Cry of the Peacock: A Novel (16 page)

"You think
you
can play," she challenged, and put the sticks to the
santour.

She played for ten minutes, a quick and dazzling tune that was at once electrifying and unforgettable, and by the time she finished, she had destroyed the Mongol's reputation and altered every man's memory of music.

In the spring of 1876,
Zil-el-Sultan ordered a week-long celebration in Esfahan. They had had months of rain. The famine, Zil-el-Sultan liked to believe, would soon come to an end. So he decorated the Palace of Forty Pillars and lit up the Shah's Square, invited musicians and poets and artists into the palace, and for seven days and nights poured wine into jeweled cups and broiled sheep over open flames. In all that time he never let Solomon the Man move from his side.

On the sixth night of the celebrations, Zil-el-Sultan called his harem into the main chambers and allowed the wives to join in the festivities. They came dressed in jeweled veils and embroidered chadors—three dozen women with their maids and children and eunuchs—and marched through the receiving hall, giggling and mischievous like schoolgirls at recess. Zil-el-Sultan watched proudly as they filed into the honeycomb of smaller rooms flanking the hall: the size of a man's harem was an indication of his wealth and power.

He drank more that night and talked to Solomon about his wives. He showed him his latest bride—the princess Samira, with the arched eyebrows and the tiny black mole on the back of her neck, halfway between her head and torso, that sent a shiver up Zil-el-Sultan's body every time he kissed it; or his own cousin, the ugly one he had married when she was already old, nearly twenty, as an offering of peace to her belligerent father. Zil-el-Sultan had not slept with her— he could not bring himself to—until his uncle had promised war.

He showed Solomon the Arab woman with the black skin and the golden hair that he swore knew more about love than any of the Shah's whores, the Turk whom the eunuchs believed had drowned two rival wives in the harem pool.

"But
there
"—he pointed to yet another woman
—"that
one came to me already dressed as a bride."

Solomon the Man followed the direction of Zil-el-Sultan's attention and saw a woman sitting in the room farthest from the hall. She had on an emerald chador and veil, and she sat with her knees crossed, surrounded by three maids who stood behind her, ready to serve. She did not speak to anyone. She did not smoke a water pipe.

For the first time in six days, Solomon the Man found himself captivated.

"Where did she come from?" he asked Zil-el-Sultan, his eyes still fixed on Hannah.

The prince laughed.

"I don't know," he said. "The eunuchs say she was a Jew."

Solomon the Man inhaled a lungful of opium to conceal his agitation. He was thinking of a story he had heard in Juyy Bar and never believed: the winemaker's daughter marrying a prince and vanishing from the ghetto as if she had never existed, his wife taking the girl into Esfahan one day and returning alone, claiming she had left him for Zil-el-Sultan to marry. Like everyone else who had ever heard the tale, Solomon the Man thought Leyla had sold her daughter to a Muslim and kept the money from Joseph.

"Why did you keep her?" he asked Zil-el-Sultan when he could no longer contain his curiosity. "Was she so beautiful?"

Zil-el-Sultan began to answer, then stopped. He wanted to remember the day he had first seen Hannah, relive the moment of encounter, understand his own motivation for marrying her.

“She
was
beautiful." He saw the glimmer of two gold coins against tiny palms. His heart warmed.

"She was like an orphan," he tried to explain, "like an offering. I could not refuse."

He missed Hannah. He called a eunuch, who ran forward and prostrated himself.

"Call Taj-Banoo." He had chosen the name himself: it had a lucky sound, a charmed ring.

Solomon the Man watched the eunuch go up to the woman in the far room. He whispered a word to her and she stood up, walked through the crowded receiving hall of the Palace of Forty Pillars without looking in any direction but that of the prince, and approached him through the fog of tobacco and opium and the wave of music and laughter that brushed against her without ever moving her. She stood before Zil-el-Sultan and kissed his hand. The prince introduced her to Solomon the Man.

"My wife," he said, and she looked up. Beneath the veil her eyes were like yellow sapphires. Solomon the Man looked closer, but he could see no more until she had turned around to leave. Then he realized, from the shape of her body under the chador, that she was pregnant. He watched her go and knew he was lost.

Solomon the Man
became obsessed with Hannah—to the point of distraction, to the limit of wisdom. He thought only about Hannah, longed for no other woman, wanted nothing but to see her unveiled—to undo the mystery of her presence, see for himself the bride of Zil-el-Sultan's good fortune. He imagined her as a child, standing in the Ali Ghapoo, dressed in a wedding gown at noon, looking in every direction with her throat full of tears, crying under her veil as she prayed for her mother to save her. He imagined her lying in Zil-el-Sultan's bed with her eyes pale and her teeth loose, imagined her—this daughter of Joseph the Winemaker—living in the Palace of Forty Pillars, close to home but never allowed to go back, close to her parents but never allowed to see them or even speak their name.

He looked for Hannah at the palace, questioned the eunuchs so directly about Taj-Banoo that they were offended at his shamelessness and stopped answering. In Juyy Bar he went to the winery and met Joseph, asked his friends about Leyla. He learned all their stories—from the tale of Esther the Soothsayer to that of Noah the Gold and Qamar the Gypsy, and even Leyla's Muslim brother. When he had heard every tale and asked every question, Solomon the Man was still consumed with the need to know. For forty days and nights he did nothing but brood over Hannah. Then at last he thought through a whole night of sobriety, and in the morning went to see Joseph the Winemaker. Hannah, he accepted, was out of reach. Solomon the Man asked to marry her sister.

News of Solomon the Man's
engagement to the daughter of Joseph the Winemaker spread faster and incited more animosity in Esfahan and Juyy Bar than any other incident in recent memory. In the ghetto, mothers of eligible young women dug their nails into their cheeks and mourned. Matchmakers ran to each other in a fury as they tried to discover which one of them had made the deal. Young men despaired at the thought of having Solomon removed from the circle of womanizing and debauchery that had become the object of all their fantasies.

In Esfahan, whores cursed their bad luck and spat. Ladies of nobility felt betrayed and swore in the most wounded tones never to allow Solomon in their midst again. Even Zil-el-Sultan, unaware of Solomon's motivations in marriage, made a royal frown and asked his friend what merit he could possibly find in a monogamous life. Solomon the Man smiled in the face of all adversity and proceeded with the wedding plans as if the whole world were on his side.

He sent to Kashan for his mother to come and take charge of the festivities. She arrived a week later, a big woman with light skin and nothing of the good looks that had blessed her son. She sat in the carriage she had hired with Solomon's money, complaining of the heat and the dust of the desert, and when she arrived at the city's gates and was forced to disembark—for no Jew could ride through a town—she was so large she struggled for ten minutes before she could free herself. She had come with her daughters, all eleven of them, and with another, darker than the rest and even uglier, whom she claimed was an orphan she had raised from childhood. Solomon the Man swore the girl was his sister. His mother, he mused, had disowned her because she could not stand having yet another ugly girl.

Ghadereh Khanum—the Able One—stayed in Solomon's house for a week and held court. She sat with her daughters around the receiving room, their backs against silk cushions and their hands caressing the necks of enameled water pipes that they forced themselves to smoke; it was the habit of ladies of gentry, which they believed they had become, owing to Solomon's wealth. In Kashan they had been rug weavers. They had lived in a hovel and worked from the age of three, sitting cross-legged in front of wooden frames onto which they tied minuscule knots of wool and silk. And they would have worked till their eyes were blind and their lungs rotted from inhaling wool, except Solomon the Man had made them rich. Now they sat in his house and snubbed the visitors who came to offer their welcome.

At the end of the week of greeting, the Able One and her daughters paid a surprise visit to Peacock's house. As was customary, they arrived early in the morning, before Peacock could have a chance to comb her hair or hide her faults in deceiving clothes. They entered the courtyard without knocking, acknowledged the neighbors with a distant and haughty nod of their heads, and invaded Leyla and Joseph's room with militant urgency.

“Welcome/' Leyla stood up before them, unveiled. The Able One frowned at her beauty. She put her fat hands into Leyla's hair and pulled hard to make certain it was real. She ran her fingers over Leyla's skin, felt her arms and thighs, dug into her blouse to check the firmness of her breasts. Disgusted by the perfection she had found, she turned to her daughters and pronounced the first verdict:

“God forbid," she said. "No woman like her could stay on the path of righteousness."

She looked around the room and complained of its dinginess.

"Bring the girl outside," she ordered as she stepped into the courtyard. "I can't breathe in this hole."

When they were gone, Peacock still refused to come out from under her comforter.

"Send them away," she begged Leyla. "Make them leave."

Ever since Joseph the Winemaker had announced her engagement to Solomon the Man, Peacock had cried and begged and sworn she would not marry. It was preposterous—that
Peacock
should refuse the man everyone wanted. Even Leyla could not understand the child's behavior. She held Peacock's hands and made a plea:

"For
my
sake," she said. "Come outside and don't shame me."

The Able One and her daughters stayed all morning. They inspected Peacock, commented on the thickness of her skin and the darkness of her gums, remarked that her hips were so narrow no child could ever come through them alive. They made Peacock walk from one side of the courtyard to the other so they could see her stride, examined her knees and complained that she was too thin—not fed by her parents—gave her a tray full of fresh radishes, mint, and spring onions.

"We brought our own," said the Able One, not missing the chance to point out the poverty of Peacock's home. They watched as Peacock took the traditional test: if she threw away too much of the greens while cleaning them, they would know that she was a spendthrift. If she threw away too little, she was stingy. If she worked too fast, she had no patience. If she worked slowly, she was lazy. Peacock failed in all categories. Then the Able One called her daughters and left the house.

"Stay for lunch," Leyla offered, but the Able One scoffed. She knew there was nothing to eat.

The next day the Able One and her daughters began to make the invitations. They called on each household personally—all twelve of them—and stayed half a day, drinking tea and chatting until it was time to leave and the Able One extended an invitation for Solomon the Man's wedding. Then the hostess would stand up most excitedly and run into the back of the room where she had stored dried goods. She would bring a handkerchief full of raisins and nuts and offer it to the women, who promised to serve it at the reception. House by house and room by room they made the invitations. They worked till the night before the wedding, and sent messages for those they had not had a chance to visit personally. Solomon the Man, they promised, was going to throw the feast of a lifetime.

To the people of Juyy Bar,
Peacock's wedding to Solomon the Man marked the end of the Great Famine of 1871. For although the earth did not yield a healthy crop for another decade, and although their poverty would become worse in the years to come, the three days and nights of celebration at Solomon's home managed to create in the minds of even the harshest of skeptics a lasting illusion of comfort, and a collective memory of never-ending wealth.

It began at dawn on a Monday, and did not end until after midnight on Wednesday. In between, the men gathered in Solomon's house and ate and drank and danced to the music of seven groups of entertainers he had imported from as far as Tehran and Rasht. They ate eggs and honey and sweetbread and halva for breakfast, drank cool essence of cherries and snacked on apples stewed in rosewater until noon, then feasted on roasted lamb, bread, rice, and golden cookies for lunch. In the afternoon, bands of musicians played, acrobats danced in the courtyard, and old storytellers recited verses from the book of kings while poets repeated the verses of Omar Khayyam. Before sunset, Joseph the Winemaker walked from room to room and poured Persian wine and Russian vodka into everyone's cup. By the time Homa the Ricemaker served dinner, the men were all drunk.

On the women's side, the celebrations were more solemn but just as extravagant. As tradition dictated, they gathered at the house of Joseph the Winemaker, where Solomon the Man had paid all expenses. The Able One and her eleven daughters hosted the affair. On the first of the three days of celebration, they took Peacock for a marriage bath.

They left in the dark, equipped with food, nuts and candy, jugs of cool drinks, and, most important, chunks of henna. In the bath, the Able One took Peacock into the well and watched as she performed the rites of purity. Then everyone came inside, around the pool, and undressed. A band of female musicians, courtesy of Solomon the Man, performed in the nude. Pari the Henna came forward, clicking her tongue to sound a cheer that echoed through the bath until it became deafening. She gave Peacock a dimpled smile and a reassuring pat, admired her beauty and remarked on her youth, then set about "turning her into a woman."