In the Walled Gardens (30 page)

E
ARLY IN THE MORNING
the phone rang on my desk. I picked up on the third ring.

“Listen,” Jalal said. “See you at the corner after work.”

At the end of the day I assorted my papers and pulled on my jacket. The doorman cracked a smile from behind his steel desk.
In the street I looked right and left beyond heavy traffic; then I turned right and kept going, twice looking over my shoulder.
Pedestrians and more traffic. I got to the corner and scanned the street. No sign of Jalal. I kept on walking down Karim Khan
Zand.

From behind, someone swept up beside me. I turned and our eyes met. He had a newspaper rolled under one arm, longer hair,
a bomber jacket, scruffy jeans. He’d lost a bit of weight, all fit and wiry, always exuding vigor. This was his most distinctive
trait. His shiny black eyes flitted, surveying the street.

“We’ve got ten minutes. Let’s go.”

We went down Kheradmand. He walked fast, alert and impatient.

“I need a big favor,” he said.

“Another one?”

“If you don’t want to hear me out, tell me now,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Reza, you’re my good friend. You’re an honorable man. I trust you like a brother. More than I trust my comrades. Listen,
I have to leave the country. I don’t have a passport. I can’t apply for one. I don’t want to alert them. They’ve told me to
lie low. You think I believe that? How much time do you think I’ve got? Any day they’ll put it all together and arrest me.
Maybe they’ve known all along. They’ve been waiting to see where I lead them. It’s a brutal business. They shoot people like
me in the street! Don’t think I’m afraid. I want to stay alive. I want to leave.”

“I told you to leave.”

“Here’s what I want,” he said. “I know you don’t own a passport. I want you to go to the passport office and apply for a brand-new
imperial passport.”

“For you?”

“I’ll pay for it. An officer I know checked the list. You’re not on the blacklist. You can leave the country. It’s your passport
I need to use.”

“Let me think about it.”

He shook his head. “Tell me now. There’s no time. I’m asking you this once. If you can’t, I won’t hold it against you. Honest.”

He was lying. We both judged a man only by the risks he took.

“What will you do?” I said.

“Change the picture. An old classmate in Esfahan specializes in that. I need two weeks. When I arrive where I’m going, your
passport will be useless. Two weeks only, that’s all I need.”

“Where will you go?”

“I won’t tell you.”

“I saw your sister,” I said. “She told me they came to Komiteh but you refused to see them.”

“I’m glad that stupid peasant thinks his son is a godless Marxist! It’ll poison his existence forever.”

“Soghra said your father has forbidden them to mention your name ever again or see you. Think of your mother! She’s heartbroken.
Soghra thinks she can put your mother out of her misery once and for all. She must really hate you. She told me to give you
this message: ‘Tell Jalal to put an announcement in the papers saying he’s dead.’”

He resented giving them a moment’s thought. But he paused, his eyes flashing.

“If I’m dead, no one will ever bother me again. I take your passport, run a classy announcement about how I’ve passed on,
then cross the border.”

The only way left for him was to leave. If he did, he couldn’t ask me another favor. I said I would do it.

He embraced me by the curb, slipping a white envelope from the inside of his jacket into my pocket. “Keep this money for me.
Wait for my call.”

He jumped into the street, one arm raised as if hailing a taxi, and a Vespa moped sped toward us, skidding to a stop. The
driver, a young man with a helmet and orange goggles and longish hair, dragged his feet over the asphalt, revving up the engine.
Jalal hopped on behind him and lurched as they veered off, shooting through the traffic.

T
HAT MORNING THE FLOWERS WERE
arranged like peacocks in all the rooms, the round tables rolled into the dining room and set with heirloom starched hand-embroidered
tablecloths and napkins and china and bohemian glassware and crystal and polished silver. The house smelled of tuberoses until
the kitchen door opened and you could smell fried oil. The pantry was jammed with serving platters and bowls and slim-necked
decanters and silver trays and boxes of sweetmeats. Goli had chosen, purposely of course, to be in her worst temper. She glowered.
The day before, Ramazan, looking ashen enough to require a blood transfusion, had botched up several dishes and come in with
his head hanging, muttering that he refused to cook anymore and was leaving my service. I’d showered him with compliments
and consolations and given him enough Valium to drug a horse, so he’d withdrawn dutifully to take a nap and had remained comatose
until the next morning. Then I’d called Mother and asked for Mashd-Ghanbar, her cook, who arrived in a taxi, charging in like
Napoleon and setting about the kitchen making such a fuss and mess that he only tripled everyone’s work. To make matters worse,
he criticized Ramazan and Goli all day, withdrawing periodically for his prayers, then coming back to criticize them again,
slamming down pots and pans and tossing utensils and behaving abominably.

The next morning he was still being a pain in the neck. So I called Mother.

“Can’t you talk to him?” I said.

“I haven’t spoken to him for two weeks,” she declared. “Tell him to drop dead.”

“I have a seated dinner party for fifty-six, Mother.”

“He’s vindictive and sulky and a general nuisance. The spoiled brat.”

“He’s your cook.”

“As if yours is any better! Anemic and impotent, with a turd for a wife.”

I went back into the kitchen. Mashd-Ghanbar was in the eye of a storm, barking orders to his flunkies — my house help and
their small children, the gardener, who had been called in, and two young adolescents, who turned out to be Mashd-Ghanbar’s
nephews from Reyy. The telephone rang, and from somewhere in the house, one of my sons called out in the loudest possible
shriek,
“Mother, it’s for you!”
I went out into the hall and there were two pairs of muddied tracks all the way in and up the carpeted steps. Goli would
throw a fit.

The electrician was calling to say he was running late, but he’d be there before the party to fix the outside lights. At six
my sons clogged up the upstairs toilet and it overflowed and flooded the entire bathroom, and the pantry ceiling below started
leaking, and Mashd-Ghanbar’s nephews ran up with mops and pails and a plunger and tried their best, mustering all their technical
knowledge until they felt heroic. Houshang arrived, so the jaunty chauffeur could join the already crowded kitchen, but instead
of letting him lounge around drinking tea, Mashd-Ghanbar sent him off to buy ice and soft drinks, and freshly baked bread
on his way back. The two waiters I had hired to serve arrived with sassy expressions and bathed in cheap cologne, and I heard
Goli grumbling about how they were useless because all the important work had already been done by her, but obviously her
mistress preferred outside help. She ordered them to watch the china and crystal because if anything, God forbid, got chipped
or broken, she of course would be blamed as usual.

Upstairs, Houshang declared the house a zoo.

“Why can’t you organize better? Don’t you care?”

He locked himself in the bathroom for half an hour with the
Economist
and
Playboy
and soaked in the tub and shaved until the masseur arrived with his oils and folding table to tend to Houshang’s body, that
holiest of sanctuaries. The telephone rang and it was Mother. She said Father was depressed and unwell. There had been another
death. She paused for effect. “Who?” I said, worried. Abbas Sobhi had finally died of cancer in the hospital. He was one of
Father’s oldest and dearest friends, and our families had known each other for several generations. I said I’d call on the
Sobhis the next day. Mother started crying on the phone. I consoled her and said I’d come to see Father the next morning.
“If we’re still alive,” she said, hanging up. Five minutes later my uncle Khodayar’s wife called to see if I’d received the
bad news about Abbas Sobhi. She said she had more bad news. Uncle Khodayar had a tumor. He was going in for surgery at Pars
Hospital in two days. But she wasn’t going to tell Mother. “Why not?” I said. “He’s her brother.” She started down her list
of grievances, interjecting here and there melodramatically that Mother didn’t care about anyone anyway. We got into an argument.
Mother had never liked her and thought her a tedious and uneducated hypocrite given to hysterics, and she’d always found Mother
meddlesome and overbearing and made sure she got back at her as often as she could. “I’m going to tell Mother,” I said. She
protested about onerous expectations in families like ours — “Of course, God forbid that you should ever lower your standards!”
she said, all acerbic and overwrought — nagging on about a host of old and unrelated and miscellaneous affronts, and since
nothing in the world could stop her, I kept an eye on my watch, until I finally had to cut her short and say we would all
be at the hospital for the surgery. “You’re just like your mother!” she retorted, and hung up on me. Mother called back two
minutes later to tell me about the services for Mr. Sobhi and the phone calls she’d received about him since we’d last talked.
“Why was your phone busy for the last twenty minutes?” she asked. “Mother,” I said, “I have a party and I have to get ready,
and I’ll call you tomorrow morning.” “You’re very short with me tonight!” she said, all miffed, and hung up. The telephone
continued ringing nonstop — with messages for Mashd-Ghanbar from his overattentive and hypochondriacal wife, and several calls
for his nephews, who were buzzing around like horseflies, and four consecutive calls from friends of mine who wanted to discuss
which jewel to wear with which shoes and which dress. I chose a navy blue silk chiffon dress, no jewelry. Dusted loose powder
lightly over my face, sheer lipstick on my lips. Then I shut myself in the upstairs study to quickly check all the local papers,
then the French papers I’d bought from Larousse downtown. Nothing from the French reporter in Tehran about Peyman Bashirian’s
case; nothing about a naval scandal involving charges of corruption. Suddenly the electricity went out.

Houshang bellowed from the bathroom, “What the hell’s going on tonight?”

The telephone rang by my elbow and I picked up in the dark. Kamal Bashirian’s sister was calling to thank me for my flowers
and visit. She was very worried for him. They’d taken him to Alborz Hospital late that afternoon and the doctors were keeping
him overnight. It was his heart.

“I hope this isn’t serious,” she said anxiously.

I was saying good-bye when Houshang barged in with a flashlight.

“We have no electricity and fifty-six for a sit-down dinner and you’re still on the phone gossiping?”

“Fifty,” I said.

He went out and shouted from the top of the landing, and the driver yelled back up from the foyer that the electrician was
outside and not to worry — the lights would come back on in five minutes. “Are you all dead down there?” Houshang thundered
from the top of the stairs. “Get some candles up here!” Then he came back in, pointing his flashlight. He saw the jumble of
newspapers around me and asked how I could be reading instead of supervising the preparations for a dinner party that was
so paramount to his career. Then he demanded to know who was not coming that night, for those who weren’t had snubbed him
and would pay for it.

“Iraj and Pouran,” I teased, smiling in the dark.

“What? I just talked to them.”

We heard a crash downstairs. They were breaking Grandmother’s rose-medallion china. Houshang left, slamming the door, leaving
me in the dark. I sat alone, serene, for the first time all day, all week.

The lights came back on finally, but only just before the guests arrived. Our sons cheered, running through the living room
blowing out the candles and bumping into furniture. Houshang surveyed the rooms and tables and flowers, then threw me a critical
look. He wanted to know why I wore no makeup and insisted on looking plain and severe and unadorned.

We argued, just as the first guests walked in the door. The house help was jittery from the high-strung griping of Mashd-Ghanbar,
anguished and angry without electricity just before his culinary masterpieces were to be presented.

Our sons crouched at the top of the stairs and gawked. Under the chandelier in the front hall, the guests removed their furs
and coats, and Goli, grouchy and curt, grabbed and carried as if dispensing with an arsenal. Drinks were served. People mingled,
breeding prevailed. I went back to make my rounds in the kitchen. From the open door to the pantry, I kept hearing snippets
of Goli’s conversation with the waiters, disparaging the guests and lecturing on alcohol and abstinence and the teachings
of the Prophet. Then all of a sudden she said she’d heard the dead bodies of political prisoners were being dumped in a salt
lake outside Tehran. I’d heard enough. I barged in and ordered her to go help the cook, warning the waiters they were there
to tend to the guests. In the living room the guests effervesced and conversed. My brother Kavoos and his beauty-queen wife
split up as soon as they arrived, moving in different circles. Pouran and Iraj worked the room like worker ants, Houshang
laughing with delight whenever they spoke. Pouran had another low-cut dress on and crimson rubies that matched her sharp and
glib tongue. She wasn’t making eye contact with me, though she had kissed me on both cheeks and raved about everything.

“You have
such
taste!” she said. “Isn’t Thierry coming tonight?”

Thierry arrived late, brushing his lips expertly over the hands of chosen women, speaking attentively in three languages to
both genders and all ages in every circle. Pouran, he ignored. This she noticed too quickly, though she pretended not to,
which forced her to become shrill and insincere and overwrought. She kissed Iraj, fiddled with the ties of several men, then
patted their cheeks, dragged off Houshang and conferred with him theatrically. Thierry was asking about my Qajar pen boxes
when I told him Peyman Bashirian was dead. “Who?” he asked, dashing and amiable. “The prisoner whose father met your reporter
from Paris,” I whispered. “Where did he die?” Thierry asked. “In prison,” I said. He leaned in, whispered to me, “I told you
it was wiser to leave this alone.” As I turned I caught Pouran giving us dagger looks. Five minutes later she cornered me.