by Banine
A love match with a penniless girl! It was unthinkable, contrary to good sense, good taste, reason, even common decency, but was going to happen because the poor man (my father, of course) had lost his mind. The world of my grandmother and aunts was already showing cracks, but this would bring it crashing down. They knew who to blame, reserving their hatred for Russia and Christians, the destroyers of their world.
Ignorant of the feelings of the older generation, we children were overjoyed, delighted. We were going to have a young, civilized stepmother, with fair skin and almost blonde—as was confirmed by Uncle Ibrahim, who had a recent photo of Amina. We devoured that picture, finding her dazzling.
My eldest sister Leyla became unbearable. She was going to Moscow… No, not only Moscow, maybe even Paris, the omniscient Uncle Ibrahim declared. Amina wanted to go to Paris before coming to Baku, and since business stopped my father from accompanying her, he was going to send Uncle Ibrahim in his place, and for reasons of propriety Leyla was to join them; to put it in political terms, it would be ‘a unilateral honeymoon, taken within the family framework’.
It was infuriating that Leyla would have the good fortune to see Paris! Wasn’t it enough that she was sixteen with voluptuous breasts and a dozen suitors? To reinforce her crushing superiority over us, she would travel to Europe! My heart ached at my dreary fate. I remembered my unhappy romances with Ruslan, the Russian boy and the two brothers; the hollow word ‘injustice’ was imbued with tragic meaning… off I went to shed unseen tears beneath the leaves of my friend the vine.
Two long months passed, lit up by burning arrows—postcards from Warsaw, Berlin, Paris. The cards seemed imbued with a hidden magic power that I tried to decipher; I fingered them, turning them over and over; I sniffed them, trying to picture where they had been chosen and posted, how they had crossed all those distant countries to reach us. I couldn’t get to sleep at night as I constantly imagined a glittering life with Amina; an eventful life, full of joy and pleasure; the kind of life one can only dream of. Following Amina everywhere—to Paris, Nice, Rome… I had completely forgotten my love for the two brothers and was now indifferent to their charms whenever I happened to see them.
That memorable summer I was obsessed with dreaming—an obsession, moreover, that has never left me. I sought solitude so I could dream in peace; only in this escape from the tedium of daily life could I be sure of finding happiness, independent of everyone and everything.
But I needed the guile of an old Sioux to find this solitude, throwing off the scent of sisters, cousins, aunts and governesses, and especially those bloodhounds Asad and Ali. When I managed it, I ran to my vine in the heart of the vineyard, lay down on sand softer than the softest skin, my friend’s leaves all around me, closed my eyes and plunged into the story of my love for Amina. I saw myself at her side in Paris, instead of the loathsome Leyla with her enormous cow eyes and bulging breasts. ‘She’ showered me with presents and tenderness, while I adored her unreservedly, with all the generosity of a child who hasn’t yet learnt how to hold anything back, despite the tough school of my cousins.
The day that I would meet her, a day impossible to imagine, finally arrived. At dawn we set to work with garlands and paper lanterns and thousands of fresh flowers, until the house was resplendent and aromatic. Then we dressed in all our finery. Towards five in the afternoon, the entire Family, except for Grandmother, gathered beneath the large portico at the main entrance to await the arrival, all quarrels set aside.
Overcome with excitement, I shivered despite the blazing sun; I had had a lump in my throat intermittently since morning and could drink only water; my heart was pounding violently. I imagined every detail of the great love scene: as She got out of the car, I would be the first person She saw. She would walk towards me, arms outstretched and eyes glistening, and say something dazzling, such as: ‘My little angel, love me.’ The next part of the scene was vague, as my happiness was beyond expression.
We sat on the stone benches beneath the large portico, eyes fixed on the empty road. Whenever a cloud of dust appeared in the distance, I was at breaking point. Everyone got on my nerves. My aunts were gossiping at full volume as usual, criticizing their sister-in-law—whom they had yet to meet—at a rate of three hundred words per minute; excitement racked up the speed of their utterances f rom impressive to prodigious. My sisters and female cousins, presided over by the governesses, sat in a separate group, all ‘good little girls’ together. Enormous powder-blue ribbons sat on top of their well-brushed hair; the same blue bordered the collars of the eternal sailor suits they had to wear, with nascent moustaches the finishing touch. Their feet elegantly pointing inwards and their hands casually resting on their thighs, they seemed to be waiting for the click of the camera.
My male cousins were as scruffy as usual, despite the efforts of the whole family. They pulled each other’s hair and punched each other out of the blue, as a kind of game. That day, for the very first time I despised them, rather than admired them.
A cloud of dust appeared in the distance—was it them? As they came closer, all doubt disappeared: we recognized our horses, our coachman, our father. The carriage made rapid progress and pulled up at the portico. My father was first to emerge, swarthy as usual but expansively content as never before; next came Leyla preceded by her breasts like a herald’s trumpet, and finally ‘She’ stepped out…
My heart wasn’t beating, it was jumping up and down. More than that, my internal organs had been rearranged. Instead of one heart, I now had several: one in its usual place, one in my head, another in my throat and more scattered all over. They all pounded together, making me shake terribly. And not without reason. Amina was more beautiful in the flesh than in photographs. She was touched by the freshness of dawn; her very slightly snub nose seemed to me to be the height of originality; her lips were red, full and smiling. The sun illuminated flecks of flame in her chestnut hair, which I studied in fascination. As she approached, her fitted dress hinted at a fine waist and long, slim thighs.
My father did the introductions. According to my fantasy, Amina should have recognized me herself among the laypeople, chosen me, favoured me straightaway, sensed my all-consuming love for her. But she embraced the aunts, the sisters, the cousins, even the insolent twins who were staring at her rudely. All the family were introduced—I was the only one left out. They were about to walk down the grand avenue towards the house when my father became aware of my presence behind an aunt and pointed me out to Amina: ‘And there’s the littlest.’
Only then did she turn her light-brown eyes towards me, kiss my forehead and pat my cheek.
‘Oh, what a black little thing!’ she said smiling, and turned her back on me, taking my father’s arm.
It was a bitter disappointment, but even children are capable of compromise. I bravely choked back my sorrow and got acquainted with the chasm between dreams and reality. I found a thousand and one justifications for Amina’s behaviour towards me and my love remained as strong as ever, but less demanding. Amina, though, was indifferent towards me; or, rather, she was kind when she saw me, but forgot all about me when I wasn’t there. She had other things on her mind than her relationship with a lovesick little girl. The poor thing was like a fish out of water. Young and used to her freedom, she found herself surrounded by veiled women, malicious sisters-in-law and wild brothers-in-law for whom virtue was no laughing matter. What was to become of her among all these strange people? And what good was the celebrated oil in these impossible conditions? The oil that could take the form of jewels, dresses, furs and other frivolous things? What use were they in this milieu? Even to possess them seemed pointless, absurd. Dress in Parisian creations for the mustachioed sisters-in-law, put on make-up for the suspicious brothers-in-law? With the exception of some old engineers from the family firm, respectable, bearded, long-serving employees with armies of children, any male who was not part of the clan was automatically suspect; it was considered indecent to invite a man
to call. My tolerant father, known for not giving a damn, wouldn’t have minded, but the Family, strong, united, jealous and strict, was on watch.
At least at the start, Amina’s life was far from cheerful. Besotted with France or, rather, with Paris, or even with a particular aspect of Paris, she found herself forced instead to live an almost miserable, enclosed existence.
Not sharing her suffering, my three sisters and I were happy and proud to have her with us and learnt much through her presence. Amina had brought back a lot of music from her latest trip to Paris.
À la Martinique, Martinique, Martinique,
C’est ça qu’est chic, c’est ça qu’est chic…
we would sing in delight, imitating the sounds without understanding the words. Tangos, the ‘Apache Dance’, Mayol’s songs and all the popular tunes of the era were strewn across our magnificent Bechstein concert piano. It was only much later that I learnt of composers such as Ravel or Debussy. The same could be said of the literary genius of France which was revealed to us through La vie parisienne with its captivating pictures. Emancipation had begun.
Some time later, though, and thanks to the good-natured Amina, whose idea it was, we had more useful contact with French culture through the intermediary of a charming demoiselle, Marie Sarment, who came from France for our benefit.
Also thanks to Amina, an Englishwoman arrived from England at almost the same time in order to teach us the language of Shakespeare and social graces from across the Channel. From day one she astounded us with the excellence of her table manners; instead of eating corn on the cob by grabbing it with both hands, as we usually did, Miss Collins would remove the kernels meticulously with a knife and fork; she would stab each kernel separately with her fork and convey it to her mouth; it was attractive to watch but took far too long. After humbly admiring the grace and skill of her performance, we would grab our cobs again with both hands and devour them in the Caucasian manner.
Fräulein Anna was justifiably resentful at the arrival of the new governesses. Her situation remained privileged; she was in some ways part of the family, but her authority was diminishing and we admired only one woman now: the dazzling Amina. All her ways impressed us: how she spoke French, how elegantly she wore her dresses by Poiret, how beautiful her chestnut hair was (I now found poor Fräulein Anna’s blondness dull in comparison), and her intelligence (ah, what intelligence), and her culture (ah, what culture), and so on and so forth… I was sick with admiration.
I didn’t want to play our usual games very often now; I thought it was boring to pretend the apricot tree was a train and we were passengers, drivers and stationmasters, and found it childish to play at ‘the ruling family’; even the ‘massacre of Armenians’ had lost its spice for me. No, I wanted to play at being Amina. I would imitate her; mimic her voice, her walk, her gestures; I would wrap myself in a blanket that was meant to be one of Worth’s creations, declaim French words and pretend I was strolling down the grand boulevards of which Amina had so often spoken.
Asad played the part of my father—and with considerable talent, I have to say—while Gulnar, Ali and Tamara were the extras—servants, doctors, merchants, police officers, whatever the game demanded.
To me, Amina was France, and this was the start of my love for the country that was later to become mine. As a result, I wanted everything to be French or at least everyone to speak French; I even wanted to teach Grandmother the language. I went to find her, sitting majestically as usual on her commode.
‘Grandmother,’ I said in Azeri, as she didn’t speak any other language, ‘say “Bonjour, petite fille”.’
Grandmother would start off with a few insults and then meekly repeat ‘Bondjouptitfil’. I would make her repeat it, then teach her other words until she lost patience and gave me a good smack, accompanied by one of the tremendous swear words she had made her own. So I would leave her to go and teach French to more receptive souls.
Amina’s arrival turned our whole life upside down, materially as well as spiritually. In the autumn we would move to a new house, for which furniture had been ordered from Moscow. Our former apartment would gradually disappear from our ungrateful memories; a piece of our lives would fall into oblivion. Farewell to the five of us together, farewell to cream tarts, farewell to pink cotton angels. The era of Germanic sentimentality, transplanted so strangely to Azerbaijani soil, was over—a new era was beginning: the era of Amina.
6
Everything amazes me when I go back to the past. I’m surprised to realize that this part-oriental, part-German and, later, Russian childhood is my own; that the dreamy, withdrawn and rather naughty girl is me. All these dredged-up memories seem borrowed: it’s hard to believe they’re mine. I walk through them like a tourist, not a resident; Baku seems to be a distant dream and the family my own invention. Sometimes I enjoy going back, but more often I am apprehensive. I was happy until around the age of ten, but then withdrew into myself, feeling lonely among my older sisters. The change began when my father remarried; maybe Amina embodied the dream I had thought would always be out of reach. At that time a new horizon opened up before me: I realized there were other worlds, not just my small world with Fräulein Anna at its centre and our country house at its boundary. Convinced that Baku was a splendid city, my family irreproachable and our life desirable, I was surprised and saddened to discover that Amina did not share my opinion; Amina despised Baku, loathed the family and rebelled against our existence. I had ‘to reconsider my position’ and came to see Baku as a filthy backwater despite its millionaires, our family as dangerously barbaric and our life as pitiable from all points of view. I dreamt of crazy things that I knew were impossible to attain. I would have been dumbfounded to hear that I would one day have the free life of which I dreamt, abroad, far from all the oppressive constraints which Amina chafed against; that I would possess Paris in all its beauty, in all its poignant beauty; that I would cross the Place de la Concorde almost every day and regularly visit the Louvre. I didn’t know that a long, hard war and a long, hard revolution would one day open up to me the land of my most cherished dreams. No, I knew none of this then. I was preparing for a very different life that I thought I already knew. I would marry one of Baku’s oil barons, decked out in dazzling jewels that would attest to the importance of my fortune, and would have many children. With a lot of luck, my husband would be handsome and inspire me with love, a hope that never left me. Having dreamt of love from a very early age, I wanted to know it.
There’s nothing left of the Baku of my childhood, and who regrets it, other than a few old émigrés who parade their vigilant nostalgia around the world? No one will be moved by the memory of the sordid millionaires; it is right that they disappeared. Islam had ceased to be true Islam, thereby losing its function. Engulfed by modern life, it no longer brought peace to the soul, only a list of constraints that were thrown off without regret. Is gambling forbidden by the Koran? The whole of Baku played cards, staking enormous sums into the bargain. Is wine forbidden by the Prophet? People made up for it by drinking spirits—vodka, brandy—on the false pretext that it wasn’t wine. Reviled too was reproduction of the human image, but the photographers were overwhelmed with customers and the Muslims had their pictures taken in profile and full face against the background of a painted park or riotously draped curtains.
What a strange childhood! I know that every childhood feels far away. Mine, though, seems even more unreal because of this complete fracture, both geographic and social. Nothing connects me to it: neither religion, which I abandoned, nor language, since today I think and write in French; neither my nationality, which has changed, nor the lost millions; nothing and no one. My past seems like a previous life. Unlike Baudelaire in his poem ‘Former Life’, I didn’t live ‘beneath vast colonnades’, but in places that seem equally unreal to me, like a dream that arose in response to some forgotten tale.
7
We returned to the city and did our best to settle into our new
, half-empty house. As we watched the furniture from Moscow arrive, our admiration for Amina’s taste reached fever pitch. We thought the furniture triumphantly luxurious, as the furniture of rich people should be, and so original! To please our oriental taste, there was the inevitable Moorish furniture, all carved wood and fretwork and covered in sumptuous ornaments in all the colours of the rainbow; long, narrow divans stood on a dais separated from the rest of the room by an elaborate wooden balustrade. I think the divans were supposed to be soft and voluptuous in the oriental style, but they were neither—they were hard and uncomfortable. But this was probably the will of Allah! The stucco on the salon’s walls was shaped into wonderfully painted and gilded arabesques. The whole was meant to recreate the Alhambra…
