Cry of the Peacock: A Novel (13 page)

"There," she said. "Eat this now."

Peacock felt the sugar on her tongue and tried to swallow, but the sweetness was overpowering and she threw up.

"She's sick," the boy cried in disgust as bile flew into Peacock's chador and onto her shoes. Afagh bent down to help her, but Peacock let go of the bag and began to run.

"Wait!" Afagh cried, but Peacock went out the door and through the house, out the gates and into the street full of dust and hunger, where Joseph the Winemaker received her with cold dismay.

All her life, Peacock would grieve for the food she had left behind.

Taraneh the Tulip
came from Tehran to see Leyla. She brought food, and the smell of hope, and the optimism that had always guarded her against life's destruction. She sat in the courtyard of Joseph the Winemaker's house, above the steps leading into the basement winery, and took Peacock in her lap. Hannah, nine years old, slept in the shade of one of the columns surrounding the porch. She was thin and frail, trembling in her sleep, but still beautiful. Taraneh the Tulip realized Hannah would die soon of starvation.

''Marry your daughters off," she told Leyla. "If you can't feed them yourself, give them to someone who can."

Leyla smiled in bitterness and shook her head. Even without the famine, she said, few men would have married Joseph the Winemaker's girls—or the great-grandchildren of Esther the Soothsayer, who was punished for adultery.

Taraneh the Tulip was not swayed.

"Give them to a Muslim, then," she insisted. "Find a rich Muslim and pray they will be loved."

She told Leyla about Zil-el-Sultan: he was the most influential of Nasser-ed-Din Shah's children, more popular than the crown prince, and the Shah had placed him in charge of the entire southern half of Persia. His title, Zil-el-Sultan, meant "The King's Shadow," and evoked an authority second only to the Shah's. He came to the Palace of Forty Pillars, replacing Taraneh's father-in-law in his capacity as Esfahan's governor, and he had brought with him a ray of hope for the Jews. In proximity to the Shah or his children, the mullahs commanded less power; in Tehran, where the Shah lived, and in other cities where his sons were governor, the incidence of massacres and persecution decreased remarkably.

Still, Zil-el-Sultan was a feared man. He was generous but cruel, strong but impetuous. His four permanent wives were all from noble blood, but he had married them only to secure his position with the powerful families of Tehran. He treated the permanent wives with indifference, spending most of his time with the hundreds of temporary ones he married on limited contract, and whom he discarded as soon as their time expired.

“Take Hannah to Zil-el-Sultan," Taraneh the Tulip urged Leyla. “Don't tell them she's a Jew, because if they find out, the harem eunuchs will poison her. Give her to the prince and pray he will like her."

Leyla understood she had no choice—that her daughters would die soon of malnutrition, that she herself would soon starve and leave the girls without hope. One night when Joseph the Winemaker was asleep, she dug into the floor of the winery, and took out the small treasure he had buried in case of a pogrom: there were twelve gold bangles and two gold coins—gifts he had made to Khatoun's parents, and which he had reclaimed after the young bride's death. Leyla filled the hole with earth, then covered it with a canvas rug. The next day she told Joseph the Winemaker she was going to Esfahan to beg for food. She went instead to the bazaar.

She sold the bangles, and with the money she bought lace. She ordered silk satin and rhinestones and a pair of white slippers embroidered with silk paisley flowers. She smuggled the material into the house and every day worked in secret. She stitched together strips of lace and satin, made a five-layered skirt, a short jacket, a long veil that she covered with rhinestones till it glittered from end to end. With the bigger stones she made a small tiara. She finished just as Joseph the Winemaker discovered that his bangles were gone.

“Thief!" he screamed one night, and turned to Leyla for answers. Leyla grabbed Hannah in her arms, threw the bundle of clothes on her shoulder, and ran out the door.

It was dark. Hannah was afraid. They walked to Esfahan, hiding in the shadow of walls and stopping at every corner: no one, least of all a Jew, was allowed to walk the streets of Esfahan at night. The Shah and his heirs suspected the world of plotting against them, and so imposed a permanent curfew to prevent conspirators from meeting under the cover of dark.

On Char Bagh Street in Esfahan, a night watchman strolled with a lantern hanging from the tip of a wooden pole. His job was to arrest anyone who did not know that night's password—kept secret among the most trusted of the Zil's friends. But he was drunk, and as he walked past Leyla, his eyes clouded by arrack, he did not see her.

"All is safe in the King's shadow," he cried as he faded down the street.

They reached the Shah's Square. Leyla waited for dawn, and the sound of the morning
namaz
—the Muslim prayer performed publicly five times a day—to rise from the minaret of the Shah's Mosque. Then she showed Hannah the wedding gown.

"Am I to be married?" the child gasped.

Leyla held her daughter's face in her hands. She knelt down and kissed Hannah's eyes.

“You are to try," she said.

She watched Hannah wear the gown. She gave her the shoes, put the tiara on her head, hung the veil around her. Then she put her hand on Hannah's head and blessed her.

“Open your hands," she said, and into each one of Hannah's palms she put a gold coin.

“Keep them in your fists. Don't show them to anyone except your husband."

They walked into the crowded street, a woman in a faded chador leading a girl in a wedding gown. They went down

Char Bagh Street to the Shah's Square, through the square and toward the Ali Ghapoo, where thieves and murderers took refuge. Eyes stared at them. Heads turned. Men left their shops and followed them. Women dragged their children and came up to watch.

Inside the Ali Ghapoo, Leyla stopped and faced Hannah.

“Stay here," she commanded, her heart full of pain. “Don't leave until they come for you from the palace."

She turned away. She never saw her daughter again.

And so it was that Hannah stood in the blazing sun of noon, on the first day of the first month of summer in the year 1875, and stared ahead into the garden of the Palace of Forty Pillars without knowing why she was there or what she was to expect. She stood there shining like a diamond in the light, her dress soft and white and beautiful, her veil reflecting the sun, blaring in the eyes of even the most indifferent of passersby until they stopped and stared at her, asking questions she could not answer, examining her without daring to touch her. She stood surrounded by an ever-thickening crowd and waited as her mother had told her to— waited until the day stretched into evening and the sun set into the shady corners of the Palace of Forty Pillars, and at last Zil-el-Sultan heard news of the child bride in the rhinestone tiara waiting in the Ali Ghapoo.

“Bring her to me," he demanded.

The guards took Hannah into the inner courts of the palace and unveiled her before Zil-el-Sultan. He smiled at her beauty. He thought she had a lucky face.

"Who left you?" he asked, but Hannah was afraid to answer.

"What is your name?"

"Where did you come from?"

She said nothing. She stood before him, lost and afraid and speechless, and, trembling, stretched out her arms and opened her hands to reveal the gold in each palm. Zil-el-Sultan was startled.

He sent her to his harem favorite, who looked her over and was pleased. She called a mullah who declared Hannah Muslim and married her off to Zil-el-Sultan. They gave her a new name: Taj-Banoo—the Crown Lady. They never asked about her family; she had come into his harem, and from then on she had no other life. The doors closed and the past faded and Hannah knew, without ever being told, that she could never look back.

Inside the harem, the wives undressed Hannah and inspected her hair and body. They rubbed her skin with cleansing plants and scrubbed her with healing stones. They put oil on her stomach, perfumed her hair, and lowered her into a shallow pool made of dark blue tiles and filled with spring water warmed by a constant flame. They washed her and dried her skin, rubbed her this time with jasmine. They painted her eyes with silver nitrate, painted her lips and her cheeks with rose petals, braided pearls into her hair, hung diamonds around her neck. They taught her how to walk before the prince, how to speak. Then they took her into his bedroom. She was nine years old, and as he kissed her that night, Zil-el-Sultan felt a tooth loose in her mouth.

Muhammad the Jew
became a stranger in his own house. The birth of his son had created a distance between him and Afagh he could not overcome. When he saw her with Ezraeel, all he could think of was Noah the Gold and Qamar the Gypsy and the dark room in the ghetto where worms crawled into the water he drank. He could not tell Afagh of his pain, but he expected her to understand him, and when she did not, he became cold and as severe with her as he was with strangers. He left her with the child and went on one journey after another, came back every time for a shorter interval and with greater anguish. He slept with her only once more, and again she became pregnant. In 1875 he left Esfahan and threatened never to return. By then he was already lost: Mad Marushka had found him and was coming to call.

She slammed her fists against the door of his house one early morning and woke up the household. It was still dark, but the servants opened the door. They saw an old woman, her hair long and knotted, her skin scarred and scabbed and so covered with grime they coughed from the stench of her dirt and infections.

"Call your mistress," she barked at them. She knew Muhammad was gone. She kissed Afagh's knees.

"Please," she begged, "I need a job."

Afagh needed no maids. She was not allowed to hire anyone without her husband's approval. But she was moved by Marushka's poverty, by her age and the revolting smell of her skin. She let her stay.

"I will carry out your every command," Mad Marushka wept gratefully on Afagh's hand. "I will even deliver your child."

She treated her mistress with a mother's kindness. She waited on Afagh day and night, became her friend, gained her trust. When Afagh went into labor, Marushka took her into the bedroom and spread a bed of sheets and pillows on the floor. She made Afagh crouch on the sheets, locked the door from inside, and forbade the servants to call a midwife.

The labor lasted all day and into the night. The contractions were long and frequent, but Afagh's progress was slow, and her womb reluctant. Mad Marushka sat next to Afagh and rubbed her back, washed her face with cold water, and held her up from under the arms when she had no more strength to crouch. At dawn the next morning, she put her hand inside Afagh and announced that the time had come.

"Push," she commanded. "It's here."

Afagh gathered her strength and pressed. Blood gushed out around Marushka's wrist. The child's head appeared. Mad Marushka gripped the skull and forced it back.

“Push,” she cried again. “Push harder."

She felt the head bend in her fingers.

"Push."

She twisted the neck.

There was a single moment of terror: Afagh realized she was about to be murdered with her child. She struggled, then gave in to the force of another contraction. Drenched in the sweat of victory, Mad Marushka looked up and saw Ezraeel—hands outstretched on the glass window, face distorted in a deaf scream—standing on the balcony outside Afagh's bedroom. Distracted, she eased the pressure on Afagh long enough to allow for a last push.

Afagh delivered her child, then leaned back, closed her eyes, and died.

The first time
she heard Solomon the Man sing, late at night when all of Juyy Bar was asleep and even the stray cats were silent, Peacock sat up in bed, trembling, and thought about running from her father's house.

It was the night of the feast of Yalda, the longest night of the year, which ancient Persians had celebrated with music and song and old tales recounted to children around the fire. Long ago, before the Plague of 1866, Joseph the Winemaker had kept the winery open on this night. He had brought out his fiddle and sung to his customers in a voice that was crude and raspy, until someone had asked him to stop.

"It isn't much," he would admit to the customers, "but it would be pretty—the music—if I knew how to play it right."

But the sounds of music had long since died in Juyy Bar. In all the years since Peacock was born, Joseph the Winemaker had never played his fiddle. Music, like rain, was only a whimper in everyone's dreams.

And so, on this night when she heard the sound of Solomon's song, Peacock thought that she was dreaming and closed her eyes again to sleep. Feeling the sour bile of hunger rise to her throat, she drew her legs into her chest and felt in the darkness for the warmth of Hannah's body next to her. She felt only a bare sheet, remembered again that her sister was gone, vanished and unheard from, as if she had never been. She tried to sleep again, but the music would not fade. It was a man's voice—one she had never heard before. It emerged from among the soft notes of a flute, deep and velvety and filled with the pain of a thousand hearts. It sang a tale of sorrow, of love gone astray, of nights cold and empty but for the wine and the music of loneliness.

Between the verses he played the flute. One by one the notes of a melody drifted into the air—like pollen that turned the wasteland of Peacock's sleep into a field of violets. Next to her, Leyla had also awakened. Intrigued by the music, the voice that had erupted from the silence of a dozen years, she rose from her bed and went to the door. Through the cracks in the wood she looked into the courtyard and saw the doors of the other rooms opening as people came out to listen.

Peacock followed her mother to the door. A moment later, Joseph awakened.

"Stand back," he growled at them. "Women have no business peeking out in the middle of the night."