The Mountain and the Wall (28 page)

                       
Khurizada had no end of stories. About the Andiits’ burkas, the Balkhars’ clay dishes, the Kubachi silver bracelets. The singing competitions in Kuba and Derbent. About the Tsovkra-dwellers, who walked on cables stretched across bottomless abysses. And about the unions that free societies formed against powerful khans,
shamkhals, nutsals,
and
utsmis.

                       
Much did Khandulai learn at the communal oven. About the origins of each
tukhum,
and why Tsob thundered across the sky. And so many love songs, so many poems did she hear from the women.

                       
“At last the Gergebils and Kudalins wreaked their revenge on those Kulibs,” said Khurizada. “They taught those bandits and plunderers from the high road a lesson!”

                       
“What do you mean taught them a lesson? The Kulibs capture everyone with weapons who gets anywhere close to their homes and toss them straight into their turbulent Kara Koisu!”

                       
“Here’s what happened. The Gergebils and Kudalins come to the Kulibs and they say: ‘You attacked us, but we want peace. You’re invited to a banquet!’ The Kulibs are glad, but they are afraid to let the strangers near. ‘Tell you what,’ they say, ‘let’s have a feast outside our village. But come unarmed.’ So the Gergebils and Kudalins come with just belts on, no daggers—but they’ve hidden their daggers in the wine ewers. At the height of the feast one of them says, ‘The grain is ripe, time for the harvest!’ And they slaughter all the Kulibs with their daggers!”

                       
“
Vakh, vakh, vakh…
”

                       
That’s the kind of thing they talked about at the oven. But mostly they discussed domestic matters and their work: which fields to irrigate when; the varieties of hard wheat and white barley; the maintenance and seeding of the terraces; the coming of the thaw.

                       
“The Gazalovs started planting before everyone else!”

                       
“Yes, and they’ve already had to pay a penalty for it—one sheep.”

                       
“And Itin’s wife had to pay two measures of rye for doing her laundry in the common spring…”

                       
Khandulai throws on her sheepskin coat and leaves the oven with her friends, heading for home. The walls on all sides are tall and thick—no one can get close to the village. Under her scarf the
chokhto
flows down her back, and huge silver spirals dangle on either side, and each one has a bird in it, or twinned saplings, or two horses mirroring each other, and such long, heavy earrings that her lobes can’t hold them, they need to be sewed to her
chokhto
with string.

                       
At the edge of the winter village the bachelors feast around bonfires. They live in the fortress, whose walls are ornamented with spiraled labyrinths, sacred lines, and pictures of horsemen at full gallop. From the fortress building underground passageways run all the way to the guard towers. They live there without women and call themselves the Union of the Unmarried. They engage in swordfights and in battles with or without spears; they engage in hand-to-hand combat, they build up their muscles, shoot arrows from their bows and drink wine. Among those bachelors is the daredevil Kebed, who has long been in love with Khandulai…

“Look what it’s come to, lines like under the Communists.”

“
Le,
get a move on!”

The human chain winds round and round the booth.

                
…in love with Khandulai. It happened during the last spring celebration—on the Red Day holiday. When burning hoops were rolled down from the roofs, and bonfires were lit on the flat rooftops, and the men jumped across them, chanting, “Into the fire, illness! Into me, strength!” Or maybe it was later, at the beginning of summer, when the young
dzhigits
and girls put on their best holiday clothes, tuned their
chungurs
and
pandurs,
packed food, and went out into the mountains at night with torches.

                       
They danced the whole way, illuminating the path as they went, laughing and singing songs, led by the most energetic and playful of their number. At dawn they arrived at the meadow, and there they danced amid the fresh blossoms,
gathering bouquets and weaving flower wreaths. They collected edible greens for pies, competed in races as well as the long and high jumps, and climbed the cliffs. And there it was that Kebed was pierced to the marrow by the white-skinned, fleet-footed Khandulai, whose sharp wit eclipsed even that of their merry, flower-draped conductor.

                       
In the evening they came back to the village and gave their flowers to the old people who had come out to greet them; they organized dances on the village square, and again Kebed could not tear his eyes from Khandulai’s face. Did he suspect that Khandulai from the upper quarter would refuse him just like the others? That Kebed, dashing though he might have been, was too simple for her, his clan too meager and poor? Kebed’s mother came back to her son empty-handed, and Kebed’s soul darkened with injured pride.

                       
“There’s no slave blood in me!” he said to his mother. “My ancestors served no one. They had the right to bear arms! I may not be rich, but I’m a free
uzden
; how dare this haughty she-wolf insult me!”

                       
And mounting his steed, he headed out to the lowlands with his friends to make war upon the neighbors who had dared defy him.

                       
Ultimately the elders had enough of Khandulai’s willfulness. They gave her a piece of ox hide and ordered her to choose a husband right then and there. Khandulai came out to the village square, went up to the tall, handsome Surakat, and struck him on the shoulders with the ox hide. Surakat stood and realized that there was no escape. They began to make preparations for the wedding.

                       
The courting, the wedding ceremony—during which the groom was made to stand on one foot on an unsheathed saber blade laid flat on the ground—and the celebration that followed, which went on for many days, with all manner of delicacies, competitions, processions, ritual songs, and costumes…it all spun around Khandulai like a multicolored whirlwind. She herself spent practically the whole time in a special room with her girlfriends, sitting on a big sack stuffed with grains and covered with a sheepskin.

                       
Her mother dressed her in a special wedding dress, with a purple forehead cloth over the headdress, and with coins, spangles, chains, and river pearls sewed on, arranged in triangles, swastikas, animals, sunbeams, and circles, signifying all of Creation. Sukarat feasted in a separate room with his friends, whose task it was to guard him vigilantly from potential playful kidnapping attempts. Kebed drained goblet after goblet and pretended to be celebrating along with everyone else.

                       
At last, on the third day of the wedding, Khandulai was taken to her uncle’s home, and at midnight her new husband stole in. They were left alone in the house, but pranksters went up onto the roof to make noise and shout back and forth, and joking and laughter could be heard from outside the closed door. Surakat’s friends were spying on the couple, following the course of this first nuptial encounter.

                       
Khandulai was more than prepared to get through her wedding night: the battle began at midnight and continued for several hours. The new bride had enough strength to prevent her husband from cutting her woolen girdle with his
dagger, and she managed to hold out till morning. Surakat had been made weak by the wine he’d drunk, and his new wife resisted his efforts—to pin down her strong white arms, to gain his prize—with such ferocity and violence that ultimately she wore him down.

                       
Hearing the sounds of the battle, his friends guffawed and egged him on: “Come on, Surakat, come on! How can such a
dzhigit
fail to saddle his mare?”

                       
Come daybreak, the defeated Surakat collapsed on the floor, his wife’s innocence intact. His friends took a roof roller and, still merry, stood it vertically on the rooftop.

                       
When the villagers saw the roller poking up on the newlyweds’ roof, they chorused: “Victory goes to the wife!”

                       
“She could have given in, that’s the done thing, she didn’t have to disgrace that fine young man,” frowned the widow Khurizada, inserting some snuff into her nostrils.

“When will it be our turn? The goddamned beards!”

“Shhh, quiet! Shhhhh!”

“They’ve already renamed the city, you know. We’re now living in Shamilkala.”

“Shh, quiet! Shhhh!”

Shamil shifted his feet and leafed ahead a bit:

                
Many years have passed since Khandulai married Surakat, and since Kebed killed him. Years and years since the Council exiled Kebed from the village and turned him into a forest
abrek
! And poor Makhmud still can’t get to the denouement. Let us turn away from the villagers
and take up the story of my father.

                       
My father used to call me over and ask: “Tell me, Makhmud, what is small and big at the same time?”

                       
“I don’t know, Father,” I would answer.

                       
“Dagestan,” my father explained. “Just think how small it is, and yet how many peoples and customs, languages and arts, animals and plants, coexist here. In tiny Dagestan you can see sand hills and tropical brushwood, eternal glaciers and mineral springs, arid plains and fertile alpine meadows, sea expanses and mountain canyons so deep you could fall for half a day and still not reach the bottom! We Dagestanis, all of us, are very different, but we are alike in our honesty, hospitality, our need for justice. Remember that you are Dagestani, my son, and don’t exchange that honor for any worldly gold!”

                       
Poets used to come visit my father. They told of their songs, how they’d made people sad or happy, had reconciled sworn enemies, sparked the hot flame of love in young hearts. I vividly recall one epic poem about a mountain, a mountain of celebrations; its name is Rokhel-Meer.

“Is that a legal document? Some kind of petition?”

A man waiting in the line behind Shamil was peering curiously over his shoulder at the manuscript.

“Where do we take legal papers these days, anyway? To sharia court?”

“I don’t know—this isn’t anything official,” Shamil said, and mechanically flipped back several pages:

                
Khandulai’s waist thickened and, as was the custom, she concealed her condition from everyone. But her belly swelled
and became huge, like a gigantic pumpkin, and prevented her from taking out livestock and helping with the harvest.

                       
Recently she had been avoiding visiting her parents, and when evening fell, she would press a piece of bread and some cheese to her chest.

                       
“What’s Surakat’s Khandulai got in there, anyway?” Khurizada asked the women gathered at the spring. “I’ve never seen a belly like that in my entire life.”

                       
“She should have given birth long ago, but she’s still dragging it out,” the mountain women wagged their heads.

                       
Finally her time came, and brave Surakat’s aunt, red-handed, droopy-chested Zaza, the village midwife, rushed lickety-split along the November streets. The men had abandoned the house. There, on soft bedding that had been spread for her on the floor, writhed Khandulai, her teeth chattering.

                       
“Open all the trunks!” commanded Zaza. “Tie a rope to the roof beam and make a loop at the end. Let her hold onto the loop, poor thing. Grab on, Khandulai, pull yourself up, now release. Pull, then release. Come on! Where do you think you’re going, Bakhu? You can’t come in, there’s a woman in labor in here! Quick, tear Bakhu’s dress!”

                       
Zaza kneaded Khandulai’s gigantic, swollen, naked belly with her red fingers, issuing and repeating commands: “Sprinkle grain around the bed!”

                       
Khandulai’s mother-in-law hastily cut a lock of hair from the crown of Khandulai’s head and ignited it, whispering spells, sending a cloud of smoke over her daughter-in-law. Surakat’s sister scurried around the bed sprinkling grains of
wheat from a wooden measuring cup; the jaws of the intricately carved trunks and chests on the shelves gaped open, inviting Khandulai’s loins to do the same…But the fruit would not come.

                       
“Well, sister,” Zaza commanded the suffering woman’s mother-in-law, “sprinkle salt on the hearth! Let the sparks scorch the eyes of the mother of the
iblis,
make her flee to her cave!”

                       
The mother-in-law tossed a handful of salt into the fire, salt which the villagers themselves had collected nearby, and at that exact moment Khandulai emitted a terrible cry and her loins spewed forth, one after another, three infants, all of them female.