The Undying Grass Read online

  ‘He who walks abroad with seven balls of light in his wake … Seven balls of light …’

  Passionately, with mystic fervour, the crowd intoned the words after him five times.

  ‘In his sacred garments of green light …’

  The crowd was roused. They echoed the Minstrel’s words five times, ten times. Feebly Tashbash joined in the chorus, casting furtive glances about to see if anyone was looking at him. But he might as well not have been there at all. No one paid any attention to him.

  ‘He who presides at the assemblies of the Forty Holy Men up on the holy mountain … Who glides over the Mediterranean as though on solid land … Whom all the creatures of earth and heaven worship and adore, the birds and beasts and insects, even the crawling serpent and the ant, the hyena as well as the gentle gazelle … Who holds sway over all living things … Who can stay the flow of rivers at a word … Who has conquered Death … To whom our Prophet Muhammed, blessed be his name, has extended his hand … To whom all the angels pay obeisance … The glory of this world, the very sound of whose name is enough to heal the sick. Heir to all the skill and wisdom of the great hakim, Sage Lokman … Sultan of sultans, saint of saints … For the love of our Lord Tashbash …’

  With frenzied enthusiasm the crowd roared out the name of Tashbash and never had the Anavarza crags resounded with such heartfelt, vibrant voices. Again and again, madly, voluptuously, they reiterated the Bald Minstrel’s litany.

  ‘For the love of our Lord Tashbash turn away those dark stormclouds. Turn them away … For the love of our Lord Tashbash …’

  Tashbash was dumbfounded. Too weak to stand any more he collapsed to the ground, murmuring ‘our Lord Tashbash’ with everyone else. No one even noticed this.

  The crowd was tired. A sharp odour of sweat hung in the windless air. The heat was intense, stifling, clammy. And still the thundering, lightning-streaked clouds came rushing on.

  ‘Now you will all cast your cotton bolls into the river and say, take your cloud … Come now, all together.’

  ‘Take your cloud!’ The surface of the river splashed and sputtered as hundreds of cotton bolls were hurled into it.

  And at the same time big hard warm raindrops began to hit the ground.

  ‘Too late!’ the Bald Minstrel cried. ‘We should have started our prayers much earlier. Our Lord Tashbash would have heard us then and driven away the clouds. But maybe they’ll serve to turn the rain into a short downpour. Quick, let’s go to the wattle-huts and protect them from the rain with sacks and straw mats.’

  The villagers had already taken their precautions. But they went back to the huts and stuffed whatever holes and chinks they could find with old rags and grass and straw.

  Tashbash had not moved. He had not strength enough left to get to his feet. No one took any notice of him at all. Only his wife stole pitying glances his way as she spread a black rug over her wattle-hut. Should she go and take his arm and lead him back to the hut? But what would people say? Better wait till it’s dark, she thought. If he’s still there, I’ll go and fetch him. I have to …

  After the first few big desultory drops, the rain came down in full force as though the bottom had been knocked out of the sky and the day turned to darkness.

  She bent over him under the driving rain, lifted him up and slowly led his dragging body towards the wattle-hut. She made him undress, rubbed him dry and put him to bed. Tashbash was shivering as though in the grips of malaria.

  ‘Wife,’ he said, ‘I’m done for. Those people have killed me. I am Memet; don’t you know me? Of course you do, and so does everyone else. Didn’t Sefer say so openly? Have they all gone mad? After what’s happened today I’m at my wits’ end. Don’t you all know, as well as I do, that I’m no copy or likeness or anything like that? Of course you do. And I’m no stranger either. I’m just plain Memet Tashbash, your husband. You know that, don’t you, lass?’

  She made no answer. He put out his hand to her, but she backed away.

  ‘Woman, are you mad? What’s wrong with you all? Have you sworn to kill me? Oh Lord, what crime have I committed? Great Allah, what have I done that you should estrange me from my wife and my children and my friends and make me the laughing-stock of the whole world? Let me go, Lord, let me go! What am I to do now? What, what …’

  A long fulgurating flash lit up the darkness. The heavens thundered. The rain splashed down and the lightning struck somewhere very close.

  She brought him some piping hot soup, in a large basin and laid it on the blanket before him. Then she pressed a wooden spoon into his hand.

  The three children, huddled in a corner, watched with frightened eyes as he gulped down the soup like a hungry wolf.

  It was raining harder than ever.

  32

  This night three people are lying awake thinking about Tashbash. Fatmadja Woman, the boy Hassan and Memidik. Tashbash is not sleeping either. Caught in a mesh of black thoughts, he can find no issue to his plight, no way of piercing the four dark stifling walls that are closing in on him. Earth of iron, sky of copper, he keeps repeating to himself. The phrase sticks to his tongue. Sky of copper … Of copper … Earth and sky afford no hope for him any longer. He is a sick, cornered man knocking his head against the blackest rock of despair. In his baffled dejected mind strange thoughts begin to take shape, mad, mad thoughts.

  Fatmadja Woman roused her sleeping daughter in the middle of the night. ‘Get up, my love, quick,’ she said. ‘It’s on a lucky night your mother gave birth to you, that’s sure. See how the beautiful Allah has sent our Lord Tashbash to us again!’

  The girl, bed-ridden for years, woke up and moaned. The left side of her body was paralysed and she had long lost the use of her legs.

  ‘How he made me sweat last year, that accursed saint, until I got him to put his hand on your head. But I’m not one to take no for an answer. And remember how much better you felt afterwards? Well, now he’s back …’

  ‘But that’s not our Lord Tashbash … He’s only an image of himself that our Lord’s sent us,’ the girl protested. ‘Of what good would an image be to me … Memidik says that up on the Mountain of the Forty Holies …’

  ‘Shut up!’ Fatmadja hissed angrily. ‘Don’t talk nonsense. As if I wouldn’t know Tashbash, my neighbour of so many years! Why, we grew up together! Image indeed! It’s Tashbash himself in the flesh. Sefer spread that rumour on purpose. Only let him hold his hand to your head once and you’ll see whether it’s our saint or his copy! Didn’t you look into his eyes, girl? How they flashed and threw sparks? Would a mere copy have such eyes, idiot? Keep your heart pure or you won’t get well. He’s our own Lord Tashbash and no other. Come now, purify your heart.’

  Fatmadja girded her sash tightly, lifted up her daughter on to her back and emerged from the wattle-hut. The rain had turned out to be only a cloudburst lasting a couple of hours. The sky was clear now, studded with a welter of large rutilant stars. Pure and scoured and cloudless, its delicate blue shone through the veil of darkness, a crystal blue dome on which the stars sparkled. The night was perfectly still. With the girl on her back Fatmadja picked her way carefully, not making a sound. She did not want, anyone to see her. Outside Tashbash’s hut she lowered her daughter to the ground and called out in a stealthy voice:

  ‘May I be your slave, your creature, Lord Tashbash! You’re awake, I know. Those all-seeing eyes of yours never close even in sleep. Lord Tashbash, Allah has sent you to us again, a remedy to our woes, a hope in our miserable existence …’ She talked on in a keening voice, kneeling in the mud before the door and swaying from side to side. Inside, Tashbash lay listening to her with a strange exultation. He wanted her to go on for ever. ‘Before the gendarmes took you away you laid your hand just once on my poor girl’s head and she rose to her feet, she who had been a cripple the last seven years! Then on the very day you went away she fell sick again. The spell was broken. Allah, give that Muhtar Sefer his punishment a thousand times over! No one talks to him
anyway, no one even looked at that pig-face of his after you went. They’re saying things about you, that you’re only a stranger, that you’re a copy of himself our Lord Tashbash has sent to test us. Of course you’re no copy but our Lord Tashbash in the flesh, aren’t you, my Lord? Nobody believes you’re you, but they’ll see. I know you, may I be your slave. You’re our very own Tashbash, bright-eyed Allah’s beloved saint Don’t keep me away like last time; come, get up and put your hand to my girl’s brow …’

  There was no sound from inside the hut. Fatmadja grew impatient.

  ‘Why don’t you come out, man?’ she cried as loudly as she dared. ‘See what I’ll do to you tomorrow if you don’t come out! How I’ll denounce you for an impostor before the whole world … Well, are you coming, you God-forsaken saint? You churlish good-for-nothing! Why, if there’d been an ounce of good sense in you would you have come to this, with all your holiness? I’ve known you since childhood. Pig-headed and stiff-necked to the core always … What Allah was thinking of when he made a saint of you I can’t imagine! … Either you come out at once or I make a scandal tomorrow. Come on now, I can’t shout, people will hear, or I’d soon rouse all the villagers and set them at you. Come out, you churlish saint! You’re a disgrace to all the sainthood. Look, I’m going to scream right now if you don’t …’

  Tashbash’s heart beat quickly with elation. The villagers knew him then. They believed in him still. Fatmadja was the proof of this. He crawled out of the hut and got to his feet. For a while he stood there in the night, straight and still. In the east the morning-star glowed large as a sun, a whirling coruscating mass of fire. Fatmadja had thrown herself down before him and was clinging silently to his knees.

  When Tashbash spoke it was from the bottom of his heart, with faith and love.

  ‘Oh God,’ he began, ‘hear my plea in the silence of this night. Many times I have doubted and put you to the proof. I have tested myself again and again, but now at last I know that I am your saint, your representative upon earth, sent by you to relieve the sick and comfort the poor and give strength to the weak. This was your trust, and because I betrayed it you brought all these troubles upon me. And you were right. I have come to my senses now, but too late. The people have rebelled against me, and against you too. Only this woman, our good sister Fatmadja, is left loyal and true …’

  ‘Ah brother,’ Fatmadja broke in tearfully, ‘only me! I never lost faith for one minute. I always believed in you, and, what’s more, long before you yourself did.’

  ‘Allah, here is this true, pure-hearted woman …’

  Again Fatmadja broke in: ‘Pure and sinless! Pure and sinless …’

  ‘Heal her daughter who has been bed-ridden these last ten years …’

  ‘Seven years!’

  ‘Seven years,’ Tashbash rectified. ‘A cripple for seven years … Make her well. Do this for me since you have seen fit to bestow the light of holiness upon me. Grant my plea if I have the slightest favour in your eyes, oh my glorious almighty Allah! Amen, amen. Creator of earth and heaven, of the mountains and the rocks, the birds and the beasts, Lord of the universe, grant my plea … Amen, amen, amen …’

  ‘Amen, amen, amen,’ Fatmadja repeated fervently after him.

  Tashbash was tired now. He swayed on his feet. But he was happy and proud and wildly exhilarated. Gently he touched Fatmadja’s shoulder and lifted her to her feet. ‘Your daughter will get well,’ he said.

  ‘Oh no, she won’t!’ Fatmadja retorted. ‘Not like this, she won’t.’

  Tashbash felt as though boiling water had been poured over him. ‘Why not?’ he said.

  ‘Because I’m telling you. You never put that holy hand of yours on my girl’s head. You never even once sent your magic breath over her …’

  Tashbash smiled, relieved. ‘You’re right, Fatmadja Sister. It’s a good thing you reminded me of that.’

  He bent over the girl, laid his hand on her head and with long deep breaths blew all over her body.

  Fatmadja heaved the girl up on to her back again. ‘Take this,’ she said. She pressed a pinch of salt into Tashbash’s hand and went off into the night.

  Hassan saw Fatmadja with the girl on her back coming his way and he hid behind a bush.

  ‘She’s at it again,’ he thought. ‘She’s taken her daughter to Tashbash’s double, to get him to work a cure. Doesn’t she know a double would never work as good a cure as a real saint? Oh, she knows it only too well. She wasn’t born yesterday, Fatmadja! It’s just that she had to try everything. All the year round she carries that daughter of hers from shrine to shrine, from hodja to hodja, from one village to another, wherever there’s a holy man. At least three times a month she visits the Green Rifle Hodja and has him recite prayers over the girl. Why, she’d take her to anyone, not just to the Lord Tashbash’s double …’

  He emerged from his hiding-place and stopped a few feet from Tashbash’s door, undecided. He coughed loudly a few times, but with no result. Then he broke into a song. His thin sharp voice shattered the silence and floated up towards the Anavarza crags. Three times he whistled, his long ear-splitting shepherd’s whistle. But it was no use. His heart fluttering, he drew up to the door.

  ‘Lord Tashbash, Lord Tashbash,’ he called. ‘Come out. I have something to talk over with you, a few things I must say to you. Hassan is my name, Hassan the son of Ali the Long Man …’

  Tashbash slipped out of bed quickly and went out to the tiny waiting shadow.

  ‘Is it you, Hassan?’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes indeed, my Lord Tashbash.’

  Tashbash felt pleased and proud. ‘How it rained, eh, Hassan? We don’t have such rain up in our mountains.’

  Hassan took a hesitant step towards him. ‘Don’t you know, my Lord Tashbash, that this is the very special Chukurova rain?’

  Laughter bubbled up within Tashbash at the serious, solemn way Hassan said ‘my Lord Tashbash’.

  ‘I know, Hassan.’ He was happy and light as a bird now. The night was cool and smelled of wet grass, bitter cotton, burdock and freshly-blooming cotton flowers. ‘What do you wish to say to me, Hassan?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve missed you a lot, our Lord Tashbash.’

  ‘I’ve missed you too, my child … Come, let’s go down to the riverside and sit under those planetrees.’

  The Jeyhan River had strewn its pebbles over a wide, flat pocket that stretched up to the planetrees. They found a pebbly mound and sat down. Hassan was the first to speak.

  ‘Do you remember, Lord Tashbash, that time when we’d laid a snare for starlings, you and I? How many had we caught?’

  Tashbash knew why Hassan was asking this question. He remembered the starlings very well.

  ‘Eight,’ he replied.

  ‘That’s right, my Lord, eight!’ Hassan cried excitedly. ‘Then in the Peri Valley …’

  ‘You made a fire. And I brought a large log. How we had those embers glowing, how we roasted the starlings … How juicy they were …’

  Hassan was not yet quite satisfied. A stranger might have found this out. Who in the village had not heard the story of the eight starlings!

  ‘Once we’d come upon a covey of partridges out in the steppe, red-legged partridges.’

  ‘We hunted them and they fled farther off into a snowdrift. You ran ahead of me and got buried to your neck in the snow.’

  ‘If you hadn’t found me I’d have died. I was sinking into the snow … It was so deep …’

  Hassan had forgotten his little stratagem now and Tashbash the boy’s intention. They gave themselves up to the pleasant glow of shared reminiscences.

  ‘The partridges flew off again. There was a warm sun like the Chukurova sun. It made the snow sparkle so, you couldn’t open your eyes …’

  ‘But they didn’t go very far, did they? You reached them before me again …’

  ‘I watched in case we should lose track of them. Then you came and threw your felt cloak over them. And when we looked under it th
ere were six partridges!’

  ‘Then we rounded them all up, a full forty-three …’

  Memories of the past came rushing to their minds. How they had waited up together for a young marten which had vanished into a hole. How it had given them the slip in the end. A moon-drenched night …

  Hassan was ready to swear now that this man was Tashbash. But how had he come to this, a holy man like him? The boy was confused, but he dared not ask. One couldn’t ask such things …

  Tashbash told Hassan all about his escape from the gendarmes, how he had almost frozen to death, how the shepherd had found him, how he had decided to return to his villagers. He told him everything, and in turn the boy related to him the events in the village after he had gone. How Muhtar Sefer had been stuck to his bed for two whole months from the sound whacking Corporal Jumali had dealt him and how no one would talk to him, not even the Government people. He told him Corporal Jumali’s story of how he, Tashbash, had been borne off to the mountain peak swathed in a blazing light. How Memidik had seen him at least five times and that all the village knew of it. Then he went on to tell about the attack on his father. His voice broke.

  ‘They were jealous of him because he was picking so much more cotton than them,’ he said tearfully. ‘And so they broke his bones … Tomorrow morning you must go and rub your hand over those broken bones. Maybe Allah will make him well for the sake of his saint. And you, be very careful. Those villagers are jealous of you too and are making up all sorts of things about you. Even I, for a moment, believed that you were our Lord Tashbash’s double. Then I talked to you and knew it wasn’t so. So, you see, you must be very, very careful, my Lord Tashbash.’

  Tashbash smiled. ‘Hassan, why do you always call me my Lord? Would a man call his own uncle lord?’

  ‘I did! I did call you uncle always,’ Hassan cried excitedly. ‘But they told me it was a sin to say uncle to a saint. And look at them all now, they won’t even recognize you! Well, who cares! You’re a saint and first among the Forty Holy Men now … Uncle Tashbash, you are a saint, aren’t you?’