Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

“Uzbeks,” Brady said as they saw their first people—a series of men laid out on mattresses in the shade of trees and buildings. “The Russian colonists down here call all the urban Muslims Sarts, but there are lots of different groups. You can tell them by their hats. See that guy over there?” He pointed out an old man sitting in an open doorway, wearing what looked like a long white nightshirt and a peakless embroidered cap. “That sort of hat means an Uzbek.”

Piatakov grunted. He sometimes felt that Brady should have been a librarian, albeit one who took no prisoners.

They came to a crossroads where the road from the station met a wide, tree-lined avenue that boasted a number of imposing buildings. Two Uzbeks were walking toward them, toting battered kerosene cans from which they sprinkled water across the sandy street. Their bare feet were blanched by the dust.

The Russian Imperial Bank seemed permanently closed, its double-eagle plaque hanging loose on the wall by the boarded doors. Three small boys were sitting on its veranda, watching the strangers with interest.

“There,” Piatakov said, pointing out another building fifty yards farther on, where a large red flag hung above an open door, low enough to serve as an entrance curtain.

Inside they found a large office, shutters closed against the sun. Two desks bore typewriters; several shelves sagged under piles of papers. The large map of Turkestan that hung on one wall looked as though someone had thrown a bottle of ink at it.

A chain of troika bells hung beside the door. Brady shook it, conjuring a mental picture of falling snow.

A bleary-eyed man emerged from the back of the building. He was a Russian, somewhere between youth and middle age, with a complexion that suggested more than a few years in Turkestan. He greeted them cordially, said his name was Ulionshin and that he was the local party secretary.

Brady passed over two of the identity papers that Aram Shahumian had forged in Moscow. Ulionshin took a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles from a drawer and examined the papers carefully. “So, Comrade Travkin,” he said, addressing Brady, “you and Comrade Semionov here have come to report on the state of our roads in Turkestan.” He offered a wry smile. “It will be a short report, I’m afraid. One word would suffice for most of them and not a word you use when ladies are present. But accurate. The camels have been dropping it for several thousand years. Still, what can I do to help you?”

“Somewhere to sleep tonight and a ride into Tashkent tomorrow morning, if that’s possible,” Brady said.

“Transport by road, you mean?”

“It’s the only way to see what improvements are necessary.”

“Of course, of course. But we have no motor transport, I’m sorry to say. There was an automobile,” he explained almost wistfully, “but the Tashkent Cheka decided they needed it more than we did. And of course they were correct, but…” He shrugged. “I can have you taken by taranta .”

“Taranta?”

“I’m sorry. Living here for so long, one forgets. A taranta is a four-wheel carriage, quite comfortable, and Tashkent is only thirty versts away. Three hours at the most.”

“That sounds very acceptable,” Brady said.

“Good. As for a place to sleep, I shall be honored to share my roof; you will find nowhere cooler in Saryagash. And of course you must eat with us.”

It was a pleasant evening. Ulionshin’s wife was a lovely, almond-eyed Uzbek, and his equally beautiful daughters had a plethora of questions about the wider world, which Brady was happy to answer. The food was the best they’d eaten for several months: thick unleavened bread, which Ulionshin called lepioshka , and chunks of lamb on skewers grilled over a slow-burning fire, all washed down with raisin-sweetened, bloodred apple tea. Afterward, stretched out on his back in their allotted corner of the roof, Piatakov stared up at the starriest sky he had ever seen.

He lay awake for a long time, feeling the past gnawing at the edges of his contentment. This was his new life, freely chosen. Why was it so hard to cast the old one aside?

They left Saryagash soon afterfirst light, sitting side by side on the taranta’s rear seat. The driver, a young Uzbek named Mirumar, spoke not a word of Russian but refused to be inhibited by this handicap. Whenever he had a moment free from shouting at the horses, he would explain passing scenes of interest with extravagant gestures, streams of incomprehensible words, and what he no doubt thought was a winning smile.

The journey was slow but mentally relaxing, despite Mirumar’s exuberance and the endless jolting of the ironclad wheels on the badly rutted road. They sat mostly in silence, aware of the heat’s slowly tightening grip, listening to the heavy breathing of the two ponies, watching the mountains rise in the distance. Only once did they encounter other travelers: a convoy of camels escorted by nomad horsemen, who treated them to an array of lordly stares.

“Kyrgyz,” Brady suggested, a word that unleashed a long stream of obvious invective from their driver.

As they neared the foothills of the mountains, the transition from desert to greenery was abrupt. Silence gave way to birdsong, the harsh yellow glare to a patchwork of colors less fierce on the eye. They joined the road from Chimkent, which proved just as rutted as the one from Saryagash, but which wound prettily through thinly wooded slopes and across the occasional dried-up stream. It passed through several villages, each a single street of clay dwellings surrounded by fields full of working women, each boasting a chaikhana or two full of lolling men, glasses of green tea and ornate hookahs only an arm’s reach away.

Piatakov didn’t have to wonder what Caitlin would have thought.

The sun was approaching its zenith when they drove across a wide riverbed and stopped beside a guard post on the northeastern edge of Tashkent. Two Uzbeks in Red Army uniform noted the red stars in their caps and examined the proffered papers only with reluctance, before returning to their seats in the shade. Mirumar urged the ponies forward once more, down a narrow, unpaved street hemmed in by a wall of clay houses.

Ulionshin had explained the city’s layout to them: a Sart town of around a hundred and sixty thousand Uzbek natives and a Russian town of a hundred and twenty thousand colonists, side by side on either bank of the Sarla River. Coming from Saryagash they would arrive in the Sart town first, but Mirumar knew the route through to the Russian quarter.

Brady had other ideas. He leaned forward and tapped the boy on the shoulder. “Chaikhana,” Brady said, adding a drinking mime for good measure.

A few moments later they pulled up outside a large and prosperous looking teahouse and, after disentangling their cramped limbs and luggage from the taranta, sent Mirumar on his way with a precious ruble. Brady surveyed the coins still left in his hand somewhat ruefully. “Rogdayev had better cough up,” he said.

They found an empty mattress and sat with legs stretched out, their backs to the side of the building. The adjoining square contained at least twenty empty market stalls, and the wall of dun-colored single-story buildings that enclosed it was broken only by the streets running in and out. Above the roofs the dome of a mosque gleamed fitfully in the sun. Most of the mosaic tiling had fallen away, and red poppies were climbing up the dome from roots in the supporting stonework.

“You’ve never been out of Russia before, have you, Sergei?” Brady observed.

“No.”

“I think we should stay in the Russian town,” Brady decided, surveying the other, mostly sleeping, customers.