Death and the Dervish (Writings From An Unbound Europe) (53 page)

I have never had anything, and have never wanted to have anything, but my peasant blood has retained a fear of careless spending. It leads to a dead end. And this seemed
like drunkenness, when one lacks moderation; like an excess of zeal and hot-bloodedness, when one is difficult to stop; like senseless enthusiasm that does not consider consequences; like Jemail, who was his own destroyer. And yet, behind everything that my mind could not accept I sensed a certain abundance of serenity and a barely tangible reason for profound joy. Because it was absurd, because it was ridiculous, because it reminded me of a joke: lets do something unusual. Because it was hard to find an explanation for it.

They would surely come to their senses, when it was all over, and they would see how expensive generosity is. But everything would turn out so well that they would not have an opportunity for regret. They would be blinded by pride because of praise from people whom it had not cost a single piaster.

And I realized more and more what a difficult and complicated task it is to be in power. I wasted time with tedious matters, defending myself and attacking others, doing whatever it took to stay afloat, instilling fear in others and enduring it myself. I felt my power become greater and greater, along with my difficulties, since I no longer needed to soften my blows. But with a strange melancholy and inexplicable envy I thought of Hassan’s face, of the joy with which he always renounced certain support, of the hope he inspired in people’s hearts. This was nothing very serious, but again, it seemed as if I had missed some sort of opportunity.

Then a few important events occurred.

(If I were more idle, as I once was, I would feel the need and the desire to think about how they were in fact similar to others, but gained importance because they concerned certain people. And so events are not important in and of themselves, but rather because of our interest, which singles them out from among the others. Or something like that. There is a certain pleasure in such slow, deliberate thought,
as if we are above things. But now I have been engulfed by them, and I can manage only to record them.)

In the Posavina, on the day the auction of the confiscated property was to take place, Hassan encountered an unexpected obstacle. The town crier announced that a representative of the vizier would buy all the property, and that was nothing other than an order for no one to enter into the bidding. But this was an obstacle only in my opinion; in Hassan’s it was not. Ignoring the viziers wish, he bought a few pieces of property; the rest, the vast majority of it, was taken by the vizier’s representative, for nothing. Hassan even left some money, so that a few houses could be repaired as much as was possible and so that food could be bought for the families who would settle there. He returned to the kasaba, satisfied.

“Why did you have to lock horns with the vizier?” I asked him, joking, because I did not believe that the vizier’s anger would last long. “Do you really fear no one?”

It was the old man who answered. He was walking slowly around the room with a fur-lined coat over his shoulders: “God a little bit, the sultan not at all, the vizier about as much as my bay horse.”

“What do I have to fear?” asked Hassan, parrying my blow. “I’ve got you. Hopefully you’d protect me.”

“It would be better if you never even needed anyone’s protection.”

“A dervish will never give you a direct answer,” the old man said, laughing.

Hassan answered seriously: “He’s right. It’s better if I don’t ever need anyone’s protection. I should be my own shield. It’s not right for me to burden a friend with troubles that I create myself If you can’t swim, you shouldn’t jump in the water hoping someone will pull you out.”

“But that someone wouldn’t be a friend if he didn’t do it. You understand friendship as freedom; I understand it as obligation. My friend is the same as I. If I protect him, I protect myself. Do I really need to say this?”

“No. And my father is dragging out a needless conversation, so he won’t have to tell what he did to me. Did you know that he hid gold from me? A thousand ducats! I found them when I returned, in a chest under lock and key.”

“I told you about it myself.”

“You told me about it after I’d already found out.”

“Why would I hide them? And from whom? The money is yours, do what you want with it. I’m not going to take it to the grave.”

God bless his bones, the old man’s mind still works!

“And even if I did hide it, is that really something bad? But I didn’t, I forgot about it. Is that so unexpected from an old mind?”

From his lack of persistence, from the smile he wore as he listened to the old man’s naive defense, not even trying to extract some more convincing explanation, from their mutual spirit of cheerful tolerance, in which they resolved this apparent argument, I would have said that Hassan was not even discontent with the way everything had turned out. They had done their good deed and still had some ducats left. And their relatives no longer bothered them in the house.

But no matter, others would not have done even that much. And such generosity, with moderation, which maybe even stemmed from pity, was somehow closer and more familiar to me. It was more human; it had limits that I could perceive. It did not frighten me with a suicidal nature, or offend me with immoderation. Irresponsible generosity is the extravagance of a child who gives away everything he has, because he does not know the value of any of it.

On the second day of the Ramadan Bairam I was visited in the tekke by Piri-Voivode, the man who followed the movements of suspicious people, and for him that was everyone. He handed me a letter by one Luke of Dubrovnik, a friend of Hassan’s, which had been sent to the Dubrovnik senate. It
had been in the hands of some Dubrovnik merchants who had left the kasaba that morning with their loads of merchandise.

“Why did you take this?”

“Read it, and you’ll see why.”

“Is it important?”

“Read it, and you’ll see if it is.”

“Where are the merchants?”

“They’ve gone. Read it, and tell me whether they should have.”

The devil himself had hung that man around my neck, that stubborn, incorruptible, distrustful idiot who would surely watch his own mother with suspicious eyes. Understanding nothing, but accusing everyone of everything, he buried me in reports, remembering them and later inquiring as to how each of them had been resolved. Half of my troubles, and I had enough, came to me from him, and I had already begun to think, considering him a form of divine punishment, that everyone must have his own Piri-Voivode. Only mine was the worst. I even suspected that he had been assigned to me on purpose, as a subordinate who would watch over me (and they could not have chosen anyone better). He was not anyone’s man; he served nothing other than his own stupidity, and that was enough to drive me into a rage three times a day. Yet he was invulnerable. At the beginning I would try in vain to bring him to his senses; later I despaired of it. He hardly listened to me, holding his head high, arrogant and scornful, or sincerely surprised, doubting my intelligence and honesty, and torturing me further with his unbearable conscientiousness. The only thing left for me to do was to strangle him when I finally lost control of my anger, or to flee head over heels when I could no longer bear it. Worst of all was that you could find a thousand reasons to call him a fool, but not a single one to proclaim that he was dishonest. Within him there raged the principle of some monstrous justice and the passionate desire for all people to
be punished, for anything. And all of my severity was insufficient for him. Others accused me of cruelty; he reproached me for leniency. My enemies agreed with both one and the other.

He told how highwaymen had attacked the Dubrovnik merchants at the foot of the mountain, and before they could fight them off one of their horses got away, galloped off toward the kasaba, and wandered into some village. The Dubrovnik merchants looked for it in vain, and left without having found it, because they were in a hurry to cross the mountains before dark. Piri-Voivode learned of the horse and found it at once, making the peasants give back everything that they had taken (and I am sure that they would have given him even their own possessions, not just someone else’s). That was how he found the letter, and took it to the
saraf*
Salomon so he would read it to him, since he did not know the Latin alphabet.

My head began to spin from that intricate tale and its barely tangible thread of events, to which no reasonable man would have paid any attention, but Piri-Voivode brought it to completion, chasing shadows and fishing a spy’s report out of it!

He stood in front of me and waited. I read the letter and learned what I already knew, that foreigners write about what they see and hear in other lands. Everyone knows it and everyone does it, but everyone is astonished when someone is caught in the act. I read the letter and breathed a sigh of relief: there was nothing about Hassan that might have cast some suspicion on him, or about me that might have insulted me. The Dubrovnik merchant wrote mostly about the vizier and the way the land was ruled. Parts of it were accurate, to be sure, but they were not pleasant to read. (“Chaotic administration has indeed sapped the strength of the land. . . . You should see what imbeciles they are, those kaimakams and mutesellims: you would be surprised how it is possible that those men, who do not at all even belong to
upright society, can have power. . . . A net of spies, consisting of officials and secret informants, is spread out as if this were some land in the Occident. . . . The vizier has introduced a state of lawlessness, and equated himself with the empire, and whoever does not accede to his demands is an enemy. . . . In general he appoints, shuffles and dismisses his officials and rules the land according to his own whim; he has made it known on several occasions that he does not know the laws. . . . He is odious to Muhammedan and Christian alike. But the government cannot rid itself of him so easily, because in the last seven years he has amassed quite a lot of ducats, and supports himself in Constantinople with them. . . . All of his family are in with him. . . . With the help of this immoral, cruel, and treacherous gang he sits on the backs of the people, so that no one dares utter a word. . . . This system of terror and police, of course, has naturally made Bosnia the dead limb of the empire, since no one believes his neighbor any more, or a father his son, a friend his friend, since all of them fear Osman’s black men and are happiest if no one notices them . . .” The purchase of the confiscated lands in the Posavina was also mentioned, as well as the price at which they were bought, a trifle, and the names of the friends and
lovers
of the vizier’s entourage, and everything that they took, acquired, and seized. The Catholic man had not sat here in Bosnia with closed ears and eyes!)

“Terrible,” I said because of Piri-Voivode, who was waiting with interest for my reaction.

“He should be arrested.”

“It’s not easy to arrest a foreigner.”

“Can a foreigner do anything he wants?”

“No. I’ll consult the mufti.”

“Consult him. But the man should be arrested first.”

“Maybe. I’ll see.”

He went out, very discontent.

What a mess! If he had not been nosing around where he should not have, I would at least not have had to worry
about this. I had not known anything about it and it had been no concern of mine. Now I knew about it and it had to concern me. But whatever I did, I might make a mistake, and my conscience, on which I had relied so much, could not help me at all. It is moments such as those that make a man’s hair turn gray prematurely.

The mufti would not even hear of discussing business matters on the Bairam. He did not really want to ordinarily, but it was not his opinion that was important to me—rather his name.

The musellim was not at home. I was told that he had gone to the bazaar. I found him in his office. On the Bairam! He already knew everything.

“He has to be arrested,” he said without hesitation.

“And if we’re making a mistake?”

“We’ll apologize.”

I was surprised by his resolve, it was very unusual. It would have been best not to do what he advised me, because he did not wish me well—that I knew. But if I obeyed, the responsibility would not lie with me alone.

“It looks as though that’s best.”

I agreed, though I was not convinced.

Piri-Voivode freed me from that worry, but saddled me with another. He came to tell us, bitter because it had happened, and satisfied that his suspicions had been confirmed, that the Dubrovnik merchant had fled the kasaba with Hassan’s help. They had gone on foot to the outlying fields, and there Hassan’s men had been waiting with horses for the merchant. Hassan had come back alone.

“Unfortunate,” said the musellim, shaking his head.

Everything about him seemed worried, his voice, his hunched shoulders, the hand stroking his beard, everything, except a barely visible smirk on his thin lips. It would be strange if he did not report to the vali that he had been in favor of arresting the man, but that, unfortunately, he did not make the decisions.

Piri-Voivode was already clearing himself of any guilt and making accusations: “I said he should have been arrested.”

“Unfortunate,” the musellim repeated, driving a nail into my forehead.

And yet I myself knew just how unfortunate it was. The Dubrovnik merchant was no longer guilty, since he was gone. The culprits were those who were still here. Hassan was guilty. And I was guilty, because I was his friend, and because I had let the merchant escape. Guilty for the deeds of others, for their loyalties and stupidities. Guilty before the vali, who was my protector.

We sent for Hassan at once, and I was afraid that he would be scornful, hot-tempered, and insulted that we were questioning him. And I could not warn him and persuade him to be cautious since rashness would not help him. I only hoped that he would understand both our positions, and I calmed down completely when I heard how he answered. It’s true, he said, the Dubrovnik merchant has gone home; he was in a hurry. He received news that his mother is on her deathbed. He lent him his men and horses, because there were no rested horses at the post station. And he saw him to the fields, as he always sees off his friends. They talked about ordinary things, so ordinary he can hardly remember them, but he’ll try if it’s really necessary, although he can’t see how that could be of any importance. His friend did not tell him about any report (“A spy’s report,” the musellim explained). He thinks it very strange, since the man was involved only in business, and wasn’t interested in anything else. And he persuaded Hassan to send caravans and goods to Dubrovnik, instead of Split
³
and Trieste, if he ever took that up again. He didn’t leave with the other Dubrovnik merchants, because he received the letter from home only after they had already left (that’s easy to check: the man who had brought the letter is still in the inn), and he packed up and left, taking only the most important things with him.