Death and the Dervish (Writings From An Unbound Europe) (41 page)

Important changes occurred in the house. Fazli, the stocky stablehand and husband of the black-eyed beauty Zeyna (the younger one’s lover), became the old man’s faithful nurse. It turned out that his enormous hands were capable of the most tender movements and the most careful attention. Hassan would leave small sums of money in his father’s room, since he knew the man and was afraid his devotion might fade.

Hassan ended the dangerous love affair resolutely. Its apparent strength gave out more easily than even the most cynical imagination could have predicted. Its strong fortress fell victim to the eternal traitors against love.

After he had recovered enough for death not to seem too near, his father would not agree to give all of his estate to the wakf, but the wakf was nevertheless large, and along with the caretaker (one honest and reasonable clerk from the courthouse had agreed to accept a caretaker’s bird in the
hand rather than two of the kadi’s in the bush—then it became clear to me who had informed Hassan of Harun’s misfortune), they also needed to find an assistant. Hassan called his younger stablehand in his room and offered him that respectful and well-paid position, if he would never again come into his house, except on business, to see him, and if he would never and nowhere meet with Zeyna, except accidentally, and even that should pass in silence. If he agreed and kept his word, he could take advantage of the opportunity that had been given to him; but if he agreed and did not keep his word, he could start looking for another line of work at once.

Hassan was prepared for the youth’s resistance and complaints. He even considered relenting a little, to let everything go on the way it had been, because he regretted putting such a hard choice before him. But the youth agreed immediately. He was quick and capable. Hassan felt sick.

Then he called the woman, to explain everything to her. But the youth told her himself, that they could unfortunately no longer see each other, that he was leaving to follow his destiny—she already had hers. He hoped she would not have bad memories of him; he would only have good memories of his life in that house. And so, that was how God wanted it to be.

Someone needs to keep watch on him, thought Hassan with disgust.

Zeyna stood by the door, silent, a pallor showing through her darkly tanned skin. Her lower lip trembled, like a child’s; her arms hung powerlessly beside her full thighs, lifeless, lost in the folds of her
shalwars.*

She remained like that even when the youth had left the room. That was how she was when Hassan came to her and put a string of his mother’s pearls around her neck. “So you’ll take better care of my father,” he said, not wanting to compensate her for her sorrow openly, and leaving her unsuspicious before her husband.

For two weeks she walked around the house and yard with the pearls around her neck, sighing and waiting, watching the sky and the gate. Then her sighs stopped, and she began to laugh again. She had gotten over it, or hidden it.

Her husband grieved longer. “It’s really empty here without him. And he, the ingrate, has forgotten us,” he would say reproachfully, long after the youth’s departure.

Hassan was discontent with both them and himself. He had done everything for things to happen that way, but it was as if he would have preferred for them to end differently. “Look: I got involved in order to untie this knot,” he said, laughing. “But what have I achieved? I incited the young man’s selfishness and made her unhappy and free from restraint. I’ve hung this embittered woman round her husband’s neck, and I’ve convinced myself once again that I act wrongly whenever I do something planned. Damn it, nothing is so screwed up as a good deed done on purpose, and nothing so stupid as a man who wants something his own way.”

“Then what isn’t screwed up or stupid?”

“I don’t know.”

A strange man, strange but precious. He was somewhat mysterious to me, but he was to himself as well, as he continuously revealed and sought himself. Only he did not do it with effort or an ill-temper, as others do, but with a certain childlike openness, with the ease of scornful doubt, with which he usually questioned himself.

He liked to talk and he did that well; the roots of his words were deep in the ground, and their branches spread out into the sky. They became a need and pleasure for me. I do not know what it was in them that filled me with joy. I barely remember some of his stories, but they intoxicated me with something unusual, bright and beautiful: stories about life, but more beautiful than life.

“I’m an incorrigible babbler. I love words; it doesn’t matter which, it doesn’t matter about what. (I am writing down,
at random, things that he said one night, while the kasaba slept in the darkness.) Conversation is a link between people, maybe the only one. That’s what an old soldier taught me, we were captured together, thrown into a prison together, chained together and bound to the same iron ring on the wall.

“
‘Shall we talk or be silent?’ asked the soldier.

“
‘What’s better?’

“
‘It’s better to talk. That way it’ll be easier to rot in this dungeon. It’ll be easier to die.’

“
‘Then it’s the same.’

“
‘Well, you see, it isn’t. We’ll think we’re doing something, that something’s happening. We’ll hate ourselves less, and what must be will be; it’s not in our power anyway. Two enemy soldiers met in the woods once, and what could they do? They began to do what they knew and what their trade was. They fired their muskets and wounded each other, drew their sabers and cut each other up; they fought all morning long, until they broke their sabers, and when their knives were all they had left, one of them said:

“
‘Wait, let’s take a rest. You see, noon has passed. Were not wolves, but men. Look, you sit over there, and I’ll sit here. You’re a good fighter, you’ve worn me out.’

“
‘You’ve done the same to me.’

“
‘Do your wounds hurt?’

“
‘Yes.’

“
‘Mine too. Put some tobacco on them, it’ll stop the bleeding.’

“
‘Moss is also good.’

“So they sat down, talked about everything, about their families, their children, and their hard lives. Everything about them was similar, much was the same. They understood each other, and grew close. Then they stood up and said with satisfaction: ‘Hey, we’ve really had a good talk, like men. You see, we’ve even forgotten about our wounds. Now, let’s finish what we’ve started.’ And they drew their knives and did each other in.’

“That friend of mine from the dungeon ring was cheerful, and he made me laugh with this sarcastic parable. He made me laugh and gave me courage. Maybe someone else would’ve said that the two soldiers in the woods parted as friends. And that would’ve been a shameful lie, even if it had happened that way. Like this, the story’s bitter ending was truthful, maybe mostly because I was afraid they would be portrayed better than they were. But again (I’ve never been able to explain this conclusion to myself convincingly), maybe it was precisely because the end was so cruelly truthful that I was left with a childlike idea, a stubborn hope that they nevertheless made peace with one another. And if not those two soldiers, then maybe some others, because it almost happened that way even in this story. Although that wasn’t important for my soldier; he talked so he wouldn’t be alone. He’d seen enough of the world, and experienced almost everything. And he knew how to make his tales interesting, lively, somehow intimate; he savored them, dispelling my fear that it’d be harder for me with him than if I were in prison alone. I’d wake up at night and listen to his breathing.

“Are you asleep?’ I’d ask him. ‘Tell me something, if you’re not.’

“
‘What are we going to do when we tell all of our stories?’

“
‘We’ll tell them again, in a different order, backward.’

“
‘And when we tell them backward?’

“
‘Then we’ll die.’

“
‘Content, like those two soldiers.’

“
‘Content, like two fools who’ve done their duty.’

“
‘You’re bitter,’ he said, without reproach.

“
‘And you’re not?’

“
‘No, why should I be? You see, I went to war of my own free will, which means I agreed to be wounded, captured, killed. The easiest thing of all has happened. So why should I be bitter?’

“As soon as his soft voice began to flow the night would
become less empty. He built a bridge of cobwebs between us, a bridge of words. They fluttered above us in an arch; they rose and dropped, like the waters of a river. He was the source; I was the mouth. A secret was woven between us, and the beautiful madness called conversation worked a miracle: two dead logs that lay side by side suddenly revived, and were not completely separated. When they exchanged us for enemy prisoners, we parted without regret. He’d always find people to listen to him, because he needed them; and I also began to find them. People became closer to me, through conversation. Not all of them, of course. Some are deaf to the words of others; they’re a misfortune both for themselves and for everyone else. But one should always try. You’ll ask: Why? For no reason. So there’ll be less silence and emptiness. At the very beginning, when I’d just gone into trading, I heard about a woman in Vishegrad, the widow of a landowner. She had no one but her son, a young man of twenty. You can imagine how she loved him. He was her only son, all her life lay in him. When the young man died at war, his mother went out of her mind. At first she didn’t believe it. Then she locked herself in her room, started eating only black bread, drinking only water, and sleeping on the bare floor; and every evening she placed a heavy black stone on her breast. She wanted to die, but she didn’t have enough strength to kill herself And as if from spite, death would not visit her. For twenty years she lived that way, on black bread and water, with the heavy stone on her breast, only skin and bones; she turned grey inside, then black, and then hardened, like an old rind. She couldn’t have looked worse if she had hung from a beam, but she lived on. I was particularly shocked by the black stone that she put on her breast every night; it somehow made me appreciate most how much she suffered. And it was the stone that led me to her. Her house was large, with an upstairs, but it was dilapidated and had not been whitewashed for a long time. The property around the house was spacious, surprisingly nicely
cultivated. There was only one old woman in the house; she served the widow for years, and grew weak herself. She told me that they had no help. The property was large; the estate manager took care of everything, but the widow didn’t want to settle accounts with him. She didn’t want to take the money; he took it for himself and gave the two of them just enough to stay alive. But God would not take her and stop her suffering. I lied to the widow and told her that one of my friends, who had also died, had spoken of her son, and that because of this I had come to see her, as it seemed to me that I had known him as well. I lied, because it was the only way I could get her to talk to me. About her son, of course. She’d kept silent for years. For years she’d waited for death, for years she’d thought of him, poisoning herself with anguish. And now she could speak about him. I got her started. I forgot what I’d said in the beginning (lying is very risky); I talked about him as if I’d known him. But there was no way I could make a mistake. She didn’t even realize I’d been just a kid when he died, maybe she even thought her son was much younger than I, since he hadn’t changed in her memory. I told her that he’d been handsome, intelligent, kind and generous to everyone, tender toward her, that he’d stood out among thousands. I portrayed her very thoughts and couldn’t overdo it. All of my praise was weak and insufficient for that mother. She spoke softly, hoarsely, but each word came from her dry lips like a kiss, caressed, coddled, scented with love, wrapped in the fine cotton of her long memory. I was new, a stranger; it was worthwhile to tell me everything about him, to make up for her stubborn silence. But subconsciously she wanted to explain to me why she grieved so much, ceasing to grieve while she spoke, because she saw him at his best and alive. I think it was the first time she really succeeded at it. Alone, and with someone she knew she revived only enough to see his shadow, knowing that he was dead. Now she forgot about death, she repressed within herself everything except for that distant
time in which there had been no misfortune. I knew this wouldn’t last long, that she’d come upon the thought of death. I kept expecting its black cloud to cover her. I would see it by the darkness on her face, but no matter, she was delivered at least for a moment. After that I visited her whenever I was in the area, going on a journey, or coming back, and the woman found more and more images in her memory, and her son became smaller and smaller, younger and younger, always the same and always alive. She shifted him backward into the past from the black hour that had ended his life. She would wait for that moment of resurrection, as for a feast, as for the Bairam; she would wait for me for days. She had the guest room heated if it was winter, for the first time in so many years. She had food prepared, which she didn’t eat, she had moth-eaten mattresses covered with yellowed bedsheets, for me, if I agreed to stay for a few more days and extend her holiday. She didn’t change her life much; she continued to eat only black rye bread and to drink water, and continued to sleep on bare floorboards, with the black stone on her breast, but in her eyes there was no longer only the thought of death. I persuaded her, and she agreed, to request the withheld income of her property from the estate manager, to erect a mekteb for the village children, and to help them with food and clothing, because that was certainly what her son would’ve done. She had the mekteb built, brought in a hodja, and helped the poor villagers so their children wouldn’t go ragged and hungry to school. She did a good deed, and alleviated her suffering.”

“And so, everything ended well and everybody was happy, like in a fairy tale,” I said, mocking Hassan’s narrative.

It seemed that this tale and its moral was intended for my ears, to serve as an example for me: I was probably supposed to gather children and boys around me, and to instruct them how to lead a happy life. It sounded naive and unusual for him, the opposite of everything I knew about him. But he had studied well in the school of the old soldier from the dungeon.