The Orphan Sky (27 page)

“So your attaché is a millionaire. He probably paid—”

“Paid? He never paid a dime for it. He never pays for anything. He's a thief. No doubt in my mind, he stole it from his government's treasury, leaving half of Turkey destitute.”

Almaz put the necklace on and moved the collar of her pajamas aside, allowing the diamonds to sparkle against her olive skin.

“He gave it to me after that time when his little member, you know, finally did its little job.
That
little." She laughed, holding her thumb and index finger an inch apart.

“Don't make fun of the old man.”

“The very
filthy
old man, who sweats and grunts like a pig when he tries to do it, you know.”

She jumped on top of me and began squealing and puffing and wheezing and squeezing my throat playfully, then rolled off me, laughing. “That's how it goes. And when he gets high on opium, he can be really,
really
nasty and sadistic. What can I say?” She shrugged. “By the way, do you still have that doll I left for you?”

“Almaz the Doll?”

“Yes.”

She paused. “Would you mind if I took it back? You know, there's something I always wanted to do. As a tribute to my parents. To have her on exhibit at the Baku Museum of Fine Arts where she used to be.”

“How could you do that?”

“Bulut can make it happen. He promised. He and the museum director get drunk and go to the Turkish baths on Tuesdays together.”

“It will mean a lot for Aunty Zeinab and Uncle Zohrab.”

We lay silent, cuddled by a warm cashmere spread, listening to the violins swirling in the dying candlelight, watching the wax metamorphose into lacy skirts adorning the bronze holders.

“Almaz, I need your help. I'm pregnant,” I said.

Pause.

“I told you not to go to Afghanistan.”

Did I hear disdain in her tone?

“It's late. I better get going.” I dropped my feet to the floor, made an attempt to get up.

“Don't even think about it.” Almaz grabbed my hand, pulling me back under the spread, close to her. “I know how you feel, Leila. And I'm sorry. It's no fun.”

“Have you ever…”

“Remember that evening I snapped at you, when I was washing your hair before your recital, the time you played Beethoven? That was the first time for me.”

“The first time? You mean—”

“Yes, that's exactly what I mean. I was pregnant then. For the first time.”

“Why? Why didn't you tell me—”

“Tell you what? That your papa made me pregnant? That I didn't know what to do? That I wanted to kill myself? That I went to Samed Vurgun Park and kept jumping down from the tree—the same tree you and I used to climb and play the Cockle, Cockle Golden Comb game? That I jumped and jumped until it just came out?”

“But maybe if you told me then, we could have done something,” I said defensively.

“Something what?”

“We could have stopped Papa and prevented the tragedy—his death, Aunty Zeinab's suicide, everything.” I cried out harsher than I intended.

“No one, including you, would have believed me,” Almaz replied sadly, wearily. “Besides, I didn't want to hurt Mekhti Rashidovich. Wouldn't you have done the same to protect him?”

I had no answer. All I could think of was that Papa had caused Almaz the same torture I was going through. And that my pain was the punishment for what he had done to her.

“How far along are you?” Almaz asked.

“It's over three months.”

“What have you been waiting for?” She shook her head in disbelief.

“I've been on tour.”

“Tour? What tour? You're crazy. You should have come to me instead of going on a stupid tour. Now, at this point, there's only one thing left outside of an abortion.”

“What is it?”

“Can you stay overnight?” Almaz said, ignoring my question.

“Mama thinks I'm still touring.”

“Good. Then get undressed. I'll make a bath for you.”

I spent the night in the bathtub in near-boiling water, inhaling the vapors of the vinegar that Almaz kept adding. On top of that, she made me drink a half bottle of vodka with parsley, iodine, and arsenic. The torment resulted in projectile vomiting, a blazing throat, and an excruciating headache.

But no miscarriage.

The next day, as soon as the sun went down, Almaz and I wrapped ourselves in chadors and boarded a tram that took us to Black City.

A Baku I had never seen before unfolded through the dusty window of the tram: deserted streets, broken lights, and decrepit apartment blocks with the leftovers from better times—beautiful ironwork railings on curved balconies and, here and there, colorful stained glass windows.

Black City. An industrial oil district of Baku that used to be a French Gothic quarter built by the oil barons for their overseas workers at the beginning of the twentieth century.

“Our stop.” Almaz pulled me to the exit.

We got off and walked alongside the tracks. The smell of black oil,
neft
, was heavy in the air. Dark, slimy puddles spilled across the road.

Then, out of nowhere, a figure emerged through the shadows, head slouched inside his shoulders, eyes bloodshot, a leer on his face. He hobbled toward us on the narrow street unwavering, as though he could pass right through us. We split to make room, but at the last moment, he attempted to grope Almaz's breast.

“
Kiopek
oghlu
,” she cursed, pushing him forcefully aside. He stumbled against a wall as Almaz grabbed my hand, and we ran toward an alley at the end of the block—our destination.

“Pay fifteen kopeks if you want to enter.” A girl no older than six, with blond curls and small oblique eyes, a strawberry embroidered on her skirt, guarded the gate. Behind her lay a pile of decaying trash with something shifting around inside. Rats?

“Shameless! Leave them alone! Like mother, like daughter.”

An old hag, her face a patchwork of hard, dark brown crust, sat on the pavement in the middle of the inner courtyard surrounded by heaps of sheep wool, spinning it skillfully with a long stick. Seeing us, she twisted her toothless mouth in disdain and followed us with a penetrating glare until we disappeared up a staircase. The splintered staircase squeaked beneath our feet, threatening to collapse before we could reach the third floor.

Renata waited by the door. Vasilisa the Beautiful, the heroine of a Russian fairy tale, I thought, looking at the tall woman in her midthirties with flawless, alabaster skin on her round face, her blond hair entwined in a thick braid, a touch of the Siberian steppes in her slightly slanted gray-and-green eyes. She was a Tatar and a midwife who moved to Baku after marrying an oilman. Or so she thought.

As soon as she arrived, she discovered that her “husband” had another family and not the slightest intention of accepting her and their newborn daughter. Trying, to no avail, to get a job as a nurse, she ended up providing “clandestine female services” to her quickly expanding clientele. To my total horror—and yet with some relief—I learned that Almaz had used those services on two occasions.

“You're late. I thought maybe your friend changed her mind.” Renata smiled, inviting us inside, then snapping the door shut with two massive locks. “Happy to see you again.” She hugged and kissed Almaz on both cheeks. I noticed that one portion of Renata's index finger was gone.

Almaz retrieved a small jewelry box from her purse and handed it to Renata, who opened the box and peered inside, eyes flashing with greed.

“Take good care of my sister,” Almaz said, “and do it with opium so she doesn't feel a thing.”

I felt ashamed that Almaz was paying for my abortion with her pricey emerald ring, but she had refused to listen to my protests. “I've got diamonds pouring out of my ears,” she said, “while you make five rubles per concert.”

Renata took my hand and led me into the kitchen. “Don't be afraid,” she said, her voice motherly. “We women are like cats. Heal fast. Those
podonki
think they're strong. Ha! I'd like to put one of them through this, to see the scum drooling and shitting and begging for mercy while others watch.”

Why was she telling me this? To scare me? Or to strengthen me with her Russian-style tough love?

“Trust me,” Renata continued, “men would quickly learn to keep their dirty thing inside their pants instead of waving it around, having fun, and afterward expecting us women to pay. Not a big deal to them. Animals.” She spat with repugnance.

The small kitchen had been transformed into a surgery. A seventeenth-century surgery. In the center, a gray towel covered a long table. More gray towels hung on a rope stretched from one wall to another. On the stove, a huge pail of boiling water and a stainless steel bowl for sterilization stood ready. I furtively peeked inside and my heart nearly stopped—what I saw wasn't just syringes and needles but large, scary pincers and pliers resembling medieval instruments of torture.

“They look worse than they are,” Renata said lightheartedly, seeing my anxiety. “And if everything goes well, I might not even use most of them, but it's good to have everything just in case.”

In
case
of
what?
I wanted to ask but didn't dare, shivering uncontrollably, sweat oozing all over my body.

Renata looked out the window and called, “Shushana
Khanum
, would you mind watching Sabina for an hour? I'll pay,” then closed the curtains and turned to me. Gone was Vasilisa the Beautiful, the caramel smile replaced by a hard face without a trace of empathy.

“All right. Get on the table, take off that bottom, and pull your dress up. And listen carefully,” she said in an indisputable, stern voice. “You don't move, or you get hurt. Hurt badly. And then, it's not just you who suffers but me too. So no matter what—Don't. You. Move.”

Why? Petrified, I glanced at Almaz for help, but she just nodded her head.

I climbed on the table and, soaked with shame, brought my skirt up, exposing myself to the intense light of a single bulb hanging from the ceiling, swinging monotonously, dispersing rainbow rings. Renata shaved my pubic hair with a razor, splashing me with ice-cold water as if making sure it hit my body with the force of falling rocks.

From the corners of my eyes I watched Almaz take a small package out of her pocket and carefully empty its contents next to a kerosene lamp on the kitchen counter. Atilbatil seeds? Old women used to burn thirteen atilbatil seeds as a remedy for the evil eye. Picking out thirteen seeds, Almaz wrapped them in a piece of newspaper and gently lowered the package over the lamp flame. The seeds immediately began to crackle.

“
Atilbatilsan
havasan
.” She intoned a traditional incantation, walking around the room, spreading the smoke, repeating again and again: “
Atilbatilsan
havasan, Atilbatilsan havasan, Atilbatilsan
havasan
…”

A familiar fragrance touched my nostrils—sweet and tangy black currant. I inhaled thirstily. Then more. Slowly inviting the dreamy musical nostalgia of the Rach 3 “Adagio.”

Oboes played somewhere outside. Tenderly. The notes drifted through the rainbow rings like snowflakes, white and soft, pirouetting in the white air, clustering around me like busy white hens. Spinning an icy web across Aunty Zeinab's Orenburg downy shawl.

“It will keep you warm,” Almaz whispered, wrapping the shawl around my body.

The strings began to take over, silencing the oboes, slowly moving their bows through the white snow.

Why so slow? I can't wait anymore. Soon the dusk will break through the window, splashing me with the garnet rings of the falling sun.

“Breathe! Breathe! Don't be lazy!”

I'm not lazy. I'm waiting for my solo. Only four more bars left.

And here it is—I strike the keyboard, my hands in full control of its obstinate, elevated keys. The keys of the Mukhtarovs' clavichord with a shepherd boy and his flock running across its lacquered cover. So that's what this Rach 3 is really about—unrestrained, wild, brazen lovemaking. A spatula instead of a brush. Immediate in place of constant. And no more legato. Just an agonizing staccatissimo of twilight pouring through the window in Maiden Tower's Coronation Hall, splashing, cutting me with its ruby shards of glass.

“Hold her hands tight!”

No! No one can stop the passion of my music that pierces through me like a fire arrow, its flaming tongues licking me from inside, spreading throughout my body, scorching my hands, my eyes.

“Ahhh!” I scream in pain. Let me first finish my cadenza.

“Hold on, Leila. Just keep breathing.” Almaz's face hovers over me.

Why is she crying? Did someone just die? And where is the snow? If I can cool down my hands in the snow, then I'll finish the “Adagio.”

I reach out for the snow. Instead, a sea is spilling around me, sucking me in, deeper and deeper, into its warm, cozy, gray nothingness.

• • •

I awoke in a hollow of darkness, in the grave, soundless serenity of a hospital room, as if the world outside had ceased to exist. Or had just shut the door on me in condemnation.

Mama sat on a chair in the corner, frighteningly fragile, hands pressed against her face, rocking from side to side. Mourning.

Gleams of fluorescent light crept in from under the door like the heads of coiled snakes. Slithering across the floor, they climbed onto my bed, stalking, probing what lay buried beneath the sterilized, iodine-smelling gauze bandages. Was I hallucinating?

I closed my eyes. Back to sleep. Sleep was my only sanctuary.

Almaz had brought me to the hospital in her arms—bleeding and half conscious. Mama couldn't give me an anesthetic, afraid to add more to a heart abused by the concoction of Renata's narcotics, so the pain played freely inside me, its obtrusive arpeggios followed by discordant triads, short pauses, and never-ending, recurring cadenzas.

I welcomed the music of pain. It made me a part of Mama's heart-hacking labor, not just its languorous observer. I felt every motion of her strong, sinewy hands. I followed every tear spilling out of her deeply focused, red-rimmed eyes as she operated on me. By herself. In the seclusion of her surgery. Without nurses and their keen eyes and gossipy tongues. She finished the abortion, removed the infected tissue, then sewed my slashed uterus with her tiniest golden needle so as to avoid a second infection and leave no scars.

But there was nothing she could do to prevent the gossip that spread like gangrene, its symptoms showing up even within our closest, most benign inner circle.

The first time I left the room and limped alone through the corridor, towing my IV, I saw Mama's surgical nurse, Margo, standing by the window, surrounded by a flock of nurses, smoking and discussing something ardently. At the sight of me, they shushed at once.

“Leila, daughter, you're on your feet,” called Margo, breaking the tongue-tied silence. “Oh, I'm so glad… You're safe now…and looking healthy and pure like a rosebud…” She stumbled, with her arms stretched out toward me like cactus spines. Then she rushed to me, squeezing in her arms, wailing, “Sweetheart, what a nightmare…what a nightmare had fallen on your tiny, little shoulders and on your poor mama.”

The next day, Uncle Kerim, Mama's lifelong friend and a colleague, stopped by the room to check on me. As always, he looked elegant and well groomed, emitting a musky oud cologne scent.

“Hi,
sirin qiz
. My precious girl, how is our little body healing?”

He took my temperature and blood pressure and then perched on the edge of the bed.

“I want you to know,” he said, gently patting my hand, “you've always been like a daughter to me. And what's happened will never change that.”

He pulled a handkerchief out of his doctor's gown and wiped the glossy, bald slope in the middle of his head. Winked. “Do you remember our little song? ‘Do, Re, Mi'…”

How could I ever forget those cloudless, sun-filled days of my childhood? With Uncle Kerim and his wife, chatty Aunty Sultanat. She baked the best
heyva
pirog
in town, and she taught Almaz, her three children, and me how to play the Do, Re, Mi game to keep us busy during Uncle Kerim's endless toasts. She would get us in a circle and dance with us, raising our arms, getting up on tiptoes, singing:

Little sparrow sings her song

On the tree, Do, Re, Mi.

Go round, go round,

Do, Re, Mi, you and me.

Uncle Kerim coughed and cleared his throat. “Your task now is to get back on your feet, and your positive attitude is the key. Don't you worry about anything else… You'll have other children…at the right time… With a nice boy… The wedding… We'll celebrate… With Allah's help… You'll give dear Sonia
Khanum
grandchildren…”

I lay silent, feeling so low. Poor Uncle Kerim. His golden Scheherazade's tongue could usually weave a pathway to the moon. Now he had a hard time putting one word in front of another.

“Thank you, Uncle Kerim.” I pulled the gray blanket over my face.

There couldn't have been a worse dishonor than for an unmarried woman in Azerbaijan to get pregnant. And, even worse, to have an abortion. I'd managed to accomplish both.

At least, Communism had abolished the Sharia Law, and I wouldn't be
stoned
like the Saudi Princess Misha'al. She was nineteen like me.

Well, “Long live Communism!” I whispered sardonically.