The Kindness of Enemies: A Novel (15 page)
Tonight I nursed my memories. Random images of his Afro comb, his tennis racket, his Bee Gees cassettes. How when he was seven he came over to play, stayed the whole day and then went back home and complained to Grusha that we hadn’t fed him enough. I remember Grusha indignant and my mother embarrassed. Now the memory made me smile but at the time harsh Russian words were exchanged all round. When Yasha was fifteen he would take his father’s car without permission and we would sneak off for drives. He would have one hand on the steering wheel and the other resting on the open window. We would talk our own mix of Russian, Arabic and the English we learnt at school. He was the same species as me – I could sprint through the added contradictions of what I knew and what I had inherited and he would keep up the pace, he would know the terrain; he could do Sudan through Russian eyes and Russia through Khartoum eyes. Tonight I wanted to reach, through sleep, to the comfort of how we used to be. Instead I open a drawer and I am appalled to find a baby, a naked baby I put away in the drawer and forgot about.
The baby is dead, it must be dead. Is it dead? I can’t find out, I can’t lift it out of the drawer. I can’t look at it properly. I must close the drawer. I must close the drawer and move away and pretend that I never opened it in the first place.
I surfaced into tears. When I dipped down again it was Gaynor Stead who barged through my dreams.
Gaynor Stead talking about me to Fiona and saying, ‘Natasha put her fat arse on my desk …’ ‘Interesting,’ was Fiona’s characteristic reply, warm and understanding, eager to help. ‘Black arse … fat arse …’ Gaynor was younger in the dream and Fiona, with her arm around her, was older. ‘They are mother and daughter,’ I realised even though in real life they were not. ‘How could I have missed it before?’ my sleeping mind insisted on the connection. ‘They are
really mother and daughter.’ ‘Black arse … fat black arse …’ The words looped and steadied, they became rhythmic. I woke up warm with humiliation, not sure where I was.
I tried to find Malak’s number through Directory Enquiries but she was not listed. I would have liked to speak to her now, not to tell her my dream but to listen to her voice. She would tell me that dreams mattered to Shamil, that they influenced decisions he took and manoeuvres he devised. I rummaged in my bag and found my notebook. In it I had written some of the things Malak had said. ‘Sufism is based on the belief that the seeker needs a guide. Even Muhammad, on his miraculous night’s ascent through the seven heavens needed Gabriel as his guide.’
In the margins I had scribbled the word ‘guru’. And so how would it work in modern life? I taught for a living but it was learning that had always been more fulfilling. Malak the actor, Natasha the teacher. Sufism delves into the hidden truth behind the disguise. Perhaps Malak was only an actor in disguise. Perhaps Natasha was acting the part of a teacher. If I ever started to seek the kind of knowledge that couldn’t be found in books, who would I want as a guide? Does the student seek the teacher or the other way round?
Anna stumbled around, repeating the same question to anyone who would stop and listen – Avars, Lezgins, Russian prisoners of war, serfs from the Tsinondali estate who had been captured in separate raids, wounded Armenians and Georgian villagers who, with a shock, recognised her – she would clutch their arm and say, ‘Have you seen my baby?’
The hostages were in Polahi now, a Russian outpost that had been captured by Shamil. His troops were stationed around the watchtower and the surrounding areas. The attack on Tsinondali had been part of a series of raids into the Alazani Valley. Now some of the men brandished severed heads as trophies; they herded cattle, slaves and horses up the mountains.
‘Have you seen my baby?’ Anna’s words did not need to be translated, they were understood, but no one wanted to answer her or even meet her eyes. Madame Drancy straggled after the princess. Sometimes she succeeded in leading her back to where they were camped. Sometimes she crouched helplessly, watching Anna, on hands and knees, sifting through rocks and brambles looking for
the impossible. ‘Be strong for Alexander. Look at him. See how distraught he is to see you like this.’
Anna turned dutifully towards her son. She understood the logic of Drancy’s argument but she could do nothing about it. A storm was inside her and she could not subdue it. If she could be sure, if she could hold Lydia again, if she could kiss her cool cheeks, if she could put her finger on that mouth that couldn’t swallow, that couldn’t cry, that no longer needed her, that no longer knew her, then maybe she could settle down. Hope was the devil, hope wrestled with her and wouldn’t let her rest. ‘Someone saw her fall and picked her up. Someone found her, someone saved my daughter.’ How could she not believe this? Why should she not believe it? No one dared, not even Madame Drancy, to contradict her or to say that they had seen the horses ride over a bundle that should never have been on the floor of a forest.
‘Come and lie down, Your Highness. Come and have a rest.’
When she lay down, the tears started. ‘I had her by the leg. But I couldn’t keep holding her,’ she mumbled over and over again. She dozed but jerked awake. ‘She is too small … too small for all this …’
Alexander snuggled close to her, his head pushing her stomach. His tears were those of fear rather than grief. So much was happening around him that he could scarcely remember his baby sister.
The next morning Anna’s breasts were hard as rocks. She needed the baby to relieve the discomfort but now she was on her own. Expressing the milk gave her a few lucid moments, a recess from grief. She knew from her experience of farming that if a cow was left unmilked it would eventually dry off. But the process had to be gradual otherwise the milk would curdle, there could be an abscess with fever setting in. She lay down on her side and let the milk seep into the burka she had been given to use as bedding. One of her breasts already had less milk than the other; it would dry up first. When Lydia came back to her, what would she feed on?
‘Madame Drancy, why have we stopped?’
‘The men seem to be expecting someone of high rank to come and see us. It might even be Shamil himself, as they say he has come down from the mountains to inspect his troops. I am terrified of him. He sounds like a monster by all accounts.’ The governess sounded more curious, though, than anxious.
Anna, still lying down, told herself, ‘In this audience I will not be a prisoner. I will be what I really am, a princess of Georgia.’ But it was as if she could still hear herself weeping, it was as if her heart still beat the words Lydia, Lydia.
‘Heathens,’ Madame Drancy was saying. ‘All these men revere Shamil as if he is God’s representative on earth. Just the mention of his name and they’re mumbling salutations and chanting.’
Despite the language barrier, Madame Drancy was communicating with the men. This was done in a mixture of sign language and the little Russian that some of the men spoke. The ordeal seemed to have awakened in her an anthropological interest, an intellectual ability to detach herself and make observations. She had even taken to wearing the burka, stretching inside it as if she were under the bedsheets. It soothed Anna to listen to her voice.
‘Do you know what one of their laws is, Your Highness? No woman is allowed to remain a widow for longer than five months. I might end up in a harem!’
‘Oh you are fanciful.’
‘But I wonder though. We seem valuable to them. Didn’t you notice, yesterday when we entered that village and we were surrounded by crowds, our captors shouted, ‘For Shamil Imam’ and then everyone stepped back?’
Anna couldn’t remember passing a village. Two days or more were a blur, as smoky and as eerie as a nightmare. She turned to wake Alexander up with a kiss, to reassure him that his mother was still with him.
It was not Imam Shamil who came to inspect them but a young man with bright eyes and a roughness to his skin that contrasted with his easy smile. He bowed to Anna. ‘My name is Ghazi Muhammad. I am Imam Shamil’s son and the viceroy of Gagatli and the governor of Karata.’ He spoke Russian poorly and with a heavy accent. Her full concentration was needed to understand every word.
Ghazi went on, ‘These incursions into Georgia are aimed at inducing the population to join our resistance. On behalf of my father, I welcome you as our guests.’
‘Guests! Is this the treatment of guests?’
He said lightly, ‘Clothes will be provided for you to replace your torn ones. And warm food too. I will immediately order this.’
‘This is not enough. Not after what we’ve gone through. I lost my daughter because of you.’ She must not let her voice break, she must not show weakness in front of him.
He looked more sombre now. ‘Your Highness, what happened to the little princess was not at all our intention. Indeed, your lives are precious to us.’
The words ‘little princess’ made her breasts leak. She would not risk speaking now.
‘It was Russian bullets that were fired at you, not ours.’ His voice turned cool with this defence.
She hardened against him. ‘They did not know that we were your captives.’
‘Perhaps so. If it will comfort you, I will immediately order a party to search for your missing child.’
Hope would keep the wound open for longer. Her voice rose. ‘I have done nothing to deserve this. What wrong have I and my children ever done to you?’
Ghazi folded his hands on his belt. ‘Believe me, I am saddened at how much you have suffered. My father is going to be very angry. I blame all this on the brutality of the Lezgins. They are uncouth soldiers of the line. But we were unable to spare my father’s elite force.’
Momentarily he looked young and unguarded. It gave her a surge of strength. ‘You will pay for what you have done to us. Do you think His Majesty the tsar will sit back and do nothing? Do you think my husband, Prince David, will not try to rescue us?’
Ghazi shifted and stood up straighter. ‘You are distraught, Your Highness and understandably in pain. I promise I will do everything I can for your wellbeing. My suggestion is that you rest and once you’re suitably dressed, I will take you to meet my father, the Imam of Chechnya and Dagestan. He has summoned you.’
‘What does he want?’
Ghazi smiled. ‘To speak to you, of course.’
‘I will not go to him.’
The young man raised his eyebrows. ‘He is Imam Shamil.’
With all her strength, she held herself straight. ‘And I am a princess of Georgia. I will not be summoned by him.’
Ghazi bowed and withdrew. She had won a very small victory.
They were given millet bread and dried apricots. It was good to see Alexander eating. He had been dreaming of cake with sugar on top. Anna still dreamt of Lydia, that she had been found, that she was safe, after all, lying on the armchair among the lilac flowers. In the morning she watched Alexander wander off and join the men. Madame Drancy, sensing her disquiet said, ‘They’re only showing him their horses.’
‘Still. I don’t trust them.’ When Alexander was a baby he had looked exactly like Lydia, the same colour hair, the same long lashes.
Madame Drancy was still speaking. ‘We’re going to be given face veils when we meet with Imam Shamil.’ The new clothes they had been given were nothing but ill-assorted rags. Loose Turkish trousers and a sack full of left-foot shoes. Madame Drancy, who had been stripped to her corset, was grateful to have them. Anna, though, refused to change.
She looked around her as if for the first time. The condition of the other prisoners was worse. They had been made to march on foot and many were ill with dysentery and typhoid. No patience
or special treatment was given to them. Insolence was dealt with by a scimitar thrust or a shove off a mountain ledge. Women were snatched as handmaidens and children set to work as slaves. The friendliness Shamil’s men showed to Alexander, the relative respect she and Madame Drancy received was denied to the others. Innocent Georgian villagers and serfs who had nothing to do with the war between Russia and the Caucasus. Their crime in the eyes of the Muslims was that they had succumbed to Russia and were now her ally. Georgia had not resisted as it should. Anna bit her lips. Weren’t these the same words she had said to David? The thoughts that could not be voiced in public, the resentment that must stay hidden. We are Georgians, not Russians. But for the sake of peace her grandfather had ceded the throne and here she was, caught up in the war against Russia.
The Georgian prisoners raised their voices up to lament their fate. They started to sing of home and pain, of orphaned children and of how low their princess had fallen. It brought tears to Anna’s eyes.
The flower of Kakheit has fallen into the Lezgins’ hands. Pray for our princess …
She wished she could have protected them, she wished she could have spared them all this. Her helplessness frustrated her. But not all of the Georgian prisoners regarded her with goodwill. An elderly peasant woman was livid that the princess had been given a horse-cloth to lie on. She railed out loud against the injustice, decrying the privileges of royalty. When she attempted to seize the horse-cloth by force, Anna let her have it.
She had heard of the tower of Pohali, after which the fort was named, but it was the first time she had seen it. The top storey had been demolished by Shamil’s artillery. Behind it the mountains rose, arrogant. If she narrowed her eyes against the sun and looked up, she could see clumps of snow on the peaks. Ahead of them was a journey of more than three weeks. If David was ever going to rescue them, he would have come by now. The further they travelled up the mountains, the more difficult it would be for him to reach them.
And when they arrived in Shamil’s stronghold at Dargo-Veddin, it would be too late.
Fresh horses, new captors and it was time to climb again, up steep zigzagged paths, through bushes that tore at her clothes, around ugly rocky aouls where strangers lined up to stare. In some of these villages, they would find kindness and hospitality. They would be welcomed into the most peculiar of designs: a hill inside a courtyard, which had to be climbed in order to reach the upper floor. Rooms without windows and only a door to a large balcony. The grudging shelter of stables, spending a night next to asses and oxen. And that was preferable to the hostile aouls, where the villagers crowded to throw stones at them. Her back ached, her toe was still sore. Now lice in her hair. She scratched until there was blood under her nails. They must dismount because the horses could not manage these dangerous paths. Wading in deep mud one day, crawling on hands and knees over a ravine. Surprising avalanches of snow, gifts from the summits, that were not expected to melt until the middle of July. She began to hate these rocky barren mountains; they were endless and cruel. She screamed, she could not help it, as she was led to mount a horse that had a severed hand dangling from the saddle. The hand was Georgian, she knew, because of the wedding band. ‘Assassins,’ she yelled at them and they laughed. Men with faces blackened by gunpowder. ‘To prevent sunburn,’ Madame Drancy explained to her in a moment of clarity.
