The Undying Grass Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Yashar Kemal

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Turkey’s greatest novelist, Yashar Kemal was an unsurpassed storyteller who brought to life a world of staggering violence and hallucinatory beauty. Kemal’s books delve deeply into the entrenched social and historical conflicts that scar the Middle East. The Wind from the Plain trilogy is widely seen as his masterpiece, alongside the legendary Memed My Hawk.

  Three men are caught in a triangle of politics. Memidik, a young hunter, is obsessed by an urge to kill the tyrannous headman, Sefer, who has caused him so much pain and humiliation. Yet, each time he tries, he is overcome by fear. Then the accidental death of another man in the community fires him with renewed determination. Sefer, meanwhile, is sentenced to solitude and the local champion, Tashbash, is invested with mythical powers.

  The web of fantasy and intrigue spun around the villagers enmeshes them in plots of bravery and illusion in this extraordinary story of survival.

  About the Author

  Yashar Kemal (1923 – 2015) was born on the cotton-growing plains of Chukurova, which feature in his The Wind from the Plain trilogy. His championship of poor peasants lost him a succession of jobs, but he was eventually able to buy a typewriter and set himself up as a public letter-writer in the small town of Kadirli. After a spell as a journalist, he published a volume of short stories in 1952, and then, in 1955, his first novel Memed, My Hawk won the Varlik Prize for best novel of the year. His highly distinguished literary career continued in this vein; his work won countless prizes from all over the world and has been translated into several languages. Kemal was a member of the Central Committee of the banned Workers’ Party, and in 1971 he was held in prison for 26 days before being released without charge. Subsequently, he was placed on trial for action in support of Kurdish dissidents. Among the many international prizes and honours he received in recognition of his gifts as a writer and his courageous fight for human rights, were the French Légion d’Honneur and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, as well as being nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Kemal was Turkey’s most influential living writer and, in the words of John Berger, “one of the modern world’s great storytellers”.

  By the same author

  MEMED, MY HAWK

  THE WIND FROM THE PLAIN

  ANATOLIAN TALES

  THEY BURN THE THISTLES

  IRON EARTH, COPPER SKY

  THE LEGEND OF ARARAT

  THE LEGEND OF THE THOUSAND BULLS

  THE LORDS OF AKCHASAZ:

  Murder in the Ironsmiths’ Market

  THE SAGA OF A SEAGULL

  THE SEA-CROSSED FISHERMAN

  THE BIRDS HAVE ALSO GONE

  We would like to state that for technical reasons the names Ömer, Ökkesh, and Ümmet are printed throughout the book as Omer, Okkesh and Ummet.

  1

  How day by day Memidik’s anger grew within him until it was past enduring

  Swiftly Memidik whipped the willow-leaf knife from its sheath. It flashed lightning-blue under the moon, tracing a wide arc through the air. He was like a rock-hawk ready to pounce on its prey. He gave a spring, then stopped motionless, rigid, his legs taut and quivering, his body heavy as an ingot of lead.

  Moonlight swathed the trees and grass, the knolls and hillocks which seemed to be stirring, broadening and lengthening in the silvery brightness. A pale gloom filled vale and gully. The Anavarza crags cast their shadow upon the Jeyhan River, a molten silver sheen on the great wide plain, torpid, soundless, still, vanishing a while in the shadow of the crags then resuming its luminous meandering way.

  The sound of footsteps crunching over the pebbles in the dusky creek drew nearer and the clatter of scattering pebbles echoed and re-echoed through the moonlit night. Sometimes the footfalls were faint and far and then they were ringing close in his ears. They stopped and in the sudden silence he heard the cracking of dry twigs as a nightjar hopped from branch to branch. Without warning a huge, tall shadow loomed into view alongside the stream and like a shot Memidik flung himself behind a bush. The shadow came onwards with a swinging gait. It grew taller and taller. It towered high, then stooped very low. It swelled, jumped, fell, rose then suddenly unfurled itself upon the ground. And all at once it lunged at Memidik. He went limp. The knife dropped from his hand, leaving a tingling numbness. He bent down and groped for it among the stubble. His hands were shaking as though they would fly off. The knife gleamed briefly blue under the moon. The shadow was right before him now, a pair of long springy wide-striding legs, long black legs that came and went, came and went, blocking his view like a dark wall. Memidik’s knees gave way and he crumpled down at the foot of the bush.

  ‘Damn you knife,’ he muttered when the shadow had vanished in the distance. ‘Damn you, damn you, I’ve failed again.’

  It was the same every time. Memidik’s body, his hands and his feet would not obey him. And so he could not kill Muhtar Sefer. That snowy winter’s day for instance. For how long had he lain in wait, behind the mulberry tree in front of Sefer’s house, taut and ready to spring upon him, and then, when Sefer had come out at last, Memidik’s body had gone to pieces, he had been soaked in sweat from head to toe …

  He crouched beside the bush, still trembling, but gripping the handle of his knife with all his might.

  ‘I must kill him tonight. Tonight! Tonight’s the last moment … So long as that man lives I’m dead.’

  The soles of his feet, his knees, his testicles ached suddenly, and a wave of nausea swept over him. Never could he get that beating out of his mind. Never, not for one minute … He had endured it for the sake of Tashbash, the saint whose countenance was bright as clear water, who turned the night into day when he walked abroad with the seven poplar-tall balls of light in his wake, Tashbash who had vanished, gone to join the Forty Holy Men. It was Muhtar Sefer’s henchman, Omer, who had beaten Memidik so cruelly. Afterwards for three months he had been nailed to his bed, passing blood. Was it possible to beat a man like that – to within an inch of his life? Even that monster Omer would have drawn the line somewhere, but Sefer, Tashbash’s sworn enemy, had egged him on. The neighbours had gathered at his bedside: ‘Poor Memidik, he’ll never pull through,’ they had said. ‘What a heathen that Muhtar Sefer is!’ And how his poor mother had wept! Memidik had not died, no, but he had never been himself
again. Never once had he been able to look anyone in the face after that, not even his mother. He had gone to hide his shame in the mountains and the steppe and had spent all his days hunting, for Memidik was an expert huntsman.

  ‘I shan’t ever rest as long as he lives. I’ll kill him. And then I’ll be able to look people in the face again.’

  He had whetted the willow-leaf knife till it could sunder a thread at the slightest touch, and night after night, all through that snowy winter, he had lain in wait for Sefer with the knife freezing into his hand. Sometimes they would come face to face, but then that traitor body of Memidik’s would start to tremble and the knife would drop from his hand on to the snow. ‘It’s the cold,’ he told himself at last. ‘Waiting in this freezing weather does this to a man. I’ll kill him when we go down to the Chukurova for the cotton. I’ll kill him there, on the very first day, so help me God.’

  How sure of himself he had been, but now his body had failed him again! ‘I’d better kill myself,’ he muttered bitterly. ‘That’s the only thing left for me to do …’ But would he have the courage to do even that?

  He started off following the way the shadow had gone. Two or three hundred paces farther he struck a patch of blackthorn bushes that bit at his legs and tore at his shalvar-trousers. The bitter smell of burdock filled the night, together with whiffs of mint and lungwort, of harvested fields and swamp. Wet scents in the wet night under a wet moon … He felt better now and the strength flowed back into his body. He followed the narrow path down to the creek then climbed up the bank. Beyond the bank was an old graveyard. Closing his eyes he turned away quickly and never opened them once until he was back down in the creek at the ford where the clear water spread over a wide, flat surface lined with white gleaming pebbles and the up-streaming fish glowed and sparkled as though about to leap out into the air.

  And then he saw him. He was sitting on a boulder with his feet in the water. What wide shoulders he had! A giant’s shoulders … ‘The Muhtar’s not as big as that,’ Memidik thought. ‘God knows, it must be the moonlight that makes him seem so big … People look four, five times as large in the dark. Maybe I’m ten times larger myself by now …’ The idea gave him fresh confidence. On tiptoe he drew nearer and nearer. He gripped the knife ready to strike but once again his body gave way and he sank to the ground shaking as though seized with ague.

  In front of the shadow a large spangled fish leapt out of the water. Three times it leapt, its silver belly flashing under the moon. The man lifted his head. Then he threw a pebble at the fish.

  Memidik’s anger knew no bounds. Why did he feel so cold inside? Why was he trembling? Why couldn’t he rise now resolutely and plunge the knife right into the man’s heart as far as it could go? How his blood would stream into the water, staining it red … And there he sat now, quite motionless, unsuspecting … Now, on tiptoe, without making a sound … A sudden cry: ‘God, I’m done for!’ … The cry echoed and re-echoed in Memidik’s ears: ‘God, I’m done for …’

  He dragged himself to the edge of the stream and tried to drink, but his hands shook so that the little water he managed to scoop up spilled down his neck.

  When he looked again the man was gone. He jumped up, not trembling any more, already running. He must catch Sefer now, this moment, when he had strength enough, when he knew he could stab his dirty worthless body again and again and again without wavering. He rushed on, scattering pebbles to right and left along the shingle. ‘Aaah, if only I could find him now … Now …’ This time his hand would be firm, his body strong.

  The soles of his feet and his toes ached where Sefer had burned them to make him come to after he had fainted under the blows … How he had jumped up to the very ceiling of the room from the pain … ‘It’s nearly a year since that day …’ He was talking aloud to himself. ‘Ah, but he killed me. He really killed me on that day …’ An agonizing pain shot through his limbs. It was as though he were being beaten all over again and this happened to him whenever he brought that day to mind. A real pain held him spitted, writhing, holding his groin in both hands, rocking to and fro.

  A light breeze sprang up and stirred him back to life. The moon had slipped behind the clouds. He heard reeds rustling somewhere. He turned and ran back along the stream. ‘Sefer killed me! But I … I’ll kill him!’

  At the ford he pulled up short, for there, less than fifty paces away, was the shadow sitting just where he had been before, his feet dangling in the stream.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘While he’s sitting there quite still, quite absorbed … Now’s the time.’ But no sooner had he said this than his body turned to jelly. He dropped to the ground. Sefer had not moved. Three large fish leapt out of the water in front of him, their silver bellies flashing briefly. Then Sefer rose. He stretched out his arms until his whole body cracked and he began to walk. He stepped right over the crouching Memidik and passed on. Memidik could not lift the arm that held the knife, he could not even move. Sefer went his way and disappeared behind a thicket of plumbago shrubs.

  ‘Damn you!’ Memidik shouted. ‘Damn you, my worthless body! What’s the matter with me? But I’ll do it yet, body, you watch! Walk out on me as much as you like, I’ll kill him yet.’

  Suddenly Sefer was there again, sitting in his own place, casting pebbles at the flying fish. Memidik stared, and as he stared Sefer began to swell. He grew larger and larger before his eyes and Memidik’s fear increased. ‘There’s something about this man, some mystery, some sorcery … He just slips through your fingers like water. He’s a devil, a jinn … What can I do? I can’t kill him, I can’t!’

  After all, who ever heard of killing a man just because he had given you a beating? ‘Yes, but I can’t look anyone in the face any more. I want to sink into the earth, out of sight. I can’t even go near Zeliha and speak to her, let alone tell her … Oh God, why can’t I do it? Why am I so afraid?’

  ‘Afraid? No, no, it isn’t fear!’ A voice sounded in his ear. He listened, but it had stopped.

  They were face to face now, quite near, the distance between them wiped away. The stream babbled in their ears. The drone of a distant tractor filled the night. A car drove by. Its headlights swept over the Anavarza crags and caught them where they sat. Dazzled, they could not for a while see each other, or the flowing water, the rushes and the planetrees. Overhead a flock of birds glided through the light like a black cloud. Memidik was in the grip of a fever. His trembling increased. He could not stop it. He shook so much that his body ached.

  Then the moon set. The earth drew a long angry breath like a sigh. It quivered, stretched and swayed, burning itself into Memidik’s body. Sefer rose, towering in the darkness, and stretched his arms, his joints creaking loudly. His lifted arms were like a great eagle’s wings spread out in the darkness. He took one giant step. Memidik could not escape, he could not stir. He was trapped between the huge long legs.

  The planetrees filled the night, blotting out the sky over Memidik’s head. The fish leapt three times over the surface of the stream, three lightning flashes darted up into the sky. Sefer loomed over Memidik, growing larger and larger. Then he vanished.

  A voice called from a distance: ‘Hey! Hey, Memidik! Listen, is that you? What are you doing around here? Come now, talk to me. No one talks to me, no one at all, just because Tashbash has forbidden it. But Tashbash is not a saint … If he were, would he have frozen to death like that in the blizzard? Tashbash is dead. Dead! …’

  Memidik stopped trembling. He jumped to his feet. He was like the rock-hawk ready to spring on his prey. He gripped the willow-leaf knife until the blood froze in his palm. ‘Tashbash isn’t dead!’ he shouted. ‘It’s not a dream, it’s true. It’s true! He’s not dead, I saw him. I saw him with the seven bright balls of light behind him. I saw him smiling in the dazzling brightness of the lights.’

  ‘He’s dead, my child, dead.’ Sefer’s voice was low, soft, insinuating. ‘The lights are dead and so is Tashbash. Come talk to me. He’s dead a
nd gone. Lights can die too. The streams die, the earth itself dies … Even saints die …’

  A huge figure, much larger than Sefer, rose before him like a wall. His arms swooped down on the night like a great eagle’s wings and enveloped sky and earth. Memidik had no time to turn, no time to give way. The knife jerked and flashed, tracing a long flame-like arc in the darkness. It came and went, came and went, plunging into the soft flesh of the outstretched silent body.

  From the tip of the knife, from Memidik’s fingers, the blood dripped, dripped endlessly till break of day, seeping into the sandy earth.

  2

  How Old Halil went looking for his fellow villagers in the cotton fields of the Chukurova plain

  When it was time to go down to the cotton the villagers of Injejik provided Old Halil with a horse, an aged and scraggy one it is true, but still it carried him all the way down to the Chukurova plain. They even produced a real Circassian saddle for him, worn and tattered but yet soft and comfortable. Halil rode proudly erect at the head of the caravan, holding an old whip negligently over his left knee like a cavalier. He was overflowing with joy.

  ‘Ah, these Injejik villagers … They’re what I call human beings. Not like those mean people at home who don’t know my true worth. When I think of that old harridan Meryemdje, that vicious Muhtar Sefer, that simpleton of a Tashbash … The things they did to me! Go back there? God forbid! Go to see those dogs again? Never!’

  If only Meryemdje could see him now! If only he could meet with his villagers at a crossroads on the way … How Meryemdje’s eyes would pop out of her head! He whipped up the horse with pleasurable anticipation. All the way down to the Chukurova he nursed this hope, but not a single Yalak villager did he see. His riding a horse straight as a young shoot, the Circassian saddle, the whip, all were in vain …

  The villagers of Injejik had found work on a large plantation near Kösreli. The crop was plentiful this year, with every cotton boll blooming large as a fist and the whole plain white as though it had snowed.