Mother Russia Read Free Page B

forbidding people to walk on the grass; none are needed. But Pravdin, hunched forward, absorbed in his thoughts as he cuts diagonally across Sokolniki Park, is in no mood to obey signs that aren’t there. Pigeons scatter. Emaciated squirrels claw their way up trees. An old man in civilian clothes with a chest full of medals angrily shakes his cane but Pravdin, out of earshot, hurtles on. At Khokhlovka, a district of factories and warehouses, he reaches for his chalk, scrawls in English across a billboard trumpeting how many schools have been built in the last five years:
    Nothing worth knowing can be teached
    (Anon: Pravdin studied English in the camps but his teacher disappeared in midcourse); Glancing fearfully at dark clouds conspiring over the rooftops, he hurries on to the warehouse that serves the Druse as a base of operations.
    The small door at the rear opens before he has a chance to ring. Pravdin, shivering from a rain that has yet to fall, ducks to enter, is greeted by Zosima, a Berber with a small blue flower tattooed on her left cheek. Long plaits of silky black hair fall across her shoulders to her waist, indicating that she is not married. Her lids are painted blue; her gaze is direct, unblinking. Pravdin has seen her before; she is one of the Druse’s “nieces” and chauffeurs him around in a curtained Packard that is said to have belonged to the Cuban ambassador. (“I never drive myself,” the Druse once confided to Pravdin, “my hands are too small.”)
    “Chuvash expects you,” murmurs Zosima.
    “How expects me?” Pravdin is edgy. “I never called I was coming.”
    Zosima only steps back, bolts the door behind him,leads the way through labyrinthian warehouse aisles stacked with busts and statues of men whose biographies have been conveniently lost: Bukharin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev. (“I am the day watchman at a pantheon of nonpersons,” the Druse told Pravdin the first time he visited the warehouse.)
    The Druse, whose full name is Chuvash Al-hakim bi’amrillahi, greets Pravdin at the door of the room that serves the warehouse guardian as an office. Dressed in a black European suit, an embroidered skullcap set squarely on his shiny bald scalp, deeply tanned, he places his right hand on his heart, inclines his head to Pravdin. “Salaam aleikum, brother,” he says quietly.
    “Shalom Aleichem back to you.” Pravdin bows awkwardly, precedes the Druse into his office which is covered, floors and walls, in oriental carpets, giving to the room the thick muffled atmosphere of an Uzbek yourta. Chuvash and Pravdin sit cross-legged on either side of a low iron table. An old beetlelike woman, her face masked by a heavy black horsehair veil, hovers. Chuvash mutters something to her in Kirghiz (one of the six Turkic dialects he speaks fluently). She moves away, neither man speaks, she returns with shallow bowls of green tea brewed in a charcoal-heated samovar and served with a delicate herb called hell. The aroma clears Pravdin’s nasal passages. The Druse offers Pravdin a plate of biscuits. He takes one, bites into it, cups his other hand underneath to catch the crumbs.
    The Druse sips his tea while it is still scalding hot. Pravdin leaves his bowl on the table and blows on it until he can bear to lift it. When the bowls are empty the old woman is summoned to take them away.
    “So.” Pravdin dries his lips on the sleeve of his Eisenhower jacket, clears his throat.
    “Brother, it has come to me again,” Chuvash says.

    Pravdin, concealing his skepticism behind a crooked smile, leans forward.
    Chuvash places both hands on the iron table, palms down, speaks with his eyes closed, his back straight. “It is the reign of the last Emir of Bukhara, Said Mirmuhammed Alimkhan,” he recounts intently. “He lives in the Ark twenty meters above the level of the city. This Friday, as every Friday, carpets are laid between the Ark and the mosque. The people prostrate themselves, see only the Emir’s