The Orphan Sky (30 page)

Farhad stared at me intently. “You're probably wondering how I knew about your behavior. Yes? Well, your girlfriend's been on the KGB list for the last two years, doing some work for us.”

What? Almaz working for the KGB? No way. Farhad was toying with me. But then how else could he have known within a few minutes that I had spoken with Almaz?

Farhad chuckled. “Did you really expect that a girl, even one as worthless as Almaz, would be allowed to publicly parade around the city with foreigners in their fancy cars? Without experiencing any consequences? Of course not. She'd be marching at four in the morning to a farm field in some penal colony in Kazakhstan if we didn't put her talent to useful work.”

“What talent?”

“Her between-the-legs talent.” Farhad laughed. “Listen, sweetheart, that's what the KGB does—recognizes the talent in people and employs it for the good of our country. Your talent is in your musical hands; my talent is in my analytical ability to detect people's vulnerability. Why is my talent imperative? Because human vulnerability is the strongest weapon of control in the hands of the KGB. I shouldn't be telling you this, but one in eighteen Soviet adults are official KGB informers. The only ones we don't care about are talentless nothings who can do neither harm nor good.”

Farhad grinned. “My boss once told me an anecdote. ‘What will happen to the KGB when the Soviet Union reaches its full Communist phase?'”

Pause.

“Are you asking me?” I said.

“Yes.”

“I don't know.”

“It'll go out of business. Because people will be arresting each other.” He burst into laughter.

I sat, unable to hold back my tears anymore. Did Almaz report my call to her? But why? It didn't make sense.

I got up to clear the dishes, but Farhad reached out, pulled me close, and pushed me into his lap.

“I don't like when you're sad, baby. And I didn't mean to hurt you. Not at all. I love you.” He kissed behind my ear and whispered, “Almaz didn't betray you. No. It wasn't even necessary. You see, her apartment is bugged, and when a call came to her from the phone listed under my name, a friend of mine in the wire-tapping department next door informed me. That's how I found out.”

“Then why didn't she ever tell me about working for the KGB?”

He gasped. “You're something else. Haven't you heard what I've been telling you for the last half hour? No one is to be trusted. Almaz is probably afraid that if she tells you, and you tell me, then I'll report her for revealing confidential information and off she'd go to serve a six- to eight-year sentence for prostitution.”

“Do you trust me?” I asked, out of curiosity.

“I did once. Four years ago. And I gave you the chance to prove yourself trustworthy. A chance that you failed.”

“And you punished me by putting through the condemnation hearing and then appearing like my knight in shining armor to save me.”

“Leila, I
am
your knight in shining armor, if you haven't figured it out yet. If not for being my wife, with your dossier, you'd now be playing piano somewhere in Far East Siberia, not preparing for the London International Piano Competition.”

Farhad tightened his arms around my waist, pulling me closer. “You should be proud of your husband. I'm the youngest associate in the field of psychological domination, trained in ideological subvergence.”

“Subvergence? What is that?”

“The science of altering the thinking and behavior of individuals, as well as the entire population. We don't use guns here. Instead”—he retrieved a small, square foil package with pills, broke the foil, and showed me a tiny aluminum cylinder—“this is the primal cutting-edge weapon. Works better than any gun.” He put his index finger to his lips and winked. “But I didn't tell you that.”

On the morning of October 23, 1983, three weeks before the London International Piano Competition, General Tamerlan Jabrailov invited Farhad and me to his office.

He sat across the desk from us in his deep-buttoned leather chair. Behind him, dressed in a traditional Russian linen
rubakha
, Vladimir Lenin smiled at me from an oil painting encased in a gilded frame. Another Lenin—this one in formal coat and tie—surveyed me suspiciously from a black-and-white photograph standing on the General's ebony desk, alongside a wooden bust of Comrade Andropov—General Jabrailov's mentor.

Thick damask draped over two casement windows kept the room dark. The only source of light was a small dormer window with a white lace curtain fluttering in the wind, dispersing jaunty patterns of sunshine throughout the otherwise austere office of the head of Department A—the code title of the Department of Psychological Warfare of the Azerbaijani KGB.

The General, like Farhad, was a self-made man with a humble upbringing who had graduated from Moscow State University with a degree in ancient African civilizations. Later, he added a doctorate in psychology and a general's rank in the KGB, presented to him by Comrade Andropov himself.

“I hate these yearly reports. Damn waste of my valuable time.” The General slammed the book closed and hurled his pen across the desk in frustration. Farhad leaped out of his chair and, with perfect timing, caught the pen in midair, ink splattering across his hand onto the edge of his starched white cuff, protecting the expensive leather inlay on the desk.

“That's why I keep him around. Always on the alert.” The General winked at me and picked up a phone. “Olga, come here and get the files.”

A young woman in a tight floral dress with long, blond hair and blue eyes glided over to his desk.

“Sweetheart, make sure everything is typed and labeled by ten tomorrow, will you?” The General smiled slyly.

“I'll work until midnight if I have to, Rafig Nazimovich,” Olga replied, her voice unexpectedly low and husky, her false eyelashes flapping flirtatiously.

The General nodded, his eyes glued to Olga's back, reflecting every swing of her hips as she danced her way across the office and out the door.

“I need to talk to you, Leila darling.” The General clasped his hands together on top of his desk. “It's a matter of our future. Our country's future. And for that reason, I'm going to let you in a bit on what your husband and I are doing here. Contrary to what everyone thinks of the KGB, only a small segment of our work focuses on espionage. James Bond is pure Hollywood whimsy, which, as a matter of fact, I'm a big fan of.

“But what we're really doing here is building the future of civilization, bringing the Western world to the cataclysmic point at which a Marxist insurrection can finally commence. And, thanks to Comrade Andropov, who's leading us forward and out of the Brezhnev era of stagnation, changing the old, rusty, bent rails under the fast-moving train of Communism before it falls off the track, we work on the ideological
subversion
of the West. Do you know what that is?”

I shook my head.

“I'll explain.” General Jabrailov grinned boyishly, his gray eyes shining. “We're in the business of mind control, Leila. We are the champions of social conditioning. The moral corruption of the West—their counterculture of the 1960s with its sex revolution, drugs, rock 'n' roll, feminism—has been the work of our unnamed heroes. Over the past twenty-five years they have been demoralizing Western society, preparing it for the next phase of our psychological warfare—the destabilization and indoctrination of young Western generations with the ideals of Marxism–Leninism.”

The General took a pencil and tapped it on the desk, shaking his head. “Unfortunately, the corruption of the West backfired. Our country is flooded with their Western music, their decadent ideals, their damned youth culture. I can't stop my own son from listening to their Beatles or buying their cowboy jeans on the black market.

“That's why we need to create our own stars—
sex
symbols
—to attract the young generation. As you know, socially, our Bolshevik fathers ‘eradicated' sex by substituting both male and female gender with a single hybrid label called ‘comrade.' And the sex symbol cultivated by the KGB-controlled Novosti news agency for the last fifty years has been the same broad-shouldered, mannish milkwoman, whose breasts are decked with so many shining orders and medals that she looks as if struck by lightning.”

The General laughed at his own joke.

“But it doesn't work anymore. We have to give our youth a new image. You know, Leila, what image I see? Marilyn Monroe. In her explicit gown. Walking across the stage into the spotlight, luscious as a peach, sparkling like a jewel, singing”—General Jabrailov closed his eyes and crooned in a low voice—“happy birthday, Mr. President…” He smirked. “Who can withstand the temptation? No one. And I'll tell you this—I saw you performing for that old buffoon Mark Slavkin, when you switched from Khrennikov to ‘Body and Soul.' That's when I knew that you were the one.”

General Jabrailov leaned against the back of his chair, stretching out his long limbs. “I see you, Leila, winning the London competition, playing for Ronald Reagan, for that bitch Thatcher, making the West fall in love with you, and becoming a spokesperson for our young Soviet generations. Someone they can look up to as their role model—for the girls wanting to be like you, for the boys wanting to be with you.” He winked. “You'll be our own sex symbol—beautiful, intelligent, and internationally recognized. Well, not only do you combine all those qualities, but you're also one of us.”

“But, Comrade Jabrailov.” Farhad sprang out of his chair and leaned over the desk, his hands nervously rubbing its edges. “I can't allow it. Leila is not like some shameless
model
. She is a married woman. She is my wife—”

“Sit!” the General said in a low voice.

Farhad fell back into the chair and lowered his head, a flood of burgundy spreading across his face. I could only imagine what was going through his mind. To start with, he hated my success. Despised my music career. All he wanted was to lock the door of my golden cage, to keep me to himself and perpetually pregnant, but thanks to midwife Renata's deficient skills—or perhaps to sheer providence—I had been pronounced barren. And now more help was coming from this most unexpected source.

“Who do you think you are?” The General propped his body forward over the desk, staring at Farhad, an angry eagle eyeing his prey. “What do you think you are? Zeus? You think you can throw lightning? No. You have a long way to go before you can even light a small fire. So sit quietly, bite your tongue, and listen with your big ears. Do you realize the responsibility you have to the whole country? Your wife is a national treasure. And how do you treat her?”

A week earlier, for Farhad's twenty-third birthday, we had a party in the courtyard of Villa Anneliese. At one point, the General noticed me washing dishes and ordered me out of the kitchen. Later, Professor Sultan-zade, sitting at the table next to him, took the opportunity to complain that I had missed an orchestral rehearsal over the weekend. Why? Because Farhad, in a jealous fit, had locked me in the flat and gone to a KGB retreat.

“What do you say about all this, Leila?” the General asked, holding my entire being with mesmerizing power of his eyes.

By now, I had become well acquainted with KGB games. Like Johann Sebastian Bach's most elaborate fugues, they had layers and layers of counterpointed messages and traps. I had to think fast. The first thing to consider: the General had been grooming Farhad as his future successor. Second, and probably most important: the General had made up his mind about me as a sex symbol a long time ago.

“I love my husband with all my heart,” I said earnestly, reaching out and touching Farhad's hand, “and as much, or even more, I love my country. With all my heart. And I will do whatever it takes to be—and to continue to be—her loyal daughter.”

The General grinned, pleased, then narrowed his eyes and stuck his finger in my face playfully. “Go practice your piano and win that London competition. Don't let me down, Leila. You hear me? Don't. Let. Me. Down. I've got everything in place—no money spared and all our overseas manpower available—to put you on the covers of their
Vogues
. I've even pushed our Hollywood contacts to get you into the right circles. So. You must deliver the win. Period!”

He got up. “You can go now. Your husband and I have work to do. And by the way”—he hesitated—“not my business of course, but you two are like my own children so…” Pause. “No sexual intercourse before the competition. You know, in case Leila gets pregnant and doesn't perform at her full capacity. Anyway, that's my order!”

As Farhad and the General returned to work, I galloped down the grand marble stairway, out of the KGB headquarters, and into purifying, early autumn air spiced by a light rain. Little rainbows chased each other, and the sun sprinkled its gold stars on a blue polyphony of waves. I sat on a bench to gather my thoughts, shielded from the drizzle by the mane of a chestnut tree. A few droplets snuck through and landed on my head. If I could only shake my shackles off as easily as the rain from my hair.

I had three weeks left before the London competition. And the General had made it clear it wasn't about just music anymore. I had to win. Just like in the old
kelam
—“A winner sits at the lion's table; a loser sits on the lion's plate.”

“Come in, Leila.”

Professor Sultan-zade opened the door, took my coat, hung it on a rack, and led the way to her living room. Recently, we'd had a few of our piano lessons at her apartment, followed by tea and conversation. These special times had become my escape from my own home, which had turned into a reformatory.

“Take a seat.” Professor Sultan-zade pointed at a settee by the electric radiator. “Still no heat in the building. I'm freezing. Can't even bend my fingers. Would you like a shawl?”

“No, thank you. I'm not cold. Not at all.”

It was quite stifling in her apartment. Maybe she had a fever?

“Would you like some tea?”

“If you don't mind, I'll make it myself. For both of us. May I?”

“Be my host.”

I stepped inside the kitchen. Always tidy. Gzhel china behind the glass doors of the cabinet; silver trays and pitchers on a side table; a vase on a windowsill holding a single tea rose. I turned on the stove, boiled water, brewed tea, added coriander and honey, and carried the tray to the living room.

Professor Sultan-zade reclined on the settee, her head back, eyes closed. The crow's-feet spread from the corners of her eyes all the way down to the smoker's lines around her mouth. The bronze tint of her skin looked tarnished. A few strands of silver spilled out of her beehive. She no longer looked like Nefertiti. I placed the tray on the floor, poured tea in her
armud
, added three sugar cubes, and mixed it.

“I should probably take it easy on the sugar,” Professor Sultan-zade said. “I was seven when my mama had both legs amputated because of diabetes. And in my current condition I have to be cautious. It's not just about me anymore.”

Current
condition?
I glanced at Professor Sultan-zade. Her long fingers flew to her eyes, concealing tears. Her lips trembled, trying to hold back sobs.

Unsuccessfully.

“I'm pregnant. Almost four months pregnant. How could I have been so stupid? I didn't even realize it until last week. I thought I was finished as a woman. And here I am. Pregnant with that double-faced, lying
donuz
's baby.”

“Double-faced? Lying?”

“This monster, this careerist Najafov, got engaged last week. In secret from me. Do you know to whom?” she asked, seeing my face.

“No.”

“To the widowed daughter of the Third Secretary of the Party. She's twenty-five with two children. She's her father's darling. And she's my death sentence. Can you imagine what a scandal it's going to be when they learn that I'm pregnant with his child?”

I shook my head.

“They'll cut me out like a cancerous growth. They'll force my resignation from the Conservatory, the place I've built into one of the finest institutions in the country. That's it. How could I have been so stupid as to not see him for who he was—a liar and imposter? He needed me at the beginning of his appointment as a rector. He was nothing then. Nothing but a peasant
kemancha
player with a hundred-word vocabulary.

“That was the only reason they appointed him. A benign figurehead to temporarily fill the chair. And to stay, the weasel needed my unconditional support. He acquired it by playing a game no man can ever lose. He used me, chewed me up, and spat me out like a rotten fig. Now, I'll be dragging my swollen legs across the corridors of the Conservatory, and the monster and his prized bride will be moving into a government building right across the street.”

Professor Sultan-zade breathed rapidly, choking on her hurt. I nestled next to her and put my arm around her shoulders. If not for her daring endeavor, I wouldn't be going to London. She had risked everything to help me when I was at the lowest point in my life. Now it was my turn.

“Enough. Waste of time.” She rose to her feet. “I've been thinking. It's not the first movement's ossia or the buildup to the toccata climax in the third movement that worries me. You've got enough technique to play them in your sleep. It's the opening theme that haunted me throughout the night. I don't think we've given it enough attention.”

In her wide steps, she strutted to the piano, opened the cover, and lowered herself onto the bench. “Listen,” she said, playing the first theme of the “Allegro ma non tanto,” sharing single-note octaves between her hands, drawing clear-as-glass lines. “The melody here is so bare, so exposed, with nothing to work with, nowhere to hide. Imagine a lone birch tree in the middle of a snowy valley bathed in the moonlight. This is the mood of intimacy you need to establish, to draw yourself and the audience into the turbulent, unpredictable inevitability of what is to come.”

A tear snaked down Professor Sultan-zade's cheek, leaving behind a black mascara trail.

• • •

I left Professor Sultan-zade and strolled down the street, aimless. The rain intensified. The stakes had risen. I had to win the competition at any price. For my professor—to give her the incentive to fight her enemies. For myself—to avoid burning in the hell of General Jabrailov's wrath. How could I take the pressure? I looked skyward. No help there. The heavy, cloud-infested sky echoed the requiem of my soul.

I needed Almaz's opium. Ignoring Farhad's order not to see her, I headed to her place.

Almaz wasn't home. I waited, scouting around her new building, admiring the green cupola on top of its slick, glass-and-concrete carcass. Thinking. After all, we both hadn't sold ourselves
that
badly. With the KGB's blessings, Almaz's Turkish attaché had moved her to the most prestigious address in town and placed Almaz the Doll in the exhibition hall of the Baku Museum of Arts. And I had just been promoted to the role of the KGB's new “sex symbol.” I spat on the ground and headed toward Taza Bazaar.

I hadn't been there in years, but it looked the same—scruffy, smelly, noisy antiquity, its usual cast of characters in place. A hairy midget juggled tomatoes, slicing them in midair with his bejeweled dagger. An old woman with the face of a Caspian tiger stuck a bunch of her greens to my nose. Turkish triplets in chadors sitting cross-legged on the ground guarded their burlap bags with nuts. The Rose Garden Fairy in a rabbit-fur vest hassled passersby: “Sunny day, with Allah's help. Don't you want to try my
halva
? My
halva
will melt in your mouth like rose sherbet. If you don't like my
halva
, taste my
pakhlava
. It will take you to Allah's rose garden.”

I swept through the rest of the Bazaar like a sandstorm—past Tea Alley with the young man with his filthy stare, guarding a tea shop; past Fish Row with its deathbeds for belugas and sevrugas. Until I reached my destination: Beggars Corner, where Almaz had told me she bought her opium from an invalid nicknamed Genghis Khan.

I identified him right away. A hulking shaved head as if axed from the trunk of a tree, slanted Mongoloid eyes perched at the temples of his flat face, his torso hunkered down on a wooden cart with the wheels of roller skates. A brick on each side with which he pushed the cart against the ground. A sailor's hat full of coins in front of him.

“I'm a friend of Almaz,” I whispered, bending over him.

“A friend of Almaz
Khanum
is my friend too.” He raised his eyes at me. “How much?”

I held out ten rubles. “Is that enough?”

He grinned, baring his blue gums with a few rotten teeth, then retrieved a small package out of the breast pocket of his soiled military shirt. “My
tiryek
is smooth. All the way from the Khizi Mountains. Send my regards to honorable Almaz
Khanum
.”

Clutching the package in my hand, holding my breath to avoid the revolting odors, I darted through the island of human misery toward the exit.

And there, as I reached the rusty exit gate of Beggars Corner, I saw Tahir.

• • •

Not the Tahir I kept seeing in my dreams: handsome and free with hair swinging in the wind, crossing St. Mark's Square in Venice, posing in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, sunbathing in Central Park to the sounds of Dave Brubeck's “Take Five.” Oh, how I hated that Tahir, cursed him every time I woke up inside those dreams.

No, the Tahir I saw crouching next to a box with rotten oranges had nothing to do either with my dreams or with the Tahir I once knew, the boy who was ingenious and stubbornly unbeatable, cruising through a haze of
hashish
into skies of creative illusions and artistic breakthroughs.

I wanted to be wrong. I prayed that I was terribly wrong. That this comatose, hopelessly lost stranger couldn't possibly be Tahir. Couldn't be. Of course not. How could he?
My
Tahir had defected to the West long ago. He had been living in his America or somewhere else he always wanted to be, enjoying his freedom, his art, not even remembering my name.

But it
was
him. Inside that awful tattered clothing. Behind the wild shrubbery of his face. The same unmistakable eyes, intelligent and deep.

“Tahir,” I called softly.

No response. And not a sign of recognition.

“Tahir, it's me. It's me, Leila.”

I came closer and carefully patted his shoulder. My touch had the effect of a key turning on a wind-up toy. Tahir began to shake his head, rapidly muttering something incoherent. Then he gradually slowed down and returned to his detached stillness.

“Lover boy is high up.” A crippled drunkard hobbled toward me, waving his crutch dangerously close to my face. “But I'm here. And I can do you better with one leg than this homo with no balls.” His filthy laughter ignited the crowd. Other invalids oozed out of the cracks in Beggars Corner, flowing toward me from every direction.

“Tahir!” I shouted in desperation. “Just look at me! Please! Don't you recognize me? What have they done to you? What have they done?”

I reached to grasp his arm. Instead, I felt a hollow, empty sleeve. Where was his arm? I pulled my hand away in horror. Could he have hidden it somewhere under his shirt? I froze, my eyes searching, desperate to find Tahir's missing right arm.

“
Rehmi
… Take pity on a veteran of two wars… Money… Bread… Allah…
Yaziqliq
…”

The sea of misery was closing in, the inhabitants of Beggars Corner almost upon me. Showcasing their stitched stumps and blistered skin, their festering lesions and empty sockets. Begging, cursing, confiding their wretched histories.

I pushed my way out of the circle, jabbing my elbows, shoving the horde aside. And I ran. Ran, out of the rusty iron gates of the Taza Bazaar. Ran, afraid to look back, as if the earth behind me might swallow me up. I could never have imagined this nightmare—a nightmare in which I played the two leading parts—villain and victim.

Suddenly I stopped. I knew what I was running from. But where was I running to? To the golden cage of Gargoyle Castle, with Farhad as my warden? To the win at the London competition so the KGB could parade me as their trophy?

Above, a caravan of clouds passed, veiling and unveiling the moon, her face luminous against the starless sky. Caravaggio's tenebrism—intensified lucidity of light against obscurity of darkness. Darkness held Tahir prisoner. Why? How did he end up there?

It didn't matter. He was there—beaten, maimed, and despondent.
My
Tahir. He needed me. But even more, I needed him. Because since I had lost him, I had lost myself, wandering the dark alleys of my destiny—my own Beggars Corner—clinging to my music as the only road sign. But even music could no longer give asylum to my homeless heart.

I turned back. I knew exactly what I had to do.

• • •

At about eight o'clock, one of the Taza Bazaar's guards, a brawny Russian woman in a rubber apron, lamb's wool vest, and tarpaulin boots, marched to Beggars Corner.

“All right, comrades
invalidiki
,” she shouted, waving a massive key chain that could easily have knocked someone unconscious. “Take your crud and be gone, or I'll call the
militzia
. And if I see someone shat here—and I better not see it—I will kill with my own two fists.”

As if responding to a military command, the inhabitants of Beggars Corner lined up along the fence. A well-nourished, animated man with a rumpled black beard came out of the alley, planting every step of his wooden leg in a wide sweep. A
vozhak
. One after another, the beggars handed him money. When Tahir's turn came, the
vozhak
unceremoniously tapped his hands all over his body, didn't find anything, spat on the ground, and pushed Tahir away. All the cache collected, the
vozhak
gestured to the guard with a smile, retrieved a stack of banknotes from his trousers, spat on his thumb, counted a few, and passed them to her. She hastily stuck the money under her apron.

“Good night with God's help,” she hollered. “Good peaceful night to you, poor souls. God is kind to those who sacrificed for Motherland.” She waited patiently as the beggars shuffled out of the Bazaar, even helping Genghis Khan by pushing his cart with the toe of her boot when it got stuck at the curb, then soundly locked the gate and crossed herself.

I watched through the shattered glass of a telephone booth as the group wandered off. Tahir and a few others, including the one-legged monster who had threatened me with his crutch, slowly made their way up Bakikhanov Street toward the Circus Arena. I followed a safe distance behind, unable to take my eyes off Tahir's wobbly, shrunken figure. As they reached the Circus, they turned left and headed down toward Kubinka—Baku's most dangerous neighborhood.

Named after merchants from the town of Kuba who used to own this area at the beginning of the twentieth century, Kubinka was a haven of brothels and a black market. Crooked, narrow streets, sewers spilling into the roads, a havoc of broken bottles, scraps of food, and dog and human waste. Merchants and buyers never met in the light of the day. All transactions took place inside cramped stone-walled shacks.