The Orphan Sky (15 page)

The wind outside was loud, beating against my window like a trapped bird. And fog. Everywhere. Hanging in thick bundles, pushing me into the downy abyss of my bed.

And then, far away, the sound of a harp, its strings plucked in sobbing arpeggios seeming to come out of the wind, followed by a slow procession of strings. The music grew louder, swelling into the full orchestral despondency of Gustav Mahler's “Adagietto.” I lay listening as the first violins painted a summer sunset; the violas sang the last autumn song of a skylark; the cellos drifted away with the spinning snow; then all the voices joined in spring's bittersweet harmonies—eternal and ephemeral. I cried and smiled at the same time. The music passed on, its echoes fading away. I slept.

I woke to silence, the ghostly silence when you feel like you're the last living soul left on earth. My head felt heavy as lead, while the rest of my body was weightless, floating on the smooth waves of my bed. Both windows in my room were draped, leaving me a prisoner of darkness. And of smell. A repulsive smell clogged the air. Where did it come from? I had to get away.

I stole out of bed. Too fast. The room spun around me. I held on to the wall, waiting for the spin to die out. The mirror next to my wardrobe was covered with white fabric. And so was the other mirror, hung over my piano. I thought of a custom to cover mirrors in the house of mourning. Did someone die?

I started toward the hallway, unsteady, clutching the wall, sliding my bare feet in short thrusts across the floor. My skin was numb; my bones crunched and ached. A light loomed ahead, scattering yellow spiders across the hallway. I pushed myself forward.

The living room was mobbed. People everywhere, lumped in groups, their lips moving but making no sound. At the sight of me, as if by command, everyone stepped aside, clearing my way to the center of the room.

There, on the dinner table, lay Papa. Asleep, dressed in his only formal black suit—the one he always refused to wear.

You
have
my
permission
to
bury
me
in
this
suit. That'll be the only time I wear it—for my funeral
. I could hear Papa cracking his joke, right in my ear, the familiar tobacco breath brushing against my nostrils.

Then why was he wearing it now? And why was he sleeping on the table, enclosed in ice and flowers? Surrounded by the fumes of that terrible odor. And watched by an audience all dressed in black?

“Papa!” I screamed, throwing myself toward him, anxious to reach him before this dark crowd could stop me from waking him up. But a single step was all I could manage before plunging to the floor.

“Papa,” I muttered, “I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Papa…”

Someone lifted me. Uncle Kerim, his lips clenched tight. I had never seen him before without a smile. I leaned my head on his shoulder.

“Give her another Demerol,” I heard him say.

Nurse Margo's face came close, her red, puffed-up eyes blinking rapidly. A bee sting on my arm.

“Papa, I'm sorry. Please forgive me, Papa.”

Could he hear me?

Mama sat alongside him, a small porcelain figure buried in the folds of a mourning dress, a scarf tied so tightly around her face and neck that it seemed to drain any vitality from her cheeks. They were as ashen as the wall behind her. Eyes closed, she was rocking slowly from side to side, her hand stroking the black silk on the table, back and forth, as if ousting wrinkles from Papa's resting sheet.

Did she hate me? Did she blame me for Papa's death? Of course she did. Just like everyone else must. Blame hovered in the air as strongly as the odor of formaldehyde. It was my life Papa had saved by sacrificing his own.

“Papa, I'm sorry. Please forgive me, Papa,” I kept saying, over and over, the words that would be carved into my heart for the rest of my life.

• • •

By the time we reached the cemetery, the sky had cowered behind the angry face of a rainstorm. What started as a drizzle quickly intensified into a relentless shower.

Mama walked on my right, her shoulders squared, her face withdrawn.

“It's good the rain waited until Mekhti Rashidovich was inside the coffin,” sobbed Nurse Margo, squeezing my hand.

That's what I thought too. How horrible it would have been if it had poured while Papa was carried a few blocks in an open coffin, followed by a large crowd to the waiting catafalque. Getting wet before being buried under the ground. Did Papa feel anything?

A gust of wind slapped me in the face and continued whipping through the Alley of Honor memorial park, lifting into the air anything that wasn't rooted in the ground—batches of loose soil, broken twigs. Someone's purple shawl quivered against the gray sky. How much grayer could the sky even get?

A group of drunken gravediggers in high rubber boots lingered in the distance, leaning against their weapons, smoking, impatient to wrap up their job. If I had only stayed at the party instead of wandering the dark streets, they wouldn't be burying Papa with their rusty shovels.

And I wouldn't have known.

Almaz, that witch, pretending to look innocent, joined a group of female mourners performing a traditional mourning ritual—tearing her hair, beating her chest with her fists, lamenting loudly. Miserable, wicked
ifrite
. How dare she come here? Had she no shame left at all? She had always been jealous of me, of my family. And that's why she stole my papa—to take my place, to become more important to him than me.

“What if you were me and I were you? Then it would be me living upstairs in your fancy quarters, and you'd be right here—in my place—under the
stairs.”

A cobra who spit her malignant venom into Papa's heart. A traitor who dropped me as a sister so she could spend time with Papa and put a curse on him. The curse of her beauty. Oh, how I wanted to scratch out those heinous hyena eyes, to see her bleed to death, twisting her whoring body in her epileptic convulsions.
She
should have been inside that coffin. Eaten by worms. Instead of Papa.

When did it all start? When? Was it two years ago when we went to the Black Sea? Mama couldn't go, and Papa offered to take Almaz with us so I would have a friend to play with. One morning we were supposed to tour the Swallow's Nest Castle. Almaz said that she wasn't feeling well, and Papa sent me alone with the tourist group. When I came back, Papa seemed annoyed and edgy, even snapped at me for buying two blue shells for fifty kopeks. He made me so mad that I threw the shells out the window. Was it then and there that it started?

But why did Papa yield to her spell? Did she really make him love her more than he loved me?

Excruciating pain stabbed through my head. I touched the bandage. No, it wasn't physical pain. It was the realization that, ever since that doomed evening of Mama's birthday, Almaz and I had been knotted together again. This time as the keepers of a dirty secret protecting Mama's heart and Papa's reputation. With me alone absorbing the blame. And it made me hate
her
even more.

“Very well-attended funeral,” I heard Farhad's voice behind me. “Honorable Mekhti Rashidovich would be proud to know that the love, encouragement, and inspiration he gave to all of us would carry his good name beyond his tragic death.”

Farhad had arrived yesterday morning, on a short leave from the KGB Higher School in Moscow, where he had been accepted into a three-year program. Along with my parents' closest friends—Uncle Kerim, Uncle Anatoly, and Uncle Zohrab—Farhad worked tirelessly: dealing with the bureaucracy of the morgue and with the proceedings at the cemetery; ordering and picking up flower wreaths; organizing and welcoming crowds of visitors. His presence disturbed me, and his active participation in the arduous business of arranging a funeral made me feel cornered. He hovered over Mama like a doting son-in-law, trying to fill in the missing male presence in our Papa-less family. And Mama, who hadn't shown much delight at the prospects of our betrothal, now seemed to succumb to Farhad's efforts.

The whole upper crust of the Azerbaijani Communist oligarchy was in attendance at the Alley of Honor, grouped around the plot for Papa's burial located next to the tall, granite monument with the portraits of his parents.

A sudden buzz in the crowd. Headlights turned on the brightest high beams, a black ZIL limousine—the official carriage of the
Nomenklatura
—traveled toward us along a path too narrow to accommodate its obese body, causing the chauffeur to drive over graves bordering the path.

“Is this the First Secretary of the Party himself?” A wave of awe spread through the crowd.

The Chairman of the Council of Ministers emerged from the car, a young member of his entourage holding an umbrella over his head. The Chairman made his way toward us, his face somber, his lips pressed tightly. He vigorously shook Mama's hand, patted me playfully on the cheek, turned to the crowd, and said loudly: “It's your turn—the young Soviet generation's turn—to carry on the torch of Communism.”

He walked to the podium and began his eulogy, the wind and rain restraining his voice, only brief snatches of his monologue reaching my ears: “…Soviet Azerbaijan…under the guidance of our government…many sacrifices…beloved country…dedication to the morals of Communism…My hard work on behalf…”

Why was he giving propaganda rhetoric at Papa's funeral? Why did he turn our tragedy into a self-promoting spectacle? And why did Mama gaze at the speaker with admiration, nodding her head in agreement with his empty words? Just like everyone else in the crowd.

Except for Tahir. He hid at the very end of the burial plot, leaning against a white poplar tree that fearlessly held its skinny branches up against the blasts of the roaring wind.
I
am
here
for
you
, I felt him say.

• • •

Upon returning from the cemetery, our family and our closest friends gathered in the courtyard at the same tables where—just two days earlier—we'd celebrated Mama's birthday. Nothing seemed to have changed. These were the same faces, except for Almaz—she wasn't there. The same dishes cooked and served by Aunty Zeinab. The same flowers spread around the courtyard, their fragrance futile against the odor of formaldehyde.

“My condolences, worthy Sonia
Khanum
, on the passing of your asshole husband.” The insult sliced through our gathering like a dagger.

Everyone stopped talking, chewing, breathing. A deadly silence took over the courtyard, all heads tilted up, all eyes glued to Chingiz.

He leaned over the balustrade of the third-floor balcony, his cow eyes glistening, his gold-tooth mouth twisted in a drunken sneer, slurring and weeping at the same time. “Look at you. You're all there, sitting there, speaking there. All respectful. Saying all these nice things—he did this and he did that. But no one says that he was a dirty
haramzade
. A pedophile. And a thief.”

Uncle Ali appeared behind Chingiz, hitting him, trying to pull him back inside their apartment. “Don't listen to him,” he cried. “You good people all know that the boy is not well in his head. Just like his mother. You all remember her, my poor niece, how sick she was, don't you? Please! Good, worthy people! Don't listen to his jabber. He's not only cuckoo and
beyinsiz
, but he's had too much vodka and opium. He's drunk and weak in the head. Forgive him good people.”

“Sikdir!”
Chingiz swore and pushed his uncle off. “I know what I'm saying. I saw it with my own two—” He forked his eyes with his fingers, then turned the fingers on the crowd. “You.” He pointed toward Papa's friends assembled in the right side of the courtyard. “I saw all of you. I gave my buddy
anasa
to smoke; he let me watch. My buddy works at the Turkish baths on Dzerzhinsky Street.

“Don't you good people know it's not just baths but
fahisexana
, a whorehouse for important men like Mekhti Rashidovich? I watched how they
atdirmaq
my Almaz. Her and other girls. They would
atdirmaq
them, then use them as their urinals. Perverts.” Chingiz bent over the railing and spat down at our gathering.

“Let's get him, the lying son of a bitch.” Farhad threw his chair aside and rushed upstairs followed by several other men.

Everyone tried to sneak a glance at Mama, to see her reaction. There was none. She kept digging her fork into
dushbara,
dumplings, her eyes downcast.

“And you, my future mother-in-law Zeinab,” Chingiz howled. “How much did you pay my uncle so I would marry your dishonored daughter?”

The sound of a blast shook the courtyard.

Aunty Zeinab's copper tray had crashed onto the stone floor, her
plov
spilling around. She didn't move, her mighty arms hanging helplessly, her crimson face frozen in pain.

“I loved your Almaz,” Chingiz whimpered. “I loved her before he made her a whore.
Allahu
Akbar
, the bastard got what he deserved, smashed like a pea.”

The men reached the third floor and grabbed Chingiz, beating him fiercely and dragging him inside Uncle Ali's apartment. He didn't resist, just cursed, wailed, and cried his drunken tears. Soon the police arrived, and Chingiz was heaved away, his face bloated beyond recognition, his torn lower lip hanging like a crab leg.

Papa's wake resumed with everyone trying to act as if nothing had happened, shedding tears, hugging Mama and me, offering long praising toasts in Papa's remembrance. Uncle Kerim even made a clumsy attempt to tailor one of his toasts to the incident when he said, “The best memory is that which forgets nothing but injuries. Write goodness in marble and write injuries in the dust.”