Missing Soluch (18 page)

Abrau still couldn’t speak. He raised his head up. Ali Genav began to massage Abrau’s ears with his hands.

“What happened? What did he say?”

Abrau finally replied, in broken speech, “Cold … too cold … didn’t come!”

Abbas brayed from across the room, “Didn’t I tell you to send me? I told you not to trust him with that job! If I’d have gone, he’d be here. I would have brought him. Even if he was sleeping with his wife, I’d have dragged him out and brought him. Castor oil! I need some castor oil … You should have had someone capable do it!”

Ali Genav removed his cloak from Abrau’s body and loosened the laces on the boots, taking the boy’s feet out of them. He rose and was about to leave when Mergan entered the door with Hajer behind her. Just then Morad stepped in the room with his arms full of cottonwood. Ali Genav looked at Mergan as if he had a question he didn’t dare ask her. Mergan’s eyes had a shadow across them. What could he do? Finally he opened his mouth.

“Yes? Well?”

Mergan said, “She passed … God have mercy on her.”

“Who? Which one?”

“Your mother. Mother Genav!”

Ali Genav said with disbelief, “Now what the hell am I supposed
to do? Night! It’s already night!”

He said it quietly, not directing it at anyone. It just slipped out. He put his cloak under one arm and his boots in one hand and walked heavily out the door.

Abrau pointed to Ali Genav as he left, and said to his mother, “My pay! My pay!”

Mergan sat between her sons. Abbas said, “Mama, dear! I need some castor oil! I’m dying. My stomach, my insides. My insides hurt so much! Give me castor oil. My insides are full of coins! Mama!”

Worried and anxious, in the mists of the morning, Abrau slid out from where he was. His bones had warmed a bit, and he felt as if he could walk. Quietly, he dressed and tiptoed out of the house. Sounds were still coming from behind the closed door of the stables. Abrau crept forward and listened. These were the last emanations from Abbas’ troubled stomach—he had locked himself in the stables last night and now, at the break of morning, wrapped up in his own pain and his own concerns, Abbas had locked off the stable. He had closed the door and would not let anyone else inside. The last light from the lantern flickered in the darkness of the stable. Abrau thought that Abbas must finally have found some relief in there. But Abrau wasn’t really concerned about his brother. He tied up the edges of his overcoat,
drew the string around his waist into a knot, and then exited through the gap in the wall.

The alley was still dark. However, the snow’s light was beginning to break through the darkness. The snow was now covered by a sheet of ice. It had become dry and impermeable. The coldness was spreading, that cold that follows every snow. As the saying goes, “Worry not for the day of snow; worry for the day after!” But Abrau was relieved that on the day after the snow, meaning on this day, he had no major chores to see to. He had already made his contribution with his work on the day before. Even on the short distance he had to go, the coldness burned him. His eyelids couldn’t fight the harsh dawn wind, which rose off of the snow and cut through him. His hollow eyelids, which were pockmarked from childhood chicken pox, flickered open and shut. They couldn’t stop blinking. His nose began to run. His face, bitten by the cold, began to look withdrawn and bruised. Abrau felt frostbite beginning to numb his chin and forehead while tears gathered at the edges of his eyes. He hid half of his face in the collar of his overcoat as he passed before the door of the mosque. The door was half open. Abrau peeked inside. A casket covered by an embroidered sheet was set onto the winter cover of the pool in the courtyard, which was frozen stuck. One of the stray bitches from Zaminej’s wild packs had decamped beside the casket. Abrau guessed that Mother Genav was still lying inside the casket, since people aren’t buried at nighttime. So, there was no time to waste. He continued on his way, entering the alley leading to the town’s public pool. The pool was a solid square of ice. All around the pool, piles of snow were heaped on top of each other. The bath’s boiler room was just a ways farther on, at the edge of one wall of
the town baths, next to the drain to the pool. Abrau circled the pool and headed step by step down an embankment along a narrow path. The path twisted and turned like a snake’s tail, leading to the low and broken doorway into the boiler room.

Abrau opened the door. Ali Genav was sitting on a slab of rock beside the water heater stoking the heart of the fire with a metal poker, occasionally tossing a handful or two of kindling into the fireplace. He has sensed Abrau’s entrance, but Ali Genav was calmer and more deliberate than to be drawn out of his own thoughts by a sudden movement in his surroundings. So, he remained focused on his work, as if no one else were there. Abrau shut the door behind himself, approached Ali Genav, and sat quietly in the comfortable warmth of the fire. How the warmth entered his heart! Without looking at him, Ali Genav handed the poker to Abrau and extracted a crumpled packet of cigarettes from the pocket of his shirt. He took a cigarette out with his mouth, holding onto the end of it with his teeth. Then he took a burning branch from the fire, lit up, and exhaled a cloud of smoke from his nostrils. With a voice full of self-pity, he said, “I’ve not slept a wink since last night! The moaning and groaning of this damn woman stopped me from even shutting my eyes, damn her and her father and ancestors! She was swearing and moaning until the break of dawn. It’s as if she thinks she’s owed something. Infernal woman! She makes the world a salt-desert, bringing nothing good to it. If she’d die, I’d be free of her. Why should someone waste his wheat and bread on a woman who has nothing to offer and who brings no blessings! A female donkey would at least bear offspring once in a while, but this bitch won’t even bear a thistle bush so that one can at least feel the satisfaction of having left something
behind! May her father rot in hell. What is supposed to give me hope in life? When I die, what will carry my name, except for a slab of stone?! When I die, it’ll be as if I never lived. So like some fool I came and went. So what? So I beat her once the first time she was pregnant and she lost the kid! Now what am I supposed to do with her? I lost my head and I beat her. Now what? She complained so much and harassed my father and mother so much that I couldn’t have a say in the house. And then this happened to my poor mother. I swear on this fire before me, she was the cause of all these problems. Otherwise, I would never have thrown my own mother out of my house to go and live in a ruins and to meet this kind of an end. Didn’t I suckle from my mother’s breast? How will she ever forgive me for what I’ve done? How? After all, she’s gone now!”

Abrau had come to raise the issue of his pay for his previous day’s work. His worries now came from the fact that, after having awoken at dawn to come down to the water-boiler room, Ali Genav was clearly so self-involved that Abrau didn’t have the heart to ask him for anything, much less for his money.

“And now my donkey has come down sick, too! The hairs on his body are all on end, and the poor thing is shaking like a leaf. What did you do to him yesterday?”

“A donkey that’s put to work doesn’t become sick, does it?! You must have let it get cold last night!”

Ali Genav replied, “No! He must have been sweating, and you must have had him stand somewhere for a while in the wind, and he caught a cold.”

Abrau took a handful of kindling and pushed it into the fireplace with the poker. “We went straight there and came right back. And I’ve ended up sicker than your donkey!”

Ali Genav smoked the last bit of his cigarette and sighed, “I don’t know what to do with this woman! She’s become the greatest burden of my life.”

Abrau carefully said, “Ali …”

Ali Genav looked at him. The pupils of his eyes shone in the light from the fire.

Abrau asked, “Do men who leave ever return?”

Ali Genav stared at the smoke rising from the fire, took the poker from Abrau, and said, “What do you know about the ways of the world? He might eventually come back. Some do. Your father could return one day.”

Abrau said, “And do they all leave in this way?”

Ali said, “No, each one leaves in his own way.”

Abrau said, “I just wish I knew where he’d gone. Why didn’t he tell us where he was going?”

Ali said, “Do you think he knew where he was going himself? Some have left and have never been heard from again; while others send word after some ten or fifteen years. Morad Nim Mani left and we didn’t hear from him for eighteen years, when we found out that he was in Bejnurd working as a prayer scribe. But once Muhammad Balachai left, it was as if he’d never existed! And we heard the news of the death of another fellow just recently—his children went up toward Sangsar to take his sheep, and they ended up staying out there. And then there’s Ghuli, the father of our own Safdar … He left like a real bastard. He had three camels and worked as a porter on the road to Ghuchan. Out there, he did business among the Kurds, and the women there attracted his attention. Some say he’d fallen in love. He used to play the
dohul
drum and he was a good dancer. Anytime the Kurds had a wedding, he’d show up.
Eventually, he sold his camels and wasted away what little he had. Then one day he came back to Zaminej with his hands empty, begging. I remember it well. I had just shaved for the first time and I was going with some others to play
kolah qidj
when I saw that Ghuli Khan had shown up. His camel’s saddle was on his back. Those days, if you were a camel owner, you could marry well. He had a fiancée here, Safdar’s mother, who was then still really just a girl. He went to his fiancée’s home and was acting the role of the husband-to-be. That night, he had his way with her. He planted the seed of our own Safdar that very night. Then next day, he sold the inheritance he had from his father—a copper cup and saucer set and some bits—to Karbalai Doshanbeh, the father of Salar Abdullah. He bought some rice with the money and made a rice dish and ate it with his fiancée. The next morning he left and no one would ever see him again. No one knows what hell he’s gone to! Some say he’s gone back to those same parts, around Darreh Gaz, that is, where the Kurds are. Some say Safdar knows about this. But any time talk of his father comes up, Safdar shakes his head and says, ‘He can go to hell!’ One time, I jokingly said to him, ‘Go find your father; they say he’s been seen up by Darreh Gaz.’ He replied, ‘I hope he goes even farther away, to Kalleh Khavajeh or farther!’ And you’ve heard the story about my own uncle, no?”

Abrau said, “I just wish I knew where he’d gone!”

Ali Genav said, “Forget about it—if wanting to see him was like a tooth, I’d say you should pull it out and throw it away. Imagine he was never here. What do we know? Goats go where there’s grass, don’t they?”

Abrau replied, “I just wish I could forget about him!”

Ali Genav said, “Between you and me, your father had no choice. He was a respectable man. We need to give him his due; he had a strong sense of honor. He was hard-working. He was creative. He wouldn’t let anyone speak down to him. He had a short temper. He just couldn’t take much more. That’s why he left! Soluch was entirely different from Safdar’s father. I know that if Soluch is ever able to fill his pockets with something, he’ll be sure not to forget you. He’ll be sure to show up then. He was a reliable sort, Soluch. The poor guy!”

Abrau was stoking the fire. He said nothing. He was sitting on his legs before the fireplace, lost in thought. His lips were pressed together. It seemed as if he were unconscious of Ali Genav’s presence. Ali Genav also decided to drop the subject. He was tired and sleepy. He yawned, punched his chest with his fist, and said while rising, “I’m going to go lie down and see if I can sleep. You keep an eye on the fire. The pots are already boiling, so take it easy with the kindling. Just take care the fire doesn’t go out.”

Abrau was silent. Ali Genav went to a corner of the room, lay down on an old blanket, and said, “Put the kettle by the edge of the fire so that it’ll boil. I have so much to do today! I have to dig my own mother’s grave, God rest her soul. That other poor woman—I don’t know what to do about her. But if I can’t get some sleep, I’ll be useless.”

Abrau put the handle of the kettle on the end of the poker and set it on the edge of the fire.

“You’re like me. We have the same nature. You’re good with any kind of work. But this Abbas, he takes after his worthless uncle! He’s split right down the middle. Instead of focusing his mind on any particular work, his eyes are always looking
around for something else. He’s always trying to get at what someone else is holding or carrying. His eyes are like hungry thieves. He’s like a dog that thinks someone will eventually come around to throw him a bone. His mind and eyes are always searching, like a stray dog. In a few days, he’ll have a beard and mustache—I can’t help but wonder how he’ll fill the belly of a wife and children then?”

Soluch had told Abrau many times, “The only time a man can raise his head among people is when his shoulders have been drenched in sweat. A man is someone who, if you slap him on the back, dust rises from his shirt!”

On the rare occasions when Soluch spoke, he would generally speak in this vein. He’d say things like, “Work! Work! The bread you get from work is what gives you your essence, your honor. A man only has his work!”

But why did he leave all of a sudden?

There was no way that Abrau could digest this. However he looked at it, he couldn’t comprehend it. He knew that need was at the heart of it. Could there be anything else? Yes, need—but so what? Was Soluch the only one who was in need? Only him? How could he be justified in leaving? Just leaving like that. Leaving behind his wife and daughter. One might consider the others, Abrau and Abbas, as nearly men. But what about Hajer? Didn’t he consider the fact that by next spring Hajer would be nearly at the age of maturity? That she’d be stepping onto the ladder of adolescence? Had he even thought about these things? He must have. The Soluch that Abrau knew was a responsible man. He was practical, more bones than muscle. He couldn’t have gone without thinking over all of these questions. But where could he have gone? After all, winter’s not the
season for working. If you had a special skill that used the different fingers of your hand, during the winter you’d never have to open your fist. To the extent that Abrau’s experiences in life had taught him something about these things, he knew that no matter where they went to find work, all the men would return to their homes in the winter. There, they’d huddle under one roof with the rest of their families to wait out the season until spring. They’d make it through the winter in one way or another, surviving with very little. So where could Soluch have gone in the middle of the winter? What kind of work could have drawn him away?