The Tale of Aypi Read online

  “These men, always thinking about themselves all the time!” said Aypi to herself. “Didn’t consider what everyone would start saying about the girl.”

  Then she decided to test the strength of Gutly’s love. She came up to him, ran her hands around his back then clasped hands with him, playfully entering his embrace until her lips touched his ears. “Dear, when will our wedding be?” she whispered breathlessly.

  Gutly tensed up suddenly like he’d been struck. “Well,” he said, clearing his throat, “I just said this coming year honey, while we were under the tree, have you already forgotten? At New Year’s I have a break from university and you’ll be of age, so if your parents give permission then we’ll be married.

  “And if they don’t? Then what?”

  Gutly couldn’t answer this question, but he took his hat in his hand and looked away for a moment. The light of the moon showed the panic in his eyes. “Oh, it won’t make any difference. We could get married tomorrow too.”

  “You swear? Really? Tomorrow?” she asked in her melodious voice, looking up and clapping her hands together.

  “Yes, tomorrow,” said the youth, smiling awkwardly. “As long as you’re of age. You’re the most beautiful girl in the world to me.”

  “Even in the capital?” teased “Bagti.”

  “Yes, even there.”

  “I don’t believe you!” she contradicted. “There must be at least one in the capital!”

  “Yes, yes!” said the slightly flustered Gutly. “I mean… no! You’re the only one I love! That’s all there is to it.”

  “Come on, let’s go walk along the shimmering moonlight together,” she suddenly suggested as she stood in the silver light. “Look, there’s no-one else living nearby, if it’s just the two of us, it’s ok! Let’s go! I said let’s go! Why are you standing there like a post? Come on, let me pull you over those glowing waters!”

  “Over them?” asked Gutly looking surprised.

  “Oh what a bore! The moonlight! Its mystery gives me power!”

  An inexplicable fear rose inside Gutly. All that his ears heard and his eyes saw were like a dream. Was he really awake? “It’s like I don’t even know you Bagti,” he said fearfully. “You’re usually so shy, at Kerem’s wedding your singing was so bashful and so sweet. What’s happened to you tonight? Are you feverish?” he asked, cautiously pressing her to himself. “Let me kiss you.”

  The false Bagti scoffed and laughed, “Don’t worry, now it’s my turn to kiss you!”

  This truly astounded him, never before in his experience had a girl been so forward or said “I’ll kiss you!” The girl didn’t wait for his response, but violently pressed her lips against his, which they met like cold embers. When she finally stopped and stepped back, Gutly was unable to hide his delight.

  “Bagti dear, I feel like a feather in the wind! You make me so happy!”

  “Love gives you wings!” said Aypi, laughing at him, “so become light as a feather! Look, now open up your eyes, but fall sleep!”

  Aypi lifted her feet off the ground and floated above the shoulders of the sturdy youth who floated right behind her. “Wow, those stars are as big as apples,” he said as they broke through the clouds. I want to go see them!” he exclaimed innocently like a child.

  “Be patient,” replied Aypi, “they’ll all be yours soon.” Before they reached the heavens though, they alighted on Aypi’s Island. Gutly moved to embrace her again but false Bagti slipped out of his embrace like a snake to stand beside him. Gutly took off his hat, and kneeled before her like a feudal lord.

  “In this world or the next,” he said, “I am yours! Tonight your white face is whiter than before, whiter than snow! There is no one alive with as beautiful complexion as you!”

  “You’ve got that right,” answered Aypi sorrowfully. “But I’ve got something to show you on this island that will frighten all these sweet words right out of you. Hang on to your hat and keep your eyes open! You’re about to see the Venus Star, my love!

  They flew up again, right into the heavens this time, and soon landed in an Edenic garden redolent with the birdsong of fairytales. To behold the creatures of this garden was simply astounding! Brilliantly coloured butterflies and scarabs buzzed around them, all astonishingly beautiful. Beasts, both predator and prey lived together in peace – the fearful lions and tigers with the gazelles, onagers, saigas, camels, oxen and cows, leaving them completely untroubled. All kinds of animal, bird, or plant could be found in the garden, and its grasses and the behaviour of the beasts amazed Gutly.

  Monkeys leapt from tree to tree, gathering ripe fruits to give to the tigers, lions and crocodiles, which ate them up without any need for meat at all. The mountain goats had their fill of green grass and whenever they began to head-butt each other out of selfishness, the lions and tigers interceded to calm them down.

  “What a beautiful place!” exclaimed Gutly.

  “This is Venus!” she answered. “Life is such in this particular world.”

  “But why is it not like this in ours?”

  Aypi reflected, unable to answer for a while. “I don’t know; some mistake must have been made at the birth of our world perhaps? Maybe man can fix it before it’s too late. That is, if they want to keep on living.

  “Since we have come all this way, I’d like to see God, if that’s possible. He’s got to be here on Venus, right? I want to ask God himself one difficult question about mankind: “What went wrong on Earth? When will war come to an end?”

  “How presumptuous you are! Do you think God is like a beautiful girl who will sit there listening to whatever you say and be happy with it? God isn’t here, he’s on Sirius. No one living can see him, only the dead! What’s the use of only seeing the dead, if he won’t speak to the living? Perhaps men are their own little gods! The best thing they can do for their lives is constantly improve themselves. Is there some other solution? No, only man can make man happy.”

  “How?” asked Gutly, as if suddenly waking from sleep.

  “At the very least, if they don’t do evil to each other, that would be enough to make them happy” Aypi replied with annoyance.

  “Oh my Bagti, we’re happy aren’t we? We’ll be happy and grow old together and then die someday, won’t we?”

  Aypi’s countenance changed as she heard this. “A fairy tale,” she answered. “Meant for children and young girls, not me. I’m not your happiness, and I’m not your Bagti either!” The ghost’s voice sounded sharply in his ears. “I’m not like the girls who’ve fallen under your spell! I’m the bitch inside every woman – Aypi! Have you heard of me?”

  Gutly’s eyes widened, but he was still obviously asleep, and he moved like he was swimming through a lake of milk. Aypi, realizing her hatred was useless, relented a bit.

  “See the bird singing on the branch over there?”

  “Yes, I see it,” replied Gutly, who found the singing pleasant. “The song of those birds is like the voice of the most beautiful girls in Ashgabat!” He realized the slip, and continued “Just like your voice!”

  Aypi smirked just like a living woman would: “If you went to Ashgabat right now, would you roam the streets, or go right to your dear Bagti? Come, it’s time to choose your path!”

  “I’ll have to decide when the time comes… and so what? Always decisions! I still have to finish school, then I’ll figure it out, until then I’m free to have a little fun like everyone else, I’ve got the right don’t I?”

  “Do you really? Free just like everyone else? You’ll pay for this! Even if I don’t help the rest of the village, at least I’ll help one girl, or maybe I won’t even do that, but I’ll open the eyes of men everywhere, they’ll finally understand what they are at least!”

  They soon began their dangerous flight home through the cold darkness of the heavens. The terrified, sleepwalking Gutly finally landed
on the Caspian coast. “Get out of my sight! Don’t let me see you here again!” she warned him.

  As Gutly woke up, he repeated the words twice. The first time he was walking like someone just woken from his sleep, but by the second time he was already running at full speed. In the feeble light of dawn his hat bobbed in the dark, flying like the birds in the dream. Aypi sighed, “Perhaps it will be a lesson to him,” she thought, “Helping just one girl would quench my anger.”

  Gutly couldn’t even leave the house for a few days after the incident. When she saw this, Aypi said “What a strange boy! And to think his fine words could befuddle a girl so.”

  “Damn them,” she complained. “Have they lost all self-respect, that they can’t even step outside? Is it possible? Where is this prodigal strength and spirit of theirs? What does it mean, when one little woman can take out a whole town of strong men, who’ve braved storms and raging seas, and turn them into house pets?” Should she rejoice or mourn? Did this ghost, both killed and brought to life at critical moments in the village’s history, have any reason to rejoice in her work? If her deeds harmed these people again, what a pity it would be.

  How to snap them out of it, she puzzled to herself, and return men to their natural condition? What was the source of their discontent? Why did they make their wives bow and expect some confirmation of their manhood? Why did they still brag of their lifelong dominance over women, when they too were born of woman? When little boys get into trouble, they hide under their mother’s wings remaining dependent as long as they stay there. Perhaps pride made them pose before women to cover the embarrassment of that initial weakness and show that they counted for something. It was nothing more than men struggling to prove their independence from their mothers. Could this congenital guilt be the wellspring of their overweening pride and belligerence? How could they be cured of this stunting and made free?

  If men recognized this unshakeable truth, they would recover from the ignominy and mend their courage. As long as they thirsted for war they were boys; to become men only when they disavowed it. The tension of birth, when they had hung perilously between life and death, still loomed in their sub-consciousness, and until that was alleviated too, they wouldn’t be real men.

  When Mohammad declared in the Hadiths that “Paradise lies under the feet of mothers,” had he not only honoured the eternal role of women, but also shown males how they could be real men and true adults? Her grandmother Anna, a Cossack enslaved in Saklab and sold through Persia to the Caspian coast, had insisted that the Christian prophet Jesus said the same thing.

  Regretting her own cruelty, Aypi lowered her head. As she ceased her flight through the village, she looked back towards the sea.

  She had wandered the heavens for a time, but the peace she could not find on earth would not be found in heaven, so she descended once more into the sea, where her bones had rested in the sediment for hundreds of years, and took her uneasy rest.

  16

  With her heart in her mouth, Ay-Bebek stepped outside. As if for the first time, she took in the winding rows of familiar, run-down houses and huts standing incongruously but jauntily on frail stilts. Then she went back home and opened up her old hope chest, took two pieces of paper from it and folded them into her handbag. She took the baby up in her arms and carried him outside.

  “Baljan! Baljan!”

  “What is it, Mom?” he asked, as he came running from the backyard where he had been playing.

  “Come and follow me!”

  Together they left the village. She observed the wilting flowers and mourned the receding tokens of spring, which so recently had been poppies sparkling like red gold; just as she mourned her distant girlish dreams, long since turned to ash.

  “Where are we going, Mommy?” asked Baljan tugging at her hand after they had walked for a while.

  Ay-Bebek pressed on a little farther, then pleasantly answered, “My dear child, we’re going to see our new house in the city. Look, here’s the deed for the house,” she said, indicating the paper’s edge in her bag. “I’ve had it in my chest the whole time. Everyone else has seen their new house, so now it won’t do for us not to see it. I’ve brought salt folded up in this hanky, and we’ll leave it at our new house.”

  “Why?”

  “How should I know? It’s an old superstition, son. Whenever people move to a new house, first they leave salt in it.”

  “Mom, but why?” he echoed in his high-pitched voice.

  “If you do, your new house will be happy and prosperous. They say it’ll be a lucky house.”

  Baljan thought for a while, then, looking his mother up and down as she walked beside him, asked the guileless question of a child:

  “Mom, will Daddy come later? Does he know we’re going to the city?”

  Ay-Bebek tried to assuage his doubts. “He’ll know for sure, boy, is there anything he doesn’t? He’ll come back from fishing and see that we’re not home, and he’ll know right away we went to put salt in our new house.”

  “Mommy, let me go back and get him,” he suggested, looking back anxiously at the distant village and obviously dissatisfied with his mother’s answers. “Otherwise he won’t find us and won’t know where we went. Mom, if he doesn’t find us, he’ll be upset.”

  “He won’t be upset! Why should he be, are we doing something to be upset about?” answered his mother curtly.

  “Mommy,” said the boy, staring up at the sky, “Look!”

  Ay-Bebek looked up. “Why, what’s up there?”

  “Don’t you see, Mom– over there – don’t you see that black cloud? If the weather turns bad, daddy will come back tired. What’ll happen if you aren’t there, Mommy? Let’s go tomorrow to the new house, all together.”

  Ay-Bebek’s step faltered.

  “That’s hardly a cloud, more like some feathers that fell off a coot and are floating around.”

  Nonetheless, after that she ceased making any further progress: First she’d start toward the city, then back towards the village. Finally, shifting the baby in her arms, she resolved to turn around and retrace her steps.

  “Okay then, don’t fall behind me! Let’s walk fast, if people are putting tarpaulins over their houses we’ll do it too, otherwise, before your daddy comes rain’ll be in our house again, and soak all our things.”

  “Okay Mom!” said the boy, happy to be going back. He went ahead of his mother, skipping just as he always did.

  When they returned home, the black cloud growing over the sea didn’t appear too threatening. Ay-Bebek let the boy go off and play and she put the baby in its cradle, then leaned over to nurse for a while. Her eyes, tired of looking for her husband’s form on the road, involuntarily closed and she drifted into unsettling sleep.

  Her sleep was not long; rays of sun reflecting off polished armour and weapons soon awoke her. From the sea, they crossed over the dunes, line by line: strange, terrifying warriors. They appeared suddenly, as though sprung from the earth, the limit of their massed formations beyond the range of sight. Ay-Bebek observed them from afar, wondering where they had come from. Just yesterday and even today, whatever else had been happening, it had been peaceful; everyone had been gathering up their children and preparing to relocate. Now the rocky, secret bathing places where so recently she had stripped and entered the sea were full of endless companies pouring out and dispersing from strange ships.

  Ay-Bebek began sprinting to tell the village men, but her knees knocked; no matter how hard she tried, she could not run. At every step she tripped and collapsed. She couldn’t understand how so many potholes and bushes had appeared on the well-known road, but each time she fell, she got up and kept going. How she suffered; falling, rising, until at last, when she hadn’t the strength to stand, she crawled. “I’ll have to go on this way,” she commanded herself. The village was a distant speck though; how could she crawl such a long way?
No, that would not stop her, but how painful and difficult it was, and her knees were raw. Anyway, that was nothing, because those stone-faced warriors, steel clad and armed to the teeth, were marching over the dunes, getting closer with each breath.

  “As long as I get the news to someone, what does it matter if I die? Isn’t there be some child or youth on the road who could go faster?” she wondered, hastening her crawl. At the crest of each dune, imagining herself near the village, she craned her neck and looked forward, then twisted around to see how much distance remained between her and the pursuing hordes. With each passing moment, the distance closed. She had little doubt they were foes: hunting her down this way, who else could they be? They were here to take the fishermen’s village, and they wouldn’t make any distinction between old and young, no, they’d kill everyone. Where was Baljan? Oh, and her poor baby was sleeping on the porch! If their eyes should chance on the crib!

  Just then someone standing over her laughed scornfully.

  “Why do you flee? They won’t harm us! Don’t you see me unafraid here? If it were frightening, I too would flee. If you don’t curse them, they’ll offer you a gift.”

  “Who are you?” asked Ay-Bebek, looking up at the woman. Getting up to her feet, she again enquired, “Who are you? How do you know these people?”

  The unfamiliar woman’s beautiful hazel eyes sparkled merrily. “Don’t you know me? Your husband is a friend to mine. Do not fear them! Look at this ruby necklace! Would you like to try it on?”

  “No!” yelled Ay-Bebek shrilly, “I won’t wear it, I don’t want that kind of thing!”

  “Won’t you?” mocked the woman, laughing. “If I give it, well, then you’ll wear it!”

  Ay-Bebek’s eyes bulged looking at the woman. “Are you Aypi?” she gasped.

  A strange sparkle appeared in the apparition’s eyes. “Yes, I’m Aypi. Why didn’t you recognize me? Don’t play dumb, I know you did, if your husband does, so should you! All you people do is talk of me day and night. As if you yourselves were any different from me. How are you better? When will you see how crooked you are? Sooner or later you’ll leave the village and be lost forever. You’ll blame me for that too, I suppose? Did I tell you to do that?”