THE HOUSE OF EDRISIS  

Ghazaleh Alizadeh

Translated by: Rosa Jamali

  Season 1: Ashkhabad

    CHAPTER  1           

The turn-out of a turbulence in a household is not all in a sudden, in the wooden cracks , on the sheets , throughout the  hatchways and in the folds of curtains ; the dust covers everywhere longing for the wind releasing the scattered constituents of a lurking- place.

In the house of Edrisis life was going on; the engraved wall   clock with the covered pinnacle of birds and flowers, a piece of work by the carpenters of Bokhara,  struck 10.

Legha looked at her wrist-watch,  she set it forward and stood up, she walked away from the breakfast table and took the bread crumbs for the fish.

Vahhab, the son of  the household , gulped down the last sip of tea from that azure Serv tea-cup, restrained yawning , turned to Mrs Edrisi:" She is better today ."

The old lady moved the glasses on her nose, her eyes behind the glasses were dark blue :" It's not clear what she does."

The fog descended from the arcade, fretted the windows, turned around and went to the pine and poplar trees. From the end of the corridor, there came the sound of washing the dishes , the tap- water turned out and it was the bubbling of Semavar.

Now and then Yavar coughed in the kitchen, pulled his feet on the floor.

The grand lady crossed the eyebrows:" Poor man, growing old , he's got a bad lung , pipes , he somkes a lot."

Vahhab leaned the margins of table, stood up:"I should go to the library , I read an article about the ruins of a city called "Nesa" , It was a grand place once , buried now."

Mrs Edrisi sighed : " A plenty of them have been buried and one day our city is going to be buried."

Vahhab closed his eyes , turned back and walked away.

The household were a kind of quiet in eating, drinking , walking and talking.

Vahhab was thirty but looked older , thin and droopy shoulders, a pale face , solemn and lightless eyes. He had studied in British boarding schools, for any word or movement , he felt the whips on the back . He ate a little and took a shower before the noon , clipped his nails every week and filed them .Below his eyes were bloated for the shortage of sleep, he stood across from the mirror, counted the strands of white hair in a pile of soft and black hair ,the other day he had twelve strands of white hair.He didn't go out, he wanted to be in a shelter , twice a month he dropped in "Ashena Bookshop", the man put away the new books for him, Vahhab knotted the eyebrows and with a closed mouth payed for them , came back home.

In the afternoons if the weather was good, he sat by the pool , opened the fountain and looked at the patterns of the water flowing, he remembered the past , his childhood was far away.

Gradually when it was getting dark , the dreams faded away,birds flew in the garden. In the hot weather female feeding cows from the end of alfalfa field were mooing. On the second floor, his grand aunt, Legha, sat behind the hatchway, with her hand under a cheek, stared at  the whiteberry trees , clay-roofs and faded attics till the time they would turn on the lamps around and drew the curtains. She closed her eyes, behind the dark immersed eyelids , sometimes a blue and yellow pattern like a glass flower expanded and amused her.

On the rocking chair Grannie leaned  against the mahogany furniture of  walnut trees , rubbed the perfume on the back-ears, the acrid extract of Jasmine spread in the house.Once in a while , she saw the dreadful figure of her late husband , in a summer suit , with a white bow and salt and pepper whiskers, in a hoarse and throaty voice caused by tobacco and opium he whispered:" Such a nice smell!" The time she stared at the dark, the white phantom had gone, she heard the creaking hinges of the doors on the first storey, Yavar was walking in the corridor. He turned on the candelabra in the vault, it glared on the plaster moulding , the leaves of vine trees, lotus flowers and the clusters of grapes .The wind moved the candelabra and the chains squeaked.The rainbow prism glowed on the images of carpet, the bifurcate winding stairs and bending balustrade , it leaped around.

The first storey had three corridors, a big anteroom , a library and four bedrooms. On the second storey there were ten attached bedrooms around the balustrade , the bedrooms except three of them were locked.

In the morning when vahhab was tired of reading, leaned against the velvet cushion in the drawing room , half asleep and behind the flowers , listened to the creaking of the springs , there were some pillows with the patterns of peacocks and parrots , he put them under his elbow , he drank a cup of coffee and lit a cigarette.Stared at the waterdrops , he yawned , there was a slight pain in his bones ,  rocked his legs and pondered to  the past , he dreamt Rahila , his aunt who had died young from a strange fever .After her death Mrs Edrisi's hair had grown white overnight , Vahhab was ten at that time.

She was engaged to a broad-shouldered stout man with big eyes and a Moorish face .A widower who was a grand landowner , called Moayyed . People said that he lived in a mansion and had a lot of horses in the stable, with pomp and circumstance, they wanted to buy his chestnut horse for 3000  roubles,he came in hurry with three servants, the sound of his shoes on the pavement , Rahila sat by the bed , didn't move , her hands on the white satin, weary and proud, pouted her lips like roses, grinned. Her head uplifted , her almond eyes half open. The shade of her eyelashes on her moonlit cheeks and with a dreamy glance, tall, airy,  introverted and aloof , nothing made her happy.

In the end of spring , she sat in the courtyard ,  under the scaffold of lilacs , on a straw chair and sipped her tea . White  pigeons surrounded her feet , hovered in the scaffold. The rain started , she walked in the garden , her garments wet, she looked at the clouds as if she was waiting for somebody , she didn't have a friend . Never answered to the letters, visits or messages .

Vahhab looked at her through the hatches , Rahila tucked  her skirt up , skipped over the brook , soft and agile , pranced and  tiptoed on the wet lawn, picked up a rose-bud , smelled and pinned it to her hair , she closed her eyes and opened them once more, wandered in the garden for hours , when she became tired , she went to the shade of  that big elm tree, she made a house with the rubble stones, she rooted up the grass and squeezed it with her teeth, then she stood up and ruined the built- up house with the rubble stones tossing on the steep lawn .

The memory of Rahila was deeply moving  , Rahila's room at the end of corridor , in the north frontline , had two big windows , one to the garden and the other one to the courtyard and the arbour.

The lace curtains had the smell of dust and the perfume of autumn crocuses, when he went to the mirror , his face looked as a stranger .He closed his eyes and wanted  Rahila to be alive, spreading about her straight hair , while combing , the strands  slippped over one another, like a flash of silk , he would turn to a small boy , pulling her skirt , the young girl with her very charming , cold eyes would send him off.

He opened the drawers , arranged the perfumes on the dressing table , nineteen hundred from Paris and Moscow, Italian , Chinese , Indian, the longlasting perfumes of the far oceans :musk and birch and myrtle and black ambergris.In cosmetics she had nothing just perfume , there were several bottles in each drawer.He bent down the table , took a deep breath. He opened the closet , his face was lost in the white garments , muddy stains , flower buttons , dry grass and thorns and beads.In the dark , it turned up a crack of moth- worn wood , he tilted his head and closed the door.He put the perfume bottles in the right place, arranged the folds of curtains , spread the bed-spread to the pillows of lace and embroidery. He went out of the room , locked the door . In the dark corridor , walked on the polished  parquet and went to the library.

There were some magazines in a drawer; he took them out and turned the pages over, he looked at the biography and pictures of Roxana Yashvili , she was a stage actress, starring in plays such as " Small Bourgeois", " One Month in the Village", " The Blue Bird" and "Chaika ", they called her a wild flower, the glimmering of  a creative will-power in her eyes .  Critics believed she could show the spritual images and transfer it to the audience, seemingly resembled Rahila , Vahhab looked at her pictures in the costumes of Normandy women, a black velvet dress , with a fan in one hand , beneath an arbour or at the breakfast table while playing with an actor.  Painters had painted her on the several canvases , poets had written many poems for her. Since six years before, she had lived with "Marenko"; the noted poet .

There was no picture of Rahila in the house . When Vahhab looked at Roxana's almond and black and glimmering eyes and her slim figure remembered Rahila. She came from Tbilisi with a different nature noted for her upheavals. Vahhab didn't like her complacency , didn't read the interviews , just looked at the pictures.

Just at twelve Legha climbed down the winding stairs , stepped in the hall, knotted her eyebrows , cross , broad-shouldered and tall , pale with big lips and a sharp chin and a snipe nose, grey eyes , sweeping and lightless, fumbled around , wiggled the pouts , the backbones pricking in hatred ,she was sensitive to  pumice- stone, even disliked the shape and the name , naked and screaming ran away and fainted unconscious on the floor and in the corridor, Mrs Edrisi sneered and spread a sheet on her hanging boobs.

The smell of men revolted Legha , when the workers came for some days to dig the garden or trim the trees or cut the weeds , she locked herself in the room and didn't come down. A strike of smell made her sick . She opened all the windows , the candelabra moved , in the arcade the wind blew and howled , for two times a day she took a shower. She had the smell of soap and foam with herself . At nights, right after the dinner she took out a little of sour orange blossoms , she brewed it and stirred it with a teaspoon, the leaves soaked and spread out, the steam on the cup had a smell of moss and bare moors , she sipped the root beer slowly , with decency and dignity , her lips were not wet . She stood up and very coldly said good night , in a flower patterned gown and with plait hair , a hand on the banister , she climbed up the stairs, and her pale countenance lost in the dark landing.