The Orphan Sky (16 page)

But nothing could change what had happened.
A
knife
wound
heals, but a tongue wound
festers.

Ayib
was out. The shame had been revealed.

• • •

The next morning I woke to the screeching of car brakes followed by the slam of the doors. A gray GAZ-2424 Volga van was parked beneath my balcony. Two men in white aprons rolled out a stretcher. I grabbed my shawl and ran downstairs.

Uncle Zohrab stood at the entrance to his apartment, his feeble body swaying, banging his head mercilessly against the wall, wailing: “
Al-laa-hum-magh-fir li-hay-yi-naa wa may-yiti-naa wa shaa-hi-di-naa
…”

“What happened?” I asked, terrified.

“She took her own life.” Uncle Zohrab sobbed, covering his face with his hands. “My sweet
gül
, my Zeinab… She hung herself…quietly…while we were asleep… She hung herself in the kitchen. My beloved Zeinab. Allah, give wings to her soul…”

Then I saw Almaz. She lay huddled on the floor in the corner, shaking as violently as if a thousand volts of lightning poured through her body. The pallid irises burst out of her eyes. Her mouth salivated, chewing on air. An epileptic seizure.

“Uncle Zohrab,” I shouted. “Help!”

“Let her die. Let the
fahise
die.” He hit his head with his fists. “Oh, my Zeinab, my sweet
gül
, why did you do this to yourself? Why did you leave me in shame?”

Almaz struggled to breathe, foam forming at her mouth. Her clenched fingers pulled at the collar of her nightgown. A rasping sound rattled through her throat. Her head bounced against the hard floor.

I dithered, torn between the wish for Almaz to die an agonizing death and a fear of losing my only sister.

Fear won.

I knelt beside her, placed the palm of my hand between her head and the floor, pushed her body to one side with my free hand, and positioned my knee firmly against her back. She continued to tremble but not as violently as before. I took off my shawl, wrapped it around her shoulders, and dropped on the floor next to her.

How long had it been since we were like this together? How long had it been since I saw her face without coats of makeup? Her baby skin, a tiny mole above the bow of her upper lip, her eyes fringed with her own black lashes. How long had it been since a sanguine girl ran up and down our castle's stairway, her red ponytail flying, her crystalline laughter echoing throughout the courtyard, bringing sunshine to my childhood?

A pair of jorabs, two petals of a rose,
Aunty Zeinab
used to call us, holding us to her breasts, nursing us at the same time.

Aunty Zeinab, my sweet Aunty Zeinab.

Two men in aprons struggled to roll the heavily weighted stretcher out of the apartment. The gray plastic sheet slipped down at the threshold bump, cruelly exposing Aunty Zeinab's body. Uncle Zohrab rushed to adjust the sheet. Then he hobbled next to the stretcher, weeping, holding Aunty Zeinab's bloated hand in his.

In the niche of the courtyard, next to the Snow Princess, Muezzin Rashid recited a prayer, the fingers of his hands entwined, his eyes closed: “
Al-laa-hum-magh-fir li-hay-yi-naa wa may-yiti-naa wa shaa-hi-di-naa
…”

• • •

How can I keep living, keep breathing, putting one foot in front of the other, when the people I love the most are no more? Cold flesh wrapped in white shroud, stuck in the ground for the worms to feast on.

How can I continue when I am the one who killed them, even if by nothing more than accidentally pulling on the loose end of a knot? A knot of perversion and betrayal the people I love the most had been entangled in.

How can I grieve for them when anger flashes through my heart and burns up my tears? When my head is like a desert with rising sand dunes of questions and not a speck of an answer?

I flipped open the seat of my piano bench. Tchaikovsky's
Seasons
. I'd bought it a few years earlier but never got around to playing it. I turned over pages:
January, February
…
June
. One note after another, I wove a spell of remembrance, grieving my lost childhood and the people who had taken it away.

June: Barcarolle

Almaz and I lay under the limbs of an old weeping willow in Governor's Park. We're here to become sisters at last—blood sisters.

We dig the hole and line the colorful splinters of glass in the shape of a heart, carefully pressing them into the dirt at the bottom. We keep redoing it until the heart is perfect.

“Time for the surgery.” I reach for a package weighing down the pocket of my blouse.

“Always a doctor's daughter.” Almaz laughs.

I unfold the cloth that holds Mama's scalpel, cottons, and a roll of sanitary bandage. Just in case.

We poke each other's index finger and squeeze two drops of blood inside the small glass saucer, turn it over, and place it atop the heart.

The burial looks magical—the heart glitters from under the glass saucer—clear except for the two snakelike rosy paths of our blood coming together, connecting at the pinnacle.

As the sun reaches its zenith, we take our vows of sisterhood.

“With the Sun, Moon, and Earth as my witnesses, I swear to be your eternal sister…”

Why did Tchaikovsky name it “June: Barcarolle”? More suitable would be “Autumn Song.” A musical eulogy.

As the broken chords of the song's coda melted into the air, I heard Almaz's words:

“What if you were me and I were you? After all, it was only a beauty mark on your tummy that defined our destinies. What if your Mama was wrong? What if she made a mistake? It's possible, isn't
it?”

What
would
have happened if my parents had raised Almaz, and I was Aunty Zeinab's daughter? What then? Would it have been me, instead of Almaz, taken to the Turkish baths' whorehouse by my own papa? Would it be me, dishonored and shamed? Offered to a retarded Chingiz out of desperation to save my stolen honor?

An
egg
thief
becomes
a
camel
thief.

First, fancy rugs, rings, swords from the museums, and then my only sister—
a
priceless,
f
lawless diamond
, he called her.

Oh, how I wanted Papa to walk in the room, poised and dependable, so I could fall again under the spell of his laughter. So I could erase, scrape, tear out of my mind those unbearable thoughts.

But the only image of Papa that seemed to survive in my soul was that of a beast with his eyes glittering in a dark alley, spitting flames of lust.

Enough. I needed an escape from death and misery. I tucked Tchaikovsky back inside the bench, closed the lid of my piano, and grabbed my chador.

Bus Number 51 passed by crammed with people hanging from the doors. I ran to catch up with it at the next stop and arrived just as it was starting to pull away. Friendly passengers' hands lifted me off the ground, and with one foot on the lower stair and the other hanging in the air, I traveled up Niyazi Street.

The Caspian Sea lazily rolled its turquoise waters. On the hillsides, mottled grape vines bathed in the slanting rays of autumn sun. I jumped off the bus at the entrance to Icheri Sheher and ran through its labyrinth toward Ashuglar Street. Energized. Feeling alive again.

“
Salam eleykum, qiz
,” Tahir's next-door shoe-shop merchant greeted me. He sat in the threshold of his shop, playing
shesh
besh
with his bowlegged son.

I reached for the knob and tried to turn it. Locked.

“Take off that chador!” I heard a commanding halt.

I turned around. Two young men in leather coats approached me. The one with a pale face took a paper out of his pocket and read: “By the District Committee in Charge of Communist Ideology and Ethics, you, Leila Badalbeili, are charged with moral debauchery and criminal association.”

I woke to Muezzin Rashid's morning prayer
Fajr
Adhan
. It had been four weeks since Papa died—an eternity. With my eyes closed, I saw a lark flying in the blue sky between the sea and a rainbow, fluttering her wings in rhythm with Muezzin Rashid's vocal trills. If I could only stay like this forever in the haven of my bed. No comrades wagging their accusing fingers in my face. No college peers making nasty grimaces behind my back. None of Mama's muffled sobs nibbling at my heart from across the hallway. Nothing but my little blue universe.

I pulled the blanket over my face.

A mistake. The blanket's camel hair muted the chant. Darkness swallowed the blue. Silence trapped me in its cave, with tritones of shame and regret creeping inside my ears.

I threw the blanket to the side. A cold draft brushed against my body, seeping into my skin. The balcony door was ajar; the rain pattered against the glass. Droplets streamed down, filling a puddle underneath the door and continuing along the gaps in the parquet floor. The curtain was soaking wet like the sail of a boat flapping in a crosswind. Outside, nothing but dull skies and Muezzin Rashid's last inflections fading away like autumn leaves.

A knock on the front door. I wrapped a scarf around my shoulders and ran barefoot through the hallway.

“Who's there?”

“It's me.”

Almaz. Shrunken to bare bones and skin since I last saw her at the Seventh Day ceremony after Aunty Zeinab's suicide.

“Can I come in?” she said, looking down at her feet, blinking.

Her face was pale, her lips as shredded as if she'd been chewing on broken glass. In her arms she held a large bundle wrapped in a yellow tablecloth. She knew Mama had left for work. Otherwise she wouldn't have dared to show up.

I hesitated. She slipped in anyway, closing the door behind her.

“We need to talk,” she said.

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“But I have something to say to you. Something I
have
to say…before I leave. Because we might never see each other again.”

Never
see
each
other
again?

“Why? Where are you going?” I said in a flat voice, holding back anxiety.

“Papa is taking me to Kishlak Gadzhi later today to marry me off to a cousin. A widower. To wash his hands of my shame.”

I thought of a small, desolate village high in the Caucasus Mountains where Almaz and I once spent a few days in the summer. Even then it was cold, in a rocky cavity surrounded by glaciers, with toilets outside and no plumbing. My heart shrank with sorrow.

“I know you hate me,” Almaz said somberly, looking down, “and there is nothing I can do to make up for what happened. All I can say is that I am sorry…so sorry…that I wish I had never been born. I wish your mama had never saved me.”

“What do you expect me to do? To forgive you?” I choked back tears. “I always knew that you were jealous of my family. But never did I imagine you would sneak behind my back, bewitching, destroying Papa. Making him love you so
madly
that he completely lost his sense of judgment.”

“You're wrong, Leila. He never loved me. And I did nothing—
nothing
—to entice him. Yes, Mekhti Rashidovich was my idol. Yes, I was jealous that you had your papa and I had mine. Because I always wanted my papa to be like yours—important and powerful. And yes, I wanted to get approval from Mekhti Rashidovich, to impress him—”

“Well,” I uttered bitterly, “you obviously succeeded—”

“He made me do it,” Almaz cried. “Right here, in his smoking room…the first time… It happened three years ago, when you went with Mama to Swallow Nest in the summer. He called on the phone and asked me to bring him some coriander for his tea. I came over…and he asked me to kiss him, the way we did when we were kids, when you and I climbed in his lap and kissed him on both cheeks. I felt embarrassed, but I was afraid to disappoint him.

“And then everything happened so quickly…fear…pain…feeling both special and dirty…” Almaz paused, staring into space, her face shadowed by hurt and shame. “Afterward, he blamed me for provoking him, for unleashing his male instincts. He threatened to send me away for spreading malicious lies and ruining his reputation if I ever opened my mouth to anyone about what had happened. I started crying, and suddenly he became his old self, kindhearted and caring, telling me that I was his beautiful little girl. Which made me feel guilty, as if I had caused injury to an invincible man. I thought he regretted what happened and would never do it again… Only I was wrong.”

I stood still, with my head down, afraid to look at Almaz, feeling the intensity of her eyes on me. I knew that Almaz had told the truth. I remembered how Papa blamed me for provoking Farhad.
That's the wicked power that you women have over men
, he had said.

What
wicked
power
could a twelve-year-old girl have?

But what could I say? I was trapped, torn emotionally. If I accepted Almaz's truth, then I would be disloyal to Papa, betraying his memory.

“It's easy to blame someone who can't defend himself,” I finally said sheepishly, avoiding Almaz's gaze.

She took a deep, exasperated breath. “All right, Leila. Then I'd better go. But at least let me give you some advice before I leave.”

“Advice? About what?”

“About your situation. Please don't be stubborn. Just hear me. There are plenty of people around who'd be happy to see you fall, take Allah as my witness.” Almaz pinched her fingers together and raised her arms in the air, the way Aunty Zeinab used to do. “I wouldn't be surprised if someone staged this whole investigation about you and the Mukhtarovs.”

“What do you mean?”

“You see, your papa… He had a generous heart and liked to live in grand style. Many people ate and drank at his table and were willing to cut off their right hands if he had asked. He had many friends then. But now he has a hundred times more enemies.”

“But why? Why would they turn on Papa…on me now?”

“An exposed red apple invites a stone,” Almaz quoted an old
mesel
. “And you are exposed now. Every vulture around has been eyeing a piece for himself: your papa's collection, your apartment, your mama's position, the Badalbeili name.”

“You're ridiculous. Who can take my name away?”

“Your Papa's cousin.”

“Uncle Mahmoud?”

Essek
—donkey—Papa called him.

“Even a donkey dreams of a fancy saddle,” Almaz said. “If your reputation is smeared, he's the one to wear the Badalbeili crown. And so it goes.”

Maybe there was some truth in Almaz's words. Since Papa's funeral, it seemed Mama and I had been living in a lonely desert, as if a forceful Khazri had blown Papa's high-placed Party-member friends away. Everyone who had something to lose tried to disassociate himself from Papa's disgrace. Only his boyhood friend, Uncle Anatoly, visited us every day, bringing fresh fruit and roses from his garden, along with his openhearted smile. But he had no connections within the Party and could do nothing to help my situation.

“Even if what you're saying is true,” I said defensively, “Mama still has many people who love her, who owe her their lives.”

“They might love her with all their hearts, but no one seems to be rushing to attend to a fallen mare. Don't forget, Leila. We women are mares—to be paraded around grandly so long as there's a powerful rider on top.”

“Enough. I think you should go.” I turned to leave the room. “I've got enough gloom without your—”

“I didn't come to upset you. I want to help.”

“How? By telling me how awful everyone is? Not much help there. They've turned me into a
sortu
. They're accusing me of debauchery, immoral conduct, hiding under a chador in order to prostitute myself—”

“I have a plan,” Almaz cut me off. “I'm going today to the Baku Central Komsomol Committee to write a report that there has been a mistake. That they've unjustly accused you of
my
wrongdoing. That it was
me
—not you—wearing the chador and going to Ashuglar Street. And that when they caught you outside the shop, it was my fault because I begged you to go there and return some money I owed to the Mukhtarovs.”

Tears clogged my eyes. “You'd do this for me?”

“Of course. You're my sister, for life and beyond,” she said.

Oh, how I wanted to put my arms around Almaz and cry together so our tears could wash the past away, even if only for a brief moment.

“Thank you for wanting to help me,” I said instead. “But your plan won't work.”

“Why not?”

“Because I've already admitted my relationship with the Mukhtarovs.”

Almaz frowned, biting her lips. “That's not good. Now you have to take action.”

“How?”

“Blame the Mukhtarovs. Write a letter to the First Secretary. Beg for forgiveness. Claim that they poisoned you with their hex, threatened you or something like that. Show yourself as a victim corrupted by the Mukhtarovs.”

“I can't.”

“Why?”

“Because it's all lies. And I'll prove them wrong.”

“
Perverdigara!
Oh my God!” Almaz threw up her hands. “They don't need your proof. They're foxes. And foxes use their tails as their witnesses.”

“I can't purge the Mukhtarovs. They have done nothing but good for me.”

“No one cares about the Mukhtarovs. It's you they're after. It's you they're using as a
qapazalti
, a scapegoat, to teach a lesson in obedience to others. To show that when it comes to their Communist justice, your privileged background and all your accomplishments don't matter. As for your Mukhtarovs—they might spend a few days in jail, but I've heard Miriam's kid has a nice
krysha
dealing hashish and other things for comrades. They'll keep him out of trouble for as long as he's useful. So you better worry about yourself. And your mama.”

Almaz sniffled, a sad smile pulling the inside corners of her eyes down. She shut them tight, then opened them, using the eyelids as blotters to dry the tears.

“I better get going,” she said. “And this is for you to remember me.” She laid her package on the table and left in haste.

I unfolded the package. Inside lay Almaz the Doll in an Islamic dress with the red Pioneer tie around her neck, her jade eyes pure, her hair hidden modestly under a scarf. Almaz's most treasured possession and the source of her great vanity. She had left her with me.

I pressed Almaz the Doll against my chest, carried her to my room, and placed her lovingly on top of my piano between the photograph of Mama, Papa, and me, and the marble bust of Sergei Rachmaninoff.

• • •

Like a mouse, I scurried through the back entrance of the Conservatory and up the oval staircase to the second floor, my face buried inside the loop of my scarf. I chose the shadowy corner behind Lenin's sculpture and hid there, imprinting myself into the wall. Waiting—
dreading
—the approach of four o'clock. My first piano lesson in four weeks. And the first time I would face Professor Sultan-zade since Papa's funeral.

Had the rumors of my
indecent
behavior
reached her? And if so, would she scream at me—loud enough for the entire Conservatory and ten blocks around it to hear—before throwing me out of her practice room? It was the worst thing that could happen now, just five and a half months before the Budapest piano competition. I needed this win more than ever—my only real opportunity to redeem myself and make the horror and humiliation of the past few weeks go away.

The light flickered in one of the sconces down the long, dim corridor.
One, two, three
…
one, two, three
…
one, two, three
… How fitting was the pulse of a waltz. Robert Schumann's
Papillons
was playing behind the door of Professor Sultan-zade's rehearsal studio. I listened to the legato passages, smooth and silky, like the wings of a butterfly touching the keys. Who was playing? I didn't remember any of her students working on this piece. Besides, the performance had something of a Vladimir Horowitz emotional carelessness that could never come from any of her apprentices.

The “Waltz in F-sharp Minor” modulated into the “E-flat Major Polonaise,” the melodies as intertwined as the vines on the frieze running along the vaulted ceiling. I recalled Professor Sultan-zade saying once that Schumann's
Papillons
was her cure for melancholy, a masquerade of moods and masks, whirling her into a dance, making her careless.

I squinted, my eyelids trembling. A thousand yellow butterflies dispersed in the air—one for every staccato flying out of the rehearsal studio. In pairs, they twirled in the dance steps of the
Papillon
's “D Major Waltz,” leaping across the corridor, luring me to follow, drawing me into a fantasy.

“I didn't expect you.”

Professor Sultan-zade stood at the threshold of her studio, dressed in a coat and clearly ready to leave. Instinctively, I peeped behind her to see who was playing the Schumann. But no one was at the piano. So it had been my professor herself giving that airy, stirring performance of Schumann's
Papillons.
The best I'd ever heard.

“I came for my lesson,” I said.

Without saying a word, Professor Sultan-zade led me inside the practice room and closed the door behind us. Then, still wearing her coat, she lit a cigarette and walked to the window, the pervasive marcato of her heels crashing against the floor. Each step a rejection. Each step a drumbeat of remorse.