A Curse on Dostoevsky

-

RASSOUL LOOKS at himself in the small mirror hanging from the wall; looks with rage and hatred. He strokes his beard. He moistens his cheeks with the last drops of water from the jug, and picks up his razor; the blade is blunt; he continues regardless; it grazes his skin. The blood flows. He takes no notice, shaving furiously, scraping the blade repeatedly across and under his chin. A fly starts buzzing around the cuts. He waves it away. It comes back and tastes the blood. He slaps it away harshly, making the razor slip on his cheek. Another cut. He doesn’t give a damn. He keeps shaving, more and more frantic, as if trying to scrape off his skin.

His movements are slowed by the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Someone knocks at the door. After a moment of stillness and silence he opens without bothering to wipe his bloodstained face. It is a woman in a sky-blue chador. When she sees Rassoul she gives a muffled cry and steps back slightly. Then she unveils herself. Sophia. Her innocent eyes are wide with horror. “What happened, Rassoul?” He runs his hand over his face, moving his lips to indicate that it’s just the blunt blade… but she doesn’t understand. “What’s the matter?” Nothing, gestures Rassoul, despairingly. “We waited up late for you last night. Why didn’t you come? My mother was so worried. She didn’t sleep all night.” Should I explain to her that I’ve lost my voice? Yes, why not. Who else can you confide in?

Rassoul takes a step backward into the room, so Sophia can enter. Then he starts looking for a pen and paper. But Sophia notices Yarmohamad’s children watching and decides to remain at the door. “I don’t want to bother you. I just came to find you to go…” She doesn’t finish her sentence, perturbed by Rassoul rummaging anxiously through his books. After a moment of silence and hesitation, she pulls the chador back down over her face and departs, leaving Rassoul to search for something on which to write his voiceless words, leaving him in that dream where he’s pursuing her through the streets of Saint Petersburg. And what if that woman in the sky-blue chador really was her? A stupid question that forces him into action. He rushes down to the courtyard. Sophia is already out on the street. He washes his face at the courtyard tap, returns to his room to change, and sets off after her.

What an absurd thought! If it had been Sophia, you would have recognized her voice.

Her voice?

He stops.

Don’t tell me you don’t know her voice!

Of course I know it, but I can’t remember how it sounds when she shouts. Actually, I’ve never heard her shout, or raise her voice at all. Well, what about her walk? The way she runs?

Sophia moves as if in water. Her shoulders move back and forth like fins. Yes, but that particular way of walking was a long time ago, without a chador. All women walk the same in the chador, don’t they?

They do.

Uncertainty and doubt make Rassoul limp even faster on his way to Sophia’s house. He is so bizarrely overexcited that he cannot convince himself such a shy and innocent girl would never get up to something as dangerous as that.

It was her, he feels like yelling at the top of his voice. Her! She did it, not only out of love for me and her family, but also from hate for Nana Alia! Yes! She did it!

As he weaves through the crowded streets, engulfed in the black smoke that has descended on the city, a man grabs him by the shoulder, stopping him in his tracks.

“Rassoulovski?”

It is Jano’s cheerful voice. Jano notices the cuts on Rassoul’s face. “Did we do that to you?” No, he mimes, a razor. The blade of destiny, he would have said if he still had his voice. “You lucky devil! At least you know you have a destiny,” Jano would probably have replied. A destiny. Rassoul would rather not have one at all.

“And your voice?”

Still nothing.

After a few steps in silence, Jano asks: “So, are you going to join Commandant Parwaiz? He’ll give you a good Kalashnikov! Do you know how to shoot?” No. “You’ll learn it all in a day. In any case…” he leans in close, whispers, “the bullet finds its own target,” and he laughs. A brief, smug laugh followed by a wink at the Kalashnikov he keeps hidden beneath his patou.

Another few steps in silence. They are both thinking—Rassoul about the slow blade of his destiny, Jano about the targets of his stray bullets. They come to a chai-khana, and the young soldier invites Rassoul in. Why not? He feels like something to eat and drink, and more importantly getting to know Parwaiz’s crew, finding out whether or not they’ve found Nana Alia’s corpse. In brief, there are a thousand reasons to pursue this adventure instead of trying to find Sophia.

Inside they sit by a window, next to three armed men who immediately break off their conversation to stare.

Jano orders tea and bread. Apropos of nothing, he asks Rassoul: “Your landlord… do you know him well?” Yes, Rassoul nods sadly. Jano continues, “When we came into the house yesterday evening, just on patrol, he rushed over to tell us about his strange ex-communist tenant who had stopped paying his rent…” Rassoul’s persistent silence prevents Jano from continuing. He glances anxiously at their neighbors, who are still staring. How annoying. He takes a noisy gulp of tea and goes on.

“Your blade scratches your face. Ours is sharper, it injures our very souls!” He stuffs a piece of bread into his mouth. “I was only twelve when the war broke out. My father put a gun on my shoulder and sent me off to do jihad against the Red Army. The things I saw… If you were in my shoes, you wouldn’t want to hear a single word of Russian, my friend. They burned down our village. I found my family’s remains, burnt to ashes! Commandant Parwaiz adopted me. He gave me the strength and courage to fight to avenge my family. And while we were mourning our dead, the destruction of our villages, the humiliation of our sisters… you, you were having a grand old time in the arms of little blonde white girls, soft and lively as fish… isn’t that right?” Another gulp of scalding tea. “You never imagined that we starving, barefoot creatures could ever take power…” Rassoul painfully ingests both the bread and the words. Even the tea burns his throat, his tongue. He would like to respond that his life hasn’t been as peaceful as Jano might think. By telling him about his conflict with his communist father, he might make himself more sympathetic.

No guarantee of that. Jano would probably reproach him in much the same way as another mujahideen he’d spoken to recently: “That too is your Russian education.”

“What do you mean?”

“Not respecting your father is a Russian abomination!”

“But I didn’t want to follow my father’s ideology. I was against the invasion of my country by the Russians.” “If you were a good son, you would respect him and follow his path, his beliefs!”

“But what are you saying? How can one follow a father who is a war criminal?”

“That’s right, you must never betray your father, not even if he’s a murderer.”

“And if he’s an unbeliever?”

Silence.

Jano sips his tea, his chest puffed out. Rassoul watches him, holding on to his rage and his desire to crush it against this chest puffed up with arrogant, rotten pride, to destroy this cage stuffed with hollow power…

But why, Rassoul? What do you know about him? He hasn’t said anything. Leave the guy alone. He is happy. He is proud. He isn’t suffering as you are. Thank God that you can’t speak!

Drink your tea, eat your bread, and get out of here!

As Rassoul stands up, one of the armed men addresses Jano. “Excuse me, brother, aren’t you Jano?”

“Yes.”

The man walks up to him, smiling. “Don’t you recognize me? Momène, from Commandant Nawroz’s troop?”

Jano drops his glass of tea, startled. “Of course! How could I forget? You’ve changed a bit. Put on weight, definitely! That must be five or six years ago… or more?”

“Six years.”

They stand up, throw themselves into each other’s arms, embrace warmly, and sit back down together. The perfect chance for Rassoul to escape. He gets to his feet to shake Jano’s hand and take his leave. But the soldier won’t have it. He invites him to drink another tea with these old friends.

“Sit down!” He turns toward the other men. “Last night we beat this brother during a patrol, and today we’re drinking tea together! Who says we don’t want peace!” He snorts with laughter, tugging at Rassoul to sit down.

And Rassoul complies.

They order more tea. And smoke cigarettes. Momène starts telling his friends about “Our unforgettable operation! Six years ago…”

“Yes, six years ago,” confirms Jano nostalgically. He turns to Rassoul. “It was summertime. A summer evening. We were on our way to attack a Soviet location. We’d been told that Commandant Nawroz would be in charge of this operation. Commandant Nawroz and our Commandant Parwaiz didn’t get on at all, but they decided to attack the Russians together anyway. We would take the prisoners, and they would get the guns…” Interrupted by a laugh from Momène, he takes a gulp of tea then continues. “Anyway, as soon as night fell we attacked!” This time he’s interrupted by his own laughter, and it is Momène who takes up the story.

“In our regiment there was a mujahideen by the name of Shirdel. A brave man and a good Muslim, but with a soft spot for the boys! So we nicknamed him Kirdel—lover of cock.” At this, everybody fell about laughing. “When our troop silently and carefully attacked the weapons depot, our bradar Shirdel came across a young Russian soldier taking a shit!” Their loud laughter silences everyone in the tearoom. They start listening, too. Jano is laughing so hard there are tears streaming down his face. Momène continues: “Imagine our Shirdel in such a situation! His heart was beating a hundred miles an hour; he didn’t know what to do; he was trembling with fear that a mujahideen would shoot this dreamy creature with the smooth white buttocks! Anyway, he captured him and, once the operation had been carried out successfully, took him to Commandant Nawroz, who ordered that he be given to Commandant Parwaiz. But who was he telling! Shirdel immediately handcuffed himself to the pretty boy and swallowed the key!”

They all roar with laughter. Rassoul does too, but deep inside. When the laughter quiets down, Jano continues: “Commandant Parwaiz took them both. He talked to Shirdel at great length, but he wouldn’t listen. He had changed. It was all over for him—jihad, prayer… They walked around together from morning till night, hand in hand. Shirdel sang for him, taught him our language… And then one night, they disappeared.” He turns to Momène. “You never saw them again?”

“No, never,” replies Momène, wiping away his tears. “What a time!”

“Exactly, what a time! We may not have seen eye to eye, but against the Russians we were united!”

“We were!”

“And now look, these days we’re fighting each other. Why?”

“Ask Commandant Nawroz!”

“And you, ask your Commandant Parwaiz!”

The laughter stops.

A silent hatred invades the chai-khana.

Rassoul stands up, gestures quietly at Jano—who waves goodbye—and makes a speedy exit.

He has barely reached the end of the road when he is startled by two gunshots, fired not far behind.

In the chai-khana?

Perhaps.

He stops, turns around.

Let them kill each other!

He continues on his way to Sophia’s house.