The Undying Grass Page 21

  Voices came from the field. Sefer’s was raised above the others. Tashbash cursed his folly. Why hadn’t he ordered the villagers to do away with this man while he had the power to do it? Zaladja Woman was rattling on without a break. He heard his own name, Tashbash, Tashbash, again and again, but could not make out what was being said. He strained his ears for his wife’s voice and suddenly his whole being leaped for joy. He had heard her low, sober, mournful tones.

  He rose and walked swiftly towards the field.

  It was very hot. The heat had sucked him dry. Somehow he could not sweat. A nauseating pain shot through his stomach, forcing him to crouch down, quite still, bent in two. How hot it was, how the sun beat upon him, how the earth scorched his feet. He crawled back into the thicket.

  A dusty gust blew past like a fiery flame, and in an instant the clouds gathering above the Taurus peaks had overcast the whole Chukurova plain. An icy blast whipped up the dust on the roads. Large heavy drops began to fall, denting the earth.

  Tashbash was standing again on the edge of the field, his body rigid and tense with waiting. He heard shouts and cries. Then a fearful uproar broke out. It was over in a minute and the roar of the downpouring rain filled the plain. Up in the sky a huge eagle struggled obstinately against the violent wind, never even attempting to fly for shelter. How long the rain lasted, how long he remained planted there bolt upright, Tashbash never knew, nor when the rain stopped. All he knew was that he was making his way into the field. His feet sank ankle-deep into the mud. His clothes stuck to his body.

  He walked into the crowd of villagers and stopped before Zaladja, smiling expectantly. She gave him a dazed stare, then turned away without even so much as a greeting. Muhtar Sefer had seen him at once. A gloating rancorous smile spread on his face, as though to say, so this is what you’ve come to, eh, Saint Tashbash? Tashbash looked to right and left and his smile froze on his lips. His eyes searched for his wife. She was standing a long way off on the edge of the crowd. He went over to her, but she never gave a sign of recognition. He tried to say something, but the words choked in his throat. She never looked at him once. No one gave him a glance. Tashbash was tempted to walk off there and then, swearing his solemn oath never to return to these people again. But his strength failed him. He wanted to cry out. Don’t you know me, you idiots, he wanted to say. Don’t you know your own saint, Tashbash? But he never uttered a word.

  Darkness fell. Fires were lit in front of the wattle-huts and the tarhana soup set to cook in soot-blackened saucepans.

  His wife was making vain attempts to kindle a fire with rain-sodden sticks. He took them from her and had the fire blazing in an instant. She set her sooty saucepan over it and cooked the soup. Then she spread the meal-cloth over the muddy ground and brought out the soggy bread. They all sat down around the steaming saucepan. The warm tarhana soup restored Tashbash’s senses.

  ‘Woman, don’t you know me?’ he said. ‘Memet, your husband? I’ve gone through a lot, but I know now that I really am a saint, a holy man.’

  She did not speak. She never even raised her head.

  The bedding was wet. So was the inside of the wattle-hut. Tashbash scooped away the muddy earth until he got to dry ground.

  ‘If there’s some dry bedding left bring it here where it’s dry,’ he said.

  She produced a threadbare blanket and a thin pallet from under the straw mat and spread them out, together with a long pillow. Casting off his soaked clothing Tashbash lay down on the pallet, drew the blanket over him and fell asleep at once. His wife lit a stick of resinwood and sat gazing at his long sunken face with its crop of rough unshaven beard, until the stick was burnt out. How drawn his nose was, how skinny his neck … Suddenly she was afraid. It was a face that bore the stamp of death.

  The three children had not stirred once since their father’s arrival. Their large, bewildered eyes had never left his face. He had hugged and kissed them, but they could only stare at him dumbly. She undressed them and put them to bed beside their father. She was very tired. Her mind was confused. The sudden coming of this man who looked just like Tashbash, but was worn and near to death, had been a shock to her. Somehow she had not been able to turn him out, to say, you’re not Tashbash, I’m not your wife, nor are these your children. Tashbash indeed! she ought to have said, why, our Lord Tashbash is with the Forty Holies now, high up on their invisible mountain where the purple violets grow knee-deep and the springs are cool and clear, where the milk and cream are so thick a knife couldn’t cut them … Tashbash indeed, you poor wretch! Why hadn’t she told this man who looked so much like Tashbash, look, you’ve eaten your food, I’m a widow and all alone, so go away now and sleep somewhere else? Why, why? Why had she let him sleep here? Oh, he looked like Tashbash, that was true. In fact, they were like as two peas. But think of our Lord Tashbash, and then look at this miserable thing!

  ‘He was tired out, poor man … How he gulped down the soup! As though he had been starving for days … Well, tomorrow morning I’ll tell him to go. I’m a woman whose husband is away, I’ll say. You can’t stay here, brother. Yes, I know, you look like Tashbash, but I can’t keep you here. Why, our Lord Tashbash would smite me with his spell … Who knows, maybe he’s sent you here in his own guise only to try me … Yes, that’s what I’ll do first thing tomorrow. Get up, brother, I’ll say, I’m a woman all by herself. Go and stay somewhere else …’

  She muttered to herself as though in the throes of delirium. All night through she waited by Tashbash’s bedside, troubled by gloomy sinister misgivings, her mind a prey to black thoughts.

  30

  The children have captured a huge old eagle. They have tied a rope around his neck and are towing him about the cotton field. He is wet through. His wings droop and trail in the mud.

  ‘They were jealous of Father because he was picking so much more cotton than anyone else. That’s why they tried to kill him. Just let me grow up and I’ll kill them all, one by one. You wait and see! Just let me get as big as they are and I’ll show them how to kill people!’ He ground his teeth in impotent rage.

  ‘Look, Hassan,’ Ummahan said. ‘You mustn’t kill Okkesh Dagkurdu. He was the only one who didn’t strike a single blow at Father.’

  Hassan stood very straight, quivering with passion. His red-rimmed eyes brimming over. ‘All right, I’ll spare him,’ he conceded. ‘Let him live.’

  ‘But that Zaladja! You must kill her well and properly. She had her teeth in Father’s ear and was biting him. And she jumped and stamped on him too.’

  ‘All the time I’m growing up I’ll think of a way to kill her …’

  ‘I’ll think about it too,’ Ummahan said. ‘Maybe I’ll hit on some good death for her.’

  ‘All right,’ Hassan said. ‘Two heads are better than one.’

  Their clothes were dry now, but dusty and caked with mud. They sat at the bottom of the bank beside a clump of laurels, whisking away the large clinging flies that pullulated in the aftermath of rain. The river flowed red and muddy, carrying an occasional pine-trunk on its surface. Its smell was unfamiliar now, sour and oozy, the odour of rotting trees and vegetation. A dense opaque haze enveloped them. It was as though a heavy thick white cloud that would never lift had settled on the plain. There was not the smallest breath of air. Steam gushed out of the flat moist earth. The sky was a pale ashy blue. The faint blur of the Taurus range, the majestic Gavur Mountains, all were lost in the same washed blueness, quivering in the vaporous heat, and the sun was no more an incandescent ball of light but scarcely discernible in the nebulous air.

  Ummahan put her mouth close to Hassan’s ear. ‘Did you see who came?’ she asked. ‘They’re all pretending not to recognize him. They’re afraid … After all, he’s just like our Lord Tashbash, isn’t he? I mean before he went to join the Forty Holies, when he hadn’t yet got that long white beard and those sacred green garments. When he’d only freshly turned holy … Tell me, isn’t he just like him? And then he went straight
to our Lord Tashbash’s wattle-hut and slept there too with his wife. People say that she did wrong to take that stranger in. They say our Lord Tashbash sent a copy of himself on purpose to try her, to see whether his wife is faithful to him or not … And there are some who say that the Forty Holy Men didn’t like him at all. You’re only a man-made saint, they told him. We don’t recognize you. And so they kicked him out. They say the head of the Forty Holies gave him such a bastinado that he passed blood. That’s what Memidik says, that he passed blood …’

  Hassan was listening thoughtfully. Suddenly he interrupted her: ‘He is both our Lord Tashbash and my own Uncle Tashbash. I know. He was probably picking much more cotton than the others, there among the Forty Holies. So they beat him to within an inch of his life just like the villagers did with Father. When I grow up I’ll find out from Uncle Tashbash where they live, those Forty Holies, and I’ll set fire to their forest. I’ll burn them alive … Ummahan, I’m sure this man is our Lord Tashbash. It’s just that those other saints were jealous of him. He came to me last night and woke me up. I’m me, Hassan, he told me. Don’t believe what anyone says, I’m me. And then he told me all that had happened to him. He kissed me and caressed me. Once we’d set a snare for starlings together and we’d caught three at a go. He remembered that. How could he have known if he wasn’t our Lord Tashbash, tell me that? So be careful what you say, Ummahan. These villagers have all turned heathen; you mustn’t listen to them. It’s a sin.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I know,’ she said hastily.

  Hassan had longed to run to Tashbash, to kiss his hands, talk to him, pour out his troubles, but somehow his nerve had failed him. He could not bring himself to go into Tashbash’s hut, so he had lain awake all night, weaving fancies and letting his imagination run riot.

  A loud noise broke out in the field. Quickly they clambered up the bank to see. The village children had captured an enormous eagle. They had lashed a rope round his neck and with gleeful shouts were dragging him this way and that through the mud. The eagle’s wings trailed low, his beak was locked tight. His head was as large as a child’s and his large eyes were filmy and unfocused. They were like the sad velvet-black eyes of a dying gazelle. The aged eagle seemed to be weeping. The children poked and tweaked at his beak and feathers. Emboldened, they even straddled over him. But the huge bird remained unheeding, a haughty figure of mud, as listless as though all this were not happening to him, indifferent, calm as a rock, waiting for deliverance either in flight or in death. Then a child jabbed a stick at his eye and he struggled. He strained his wings and tossed his head. The rope snapped. The children screamed and the huge eagle flapped at the air three times. He gave a hop and floundered weakly to the ground, unable to rise. At once the children were upon him. Securing the rope once more they hauled him up and on towards the wattle-huts.

  Memidik was lost in a brown study, gazing fixedly at Tashbash’s hut, when he saw the prostrate eagle. His heart gave a jolt and he looked up anxiously at the sky. Old Halil’s words rang in his mind: ‘Those old stray eagles never die on the ground. They soar up into the infinity of the heavens and only when they are dead do they drop back to earth …’ He scanned the sky, but it was empty, an immaculate expanse of ashy, smoky blue. Suddenly he was angry, a mounting anger born of fear. He bounded up to the children, shouting at the top of his voice. ‘Let go of him! Let go at once!’ They dropped the rope hastily and scampered off. The eagle lay quite still on the muddy ground, his head hanging over his talons, his wings limp. Memidik stared at him, then his eyes swept the sky despondently again and again. He wanted to drop beside this wretched bedraggled old eagle with his shorn and broken feathers and cry his heart out. The children stood at a distance watching him with guilty mischievous faces.

  He lifted his face again and his heart was suffused with relief. From over Anavarza Castle a great eagle was floating down over the plain with a slow wide flapping of his wings. At once Memidik forgot the prostrate eagle. Eagerly he watched the huge eagle in the sky glide over towards Hemitè Castle. Then he turned and swung off towards the wattle-huts. Fires had been lit and the women in little groups were baking the yufka bread. The smell of baked bread spread through the misty plain, fresh and appetizing.

  As soon as Memidik’s back was turned the children pounced on the impotent old eagle and began dragging him about again.

  Memidik went to the Bald Minstrel.

  ‘Minstrel, master, tell me. You know best, but isn’t it true that every man has his double in this world? That Allah always casts two of the same mould? That every single human being has a twin as like to him as two peas? Because Allah alone is one and like no other. Now, this man who came yesterday looks a little like Tashbash … Just a little … But I saw our Lord only yesterday! Oh Minstrel, master, if you’d only seen him yourself what glorious songs you’d have been inspired to sing in his honour! Our Lord Tashbash … And then look at this wretched creature here … They’re saying our Lord sent him just in his own likeness to try his wife … Tell me, Minstrel, master, you should know …’

  The Bald Minstrel’s hand went to his aged, shrunken breast. ‘That’s very likely,’ he said gravely. ‘It’s a fact that saints are in the habit of assuming all kinds of shapes to put humans to the test. This is a test and Yalak village must rise to it and come out with a clear conscience. He will send us many more such trials, our Lord Tashbash, and when we have surmounted them he will lavish prosperity and plenty upon us. We must tell Tashbash’s former wife – as you know, saints have no wives – we must tell her to gird up her loins. She must not give herself to that false likeness of our Lord or he’ll bring down our houses about our ears. Yet she must show the guest courtesy and not throw him out since he’s been sent by our Lord himself and to her house too.’

  Memidik was pleased to find that the Bald Minstrel agreed with him. ‘Master, how right you are!’ he cried. ‘I’ll go to her right away and give her your warning. I’ll find out what that man’s been saying to her, that he’s Tashbash, or a saint, or what …’

  He looked at the sky. The lone eagle had risen very high now, way above the peak of Mount Hemitè, and was gliding back towards them through the grey, steaming heat of the empty sky.

  The round iron tray on which yufka bread is baked resembles a largish shield. It is placed over three stones and a fire is lit underneath. When it grows hot the dough that has been spread flat over a board is transferred to the red-hot tray. The spatula is like a flat sword and made of wood and with it the thinly-spread yufka bread is turned over and over until it is baked.

  Little flames shot out from under the iron trays, and as the women worked they talked only about the man who had come to them in the guise of Tashbash. What were they to do? How should they behave towards him? He had gone straight to Tashbash’s hut and he looked like him, that was true, but only a little. Where was the light of holiness that should have brightened his face? This man’s face was burnt black and dry, shrivelled and sagging, the face of a poor cowed peasant burdened with woes and parched by the sun for a hundred thousand years. Had Tashbash’s wife gone to bed with him? Naked in the same hut? If so, what would the Lord Tashbash say to that from his seat on the sacred mountain of the green-bearded Forty Holies? But perhaps this man really was Tashbash, a tired defeated Tashbash who had got stick-law from the Government and gone hungry and homeless. In their heart of hearts they feared, they knew this was Memet Tashbash and no other, but they willed themselves to believe otherwise. And still they hesitated … Could it be … Could it be that Tashbash had never been a saint at all? But the bright light that came to shine over his house every night? Was that an illusion too? After all, who had ever seen it? Hadn’t Tashbash himself always told them that he was not holy, that a sinner like him could never become a saint? Would a saint ever freeze in the snow?

  They were ready to believe anything that was put forward at any moment. And the men were no better. After two days of enforced idleness their minds drifted on the same line
s as the women’s. Only Muhtar Sefer was certain. He was jubilant. Of course this was Tashbash who had arrived and no other! A weary exhausted Tashbash with the stamp of death on his brow, a Tashbash who had never expected such a reaction from the villagers, who had come back convinced of his own holiness, expecting the villagers to throw themselves at his feet and worship him, and to whom their indifference had been a killing blow.

  Sefer could predict the course of events now with practical certainty. Some things would happen of themselves. He would only have to feed the flame and perhaps foment a few incidents too.

  ‘I’ve got you in the crook of my hand at last, you so-called saint and sultan of sultans!’ he exulted. ‘I’ve shit in your mouth in spite of all the saints of heaven! So you would forbid people to speak to me, eh? You’d have the villagers worship you, eh? I’ll spare your life since you spared mine, but I’ll make you sorry you were ever born, worse than that Longish Ali. I’ve got you both now in the crook of my hand.’ He licked his lips like a cat which has just devoured its prey. Omer would have dealt with Meryemdje by now. Good lad! Faithful and true. He’d see that Omer had such a wedding that all the world would be struck dumb with admiration. ‘Mother-murderers are hanged always. It’s always death by hanging for them. No extenuating circumstances will ever save them, and the gallows are set up right in front of the big bazaar at Marash. That’s one thing I won’t miss, Long Ali’s hanging. Yes, let them see what it means to defy me, Tashbash and Long Ali, those dogs …’ He clenched his jaws and his teeth grated. ‘You mongrel curs! You’d do this to me, eh?’

  He was only sorry he could not kill Tashbash too.

  With an unearthly din the children passed before him dragging the dying eagle. He was making a last supreme effort to keep on his feet. Blood streaked down his head and out of his mouth. The children had plucked off his feathers and his body stood exposed, bald and spattered with mud, with an odd feather still fluttering here and there. There is no more pitiful sight than a once-powerful eagle plucked of his feathers.