The Railway (19 page)

“Sohrab-Sharpie?” Faiz-Ulla blurted out.

Tadji-Murad tutted in gentle reproach. Then he went onto the offensive, shifting into the Russian he had learned as a conscript in a construction battalion. “He's a fine fellow, an excellent fellow, a true Komsomol!”

“And his father will be sending him to university!” said the third matchmaker, Dolim-Dealer, sensing Faiz-Ulla's confusion.

Faiz-Ulla was indeed confused. After all, it was clear from the film, which he had seen only yesterday, that when a Station Supervisor tries to arrange a marriage there may be more to it than first meets the eye. And what about Amon and Zainab? Faiz-Ulla had promised to allow them to marry, to lie under a single blanket not as brother and sister but as man and wife. What would happen to Zainab? What would happen to poor Amon, whose friend, Nasim-Shlagbaum, had just run off with Natka-Pothecary, leaving his former comrade-in-arms all alone?

“A thousand thank-yous to our Supervisor, who has been granted wisdom by our wise Party! The most splendid of men, the kindest of men! A man whose speech is as straight and as strong as the iron road he supervises! Only... how can we possibly be worthy of his good will and attention? It's four months now since I last paid my Party dues.”

“Heavens!” said Dolim-Dealer, who was an experienced negotiator. “You don't need to worry about a trifle like that. You can leave
that
to the Station Supervisor!”

“What do you mean?” said Faiz-Ulla, who was at a loss for words.

Continuing to draw on his many years of experience as a seller of bullocks and calves, Dolim-Dealer moved from words to deeds. “Come on, give us your hand now! Good sense is the road to riches! Say yes! Come on now – say yes! Very well then – let the Station Supervisor pay not just four months of Party dues, but five months! Say yes! Really, come on now – don't shame us in public! Don't worry – he can pay your dues for six months! Look – there's a crowd gathering! Seven months then! All right? Yes?” At this point he shook poor Faiz-Ulla's hand so energetically that the latter's head couldn't possibly move horizontally, in negation, but only up and down, in agreement. “Ah – he's said yes! He's agreed!” He released Faiz-Ulla's hand and said, “Praise be to Allah!” letting the world know that the bargaining was over and a deal had been struck. After that it made no difference how many times Faiz-Ulla, who still had no idea what to say, invited them to sit down for a cup of tea – they were already leaving, to the accompaniment of Dolim-Dealer's mind-numbing babble: “A man's word is his word is his word. Our supervisor will let you know the date of the wedding. But you can start making your preparations already! By the way, are you going to the cinema today?”

In reply to these last words, Faiz-Ulla gave a nod of the head – even more publicly than before.

By one o'clock the whole of Gilas knew what had happened. Akmolin, who at that time of day was usually asleep, was zipping about the station in his diesel shunter, deafening the town with his hooting and tooting as he darted from track to track.

During the afternoon screening Zainab and Amon learned what had happened. At six o'clock Democritis Chuvalchidi learned. The evening's programme was starting at seven. Gilas held its breath.

The trouble was that Gilas had not yet had time to digest the terrible events that had followed the screening of
Djaga
. The public trial was still continuing and it was unclear how the murder investigation would end. But this is a story you do not yet know.

Ezrael, a son of Huvron-Barber and grandson of Djebral-Semavi – the Persian who had ended up in Gilas because of his love for Maike the incomparable poet – had left school after failing, several years running, to pass his fourth-year exams. He was, however, as handsome as Yusuf – not the Gilas cobbler of that name, but the Yusuf or Joseph of the Koran and the Bible and the Torah – and he was married to Shah-Sanem, an Azerbaidjani from the Kazakh village of Kyzyl-Tau.

Somehow the young couple quarrelled, and Shah-Sanem, wanting the world to know how disgracefully she had been treated, went away for a few days to her mother's. It was the month of Ashura, when Shiites remember their great martyrs – and this was too solemn a time for Ezrael, whose faith was the faith of a true Persian, to get the better of his high principles, apologise to his wife in the usual way and bring her back home. After a week, seeing that her husband hadn't come to collect her, Shah-Sanem decided to go back home anyway. Ezrael saw her from the window of his father's barber's shop but pretended he hadn't. The Month of Sorrow was still only young. Wanting to provoke her seemingly haughty and indifferent husband, Shah-Sanem began collecting more of her belongings, as if to prolong her absence until the Month of Sorrow was over. After gathering up a bundle of clothes she didn't need, she emerged from inside the high wall Djebral had built as a shield against revolutions – but Ezrael's teenage sister Aishe, who had all of a sudden begun to think of herself as a worldly-wise woman, left the house first and went rushing off to Huvron's shop. Learning what Shah-Sanem was doing, Ezrael abandoned Nabi-Onearm even though he had shaved only one side of his face; still holding his cut-throat razor and wearing his white gown, he rushed off after his wife, who was at that moment crossing the railway line. The sun was beating fiercely down, bleaching all sense from everything, and so Ezrael's sorrow all too easily modulated into fury – and it was just then that Akmolin chose to wake up and toot on his hooter. Tadji-Murad answered on his whistle, and this somehow made the heat haze spin more crazily than ever as it streamed up from the embankment. Ezrael looked at Akmolin and Tadji-Murad in sorrowful fury and told his wife to go back home and wait; once the month of Ashura was over, they would be able to sort everything out more easily. His wife seemed unable to understand and continued across the railway line with her bundle. Ezrael then began cursing his wife, shouting out that she was a brainless chicken and that this most sacred of months meant no more to her than a heap of manure. She walked on, through a gathering crowd; the half-shaven Nabi-Onearm, one side of whose face was contracting as the lather from Huvron's Bulgarian soap began to dry, watched especially intently. Had Ezrael taken her by the hand so everyone could see, had he finally taken that stupid bundle off her, Shah-Sanem would probably have turned back – but just then the Kyzyl-Tau bus drew up, and Ezrael still didn't understand.
Ezrael still didn't understand her.
He followed her into the bus, in his white gown and with a soapy razor in one hand. She took a seat by the window, and they remained silent until they got to the whirlpool near the level crossing, close to where the director of the Gilas music school had been run over by a train. There, however, they had to wait for Akmolin's mincing little diesel shunter to pass by, with Tadji-Murad standing on the footplate and whistling – and that was enough to make Ezrael swear out loud, which led Shah-Sanem to turn to the window and weep silent tears. Near the Kok-Terek Bazaar, Ezrael tried clumsily to wipe away these tears, but by then Shah-Sanem was in some kind of stupor – as blank and unfeeling as a bald patch on the head of one of his customers.

“So you just fucking want to be fucking fucked, do you? Well, fuck you!” hissed Ezrael, not entirely without hope. They were now drawing near the river where his grandfather had washed the body of the incomparable Maike. Shah-Sanem said nothing. With everyone watching, Ezrael slashed her throat with his razor.

Blood spurted onto his white gown, onto the tangled hair of the screaming Kazakh girl in front of them and onto a sack with maize spilling out of it beside their feet. Ezrael walked down the bus, which had come to a stop in the middle of the road, and made his way out into the steppe, to the very place where his grandfather had buried the incomparable Maike after hearing from him the terrible words that they had all heard again during the film
Djaga
:

Blood is never washed away by blood,
Only tears can wash away blood.

And so, still not having digested the story of Ezrael and Shah-Sanem, Gilas waited breathlessly for the second screening of
The Railway to Pradesh
. In the usual way, an hour before the film was due to begin, music blared out through Ortik-Picture-Reels' loudspeaker, which the railway authorities had “written off” in exchange for Ortik's adorning a banner with their latest slogan: “Gain a minute – and lose your life! Take care!” The Beatles sang “Girl”; Raj Kapoor sang “
Mera djula he djopani
” or “I'm wearing a Japanese hat”… Three quarters of an hour before the beginning, Ortik's Auntie Koshoy-Hola began selling her sunflower seeds – a commodity on which she had a local monopoly; at the same time Ortik's wife began reselling some of the tickets she had already sold. After another fifteen minutes a long queue of people had formed, all of them dressed in their smartest white; Ortik's son Omil was supplying tickets to the tail of the queue at three times the official price. Nearly the whole of the able-bodied population of Gilas was present.

Zainab and Amon sat down on either side of Faiz-Ulla-FAS. Temir-Iul-Longline the Station Supervisor was greeted with loud applause as he strode in together with Tadji-Murad, Ashir-Beanpole, Dolim-Dealer and the for some reason still only half-shaven Nabi-Onearm, who raised his one hand as if to calm the public. Ortik, however, understood this gesture – which Nabi repeated after a whisper from the Station Supervisor – as a signal that the film should begin; he turned out the lights.

Had I the power, I would move the film from the evening to a mindless midday, a midday full of sunlight and languid songs on the radio – but it was inescapably seven o'clock in the evening. Young daughters-in-law were sprinkling their yards with water; patches of shadow had appeared; the newly swept earth was breathing a sigh of relief. And the fervent song of young Gopal and Radkha could be heard from the summer cinema.

Everything happened as scripted. After a day of honest labour, and after pissing against the wall of Huvron-Barber's little shop, Yusuf-Cobbler was still chuckling at the thought of the imminent torrents of tears when the old Teacher handed the departing Gopal his last rupees together with a school certificate for good study and conduct and Akmolin suddenly got up and left: was he
really
just starting his night shift? Ten minutes later, and without waiting for Radkha to do her first belly dance before the drunken railway workers, Zainab got to her feet and walked out to the left, past her mother. A moment later Amon got to his feet and walked out to the right. The audience held its breath, watching the Station Supervisor saying goodbye to his daughter as she set off just as Gopal had set off a year before her. At that moment Dolim-Dealer touched the Gilas Station Supervisor on the arm and followed Zainab out.

Yusuf-Cobbler had already forgotten what he had been laughing about only minutes before, the Indian Station Supervisor was already thinking evil thoughts and leading the audience to suspect him of still greater evil when the Gilas Station Supervisor – whose suspicions were getting too much for him – also walked out of the cinema, through rivers of tears and Radkha's impassioned singing. Amon and Zainab were already far away, kissing with no less passion.

Some time later, as Gopal entered the station canteen, Democritis Chuvalchidi entered the station buffet run by Froska, the ex-wife of ex-Master-Railwayman Belkov. He ordered a glass of vodka on tick, silently downed it without even the tiniest morsel of food, made his way to the cinema – and found the Indian Station Supervisor furthering his evil designs; there he was up in his office, with the railway line stretching out beneath him as far as the eye could see to both east and west. Democritis glanced lazily at the screen, then surveyed the rapidly diminishing audience till he caught sight of
him
. Dimna threw herself at Gopal and, after singing a song of faithless love, began kissing him in front of everyone. Why didn't he speak? Why didn't he declare his love once and for all? Democritis made up his mind when only six people were left: old Koshoy-Hola, stepping across puddles of tears as she went on selling sunflower seeds; Ortik's son Omil, who was still chewing the last of the seeds he had bought with the money he had made from selling tickets; Musayev-Slogans, who couldn't understand why there were no posters and slogans in India; Nabi-Onearm, who was scratching the still unshaven half of his face with his one hand; and
him, him, him
!

As the handcar, with the whole of the town on board, careered noisily along, the lovers stood on the railway line, just beyond the level crossing, in the last rays of the summer sun. Their hair and their clothes were fluttering in the breeze. Seeing them, the Station Supervisor screamed. The handcar gathered speed, hurtling towards a catastrophe. Tadji-Murad closed his eyes in alarm, but the whistle he had forgotten in his mouth suddenly whistled. There was a hellish wail from the oncoming locomotive, Gopal and Radkha burst into an “
O pyari, pyari tumsa
” that could be heard all over the town – and Akmolin slammed on his brakes. The handcar, spilling out half its passengers, also stopped dead. And there were the lovers – standing halfway between the handcar and the locomotive and aware only of each other.

Everyone went still. The Station Supervisor's head – everyone slowly realised – was sticking through a hole in the shatterproof glass of the handcar's windscreen. While Tadji-Murad supervised the extraction of his Supervisor's head, whistling and waving his hands in the air, Zainab and Amon leaped onto the running board of the local train just announced by Ashir-Beanpole – and that was the last that anyone in Gilas ever heard of them.

And as the frustrated audience dispersed towards their homes, after failing to watch the film to its climax and then being robbed of fulfilment a second time, a scene took place beside the level crossing – just beyond the whirlpool that the Salty Canal forms after emerging from the pipe that takes it beneath the road, close to where Ezrael had cursed Akmolin and Tadji-Murad and where the director of the Gilas music school had been run over by a train – a scene such as could never have been seen in any of the films shown by Ortik-Picture-Reels. Two men were walking along the railway line, and one was saying, “So you don't love me any more? Well, why don't you say anything? Say something, damn you! You bastard! You fucking bastard! Finished with me, are you? Finished? So I'm no use to you any longer, am I? Remember how happy we used to be! We could still go away together. Yes, we could get tickets for the express and just go. Who the fuck's going to find us? Did you hear what I said? Say something then! Why are you crying? Look, nothing's happened. Look, we're together. Just the two of us. And we don't need anyone else, do we? Do we? Why the fuck don't you say anything? Why are you looking at me like that? Because of my clothes? They're just clothes. My mother washes them every other day. Seen better clothes on other people, have you? And I suppose other people's cocks feel bigger, do they? Or… Have you… Stop a moment…” Standing quite still, he hissed into the other man's face, “So you just fucking want to be fucking fucked, do you? Well fuck you!”