Iron Earth, Copper Sky Page 18

  Away from the crowd, Memidik was watching. He gritted his teeth and cursed. ‘Two-faced Sefer! A hundred-faced, a thousand-faced Sefer … I’ll show you one day!’

  Chapter 30

  Sefer scoured the village, thundering and cursing and reviling every single person.

  ‘You gave him up,’ he ranted. ‘Gave him up to three miserable policemen. In front of everyone, before the eyes of a huge village they took him away, Allah’s own envoy, the light of our eyes, the bounty of our crops, the milk of our cows, the green of our forests, the fecundity of our women … I, only I stood up to them, and they all but killed me!’ And he displayed his bandaged arm. The Corporal’s final blow had dislocated a bone which the Bald Minstrel had set and dressed, but the pain was enough to bring tears to his eyes. ‘It cuts me right to the heart. If you’d backed me, if you’d been men, he would not have ended in the loony-bin, our own Tashbash, or been thrashed black and blue at the police station. Ah, wretched people!’ And here he launched upon Tashbash’s famous imprecations. ‘The women shall be barren, the crops shall wither …’ With relish he repeated it to whoever he came across, expecting to inflame the villagers and, who knows, perhaps take Tashbash’s place on the throne of sainthood.

  Modulating his voice soulfully, he poured out the prophetic maledictions, putting all his heart into his performance, but no one turned a hair. What could these wretched people have seen in Tashbash to have made such an idol of him? Sefer was ten times more eloquent. But it was no use. They had shut themselves up like clams. Slowly the very life was draining out of the village. No one stirred abroad. Not a dog barked even, nor a cock crowed. Only the shrill whistling of the mighty wind rushing in from the steppe, sweeping along the empty yards and whirling about the shuttered houses broke the deathly silence, and the sound made by the dreamily falling snow, like the rubbing of an insect’s wings.

  For perhaps the hundredth time, Sefer walked through the empty village and hurled out Tashbash’s imprecations, straining his lungs, shouting himself hoarse, but it seemed as though no one heard him.

  ‘Never since the world began has anyone been mourned like this,’ he thought. ‘And all for that good-for-nothing Tashbash.’ Suddenly he was angry and cursed in earnest at the villagers’ wives and mothers, cursed recklessly until a sudden panic fear drove him to his house and he stood panting, gun in hand behind the locked door, waiting for them to come and break into the house, Meryemdje at their head. This time there would be no reprieve for him.

  He waited in vain. No one so much as passed before his door.

  ‘They’re sore,’ he said. ‘Sore at the whole world, and they’re sulking. Well, I don’t care. I’m damned if I’ll do anything more for them, the ungrateful dogs.’

  And he too retired into his shell.

  Not even the rumour about Tashbash and the madhouse had shaken the villagers out of their torpor, how he had been shut up in there, packed with hundreds of lunatics, and how in the twinkling of an eye the building had vanished and all the lunatics had found themselves in the open, freezing in the snow. So they’d hastened to take Tashbash from among them, and in a flash the madhouse had appeared in its former place again. A few days ago, people would have feasted on such a tale. But now … The village was like a vast deserted graveyard.

  One morning, however, Sefer was awakened by a confused uproar; people shouting, dogs barking, cocks crowing, a din that filled the whole village and roused echoes far in the distant steppe. He jumped out of bed. The sun was not yet up. Thin flashes of light silvered the clouds in the east. A freezing wind lashed at the village.

  ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

  But he knew only too well, and with beating heart he sped straight for Tashbash’s house. All the village was there, come to life again, laughing, talking, rejoicing. The door was open wide. He broke through the crowd and burst in. Tashbash was sitting by the hearth, his eyes on the fire.

  Sefer threw himself at his feet. ‘Welcome back, our Lord, our dear saint!’ he cried. ‘Welcome back, our Prophet Muhammet’s envoy. The flower on the branch, the green of the forest, the flowing of the streams are come back to us with you!’

  Tashbash raised his head slowly and looked at him with disgust. Then he turned his eyes to the fire again.

  ‘He didn’t speak to him! He ignored him!’

  The word spread through the crowd like a paean of joy.

  Sefer talked on desperately. ‘Our good Tashbash! How did you get away from them? Did they hurt you? Ah, you’re back, thank God. This village has been plunged into mourning ever since you left. You’ve come and brought us to life. You’ve made the blood in our veins run again …’

  One word from Tashbash would be enough to change Sefer’s position, but he did not even look at him. He seemed turned to stone.

  ‘Look, Tashbash,’ Sefer said in the end, ‘when they came to arrest you,’ he lowered his voice so the others should not hear him, ‘you know I was the only one to try to stop them. These people here whom you call your villagers, they couldn’t have cared less. The police gave me such a beating that … Look, they broke my arm. Come, let’s be friends. Forgive me and let bygones be bygones. I’ll do everything you wish from now on, I swear it. Come, just turn your face to me and say a word. Say something so I won’t be disgraced here in front of everyone … Is there no human feeling, no pity in you? So you’re not going to talk, eh?’

  People were pressing at the door, eager to hear what was being said. Sefer lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘If you don’t speak to me, my man, it’ll turn out ill for you. Be you saint or even prophet, I’ll break you. After this, it’ll be either you or me, before Allah that’s how it’ll be!’

  Tashbash never even lifted his face from the fire.

  Suddenly Sefer leapt to his feet. ‘So,’ he hissed, ‘I’ll pay you back for this!’

  He pushed through the throng of villagers and was gone.

  A sigh of relief rose from the crowd.

  ‘Sefer kissed his feet, but he never gave him so much as a glance …’

  ‘Our own Lord Tashbash!’

  The Muhtar dashed into his house chewing at his moustache. He grabbed the gun from the wall and rushed out again. Then he checked himself.

  Today, Tashbash had signed Sefer’s death warrant. He would never be able to look anyone in the face again. Wasn’t this just what the man had been plotting for years, Sefer’s utter disgrace?

  ‘I’ll get him yet!’ he muttered. ‘But not this way. No, I must have a plan. Even the Government does nothing without a plan …’

  He hung the gun back on the wall.

  The Captain, when he had come into his presence, was all fire and fury.

  ‘So!’ he had roared. ‘So we’re playing at Mehdis, eh? In this age of the atom, of conquered space? Why, you lout, people are going to the moon now! And not by miracles either, but by the power of science, of technology. And here you are, stuffing our poor ignorant people with fables, nonsense about miracles and spells, so they will be left for another few centuries in the mud and degradation they’ve been wallowing in so long. But I’ll grind you to pulp! This is the twentieth century, and these people still live in the Stone Age as their ancestors did ten thousand, fifty thousand years ago. Nothing has changed for them. And you, with your fairytales and sorceries, you come and try to make them worse than the primitive tribes of Africa even! And why? Just for a little profit, just for a handful of silver! A strong, hale man like you, why don’t you do some honest work?’

  This had been too much for Tashbash.

  ‘Captain,’ he had said, ‘you can’t hang a man without hearing him first. Let me tell you how they made a Mehdi of me. Listen to the whole story first, and then hang me if you like.’

  ‘Was the Muhtar lying to me then?’ the Captain had asked less angrily. ‘All right, out with your story, and mind you keep to the truth.’

  Tashbash had related all. Gradually, the Captain’s face had lost its hardness. He had beg
un to feel pity for Tashbash.

  ‘This is a bad business, Memet brother,’ he had said when Tashbash had finished. ‘I wish I could do something to help but … How are you going to get out of this mess?’

  Tashbash had bowed his head.

  ‘Look, Memet,’ the Captain had said, ‘I’m a man of the law, but I’m going to let you go this time. You’re a sensible person, but somehow you’ve let yourself be drawn into this. It’s up to you to do something, I can’t tell you what. But if you’re brought here again I’ll make you wish you were dead.’

  Tashbash had left the police station more dead than alive, racking his brains all the way home as to what he ought to do. Then he had seen the crowd about his house. How, when, had they heard of his release? His first impulse had been to run away, to leave the village, his wife, his children, everything. But suddenly the realization had come to him that he could never do that. He could leave the village, yes, abandon his wife and children too perhaps, yet there was one thing, just one thing he could never bring himself to give up. But this he did not admit even to himself. So he had walked into the crowd and surrendered himself to the demonstrations of love, the kissing of hands and feet, the prostrations …

  ‘The Captain, the minute he saw our Lord Tashbash, fell at his feet and begged his forgiveness. And at that instant a ball of light burst from our Lord Tashbash’s brow and glided out of the window. And not a minute later, three balls of light came floating in again and settled upon his head. The Captain was dazzled. Ah Tashbash, he said, you’re a saint indeed! Go back to your village with your message of hope and bring wealth and plenty to your people … Yes, that Captain’s as good and clean a man as they make them.’

  Tashbash shivered at the thought of what the Captain would do if he heard of those three balls of light!

  Night fell and the crowd dispersed, but the sick remained. Tashbash took them in and talked to each in turn. He spoke to them with gentleness and laid his hand on their brow. Then he knelt, facing the Mecca, and prayed aloud.

  ‘Almighty Allah,’ he said, ‘these people have come to me full of faith. Even if I have no more favour in your eyes than a dog, don’t disappoint their hopes, make them well …’

  Then he rose and blew his breath upon the faces of the sick.

  They had begun to come from all over the Taurus now, and even from the distant villages of the steppe, with every kind of disease; epilepsy, rheumatism, asthma, paralysis, tuberculosis, malaria, dysentery, madness … It was hard work, and Tashbash was worn out. He treated them at night and slept during the daytime. The villagers saw less and less of him. He had decreed that the only payment he would accept was a pinch of salt, but the salt had now piled up into a tall mound. In Yalak village itself, people had fallen into the habit of coming to him with the flimsiest of trouble, such as bleeding noses or toothache. Some even came hoping he would find their lost cow or donkey.

  ‘From one of the villages of the Taurus they brought her one day, a golden-haired, black-eyed girl. Bed-ridden for years she was, her legs like two withered branches. Our Lord Tashbash laid his hands on her legs and prayed and beseeched Allah to make her well, but nothing happened. So he went up to the summit of Mount Tekech and for three days and three nights he offered up prayers, but when he returned the girl’s legs were still like two sticks of wood. He wept with pity, our Tashbash, she was so beautiful, and he bent down his sacred brow, bright with the three balls of light, his brow that never bows to anyone but Allah, and passed it over the girl’s legs. And behold she rose and began to walk, and she walked all the way to her village.

  ‘And then there’s Dumb Ali, that shepherd from Chukurja village in the steppe, not yet twenty. One snowy night the wolves attacked his flock. He fought them off with his staff for as long as he could, but the next morning they found him lying on the snow, unconscious, and when he came to he could not utter a word. He’d been struck dumb, and dumb he remained until the day they brought him to our Tashbash. Tashbash just spat into his mouth, and there the shepherd was, piping out clear as a nightingale again …

  ‘What about Speckled Kemal who’s been plagued by the fever every other day for seven years now? He was shaking so much, the poor man, that he couldn’t even pick cotton. Tashbash burnt a bit of cotton wool soaked in olive oil and held it to his nose … Speckled Kemal has never had a bout of fever since.

  ‘Seventy if he’s a day Grim Mustafa is, and blind since the age of thirty-five, but still he wanted to try our Tashbash too … Tashbash made a mixture with a handful of willow leaves and the wings of bats, and said a prayer over it. Then he set it afire and the minute the smoke rose to Grim Mustafa’s eyes, he could see again.’

  These stories, and many more, spread far and wide, all through the Taurus, up into the steppe, in the town itself, and from everywhere sick people who had lost all hope began to come to Tashbash. The saint of Yalak had become famous. Everyone had heard about him except the Government people. Even the Captain’s own wife knew what was going on, but she never told her husband.

  Not for a moment had Tashbash believed he was a saint, not until the day the paralytic girl had come back to him a week later, walking on her own two legs. Then he had wept for joy. And there had been the dumb talking and the deaf hearing again, and others with sharp pains in their bellies which stopped the instant he laid his hand on them. He had seen all this happen just at the breath of his prayer, the touch of his hand. If he was not a saint, if he was just an ordinary man, then what did it all mean? The insinuating thought preyed on his mind. Could all these people, those who had seen the balls of light and the Holy Walnut, the sick who had been restored to health, could they all be lying? Yet he himself knew very well that he had never gone up Mount Tekech that stormy night, and certainly he had seen no lights, let alone trees and forests of lights. Wouldn’t a man know about it if he’d gone somewhere? Wouldn’t a man know whether he was a saint or not? Didn’t the Prophet know he was a prophet and Hizir that he was a saint? He must wait a little, wait and see …

  Chapter 31

  Now a fresh danger threatened him; the house was about to collapse. A hole deep as a well had been dug right under the threshold, and people had to jump over it to get in. God knows where the rumour had sprung from, but the firm belief had taken root that if the earth from Tashbash’s threshold was scattered over a field it would increase the yield ten-fold. People flowed in from as far as the steppe villages for a handful of this earth. As for the Yalak villagers they scooped up whole sackfuls.

  If the Captain heard of this and of the hundreds of sick who came to him, he would break every bone in his body. Since the world began who had ever seen a saint or a prophet come to a good end? It was either the scaffold for them or being skinned alive. Tashbash knew this, but still he remained in the village. He told himself he would go as soon as winter was past, but the truth was he simply could not tear himself away from all this adoration.

  ‘Our own Lord Tashbash! If this base dirty world yet stands, it is only for the grace of your dear presence … Our own Tashbash! He’s taken his rightful place among the Invisible Ones, among the Holy Forties …’

  The villagers worshipped him. They spoke his name with the same veneration as that of the Prophet Muhammet. He had only to lift a finger now and they would make short work of Muhtar Sefer. And not only the Yalak villagers. He could command all the villages of the Taurus and of the steppe too. He could say to them, gather together, walk upon the town, kill that Adil Effendi, and they would not hesitate one moment. He could make them do anything, even rise up against the Government. They would face death for his sake. And before long his fame would spread all over the country. From Aleppo to Damascus, from Adana to Istanbul, people would be talking of him. These and other heady fancies would lay their grip on him and at such times there was no doubt in his mind that he really had become holy. Why should so many people all say the same thing? Why should they lie? There could be no smoke without fire. The bright Holy Walnut tree, for
instance, that descended on his house every night, flooding the place with light, there wasn’t a soul in Yalak who hadn’t seen it, down to his wife and children. Could that be an invention too? Still, he had to see it for himself. He must wait up one night and keep watch. Ah, if he could but catch one glimpse of it, then he would fear nothing any more!

  At times, the certainty of his holiness was so strong that it was all he could do not to rush out into the village square and give utterance to the winged words he felt called to speak, his message about life and love and light … With a tremendous effort he would curb this impulse, but the strain would leave him panting and in a sweat, his body aching all over, as though he had been flogged. He would lie on his bed for an hour, two hours, his eyes fixed on the sooty ceiling. Slowly the tension would leave his body and he would melt back into the pure ecstasy that now filled his days.

  It seemed to him as he looked on the luminous snowy peak of Mount Tekech that he could stretch out his hand and caress it. As the dawn drew its streak at the far end of the earth, he felt that if he raised his hand and said, stop o blessed sun, do not rise over the earth today, it would stay right where it was, and the soft lambent hazy earth and dew-scented twilight would last for ever. He could go to the forest even now, in the dead of winter, and say o trees put out your leaves, and in the midst of the snow the forest would suddenly be fresh and green as on a May day. He could lay his hand on the snowbound steppe, close his eyes and say, let the snows melt, let the flowers grow and the birds sing as in spring, and when he opened his eyes all his wishes would have come true … And he would laugh out loud with exultation.

  His wife and children would fix wide awe-struck eyes on him. She was bursting to tell someone, anyone, about her husband’s strange new ways, but he had expressly forbidden her to say a word outside the house and she was afraid that if she disobeyed him he would strike her with the crippling spell.