The Girl from the Garden (15 page)

“Perhaps I may come with you tomorrow, brother,” Ibrahim says as he stands. He leans on his wife and walks slowly toward the door. “Perhaps a good night’s sleep will have me feeling more capable in the morning.”

“Well, Rakhel?” Zolekhah says. She kneels and brushes crumbs with her hand. She stacks one plate on top of another. “Get up, daughter, and help me.”

“I can be of help, too, Naneh Zolekhah,” Kokab says.

“Not you, dear. You stay here and keep Asher company. His sour mood needs some sweetening.”

Rakhel does not move. She looks at the plate before her. She can feel Zolekhah waiting for her to do as she has been told, but her legs are treasonous and she worries about what her hands might do. Should she reach for a plate, she might drop it, just to hear it shatter.

“Rakhel?”

She looks up slowly and sees the look of warning in her mother-in-law’s eyes.

“Have you gone deaf, Rakhel?” Asher asks. “Does Mother need to repeat her request more than once?”

Rakhel shakes her head no and rises. She picks up the pile of plates Zolekhah has stacked and walks out of the room.

Outside, the night is silent, black, with the scent of impending rain. Rakhel walks to the pool, places the plates on the ledge and sits on the edge of the fountain. She turns her back to Zolekhah and puts her fingers in the water.

“Rakhel?” Zolekhah says.

“I’m here,” Rakhel says.

“Asher will spend this night in Kokab’s room,” Zolekhah says. “You understand why it is necessary for him to do so?”

Rakhel looks at her feet. She holds her breath.

“Rakhel?”

“Yes, Naneh Zolekhah?”

“Do you understand why he needs to do so? Because you cannot give him a child and he is not a man to sacrifice all he has built for want of a child.”

“Yes, Naneh Zolekhah.”

“It will get easier with time, Rakhel. This first night without your husband may seem long, but it will get easier with time. You have seen to breakfast for him in the morning?”

“Yes, Naneh Zolekhah.”

“You did well with dinner, I am very pleased. I know
you have the capacity to be the khanum of this estate, to take the role of the first wife with grace.”

Rakhel remains silent. She can stop breathing at will, whenever she chooses. She continues to look at her feet. Zolekhah reaches out and lifts her chin. She bends close and kisses Rakhel’s cheek. Rakhel sobs once, then holds her breath again, but she cannot stop her tears.

“Time, daughter, time is a salve upon an aching heart. I will tell Khorsheed to come out here and keep you company. Better to busy yourself with a task, than sit alone and think. And better to be with a friend.” Zolekhah rises to fetch Khorsheed.

In the stillness of the courtyard, Rakhel looks at the lit guest hall. Asher stands by the window. Kokab stands beside him.

“Rakhel?”

“Did you see that?” Rakhel asks without turning to look at Khorsheed.

“See what?”

“Are you deaf or blind?”

“Why?”

Rakhel wipes her face with her shirt, then turns to Khorsheed. “Didn’t you see what she has done to Asher? Haven’t you noticed the changes in your own baby? She is taking what she wants from us, my husband and your baby. Right before our eyes.”

Khorsheed takes a step back. She pauses, then picks up a plate. She scrapes the contents into a bucket. “What are
you talking about, Dada. She has done nothing to my baby. Yousseff is fussy lately because he is teething.”

“Some mother you are. This very afternoon the poor lamb screamed like someone was tearing his liver out of his body.”

“Well, it hurts to cut teeth,” Khorsheed says. She picks up another plate. It slips from her fingers, but she catches it. She breathes in heavily and dumps the remains.

“Khorsheed, you’ve seen babies cut teeth before. Have any of them ever suffered like Yousseff?”

Khorsheed doesn’t respond for some time. She continues to scrape the food off dishes and stacks them by the fountain with her back turned to Rakhel.

“Well, have they?” Rakhel asks. “Isn’t Yousseff’s pain different?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think for a moment.”

Khorsheed takes another plate from the pile. She holds it for a moment. Then she tilts her head to the side. “That’s him. He’s crying again,” she says. She places the plate down and walks with haste back to her room.

“Lord knows what she plans for him,” Rakhel calls after her.

Khorsheed rushes into her room. A warm light comes from inside. Rakhel waits in the still darkness. She wipes plate after plate, deliberately. After several minutes, Khorsheed comes back out to join Rakhel.

“Did she stop tormenting him?”

“He just needed a little milk to soothe him, that’s all. The little sparrow misses me when I leave him.”

“Probably because he senses something menacing. You noticed Asher, too, no? The spell she’s put on him? Like a man walking in his sleep.”

“He is a bit distracted.” Khorsheed grabs a handful of spoons and dips them into the pool. She hands them to Rakhel, who shakes them dry.

“I’m doing what I can to bring him out of it,” Rakhel says. “You can’t be naive, Khorsheed. You have to do your part. You are a mother, and that helpless little sparrow depends on you.”

“Rakhel, I’m not stupid. You are saying this to make me dislike her.”

“Like her all you want, Khorsheed. But don’t come running to me when black calamity comes your way.”

“It won’t. And I won’t come running to you if it does, either.”

“You don’t have to be mean.”

“Who’s mean, Dada? All you do all the time is try to frighten me. From the very beginning, when I was pregnant with Yousseff, without regard for me or my baby, you’d do things to scare me. To hurt me. And now all this talk about Kokab being a djinn. You know, I’m nursing, and fear turns my milk sour. It can even dry me.”

“Nonsense.”

“Happened to my aunt.”

“No, I know that. Nonsense that I’m trying to scare
you. You are my only friend, Khorsheed. More than that. My sister. I’m saying what I say to protect you, and Yousseff, whom I love as much as you do. Don’t worry, though. I know you won’t believe me. Who’d believe a woman’s accusations against her havoo?”

“Oh, Dada, just stop worrying. Asher hasn’t even been with her, yet. If he wanted her so much, he’d have taken her by now. He just brought her for one thing only, and he’ll do what he needs to when the time comes, and he’ll be done with her after that.”

“So you don’t see what I see?”

“Maybe you see what you see because you are jealous.”

Rakhel turns swiftly toward Khorsheed, a plate clutched in her hand.

“I am not jealous of that harlot, Khorsheed. And I’m certainly not jealous of you.”

“You know what I mean.”

Rakhel raises the plate and hurls it to the ground. It shatters, the sound crystalline in the night. Shards of porcelain scatter about.

“What do you mean, Khorsheed?”

“What was that?” Zolekhah asks from the window of her room.

“Just dropped a plate accidently,” Rakhel says.

“Be careful,” Zolekhah says and closes the window.

Rakhel grabs Khorsheed’s wrist. Khorsheed tries to twist her arm out of Rakhel’s hold, but Rakhel doesn’t let go.

“Listen to me, Khorsheed.”

“Let go of me, Dada.”

“I am not jealous of anybody. I have everything, Khorsheed. You know what Zolekhah gave me, right? All the keys. You know what that means, right? I’m in charge. Not Zolekhah. Not that harlot. And not you. What do I have to be jealous of?”

“Let go of my hand or I’ll scream.”

Rakhel releases her hold. Khorsheed pulls back and nurses her wrist.

“You hurt me, Dada. You know, your envy is really getting the better of you these days. Sometimes, I don’t even want to be around you.”

Rakhel turns and slaps Khorsheed. Khorsheed cries out. Rakhel grabs her neck and places her hand over Khorsheed’s mouth. Zolekhah peers out of her window.

“Tell her it was a rat,” Rakhel whispers. Khorsheed struggles. “You tell her it was a rat or you’ll pay dearly.” She removes her hand from Khorsheed’s mouth.

“Just a rat,” Khorsheed says. “A dirty, little rat.” Khorsheed looks at Rakhel quietly. Then, she turns and walks away.

“Where are you going, Khorsheed?” Rakhel asks. “Did I tell you that you could leave?”

Khorsheed walks into her room and closes the door. Rakhel stands alone in the empty courtyard. She looks up at the night sky. Not a single star. Rain in the morning.

“Go ahead,” she says. “Abandon me like the rest of them. I don’t need You.”

A
sher
remembers a zoo he visited as a
child with his father, at the foothills of Doshan Tepe in Tehran. In his memory, the colors are muted and warm. It was before Ibrahim’s birth, one of Asher’s earliest memories. He recalls seeing a fox, curled on the packed earth beside an amputated tree trunk, behind the thick iron bars of a cage. And the fluid movement of a leopard, the contrast of those bars against the black spots of the animal’s skin. And a fly’s impunity against a wolf. And that pacing lion. Its cage not much longer than his own body. One step, two step, turn, one step, two step, turn.

What is this pulsing urge to live, to breathe?
Asher thinks.
In the confine of four paces, the lion still gnaws the bare meat of the donkey’s head thrown it, tears at the meager flesh of the cheeks and ears to sustain his own life, even when wanting is a wide, wide savanna.
When wanting is louder than the thunder of a thousand hooves. Why not just lay the head down on the cool of the earth, gaze at the clouds rushing overhead, the insistence of the sun, the perpetual games of the moon, watch quietly until you reach the edge of days?

Asher walks across the four paces of the room.
The flesh, in essence, is a prison,
he thinks
.
Asher kneels before Kokab and takes her hand in his hand. Something breaks open inside him. He brings her fingers to his lips.

“The days pass so slowly here,” Kokab says.

Asher inhales the musk of her wrist.

“Today I watched a flock of gray pigeons against the gray skies,” she says.

He leans in to her hair. He breathes in and exhales against the lobe of her ear. He notices the rise of the fine hairs on the contour of her neck in response to his breath. He buries his hand in the thick of her hair, holds it out at arm’s length, and watches the gleam of light captured in its blackness.

“You would not think their flight so majestic, to see them,” she says. Then, she pulls back and looks at him. “You will take what you want from me, but it is not something I choose to give.”

“Then push me away.”

She looks at him silently. He catches the quickness in her eyes. It is a melting darkness. Had he not been kneeling beside her, he thinks, he might have fallen to his knees. “Then burn for me,” he says. He places his finger against her mouth before she can speak. He touches the moist softness of her lips. He traces his fingers on her skin to the smooth of her throat and notices that his hands shake, subtly. She tilts her head back slightly and he feels an explosion of heat inside his own body, a ripple that passes from the skin of this woman into his own hand, and from there, fast toward his heart. Suddenly, he feels the proximity of his own death, but the terror of this thought abates to his hunger to taste, again, the salt of her skin.

One night passes,
then another. At first, each evening before dinner, Asher visits Rakhel in her room and asks about her day. She prepares chai for him and he sits before her, impatient to leave, sipping his hot chai quickly, his eyes distant. Often, she catches him as he glances at the door. He clears his throat before he begins the formalities of good-bye. Then, he leaves hastily to see Kokab in her room.

So that each night Rakhel might recount for Asher reasons why she is indispensable to him, she spends her days from dawn to dusk engaged in household industry. And when Asher asks her about her day, she begins a detailed account of her preserving, stewing, pickling, brewing, sewing, cooking, and carrying on without a pause until Asher
pats her hand and says, “Well done. Well done, indeed.” She closes her eyes when he touches her hand, briefly. The way you might pet a child upon the head. His hand feels cold on her flesh.

One night, in desperation to keep him a moment longer from leaving, Rakhel says, “Asher, the valley you say you pass before reaching the village of Gahvareh, don’t only goats and sheep graze there? If the shepherds move them up into the mountains, you can buy that land and have the farmers plant wheat in that valley, too, no? I remember my father used to say that the man who holds the grain is the man that has power. No matter what happens, everybody still needs to eat bread.”

Asher stops a moment in his incremental escape of her company and looks directly at Rakhel for the first time in weeks. “You think I should expand the lands where we grow wheat?” he asks, amused.

“Yes. Purchase that valley near Gahvareh and plant more wheat.”

“Purchase that valley and plant more wheat?”

“Then, you can grow and sell more wheat.”

“Well, why not,” Asher says. He says good-bye to her and takes his leave. The following day, when he returns from the caravansary, he remembers her suggestion and smiles. That night he tells her, “It is a sound idea. To buy that valley and plant more wheat fields.”

Rakhel’s suggestion proves profitable, and when Asher tells her this, she begins a determined search for ways
to counsel her husband on investing. At first she steals into Asher’s study and looks through all his books, but unable to read or understand his calculations, she abandons the venture. Instead she decides to listen closely to the men as they speak. She eavesdrops on visitors in the yard or in Asher’s study. She talks to peddlers about what they see in their routes from village to village. She even listens to the gossip of the visiting women about who has met hard times. Thus, she gathers information and sits alone in her room at night thinking and rethinking, shaping her argument for Asher. She arranges her requests in a fashion palpable to her husband’s ego, cautious of what she suggests and when. A Tabriz rug the Cohenzadehs need to sell, a ruby medallion worth tenfold of what they are asking. Then, after acquiring those jewels and antiques, she spends several nights listening to him talk to her of the market before she says, “What if we buy the lands east of Tofangchi, too?”

“I built his empire,” Rakhel told Mahboubeh as a child. “I made Asher Malacouti richer than rich.” Rakhel repeatedly recounted for Mahboubeh the story of how she first suggested the valley near Gahvareh. Mahboubeh remembers the jewels, the coins, the rugs, the vases Rakhel kept in her rooms, behind locked doors. Sometimes, she’d take Mahboubeh into one of those storerooms and show her an antique pendant, tell her its value, and the price she paid for it. In truth, the wealth belonged to Asher, but after his death, that wealth, the lands, and all those priceless antiques became their son’s inheritance, and since Yousseff was not
yet married, Rakhel managed to gain even more control of what was bought and what was sold.

Then, Yousseff died. His children were still young when his heart gave out. The Kurds from the villages came for his funeral the way they had for Asher’s death, and for Rebbe Yousseff’s, before him. They chanted and pounded their fists against their chests. Some even hit their backs with chains. And there was Rakhel, louder than any of them, weeping, and screaming and clawing her face. She’d pull out handfuls and handfuls of her hair. All day long, she’d
shivan,
until night came and she fell asleep from exhaustion. Then Mahboubeh took a broom and swept up her hair. Tufts of it, like small animals, on the floor. At sunrise, Rakhel started again. For months, she mourned him. Then she stopped crying when Yousseff’s young widow started to sell the antiques, one by one. And parcels of the lands, too. Rakhel took to yelling, then. Yelling and screaming up and down the street that Yousseff’s widow was a thief, selling
her
antiques, selling
her
melk
. But all that wealth belonged to Yousseff’s boys by inheritance, and since they were still too young, his widow could do as she saw fit.

But before the loss of her melk, the act of advising her husband and helping him invest begins as Rakhel’s attempt to keep Asher in her room a bit longer, to win back his approval, to earn a place for herself in his home. She praises his profits, his acquisitions, lists for him how his wealth grows and grows. Sometimes, Asher pauses a moment and looks at
Rakhel intently, as though looking at a new acquaintance, intrigued.

Regardless of Rakhel’s endeavors, however, Asher never returns to her room to spend an evening. After dinner, she sits beside her window, looking toward the light that escapes the curtained windows of the farthest room until it is snuffed out. In the mornings she rises early and looks out again to watch for Asher to leave. And it happens, often, for the morning to advance, sometimes approaching noon, before Asher steps out. By then, Rakhel has been working in the courtyard for hours, orchestrating more and more household projects that engage the maids to the brink of exhaustion. She labors, herself, alongside them. Asher walks past her, toward the stables, and nods a greeting in her direction. He leads his horse out without looking at her once.

Rakhel keeps her gaze down and busies herself with the task at hand so that the girls don’t see her hot shame. After he leaves, she turns to Zahra and Sadiqeh with a controlled fury, and explains how their work is inadequate, careless, unsatisfactory. It must be redone, with greater diligence and more speed. And the girls exchange a quick glance, a smirk, before continuing their work with exaggerated zeal until Rakhel leaves their company. Only then does she hear their hushed talking, their laughter. She imagines them aping her, and her face burns with rage. She walks faster, toward the well, thinking of other laborious projects for them to begin. She reaches the well, her hands trembling, and sits beside
it, her back against the cool of its stones. She closes her eyes and sees Kokab’s face, perhaps just rising from sleep. She imagines Kokab’s thick hair disheveled, and the movement of her limbs across the bedclothes where the impression of Asher’s body still rests. Rakhel imagines how Kokab leans in to smell his scent on the pillow. How she rises from the tangle of the sheets and walks to open the window to allow for a breeze.

In the mornings,
after Asher leaves Kokab for the whole of the long day within the household, she stares out of the window for hours. At the gray days, the steady rain, the shift of clouds, the sudden gold and the world illumined before dark clouds again, the white flash of lightning, the roll of thunder. She watches the birds come to settle on the naked branches that scratch at her window. She saves crumbs of bread from dinner in the pocket of her skirt, and leaves this small offering on the sill. She watches the birds look at the mound of crumbs skeptically, first with one eye, then another. And she watches the naked branches, scratching at her window, until she opens it one day to look closely at the small buds on the branches. She closes her eyes and pictures her daughter. The glow of her eager face in the mornings.

“Look at the branches, my love,” Kokab whispers. “They are not bare. The blossoms are simply waiting.” She thinks about her daughter’s dimpled hands. If she could hold those hands now . . . She throws her head back and a cry
escapes her lips. She shuts her eyes tightly. If she could hold those hands now, she’d guide them along the branch, to the tips where the buds are still enclosed in their tight sheaths, the tree aching with the desire to push forth the petals.

“And afterward, those petals will come down on us like snow,” Kokab whispers. “And soon after, green leaves. So new, they’ll shimmer in the sunlight.”

Kokab catches a glimpse of herself reflected back in the glass, alone in the room, talking. She laughs. She raises her fingers to her cheeks. Tears, again. Endless.
There is dust, too,
she thinks.
Dust that settles on the leaves.
That dims their shine.
And time dries them, breaks their bones.
Burns them red, orange, gold.
And winds that push them until they can’
t hold any longer to the limb, relent.
Let go their grasp.
Float.
Settle in puddles to be trampled by man and beast.
She shakes her head. “Even in this, my love,” she whispers, “even in this a spectacular grace.”

Kokab waits through each passing day for the evenings. When the sun begins to set, she feels, despite herself, a flutter in the pit of her stomach. Soon she will hear the gentle rap of his fingers against the door. Each evening, Asher walks in and dispels the quiet birds of her sorrow. He fills the cold room with the warmth of his body. He asks her to stand in the candlelight, to stand naked and trembling, so that he can look upon her. And she stands for him. She stands for him in the golden flicker of that light, and she watches the shadows pass over his face. She watches him watch her with so much longing, the way she watches the sky, the moon, the rain. And in these moments of his rapture, she feels herself
become tree, sky, moon, rain, the shift of clouds, the sudden gold, the illuminated earth.

Rakhel stands pressed
against the garden wall. The night is moonless, and the stars litter the black sky. She shifts her bare feet in the wet grass. Across from Rakhel the willow tree hangs low to the ground, swaying each time there is a slight breeze. Beneath the tree rests the well. The shadows that lurk in the peripheries of Rakhel’s vision whisper to her, masking their voices as the sound of leaves. She hears a rustle come from the old walnut tree and she stands erect, the potential of motion pulsating in every muscle of her body. One more unknown sound in this darkness and she will lose her resolve, run back to her empty room and pray for forgiveness.

She takes a step forward, then two and approaches the well, her whole body shaking. She braces herself, tilts her head to the side to listen for footsteps, then she takes another step and listens again. Nothing but the sound of the wind in the trees. She places her hand on the low stone wall of the well and looks into the black emptiness of its opening.

“Can you hear me?” she asks. Her question rings down the well and multiplies itself indefinitely. She waits for a sign. The wind falls still. The leaves silence their whispering.

“Can you hear me?”

She brings her face closer to the opening, her question a response to her own question.

“You must eat the child that grows in her belly,” Rakhel says. She listens to her own voice travel, echo in the circular tunnel. “If she has a baby, I will lose everything,” Rakhel says.