A Curse on Dostoevsky (2 page)

Move, Rassoul, move!

Total inertia.

Rassoul?

What’s the matter with him? What is he thinking about?

Crime and Punishment
. That’s right—Raskolnikov, and what became of him.

But didn’t he think of that before, when he was planning the crime?

Apparently not.

Or perhaps that story, buried deep within, incited him to the murder.

Or perhaps …

Or perhaps … what? Is this really the time to ruminate? Now that he’s killed the old woman, he must take her money and jewels, and run.

Run!

He doesn’t move. Just stands there. Rooted to the spot, like a tree. A dead tree, planted in the flagstones of the house. Still staring at the trickle of blood that has almost reached the woman’s hand. Forget the money! Leave this house, right now, before the woman’s sister arrives!

Sister? This woman doesn’t have a sister. She has a daughter.

Who cares? What difference if it’s a sister or a daughter? Right now Rassoul will be forced to kill anyone who enters the house.

The blood veers off just before it reaches the woman’s hand. It flows toward a worn, darned part of the rug and pools not far from a small wooden box overflowing with chains, necklaces, gold bracelets, watches …

What’s the point of all these details? Just take the box and the money!

He crouches. His fingers move hesitantly toward the woman’s hand, to grab the cash. Her grip is hard and firm, as if she were still alive and keeping a tight hold on the wad of notes. He pulls. In vain. He looks anxiously at the woman’s lifeless eyes and sees his face reflected in them. The bulging eyes remind him that a victim’s last sight of her assassin remains fixed in her pupils. He is flooded with fear. He steps back. His reflection in the old woman’s eyes slowly disappears behind her eyelids.

“Nana Alia?” calls a woman’s voice. It’s happening, she’s here, the one who wasn’t meant to come. You’re done for now, Rassoul!

“Nana Alia?” Who is it? Her daughter. No, it isn’t a young voice. Never mind. No one must enter this room. “Nana Alia!” The voice approaches, “Nana Alia?”, climbs the stairs.

Leave, Rassoul!

He takes off like a wisp of straw, flying to the window, opening it and leaping onto the roof of the house next door, abandoning his
patou
, the money, the jewels, the ax … all of it.

Reaching the edge of the roof, he hesitates to jump down into the lane. But an alarming cry from Nana Alia’s room makes everything shake—his legs, the roof, the mountains—so he jumps, and lands hard. A sharp pain shoots through his ankle. It doesn’t matter. He
must stand. The lane is empty. He has to get out of here.

He runs.

Runs not knowing where he’s going.

He only stops at a dead end, beside a pile of rubbish, the stink burning his nostrils. But he is no longer aware of anything. Or doesn’t care. He stays. Standing, leaning against a wall. He can still hear the woman’s piercing cry; he doesn’t know whether she is actually screaming or he is being haunted by her cry. He holds his breath. All at once the lane, or his mind, empties of the sound. He pushes himself off the wall to move on, but the pain in his ankle stops him dead. He grimaces in pain, leans back against the wall, squats down to massage his foot. But something inside him starts rising. Suddenly nauseous, he bends over to vomit yellowish liquid. The filthy dead end spins around him. He puts his head in his hands and sinks to the ground, back to the wall.

He is still for a long moment, eyes closed, not breathing, as if listening for a cry or a moan from Nana Alia’s house. Nothing but the beating of his own blood in his temples.

Perhaps the woman fainted when she saw the corpse.

He hopes not.

Who was that woman, the blasted creature who messed it all up?

Was it really her or … Dostoevsky?

Dostoevsky, yes, it was him! He floored me, destroyed me with his
Crime and Punishment
. Stopped me from following in the steps of his hero, Raskolnikov: killing a second woman, this one innocent; taking the money and the jewels that would remind me of my crime; becoming prey to my remorse, sinking into an abyss of guilt, ending up sentenced to hard labor …

And? At least that would be better than running off like an idiot, a pathetic excuse for a murderer. Blood on my hands, but nothing in my pockets.

What madness!

A curse on Dostoevsky!

His febrile hands close around his face, lose themselves in his frizzy hair, then clasp together again behind his sweat-soaked neck. He is seized by a terrible thought: What if the woman wasn’t Nana Alia’s daughter? She might take everything and leave as quietly as she came. But what about me? My mother, my sister Donia, my fiancée Sophia—what will become of them? I committed this murder for them. That woman has no right to the loot. I have to go back there. Screw my ankle!

He stands up.

Goes back the way he came.

R
ETURN TO
the scene of the crime? What a trap! Everyone knows it’s a fatal error. An error that has ruined many a competent criminal. Haven’t you heard that wise old saying:
Money is like water: once it flows away, it never comes back?
It’s all over. Never forget that a thief only has one chance at a job; if you mess it up, you’re fucked; any attempt to sort things out is bound to end in disaster.

He stops, glancing around. Everything is calm and quiet.

He rubs his ankle and sets off again. Unconvinced by the wise old saying. He walks fast, decisively, until he comes to a fork in the road. There he stops for a moment, just to catch his breath before taking the street leading to the scene of the crime.

Let’s hope the woman really did faint next to the old lady’s corpse.

Here he is, in the victim’s street. He slows down, surprised by the silence around the house. A dog is dozing in the shade of a wall. It sees him and stands up heavily to emit a lazy growl. Rassoul freezes. Wavers.
Lets a little time pass in the reluctant hope that it will convince him of the folly of his curiosity. He’s about to leave when he hears footsteps hurrying through Nana Alia’s courtyard. Panicking, he flattens himself against the wall. A woman shrouded in a sky-blue chador exits the house and rushes away, leaving the gate open behind her. Is this the same woman? It must be. She has taken the money and the jewels, and is making her escape.

That’s too much! Where do you think you’re going, you infidel? You’ve no right to that money, or those jewels. They belong to Rassoul. Stop right there!

The woman speeds up and disappears down a lane. Rassoul ignores the pain in his ankle to rush after her. He catches up with her by an unlit entrance to a building, where he is suddenly stopped in his tracks by running footsteps and the cries of teenagers. Again, he tries to hide by flattening himself against the wall. Despite her haste, the woman also stands aside to let them pass. Rassoul’s eyes meet hers through the gauze of her chador as he bends to rub his sore ankle. Then she is off again, in the teenagers’ wake, even more hurried and distressed than before.

Rassoul resumes his pursuit, limping and out of breath. At a crossroads the woman takes a new, wider, busier street. Rassoul stops dead, horrified by the dozens of women in blue chadors walking briskly along the road. Which one to follow?

He pushes desperately through the mass of veiled faces, searching for the slightest clue—a bloodstained
hem, a box hidden under one arm, a suspicious haste—but there is nothing. He feels suddenly dizzy, and has to make an effort not to pass out. Once again, he is terribly nauseous. Sweating, he moves into the shade of a wall and doubles up to vomit more yellowish bile.

Feet pass in front of his dazed eyes. He is exhausted, becoming less and less aware of the surrounding noise. Everything goes quiet: the coming and going of the people, their talk, the cries of the street hawkers, the beeping of the cars, the traffic …

The woman has disappeared. Lost among all the others, faceless.

But how could she have run off, leaving Nana Alia—surely one of her relatives—in such a state? All she did was scream. She didn’t even call for help. How cunningly she must have assessed the situation, made a decision, and gone off with the loot. Without even committing murder. The bitch!

Without committing murder, perhaps, but she is a traitor. She has betrayed her own family. Betrayal is worse than murder.

This isn’t the moment to work up a theory, Rassoul. Look, someone is trying to give you money, fifty afghanis.

Who does he think I am?

A beggar. Squatting wretchedly on the pavement in your dirty, ragged clothes, unshaven, with your sunken eyes and filthy hair, you look more like a beggar than a murderer. A beggar who won’t even take what’s given.

The man can’t believe it. He insists, shaking the note in front of Rassoul’s distraught eyes. Nothing. So he shoves the note into Rassoul’s bony fist and walks away. Rassoul looks down at the money.

The booty from your murder!

A bitter smile plays on his bloodless lips. He closes his fist and is about to stand when a terrifying blast of noise glues him to the spot.

A rocket explodes.

The earth shakes.

People throw themselves to the ground; others run around screaming.

A second rocket, closer and more terrifying. Rassoul joins those on the ground. All around him is chaos and noise. A great fire is giving off black smoke that spreads through this entire central Kabul neighborhood at the foot of the Asmai mountain.

Some minutes later a few heads, looking like dusty mushrooms, begin to poke up in the oppressive silence. Shouts ring out:

“They hit the petrol station!”

“No, it was the Ministry of Education.”

“No, the petrol station …”

Just to the right of Rassoul, a prostrate old man is desperately searching for something on the ground while grumbling into his beard: “Fuck you and your petrol pump, and your ministry … Where are my teeth? Dear God, what’s the matter with these marauders of Gog and Magog? My teeth …” He rummages around in
the earth beneath him. “Have you seen my false teeth?” he asks Rassoul, who is staring at him curiously, wondering if he has lost his mind. “They fell out of my mouth. I’ve lost them …”

“Come on,
baba
, is a set of false teeth really so important in these times of war and starvation?” sniggers a bearded man lying nearby.

“Why ever not?” retorts the old man haughtily, indignant at such a thought.

“What vanity!” snorts the bearded man, standing up and brushing himself off. He walks away with his hands in his pockets, watched suspiciously by the old man, who mutters, “
Kos-madar
, that son of a bitch stole my teeth … I’m sure of it.” He turns back to Rassoul. “I had five gold teeth in that set. Five!” With a quick glance at the bearded man, he continues in a regretful voice, “My wife was always nagging me to sell them to cover the household costs. I pawned them more than once. Every time my son sent a bit of money from overseas, I would get them back. I only retrieved them from the pawnbroker today at lunchtime. What a shitty day!” He stands up and slips into the crowd, searching for the man, perhaps.

Rassoul appreciated the bearded man’s irony, not out of cynicism but because he hates gold false teeth, an external manifestation of greed in all its ugliness. Nana Alia had two herself. If he had had time, he wouldn’t have minded pulling them out!

He had had the time, but not the wits; otherwise he
wouldn’t be here, wretched, with this fifty-afghani note in his hand.

He stands up among the people who are once again bustling about, running here and there, doing their best to get on with things while covering their mouths and noses so as not to suffocate in the dust and smoke. Most of them are heading toward the blaze. The flames are burning higher and higher. Rassoul approaches too. The burning corpses make him step back, but then a man shouts to him through the smoke for help. He is trying to carry an injured girl on his back. “I’m all alone. This poor young girl is still alive.” Rassoul goes to help, takes the girl in his arms and carries her away from the flames before handing her back. “We need to get out of here. The tank is about to explode!” shouts the man, spreading a gust of panic among all those trying to put out the flames.

Rassoul resumes his journey toward the mountain. He stares wearily at the dark, narrow lanes that weave up the slopes, forming a veritable labyrinth, a sprawl of about a thousand houses, all made of earth, built right on top of each other all the way up to the top of the mountain that divides the city of Kabul geographically, politically, and morally, in both its dreams and its nightmares. It looks like a belly about to burst.

From below, he can see the roof of Nana Alia’s house. A big house with green walls and white windows.

Now that the woman has left, he can go back, just to have a look around, that’s all.

He makes his painful way back up the steep street. He has just reached a building entrance when three armed and raging men burst out of a small side alley. Rassoul bends down to hide his face, so he can only hear their shouts.

“The bastards, now they’re blowing up our petrol station …”

“Two rockets! Well, we’ll hit their station with eight. Their neighborhood will be destroyed, it’ll be running with blood!”

They disappear.

Rassoul continues on his way. Before reaching his victim’s street he pauses for a moment. His legs are trembling. He is breathing hard. Along with the petrol and explosives, there is a smell of rotting. The air has become even heavier and harder to breathe. There is also another smell: flesh, burnt flesh. Horrific. Rassoul blocks his nose, and takes a step. The second step is hesitant, interrupted by an image of Nana Alia’s corpse surging into his disordered mind. There’s no way he can go back and look at the corpse he killed with his own hands—these hands that are fluttering, trembling, sweating. Everything must be abandoned. Everything.

He turns on his heel. But a morbid, almost pathological curiosity stops him again. There must be police in the house, relatives, neighbors, tears, wailing …