Death and the Dervish (Writings From An Unbound Europe) (57 page)

I told the youth in simple, ordinary words, how it was when I came into the village that spring, twenty years ago. I told him for no reason, for myself, as if I were talking with myself, because it did not concern him. But without him I would not have been able to tell it. I would not have been able to talk with myself. I would have thought about tomorrow.

He watched me seriously, with surprise.

“And if you’d been healthy and happy, you wouldn’t have come home?”

“When everything is lost a man seeks refuge, as if he were returning to his mother’s womb.”

“And after that?”

“After that he forgets. He’s driven to it by his restlessness. He wants to be what he was not, or what he was. He runs away from his fortune and looks for another.”

“Then he’s unhappy, if he thinks his fortune is always somewhere else.”

“Maybe.”

“And those flashes of light on the battlefield? I don’t understand that. And why is that the purest hour in one’s life?”

“Because a man forgets himself.”

“What does he get from that? And what does anyone else get from it?”

He would never know anything of our enthusiasm. I do not know whether that is good or bad.

“And what happened then?”

“Didn’t your mother tell you?”

“She says you were sad.”

Yes, I was sad, and she knew it. She knew it even before she saw me. They had heard I was dead, and I felt that way, as if I had come back from the dead, or worse, as if I were going to die, from desolation, from some dull tranquillity, from misery, from darkness, from my horror at not knowing what had happened. I had been somewhere, flashes of the sun and crimson reflections pained me, because they flared out of the darkness, as during an illness. Something collapsed—there, where I had been and here, where I was supposed to be, it was washing away like a sandy bank when the water rises, and I do not know how I managed to float to the surface, or why.

My mother tried to heal me with charms, throwing a piece of hot lead into a cup of water over my head, because I kept silent when I was awake and screamed when I was asleep. They wrote amulets for me, in case I had fallen under a spell, took me to the mosque and said prayers, asking God and men for medicine, still more frightened that I agreed to everything, and that I did not care.

“Did your mother tell you anything else?”

“Yes. That you flirted with each other. My father always laughs when we talk about it. You’re both happy, he says.
He, my father, because everyone thought you were dead; you, because you hadn’t died. Because if my mother hadn’t heard that you were dead, she wouldn’t have married him. Like this everyone is all right, and all three of you are happy.”

He knew a lot, but not everything. She waited even when she had heard; she would still have waited, God knows how much longer. She did not get married; they married her off. A few days before I arrived. Had I slept less, had I traveled nights as well, had I not been so exhausted, had the plains been smaller and the hills lower, I would have gotten back in time; she would not have married Emin, and I might not have left the village. And none of these painful things would have happened, not Harun’s death, not this last night of mine. But maybe they would have, because there has to be a last night and there has to be something painful, always.

He wanted to know more.

“Was it hard for you when my mother got married?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s why you were sad?”

“Well, that, too. And because of my wounds and exhaustion, and because of my dead comrades.”

“And then?”

“Nothing. You forget, you get over everything.”

What did he want me to say to him? That I had not forgotten or gotten over it? That I did not care? His expression was tense as he looked at me; something within him remained unsatisfied. His laughter was forced, as if he were hiding some thought. Was it a son’s jealousy about his mother’s virtue, which he does not want to doubt? But something was disturbing him.

“Do you love your mother a lot?”

“Of course!”

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“No.”

“Did you talk about me often?”

“Yes. My mother and I. My father listens and laughs.”

“Whose idea was it to send you to me?”

“My mothers. My father agreed to it.”

“What did she tell you?”

“If Ahmed-effendi wont help you, she says, then no one will.”

“Your father agreed. And you?”

“I did, too. You see, I’ve come.”

“But you’re not happy about it.”

He blushed, his sunburned cheeks blazed with fire, and he said with a laugh:

“Well, I was surprised. Why you and no one else?”

“Because we’re related.”

“That’s what they say.”

“I told Emin, when your son grows up, send him to me. I’ll look after him. I should be able to do that much.”

I lied, to calm him down.

He was more sensitive than I thought. It seemed inappropriate to him that they were asking me. He thought it a little strange.

I did not think it was strange. And so I found out now, at the end of everything, that she has not forgotten me. I do not know whether I am happy, because it is sad. She mentioned me often; that means she was thinking about me. And she has entrusted her only son to me, so I will help him, so he will not remain a poor villager. She loves him, certainly, she loves him enough to agree to let him go, just to get him out of the dirt and insecurity of their village. Maybe I am also to blame that those people send their children to the kasaba. My renown leads them to do it.

You’ll regret it, beautiful woman, when you hear.

I do not know what she looks like now, but I remember her for her beauty. And for an expression on her face of grief, such as I have never seen since, and which I could not forget long afterward, since I was the cause of that grief. It was because of this woman, the only one I ever loved, that I
never married. It was because of her, whom I lost, because of her, who was taken away, that I became hardened and more closed toward everyone: I remember feeling as if I had been robbed, and I would not give others what I could not give to her. Maybe I was taking revenge upon myself and people, involuntarily and unwittingly. Her absence hurt me. And then I forgot, I really forgot, but it was all too late. It is a pity that I did not give my unspent tenderness to someone, to my parents, to my brother, to another woman. But maybe I say that without reason now, settling accounts. Because I also left her to go off to war, without sorrow, and I regretted it only when it was too late for me to change anything.

On the morning of the third day after my return, tired of my parents’ attention and worry, I wandered away from our house and ended up on a plateau overlooking the village, the forest, and the river, on a rocky waste, above which there were only eagles flying in circles. With my palm I touched the slab of a large tombstone; it was the only thing between the wastes of the earth and sky, soothed by the centuries and undiscovered by anyone. I strained to hear a voice from that stone, or grave, as if beneath it were hidden the secret of life and death. I sat on the cliff’s edge, above the endless forests and crags and listened to the snakelike hissing of the mountain wind, in a twofold wasteland of loneliness and nonexistence, like the ancient corpse under the slab. “Hey!” I cried to it, far away, into the void of time, and my voice tumbled over the jagged rocks. A lonely voice and a lonely wind.

Then I went down into the forest, I beat my brow against the bark of trees; I battered my knees against their gnarled roots, stopped in the open arms of the bushes, embraced the beech trees, and laughed. I fell down and laughed, got up and laughed. “Hey!” I cried to that distant, lonely corpse, who had wanted to be in the heights, even if shut inside a grave. “Hey!” I cried and laughed as I ran away.

I skirted her village, so I would not see her; I went down
to the river; there was no loneliness there. I brought it down from above, I brought it from afar. I went along the level shore and walked in the shallow water, stepping in and out of it, as if drunk, enthralled by the soft gurgling of the swift current; I stood in the water up to my knees and imagined that I was sinking deeper and deeper into a whirlpool: deeper and deeper, the water was up to my chin, to my lips, over my head. Above me the current was rippling, around me there was a greenish silence, the swaying grasses wrapped around my legs. I was also swaying, like a blade of grass; small fish swam into my mouth and out of my ears; crayfish caught my toes with their claws; a large, slow fish brushed against my thigh. Peace. Indifference. “Hey!” I cried, silently, and sat down in the grove between the path and the river, between life and death.

There was no one. No one passed through that small valley between the two villages. Everyone was out in the fields or working around his house. This solitude hurt pleasantly; it made me sorry, but I would not have traded it for anything. The ground smelled of the warm moisture of spring. Turtledoves landed in the poplars, pigeons were bathing in the shallow water, ruffling their feathers, splashing red and green droplets of water all around. A cowbell rang sluggishly somewhere in the distance. A familiar place, familiar colors, familiar sounds. I looked around: it was mine. I smelled the air: it was mine. I listened: it was mine.

Mine was also what was empty, what was not there.

I had yearned to go there. I had sniffed at the wind, like a wolf; my desires had found a direction, and there I was. I had come. I did not find the miracle that I had hoped for, but it was good, it was beautiful, it was quiet. Quiet, as during sleep. Quiet, as during convalescence.

I ran my palm through the soft grass, freshly sprouted, tender as a child’s skin, and forgot about the awakening earth.

While I had been hurrying back from the army, I had
thought of my homeland, of my family’s house, and of her, sometimes.

But then I was thinking only of her.

It would have been better if you’d waited for me, I whispered to myself; it would have been easier for me. I don’t know why, but it would have been easier. Maybe you’re more important than my homeland and my family’s house, now that you’re gone. If only you didn’t exist, it would be easier; it would be better. Without you the distant, foreign lands hurt more, and the empty roads, and the strange dreams that I have even when I’m awake, that I can’t chase away without you.

I was not sorry; it did not matter. But I called to her shadow, her absent face, to say goodbye, one last time, to leave her once again.

And I succeeded in summoning her, in creating her out of the green bushes, out of the water’s reflection, out of the sunlight.

She stood, distant, entirely shadows. If a breath of wind came up, she would disappear.

I desired that, and dreaded it.

“I knew you’d come,” I said. And immediately, without stopping:

“It’s too late, there’s nothing left, except in my thoughts. And let there not even be that.”

“Allah be with you,” I said in farewell. “I won’t let you haunt me like a ghost. You’ll always be standing between these hills, like the moon, like the river, like an
alem*
on a minaret, like a shining apparition. You’ve filled this place with yourself, like a mirror, filled it with fragrance, like a bed. I’ll go out into the world. You won’t be there, in that other place; not even your image will be within me.”

“Why are you holding your head in your hands?” she asked me. “Are you sad?”

I’ll go away, I said and closed my eyes, lowering my eyelids like visors, like gates, to capture her fleeting image. I’ll
go away, so that I won’t have to look at you. I’ll go away, so I won’t think about your betrayal.

“Do you know how I felt? Do you know how I feel now?”

I’ll go away, so I won’t hate you, so I’ll stop caring. I’ve scattered your image along distant roads: the winds will carry it away; the rains will wash it away, I hope. My hurt will erase it from within me.

“Why did you leave last autumn? A man should never leave when he has a reason to stay.”

“I had to.”

“You left me. What were you seeking in the world? You’ve come back sad. Is that all you accomplished?”

“I’m sad because of my wounds, my fatigue, because of my dead comrades.”

“You’re also sad because of me.”

“I’m also sad because of you, but I didn’t want to tell you that. I traveled for days and weeks to see you. In the evening I’d lie down under a tree in a forest, hungry, my legs bruised, frozen by the icy rains, and I’d forget about everything, talking with you. I walked endless roads, and I’d have been frightened at how many of them there were and what kinds of horrible distances there are in the world, had I not held your hand in mine and walked by your side, feeling your hip next to mine, hardly waiting for a level road, to close my eyes, for you to be closer and clearer to me. Why are you crying?”

“Tell more of how you thought about me.”

Her cheeks were pale, her eyelashes cast deep shadows under her eyes, her bent knees trembled on the ground, her hands rested beside them, she touched the grass with her palms, as I had a little before.

“Why did you come?”

“Do you want us to go out into the world together? I’ll leave everything and come with you.”

She had been the wife of another for three days already, she had the traces of another’s hands on her body, another’s lips had brushed the bloom from her skin.

I told her that, in anguish.

“But just because of that,” she answered foolishly, incomprehensibly.

I grabbed her by her arms, like a drowning man. She belonged to another man. I did not care; she had been mine, forever. I did not know what forever is; I only knew about that moment, the only one that mattered, which erased time and my sorrow. My quivering fingers dug into her like nails; no one could take her away from me alive; I held her pinned to the ground in that beastly grip. The river became silent; the only sound was that of bells within me, unknown and unrung until then, all of my bells, as if they were sounding an alarm. People would gather around; they did not concern me; they did not exist. Oh, my dream, which has become a victim.