The Orphan Sky Read Online Free PDF

me, crawling up the walls, slowly enclosing me. The words of an ancient curse whispered in my head, turning to acid in my stomach.
    From the dome of a moonless sky
    The dead maiden’s evil eye
    Casts a spell upon a soul
    Who wanders all alone.
    The Immortal’s hex. A punishment for entering the green door.
    In panic, scared of my own shadow, I ran toward a tiny beam of light flickering at the end of the balcony where, to my total humiliation, I bumped into Chingiz. He leaned on the railing, smoking a cigarette.
    â€œIs somebody after you?” He puffed smoke into my face.
    â€œNobody.”
    â€œNobody means—a ghost. So you’ve been running from a ghost. Oh, there she is.”
    I anxiously turned in the direction of his pointed finger.
    â€œGot you!” He soundly slapped his thigh and brayed like a donkey. His gold teeth glowed in the night, and his eyes ogled me with a malignant, unmovable stare.
    I dipped into my pocket to retrieve the key and opened the door to our apartment. Actually two doors. An exterior heavy oak door identical to those of the rest of the apartments. And a bunker door, as I called it. A year ago, Papa brought a brigade of workers who spent an entire week setting the solid steel door and fortifying it with German locks and bolts sturdy enough to protect the treasures of the Hermitage Museum.
    It may not have been the Hermitage, but our apartment did resemble a museum. The largest unit in the building, it had four rooms altogether: a sitting room with a vaulted ceiling and arabesque tapestries on the walls; my parents’ boudoir, furnished with the Versailles bedroom set of Louis XVI (not the real one, of course, but a magnificent handmade replica); my room, airy with a balcony, split by a screen into a bedroom and my music rehearsal space; and Papa’s pride, the smoking room.
    It was filled with so many interesting things: his X-shaped wood-and-brass throne with an eagle’s head, perched on carved lion’s feet; a dragon-wrapped chandelier, emitting shadows instead of light—a gift from Chairman Mao in 1973 when Papa visited China with a Soviet delegation; a dagger studded with massive rubies, suspended in front of a Persian rug hanging against the wall. Papa liked to joke that he had found it in Genghis Khan’s hidden tomb.
    With Papa, I never knew if he was joking or not. He was an avid—no, compulsive—collector. He hunted his treasures the way he hunted his oil reserves. Fanatically. But if you asked him, he’d just shrug and laugh. A little hobby , he called it. And why the bunker door? Just to keep safe the biggest treasures of my life, my beautiful wife and daughter .
    Why did my family live in such luxury? Why was my papa allowed to acquire and display his riches instead of using them for the common good? Why did I myself preach the equality of our Communist society to the younger generation?
    Because that was the normal way of life in Soviet Azerbaijan, something I never would have thought of questioning. There were common citizens and there was Nomenklatura —the ruling class of Communist Party members, who held key positions in government, industry, and culture. To become a part of Nomenklatura was an ultimate ambition of every Soviet citizen.
    I was born into it.
    â€œI thought we’d miss you,” Mama said without taking her eyes off her mirror. Dressed in a beige evening suit, she was applying her neutral lipstick. Her only fake means of beautification, as she called it. She didn’t need more. Her natural colors mixed into a bouquet of spring. She had the eyes of the morning sky, and the sun seemed to get stuck in the silk of her hair. Today she allowed it to swing freely in the air. So different from her usual professional hairdo—a braid wrapped around the top of her head designed to add a sense of gravity to her youthful face with its skin as transparent as Carrara marble.
    I had received none of