For this week’s Translation Tuesday, we present to you a short story by decorated Azerbaijani author Nermin Kamal, translated from the Azerbaijani by Anne Thompson-Ahmadova. In it, a man and a woman—both married, but not to each other—commiserate about their respective marital woes. His wife can’t seem to recover from grief; her husband is lost in the interminable throes of depression. Meanwhile, the machinery of the city churns on. As the couple take solace in their clandestine connection, the man’s wife finds her own comfort in an unexpected animal visitor. Kamal playfully jumps between various perspectives among the city’s residents to depict their entanglements with a broad vision.
Late one afternoon a man and woman were sitting talking in George Enescu Park in the Eighth Residential District. ‘Cover your ears. Don’t listen to them,’ an old street vendor on a nearby bench told her granddaughter. The man was complaining about his wife and the woman about her husband. Tedious though the conversation was, they were listening intently to each other.
‘How long can this go on? How much longer can we live like this?’ the man grumbled. ‘I come home exhausted from work and find her sitting there crying. She put her father’s pictures on the wall and I didn’t say a word. Now she’s wearing her father’s clothes. I tell her, you shouldn’t keep a dead man’s clothes in the house, take them to the charity. Your father was a big strapping bloke, you’re a petite woman, how can you wear the dead man’s jumper in front of your husband? But does she listen? She’s been crying for six months. I could understand it then—her father had just died, but what can I say to her now?’
‘Mine’s the same,’ the woman grumbled. ‘The house is falling apart. All the cupboard doors are hanging off their hinges. Whatever you touch, it’s broken. He doesn’t fix anything or get anyone else to fix things, he just sleeps all day. Not that his father has died. He says, I’m tired, really tired. You might be fed up of life—that’s up to you, but I’m not. Life is wonderful.’
Though he was just a statue, George Enescu couldn’t bear it. He swept his bow over the strings of his violin. When the man was speaking, the noble instrument growled like a bear, but when the woman was speaking it twittered incessantly like a nightingale. But no one except the violinist could hear it.
‘At least there’s a grave. We gave him a proper burial, laid flowers. I said to her, the world is heading for hell in a handcart. By the time we die we might envy those who are already dead!’
‘Don’t talk like that, love. God forbid.’
‘Anything can happen. They could drop a bomb tomorrow and we’d be blown to bits. I’m a civil defence teacher. I know these things.’
‘That’s what I tell him too. We won’t be young again. We won’t be born again. I tell him the most precious thing is time. It flies like a rocket. Stays in bed all day and sleeps and doesn’t do a thing. The doctor says that depressed people sleep a lot. What have you to be depressed about? Eat, drink, go out…’
‘Exactly. I say to her, how long can you stay in the past? I understand,’ the man softened his voice as though talking to a child, ‘I do understand, you lost your mother, your father brought you up on his own. Another man would have remarried, but he didn’t. He said to you, if I married, I wouldn’t be able to look you in the eye. You were like brother and sister, we know. You shared everything, talked about everything. When you were a child, if you had a tummy ache, he would run for a cab and take you to the doctor, worried his child might have appendicitis, but the years passed and the day came when you didn’t realize he was burning up with fever and you didn’t do anything. We know all that too. He protected you but you couldn’t protect him. But you’re not God who can protect whoever he wants! How many times can you listen to the man’s voice on your damned phone? His bones are already rotting. Time has passed, time! What’s so difficult to understand about that?’
‘He’s just the same, you can’t get through to him. He’s spending his life asleep. I say to him, there’ll be plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead. Get outside, go to work. Find a friend. Wake up! Wake up! He says, I’m fine like this, I like being alone… You tell your wife the soul of the dead is troubled when someone mourns too much. Better to pray for the forgiveness of her father’s sins than to weep. My father died too, but I didn’t act that way. You can’t die along with the dead. Life goes on regardless.’
‘That’s what I say! Do you think I don’t? We all lose people in life, but time passes, and we get over it. But she is the opposite. Time passes and she sinks further down. It’s good to have self-control. Grief has its limits…’
It was real autumn weather. The birds had left the city in time to escape the rain. The first yellow and orange leaves stood out amongst the green of the trees like a premature streak of grey in someone’s hair. An old gardener had flopped onto an empty bench, defeated by the unruly grass.
‘Yes, grief has its limits. Our older relatives came round. My dear, your father has died, may he rest in peace, they said. That’s life. We’ll all die. Do any of us still have their father alive and well? Who can bring back the dead? Our friends came round and said, Kamala, we were once school children, then we grew too old for school. The time came when we went to each other’s weddings, now we are the age that we lose our mothers and fathers. The time will come when we go to each other’s funerals. It went in one ear and out the other. My mother was afraid she’d kill herself. She said, my child, he brought you into this world, raised you, educated you, organized your wedding. Now, you should bring a child into this world, raise them, educate them, see to their wedding, and then you can die. My father said, young men, just twenty-five years old, died in the war last year—fine young men, and now, what should their young children do? The neighbours came and said, be thankful that he didn’t suffer much. He didn’t spend years in his sickbed, doubled up in pain day and night. All she says is how could this happen? I was not expecting it.’
‘Hm. What guarantee is there? A man leaves for work in the morning, and by noon, his kid gets a call—he’s been run over, his skull shattered. Come pick up the pieces.’
‘She doesn’t get it. I found a poet who’s a good speaker, so I brought him round. He’s never lost for words. He’s on TV. You’ll know him if you see him. He came and spoke a book’s worth of words to her. He said, your father hasn’t really died, he lives in you, he is you and you are him. The poet had brought a writer with him, a polite young man. He said, ‘Sister, this is something that either has happened to all of us, or will.’ But there’s no getting through to her.’
‘Hasn’t she got any family or friends? She might listen to them.’ The woman stood up. ‘It’s depressing. Let’s walk.’
They rose and strolled towards the statue. The skilful violinist played cheerful European folk dances to accompany their walk, trying to feed their souls with music and calm the two young people down. But no matter what he played, they couldn’t hear him.
‘Her side of the family’s been round too. I hadn’t met them before. They don’t really know each other as they don’t mix. Her cousin said, what is life after all? What has he lost? What a thing to say! She talked to her as though life is nothing. Go and kill yourself then. What are you living for? Another relative stroked his beard: “You have to accept the realities of life.” Another chipped in, it is not Covid, but hospitals kill people, you should have put him on a drip at home, lots of people do that. That was more fuel on the fire. Then instead of comforting her, her aunt started to reminisce. “Once we were younger I called Kamala’s late father to help me move a sofa. Soviet sofas were heavy as an anvil. He said move out of the way, lifted the sofa by himself and put it where I wanted. I can’t believe a man like that has given his soul to Azrael. The doctors killed him.” And another aunt, her father’s sister, didn’t help matters either: Kamala, she said, your father lived for you! Her relatives made her even worse.’
‘They’d have done better not to come. Instead of comforting her they upset her. If crying made you better, I’d cry too, my darling.’
‘Her friend came round and sat there silent as a mouse. The only thing I heard her say was “Life is terrible.” That set her off again. Her second cousin wasn’t too bad. He said, “don’t think about it. Don’t cry. Death will come to us all. We have to be ready for the unexpected. My wife’s shoes were rubbing her foot. Can you die from badly fitting shoes? Well, she did. It turned out she had diabetes. Things just escalated. She died from a callus.’
‘That’s fate.’
‘That’s not all!’ The man was still angry. ‘I had to call my ninety-year-old grandmother from the village. She came all that way even though she’s not well. She talked some sense though. She said, one day God gave jobs to three angels. An angel called Azrael was given the job of taking people’s souls. Azrael’s mother began to cry, saying, my son, what sort of job is that? People will curse you! Azrael replied, don’t be afraid, I’ll kill people in such a way that no one will know it was me. I’ll show a child a red apple. The child will run after it and fall into the clay oven. His family will blame themselves. My grandmother wore herself out talking, but my wife just said, if I’d taken him to the doctor three days earlier, everything would have been fine, or if I hadn’t taken him to that doctor but to a better one. When my grandmother left for the village, she said, my child, what you are saying is a cause, but what is written, is written: it’s fate.’
‘She didn’t get better though?’
‘She didn’t. She said, why is your fate good and my father’s bad?’
‘Have you got her photo with you?’
The man drew a wallet from the breast pocket of his coat and took out a passport photo of his wife.
‘I see. You keep her close.’ The woman gave the man an appraising look. The violin stopped chirruping and fell silent. Then it started up chirruping like a bird again, as though it was listening to the world around it, testing its sensitivity. The chirruping extended to a warble then stopped with a short whistle. Hundreds of violins in the city responded instantly to that whistle.
‘Yes, I sometimes need it for documents and the like. As I was saying, nothing anyone said made any difference. No one could get through to her.’
At the edge of the park a group of young men were drinking ice-cold beer at an open-air restaurant, a hangover from summer. The woman shivered as she looked at them.
‘Shall I give you my coat… There you are, that’s better. Are you warm enough now?’
‘Yes, I am.’
At that moment the stone violin roared like a spring waterfall. The melody rose to a rapid trill on two high notes—as though a branch hung over a waterfall, with a pair of green leaves trembling above the cool torrent.
‘It’s getting late. Go home if you want to. They’ll be expecting you.’
‘Ugh, don’t remind me. I’ll go all that way and when I get there she’ll be crying again, and the house will be cold and dark.’
‘You don’t have much luck.’
‘It’s all because of her. I’m a positive person. Last night I felt the bed shaking. I’d been asleep so you can imagine what I thought—an earthquake! Then I saw she was crying. What’s the matter now? I asked. She said, I dreamt of my father, he was up close and smiling at me. Wait for the morning and pray for him. Why don’t you let me sleep? I’ve got to go to work in the morning. Is it my fault?’
‘It’s not your fault at all, love. It’s not my fault either. You have to be able to enjoy life, to have a good time. My husband can’t do it, nor can your wife.’
‘I did everything I could. I talked a lot. I said, we don’t live for ourselves alone. A man gets up in the morning for his loved ones if not for himself. He washes his face, combs his hair, dresses smartly and smiles if not for himself, then for his family. I’m a man too—I want warmth, a pleasant day, affection. I wish he hadn’t died, but he did. I’m still alive though. The day will come when I won’t be.’
‘Don’t say that. God forbid. But you’re right. I talk to my husband a lot too. I say, we won’t come into this world again. Families are going on holiday, enjoying themselves. But he stays in bed and sleeps all day. I find him a job but he doesn’t go. Finally, yesterday I called his brother and said, look, this is how things are, we have to sort it out. This can’t go on. I want to live too, and he’s pitiable as well… He took him to the village. He said let him walk outdoors, stroll in the forest, have a change of scene. But I don’t believe he’ll change.’
‘So you’re on your own at home now?’
The notes of the violin rose from bass to soprano like squirrels scrambling up a tree and held the highest point. The note hovered there, like a swing that had swung so high that it could only go back or quiver forward. Like the whistle of a blue tit, the note accompanied the man and woman as they left the park.
They had both got everything off their chest and not much was left of their recent stress and anger. It had started to drizzle. They picked up speed, hurrying along, but their way was blocked at the next traffic lights. The roads were closed to let the president’s cortege pass. The road fell silent, a rarity in the city. In this silence everything—the last rays of the setting sun reflected in the windows, the warmly dressed people, the yellowing trees, the emptying benches—seemed to be saying farewell to the summer. The evening wind drove the raindrops and withered brown leaves into the faces of the passers-by. Shaking his head at the interruption on the road, one old workman hissed violently as though he wanted to say something. Black vehicles soon flew by like arrows fired from a distant bow. Then the lights turned green. The man and woman continued on their way. The raindrops grew larger and heavier. It was a wonder they weren’t soaked through by the time they reached the woman’s home. Looking at them, the building’s old watchman gave a priestly sigh: “We used to do the same when it was raining or windy.”
Darkness fell.
It wasn’t only the man going to someone else’s house that evening. There was a visitor to his home too: a black cat with white paws, born that March. The cat sniffed the wooden floor and seemed to find no danger. He pricked up his ears, but all he could hear was the sound of water flowing down the drainpipe. He relaxed and took his time washing his face. He narrowed his eyes, scratching the back of his ear with a hind paw. At this moment he felt the householder gazing at him intently and left his paw behind his ear in surprise. It’s her! he thought. She was just the owner a cat like him needed—a lonely woman saddened by a string of tough life events. Only a woman like that could focus all her attention on him.
He wasn’t wrong. The woman picked him up as though he were her child, stroked him, and put a soft cushion underneath him. After being well fed and watered, like a real tom the cat fearlessly jumped out of the window into the yard. He rummaged around among the undergrowth until he found something to play with. It was a dry wild fig that had grown on remote islands. It was good—both firm and soft at the same time. He picked it up in his mouth and took it home. He put it in the middle of the room and shook his tail, heavy as a wet fox’s brush. This gesture said: Since you can’t go hunting, I’ll bring you my spoils. His new owner’s lips quivered.
The black cat with white paws knew what would happen. He just didn’t know the day of his death. The dry fig was enough for him to perform a miracle. It was child’s play for him to do what many people had tried to do and failed—bring a smile to the face of the deeply grieving woman. But not too much, not so much that the woman cheered up and in a fit of defiance threw him out in the middle of winter. There’s a limit to cheerfulness. Make her laugh but only as much as he needed. He would have to see.
The cat sat with his white paws neatly together, as disciplined as a school pupil, and regarded the dry fig with a low murmur, his whiskers twitching. There was something amusing about his solemn concentration, as if he were about to solve a mystery. Was it the crows who had dropped it here like they always brought walnuts or the waves of the sea? Who could say? The ways of nature are beyond understanding.
Translated from the Azerbaijani by Anne Thompson-Ahmadova
Nermin Kamal is a novelist, essayist, and short story writer from Baku, Azerbaijan. She belongs to a generation whose childhood was shaped by the final years of the Soviet Union and the emergence of Azerbaijan as a newly independent state. In the early 2000s, she was a key member of a post-Soviet avant-garde movement that questioned literary conventions in the region. Her books have received several national literary awards and prizes. With an academic background in philosophy, she currently teaches at universities in Baku and is working on her next short story collection.
Anne Thompson-Ahmadova is a UK-based editor, writer and translator from Azerbaijani, Russian and French. She lived in Azerbaijan for twenty years, initially moving there to set up a regional unit for BBC Monitoring. Her most recent translations, Days in the Caucasus and Parisian Days by Banine, were published by Pushkin Press.
*****
Read more from the Asymptote blog: