The Undying Grass Page 14

  It was no use. Ali would not change his mind. Old Halil jumped to his feet in a rage. ‘All right then, your mother’ll die before you can get to her, that is if you haven’t already killed her … You know what the villagers will do to you then. You can see them even now, and if your mother’s found dead they’ll tear you to pieces. And she’ll die. Your mother will die!’

  He stalked off. ‘Let her die!’ he muttered. ‘Just let her die and you’ll see what’s coming to you, goose-necked Longish Ali!’

  But by the time he came to the huts his anger had dropped and he went back. Ali and Elif were still sitting where he had left them, at the foot of the oleander bush. Elif was urging Ali to change his mind. ‘Uncle Halil’s right,’ he heard her saying. ‘It’s a very good plan.’

  He took Ali’s hand in his and began pleading with him. Elif joined in. But Ali was obdurate. In the end Old Halil spat into Ali’s face and walked off incensed.

  ‘A man who kills his own mother! What can you expect from him! His own mother … Killed her … The dog!’

  19

  Meryemdje is all alone in Yalak village. There is not a soul about. Sometimes she is angry and rains curses on her son and the villagers. Sometimes she softens and pines away for them all. She gazes at the Chukurova road, longing for the sight of a living being. Who knows, Tashbash may come or Spellbound Ahmet …

  Meryemdje leaned back against the sunny wall of the hut and stretched out her right leg. Her left was folded under her. There was a gentle breeze and she closed her eyes, letting the autumn sun caress her and put life into her blood. She was in that tender nostalgic mood which the morning sunshine always brought upon her. The wide Chukurova plain with its cotton fields rose before her eyes. A pleasant, magic land … The mauve crags of Anavarza, the blurred outline of the ruins of the crags … The Jeyhan River, green, stagnant, shivering into tiny tenuous ripples … The boisterous Mediterranean, its blue waves leaping, dementedly, spuming white … And the blinding sun … The Chukurova earth, dazzlingly white under it … The greasy tractors, the trucks, the web of busy dusty roads, the luminous, many-hued dust-devils … And the labourers, teeming like ants all over the plain, in the fields, on the roads … Hungry, destitute, with sad eyes and huge hands …

  She saw Ali, his body slightly stooped, his face wrinkled with anxiety … ‘Mother, you must bear up,’ he was saying. ‘Please, Mother, please hold on until we come back. Don’t die. Don’t let those base villagers find you dead. You know them, Mother, you know what they’ll do to me …’

  Meryemdje held out her right hand. ‘I won’t die, my son, my good brave lad. I’ll hold on till you come. Don’t I know those villagers! Even better than you, my child … And why should I die? It isn’t as if I was without food or water. The bread you left me is still there, almost untouched. I’ve got everything. Only, my Ali, God forbid that anyone should be left alone like this. If there had been just one human being with me, my little Hassan or Ummahan, just one of them, I’d have waited up here a year, ten years. Why didn’t you think of leaving one of the children with me? But you were right, of course. A child can pick as much as twenty kilos of cotton a day … And Tashbash hasn’t come either … I went up into the mountain and called to him. Tashbash, my son, I said, I know you’re a mighty saint now, the beloved of the Forty Holy Men. But still, you could come and keep your Mother Meryemdje company once in a while … He didn’t come, not a glimpse of him. He’s become too grand now, I suppose. Never mind, he’s sure to come my way one day and I’ll give him a piece of my mind then!’

  She rose and picked up her stick. ‘Don’t be afraid, Ali; I won’t die and let those worthless villagers drag you through the mud. If I die it’ll be right before their eyes, just to spite them. Let them know that Meryemdje loves her son above her own soul … Ah, aaah, if only somebody would come! Anyone, even Muhtar Sefer, even that accursed prince of rogues, that deserter from the Yemen wars, that rebel against Allah, that dregs of mankind, Old Halil. I’d talk to him, even to him. I’d talk to anyone, to a double-worshipping heathen, to my own father’s murderer … There’s nothing worse than being alone, my Ali … When the villagers return, ah yes, when they come back I’ll talk with them all, every one of them, good or bad. I’ll fondle and pet them all, one by one, to my heart’s content. Just you remain all alone by yourself, my Ali, and see what a terrible thing it is!’

  She brandished her stick. ‘Go away. Go back to the Chukurova. You’re not real, you don’t smell human. You’re just a figment, my Ali, only a dream …’

  Let them come back, just let them, and see if Meryemdje will ever hurt a single one of them again! See how she’ll love them all, even Old Halil, just like her own beloved grandson Hassan. So you don’t talk to your own villagers, you spurn them, eh? Well then, this is what Allah does to you, he makes you pine for the sight of a single human being, he makes you crave even after Old Halil … That’s Allah for you, powerful long-bearded sky-eyed Allah!

  A soot-blackened saucepan of tarhana soup was simmering over the fire, its steam rising gently and vanishing in the sunlight. Meryemdje was waiting impatiently for the soup to cook so that she could drink it quickly and be off about her business. She was in a hurry.

  ‘That’ll do,’ she said, taking down the saucepan. ‘It’s not going to pierce my bowels if it’s not quite cooked!’

  She emptied the soup into a bowl, plunged a large wooden spoon into it, blew vigorously over the steaming liquid, and drank. It burnt her palate, but she didn’t mind. Meryemdje had no time to waste. Her mouth on fire, she grabbed her stick and set out for Köstüoglu’s house. As she approached the door of the barn she began to walk on tiptoe. Slowly, slowly … As though it was not her own feet that were carrying her. Putting her right ear to the door she listened, but not a sound came from inside the barn. He’s sleeping, she thought, he’s fast asleep, the speckled heathen! It’ll be easy to catch him this time. Why, he was awake all night, crowing!

  As the caravan was setting out for the Chukurova, Köstüoglu’s speckled cock broke loose and escaped. They had chased him around for a while and then they had given up. Meryemdje, after she returned to the village, had been roused from sleep that morning by a loud crowing. She had been delighted and since then her one aim had been to catch the speckled cock. She had resorted to all sorts of tricks and wiles; twice she had managed to lay her hands on him, but he was a strong cock and he had struggled free. This time she was wiser and would keep a firm hold on him. He wouldn’t escape her again. He wasn’t old either, his flesh would be quite tender. And juicy too. It would last Meryemdje a whole week. As good as a lamb.

  Carefully, without making a sound, she opened the door and slipped inside. She stood quite still for a while, her eyes closed. When she opened them they had grown used to the dark. The cock was perched on the board of a manger in a corner, his wings drooping, asleep. Meryemdje’s heart beat fast, but she knew that speckled heathen’s ways; she must not hurry. He’d let you come near him like this, nearer and nearer, and then spring into the air just as you put out your hand. She paused within stepping distance. The cock seemed fast asleep. Meryemdje gathered all her strength and moved. Her hands touched the cock. One moment she held him and the next, in a wild flutter of wings, he had escaped her. A flurry of dust and feathers and he had fled through the open door, while Meryemdje lay full length on the ground, her right arm aching as though it were broken. Hurling unheard-of curses at the cock she scrambled to her feet. ‘I shouldn’t have jumped at him,’ she muttered as she picked up her stick and went outside. ‘I should have struck him with my stick there and then. But tomorrow he’ll see what’s coming to him, that speckled heathen …’

  Tomorrow or even tonight while he slept, she would draw near to him, carefully, oh so carefully, then stop and bash him over the head. Then she would pluck and wash him clean and salt him. Over a great big fire of large red embers the cock would smell so good … The flesh roasted red as a pomegranate, juicy … ‘Aaah,’ she si
ghed, ‘let it be poison to me! While my dear ones are burning in the Chukurova heat, devoured by mosquitoes, here I am in the cool uplands eating juicy roast chicken … Yes, poison …’ But her mouth watered and she licked her lips.

  She looked at the sun. It’s still a long time till evening, she thought. I’ll go down to the Peri’s Dell and call to Spellbound Ahmet. Maybe he’ll be there today.

  And, she remembered, tomorrow it will be Thursday, and Thursday night was meeting night, when the good spirits and the Holy Forties would assemble on the top of a high mountain. Surely Tashbash, since he was a saint now, must hold such conclaves too with his saintly companions, but the question was, on which mountain? This, Meryemdje could not determine. Each day she fixed on one, then changed her mind. She racked her brains trying to remember which hills had been Tashbash’s favourites before he became a saint, when he was still a human being. In vain. If she could only discover that mountain and lay her hands on Tashbash, well then there were a couple of words he’d hear from her, yes, just a couple of words …

  It was late afternoon when she came to the Peri’s Dell. She sat down in her usual place at the foot of a rock and closed her eyes, listening to the burbling of the brook that flowed down below. The valley smelt of woods, of pine and cedar, of pennyroyal and wormwood. There was also a faint smell of wet earth which Meryemdje loved more than anything in the world. She envied the fairies who dwelt in the woods among these wonderful scents …

  When she was rested she got up and began to shout down into the valley. ‘Spellbound Ahmet, my child! They’ve left me here all alone. Come to the village, your Mother Meryemdje’s waiting, she needs you. Come, my Ahmet, come and take me to your fairy father-in-law, to the Peri King’s palace. Don’t be afraid; I shan’t disgrace you, I’m not like other human beings. I’ll look after your children until the villagers return from the Chukurova. Tell the Peri King that Mother Meryemdje’s different, not like other people. Answer me, my Ahmet. Can’t you hear me? Ahmet, Ahmet, Ahmeeet …’

  She paused. The valley echoed for a while then all was silence again, save for the bubbling of running water and the rustling of leaves.

  Meryemdje smiled, a cunning smile. ‘Look, Ahmet my child,’ she said in a lower voice now, ‘you want to come to me, I know. It’s the peris won’t let you. Come in secret then, in the night, while they’re all asleep. I long to see you, my Ahmet …’

  She stood listening, but there was no sign of Ahmet. The evening mists were sinking into the valley, the sun would soon be setting. Leaning heavily on her stick she began to make her way back up the slope.

  20

  Memidik removes the body from the well for he knows he cannot go on hiding the troublesome thing there. Why, all the eagles in the world will soon be filling up the Chukurova skies, blotting out the sun! People aren’t all asses, someone will be sure to wonder about this well over which so many eagles are turning. And then they’ll find the corpse …

  One of the grain-ricks swelled under the moonlight like a small hill and took up the space of three or four threshing-floors. Is this wheat, Memidik wondered, or just wheat-stalks? It can’t be wheat surely, it would have been separated by now. It’s only straw for fodder … He drew out a sheaf and examined it under the light of the moon. It was wheat. Fateared, black-awned Chukurova wheat … This rick, Memidik thought, could feed a whole village … But there was no help for it … How he had managed it, he himself did not know, but in the twinkling of an eye he had abstracted a box of matches from Hassan’s nylon bag. His hand went to the pocket of his shalvar-trousers. The matches were there.

  He looked up and a shudder ran through his body. The eagles were like a black mantle spread over the sky. He could hear the sound of their wings grazing against each other. A strange magic turmoil was taking place up above, as though the whole sky was adrift, a restless, pulsing swarm of hundreds of thousands of wings in the night sky …

  Memidik ran. Breathless, he reached the well. It was past the yatsi prayer hour. He undressed, but suddenly his limbs went limp and he sank to the ground. Then, like a flash, without giving himself time to think, he rose and jumped into the well.

  The body was bloated, enormous now. He propped it up. It filled the well. Memidik could barely move. He grasped the legs and found his fingers sinking into the mushy thigh. He retched and vomited while his fingers stayed stuck there in the viscid flesh. His head whirling he bent down, almost immersed in the sheet of water at the bottom of the well and, thrusting his head between the dead man’s legs, he hoisted him up on his shoulders. Then, with legs and arms spread-eagled he began to scale the wall. The body was heavy and it was hard going for Memidik. He inserted first one foot into a cleft, then the other. Next he groped for a grip and pulled himself up. Above, at the mouth of the well all hell was breaking loose, a loud flapping of wings, an expectant hubbub that increased as he drew nearer.

  The body was out now, head and shoulders above the well-mouth. The flapping became frenzied, thunderous. The well shook as though a mountain was crashing down. The body toppled and pitched straight to the bottom of the well. Water spurted up, man-high. Memidik saw hundreds of dark, black beaks closing in on him, hundreds of sombre wings outstretched. The eagles had alighted, hopping around the well. He drew his head back just in time to avoid the deadly thrust of their strong beaks.

  Back he went and lifted the body up once more. The climb was harder, more terrible than before. He was sweating blood by the time he reached the well-mouth. But the eagles would not let up. The body slipped out of his hold and water gushed up again, dousing the waiting eagles.

  Three times Memidik brought the body to the edge of the well. Three times it splashed down. The eagles were wet through. But in the end it was done, and Memidik was running towards the wheat-rick, a host of eagles in his wake. Quickly, he shoved the body within the sheaves, while overhead thousands of eagles hid the moon and the flurry of their wings resounded through the night. Then he streaked back to the well, put his clothes on and returned to the wheat, only to find it black with eagles jabbing at the stalks. Overhead thousands of them whirled in a furious ferment.

  He took the matchbox from his pocket, struck a match and applied it to the wheat-rick. The dry stalks caught fire immediately. The swarming eagles took wing and fled, narrowly avoiding being trapped in the sudden burst of flames. In a short while a mountain of flames reared up on the Chukurova plain.

  ‘It’s burning, it’s burning! I’ve got rid of it,’ Memidik kept repeating. But there was an emptiness in him, a strange unbearable loneliness. All at once he jumped into the blaze and dragged the body out. He heaved it on to his back and ran down to the river. There on the bank he lowered the body into a hollow. The blazing rick was lighting up the plain. It was like daylight. Memidik could see the dead man’s face quite clearly. It had grown bigger. The eyes were twice as large now. The face gleamed, a coppery red. He laid the body down in the hollow, thatched it over with branches from a chaste-tree nearby and scooped sand over it.

  Then he went and perched on a mound near the grave and looked about him. Everything was clearly visible in the glare of the fire. He spotted one of the dead man’s shoes on the ground some distance away. He rose, picked it up, and was about to throw it into the river when he changed his mind. Quickly he dug up a corner of the grave, found the foot and slipped the shoe on again.

  ‘To think I was on the point of burning my corpse,’ he murmured. ‘Burning him! What foolishness! What a mistake! Suppose I’d lost him in the fire? …’ A pleasant lassitude overcame him and he walked slowly up the bank.

  The blaze had spread and the flames rose high in the sky, lighting up the whole plain right down to the foot of the Anavarza crags.

  It was nearly dawn when he came to the cotton field. He found the villagers awake, every one of them. Calmly, as though he had only gone to relieve himself, he tied up the cord of his shalvar-trousers and gazed with the others at the burning wheat-rick. No one made any comment. Thei
r eyes were fixed on the lengthening flames that broke suddenly at the top and leapt up into the night sky.

  ‘We didn’t sleep a wink tonight … No one slept at all, not even the children.’

  21

  Since that day, every day before dawn Old Halil comes to wake Long Ali and attempts to force him to pick cotton in the dead of night. Ali will not be tempted and firmly rejects the old man’s proposals. But Old Halil is not one to give up.

  ‘Get up, Ali, do,’ Old Halil urged him. ‘I won’t let go of you, so get up.’

  Ali was awake. He had got into the habit of waking up at the hour Old Halil came. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Elif was awake too. So were the children. It was the same every night now and Old Halil repeated the same things too. ‘Your mother may be agonizing this very minute up there in the village. Come now, you may still get back to her in time, get back to our good rosy-faced Meryemdje; get back in time to save her, our fine, blessed Meryemdje …’

  This time he broke into tears, sniffling like a child. ‘The cotton’s so rich in that corner of the field that even the laziest slowcoach could pick fifteen kilos in a single hour. We could get up like this every night and the devil himself would be no wiser. We’d pick and pick, and you’d make enough to pay your debts and to spare. And then, in less than a week you’d be able to set off and save your dear mother from certain death. At this rate you’ll never go back before the others. And what will you find? Not even a bone left of our rosy-faced Meryemdje. What will people say then? Now tell me that, you fool. What, what?’

  ‘Uncle Halil’s right,’ Elif said.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ Ali moaned. He fell back and rolled on to his belly.

  The moon had set, but the night shone with a pale radiance as though lit up from some faraway spot. The thin bright line that divides night from day had not yet appeared and the morning-star flashed more brightly than ever over the Gavur Mountains. It seemed to sway in the lucent night sky, swung to and fro by the light dawn breeze. High above, large motionless clusters of clouds shed their whiteness over the night.