The Undying Grass Read online

  Old Halil coughed and in the hushed stillness of the plain the noise was like a burst of cannon. He seized Ali’s wrist. ‘Get up at once, you son-of-a-bitch,’ he hissed wrathfully. He had just remembered Ali’s father, whom he had always had to bully a little to make him do something. Surely Ali must have the same disposition. ‘Get up, you measly mouse-hearted Ali. Get up at once! Or I’ll give it you. I’ll raise such hell that I’ll have the whole village upon you.’

  Ali sat up. ‘But, Uncle Halil,’ he protested feebly, ‘won’t it be stealing, what you want us to do?’

  Old Halil boiled over. ‘Your mother’s dying up there in the mountains,’ he snapped. ‘Our Meryemdje! And you talk to me of stealing! As if that mattered! Of course we’ll steal if we can.’

  Keeping a firm hold of Ali’s wrist he dragged him towards the corner of the field he had marked out. He walked without a sound, gliding snake-like through the cotton plants. ‘Quietly, quietly,’ he whispered to Elif who was stepping behind. ‘Get the sacks, the baskets. Don’t forget them …’

  Elif had done that already. She had even given some baskets to the children to carry. Stealthily, almost bent in two, they made their way to a place near the banks of the river.

  ‘Here we are,’ Old Halil said. He looked at the Gavur Mountains. ‘It’s still a long time till dawn. If we can do this for four or five more nights then you’ll be able to say farewell to us. Why, you made me sweat blood, Ali! Stealing! Is there anyone who’s not a thief in this world? Even our Lord Tashbash … Every creature in this world is a thief, you foolish Ali: the flies, fish, worms, eagles, the beautiful-eyed does, the wolves and ants, everything, everyone. And because of that, stealing is a sacred thing. Thieves have a patron saint too. It’s Halil Ibrahim, that prophet of prophets. Yes, Halil Ibrahim is not only the patron saint of fertility, but of thieves as well. Listen to me, other people may burn in Hell, but those who’ve made stealing their business will go straight to Paradise. My name has come out as a thief. Well, I tell you, those who are known as thieves, who have been persecuted because of that, those who have sat in the Lord Joseph’s throne and been imprisoned like him, those will go straight to Paradise, no questions asked. So you needn’t have any scruples, Ali. This stealing we’re going to do now is a holy sacred act that’ll win Paradise for us. Come on now, we haven’t got much time. I’d have a lot to say to you about this, but it’ll be dawn any moment now.’

  Elif threw herself upon the cotton. Her body ached all over, but the pain disappeared as she began to sweat. Ali was sweating profusely, but for another reason. It was the first time in his life that he had stolen anything, if picking cotton like this could be called stealing.

  But there’s no getting out of it now, he thought. So let me pick as much as I can. Old Halil’s an old rascal, but he’s right this time. He’s clever too. He’s given a lot of thought to what’s good and what’s bad in this world. Just look at him, how he’s working, how quick his hands are at his age, even in the dark!

  ‘Put what you’ve picked into this sack,’ Old Halil said. ‘I’ll take it back to your heap. Only I can do it without anyone seeing me. If the villagers find you out they’ll kill you.’

  Quickly they stuffed the cotton into a sack and in no time Old Halil had carried it to the wattle-hut and was back again. He was in seventh heaven.

  Suddenly Elif’s hands stopped. She seized Ali’s arm. ‘Look, Ali!’ she exclaimed, pointing to a group of shadowy figures some distance away. ‘There are others, Ali, just like us …’

  Old Halil made another trip to the hut with a sack full of cotton. Their clothes were wet through from the dew. They had come across two large water-melons and had carved and eaten one of them on the spot. The flavour lingered on their palates, cool and fresh and sweet.

  ‘Quick,’ Old Halil kept urging them on. ‘Hurry, it’ll soon be light. Tomorrow we’ll come to this same spot, and the day after too.’

  The east had begun to pale now.

  ‘That’s enough,’ Old Halil decided. ‘Let’s get back before those stupid villagers wake up. We can snatch a little sleep and rest our tired bones before we start picking again with the others. Every human being, even the prince of thieves, must take some rest, or their bones will hurt. I’ll take the sack and go before you. They can’t do anything to me if they catch me. And if they do, who cares!’

  But he put the sack down again. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘I must have a peep at those people over there. I’m curious …’

  He was back almost at once. ‘Hey, great Allah,’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s Okkesh Dagkurdu with his wife and children! And who should I see farther off but Muhtar Sefer himself with his three wives and children too … Why, half the village is awake, all pilfering cotton from one another! Okkesh Dagkurdu threw himself at my feet. “Don’t tell anyone, Uncle Halil,” he begged me. “It’s to serve Allah I’m doing this.” He was weeping. “If I don’t make the Haj this year,” he said, “then I’ll never make it and I’ll pass unclean into the next world …” “Don’t weep, Okkesh,” I said. “Whether you make the Haj or not, there is a kiosk set apart for you in Paradise, a kiosk of crystal, pearl and coral, and seventy houris are written down for you, every one of them broad-hipped and beautiful. Paradise is always open to the thief. Go on with your thieving and may Halil Ibrahim, the patron-saint of thieves, watch over you …” As for Muhtar Sefer, who’d have believed it? Nobody ever saw him pick a boll of cotton in all these years, isn’t that so, Ali?’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘So all the time he did it at night. And we all thought he never did a stroke of work. How he looked down on us, how he boasted he was not one to toil like us common peasants! Well, it’s worse, much harder to pick cotton in the dark.’

  He walked off to the wattle-hut, emptied the sack over Ali’s heap and stepped back to look at it. It was several times larger than the other heaps. ‘Good work,’ he muttered. ‘Very good.’ He slipped back to his bed and drew the blanket over his head.

  Was Meryemdje dead already? Or was she taking her ease up there in the village beside the cool, frothy, marjoram-scented springs of the highlands? At this rate Ali would be sure to get back to her in good time. All at once the realization flashed upon him that if Meryemdje died he could not live on, and he smiled wryly. Well, he thought, it’s much the same for her. She wouldn’t survive me a single day … If she’s well then I’ll offer a corban, a large crested cock I’ll sacrifice to please Allah. Just let me see her again, almighty Allah, with these mortal eyes …

  Long Ali lay on his back, unable to sleep. He was wet with dew, chilled to the bone. A long shudder shook him as he thought of what he had done. It was stealing, even though half the village was doing it. Yet he felt elated. This way there would be no need for him to pick in another field with the others, after they had finished this one. He’d have made enough to pay his debts and would be able to go home.

  Elif and the children dropped off the minute their heads touched their pillows, but Ali lay awake gazing at the stars and thinking of his mother, old and ailing and all alone. ‘How could I do it,’ he kept on saying to himself. ‘Whatever possessed me to leave an old, invalid woman all by herself in a desolate village, before an empty fireless hearth? Aaah, just let me get back before anything happens to her … How I’ll minister to her every want! The best of mothers … I should have found means to make her life easier. How could I do such a thing? How, how?’

  He sat up on his elbows and saw that the villagers were stretching their limbs and rubbing their eyes in the pre-dawn half-light. Over the Gavur Mountains a streak of greenish light was steadily widening.

  ‘But there was nothing else for me to do … If I’d stayed up there we’d have died of hunger, all of us, and she too.’

  The villagers had begun to drift silently into the cotton field, still half asleep.

  ‘Elif, get up,’ he whispered and shook her gently. ‘They’re going to work.’

  She started and turned
to wake the children.

  ‘Let them sleep, the poor things,’ Ali said, his huge hand passing softly over their sleeping heads.

  But Elif was adamant. ‘No,’ she said. ‘We need them now. If they don’t help us now, where will we be?’ And she shook them. ‘Hassan, Ummahan!’

  They woke up at once. Elif’s heart ached for them.

  22

  It is soon common knowledge that Long Ali is picking cotton secretly in the night. There is nothing unusual in this; everyone at one time or another has pilfered cotton in the night, everyone but some children and a few old men. But that Ali should do it is somehow not to be borne. It rouses everyone’s choler. They decide to catch him red-handed and this is how they plot to do it.

  It was Batty Bekir’s wife, Döndülü Lass, who set the talk going.

  ‘I saw them,’ she said. ‘I was up too, but only to make water, and what should I see! Old Halil with Long Ali, Elif and their children all picking away like mad where the cotton’s in richest bloom. Long Ali looked as if he was going to swallow up the whole crop. Yes, just as I’m telling you! Anyway, look at the pile he’s made. It would never be so tall if he didn’t steal secretly in the night.’

  ‘His pile is man-high,’ Zaladja said. ‘The sneak-thief!’

  ‘And Shevket Bey’s harvest went up in flames,’ Shirtless roared out in his deep-toned voice. ‘It’s clear now who it is goes roaming in the night, who’s bringing trouble upon the villagers. We’ve got families and children too. And debts as well. And we haven’t killed our old mother either, or left her body to dry on the rocks of Yalak village. Isn’t there anybody in this village to call out halt to that man? Isn’t there anyone to defend our rights?’

  Muhtar Sefer made a sign to Gooey Apti. He also summoned the watchman and led the way down to a clump of tamarisks on the river-bank.

  ‘My good brothers, you know you’re the two apples of my eyes,’ he addressed them. ‘You won’t talk to me because Tashbash ordered it, but I know you love me better than your souls. And so do I love you both, more than my life. You can’t speak to me, yes, but I know you’ll carry out to the letter every instruction I give you.’

  They both said yes with their eyes.

  ‘Well, my brothers, last night I couldn’t sleep. So I thought I’d take a little stroll, and what should I see! That snivelling saint Tashbash’s bosom friend, Longish Ali, picking away at the cotton for all he’s worth. The thief, the wretch! Anyway, what good can you expect from a man who’s killed his own mother? Such a creature’s the lowest of the low. He’ll be picking away again tonight as sure as if we’d put him there. It’s your job to spread it among the villagers that a scoundrel is stealing our cotton. And what is the penalty for this? … Let him go on picking for another night or two. We mustn’t scare him away. You’ll take him by surprise one night, but be careful, you’ll not touch a hair on his head. Just hand him over to the villagers. They’ll deal with him. In the meantime your task is to stir them up until they’re really mad.’

  They both nodded. This was their job. They knew how to whip up the villagers’ resentment, to make them see red. The villagers would make mincemeat of Ali after they’d done their work. And serve him right, that monster, that mother-murderer! This they made clear to Muhtar Sefer with gesticulations of face and hands. Leave this matter to us, Muhtar, they said in sign-language.

  ‘I trust you, Apti, brother,’ Sefer said. ‘And you too, Watchman, you the best watchman of the Taurus Mountains, whose fame has spread beyond the frontiers of our country, to the lands of the English, of the Red Chinese, of the notorious Castro himself. Don’t speak with me if you like, you’re still dearer to me than my own two eyes. Well, I wish you success. I’m going to go hunting now and bag a couple of fat francolins for you to roast over red-hot embers and eat smacking your lips in full view of everyone. That’ll make their mouths water! Well, godspeed to you.’

  Apti and the watchman lost no time in getting down to business. Soon the long row of cotton pickers was agog with whispering, wagging tongues.

  ‘Take care,’ Gooey Apti warned them. ‘We mustn’t make him suspicious, or we’ll never be able to catch him red-handed.’

  Ali sensed something, but paid no attention. People had been so hostile to him recently that he had grown used to vindictive glances and malignant mutterings, to spiteful spitting on the ground behind his back.

  It was hot, the sun was leaden, blinding. The labourers moved like a single body, restless, itching. One spark, one tiny spark would be enough to set them at Ali and rend him to pieces. The cloudless sky was aflame, steaming, a mass of grey ashy smoke. The labourers sweated, dull and senseless from the heat.

  ‘Tonight,’ Gooey Apti was whispering into everybody’s ear. ‘For God’s sake be patient. Tonight we’ll nab him and he’ll get what’s coming to him. Not a sign now, for heaven’s sake …’

  The word was passed around from mouth to ear.

  ‘Keep your heads!’

  ‘Don’t let yourselves go, now.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, not a sign …’

  ‘Tonight when he’s picking cotton all unawares, the wretch …’

  Three gunshots cracked out in the distance and blobs of gunpowder appeared hanging on the hot air like three small grey clouds. The ferment, the angry muttering grew apace and lasted until the labourers retired under their wattle-huts in the noonday heat. Even then, there were unusual goings and comings from hut to hut, accompanied by loud shouts and curses.

  Just then Muhtar Sefer came striding along with two francolins slung to his belt. He was laughing. He went round the huts, sticking his head into each one. ‘Easy going to you,’ he said, only that, laughing all the while, his teeth gleaming.

  Overhead a flight of American jets from the Injirlik air-base zoomed by, hugging the ground. At any other time, the villagers would have sprung out of their huts to watch. But now no one moved. The shadows of the jets skimmed swiftly over the flat Chukurova earth, tracing dark paths over the luminous fields.

  Memidik, his eyes glued to the sky above the dry well, was watching the eagles. They gathered in a huge seething ball, then scattered in all directions like a flock of sheep attacked by a wolf. His hands suspended above the cotton, he stared, fascinated, wondering how this strange ebb-and-flow game the eagles were playing would end. Would they never give up and leave the well? They were wheeling close to the ground now. One or two of them alighted and hopped awkwardly about the well, their wings still outstretched. Then slowly, reluctantly they took off, rising high into the sky. A minute later they were down on a level with the Anavarza crags. Suddenly the western tip of the group flapped like a great black flag and broke off, hurtling on towards Dumlu, a dark ball that vanished suddenly in the ashy incandescent sky.

  ‘They’re leaving,’ Memidik rejoiced. ‘They haven’t found the new grave …’

  Then almost at once he felt strangely sad. Was the body still there where he had buried it so hurriedly in the dark? Dimly he recalled the events of the night before. The well, the corpse, the burning harvest, his own desperate plunge into the flaming rick to save his corpse … It all seemed long ago and unreal, like a dream. Yet the rick was still smouldering, the smoke rising above it perfectly straight, then snapping high up in the sky into flimsy clouds that soon melted away.

  ‘What if something’s happened to the corpse? What if the freshly-dug earth of the grave betrays the hiding-place?’

  The eagles, the body, the mutterings of the villagers making ready to bait their trap … Everything today combined to make Memidik squirm with maddening impotence. What if someone found the body? What if the eagles alighted on the grave and picked the body out? The body, ah, the body … What had possessed him to pull it out of the flaming rick? By now it would have been burnt to cinders and Memidik’s troubles would have been over. But now … Now not even the Lord Tashbash could save him. He felt he must go at once to the grave and have a look at the corpse. A mad voluptuous sensation inva
ded his body.

  The eagles were flowing southwards in a long black line that extended cord-like from the Anavarza crags to the Mediterranean.

  ‘These eagles must be crazy!’ Memidik muttered. ‘Who’s ever seen such a long line of eagles like a rope stretched across the sky? No one, never in all the world!’

  He heard a voice and looking down he saw Old Halil right beside him.

  ‘No one!’ the old man repeated. ‘Not even me. Cranes fly like this, in a long row. And wild geese. Wild ducks too. But eagles, never. Eagles always fly in circles over the ground. They whirl round and round and round, endlessly.’

  ‘I was wondering too, Uncle Halil, at these eagles,’ Memidik said.

  The long cord-like row of eagles snapped in the middle. The seaward length gathered up in a ball, a dark spot on the rising cumulus clouds, and vanished from sight. The rest of the group flew back to Anavarza Castle. Memidik saw them glide down very slowly and alight one by one on the crags.

  The sky seemed scrubbed clean now. Not the slightest stain marred its clear brightness. And then Memidik looked to the right and saw a lone eagle flying from Mount Hemité, a very large eagle, but old and heavy. With a weary flapping of wings it passed above them quite low, casting a huge black shadow on the ground, and went off in the direction of Dumlu.

  ‘This is a stray, Memidik, son,’ Old Halil said. ‘Old, thousand-year-old eagles always stray from the others.’ He gazed after the eagle and stroked his beard. ‘That one you see up there all by itself, that aged, mighty eagle will never go back to its eyrie. It will never rejoin the flock. It is a noble eagle, not afraid to be alone. It will stay wheeling up there in the wide wide sky, solitary, until it dies. No living creature will ever get near it again and it will never alight on this earth, not on any tree, or rock, never … You know, Memidik, son, I have a great respect for these old, stray eagles, those exalted creatures that choose death in the skies, that feel their death approaching and soar off to meet it in the high infinity of the heavens. Only when they are dead do they drop back to earth. Lifeless, their great bodies lie stretched out on the Chukurova earth … Yes, my son, they wheel and wheel endlessly, these mighty old eagles, serene in the wide wide spaces, high up in the blue immensity … On and on they fly until their wings are still. From west to east, from east to west they rove the sky, and that’s where they die, Memidik, son, far up in the remotest part of the heavens where the stars are. But to the old of the human race death comes wretchedly as to a crawling worm. Watch the eagles, Memidik, son, watch them well, they are noble creatures.’