Death and the Dervish (Writings From An Unbound Europe) (51 page)

From the kadi’s room I could hear a quiet conversation—someone was with him.

I stepped into the ransacked courtroom and stopped in the empty doorframe, upset: the kadi was lying on the floor, dead.

No one told me, but I knew he was dead. I had known even before I arrived there. I had known even while I was waiting under the eaves of the old mosque up in the mahal. That was why I had gone to the edge of the kasaba, so it would happen while I was not there.

Several people were standing in the middle of the room. They looked at the kadi with compassion. I was not sure whether I belonged in their dolorous group.

I crossed through the room and stopped above the corpse. I bent over and lifted the gown that had been thrown over his head.

His face was yellow, as always; only his forehead was blue and bloody. Surprisingly, his eyelids were lowered, and there was no expression on his face. He was hidden from everyone, as he had been in life.

“Wretch,” I thought, feeling neither hatred nor exultation. “You did me much evil. May God forgive you, if he wishes.”

Death had separated him from me; not even ugly memories could keep him here. But that was all I could think. No regret, no memory, no forgiveness. He was no more, that was all.

I did not want to give him a farewell kiss, as is our custom. It would have been unnecessarily hypocritical: those men knew what he had done to me.

I said the prayer for the dead, I could do that much.

Then I heard footsteps and turned around. The kadi’s wife was approaching the corpse.

I stepped aside to give her room, without spite, even without curiosity. I had hated him while he was alive, and I would have thought it strange if someone felt sorry for him. But it was somehow distasteful that even his wife would grieve for him, lying, for the sake of propriety, just to fulfill nice customs.

She removed her veil, paying no attention to us, and knelt over the corpse. She looked at him for a long time, without moving at all, without a sigh, without a word, and then bent down and kissed him on the shoulder and forehead. After carefully wiping his face with her silken scarf, she kept her hand on his yellow cheek. Her fingers were trembling.

Was she really grieving for him? I had expected a sorrowful posture, deep dejection, even tears, but in no way had I expected trembling fingers on the corpse’s face. I was stunned by the tenderness with which she wiped away his blood, as if he were a child, softly, to keep from hurting him or causing him any pain.

When she stood up I approached her.

“Do you want him to be taken home immediately?”

She turned her head toward me abruptly, as if I had hit her. Only later did I remember that her eyes were shaded with kohl and full of tears. Had it been easier for her when she heard than when she saw him? But at that time I paid no attention to it, because I was surprised by the glance with which she pushed me away, scorched me, stabbed me. It was the glance of a mortal enemy.

I was perplexed by both that threat and that unexpected sorrow. Maybe it had not been so dead in their empty house, maybe it would only be that way now. Not knowing why, with no real reason, I pitied both her and myself. I felt empty and lonely, just like her. Maybe because of the fatigue that had descended upon me, like twilight.

Later I remembered that she seemed beautiful, more beautiful even than on that evening in her large house, because of her eyes, glistening with tears, and because of her expression of utter hatred. One of her hands, upset, forgotten, emerged from under the folds of her
chador*
and stopped in mid-escape, startled by the silence.

I felt a desire to place my forehead under that hand, which was searching for something, and, with closed eyes, to forget my fatigue and the present day. To make peace with her. And with the world.

I was still caught in that gloomy mood when I went out into the street, into the gray rainy day dappled with wet snowflakes, oppressed by a mass of black clouds that had covered the world.

The wind whistled through me; I was an empty cave.

How can an empty heart be healed, Is-haq, you phantom, whom my powerlessness has conjured up again and again?

I walked aimlessly, stood in front of the inn for a long time watching a caravan that had just arrived, and I did not
know whether it was good or bad to be a traveler. I stopped at Harun’s grave and had nothing to tell him, not even how it felt to be a victor.

I should have gone into the tekke, to spend some time alone, to regain my strength. But I could not even make up my mind to do that.

Then Mullah-Yusuf found me, and my apathy vanished; it was as if the fog had risen. While the more important part of my work had still been ahead of me, I had not thought about him. Now he surfaced, as if from underwater, an unpleasant reminder of himself.

Hassan is looking for me, he said, and wants me to come to Hadji-Sinanuddin’s house.

I had also forgotten about Hadji-Sinanuddin. Was he really at home already?

He told, briefly—more because I asked than because he himself wished to tell—how in the morning Hassan had found out that the musellim had sent Hadji-Sinanuddin under guard to the Vranduk fortress,
⁴
from which hardly anyone ever returns, and raced off in that direction with his men. But they would have worn out their horses in vain had not the river swept away some bridge in front of the fortress; thus they caught up with the guard and kidnapped Hadji- Sinanuddin. They hid him in a village, and sent for him as soon as they heard what had happened.

I would have been more interested in this story if it had been told to me in different circumstances and by another mouth. Now I looked at the youth suspiciously. He seemed cold and restrained. He spoke hesitantly, as if none of it were any concern of mine.

In a fury that was hard to control before him, I said: “I don’t like the way you’re looking at me. I don’t like the way you’re talking to me.”

“How am I looking? How am I talking?”

“You’re keeping yourself at a distance. And you’re keeping me at a distance. It’d be good if you forgot what you know.”

“I’ve forgotten it. It’s not my affair.”

“Not so! It is your affair, but you should forget it. None of what I’ve done is mine alone.”

He surprised me with his response, and drove me to rearm myself with the caution and firmness that had left me a little while before.

“Let me leave the tekke,” he said abruptly, making not a request, but a demand. “As long as you look at me, I’ll continually remind you that I might betray you.”

“You’ll also remind me of the pain you inflicted on me.”

“So much the worse. Let me go away, let’s forget one another. To free ourselves from fear.”

“Are you afraid of me?”

“Yes. As you are of me.”

“I can’t let you go. We’re both bound by the same chain.”

“You’ll ruin both our lives, yours and mine.”

“Go into the tekke.”

“No one can live like this. We’re following on each other’s heels, like death. Why didn’t you let me die?”

“Go into the tekke.”

He went in, dejected.

16

      
On that day we will ask hell: are you full?

      
And hell will answer: are there any more?
¹

SNOW, RAIN, FOG, LOW CLOUDS. THE FORERUNNERS OF WINTER have been threatening for a long time now. And winter will be endless; it will last almost until Saint George’s Day. I thought about how the mufti must have already been suffering in advance: for six months he would worry and wait, for six months he would freeze. I could not understand why he did not leave this place. I ordered that he be supplied with beech or oak wood, that his chimneys and stoves be rebuilt so the rooms could be heated from the outside, from the corridor, day and night; and that juniper branches and elecampane be burned in his rooms.

I also became sensitive to the cold. In my and Hafiz-Muhammed’s room a fire crackled pleasantly in an earthen oven with red and blue tiles. I also hired a new servant. Mustafa could not get things done and was already unbearably quarrelsome—he grumbled and growled like an old bear. And I could no longer stand a cold room, as I once had, especially when I would return from the courthouse, wet and shivering, full of dampness like a cleaning rag.

Many things in my life had changed, but I kept my old habits. I allowed myself a few more comforts, but really very few, and more simplicity in my dealings with people;
perhaps because I was not threatened and because the honor and rank of kadi gave me a pleasant feeling of security. And more power, which I did not want. But I could see it even in Hafiz-Muhammed’s look, when I went into his room in the evening to ask him how he was and whether he needed anything.

My duties as kadi do not leave me much time for anything else, and it has been a long time since I have looked into these notes. But when I remembered them one evening and read through a few pages, I almost doubted my memory. Could it be that I had really written this, and that I had really thought this way? I was surprised most of all by my faintheartedness. Could I really have doubted in divine justice so much?

At first I was surprised by the offer of some prominent townspeople to give me the rank of kadi. I had never intended or desired to attain it. I might have even refused in other circumstances, but then it seemed like salvation to me. Because suddenly, after everything that had happened in the bazaar, I felt tired and exhausted, unpleasantly aware that I was in a trap; and not only I and not only since yesterday. Men are too vulnerable, they need protection.

Surprisingly, I grew accustomed to my new position quickly, as if a long-awaited dream of mine had come true. Maybe this was the golden bird from fairy tales. Maybe somewhere within me I had secretly been waiting for such an act of confidence for a long time, forever. That I had not allowed this vague ambition to manifest itself was because I had certainly feared disappointment if it did not come true, and suppressed it in a dark and hidden place in my soul, as I did with all other dangerous desires.

I had raised myself above fear and the ordinary, but I was no longer surprised by that. Who considers his happiness undeserved?

On the first night I stood by the window and looked at the kasaba, the way I imagined the silladar had, and,
listening to the excited rush of my blood, I watched my enormous shadow in the valley. From below, tiny people turned their eyes up at me.

I was happy, and yet I was not naive. I knew I had been helped by many accidents that had fallen into place like beads on a string after the first incident that had caused everything, my brother Harun’s misfortune. Well, they were not exactly accidents: that blow had given me strength and set me into motion. God had wanted it that way, but He would not have rewarded me if I had sat with my hands tucked in my belt. And they had chosen me and no one else, because I was partly a hero, partly a victim, partly a man of the people, not too much of anything but rather everything with a moderation acceptable to both the people and the town leaders. And what had apparently prevailed was their certainty that they would be able to control me easily and do whatever they wanted.

“You again think you’ll be able to do exactly what you want,” Hassan told me.

“I’ll do what the law and my conscience command me to do.”

“Every man thinks he can outwit everyone else, because he’s sure he’s the only one who’s not stupid. But thinking like that is truly stupid. And so, we’re all stupid.”

I did not feel insulted. This blunt remark confirmed for me that something was bothering him. I did not know what it was, but I hoped it would pass. It would have been a pity if it lasted too long, a pity both for him and me. I needed him unhurt, untroubled, and not plagued by bitter thoughts. I would also have liked him this way—I would have liked him no matter how he was, especially since I was his equal. But he was dearer to me as my lighter side. He was nonchalance itself, a free wind, a clear sky. Everything I was not, but that did not bother me. He was the only man who did not respect my position and missed me the way I had been. And I tried to be as close as possible to the image that
he saw. Sometimes I even believed I was like that. I tried to find him after my encounter with the dead kadi; he was indispensable to me, he alone; I wanted to see only him. He was the only one who could drive away my strange fear. I became attached to him, once again, forever. I would bring him back to myself whenever it was necessary. I did not know exactly why, maybe because he was not afraid of life. My new position gave me security, but it would also bestow loneliness upon me. The greater the heights, the greater the emptiness. For that reason I wanted to keep his friendship. He would be my army, a warm refuge.

Soon that need became even stronger.

I set about this difficult office, thinking it a shield and weapon in a fight that I had been forced into. But it was not long before I had to defend myself. Although no bolts of lightning had struck yet, an ominous thunder could already be heard.

Upon receiving the imperial decree with which the grateful Silladar Mustafa compensated me for my help and confirmed my office, I decided I would consult only my conscience in everything I did. I immediately felt a chill wind around me. Those who had put me in this position suddenly fell silent when they saw that I would not relent. But rumors that I was guilty in the death of the former kadi began to be heard more and more frequently. I tried to find the people who spread them, but I might as well have tried to catch hold of the wind. Had someone spoken of this, thinking that no one would be held responsible? Or had they known earlier, and had need of it only now? Maybe they would not even have chosen me if I had been totally unblemished.

I do not know whether I would have relented, either, hardheaded as I was and confident of protection from higher up, and I do not know whether
they
would have agreed to any kind of compromise anymore. We began to hunt each other.

I was also disturbed by the musellim—or rather both of them, the former and the current one. The former one sat in his village, threatening me and sending letters to Constantinople. The current one, who had already held that office before and knew how unsteady such a position is, cunningly let everything go by him, and did not reproach anyone who might have been able to harm him in any way. I found out that he had even let his predecessor know he should hide before he sent soldiers to make a sham search for him. And no one held it against him.