Somewhere East of Life

by Brian W Aldiss

  “You don’t understand. I have been on business here which is now complete. I must report back immediately to World Cultural Heritage in FAM.”

  “Have you visited the old Parthian fortress at Nisa?”

  Burnell gave the official a black look. “Nisa already comes under WACH jurisdiction. What I’m saying is that I need to return to Frankfurt immediately. Are there no other international flights available from anywhere in Turkmenistan?”

  “May I suggest you take a train, Mr. Burnell? The railway station still functions normally. Trans-Caspian train transports you to Krasnovodsk, on the shores of the Caspian Sea. In Krasnovodsk is an international airport, from whence you may fly on to Frankfurtam-Main. When we last received news from it, that airport was in working order.”

  Drumming his fingers indecisively on the counter, Burnell swore under his breath. “Could you book me a seat on the train?”

  “You may phone from your hotel. Train bookings do not form part of our service to the general public.”

  “Thanks a lot… What sort of place is this Krasnovodsk?”

  The clerk looked down his nose at Burnell; though young, he was formidably tall, or else standing on a concealed box. “You mean, compared with Ashkhabad? Is paradise… Next please.”

  All trains from Ashkhabad were crowded. Such was the conclusion Burnell reached, after an afternoon spent phoning the railway station booking-office. Though the station was close to the hotel, he could not face the obstacles of buying a ticket in the flesh, given his insufficient command of the Turkic language. He had heard from other travelers of the difficulty of discovering the right wicket at which to purchase the right ticket of the right class for the right train.

  Finally, he managed to reserve a seat on an express departing for Krasnovodsk at five the following afternoon. He lay back on his bed, exhausted by the anxiety of hanging on to a phone, at the other end of which a clerk had pottered away, perhaps to check a timetable, perhaps to take his own mysterious journey to the ends of the earth. His success meant he had only twenty-four hours to wait before quitting Ashkhabad, provided nothing else went wrong.

  With the evening opening before him, he put on a pullover and took a taxi to Mr. Khan’s EMV store.

  It was not that he still retained any great expectations of recovering his memory of Stephanie, or his academic knowledge, or any of the other matters which had crowded into the stolen years: though the dregs of hope are always the most potent. A somewhat morbid interest attracted him toward all the imprisoned detritus of other past lives, furtive, intricate, no more indelible than snow, and, in their variety, both comic and alarming.

  There was the chaykhana, and the crowded road, purple in the dusk. A great cummerbund of golden fire confining the western horizon put the scattered street lights to shame. He paid the taxi-man and made his way up the narrow alley, to knock on Mr. Khan’s door.

  Khan showed him to the section euphemistically labeled “Love.” For an hour, Burnell gorged on unedited sexual encounters. He fed with amazement on that basic human activity in all its beauty, haste, luxuriance, or squalor. He sprawled under the EMV helmet, flattened by the weight of lust, living other lifetimes—some mistily perceived, some sharp as winter frost. From infant erections to death-bed orgasms, on they came, panting for the mad mutual moment. But none of those moments had once been his and Stephanie’s.

  He emerged at the end of the hour, dazed and over-heated. He reflected on how frequently sexual satisfaction was the man’s alone, so rarely did the man show any real interest in the woman herself. Having sampled female memories—those stolen delicacies—he saw how often women were dismayed by the selfishness of their male partners. The sapphists in their antic suctions saw to each other’s gratification.

  As he paid the storekeeper, weariness must have shown in his face. Khan said he was about to close.

  “Perhaps you will favor me by drinking a glass of tea with me in the chaykhana, sir?”

  Burnell assented cheerfully. Any company was better than none, as travelers had long since discovered. Nonetheless, he was too preoccupied to listen closely to the old man’s chatter as the day’s takings were locked away in a safe. His head was slowly disentangling itself from the bootleg memories. He needed to get outside for a few deep breaths.

  Of all the torrid and fleeting love scenes which had passed through his head, he dwelt on one. Two lovers meeting somewhere outdoors in the dark. A clandestine encounter. She youthful and he seemingly no less so. They met by a waterfall. It must have been summer, since the flow of water was a mere trickle. But as to whereabouts this was, the memory gave no clue. Nor could the faces of the lovers be distinguished.

  But the feel of the woman’s body as she shed her light clothes had been real enough, and her perfume. And the male’s intense feelings of love. Mingled with passionate desire had been genuine reverence for the shy spirit of the other. The affair had indeed seemed like a true reciprocal affection, as they clutched each other on the dry bank. Something in the scene caught more than Burnell’s mere prurient interest. He wondered who the couple were, and what had happened to them; his compassion was aroused. But even as he wondered, the memory faded, dispersing like a dream. He was left in the stuffy shop with its garrulous owner.

  Setting the security system, they emerged into the evening air. The shopkeeper locked his door. The two of them walked the few meters to the teahouse, where old men were already gathering. Some chatted, some played draughts or chess. Strings of colored lights, draped across the facade, were already lit as night closed in.

  The chaykhana was a two-story affair, the verandah on the ground floor sheltered by a long sloping roof. A silk tree, with its finely textured leaves, grew to one side, giving its name to the place, “The Silk Tree Chaykhana.” Rasping music played in the rear. Khan chose a table indoors by a window, where they could watch the traffic.

  Burnell produced his stash, offering some to the other man, who refused with a smile and shake of the head. He began to talk in patchy German and English about his finances, his illnesses, local affairs, even how much the owner of the chaykhana over-charged. Burnell summed him up as a bore as he took his slap on both nostrils. His attention wandering, he thought of poor mad Ivan Nastiklof, who at least went mad about metaphysical things, in a traditional Russian way.

  Tea in beaded glasses was set before them on the table, as Khan described how a customer had cheated him over a few coins the previous week.

  “I’m not interested in all that,” Burnell said, interrupting the monologue rudely. “Petty complaints, what are they? Signs of a petty mind! Look, you’re stuck here, peddling your awful trade, what do you really know of the world? Can’t you raise your sights a little and see what’s happening? Not just the political stuff—the universal racism—all this wretched constant upheaval everywhere… Have you ever dared to think that human societies have had thousands of years in which to attain stability, and still haven’t achieved it?” He talked rapidly, marginally preferring his own nonsense to Khan’s. “Why? Why the failure? Why the constant flux, constant struggle? The world is permanently criss-crossed by refugees, fleeing some form or other of persecution. Are we all mad? If you thought about these things, it would take your mind off your arthritis, your cheating customers. Have you ever considered the terrible psychic storms shaking humanity. We’re an unstable species, the men worse than the women.”

  “You want a woman? I know a good place we can go to.”

  “Far from here?”

  “No far.”

  “I like a good drive to a brothel. Anticipation. A little excitement.”

  “Drink your tea first. The women won’t run away.”

  “What did you say your name was?”

  The storekeeper’s name was Abden Hodja Khan. He lit a long brown marijuana cigarette and began to chatter again. His cheeks were cramped under high bones. Wrinkles at the corner of his eyes gave him a humorous appearance, belied by a mournful utterance. His narro
w right hand lay on the table, playing with his plastic teaspoon. He watched the hand as he spoke, as if it were an animal with an independent life.

  “What you claim about mankind is quite a possibility. Allah wills all things. I don’t like to live in this city. Not in any city. Things are never settled in cities. The hopes, they come down. The prices, they go up. The houses, they pull down. The roads, they dig up. For me, open air is best thing, versteh?’

  Khan declared that he was a Kazakh. He had come from the remotest eastern region of Kazakhstan. “Far from here, far, far. In the snowy Tien Shan Mountains, near by the Chinese frontier.” As he spoke, his hand deserted the spoon, to point through the trellised walls of the cheykhana in the direction of a distant Cathay.

  His ancestors had been wild and free, he said, with a melancholy glance under his brows at Burnell—wild and free. Caring nothing for cities, which they regarded as prisons. He was born during a howling storm in a small yellow-painted hut with two rooms and an iron stove. The hut was set on a shoulder of the lower slopes of a mountain they called Big Bear. His mother made much of little Abden, and taught him to read. They had sturdy horses; occasionally his father and uncles traded foals in exchange for supplies. Food and animal skins.

  As a boy, Abden Hodja Khan rode with his father among the mountains.

  “I loved to ride as a boy,” said Burnell, but was ignored.

  “Snow and shine, snow and shine, always in the saddle! From early years I have my own pony—you’d say his name is ‘Blade.’ Just my father and me, only humans in any directions. We hunt, always hunting. Always in the saddle. Overhead, the open skies. On our shoulders, eagles.”

  He patted his shoulder. Burnell sat listening remotely, sipping his green tea.

  “We relied on our eagles, my father and me, relied always. My father he trained them. Big birds, sir, intelligent, on our shoulders. Then the flight. Very swift the eagle flies. Rabbits they catch for our food—anything what moves in the snow. Foxes also catching by our birds. The fox coat very valuable. When we don’t hunt, we sleep, drink maybe kumyss. My father he know everything of the wild.”

  “Tell me, did you get on with your father?”

  Hodja had closed his eyes and bowed his head, the better to recall the time of which he spoke. Without opening his eyes, he said, “Yes, I suppose. I try always to please my father.”

  “My father took me to Iceland once.”

  Khan ignored the interruption, sipping tea noisily.

  After a pause, he continued. “In the summertime came the geese, flying to our lake. Some said they had flown over the Himalayas from India, at immense heights. In one summertime, my father he taken me to a horses fair in a place called Lepkeli. Do you visit Lepkeli ever? Many people there, mainly Kazakh, very jolly. At night, the dancing, oh, all night the dancing… But I have a misfortune in Lepkeli.

  “There in Lepkeli I see my first railway train.” He acted out this dramatic moment, placing a sheltering hand along his brow. “The train he run on the lines from Urumqui in China to Alma-Ata, our Kazakh capital, Alma-Ata, and from Alma-Ata west, through Turkmenistan and in the end to Moscow. Moscow! Imagine. It was a name I heard, Moscow, like a jewel in a tiger’s throat. And then I see that diesel haul those carriages along the iron lines. That strong diesel! I go so near I can felt the heat of its machine heart.”

  He sighed. The right hand released the spoon, to lie open on the table. “It’s my imagination was like in a trap. Versteh? It’s the idea, eh? Not the real thing—the imagining. What a curse, sir, is the power of imagining to a man! I know I had to ride on that great train. I must go. That one time I didn’t pleased my father.

  He wept big tears. I never saw something like it. But still I left him. Being young, sir, I left him at Lepkeli, with our horses…

  “So I end up captive of Ashkhabad. This far only I get, then I am thrown from off the train. I have no ticket, no money. I have never been yet to Moscow. A prisoner of cities, like many men. Why is it, eh? Once I was free. Then I sacrifice it in a moment. What can I do?”

  “You could phone home,” Burnell said, finishing his tea.

  “What could I have to say?”

  “Why do you sell so many bad memories in your store? Are men so perverse? Don’t people long for happy memories?”

  “Oh, people enjoy bad memories many reasons. Like seeing a strong video—you know, violence, killing. Maybe they feel heroic. At least EMV gives to people a choice of miseries.”

  Beckoning the owner of the teahouse to show he was ready to pay, Khan said, “Memories of other people stops you being yourself. That’s a relief, eh? An escape.”

  “Is your past in fact as you say? The eagles and all that? The remote mountains? The snow?”

  A look of sorrow passed over the shopkeeper’s face. “Sir, I tell you this. Maybe I just was born here a bastard in Ashkhabad, and always stuck in this city. Why not? But if my days in the wild Alotau with my father are a substitute EMV memory, then I am made happy with them. I can’t tell what is true. Why should I tell? It’s not a matter.”

  “Doesn’t it matter to Allah whether things are true or not?”

  Khan shrugged. “I pay the bill.” He summoned a passing waiter.

  Burnell put his money on the table. “But what if those memories of yours were miserable and not happy, as you claim they are?”

  “Anything is better than to think I am a prisoner of Ashkhabad since boyhood. What kind of life would that be?” He rose. “Now you like go and see those ladies.”

  21

  Subterfuge

  The brothel was a two-story private house behind a supermarket. Downstairs was the room where girls sat about at tables while colored non-alcoholic drinks were served. Upstairs were cubicles and bidets. Khan referred to the place as either—Burnell could not be sure—”the Casa” or “the khazi.”

  Burnell checked his watch. The AIDS light was still on green. He was safe.

  He chose a young girl with a wide Tartar face and good teeth. Khan went with an older woman who knew him, and greeted him without especial delight.

  No sooner had Burnell entered the girl than she began to writhe and moan in simulated orgasm. While appreciating the theory behind this subterfuge, Burnell was irritated by it, considering it a dishonest way of speeding customer input.

  “Short Time” was what he paid for. He gave the girl baksheesh. After all, she derived less pleasure from the encounter than he.

  22

  A Brief Discourse on Justice

  When they met downstairs, Abden Hodja Khan was disgruntled. He had apparently enjoyed little success.

  “Age creeps up on me, sir,” he said, as they went into the night. He lit up one of his brown cigarettes. “Life is unfair.”

  “Not at all. Not at all, Khan. I’m always amazed at the way in which injustice is spread about with awesome equality.”

  23

  To the Krasnorodsk Station

  On his last morning in Ashkhabad, Burnell took a little breakfast in a restaurant in Ulitsa Chekhova. He felt his hours dwindling down, shorter and shorter, like the chapters of a novel by an author who is running out of ideas.

  A sturdy figure filled the doorway. It was the ex-Curator of the Archaeological Museum, Dr. Hikmat Haydar. Burnell rose and clutched his immense right hand.

  “I wished to say good-bye but did not know how to find you.”

  “Well, I find you instead, my friend. But it is not yet goodbye, positively. I will accompany you on your journey this afternoon.”

  Haydar sat down at the table, smiling, spreading himself. The chair creaked under his weight. He desired to leave Ashkhabad for some while, and so he would make the journey to Krasnovodsk on the shores of the Caspian with his friend. He would visit a kind old auntie who lived in what had once been called Lenina Prospekt in the sea port. Besides, the distance was not more than six or five hundred kilometers, and they could enjoy conversation on their way.

  “Will your wife acco
mpany us?”

  “My wife does not travel,” said Haydar. “She will not eat the bread of foreigners.’’

  Railway stations round the globe are more substantial than airports, less sinister, less brittle with tension. Their scale is less inhuman. They are places where people meet rather than depart. In many regions of the world they have become more convivial than in their country of origin, England, where rail travel is still regarded as a test of national character.

  The Ashkhabad station had been built to last a thousand years. Unlike the Third Reich—which had proclaimed a similar objective—it was well on its way to fulfilling its target. Though of a predominant style which Burnell thought of as Stalinist Criminal, its main archway and multiple turrets evoked something of Asia, with its follies and grandeurs, its longitudes and longueurs, to remind travelers that here was the Golden Railroad to Samarkand. Here was the Trans-Caspian.

  Its thronging interior echoed with announcements in strange tongues. It was crammed with stalls, mobile and otherwise, peddling ices, poisonous drinks, sherbets, sweetmeats, sheep-cheese puffs, steaming bowls of lahgman, suitcases, bird cages, kites, bright-colored toys from distant Bombay, Beijing, and Chengdu—and paper books and magazines.

  Many people in the immense crowds were wrapped against the change in the weather, wearing thick woolly leggings, or swathing their legs about with whatever material was handy. They made the atmosphere more exotic.

  But Burnell was hardly conscious of them. He suddenly remembered his mother’s words, spoken to him in his scorpion-inspired delirium. By a turn of fate, here he was at the station, as her ghost had predicted. Somewhere here on a bookstall, he would find a book, a travel book—was it by him or about him? Had she made that clear?