The Undying Grass Read online

  ‘Ali, Ali! Haven’t you got a heart?’

  ‘Ali’s heart is of flint, of iron.’

  ‘But she won’t die, Meryemdje … She’ll keep alive to be a curse on your head. Would she ever die, that one, without taking her revenge! You can break her and burn her, you can hack her to pieces, she’ll manage to keep alive. She’s like the undying grass.’

  ‘Ah, Ali’s heart is of flint, of iron.’

  ‘Ali, Ali! Think of what you owe her! The best of mothers, to be cherished and held in respect … And you leave her there, a prey to the birds and beasts! Ali, Ali! What kind of a man are you?’

  ‘Ali’s heart is of flint, of iron.’

  ‘She fell on to the road. Would she ever stay alone in the village! On she plodded until night came and she took shelter up in a tree and slept. But in the morning what should she see? There she was right in the middle of the Forsaken Graveyard! She ran. Ah, she ran on and on, round and round. She ran for three days and three nights and still she couldn’t find her way out. She collapsed beside a tall tombstone, under a planetree, its hollow, mossy trunk thinned by the years and gaping wide open. And twined all around one of its green-leaved boughs was a black serpent. Slowly it glided down, down, down, till only its tail remained coiled about the bough. Its burning breath was on Meryemdje’s face, its tongue flickered, three-forked, flaming red. If she could scream … But she couldn’t even move. The serpent drew itself into a ball, a huge black ball. Then suddenly it dropped like a stone on to Meryemdje’s breast. She never uttered a sound, she just breathed her last … Ali, Aliiii! Is there no fear of God in you? No feeling, no pity? Ali, Aliii, will this be forgiven you? Won’t your mother’s white milk turn to poison in your veins?’

  ‘Ali’s heart is of flint, of iron.’

  Over the Mediterranean a few white clouds appeared, very small and low, as though stuck to the earth. A brief gust flared up, cooling the labourers’ hot bodies and lifting a flimsy film of dust from the roads that cobwebbed across the plain. Even this was enough to put some life into them. Durmush broke into a song and people’s hands worked more quickly.

  Old Halil lifted his white eyebrows and looked to the south. ‘The southerly’s coming on full blast today,’ he said. ‘And may be bringing rain too, God knows.’

  ‘Heaven forbid! Besides, it never rains at this season in the Chukurova.’

  The sail-clouds swelled and spread, brighter and higher, overlaying the whole southern sky. And suddenly the wind burst out. Dust rose from the roads forming dust-devils that sped towards the Taurus, growing taller and taller. The labourers’ sweat dried.

  Long Ali’s sunburnt face was drawn. His lips trembled. His eyes were bloodshot. ‘I didn’t kill her, I swear it,’ he kept saying. ‘Would a man kill his own mother? Leave off pestering me, won’t you! You’ve known me all these years; am I a man who’d kill his mother? I said to her, “Mother, come with us to the Chukurova and I’ll carry you on my back like I did last year. If you don’t the villagers will never forgive me.” But she wouldn’t come. “What do I care about the villagers,” she said. “I’ll stay here in my own village, in comfort and plenty. Enough of this stupid custom,” she said. “Why should the old people go down to the Chukurova?” That’s exactly what Mother said. She wouldn’t budge. So Elif baked a two-month store of yufka bread for her and I cut three honeycombs. I found two milch goats, thirty-two chickens, and brought them home. And a pail of pure golden cow butter. There are apples and pears in the forest, and they are ripe now. And she’s not alone; Spellbound Ahmet’s there to keep her company … Believe me, brothers, I didn’t kill my mother. Anyway, I shan’t stay till the end of the cotton picking. Don’t you see how I’m doing my best, picking as fast as I can? Why, as soon as I’ve got enough to pay back my debts to Adil Effendi I’ll burn up the road to get back to her a moment earlier! She’s up there in the village beside a cool mint-scented spring, under the pines, roasting a chicken over the embers, drinking ice-cold airan … Eating that juicy chicken, drinking the ice-cold airan … The scent of the pines … A cool breeze blows … Cool, soothing … No scorching sun up there, no mosquitoes … Oh, it’s a good thing Mother didn’t come! And then our saint, our great Lord Tashbash, will come to visit her. He’ll kiss her hand …’

  A huge dust-devil, as tall as two minarets, swept down upon the field over the villagers. Long Ali went on talking. His nose, his mouth were full of dust. He was choking, but still he talked. The dust-devil passed on, snatching up cotton leaves, corn stalks, dried plants, and also Fatmadja’s headkerchief which it deposited in the middle of the river. The labourers were white with dust from top to toe, their eyebrows and eyelashes, their hands and feet were white.

  ‘Ali’s heart is of flint, of iron …’

  It is hot … Over the purple crags blood is dripping. Drip, drip, it evaporates the minute it touches the burning rock.

  16

  Devoured, by the canker of revenge, Muhtar Sefer revolves in his mind what evil tricks to play on the villagers, what snares to set for them. In this world wicked people always meditate evil towards others, and they do it too. This earth is receptive to the sorrow and wretchedness and vileness that they sow. Sefer nurses sinister schemes to bind Ali hand and foot and then deal him the final blow. As for the villagers, he’ll settle their account sooner or later. Muhtar Sefer will die rather than forget an injury. Let those villagers go on not talking to him. They’ll see …

  ‘Follow me,’ Sefer thundered. ‘I have a few words to say to you. And this time you’ll do just what I say. If you’d obeyed me last year, if you’d done away with Tashbash, I wouldn’t be in this mess now.’

  He strode on, talking, with never a glance behind him.

  Omer followed treading in his footsteps. He was thinking. Whenever Sefer summons me like that, away from the others, it is always to entrust me with some secret and delicate business.

  Cockleburs stuck to the legs of their shalvar-trousers as they threaded their way through the bushes to the river-bank. The river lay like a stagnant lake, dull, dark and green, a strange poisonous green, gloomy … Sefer led the way down through the brambles to the sandy shore. There were footmarks in the sand of hares, jackals, dogs, otters and of all kinds of birds. Omer kept his eyes on these footmarks and also on the large imprints left by Sefer’s feet.

  ‘Even here in the Chukurova people know about me. I’m disgraced before the whole world, from Istanbul to Ankara, from Ankara to London. Dishonoured, turned to scorn … Wherever I go, as soon as people realize who I am they burst out laughing. They split their sides with laughter. Think of it, the muhtar whom nobody will talk to in his own village! Not even his wives, not even his own children, his relatives … And why, if you please? Because that saint of saints, our great Lord Tashbash, ordered it so … Just like that! Just for that I’ve become the laughing-stock of all the Chukurova. It’ll kill me if I don’t do something to save my honour, Omer. You’re my nephew, but more to me than my own children. You’re everything to me. How can you bear it? That your uncle should become the plaything of the whole country … That he should be smeared with such black notoriety … A notoriety that’ll go down for generations. The man whom nobody spoke to, to his dying day, and a muhtar to boot! Ah, if we’d done away with Tashbash that night …’ He looked about him, then spat violently into the river. ‘Let’s stop here,’ he said, sitting down on a little mound. ‘Come and sit beside me, Omer, my child, the light of my eyes, the young stalwart sapling of my race …’ His voice sounded warm, affectionate, sincere, as it always did when he wanted to get something out of someone.

  He grasped Omer’s hands. His own were burning. ‘Omer, my child, no one talks to me … But you? Why don’t you speak to me? I’m going mad. Look, I’ve got something to tell you. We have a job to do. Come on, speak. Just say “Uncle Sefer” …’ He waited, but he might as well have expected some response from a stone. ‘Look, Omer, Tashbash wasn’t a saint. The villagers just made it up because they w
ere in difficulties last year. They were looking for a straw to cling to. They seized upon Tashbash and made a saint of him, and he believed it too, poor madman. Would a saint ever freeze to death as he did? Now tell me that!’

  If only Omer dared open his mouth, he’d scream at him. Our Lord Tashbash never died! Didn’t you hear what Corporal Jumali said? How Tashbash was turned into a blaze of light and floated up into the mountains? But he couldn’t say a word and this made him angry.

  Sefer waited. Then he started speaking again, trying to goad the lad into talking, but in vain.

  ‘All right then, don’t speak to me,’ he said almost tearfully. ‘Everyone’s turned against me. I might as well kill myself and get it over with …’

  Suddenly Omer felt sorry for him. Like the eagle in the sky he was, my Uncle Sefer, he thought, and look at him now. That’s what comes of meddling with saints, of putting spokes in their wheels. They can take such a revenge as’ll make a man sorry he was ever born. Who’ll dare talk to you again, Uncle Sefer? Ah, you did wrong, very wrong, to offend a holy man of God …

  Sefer saw a change in Omer’s face. He realized that he had touched the lad at last and pressed home his advantage: ‘I ought to have killed myself long ago, I know, rather than drag on this miserable existence, but life is dear … Damn it, life is dear and not easily to be parted with …’

  He saw how Omer’s eyes were filling with tears. But still he would not speak! How powerful Tashbash was! All at once he felt fear. What if the man really were a saint? Then indeed he was lost. There was no salvation for him, not in this world nor in the next. The thought cut him like a knife. In his trepidation he imagined that Omer was reading his thoughts.

  ‘How could that miserable Tashbash ever become a saint?’ he shouted out loud. ‘A wretched dog like that! Impossible! It can’t be.’ He was shaking with passion. ‘Impossible, it can’t be!’ He panted out the words over and over again under his breath, clinging to them as though to a lifebuoy that would save him from the sinister idea.

  He raised his head and smiled. ‘Impossible, quite impossible.’ He mopped his brow; he was calmer now. Then he broke a twig from an agnus castus shrub near him and began to chew it.

  There was a long portentous silence. Muhtar Sefer was thinking. His head was bowed, his long sallow face longer and sallower than ever. Suddenly he looked up and his eyes bored into Omer’s. Omer averted his gaze, but it was no use. The muhtar’s eyes held him, wild, inexorable.

  Sefer slapped his hand to the ground. ‘Omer, my friend,’ he said, ‘you will go up to the village and kill Meryemdje. That’s what I want of you. Ali hasn’t killed her. She’s up there in the village. You’re to go right away, and as soon as you’ve killed her you’re to come back here. And this winter I’ll see that you get married and I’ll pay for everything. I’ll give you an ox too. After all, she’s only a very old woman. I’ll give you a hundred liras as well. But mind, nobody must see you go. Nobody must have an inkling. You will streak up like the snake and be back in a twinkling. And don’t throw the body into some ditch or anything where the birds and beasts will get at it. We need that body. You’ll lock it up in Long Ali’s house, and it’ll be of some use when the villagers return from the cotton and find it there. It’ll serve to send Long Ali to the gallows. All right now, get ready to go.’ He rose and slapped the sand off his clothes. ‘Don’t come with me,’ he said as he strode off. ‘We mustn’t be seen together now.’

  Omer remained stockstill for a while. Then he got up slowly, his joints creaking. His whole body ached as though he had been beaten.

  17

  The air is getting more sultry every minute. The villagers are uneasy and they blame Ali for everything. The heat, the mosquitoes, the prowling gendarmes, the disappearance of Shevket Bey … It is all Ali’s fault. Everything about him, his slightest gesture, infuriates them. In this oppressive atmosphere they all feel themselves stifling, but Hassan and Ummahan most of all.

  Ummahan cast a glance at her father and nudged Hassan. Ali was crouched over his pick-sack rapidly stripping the seed-cotton from the pods and throwing it on to the mounting heap at his side. Tiny black weevils, smaller than ants, spilled out of the bolls and scurried about helter-skelter. Ali’s hands and his cotton shalvar-trousers were covered with them.

  Some distance away, under the blinding glare of the sun, a soot-blackened saucepan was letting off a thin pale steam. Tashbash’s wife squatted beside it. She stirred the bubbling liquid with a wooden spoon, crooning a grief-laden lament.

  It was very hot.

  Muhtar Sefer had built a fire, a glimmering heap that was colourless under the sun. He pounded a large francolin flat, sprinkled it with salt and pepper and laid it over the embers. The meat sizzled instantly and an appetizing smell spread through the wattle-huts. Even Long Ali’s hands stopped working as he sniffed the thick greasy odour that hung heavily in the windless air. Ummahan nudged Hassan again. Ali’s eyes were fixed on the roast wing in Muhtar Sefer’s hand. He swallowed hard. Then Sefer took a large bite and munched vigorously. The juice trickled down his chin and he cast gloating glances at the others, as they stared at him swallowing, their nostrils quivering.

  In the space of a few days Long Ali seemed to have shrunk to skin and bones. His neck had grown even longer, his eyes were haggard, his face shrivelled. His hands trembled. He dragged his eyes from Muhtar Sefer and fell upon the bolls with redoubled energy. The seed-cotton flowed to one side and the burs to another at lightning speed.

  His heap was the largest of all. The next largest was Old Halil’s. The old man hugged himself for joy as he looked at the heaps. He knew just what he was going to do with his cotton …

  Not even the sound of a song came from the wattle-huts. Here and there a cotton sack bulged out under an awning, and sometimes a pair of bare, fissured feet, some large, some small, all still as stones.

  Memidik shaded his eyes and looked towards the dry well. Over it, starting from the height of a minaret, like a black pole stuck over the well, turning, turning, ever rising, a tall, whirling pillar of eagles rose into the infinity of the sky. He could barely make out the man, but he was still there, sitting on the stone, a faint shadow in the glaring sunlight.

  ‘The man’s crazy,’ Memidik muttered to himself. ‘Doesn’t he ever get hungry? Doesn’t he have any needs? As long as he sits there I’ll never be able to take my corpse out, and the eagles will get at it.’ He clenched his teeth, quivering with rage. ‘He won’t get up! He won’t go away from that damned well, it’s just as though he were chained to it, the bastard. And because of him the corpse is rotting away there in the well. Oh God, it will rot … Haven’t you got anything to do at all, you lazy good-for-nothing? Has your bottom got glued to the stone?’

  The earth burned Memidik’s bare feet like red-hot coals. His head whirled. He threw himself into his hut and on to the cotton sack. As his hands touched the cool dewy cotton bolls, he felt better. ‘The villagers have never been like this, so dull, so dismal. It’s because we’ve lost our Lord Tashbash, that’s why …’ he thought.

  Ummahan nudged her brother and he leaned over to her. ‘He sees nothing but the cotton,’ he said in her ear. ‘He’ll soon have finished and we’ll be able to leave and go to the wood-swamp. We’ll find our last year’s bird’s nest and the badger hole. And we’ll eat blackberries … Like last year, d’you remember?’

  ‘How can we find last year’s nest?’ Ummahan objected. ‘It wasn’t here we came last year!’

  ‘Shut up,’ he said, furious. ‘It was this very woodswamp we came to last year and if you don’t feel like coming, go to hell! I’ll go alone.’

  ‘Don’t be cross. All right, it’s the same woodswamp and last year’s nest is in it, and the badger hole too. We’ll go as soon as we’ve eaten and they’ve gone to sleep.’

  Hassan smiled.

  Outside, under the sun, Elif was cooking their bulgur pilaff. Soon the fat sizzled in the skillet. All over the camp skillets were
sizzling and the odour of fat permeated the hot heavy air. Elif ran into the wattle-hut, carrying the steaming saucepan.

  ‘Help yourselves,’ she said as she emptied the pilaff into a large bowl. ‘It’s delicious today with all those tomatoes.’

  They fell to with relish. As soon as he had had his fill Ali cushioned his head on his left arm and dropped off to sleep.

  ‘Mother,’ Ummahan said, ‘may we go down to the river while you sleep? We want to gather blackberries, and Hassan thinks he’ll find his last year’s bird’s nest.’ She looked meaningfully into her mother’s eyes, but Elif did not notice anything. ‘He says he’ll find the nestlings, Mother!’

  ‘Don’t stray too far,’ Elif answered. ‘And don’t you go climbing trees, or you’ll fall and hurt yourselves. And you’re to come back as soon as the south wind springs up. Because we mustn’t lose a minute. We must pick twice, three times as much cotton as the others. If your father doesn’t get back to the village in time your granny’ll die and the villagers will eat us alive then. So come back quickly.’