The Doves of Ohanavank (22 page)

She answers after four rings, when I’m about to hang up. Her voice is groggy.

“Anastasia, sorry if I woke you up. Is this a bad time?”

“Oh, hi Lara,” she mumbles. I hear shuffling of sheets. “I’m not home yet. Is it urgent?”

“No, sorry, it can wait. When can I call?”

“At least two hours,” she says. “If it can wait.”

“It can, don’t worry. Talk to you soon.”

I imagine Anastasia in some hotel room, with a client who was drunk the night before and agreed to pay her an all-night fee. He probably fell asleep after having sex once, and snored all night, keeping
Anastasia awake. But all-night clients do not feel they’ve had their money’s worth if everything ends like that. They have to have sex in the morning, to make the fee worthwhile, even if they are so hung-over that their own body is reluctant. I could never understand that. Anastasia told me once that it is like insisting on finishing last night’s dinner the next morning, just because you’ve already paid for it. I remember feeling so offended by her explanation that I yelled some very angry words at her. But she found the whole thing amusing. She was laughing the whole time, both while telling me her take on the overnighters and when she saw my outrage. I am still amazed at how well Anastasia has adjusted to her world.

I call her back in mid-afternoon.

“Lara,
aziz
jan, sorry I couldn’t talk earlier. You won’t believe what this guy was like. A small Japanese, maybe fifty, wants me to give him a bath, then a massage, then oral sex, then he wants to fuck. In that order. And then the same sequence in the morning. Everything timed, everything precise, everything…”

“Anastasia, stop,” I interrupt. I have waited half an hour too long before calling. She’s fully awake, maybe on her third cup of coffee. “Let’s skip all that. We need to talk about Yuri. I have some information.”

“Oh thank God! Finally! I am suffering in his hands. I never thought I’d be beaten again by these bastards after I managed to calm Viktor down, and here I am back to square one with Yuri. When can we talk? Can you come to Moscow?”

Sometimes it feels like Anastasia still thinks of me as a fellow prostitute. She wouldn’t have talked to me about the Japanese client otherwise. Nor would she think that I could just hop over to Moscow. I think perhaps I should test Edik’s theory of killing the past on Anastasia first. That would be simpler than trying it on Ahmed. So I bundle up all my past dealings with Anastasia and put them away somewhere in the back of my mind, focusing on where I am now, the past rendered inactive and irrelevant.

“I cannot come to Moscow,” I say. “I can talk to you on the phone for some of this, but you may have to come here for the rest.”

“Lara,
aziz
jan, if I leave again, Nicolai will kill me; if I don’t give something to Yuri soon, Yuri will kill me. Please. How else can we do this?”

“You’ll have to have Yuri and Nicolai sort this out. I cannot come to Moscow. Now listen, call Yuri and tell him that there is a very powerful man in Armenia who is after Ayvazian’s business. He has already taken over some operations, and a few of Ayvazian’s old henchmen now work for him. He will believe this because he knows it is true. This is important, are you listening?” I want to make sure her mind has not drifted somewhere else.

“Yes, I’m listening. That is important.”

“Good. Make sure you tell him that Ayvazian’s men in Aparan are now working for some other boss. That will give the rest of your story more credibility. Tell him that you asked me to help you find out more about this new boss. Say I promised to help. Then tell me what he says.”

“Lara, we cannot even talk this much over the phone. What if they’re listening? We have to figure out some other way to send messages.”

“Fine, we’ll do that. But now tell him that much and let me know what he says.”

Half an hour later Anastasia calls.

“He’s in Dubai,” she says all excited. “So I don’t think he was listening to us. He’s returning in two days. First to Yerevan, then he’ll come to Moscow, he said. So if there is more, you have two days to tell me,
aziz
jan.”

Have I managed to really change anything in my relationship with Anastasia by putting the past away? I’m not sure. I would probably have told her the same things, regardless. Maybe the difference is just in my head, and not in her head. But that wouldn’t be enough. In order to declare this experiment a success, Anastasia has to stop thinking of me as a prostitute, even as a former prostitute. She should look at me as one of her non-prostitute friends, if she has any, and even if she doesn’t have any. Maybe if she stops telling me stories of her clients… I would take that as a step in the right direction.

So, Yuri found his way to Dubai. It was bound to happen, given that he’s on a hunt for Ayvazian’s assets. I wonder if he’ll run into Nicolai there also, or that one is strictly a Moscow takeover artist. Either way, Madame Ano would have had the pleasure of meeting Yuri. I catch myself wondering what has happened to Ano and the other girls, and I get mad at myself. How can I expect others to forget my past, if I still think and wonder about it? I have to stick strictly to my new persona, in order for me to project it, and only it, to the rest of the world. At least I think that’s what Edik was trying to tell me in Vardahovit. This is not about
denial, he said. Nor about memory. Acknowledge the past, confront the past, kill the past! Then move on, free of the past.

Alisia calls when I’m in class. We have agreed that she won’t call during class unless it is an emergency. Class ends in fifteen minutes, and my first instinct is to wait. But then I panic. What kind of emergency could they be having in Saralandj?

“Lara, they arrested Avo,” she screams. I am right outside the door of the classroom, and I walk fast towards the exit of the building so students in the hallway do not hear my side of the conversation.

“What happened?”

“He slaughtered one of his pigs, filled two large buckets with all the entrails and the blood, drove to LeFreak’s house outside Yerevan and splattered it all over the fence and the front gate.” She is hysterical. “The security guards almost killed him,” she screams between sobs. “They shot at him, to scare him away. Then they beat him up real bad and called the police. He’s in jail, Lara! What are we going to do?”

“Alisia, calm down, how did he drive to Yerevan?”

“He borrowed Ruben’s truck. He does not even have a driver’s license. Just to run a few errands between Saralandj and Aparan, he told Ruben. The police called Ruben about the incident. That’s how we know.”

“Does Gagik know?” I ask.

“I don’t know…” and Alisia starts wailing again. “Lara, they say he was very drunk. He was screaming ‘you want to be the king of pigs, Mr. LeFreak? You already are the biggest pig of all! Here! Take this then, the blood of your relatives!’ That’s what they said he was screaming while pouring the blood on the fence.”

“Alisia, there’s nothing we can do right now.” I desperately want to calm her down. “I’ll call Gagik and see what he says. They’ll probably keep him a day or two then release him. He hasn’t hurt anyone, hasn’t committed murder or something serious. So we’ll see. I know it’s scary, but it’s probably less serious than it appears to be.”

“Lara, he slaughtered the mother pig in the pen, while the piglets were suckling!” Alisia’s wail is deafening. “He dragged the body out, crushing a few of the piglets under her. How can our Avo be so cruel? How can he get
that
angry,
that
drunk?”

Details make you focus better. Alisia’s outburst is so powerful that my knees begin to shake and I sit on the steps. She is still ranting, and the phone is pressed to my ear, but my mind is blank. I want to turn off all signals, sounds, visions, and to just dissolve, merge with the earth. Did I make Avo this angry? He learned to kill because of me; did he learn anger because of me too? Does one
learn
how to be angry?

“Lara, are you there? Are you listening?” Alisia seems to be making herself even more hysterical as she tells the story.

“I’m here,” I say as calmly as I can. “But I have to go now. I have to see what we can do. I’ll call back when I know something. Did they tell Ruben which jail he’s in?”

“I don’t know, I never asked. I’m so sorry…I know I’m not helping at all. I’m so sorry… I’ll pull myself together, I promise.”

“Good. That’s the best thing you’ve said so far. None of us can help if we’re hysterical. Don’t worry, I’ll call Ruben myself. You take care of things at home until we sort this out.”

Two hours later Gagik and I are at a jail outside Yerevan. It is past visiting hours, and the guard is uncooperative. Gagik tries to reason with him, saying that I am the prisoner’s sister, that no one from the family has visited him yet, that at least I should be allowed to talk to him, even for a few minutes. The guard stares at me for a minute, but remains firm. He stands at the gate like a rock, and addresses us so rudely that my blood starts to boil. Could anger be genetic? Then Gagik reaches into his pocket, and approaches him. He slips some banknotes into his hand.

“I’ll see what I can do,” mumbles the guard. “Maybe five minutes.”

Gagik notices my hands shake.

“Don’t be afraid,” he says, clearly mistaking my anger for fear.

“I’m not afraid,” I say. “I want to do to him what Avo did to that poor pig.”

Gagik looks at me for a moment, unsure how to react. Then he laughs.

“Anger is a powerful tool,” he says. “We used it as ammunition during the war. It is as important as guns and bullets. But, like guns and bullets, one needs to aim it right. The target of your anger should not be this poor
guard, Lara. He really does not know any better. Besides, technically, he’s right, we’re here past visiting hours.”

Gagik’s words bring me back to earth so fast that I feel momentarily disoriented. And they call this guy ‘Crazy?’ I’d love to see him when he is really crazy, when he is releasing his anger at a deserving enemy.

The guard returns, a huge, bear-like creature swinging right and left as he walks, huffing as if he’s out of breath.

“Come!” he orders. We follow him, and a whiff of his body odor nauseates me. Some of my clients smelled so bad that I had to hold my breath. I literally held my nose while they were having sex with me. This unkempt bear of a man smells like them.

“Wait here!” he says and walks out.

A few minutes later two guards bring Avo in. They release him. He is limping. As I run to him, I see him wavering, and Gagik is quick to join me as we hold him up.

“Did you bring me cigarettes?” he asks. That’s when I notice his lips shake like twigs in a storm. Inside his left eye, a pool of blood has filled the space where the white used to be. There is a huge bruise on his right cheek.

I cannot lose Avo like this. This has to end. My problems seem so petty right now. If I’m the one who has been to hell and back, why is it Avo who’s in this condition right now? Why is he still in a hell that he cannot escape? I do not need to overanalyze this, but I’m responsible for a large part of it. It does not matter what part and where and how. What happened to me has caused this to happen to Avo. It was the strength of my family that held me together while girls in my situation were becoming unreachable. I shall now try to bring Avo back home, as I came back. Avo has the same fight in him that I had in me. I am now convinced of that. In many ways, he has been forced out of his home, without even leaving Saralandj, as much as I was.

“We have to get him cigarettes,” I tell Gagik.

“They’ll never let us back in,” he says, worried. Then he approaches the two guards waiting by the door.

“
Aper
jan,” he says, ‘brother’, “would you sell me a pack of cigarettes?” He is holding a five thousand dram note, which is probably ten times the price of a pack. The guards look at each other and shrug.

“Sure,” says one of them, grabbing the note from Gagik’s hand. He hands him a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. Gagik checks it, and
I can tell from his reaction that the pack is not full. He stares at the guard with such intensity that I see the guard take a step back.

“And the lighter,” he says, holding his gaze. The guard hands him his disposable
bic
lighter.

“Thank you,” says Gagik and walks backwards toward us, still focused on the guard. He puts a cigarette in Avo’s mouth and lights it. He then hands him the pack and the lighter. Avo shuts his eyes and takes a long drag. As he puffs out the smoke, he looks at me for the first time.

“I’m sorry,
Kurig
jan,” he says. “For everything, and for smoking indoors.”

Chapter Twenty

“D
id you miss me?” asks Yuri as he enters Carla’s study. He looks tired but in a good mood, and he has a large manila envelope in his hand.

“That depends,” says Carla, but smiles faintly. She is lying on the maroon velvet sofa reading a magazine. “You sure took your time in Dubai.”

“It was worth it.” Yuri approaches the sofa.

Carla sits up, and accepts a kiss from him with another faint smile. “Good to have you back,” she says, keeping her voice businesslike.