Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Kambiz

On the nights when passersby glimpsed the red flickers of flame bouncing off the walls of a small room in the small brick house that huddles against the gate tower of the Stargorod kremlin, they knew – Kambiz was doing his witching. The old Persian believed in the Good that persists in its grueling war with Evil. I doubt you could find, in central Russia, even a dozen experts who could correctly pronounce the ancient words khumata, khukhta, khvarshta – the holy triad of Zoroastrianism, “good thoughts, good words, good deeds,” that constitute the foundation of any true Zoroastrian’s life. The Persian, with his unruly mob of white hair and bulging eyes, seemed to people to be a kind of a magus, and it was widely believed that he could foretell the future and cure incurable diseases.

Nina Timofeyevna Shlionskaya, a math teacher from the First gymnasium, never in her wildest dreams could have imagined that she would have to turn to the wizard for help, but, defeated by family troubles and having lost her faith in doctors, she decided to take her chances – her last chance, as her neighbor Klavdia Ivanovna insisted – with the Persian. The man had cured Klavdia Ivanovna’s husband of alcoholism in a single session.

Kambiz sat before the fireplace in which soggy logs were slowly beginning to burn. Unable to hold back her tears, Shlionskaya told him about her daughter Katya. Abandoned by the scoundrel who had seduced her, the girl was suffering from a mental affliction, had turned inward and withdrawn from the world. Doctors – and they’d been to all kinds of doctors – could do nothing to help her. And then this cult – the New Life Fraternity, as it called itself – showed up. The girl went to their meetings. Soon she wanted her parents to join as well – but the new life, into which Katya dove head-first, frightened them more than her earlier withdrawal: Katya now seemed to live in a scary fairytale from which there was no return. Recently, she announced that she would gift her parents’ apartment to the fraternity, sign over ownership to her Teacher, and move “into the cells” with her sisters. They were all brothers and sisters, chanting spells and beginning their prayers with a peace pipe passed around a circle, after which they would be given visions of the new life they all aspired to. If Katya sold the apartment, she would doom her aging parents to homelessness, but she did not think about that.

“You’ll come live with me, it’ll be better for you that way,” she said. She has become a zombie.

“What’s to come of us? What?” Nina Timofeyevna asked Kambiz.

Kambiz threw a pinch of white powder on the logs. Smoke billowed and rose, the logs caught fire instantly. The Persian took a magical crystal off a shelf and looked at the fire through it.

“Where do they meet?”

“The building that used to be the movie theater.”

“Go home now, everything will be fine tomorrow.”

For some reason, Nina Timofeyevna believed him, and left – the Persian emanated true magical power. Kambiz, after she left, spoke to someone on the phone.

The next morning Kambiz attended the fraternity’s meeting. The teacher – a well-nourished man with a shaved head who was wrapped in an orange bed sheet – greeted the newcomer with a happy smile and offered him the peace pipe. The rite had already begun – about a hundred adepts sat in a circle on small ottomans, and their pin-head-sized pupils told Kambiz they were already seeing visions.

“Do you know the future?” Kambiz asked the teacher in his thundering voice.

“Of course I do, brother, and so will you if you join.”

“You do not know the future. You are a liar. You will be taken to the police now, and then you’ll stand trial, and get eight years in a high security prison for distributing drugs, and then will come the camp, concrete floors, tuberculosis and death.”

Kambiz waved his arm. Two SWAT teams poured in through the doors. The teacher was promptly handcuffed and led away. In the back room they found a stockpile of hard drugs. Lieutenant Colonel Ivanov, who was in charge of the operation and who tracked down the entire supply chain (the teacher cracked right away and gave the police all his dealers) got a medal and was promoted. Katya returned home, went through detox, and never mentions selling her parents’ apartment anymore. Does she still dream of a new life? History is silent on that count. The common citizens of our city saw the raid as just more proof of the Persian’s prophetic gifts.

After the raid, Kambiz returned home to sit in front of his fireplace and stare at the sacred flames. He thought about the great wisdom of Ahura Mazda. He had used an ancient remedy – a weak opiate solution – to cure Lieutenant Colonel Ivanov’s wife of hysteria and insomnia, and restored peace back to that family. And yet, used for ill, the same drugs almost ruined a hundred other families. Kambiz pulled his piece of rock-crystal from the shelf, played with it for a bit, then put it back. People needed theater, otherwise, it was too hard for them to believe a simple truth: Good fights Evil all the time, and a virtuous man who follows the path of Truth, must also work hard not to stray, for Evil often comes dressed in Good’s clothes.

The Persian fed a dry log to his fire; his lips habitually uttered the three ancient incantations. Someone knocked hesitantly on his door.

“Come in, the door’s unlocked!” Kambiz said in a thunderous voice and made his eyes bulge to give his face a ferocious expression.