by Banine
There was also furniture for two other salons, inspired by Versailles. As far as I remember, this was much simpler and, perhaps for that reason, more beautiful than the Moorish furniture. Then there was yet more furniture for a small room that was to be Amina’s ‘boudoir’. This room had an alcove with a large divan, which shocked the aunts and uncles; they claimed that the divan in the alcove, the low chairs and shaded lights created a coquettish atmosphere.
The house’s pièce de résistance was without question the huge, flamboyantly Gothic dining room, where the pointed tops of the cupboards attacked the ceiling, cathedral-style. The walls were covered in a fabric of golden fleur-de-lys and the oak doors were studded with leather nails. Alas, where was the armour of our medieval ancestors?
Amina’s bedroom was yet more modern Alhambra, with chairs to match.
Oh, what a fine apartment we had! And everything else changed in keeping with it. Instead of the maids-of-all-work that we used to have, we now had a chef, valets and lady’s maids. Amina also asked my father to buy some motor cars, so we became the owners of two Mercedes-Benzes, which had to be used; this was not as easy as it might seem at first sight. Baku was still a very small city, so any distance could be covered in a few minutes and the car would have only just got going when it arrived at our destination. This did not encourage motoring. There were not many places for excursions outside Baku. There was really only one in winter and we made that trip again and again until we were sick of it. We went to Bibi Heybat, an oil-producing suburb that ended in a narrow spit of land plunging several kilometres into the sea. There, the derricks, waves and wind gave off their distinctive tang and it all had a terribly melancholy air.
But I would sit next to Amina, and squashed up against her I soon forgot the sadness inspired by the gloomy landscape, cliffs on one side and the stormy sea on the other.
In spring we would add an alternative destination for our excursions: we went to the Nobel Gardens, which the Nobel family had laid out close to Baku in an area, like all areas close to Baku, where oil was produced by hundreds of derricks. It was an enormous public park, inserted between the Nobels’ industrial workings, a location that gave it a special charm and turned it into a sort of floral jewel: it had an abundance of trees, including fruit trees, flowers in greenhouses and flowers in flower beds. We would return laden down with branches of cherry blossom, and decorate Amina’s boudoir with them, bringing the beautiful spring into our home afresh.
My father’s marriage had turned our lives upside down and was gradually to disrupt them even more. Amina weathered storms and tempests, success and failure, in order to keep open house, not only for men who had one or several wives, a double or treble chin and a clear family tie to us, but also for bachelors, sometimes young and handsome, whose parentage was not known. To that end, Amina made frequent use of the word ‘cultures’; even if she misused it, making it serve other ends than those that might be implied, we benefited from this state of mind. We were enriched by influences other than Fräulein Anna. We were enlightened not only by Amina, but also by the new governesses.
Mademoiselle Marie Sarment was a woman of character, in the best sense of the word; she was lively and an excellent teacher. Physically, she had an aquiline nose, bouffant hair and breasts that took up a lot of room, which irritated her since she was small and didn’t really know where to put them. I can still remember clearly that first, colourful lesson: Mlle Marie spoke only colours: red, blue, violet, and so on, again and again… Despondent, I thought we would have to learn their English equivalents next, and if our linguistic studies continued in the same vein, I would end up in ten years’ time knowing twenty languages. I was depressed at the thought of all that hard work. But Mlle Marie gave me a shake, lifted her aquiline nose and cried in triumph, ‘C’est un crayon rouge!’—waving in front of my nose the irrefutable proof of her assertion. ‘Repeat after me.’ I felt she would have rather died than give up the truth of her assertion.
‘C’est un crayon rouge,’ I repeated half-heartedly, out of politeness.
My lack of conviction upset Mlle Marie.
‘My dear, one has to be sure of what one learns. It is a red pencil, after all. So repeat it.’
And I repeated it, but couldn’t help thinking of the girls my own age whom I had met at Grandmother’s; true, they were veiled, or at least they would be one day; true, they had lice in their hair, and oriental slippers on their feet, but no conscientious governess came to torment them by teaching them a new language every year. Lucky things, I sighed to myself, while repeating out loud, ‘C’est un crayon rouge.’
Pencils of every colour marched before my eyes for an hour, at the end of which I knew colours as well as millions of Frenchmen did. Then Mlle Marie gave me two kisses, one on each cheek, and assured me in charming, eccentric Russian that I was a lovely person. I believed her implicitly and set about loving her in return.
Later I had plenty of reasons to love her; one in particular disposed me favourably towards her. Studying me one day, she said, ‘You will be famous.’ I was impressed, flattered and thoroughly delighted, especially since I was beginning to suffer from an incurable inferiority complex. Dear Mlle Marie! Such a lovable person and such a skilled teacher! Even if your prediction was never to come true (and there are good reasons for thinking so), I am nevertheless very grateful to you. It is good to believe those who believe in you.
A few days later I found myself sitting opposite Miss Collins and learning ‘white’, ‘red’, ‘blue’… even more half-heartedly than with Mlle Marie, and thinking with even greater longing of the ignorant, lousy girl I would have been if emancipation hadn’t become the order of the day. Lousy, but speaking only Azeri; lousy, but not forced to play scales for two hours a day; lousy but not wearing myself out over the geography of countries of no concern to me; in a word, lousy but happy. To me, lice became a symbol of a simple, but happy life.
Miss Collins lacked Mlle Marie’s charm. Too reserved for my taste, she intimidated me; on top of that I held her personally responsible for the disconcerting fact that almost all English words consisted of refashioned French or German words. One letter was removed, another changed and the job was done—badly, I thought. ‘Bleu’ became ‘blue’, ‘rot’ became ‘red’, ‘Hut’ changed to ‘hat’, and so on ad infinitum. Those sad Englishmen with no imagination took words from everyone, made the slightest of changes and flattered themselves that they had their own language and enjoyed universal respect. But they certainly didn’t have mine. I thought resentfully that if they had had the courage and honesty to adopt French or German, I (and a quarter of humanity) would have been spared the task of learning an amalgam of mutilated words. And I put the English in the same category as the Armenians and Greeks: a category reserved for people I considered underhand and wicked.
For me, one of the greatest advantages of our new residence was our proximity to Aunt Rena, who came to live on the floor above ours. This closeness was very beneficial for me. First of all, because she would often invite us to eat the most delicious apple tart in the world, which was the speciality of her Russian cook; second, the aunts and uncles often played poker there, games at which my sisters and I garnered a much appreciated, steady income. The biggest advantage of all, though, was that during her husband’s frequent absences Aunt Rena would ‘borrow’ me from Fräulein Anna, who was none too keen on the arrangement but was obliged to ‘lend’ me. The faint-hearted Aunt Rena could not bear sleeping alone. Fräulein Anna suggested she have one of the servants sleep in the neighbouring room, but Aunt Rena replied that this would solve nothing; she needed to have someone in the bedroom itself, in the bed of her travelling husband, and I was her preferred choice. So I went upstairs to sleep at Aunt Rena’s quite often. Sometimes this arrangement lasted one or two weeks, to my unfettered delight. And for good reason: Aunt Rena often visited one or other of her sisters for the indispensable game of cards and during that time I was alone in the large apartment and
master of my own fate, taking the opportunity to read whatever I liked for as long as I liked. A small room next to the bedroom housed a huge carved-oak bookcase, full of books that were mostly translations of French authors. There were the complete works of Maupassant and Flaubert; I found Loti, Mirbeau and Zola. During my solitary nights there I read all these books, some of them several times. I would go up at nine, supposedly about to drop off at any minute; carried away by enthusiasm, Aunt Rena would usually return between three and five in the morning, so I would spend all this time reading. The reading went to my head like wine. From three o’clock onwards, though, I would remain alert, listening out while I read. When I heard a car pull up outside the house, the main door slam and footsteps coming up the staircase, I would throw the book back onto the shelf, put out all the lights and hurry into bed. Aunt Rena would find a girl asleep in her husband’s bed and would hardly dare breathe for fear of waking me. I would magnanimously decide to put her at her ease and pretend to wake up; I would enquire pleasantly who won the game, and Aunt Rena would be delighted to be able to talk and make as much noise as she liked. And she made a lot of noise as she went to bed: she would let out oohs and ahs of pain as she got into bed, would murmur in satisfaction or groan in displeasure, endlessly rearranging her many pillows and blankets, tossing and turning and invoking Allah and his Prophet, before finally lying still, exhausted. But not for long. A few minutes later she would be on the move again.
‘Ay Allah,’ she would invariably say, ‘I think I have to wee.’
Then she would make a dash for the chamber pot, placed between two cupboards at the far side of the room.
‘What can I do? I’ve got a weak bladder,’ she would say quite unnecessarily.
I wasn’t really bothered, as I would be half-asleep by now.
I was sometimes horribly frightened during the long hours in the large, deserted apartment. I remember one such night, when I was reading Maupassant’s ‘Le horla’ and terrors assailed me on every side: the furniture creaked in sinister fashion, the curtains seemed to move for no reason, the wind whistled in the chimney, but most of all I was terrified by the shadows that surrounded me. I thought they were going to materialize into horrible, hairy, slimy phantoms and suffocate me with their soft flesh. I froze in my chair, blood pounding in my temples, covered in cold sweat and scarcely able to breathe. Sometimes I would stay like this for a long time in the greatest mortal fear, expecting to be attacked by nocturnal monsters at any moment. Nevertheless, I would be as happy as ever to return to Aunt Rena’s the next evening, so great was my passion for reading. Breathless, I read and reread Mirbeau’s Torture Garden and Diary of a Chambermaid—if poor Fräulein Anna had known! She had no idea, though, and was downstairs, sleeping the sleep of the just. I got through the whole of Chekhov; I read Gyp, Hugo and others, many others. This went on for years, and I had the time to read and reread everything. I didn’t mind if I understood only half of what I read—I was happy with that half, which was more than enough to introduce me to the wonderful world of the imagination, more intense than the real world. I would be the different heroines in turn: wicked or good, treacherous or brave, magnanimous or cruel. I was all things, ever changing. I lived through fever, enchantment and horror.
Daydreaming brings such wonderful memories! A little later it would be the groans of Aunt Rena and the dash for the chamber pot; but this was dull and lifeless in comparison to the hours I spent in other people’s shoes.
Who can tell the importance of dreaming? And of reading!
8
Spring came astonishingly early the first year that Amina lived with us; warm breezes blew constantly, making the sparrows sing and the blossoms open. With the change in season came the question of where to spend the summer. Here too everything had changed: Amina did not want to go to the country with the entire Family as usual—she couldn’t bear the prospect of prying cousins all over the property, poor, lousy relations in every corner of the garden, aggressive brothers-in-law and touchy sisters-in-law. She wanted to go to France, but France was denied her. After much discussion my father decided we would go to the North Caucasus to take the waters in Kislovodsk, the most elegant of a cluster of spa towns. My maternal grandfather agreed to put one of his villas at our disposal, so that even when my father was away, we would be in a decent family atmosphere, not a showy hotel full of hazards of every sort for weak women and children.
At last I was really going to leave Baku, and on a proper train, not the ridiculous slow coach that took us to the country every spring.
Amina took personal charge of selecting the many dresses we had made; she wanted us to be well dressed, as she insisted on having an atmosphere of elegance around her.
I was captivated by my new dresses. One of them in particular kept me awake at night: it was made of white lace with short, puff sleeves and rosebuds all over. I would lie in bed, my eyes wide open, imagining myself in this dream of a dress promenading with Amina. I also thought my stepmother might love me more when she saw me covered in rosebuds and submerged in lace. I had to face the evidence: I had made no progress whatsoever in winning her love. She was utterly indifferent towards me. I looked for the reason for her indifference and eventually found it: I was too ugly, too ugly to be loved.
This idea stayed with me for some time, and I suffered cruelly as a result. I didn’t like anything about myself; the more I looked at Amina, the more I found myself repulsive. I thought her beauty perfect… and realized with a growing despair that all my features were the exact opposite of hers. In desperation I prayed long and hard to Allah, begging him to make me beautiful right away. I thought the miracle would happen as a result of my prayers and I would wake up one morning, transformed into a diaphanous blonde, all pink skin and clear eyes.
For the first time I was going to take what I used to call a real train, a big train. Amina had already left with Leyla and my father; Fräulein Anna and we three ‘little girls’ were to join them.
The heat was stifling on the day of our departure; a dust-laden wind blew over a dazed Baku. I wandered from room to room in the dark, shuttered house, among furniture covered in white dust sheets, but couldn’t settle. All three of us were in the same state of excitement and could not eat a thing at lunchtime. Seeing this, Fräulein Anna suggested that instead of having dinner at home we go for a bathe in the Caspian, followed by milky drinks in one of the cafes on the Boulevard. From there we could go straight to the station without returning to the house. We greeted this brilliant idea with enthusiasm.
The famous Boulevard occupied a prominent place in Baku’s social life. It was a long stretch of asphalt next to the sea with many seats and few trees. One went to the Boulevard to see and be seen, to keep up with the latest news, to eat, drink and listen to music. In the open-air cafes zurnachi (the zurna is a kind of fife) played and singers sang themselves hoarse in Azeri, their leader sporting a fez. Buttermilk, yoghurt, kumis and other dairy products were consumed. Sometimes the municipal orchestra played with excessive gusto in a bandstand in the middle of the promenade. And those weren’t the only attractions on offer: there were the landing stages, where boats would be moored and others would be docking or setting sail; and, finally, there was the bathing area, which was reached via a long wooden jetty projecting out into the sea. There wasn’t a public beach system in Baku: for a few roubles every bather acquired exclusive use of a cabin that opened onto a minuscule square of sea, bounded by wooden planks dug into the sand.
I was astounded at the opulence of the sleeper compartment, where our luggage was already waiting for us. Everything was rich and gleaming: the mirrors, the wood, the lamps all shone; we had plush carpet beneath our feet, velvet at the touch of our hands. The restricted space concentrated all these riches, condensed them in some way: what was contained in a square centimetre there would have embellished a square metre anywhere else.
Fräulein Anna settled me on a couchette. The others went to bed in turn and soon everyone was
asleep; only I tossed and turned on my borrowed bed. The red night light reminded me of the icons I had seen in our Russian maids’ rooms. My thoughts hopped from one subject to another: I relived that evening’s dip in the Caspian; I imagined the marvellous life the next day would bring; I reviewed all my new dresses, lingering with tender satisfaction on the one with rosebuds. The next moment I wondered why Fräulein Anna and Amina had such white skin, while we were all so brown. My elder sister Zuleykha’s upper lip had already acquired a covering of light down. The next eldest, Surayya, had a much thicker covering. As for Leyla, the eldest of us all, she already possessed a real moustache, which she removed regularly. Having so many older sisters was such a bore: I could see my physical destiny in each of them; I knew what I would be like in four, five or eight years. At that age I didn’t give a thought to the day when we would be not just adults, but older than that; when I would see what the ‘ravages of time’ would inevitably wreak on me.
I woke up at dawn and remembered with pride that I was travelling.
As I got up, I could see the sky, then a wood, something I had never seen before. Trees, hundreds of trees, thousands of trees, standing on a thick, grassy carpet; grass that grew lush and green, and appeared entirely natural—what a marvel! If only our gardeners could see that, I thought; for all their artificial irrigation they could not turn the sandy earth green.
The train stopped suddenly in the middle of the countryside. The spot wasn’t completely deserted, though, as there was a house for the crossing keeper. He emerged from inside and walked over to the locomotive; I heard him talking to the driver, then silence returned.
The silence that follows a train stopping in a deserted place is always so troubling. Why? There is more than silence in this silence, there is a sort of waiting, an enchantment that is both delicious and sad at the same time.
