In the Walled Gardens (26 page)

“He’s not here,” he said to me.

“Don’t jerk me around! I just talked to him.”

“Call tomorrow night at nine,” he said, going back out to the front.

I exited through the back alley, imagining Morteza and how I was going to beat him until he’d cry and beg like a woman. My
knuckles ached to sink into his face, finally breaking it open.

I
STOOD SMOKING
in a dark side street off Jaleh Square. I’d called Morteza from the café where I ended up having dinner. I was waiting for
him. I saw the liver-red Peykan come down the street. He slammed on his brakes, screeched to a stop, jammed the car into a
space with his lousy parking. He was still behind the wheel when I went over and tapped his half-open window. A brother-in-law
with a nose like an eggplant and shiny black hair like a wig and lecherous lips, once handsome in his youth for half an hour.

“Get out,” I said.

He hesitated, leaned over to grab his jacket from the front seat, and got out of the car. He slung his jacket over one shoulder,
barrel-chested and fleshy. He’d put on weight; he looked bloated.

“What’s the problem?”

“You’re the problem,” I said.

“Ha, ha,” he laughed, braying. He asked for a cigarette.

“Tell me something,” I said. “You pamper my sister? Care and protect her and her children as is your sacred duty?”

“Of course I do! But you know her, she bitches constantly.”

“You mean it’s her fault?” I said. “And Mother? You respect her as you should? How about Father’s memory?”

“What d’you mean your father — of course — he’s, he was — what a man!”

I took out my keys and said to him, “See this?” Then I drew a line, scraping paint off the side of his car.

“You crazy?” he said, lunging for the key.

I threw a punch to his face so fast he looked stupefied. He put his hand to his mouth, and his fingers got bloody.

“I’m here to give you a lesson you won’t forget,” I said.

“What’ve I done to you?” he protested loudly.

I pushed him back against his car. “Me, them — what’s the difference?”

“What did she say?” he yelled. “What lies did she make up this time?”

I punched him again, to the left side of his face. He swung right back out, but missed me.

“Wait, let me explain — you don’t know —”

I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him over to the sidewalk. He kept taking wild swings and kicking, blood dripping from
his mouth.

“Listen, motherfucker,” I said, “lay a hand on my sister and you’re dead. Tonight the emergency ward. Next time the morgue.
I’ll dance on your grave.”

He reeled back, hurling insults at me, swearing his innocence by saints and prophets and members of his family. He was pathetic.
I left him propped up in his car with a black eye and cut lip and enough gashes and bruises to keep him in pain for a week.

I walked to Jaleh Square to catch a taxi.

T
HE NEXT DAY, MOTHER CALLED
my office very agitated about Morteza. He’d come home after ten the night before, received a call, and gone out, then come
back an hour later all bloodied and bruised.

“They nearly broke all his bones! Maybe he owes money and he’s in trouble with some lowlifes.”

“He’s a lowlife himself, Mother.”

“He’s bruised and limping,” she said. “He’s your brother-in-law, for God’s sake! What if they’d killed him? What would become
of Zari and the children?”

Morteza should have received the beating of his life sooner. From the first day, the first brick had been laid crooked. Men
like Morteza never repent. It’s a complete waste of time. They just respond to punishment.

I left the office late in the evening. In the street I dialed the café from a public phone but could barely hear over the
din of traffic. The man said something like, “Wait for the message,” then dropped the receiver with a thud, came back, and
said, “Dinner is waiting for you.”

There and then I flagged a cab. I had to squeeze in the back with a man and woman. When I got off, the scent of her perfume
still clung to my sleeve.

This time Khachik came out from behind the counter to greet me and we embraced like old friends, and he whispered. I went
back through the kitchen. There was no one there. The door to the back alley was open, facing the back wall of a brick building,
and I stepped into the dark. I saw a man’s shadow against the wall, the pinpoint glow of a cigarette. The shadow moved out.

“They said you were in Komiteh,” I said.

He nodded. I lit a cigarette, stood against the wall.

“For years our group received instructions from Europe,” Jalal said. “Two years ago, several of them came home. I was told
to form a cell. The coffee shop was doing well. We had money. A while ago I had a hunch we had a traitor in our group. Shaheen
was a new member. He was clever, but he was the traitor. I made sure. We had a serious problem, so I volunteered. I went over.
It was the only way.”

“You let them recruit you?”

“I exposed a couple of student groups. You know, gave in some names. I made myself useful.”

“What about Shaheen?”

“SAVAK should’ve used someone more intelligent. You met him. He’s the one you talked to at Radio City.”

“You reckless bastard! You had me give a message to a fucking snitch?”

He put up both hands. “You did us a favor. My comrades were in the car with me. You helped expose an informer. A true revolutionary
act!”

“Go to hell,” I said, incensed.

He stood against the wall, staring at me.

“Come on,” he said. “Nothing’s changed. We trust each other.”

“Tell me exactly what happened.”

“Omeed was my code name to Shaheen. I was in charge of our intelligence. At first he checked out. But I tailed him after he
joined us. I knew everything about him — what he did, where he went. The license plate on every car he got into, the address
of every house he used and the time and date of each visit, every place he ate, every office building he walked into.”

“He never suspected you?”

“He never saw my face. That’s how I work. Until I walked in at our last meeting. I had a file of incriminating evidence against
him. I handed it to SAVAK. My best work! Proof he ran a cell and had plans to attack a gendarmerie and rob a Melli Bank. It
was all in the file — the codes, his contacts, how he was double-crossing them. Recruiting, buying arms! He was a rat, a double
agent. They’re so jittery. The slightest hint and they jump! They’re a knee-jerk establishment. They took him out.”

“He’s dead?”

“He’s in prison. He’s going to have to confess. My word against his. They kept us on the same floor. Twice he saw me when
they took him down the hall. They had me there to unnerve him. I wasn’t afraid. I’m not afraid of them! They let me out and
told me to lie low.”

But he looked worried. He asked for a cigarette.

“When he got your message, he figured we’d drawn him out to kill him, then and there. In the street. The son of a bitch! We
didn’t touch him. We let him sweat. He got arrested and roughed up by his own people. He’s going to be paranoid forever! From
now on he’ll be no good to anyone. Not even to himself.”

“I met your parents,” I said.

“My sister gave the address, huh? When did you see her? She’s always enjoyed humiliating me. Did she flirt with you?”

“She looked everywhere for you. Your parents are worried.”

“Didn’t they disgust you? Weren’t you relieved to get away from them like I was years ago? He’s another tyrant, my father.
Bigoted and stupid. My mother is pathetic and haggard. In that dark, oily, suffocating house. He’s a brute, you know, with
all his moral gibberish on dogma and piety and alms and the Absent One and doomsday. I hate him. I’m ashamed of her. She’s
a servant in every conceivable way. I detest servitude!”

“The poor woman —”

“Reza, you and I are the only honest people I know! Look at us — stuck in some back alley in this phony and meaningless city.
Sitting on top of a volcano. It’s been a bad week.”

He said there was trouble. His group was splitting up — there was a great deal of hostility on ideological differences. He
was in the radical wing. He had set up a network to deliver information, give refuge, get medical help in time of combat.
They were a bunch of theoreticians and dialecticians. Sometimes he wanted to strangle them. They were accusing him of playing
anarchist.

“That’s what you say about me,” he said. “But they’re always bickering with mind-numbing ideological debates. They’re being
stubborn and petty. Endangering the rest of us.”

“You should leave for a while,” I said.

I
HAD INSISTED
my brother check back with his special contact about corruption charges on Bandar Kangan. How did he know? “He knows,” my
brother said ominously. He’s ominous these days.

“They’re after blood,” he said over breakfast.

Houshang had already left. Kavoos was buttering toast.

“I think they won’t be able to trace anything to Houshang. He’s clever.”

“You mean corrupt?” I said. “It’s the only way to get contracts like Kangan. Houshang’s al

ways been shrewd. They drink and play cards and shovel into each other’s pockets.” Kavoos shrugged and sipped tea, lit a cigarette,
stared out to the garden.

“I feel . . .” He hesitated. “I don’t know, underneath all this reckless abandon there’s something — something’s changed,
but I can’t tell what it is.”

Then suddenly he said, “You know, I married the wrong woman.”

Their wedding had been the most elaborate and well-attended wedding of the decade. Politicians, ambassadors, the prime minister
— she had insisted.

“You fell in love with her, remember?”

“No, I don’t.”

When he left, I went up to find the gaudy sapphire ring Houshang had given me to return it. I ended up rummaging through the
upstairs rooms. Goli, a mediocre housekeeper, moody and sloppy, was no thief. Ramazan, although an uninspired cook, had kept
exemplary house accounts for years and once found the diamond ring of a dinner guest in the powder room. I left a message
for Houshang, headed downtown. He called back, cut me off to say he had the ring.

“But you gave it to me,” I said.

“You just want to return it!”

He said he’d taken it because he planned to return the ring immediately. Ultimately his gifts were his. He was so busy he
never had time to do anything with the children, no matter when. Now he was going to sit in traffic to return a ring.

At midday I had an appointment for a haircut at Balenciaga and stopped off at the jeweler’s. The owner, Mr. Tala’afshan, made
a big show of welcoming me — how I was honoring him with my presence, how he’d feared I’d withdrawn the kind and eminent patron-age
of my family. He inquired after Mother. Such a lady, the most distinguished he’d ever seen! The crowning flower of society.
She never visited anymore. I pretended to survey the glitter he kept under polished glass. He wanted me to try on a parure
of diamonds and rubies.

“I hate parures,” I said. “I hate rubies.”

He looked baffled. Fashionably overdressed women circumambulated the cases like predators, and the phones kept ringing. When
he took a call on his faux antique-gold telephone, I saw my chance. I called over an assistant I’d never seen before, who
smoothed down his tie, smiling with deference. I introduced myself.

“Aren’t you the one who helped my husband?”

“Of course —” he said enthusiastically, “that is, Mr. Behroudi spoke to Mr. Tala’afshan and sent Mrs. — I forget the lady’s
name —” He stopped.

“Oh, he sent his sister?”

“Mrs. Mazaher! She’s Mr. Behroudi’s sister? I’m sorry, I didn’t
know.”

I flinched. Pouran Mazaher’s degree of intimacy with my husband was astonishing. She picked out women for him behind my back;
now she was picking up jewelry for him. I asked the price of the ring.

“Mrs. Mazaher charged everything to your husband’s account.”

“Everything? She selected the ring —”

“And the gold-and-diamond bracelet! She has excellent taste.”

The owner rushed over, whispered to the assistant, and sent him packing.

“Forgive me, Mrs. Behroudi. He’s new here. How can I be of assistance?”

I told him I wouldn’t be keeping the sapphire ring. Did I wish to select something else? he offered gallantly. I wanted to
see the bill.

“There is no bill if you’re returning the ring!”

His assistant could have misinformed me; still, I had to be sure.

“What about the gold-and-diamond bracelet?” I said.

He looked startled but quickly pretended to deliberate about this.

“It must be on the bill,” I said.

“The money isn’t at all important! You’re a valued customer.”

“Please check now,” I said.

He cleared his throat politely, offered tea, Turkish coffee. He went to the back, summoning the errant assistant, then dismissing
him and summoning another. They whispered. Evident complications, as I’d suspected. They would try to reach Houshang. Tala’afshan,
impersonating the very model of tact and discretion, could not admit to the gold-and-diamond bracelet. He had received instructions
not to. He came back, earnest and now amiably perplexed.

“Forgive me. We can’t seem to find the bill. There’s been a misunderstanding. I checked, and nobody knows anything about a
gold-and-diamond bracelet. It was a bracelet, you said?”

He was lying. What made it worse was that I disliked him. Houshang had purchased the gift, and Pouran had picked it up. The
bracelet was for someone else.

L
ATE THAT AFTERNOON
Mr. Bashirian kept me after a meeting in the conference room, and while other colleagues filed out of the room, he fidgeted,
realigning his pens and papers, and I thought, Here we go again. Only the day before, the last person I’d consulted had told
me his son could be kept in Komiteh indefinitely and there was nothing he could do at all.

Then the door slammed behind the last person, and Mr. Bashirian quickly whispered, “They called. They’re going to release
him!”