Cry of the Peacock: A Novel (23 page)

“Your father,” she said, "was my mother's brother.”

Ezraeel the Avenger never overcame his longing for Peacock. He never touched her again in his life. He wanted her and despised her at once, and he never managed to conquer either emotion.

He let her sell more of his gold, and ignored the loss. He gave her a loan so she could rent a room on the Pit, buy a mattress and a comforter for herself and Heshmat. He taught her about stones—agates and turquoise at first, then rubies and diamonds and sapphire. He sent her to the homes of his rich clients with a letter of introduction and a pocketful of jewels. The Muslims received her only to oblige Ezraeel, then showed her the door and asked that she not return. Peacock went back, once a month, once a week, shunned by the servants who cursed her impurity, snubbed by the ladies who were outraged by her appearance, ignored by the men who complained openly to Ezraeel for having sent them such a nuisance. Slowly, through years of relentless effort, Peacock established herself.

"He's losing money on you," her clients told her every time she went to their house. "He could sell the same stones for twice as much out of the shop."

Peacock knew it was true; Ezraeel the Avenger had been kind to her. Just as he robbed his associates, destroyed entire families by making high-risk loans at outrageous interest, just as he had ruined Assal the Whore with his refusal to marry her, Ezraeel the Avenger watched over Peacock and showered her with benevolence.

Reza Khan the Maxim
was born in the north, in the village of Alasht, six thousand feet above the sea, in a thatch-roofed mud shack that clung to the edge of a precipitous slope. The winters were cold in Alasht, the summers arid. Most of the village's children died in infancy. Most adults never even saw the world outside.

A year after his son was born, Reza Khan's father died. His mother, Nush Afarin Khanum, took Reza and moved to the house of her brother in Tehran. She found another husband, remarried, and left Reza to the care of his uncle. The uncle, in turn, gave Reza away to a friend—Amir Tuman Kazim Khan, who was a general in the largely nonexistent Persian Army. In this house, Reza met his first Jew.

Amir Tuman Kazim Khan was a wealthy man with high connections and friends in important posts. He wore expensive clothes, rode horses with red tails, boasted an impressive collection of fine rugs and jewels; he had the portrait of every Qajar king woven onto silk carpets hanging from the walls of his home. His family emblem was engraved onto a ruby that he wore as a ring. The names of Allah and the Prophet were etched into fine agates that he gave away as gifts to his friends. Every New Year, Kazim Khan ordered a bag of gold coins from Ezraeel the Avenger, and distributed them among the servants and well-wishers who called at the house. The year Reza came to live with Kazim Khan, Ezraeel the Avenger sent Peacock to deliver the coins.

She came in her faded chador with the cheap metal clip that held her veil up and that distinguished her immediately as being poor. She had brought the bag of coins, she said, and some chains and bracelets she thought Kazim Khan may be interested in. Reza was baffled by Peacock's accent, but Kazim Khan immediately recognized a Jew.

''What province do you come from?'' he asked without enmity.

''From Esfahan." She fumbled in her pockets and brought out a letter of introduction with Ezraeel the Avenger's insignia. "Read it for yourself," she said proudly. "You will see that I have good credentials."

Amir Tuman Kazim Khan glanced at the letter, then smiled. He waited for Peacock to arrange a row of gold chains on a piece of black velvet.

"Look here," she urged Kazim Khan. "I think you will like these."

Not until she had left did Kazim Khan tell Reza that Peacock was a Jew.

"But you let her in," the boy protested, suddenly terrified that he had become soiled and dishonored. "You touched her gold. That whole bag of coins was in her hand."

Amir Tuman Kazim Khan raised his hands before Reza and held them out for the boy to examine: Reza found no stain, no sign of disfiguration, no evidence of sudden impurity. Kazim Khan sat down, and told him of the Jews he had known: there was a singer, Solomon the Man, whose voice could arouse nature and awaken God's angels. There was a woman, once married to Zil-el-Sultan, who always denied her origins, and whose very absence had deprived the prince of his good fortune. There was a ghost, Esther the Soothsayer, who foretold the deaths of kings.

"Never underestimate the friendship of a Jew," Kazim Khan told Reza. From then on, every time Peacock came to the house to show jewels, Reza Khan the Maxim watched her as if she were a ghost.

He grew up in Kazim Khan's house, but he always remained a stranger. He had a room of his own, food to eat, a chance to study with Kazim Khan's children. But he was conscious of his humble status—an orphan boy, half-guest, half-servant, ill at ease among his benefactors, resentful of his fate. He was an intelligent boy, capable of great thoughts and deep understanding, but he grew up angry and introverted, with no friends and few acquaintances. For a while he tried to study with the tutors who came to the house. But he was older than Kazim Khan's children, and they laughed every time Reza made a mistake. Once, when she was in the house waiting for Kazim Khan, Peacock saw the children mock Reza's handwriting.

“He even writes like a peasant," they said, and Reza turned pale and cold and looked away. After the lesson, Peacock called him.

“Look at you," she said, “so tall and handsome. I saw you first when you were just a boy."

He was grateful that she had not mentioned the incident she had just witnessed. His eyes, dark and forbidding, suddenly filled with tears. Peacock took his hand.

“Doesn't matter what they say," she consoled Reza. “Doesn't matter that you were a peasant. You're going to be King someday."

Reza Khan the Maxim studied with the tutor long enough to be able to read, then quit his lessons. In 1893, when he was fifteen, he enrolled in the first group of the Cossack Cavalry Brigade at Tehran. Then he left Kazim Khan's care and went to live in the newly built House of Cossacks, next to the drill ground in Tehran.

He devoted himself entirely to his training, prayed he would find a home among the Cossacks. He had impeccable discipline, believed in loyalty and bravery and even heroism. Almost immediately he distinguished himself among the Cossacks, and earned quick promotions. The lower ranks feared and emulated him. His superiors commended his behavior and beliefs. Still, every day he stayed among the Cossacks, Reza Khan the Maxim became more convinced that he was serving an evil cause.

The Persian Cossack Brigade had been created in 1885, under the leadership of a Russian commander—Baron Moadel—and had the mission to protect the Shah and the foreign legations in Tehran. It had been established at the request of Nasser-ed-Din Shah, who had gone to Europe in 1878 and had been a guest of Czar Alexander II. Impressed by the Cossack regiment guarding the emperor, Nasser-ed-Din Shah had asked the Czar to create a Cossack unit in Tehran. He was proud of his Cossacks, aware that they were better trained and equipped than his own army. He knew the Cossacks were on active duty with the Czar, that their leaders told them they were there to serve
Russia's
interest in Persia. He knew Russia was his country's greatest enemy, that the Cossacks, though Persians, were allowed to speak only Russian and Turki—the language of Azerbaijan. He knew this, and yet Nasser-ed-Din Shah welcomed the Cossack regiment, and asked them to stay in Persia for at least forty years.

“This is wrong," Reza Khan the Maxim told Kazim Khan every time he was on leave from the mission. He had become tall over the years. He had dark hair, a thick mustache, merciless eyes. “The Shah has put himself and Persia at the Czar's mercy. He is training an army loyal to his enemy."

Offended by Reza's criticism, Kazim Khan would bite his lip and say a prayer to keep himself from getting angry. He would explain to Reza that Nasser-ed-Din Shah was a great man, that he had a great vision for Persia, that he had set out to modernize his country, bring it out of the past, shine the light of progress into its eyes. He told Reza that the Shah went abroad to represent his nation before the world, that he brought home with him the latest in progress; he had, after all, given Persia its first university and modern hospital. He had introduced art, theater, photography.

"It is true," he said, "that you serve the Czar. But without the Cossacks, we would have no army at all."

Reza Khan the Maxim came away more disturbed by each discussion. Nasser-ed-Din Shah, he argued, had brought progress, but at an intolerable cost: for every adviser and every loan taken from Europe, His Majesty had promised a part of Persian soil, a natural resource, or an alliance. In this way he had sold Persia's minerals, forests, and rivers.

He had allowed foreigners to rule for him, sign treaties for him, buy his country's raw products and sell them back to Persians at ten times the cost. His actions lent credibility to the mullahs who condemned every monarch as an imposter—a usurper of the position entrusted by God to the clergy.

"A king has a duty to protect his kingdom's integrity," he told Kazim Khan, who exploded at the suggestion that Nasser-ed-Din Shah was failing his nation.

"Without a king," he screamed as he walked away to mark the end of each visit, "this country will be destroyed by the mullahs."

Reza Khan the Maxim left early for the House of Cossacks, locked himself alone in the barracks, and wondered about an uncertain future destined for failure and doom.

Peacock
wanted Ezraeel's greatest stone.

"I want a diamond fit for a queen," she told the Avenger in the spring of 1895. She had worked with him for three years, managed to sell to all of his clients. Now, she said, she wanted to sell to the queen.

Ezraeel the Avenger raised an eyebrow and smiled with kindness.

"Are there no bounds to your ambition?" he asked. "Do you imagine the queen receives anyone who knocks on the palace doors?"

Peacock became flushed and embarrassed. Her eyes— she no longer veiled her face before Ezraeel—filled with tears he could not explain.

"I have a son at the palace," she said quietly. "He is seven years old. He may still be living with the women."

Ezraeel the Avenger was stupefied. He saw Peacock look up at him, and across the distance that divided them, he thought he could feel the heat of her skin. He demanded no explanation.

"And if you find him?" he only asked. "What then?"

Peacock shook her head. She had known she would lose Arash the day he was born. She knew she could never reclaim him, now that he was tied to royalty.

“Just to see him again,” she said.

On Friday, day of audiences and receptions, Ezraeel the Avenger sent his carriage to fetch Peacock at the ghetto. He waited for her outside his house at Sar Cheshmeh. He was dressed in formal clothes: a white linen shirt open at one side, fastened with a single button at the right shoulder; a quilted silk vest; a long silk robe tied at the waist and closed with a button made of knotted silk thread. He saw the carriage approach through the midmorning traffic, and went up to greet Peacock. The coachman stepped down and opened the door for him. Ezraeel the Avenger did not recognize the woman he found inside the carriage.

Peacock was dressed in regal clothes, made up and perfumed and so beautiful his eyes teared when he saw her. She wore an emerald-colored embroidered chador, a green silk blouse with long sleeves that opened lengthwise, a full skirt—the color of the blouse—that fell to her ankles. She wore white cotton stockings, green-and-gold slippers, an emerald veil. She smiled at Ezraeel.

"Zilfa the Rosewoman thought I should impress the Queen," she explained shyly. Lined with black antimony, her eyes seemed larger, more expressive, of a deeper green. Ezraeel the Avenger never stopped looking at her till they had reached the palace.

From Sar Cheshmeh, they rode to Gas Lamp Avenue— a wide thoroughfare, buried in garbage, down the center of which ran the tracks of a horse car. Half an hour later, fighting the traffic of vendors and pedestrians, of unbridled mules and camels and donkeys, they reached the Square of the Cannons, outside the Palace of Roses. The square was full of dust and dirt, its ground broken, bleached by the sun. In the center, surrounded by a fence constructed from a thousand broken rifles, was a huge basin filled with garbage. At each corner of the basin stood an old cannon, the spoils of a triumphant war—hundreds of years ago, when Persia had had an army—against the Portuguese Empire. The cannons stood on broken wheels, prevented from collapsing only by a pile of debris accumulated under them.

On one side of the square Peacock saw the Imperial Bank of Persia—established, directed, and controlled by the British. Behind a naked flagpole she saw the army compound, where half-nude, undernourished soldiers sat smoking opium.

The carriage went through the Square of the Cannons, and entered another avenue that led up to the arched entrance of the Palace of Roses. Here, in sharp contrast to the soldiers in the square, a group of officials, dressed in elaborate uniforms, stood waiting for Ezraeel behind the entrance gates.

Ezraeel the Avenger greeted Djouhar—the Queen's black eunuch—then introduced Peacock. The eunuch sized Peacock up, and appeared pleased. Still, when they began to walk into the palace grounds, he was careful to maintain a proper distance and avoid defiling himself by touching the Jewess.

They went into a large courtyard with high walls made of yellow and blue tile, in the middle of which was a marble pool full of goldfish. They climbed a large staircase, and entered a room reserved for the master of the eunuchs. It had stained-glass windows, walls painted with miniature figures, a picture of His Majesty Nasser-ed-Din Shah Qajar painted on canvas. Below the picture, against the wall, was a single high-backed chair that only the Shah was allowed to occupy.

Djouhar crossed the room, and led Ezraeel and Peacock through a wide corridor, into another court, at the end of which hung a heavy curtain of red velvet, closed, and guarded by four eunuchs. Djouhar gave the password, and the guards opened the curtain, revealing a third courtyard, this one paved with bricks and shaded with trees. Around the courtyard Peacock saw the wide-open windows of the maids' apartments.