A Curse on Dostoevsky (3 page)
Read A Curse on Dostoevsky Online
Authors: Atiq Rahimi
Tags: #Fiction, #Psychological, #Cultural Heritage, #Literary
Certain of what he will see, he approaches once more. Even closer. Still nothing. He walks cautiously into the smoky silence of the street, and up to the house. Not a soul. Except that idle dog who no longer even stands up to bark.
Stunned, Rassoul walks up to the front gate. It is shut. He pushes but it won’t open. Someone must have locked it from the inside. But then why is everything so quiet, so still?
It doesn’t bode well.
Go home, Rassoul!
H
E DOESN
’
T
go home. He wanders the city. He’s been walking for almost three hours now. Not rushing. Not bothered by his injured ankle, which has already been forgotten. He stops only when he reaches the banks of the Kabul River. The smell of sludge, the fetid stink rising from the riverbed in this late summer, brings him back to himself. As he pauses, the pain returns and stops him from wandering any further. He grabs the guardrail and rubs his ankle.
The air is becoming more and more impossible to breathe. Rassoul coughs. A tickly, noiseless cough.
His throat is dry.
His voice makes no cry.
Not a drop of hope in his mouth, the river, or the sky.
Obscured by a veil of dust and smoke, the old sun goes sadly off to sleep behind the mountains … the sun, going to sleep? What an absurd metaphor! The sun never goes to sleep. It travels to the other side of the earth, to shine on happier lands. Take me with you, Rassoul hears himself cry, deep inside. He screws up his eyes, stares at the sun, takes a few steps, and then
stops. Shading his eyes with his hand, he looks around anxiously as if to check whether anyone has noticed his silent insanity. Don’t worry, dear Rassoul, the world has more important things on its mind than watching a poor madman!
Go back home. And sleep!
Sleep? Is that possible?
Of course. You’re going to do just what Raskolnikov did—after murdering the moneylender he went back home and fell into a feverish sleep on his couch. You don’t have a couch, I know, but you do have a filthy mattress, waiting compassionately for you on the floor.
And then?
Nothing. You sleep.
No, I faint.
OK then, faint, if you prefer—it doesn’t matter, as long as you do it till morning. When you wake up tomorrow, you will realize that this was all a bad dream.
No way, I can’t just forget it all like that.
You can. Look, you’re not carrying anything to remind you of the murder. No money, no jewels, no ax, no …
Blood!
He stops suddenly. Checks his hands in a panic. Nothing. His sleeves: nothing. His jacket: nothing. But then, on the hem of his shirt, a great stain! Why there? No, it isn’t Nana Alia’s blood. It’s the blood of that young girl you saved.
The uncertainty disturbs him. He reexamines himself. No other trace of blood. No trace of the murder. How can that be possible?
You probably didn’t do it. It was all in your wretched imagination. Your naive identification with a fictional character. Just something stupid like that! Now you can quietly go home. You can even forget that yesterday you promised your fiancée, Sophia, that you’d spend this evening with her. You can’t see anyone in this state.
Yes, I won’t go. But I’m hungry.
Well, you’ve got fifty afghanis, so you can buy yourself some bread and fruit. It’s been several days since you’ve eaten.
And so his empty belly draws him to Joy Shir Square. The bakery is closed. An old stallholder is shutting up at the other end of the square. After a moment’s hesitation Rassoul starts making his way over to him. He has barely taken three steps when a cry stops him in his tracks. “No, no, don’t buy anything!” A veiled woman bursts out of one of the lanes, running and shouting like a maniac. “… It’s flesh … the flesh of …” In the middle of the square she stops suddenly, surprised to find it so empty and quiet. She flops to the ground, moaning: “The flesh of young girls … the day before yesterday they were handing it out at the mausoleum …” Only Rassoul is there, so she spills her tears on him: “I’m not lying, brother, I swear to you. I saw …,” she drags herself over, “… the offering they gave me,” she lowers her voice, “… was
a young girl’s breasts!”, she takes her hand out of her chador—“I swear to you, brother … it was the same men who were giving out offerings here today …”—she pulls off her veil—“the same men … the other day … outside the mausoleum …”; then finally, she is quiet. Wiping her tears with a corner of her chador, she asks weakly, “Brother, do you have any money? I’ve three children to feed.”
Without a word, Rassoul pulls out the fifty-afghani note and hands it to her. She throws herself at his feet. “Thank you, my brother … may Allah have mercy on you!”
He walks away, weary of the woman’s shouting but proud in his soul.
What a gesture! As if it were that easy to redeem yourself.
No. I am in no way attempting to redeem myself.
So why this act of charity? You’re not telling me it was a matter of compassion? No one will believe that. It was simply to convince yourself that you have a good heart, in spite of everything. You may be capable of killing a
loathsome creature
but you can stop a poor family from dying of hunger. Intention is what counts …
Yes! That is what counts for me …
He stubs his foot on a large stone. The pain in his ankle makes him grimace. He stops, for a moment. Not just walking, but also going over Raskolnikov’s words in his head. Praise be to God (or the stone)!
It isn’t far to the house where he lives. He can walk there, slowly and gently.
When he reaches the gate he pauses for a moment, checking one last time—as well as he can in the fading light of dusk—for any more traces of blood. The same stain remains; a stain that could be either proof of a murder or testament to virtue.
He takes a deep breath before entering the courtyard, which rings with the cries of the landlord’s two daughters, swinging on a rope attached to a branch of the single, dead tree. Rassoul creeps over to the other side of the courtyard, to the stairs that lead up to his little room. Just as he reaches the top step, the girls cry out:
“Salam, Kaka Rassoul!”
As he opens the door another voice, harsh and threatening, prevents him from going in. “Hey, Rassoul, how long do you think you can keep running off?” It is his landlord, Yarmohamad. Rassoul turns, silently cursing the daughters. Yarmohamad is standing by his window in his prayer cap. “So where’s my rent? Huh?”
Annoyed, Rassoul limps painfully back down the stairs, and stands under the window to tell Yarmohamad that he has tried to get his money back, as he promised he would yesterday. But it hasn’t worked out—the woman who owed it to him has disappeared. He’s been looking for her all day …
But he feels a strange emptiness in his throat. No sound comes out. He coughs. A dry, empty cough.
Noiseless, without substance. He takes a deep breath and coughs again. Nothing. He anxiously tries to cry out, a simple cry, anything will do. But still nothing emerges, just a pathetic stifled breath.
What’s the matter with me?
“Well?” asks Yarmohamad crossly.
Why won’t he just wait! Something serious is happening. Rassoul has lost his voice.
He tries again, taking another deep breath of air, collecting all his strength in his chest to push the words out of his lips. Nothing.
“So did you find this person who owes you money?” asks Yarmohamad sarcastically. “Give me her name, then! You’ll have your cash by tomorrow. Come on, give me her name …”
If you knew, Yarmohamad, you’d never dare talk to Rassoul like that. He has killed her. And he’ll kill you, too, if you upset him. Look at all the blood on him!
Rassoul smoothes down his bloodstained shirt, putting a stop to Yarmohamad’s tirade. The landlord withdraws nervously into his room, still grumbling, “What bullshit! Always the same lies …” Let him grumble, Rassoul. You know the rest: he’ll come back to the window to tell you once more that the only reason he’s put up with you for two years is out of respect for your cousin Razmodin; that if it weren’t for Razmodin, he’d already have thrown you out; that this is it, he no longer gives a shit about you, or about your cousin, etc.
Turn a deaf ear, and go into your room. Don’t look around to see if his wife Rona is there.
She is there, of course, behind another window. Watching Rassoul with a sorry expression on her face, as if trying to find an excuse for him. She loves him. Rassoul is suspicious of her. It’s not that he doesn’t find her attractive. He often thinks of her as he masturbates. It’s just that he doesn’t yet know exactly what she feels for him—passion, or compassion. If it’s compassion then he hates her. And if it’s passion, that will cause even more problems in his relationship with Yarmohamad. So what’s the point of even thinking about it? Better to go to his room. Better to rest, so he can get his breath back, and his voice.
T
HE DRY
creaking of the door disturbs a whole army of flies, who had entered in the hope of finding something to eat. There is nothing here. Just scattered books, a filthy mattress, a few shapeless garments hanging from hooks on the wall, and a clay jug in the corner. That’s all.
Rassoul picks his way in, kicking aside the books lying around his mattress. He collapses on the bed without taking off his shoes. He needs a moment’s respite.
He closes his eyes. Takes slow, gentle, regular breaths.
His tongue is nothing but a piece of old wood.
He stands up.
Drinks.
Lies back down.
His throat is still dry and void, void of sound.
He takes a deep breath, and puffs it out nervously.
Still not the slightest sound.
In a fit of anguish, he sits up and thumps himself on the chest. Nothing. He hits again, harder.
Calm down! There’s no need to worry. It’s just a throat bug, or some kind of chest infection. That’s all.
You need to sleep. If it’s still there in the morning, you can go and see a doctor.
He lies down, and turns to face the wall. He curls up—legs bent and hands trapped between his knees—shuts his eyes, and sleeps.
He sleeps until the call to evening prayers, until the gunshots fade on the other side of the mountain. Then there is silence, and it is this disturbing silence that wakes him.
Feverish. No strength to get up. Nor desire, either. Nervous, he tries once more to speak. His breath still comes out strong, but without the slightest sound. More and more distressed, he shuts his eyes again, but the stifled groans of a woman make him jump. He freezes, and holds his jerky breath, listening hard. No more cries, no human noise at all. Intrigued, he labors to his feet, moves toward the window, and glances out past the masses of flies clustered on the pane. In the cold, dull light of the moon the courtyard is sad, empty and still.
After a moment’s pause he lights a candle, pulls a small notepad from among the books, opens it, and scribbles: “Today, I killed Nana Alia.” Then he chucks it back in the corner, among the books.
He drinks some water.
Blows out the candle.
Lies down on his bed.
On the wall above his worn-out body, the moon casts the shadow of the window frame—a cross.
It was a spring day. The Red Army had already left Afghanistan, and the mujahideen hadn’t yet seized power. I had just returned from Leningrad. The reason I’d gone there is a whole other story, one I cannot write down in this notebook. Let’s go back to the day I first met you. That is already almost eighteen months ago. It was at the Kabul University library, where I worked. You came asking for a book and went away with my heart. As soon as I saw you, your modest, evasive gaze took my breath away and your name filled my lungs. Sophia. Everything around me came to a standstill: time, the world … so that you and you alone existed. Without a word I followed you to class, and even waited for you until it finished. But there was no way I could approach you, or speak to you. After that, it was always the same. I did everything I could to watch you passing, for our eyes to meet, to smile at you—and no more than that. Why couldn’t I declare my love? I had no idea. Was it a lack of courage? Pride? Whatever it was, our entire love affair consisted of that
fleeting glance and my discreet smile that you may, perhaps, not even have noticed; and if you did, modesty or shyness inhibited your response
.
It was this love that brought me to the Dehafghanan neighborhood at the foot of the Asmai mountain, around the corner from you. At the time you lived in a different house, with a beautiful view over the city, right next to those great rocks that I yearned to carve, like Farhad, into your likeness
.
Every morning I discreetly accompanied you to university, and then back again in the afternoons. You didn’t take the bus—on purpose, perhaps. You walked slowly, your hair covered with a light scarf, your eyes glued to the ground. Your heart was dancing from the fact of being accompanied, even at a distance, by me, your sweetheart—isn’t that right? Then, one day, you dared create an incident that would allow me to finally approach you. Not terribly original: you dropped your notebook, hoping I would pick it up and return it to you. But your ruse didn’t work! I certainly picked up the notebook, but I never gave it back. I took it with me, gripped tight to my chest like the Koran. And it is in this notebook that I’m writing now
.
It was the same notebook he had taken out earlier to scribble: “Today, I killed Nana Alia.”
He had also written poems and tales, all addressed
to Sophia, naturally—but which she had never read. For example: “Black is the world. Black is the day. And look at me, Sophia: in this empire of darkness, my heart is leaping. Because tonight, it will be with you!”
You didn’t see me. Perhaps you didn’t even know that I ate at your house tonight. Yes, I was there, with your father; I even saw your brother Dawoud
.
It had been almost a year and two months since I last saw you. More precisely, a year and forty-six days. Yes, that’s right. A year and forty-six days ago, I returned to my family in Mazar-e-Sharif. But it no longer felt like home. My father had been so keen for me to study in the USSR, land of his dreams, that he was disappointed when I returned. He couldn’t stand the sight of me. After seven months I left them. And when I returned to Kabul, another war had started, fratricidal this time, in which people were fighting not in the name of freedom but to avenge themselves. The entire city had gone to ground. It had forgotten life, friendship, love … Yes, that was the city I came back to, looking for you. But you no longer lived in the same house. You had moved, but where to? Nobody knew
.
Then today, this afternoon, I went to the
chai-khana.
It was thick with tobacco smoke, and full to bursting with bearded men. I sat in a corner and drank my tea. My attention was drawn to a
man’s footsteps as he struggled to make it up the wooden staircase. It was your father, Moharamullah, only now he was missing one leg, and had crutches tucked under his arm. I could hardly believe it. My delight soon dissolved. He was followed by two friends, one with no crutches but limping a great deal and in pain, the other missing an eye and his right arm. All three of them were high, from smoking hash in the basement
saqi-khana.
They came over to my corner. I immediately shuffled up to make room for them. Your father sat down next to me. He looked at me sharply, making me smile in spite of myself. The smile annoyed him. In his husky, drawling voice he demanded: “Is it your victory that’s making you smile?” and thrust the stump of his amputated leg toward me. “Well, CONGRATULATIONS on that victory
, bradar!”
I swallowed my smile, leaning forward to tell him that I was neither
dabarish,
bearded, nor
tavarish,
military … not conquered, still less conquering. Smoothing my beard, I reassured him that it was simply a “gift” of the war. He seemed impressed by this clever response. His gaze softened as he asked me gently where I was from. From here, from Dehafghanan. “This is the first time I’ve seen you,” he said, looking at me carefully
.
I wondered how to tell him that by contrast I knew him very well, that I was in love with his daughter …
But I stopped myself. In these times of suspicion and doubt, it’s not right to bother people. So I told him that I’d just moved to the neighborhood
.
“And what do you do?”
Just as I was inventing myself a respectable profession, one of his friends, the one-armed one, sniggered to the other: “Hey, Osman, look at our tavarish Moharamullah, he’s an investigator now!”
“Why did Allah O Al-Alim, the All-Knowing, create the cat without wings?” asked the lame one, Osman
.
“Because otherwise it would have eaten all the birds in the sky!” replied the one-armed man. “Praise be to Allah, the Vigilant for not making Moharamullah a winged mujahideen, or else …”
They burst into laughter. Your father turned toward them, annoyed: “Just wait till those winged, bearded cats arrive and give it to you hard; you won’t be laughing then.” This warning just made his two companions laugh harder. The one-armed one leaned toward your dad and said: “Chill out! We’re only laughing because we’ve already been fucked up the arse!” His reply cracked up the whole tearoom, including Moharamullah—everyone except the owner who, conscious of the talk, said: “Calm down, or they’ll be here before you know it, and they’ll ban the
chai-khana
and the
saqi-khana.”
“They will take your
chai-khana!
But our
Islamic
bradars
will make sure this country stays full to the brim with hash, saqi-khanas, and fucked arseholes!” replied the one-armed guy, wiping away his tears
.
Everyone laughed even harder. The owner had had enough. He walked over to his counter, grabbed a bowl of water and tipped it over the two cackling cripples. Startled, they stopped. “We’ve paid to smoke, and now you’re spoiling our high!” said the one-armed man, standing up and muttering into his beard. The drenched men left the tearoom
.
Your father sat stiffly in his seat. Then he turned toward me, and saw me beaming at him. He couldn’t, of course, understand the reason for my happiness. He didn’t know that it wasn’t his friends’ jokes but his presence that pleased me, the fact that I was at last meeting someone from your family; it was a sign from you!
“Don’t you laugh at us, young man. It is fate that has made us ridiculous; fate!” He said this slowly, and seriously. After a brief silence, he continued: “Fate … we say it is fate that in the end forces the mirror to make do with ashes. Do you know what that means?” He didn’t wait for me to reply. “You know that a mirror is simply glass covered with a blend of metals? Well, when time has eroded the metal, the glass is coated in ashes! Yes, it is fate that reduces everything to ashes … How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“I’m twice as old as you … more even … a noble life!” He stared into the middle distance, then continued, “War destroys man’s dignity,” and stood up. “My heart is bleeding but I have no blood on my hands. My hands are pure …” He showed me his palms. “I took part in the jihad myself, in my own way …” he moved closer … “for a long time I was administrative director of the National Archives. They used to be at Salangwat, just near here … It was during the communist era, the first one, the Khalqs. Yes, at the time we had a general director, one of those Pashtun dogs who used to sell all our archives to the Russians. Every time a document disappeared I felt like strangling him. This was the history of our country he was selling. Do you understand? The history of our country! Anything can be done to a population without History, anything! The proof …” He didn’t explain the proof, letting me find it myself in the ruins of our souls. “In short, there was nothing I could do about that director. He was a Khalq.” He spat in disgust and turned toward the owner of the
chai-khana,
crying: “Moussa, some tea for this …,” jerking his head toward me. He paused a moment, as if trying to remember what he’d been talking about. I reminded him. “Yes, thanks … hash … wrecks the memory. No, sorry, not hash!… Fate … fate reduces our memories to ashes! We need
hash to cope with our fate—a good big dose to blot out all feeling. But how to afford that, these days? If I had any money left, I’d still be downstairs in the
saqi-khana.”
I told him that I would pay. He didn’t refuse. We stood up and asked the owner to bring our tea down to the smoking room
.
Downstairs, the smoky space was lit by the yellow glow of an oil lamp hung from the ceiling. Men sat in a silent circle around a large chillum, staring into space. They were all high as kites. Your father found us a spot. He smoked, I didn’t. Gradually all the others left. When only he and I remained, he continued: “What was I telling you?” And I helped him out again. He went on: “Yes, that dog of a director … that dog, whom fate had given wings, was one of these nouveaux-riche types who had heard people talking about whisky, but never tasted it. One day he asked me to get him a bottle. He didn’t say whisky, he said ‘wetsakay’!” Your father burst out laughing. “Do you know what ‘wetsakay’ means in Pashto?” Again, he didn’t give me time to respond. “It means: Do you want a drink?” He paused, and then turned serious. “I bought him some local alcohol, the worst I could find, and added some Coca-Cola and a bit of tea. It looked just like whisky. I put it in a smart bottle and screwed the top on well. Very professional! I took it to him, and told him it had cost six hundred afghanis. At the time that was a lot
of money, you know! And after that he kept asking me for
‘wetsakay,’
and I kept giving him that same counterfeit alcohol. A few months later his liver exploded. Burst! Finished! Kaput!” He pulled proudly on the chillum and exhaled the smoke up toward the lamp. “So tell me, young man—wasn’t that jihad? I too have every claim to being a mujahideen, a
bradar,
a Ghazi!”
I didn’t know what to say. I looked at him sadly. “Ever since that day, I call on Allah and ask him about justice—both his and mine. Listen, young man, that dog of a director was a traitor who needed to be punished. Which is what I did. I couldn’t wait for a change of regime in order to take him to court!” Another drag on the chillum, and a pause. “Now the regime has changed … These days any idiot thinks he can take the law into his own hands, with no investigation or trial. As I did then. So what! The purpose of punishment is to wipe out the betrayal, not the traitor … These days I ask myself whether this kind of law and punishment isn’t in itself a crime.”
Having been totally absorbed by your father’s voice and features I suddenly jumped, and asked him if he had read
Crime and Punishment.
He looked confused, then burst out laughing. “No, young man, no! Life … I have read LIFE!” And suddenly he was quiet. For a long time. I was quiet too. He was smoking, I was thinking. Each of us
in our own world. My world was full of you. I was trying to think of a way to get your father to talk about you. Suddenly he began speaking again, but still about his own concerns
.
“The era of the Khalq was over; it was the turn of the Russians. Shortly before they left, rockets were raining down left, right, and center. One day the Archives were hit. We were all in the office. Myself and my two colleagues whom you saw just now rushed to save the most important documents from the flames. Then another rocket landed, and all three of us were covered in blood.” He nodded, regretting their courage. “Now, we are disabled. Who gave us a medal? Who remembers us? No one!” Silence, again. Memories, again, and regrets, remorse … “Ever since then I stay home with my wife and kids. I have to cover the rent, and feed them all. Who’s going to pay for that? When I went to ask for money, they insulted me. They said I was a traitor because I’d worked for the communist regime. So I had no choice; I pawned all those precious documents I had saved. My landlord took them; he knew their value. But then he died. A heart attack. Only his wife and daughter were left, and I had to renegotiate the whole thing with his wife, Nana Alia—and what a bitch she is! A dirty illiterate! Not only did she never give me back the documents, she also increases our rent every month. We no longer
own anything. My poor wife has pawned her dowry items to that cow, and her jewelry … And now my daughter has to work for her to pay the rent.”
I wanted to stand up and shout, “So that’s where Sophia is!” and throw my arms around your father
.
“What do you do for work?” he asked, wrenching me from my delight. “What’s your name again?”
I told him my name, and that I worked at the university library. After a silence, in which he looked at me tenderly, he said: “I can see that you’re an educated man, from a good family.” Another pause. “I’ve two children. A girl and a boy. My daughter is pure and innocent …” He stood up. “It’s late. I have to go home. She’ll be worrying about me …”
We left the smoking room and lost ourselves in the gloomy, dusty fog of dusk. After a few steps in silence, your father continued as if he’d never stopped speaking. “But war recognizes neither purity nor innocence. That’s what terrifies me. It isn’t the blood or the massacres—what frightens me is that dignity and innocence are no longer valued. My daughter, like her mother, is the purest, most noble …” Again a silence, a long one this time, that went on until we stopped in front of your house. “This is my house!” he said, opening the gate. Trembling, I moved to shake his hand, but he stopped me. “You’re going home? You took
me out and walked me all the way here, and now you think I’m going to let you go home?” He invited me in. As soon as I set foot inside I took a huge gulp of air, the air you had breathed. I held it for as long as I could as I followed your father through the little courtyard, under the espaliered vines starting to bud in the spring. I grew more and more nervous, dreading the moment of our meeting. My eyes were darting all over the place, taking in the nooks and crannies of the courtyard, the closed windows of the rooms, and the roof of the house, from which your brother was looking down with a pigeon in his hand. “Hello!” said your father. “Still on the roof?”
“There was a cat wandering around,” replied your brother mischievously. Your father turned to me. “That’s my son, Dawoud. He’s been looking after my pigeons since the schools shut down. I can’t get up there anymore.” We walked into the house. Your father took me into a dark room and lit a candle; then he left, leaving me to entertain myself by running my foot along the only kilim in the room. I was so excited, my heart racing so fast, that I didn’t even know whether to sit down on one of the three mattresses. I wondered if you were aware that I was here, in your house. But no. I wasn’t able to see you that evening, my beloved. I left the house after dinner, hoping to return soon
.
Another excerpt:
Last Friday, as I was lazing around in bed trying to think of a reason to visit your house, I was rudely shaken from my idleness by the explosion of a bomb that shook the whole neighborhood. Panicking, I rushed out of my room and, finding myself prey to a strange impulse, ran to the site of the explosion. I was transfixed by what I saw. The tearoom was a burning ruin, emanating foul-smelling smoke. Men and women were busy digging bodies out of the rubble. From what they said, I understood that some people had been able to escape but others were still trapped beneath. I started helping them to pull out the bodies. I found your father under a mound of stones, dying. I put him on a wagon and took him home
.
And you opened the gate
.
