Death and the Dervish (Writings From An Unbound Europe) (7 page)

So it all burst out.

Surely it lasted only an instant, as long as it takes for an eyelid to close, I knew because the young man was still standing in front of me with a frozen, absent smile. He heard nothing, felt nothing of the tumult within me, he was unmoved by the madness that had suddenly come over me. It came like rebellion, following my anguish and fear for my brother, after the doubts that had shaken me to my roots. The power of life, waiting for the foundations we had set to collapse, burst out and carried away the crops that we had cultivated for so long, like a flood, leaving debris and wasteland behind. In this moment of astonishment I could neither pass judgment on myself, nor feel remorse, nor pray; everything was still too fresh. It was as if lightning had struck and scorched me, taking away all my strength.

Go, I told him softly. Go, I said. Maybe I did not even say it, but he understood, from the movements of my lips, from the motion of my hand, because he wanted to leave. And he left, without haste, so as not to reveal the impatience that undoubtedly wanted for him to be left alone again with whatever he had brought in his eyes. Go, I said, for he was a witness of my weakness, unconscious, blind and deaf, but I knew he had been there, and I did not want to be ashamed of him. Or to hate him. I wanted to remain alone with myself.

I had felt anxiety and commotion inside myself earlier, but that came and went, like momentary lapses of consciousness, like an inexplicable defiance of my inner order. Those had been quick stumbles that left no trace. But on that night it seemed that utter confusion had come over me, that all the links inside me had snapped, and that I was not what I had been. I became aware of one of my possibilities, which could become destructive if it continued.

The first thing I felt was fear, still distant, but deep, certain, like an awareness that I would pay for that moment. God would punish me with pangs of conscience, and I would not have to wait long for them to appear. Maybe that night, maybe the very next instant.

But nothing happened. I stood in the same place, my feet firmly planted on the gravel of the garden path. I was perplexed and tired, the fire that had flared up in me had all but died out. Forgive me, God, I whispered unconsciously, mechanically, without remembering the prayer that could have helped me at that moment.

I moved away from that spot, as if in flight, and stopped at the fence above the river.

I felt as if there were not a single thought inside me, as if my senses had been numbed with shock. But surprisingly, I was aware of everything, more responsive and receptive to everything around me than I had been a moment before. My ear caught the resonant noises of the night, they were clear and purified, like echoes bouncing off glass. I could hear each of them separately, and yet they all merged into a larger drone of water, birds, a light wind, voices lost from afar, the soft murmur of night swaying slowly under the beat of unknown, invisible wings. And none of that bothered me, or disturbed me, I wished for more of those voices, sounds, droning, wingbeats, I wished for more of everything outside of me; maybe I heard it all with such clarity so I would not listen to myself.

That was probably the only time in my life that voices and noises, that light and shapes appeared as they really are, like sound, noise, smell, form. Like a sign or a manifestation of things beyond me, because I listened and watched as one detached and uninvolved, with neither sorrow nor joy, neither damaging nor mending them. They had lives of their own, without my involvement, unaltered by my feelings. They were thus independent, true, not recast into my concept of them, and they left a somewhat insipid impression, like something foreign and unrecognized, something that happens and exists despite everything, futile and useless. I had withdrawn and had been withdrawn, separated from everything around me. The world seemed rather ghostlike, alive but indifferent. And I had become independent and impenetrable.

The sky was empty and deserted. It offered neither a threat nor consolation: I saw it thus disfigured, upside down, and shattered in the water, like a close reflection rather than a mysterious void. The sparkle of pebbles could be seen through the clear water, like the bellies of fish asleep or dead on the shallow bottom, concealed and motionless, like my thoughts. But my thoughts would float to the top; they would not remain deep within me. So let them be, let them rise when they came to life, when I could accept their meaning as more than a mere hint. For now they were calm, and maybe my senses, independent and free, were celebrating mildly in this quiet, which was of uncertain duration. Surprisingly, my senses seemed pure and innocent, as long as I did not burden them with the violence of my thoughts and desires. They freed me as well, returning me to peace, to some distant time that might never have existed, a time so beautiful and pure that I did not believe in its previous existence, although it still remained in my memory. The most beautiful thing would have been the impossible—to return to that dream, to naive childhood, to the secure bliss of that warm and dark primeval spring. I did not feel the sadness or foolishness of such a longing, which was not a desire, because it was unattainable, even as a thought. It hovered in me like a dim light, turned back toward something impossible, nonexistent. Even the river was flowing backward, the tiny ripples of water overlaid with the silver of the moonlight did not drift downstream; the waters were flowing again toward their source. The stone fish with the white bellies swam up to the surface; and the river was flowing again to its source.

Then it occurred to me that my thoughts were coming to life and beginning to turn everything I saw into pain, memories, and unattainable desires. The empty sponge of my brain began to soak itself full again. The time of separation had been short.

4

      
Do you really believe that man can achieve what he desires?
¹

IN THE STREET, NEXT TO THE TEKKE WALL OVERGROWN WITH ivy, there were footsteps. I paid no attention. I barely even noticed them, and did so only because of something about them that might have seemed strange. But that impression remained entirely superficial, unchecked, and my absent-mindedness did not allow me to connect the occurrence with its possible cause. I did not care who at that late hour might be passing by the tekke, the last building on the edge of the kasaba. Nothing stirred within me, no presentiment, no foreboding; those footsteps meant as much to me as the flight of a moth, and nothing warned me that they could be decisive in my life. What a pity and what a wonder it is that man cannot sense even the most immediate threat to him. Had I known, I would have shut the heavy bolt on the gate and gone into the tekke, so the fates of others would be decided without my involvement. But I did not know, and I continued to watch the river, trying to see it in the way I had seen it a moment before, it alone, apart from myself. I did not succeed, it would soon be midnight, and a little superstitiously I went to meet that hour when all kinds of dark spirits awaken. I expected something to emerge, good or evil, even from this silence of mine.

The footsteps returned, silently, more silently than before.
I had no idea what they were, but I was sure they were the same ones. A part of me knew this; my ears detected something unusual, something that I thought nothing about, and recorded it: one foot was cautious, the other made no sound. Maybe I heard it only because it was impossible to imagine someone walking on one leg, creating the impression of that other, nonexistent foot myself. I could not hear the night-watchman—had some one-legged spirit arrived early?

The footsteps stopped in front of the gate, one of them real, quiet, and wary; the other, imagined, unheard.

I turned around and waited. They had begun to concern me, and this intrusion made me shudder. I could still have gone up to the gate and pushed the bolt, but I did not do it. I could have leaned against the worm-eaten wood of the door, to hear whether that someone was breathing, whether he had flown away or turned to darkness. I waited, aiding chance with my inaction.

In the street there were more footsteps, at a run, in a hurry, out of breath. Would the one-legged one join them, or had he disappeared?

The gate opened and someone entered.

He stepped onto the stone tiles of the doorway and leaned with his back against the wide door, as if he had collapsed or were trying to hold it shut. This was an instinctive and futile act—his small, fragile body could not have kept anyone out.

Two trees cast shadows on the gate, and he stood in a crevice of light, as if condemned, isolated, exposed. He would surely have liked to hide in the thickest darkness, but he did not dare to move. The footsteps ran past the gate, clattering on the cobblestones, and faded away at the bend in the gorge, where there was a post of Albanian guards. The pursuers were certainly asking about this man who stood as if crucified on the door. Both he and I knew that they would return.

We looked at one other, each motionless where he stood, and said nothing. From the other side of the garden I saw his bare foot on the stone tiles of the doorway, and his face, whiter than the tekke wall. In that white face, in those feebly outstretched arms, in that silence there was the terror of waiting.

I did not move, I did not speak, so as not to disturb this exciting game of pursuit and flight. As our situation became more difficult, the wait became even tenser. I sensed that I had been drawn into something unusual, grave, and brutal. I did not know which one of them was cruel—the fugitive or his pursuers—it was not important to me then. The chase smelled of blood and death, and everything was happening before my eyes. It dawned on me that life itself had been tied into a bloody knot, maybe a little too snugly and tightly, maybe too closely, too crudely expressed, but always the same in all of its endless chases, both great and small. I was not on either side, but my position was extremely important. It excited me that I could be the judge and decide everything with a single spoken word. The fate of this man was in my hands. I was his fate, and I had never felt so much power in anything that I could do. An innocent greeting or a soft cough could destroy him. Yet I did not give him away, not because his eyes, which I could hardly see from where I stood, were certainly begging for mercy, not even because it might have been unjust to do so, but because I wanted the game to continue: I wanted to be a spectator and a witness, horrified and excited.

The pursuers returned. They were not running any more, but walking, confused and furious, because everything had gone awry. Now they were not only the pursuers, but also the pursued: his escape would mean their condemnation. Here nothing could end peacefully; the outcome, whatever it might be, would be ugly.

Everyone involved in this game kept silent, I, the pursued, and the pursuers. Only the Albanian guards on the
dam in the gorge were singing a drawling song from their homeland, and that foreign lament, which sounded like wild sobs, made our silence even more oppressive.

The footsteps drew near, hushed and indecisive. I began to follow them, straining my senses, part pursuer and part fugitive, since I was neither. I passionately wished for him both to be caught and to escape, fear for the fugitive mixed strangely with the desire to shout out where he was, and all of this turned into a torturous pleasure.

The pursuers stopped in front of the door. I held my breath, and with heartbeats full of impatience I lived through that moment, which was to decide my own fate as well.

The fugitive was certainly not breathing, either; the thin boards of the door were all that separated him from his pursuers. They stood less than a few inches apart, and yet they were far away from each other; their ignorance and his hope separated them like a mountain. His arms were still outstretched, and his face glowed like phosphorous. I was so excited that the forks of his arms and legs blurred in my eyes; but the white blot of his face remained, like a symbol of his terror.

Would his pursuers open the gate and enter? Would his foot slip on the smooth stone and draw their attention? Would I clear my throat from anxiety and summon them? Their two forms of despair would struggle, but there were more of the pursuers, he would be able to hold them back only for a moment. Then they would find themselves face to face, and that would be his end. They would fall on him brutally, because of their fear and rage at having lost him, and because of their joy at finding him again. I would only watch, sickened by the outcome, praying for them to leave the tekke garden. But at that moment I felt like the pursued, accidentally, because I could just as well have felt like the pursuers. But maybe that was not accidental. Him I could see, and I wanted the unseen men in front of the gate to leave, so I would not also have to see his ugly end. It seemed
that my wish aided this man who was fighting so helplessly for his life, that it gave him some prospects for survival.

And indeed, as if my concentrated will had some effect, the footsteps moved away from the gate. Then they stopped again in confusion, one of them was not sure that they should not try it: they could still come back. But they did not; they set off down the street toward the kasaba.

The man was still standing in the same position, but the stiffness of his muscles had surely slackened, and the farther away the footsteps moved, the more his strength gave out.

It was good that everything had ended this way. If they had caught him or beat him in front of me, the brutal image would have lingered in my memory long afterward. And I might have even begun to feel remorse at having for a moment been ready to hand him over, and at having taken pleasure (painfully, but still taken pleasure) in that human hunt. Like this, if I felt any remorse at all, it would be weaker.

I did not think about who was wrong and who was right.

I did not even care: when people settle their accounts, guilt is easy to find, and justice is the right to do whatever we think must be done, and therefore justice can be anything. The same is also true with guilt. As long as I did not know anything I could not take either side, and I would not get involved. Indeed, I had already gotten involved, by my silence, but that was an involvement that did not contradict my beliefs, and I could always justify it with the reason most convenient for me, if I ever learned the truth.