The Orphan Sky (31 page)

Drugs, Marlboros, Kalashnikovs, fancy Western clothes, and fine objets d'art all exchanged hands there. The common saying was that if one could afford to buy a star from the sky he'd find it in Kubinka. Once, Almaz dragged me there to buy Caspian manna seeds for one of her love potions.

It looked much scarier now in the darkness. No streetlights. The only illumination came from the dimly lit windows of the shacks. I tried to keep track of the turns: one to the right, two to the left, three shacks and another left turn. The group stopped by a dark house, larger than most we had passed by, with someone guarding the entrance.

“
Salam!
Hello!”

“
Axsaminiz
xeyir!
Good evening.”

The door opened, and Tahir and his companions disappeared inside. I leaned against the wall of the next shack, trying to blend in without creating any shadows. My initial courage—or maybe it was just an adrenaline rush—had given way to panic. I was shaking, afraid to move. The distant lights of safe Baku twinkled three lifetimes away.

And yet, overhead, the vast, starlit tent extended from one rim of the sky to the other. Promising another chance. I tore myself away from the wall and headed toward the flickering cigarette light.

“I'm looking for my brother,” I said to a man—a boy?—no, a midget. He stared at me.

“A brother?”

“Yes, a brother. My younger brother.”

I had no money left in my wallet, and the midget's gaze promised trouble. I pulled my wedding ring off my finger and stuck it in front of his face. “Want it?”

Greed won. He grabbed the ring and opened the door.

The stench of mold, urine, sex, and hashish insulted my nose. I waited at the entrance and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. A single kerosene lamp swung overhead, dispensing more shadows than light across a long, narrow room. People sat along the walls, smoking, the lit ends of their cigarettes moving like fireflies in and out of the opaque blanket of smoke, the whites of their eyes following me as I walked through the room.

Tahir wasn't there, but as I reached the far end, I noticed a stairway leading downward. I stepped on one creaky step, then another. Ten altogether, leading into a small dungeon.

An opium den. I was inside an opium den. That's how they looked in movies about the West. I never imagined they could exist in Baku. A few human ghosts sat around a hookah, taking turns, gulping the fumes of the bubbling amber potion as if it was their last living breath. Tahir wasn't here, either. The room's stoned silence was disturbed only by the muted sounds of some commotion coming through another doorway. I pushed it open and peeked inside.

A pile of bodies—convulsing, jerking, moaning—copulated in the most repulsive ways across several cots, their deformed extremities, twisted heads, and patches of ashen flesh moving in a macabre dance. As if Francisco de Goya's dark, nightmarish painting
Casa
de
locos
, with its grotesque apotheosis of perversion, had come to life. Was Tahir among them?

No, I didn't want to know. I shut the door. The opium circle, submerged in the glow of the bubbling potion, felt like a safe haven. I sat next to a woman with a black scarf wrapped around her face.

The pipe traveled from ghost to ghost, ever closer toward me. When my turn came, I accepted it from the shaking hands of the woman, brought it to my mouth, and took a long, deep, hungry inhale.

• • •

“What are you doing here?” the woman asked, removing her black scarf and letting her gold tresses fall freely down her shoulders. She waved her hands in front of her face, blowing away the ashes, leaving her skin as pure and radiant as if it were made of milk and honey.

“Who are you?” I asked.

She laughed in a crystal clear coloratura. “Don't you recognize me?”

“No.”

She leaned in closer, her breath emitting the scent of lilacs. “I'm Peri. And I've been guarding you for a while. Not an easy task, you know, with all the vicissitudes of your life.”

Of course. How could I have not recognized her? The Peri Fairy—born out of fire and nourished by lilacs—from my
Legends
from
the
Land
of
Fire
book. She looked exactly the way she did in the picture with long, golden hair and a veil of mauve silk.

I reached to touch her hand but my fingers went right through her flesh, feeling nothing but air.

Then I remembered. Peri had been banished from heaven and turned into a bodiless
xeyal
, a ghost destined to live between light and darkness, life and death, right and wrong.

“And that's what I've being doing ever since,” she said, as if reading my thoughts. “Wandering everywhere, shedding tears, collecting them into my sack. Only after it is so full that it bursts at the seams, only then will I be redeemed. So, as you see, you and I are very much alike.”

“How can we be alike?”

“How? I'm a fallen maiden, exactly as you are. I sold my soul to wicked Div for a pair of faster wings so I could be the first to reach the firmament of the sky. And you? You chose a path of conformism from the very beginning, with one compromise leading to the next, until your soul sank into the darkness.”

“I didn't have a choice—”

“La, la, la, la, la…
I
didn't have a choice
. An eternal excuse. Nothing other than self-indulgence. Evil tempts every soul, but a weak soul tempts evil. And you have done it not once but three times. First, when you signed your name under Tahir's death warrant. Second, when you woke up alone in that Kabul hotel.

“You know, I never stop wondering. It's kind of a mystery to me. If you really loved him, if you really cared about him so much as to fly to the war zone and save him, then how could you let your wounded ego blind you? Didn't it ever occur to you that your childish proposition to escape to the West could have been overheard? That the Kabul hotel room had KGB ears? That they were waiting outside the door to pick Tahir up?

“Of course you thought of it. But you preferred the role of a victim. With all the misery and diva melodrama.”

Peri caught a tear sliding down her cheek and held it between her thumb and index finger, dropped it into a sack hanging on her neck. “And then your destiny presented you with the last test—your daughter.”

“My daughter? How do you know it was a girl?”

“How? Didn't you give her the name
Ziya
—Light?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Right before you butchered her.”

“I didn't… I didn't want to… I was scared, terribly scared and alone. And mad. Abandoned and betrayed by the one I loved.”

“I never betrayed you, Leila.”

Tahir?

In his white tunic, freshly shaven, his lavender eyes a shade lighter than the sky behind, a sunbeam bouncing through his hair. “They seized me, the KGBs, the moment I stepped out of the hotel room,” he said. “I thought I would surprise you with fresh flowers still filled with morning dew from the Kabul Mountains. Remember I told you—those greens, blues, and violets exactly like in Renoir's
Bouquet
of
Spring
Flowers
?”

He smiled, opening his arms—both arms—calling me, inviting me for a long-craved embrace. So the nightmare in Beggars Corner, his missing arm, the opium den—all this had been just a delusion.

I rushed to him, yearning to disappear inside his embrace, to feel my body inseparable from his, to touch his eyes, his lips, his two healthy hands, to make sure he was real, that he was here with me. Forever. The old Tahir. The love of my life.

“I love you. I love you. I love you,” I wailed, kissing his face and his hands, smudging my tears all over his white tunic. “Don't ever leave me again. I'm weak. I'm nothing without you, just a drained, empty
xeyal
living off the memories of those moments of happiness you gave me. I've shed enough tears. My sack is filled to the brim. The seams are bursting.”

• • •

I felt a rapid, jolting motion.

“Get out of here.” A pair of murky-gray eyes stared at me. “And don't ever follow me again. Do you hear me? We're finished playing your little princess games.”

Tahir. He grabbed my arm and, in one swift, forceful movement, lifted me off the ground and dragged me out of the room and up the narrow, creaky staircase. Doing it all with his left hand while the empty right sleeve of his stained, discolored flannel shirt hung alongside his body.

“Please let's talk. Please,” I cried, trying to stop him, to free myself from his hurting grasp. “Let me explain. I've made wrong choices. Terrible choices. But I never let you out of my heart. I've been a broken vessel for a long time. Scared, confused, brainwashed, blackmailed. I've lost myself. But I'm here now. With you. We need each other. Let me help you. Let me get you out of here. This is no place for you. I'll give up everything. I'll sacrifice everything to be with you. I need you for my soul. I need you for my music. I'm just a cracked, shattered glass. Tahir, please…”

Ignoring my cries, Tahir hauled me through the long room, its few remaining dwellers following us with their blank eyes. When we reached the door, he accidentally bumped his head against the kerosene lamp swinging overhead, swore coarsely, and released me for a moment to open the door before throwing me out. I tripped, lost my footing, and stumbled to the ground, landing in a muddy, trash-filled puddle.

“I could have forgiven you for betraying me,” Tahir said in a raspy voice. “But I'll never—
never
—forgive you for marrying into the KGB for your fucking career. You—Badalbeilis—are our worst curse. Go away, Leila. I never want to see your Medusa face again.”

The door slammed shut.

I had turned Tahir's heart into stone, and now he had returned the favor, stoning my heart.

I had no tears left to cry. I just sat in the puddle, next to a trench of sewage, and watched a stray dog and a rat fighting over a piece of garbage.

The giant steel bird gleamed in the rising sun, waiting, her engines roaring impatiently, eager to soar into the cloudless sky. A brand-new Aeroflot Airbus A320, chartered for a once-in-a-lifetime nonstop flight from Baku to London, to carry—in first-class style—the delegation from the Republic of Azerbaijan to the International Piano Competition. The privileged group included the First Minister of Culture and his son; the Second Secretary of the Party and his wife; the rector of the Baku Conservatory of Music, Professor Najafov; as well as a large entourage of young but seasoned KGB stallions dispatched from the Moscow KGB office, camouflaged in relaxed, casual attire to blend in with the rest of the Baku artistic intelligentsia. But with their universal blond crew cuts and military bearing, they stood out like a convoy of white shepherd dogs amid our procession of pampered black llamas.

The message was clear. In light of the escalating, high-visibility defections, Moscow kept its vigilant eyes everywhere, even on the top echelon of its vassal territories. Within the last year, a pair of our Olympic champion skaters, Ludmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov, husband and wife, had remained in Switzerland after the end of a tour. The son of legendary Soviet composer and Communist Dmitri Shostakovich had asked for political asylum in West Germany.

And the most embarrassing episode of all took place just a couple of months earlier when Leonid and Valentina Kozlov, the principal dancers with the Bolshoi Theater, disappeared from KGB radar in the middle of a crowded Los Angeles airport. The Soviet government announced that the dancers had been kidnapped by a Western spy agency, only to hear the couple interviewed on the Voice of America where they described how they outmaneuvered their KGB keepers. As a result, we were only allowed to bring one family member on the trip to London, the rest left at home as hostages to guarantee our return.

In my case, it had to be either Mama or Farhad. And until the last day—naively—Mama and I still hoped we'd be allowed to travel together. After all, I was their magical
utka
, expected to deliver a golden egg, and I needed maternal support to carry out my mission successfully. That's what I wrote in my application for Mama's exit visa. General Jabrailov promised it would come through. Farhad—oh, that phony Farhad—acted as if he was outraged over the visa processing delay, while Mama kept calling the Bureau of Visas and Registrations and hearing the encouraging message: “Your visa will arrive shortly.”

It never did.

The same with Professor Sultan-zade, but for a different reason. Professor Najafov had trashed her request to accompany me to the competition and instead put his own name in her place as my mentor. To avoid any last-moment surprises, two days before our departure to London, he dispatched her to Stepanakert, a small town in the South Caucasus, to sit in the jury of a local piano contest.

I accompanied her to the terminal where she was to begin her 250-kilometer journey through forests and mountains on a decrepit, crammed bus.

“I hope I'm not carrying a scorpion there,” Professor Sultan-zade said with her usual caustic humor, pointing at her five-month belly bump. “From that venomous
eqreb
, I wouldn't be surprised.”

“You'll have a beautiful baby,” I said, wiping tears.

“I hope so. You know, where I come from we say: even a porcupine child feels like velvet to his mother.” She affectionately stroked her belly. “This is all that matters to me now.”

“I'll do my best to win,” I said, throwing my arms around her folded shoulders. “And if I win, they won't be able to touch you.”

“No, Leila.” She shook her head in disapproval, her lips pressed tightly, stubbornly. “I don't need your win for my job security. It's unlikely I'll be staying in Baku after the birth anyway. I have an offer from the Tbilisi Conservatory of Music. But it's not about me now. It's about you, the most gifted student I've ever had. I've taught you everything I know. I've seen you grow technically from a child prodigy into a world-class performer. It's your heart, though, that concerns me the most. It's like a broken tree, its leaves torn and blown by the changing winds of your destiny. So please hear me.”

Professor Sultan-zade leaned closer to me, her lips against my ear, her breath as hot as the desert Khazri. “Time to heal your heart, drop by drop. Go to London. Win or no win—don't come back. There are plenty of Western impresarios who'd be keen to manage your career. You can even try to contact Rudolf Nureyev.”

“Who is Nureyev?”

“The world's greatest dancer. He might remember me. We met many years ago in Leningrad. He had just joined the Kirov Ballet and I studied at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory of Music. I played piano for their ballet classes.”

“Are you getting in?” The bus driver impatiently blew the horn like a Morse code signal.

We hugged—a finale of Chopin's “Raindrop” prelude with its poignant acceptance that this might be the last time we saw each other.

I helped Professor Sultan-zade climb the stairs, and the bus grudgingly took off, lurching through the dusty fog.

Win
or
no
win—don't come
back.

“Why aren't you smiling?” Farhad squeezed my forearm, pulling me toward the TV cameras fighting for space in a small reception room of the Baku Airport.

I did. I smiled like a mannequin.

“We'll be back in just five days with a big laurel wreath crowning my talented wife's head,” Farhad announced to the crowd.

Everybody applauded enthusiastically, except for Mama. She kept stroking my hand with her cold fingers, softly scratching my skin with her short nails. Making my heart sob. Yesterday, we took a long walk in Governor's Park. Something we hadn't done since…well, a very long time. Something I always wanted to do with Mama. We had tea inside a small
chaikhana
tent, surrounded by grapevines with clusters of ripe, milky-green sultanas emitting the nostalgia of autumn. Then we sat on a bench by a pond with lilies, admiring its still beauty, its greens, blues, and violets fading into the Impressionistic strokes of sunset.

“I've been thinking,” Mama said, “over and over. There's no future for you here. Only hurt and humiliation. They don't deserve you.” She swallowed hard, suppressing the moan in her throat but not the tears spilling out of her eyes. “I hate seeing you in this awful marriage. I hate seeing your youth and talent being used for
their
ambitions. Win or no win—it doesn't matter. All I want is for you to be happy. I want my daughter to be free.”

First, Professor Sultan-zade. Now Mama. Why? Why now and not four years ago, when I could have saved my soul from burning out in the furnace of lies, betrayal, and survival. I wanted to scream. Zümrüd
Qusu
, her wings turned into ashes.

“Farewell from General Jabrailov!” Farhad shouted, clearing the path for his boss. The General took the spotlight in what was supposed to look like a spontaneous emotional message.

“Go, Leila, show the rotten, decadent West what a true daughter of Soviet Azerbaijan can do,” he said, waving his index finger at the invisible enemy, planting the roots of his proudly conceived propaganda campaign. “Let them choke on their alcohol, their drugs and sex, together with their Marilyn Monroes and Elvis Presleys. Their so-called
idols
. We have our own star lighting the way for the young generation, and doing it in a wholesome, cultural, Communist way.”

The lobby exploded with a storm of ovation, and the line of black llamas formed to thank General Jabrailov for the parting words and submissively shake his hand. The boss of the KGB was their boss, no matter how long and high their titles read. A squadron of Moscow KGB foot soldiers picked up the dignitaries' huge, half-empty suitcases—with abundant space left inside to soon be packed with jeans, sneakers, watches, Marlboros, and gum cartons—and headed toward the exit doors.

“Remember what I told you. I want you to be happy. And free,” Mama whispered in my ear, leaving a trace of hot tears on my neck.

I buried my face in her gold and jasmine-white hair, breathing in the scent of my childhood. “
Mamochka
, I love you. I always wanted to tell you how much I love you. But every time I tried, you stopped me, saying those words were cheap. And you know, maybe you were right. Maybe these word are cheap, but not what is behind them. I love you. I love you. I love you. And I'll do my best to win, for all of us.”

Mama took my face in her hands, her sad, cerulean eyes filling my entire vision, holding me in their power. “Be strong and bold. Your happiness is all I wish for.”

“You're saying good-byes as if you're parting forever,” Farhad said, pushing me aside and kissing Mama on both cheeks like a good son-in-law. “Good-bye, Sonia
Khanum
. And don't worry, Leila will be back. I'll be watching her. Won't take my eyes off her.”

A black government Chaika waited for us outside. Together with the dignitaries, Farhad and I were driven across the tarmac and unloaded at the foot of the boarding stairs to the fancy Airbus. As soon as we settled inside its soft leather chairs, the steel bird soared into the sky.

The golden domes of the Baku mosques, the amphitheater of whitewashed streets over the cobalt arena of the Caspian Sea, the sunburned maze of Icheri Sheher, and the invincible bastion of Maiden Tower all began to sink into the heavy smog of the exhausted city. And with them, the last eighteen years of my life slowly dissolved into oblivion as the plane ascended into clear skies and headed northwest, playing hide-and-seek with the soft cotton clouds.

When my lips part to utter farewell, and my tongue is quick as a dagger,

I carve out the memories of hate and leave them behind in the land of darkness.

When my lips seal to withhold farewell, and my eyes swell like a mountain river,

I gather the memories, sweeter than honey, clearer than crystal clear gems…

And there is a farewell silent as snow,

It goes with me wherever I go.

• • •

The rain gushed across the window as our bus negotiated its way down the clogged, noodle-thin road out of Heathrow International Airport. Outside, nothing but a grim vista of empty fields, rusty bridges, and decaying, claustrophobic tunnels. Nose to the window, I waited impatiently for the glorious ramparts of Westminster Abbey to materialize. We passed by a succession of small towns with the same brick houses, darkened by damp and age, submerged in the dreary dusk.

“I'd like to have a talk with Comrade Badalbeili.”

One of the Moscow KGB personnel gestured to Farhad to vacate the seat next to me. Unlike his cohorts, he had a distinct personality. He was short and nimble with an egg-shaped face, his nose a thin blade setting off Tatar eyes, and his dirty-blond hair layered stylishly. Farhad got up obediently. Dark, hesitant opening notes of Beethoven's
String
Quartet
of
Transcendence
played ominously in my head.

“I'll be your personal assistant for the duration of the trip,” the young man said in a soothing baritone, settling next to me. “So I think we should get acquainted properly. First of all, you should know that I'm a huge fan. I was at your last orchestral rehearsal. And I'll tell you—that Rach 3, it either makes you or breaks you. The original cadenza you chose for the first movement—
bellissimo
!
Mwah
.” He swept his hand in an air kiss.

Something didn't feel right.

“How do you know so much about music?” I said.

He smiled, revealing two crimson dimples on his cheeks, his face turning boyishly perky. “You think that if I'm with the KGB I should be Ivan the Fool from the Village of Simpletons?”

“I didn't say that.”

“You almost did.” He smacked his lips soundly. “Let's put it this way. I'm an amateur pianist, and in my previous life, I studied at the Kiev Conservatory of Music. But I dropped out after the first year. I realized I'd never rise above the ranks of a music schoolteacher or, at best, an accompanist in some provincial Opera House. So, I switched to the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Relations. You see, during my childhood, I lived in many different places—Prague, Vienna, Baghdad. My father is still there in Iraq, in charge of security at the Soviet Embassy. So I've always been good with languages.”

Where was he going with all this?

“How many languages do you speak?” I asked, forcing my eyebrows up to showcase the amazement.

“Let's see. Ukrainian is my mother tongue, so it doesn't count. The same goes for Russian, Polish, and Slovak. Then it's just English, German, French, and a rudimental Arabic. Now you know almost everything about me.”

“I still don't know your name,” I said, failing to keep nervous vibrato out of my voice.

“Oh, that's true. It's Ivan Vasilyevich.” He gently shook my hand, placed it back in my lap, and leaned closer. “I should be careful with this precious jewel, shouldn't I?”

Farhad watched us closely from across the aisle, his face purple. Whoever sat next to me obviously had a considerably superior rank than my husband.

“I can't imagine why, but some people have nicknamed me Ivan the Terrible,” my neighbor continued with the broad smile, “which brings us to the topic of this discussion—the nature of our relationship for the next three or four days, until our plane touches the ground, safely and soundly, at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport.

“Throughout the duration of our stay here, you will have no communications with anyone—anyone—outside of this group. Any requests, no matter what—music manuscripts, rehearsals, acoustics, lighting—will be made only through me. As I've mentioned, I'm your personal assistant and your voice to the outside English-speaking world. Your only task here is to win the competition, to smile prettily, and to keep your mouth shut. Understood?”