The Undying Grass Page 4

  ‘I will,’ Ummahan said, happy again. ‘I’ll tell her this very night and she’ll be so pleased, because she loves our Lord Tashbash very much. But, Hassan, shall I tell you something? You’re sinning, you know …’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ he said, resentfully.

  ‘Listen, brother.’ She leaned over to him and whispered confidentially. ‘It’s not right to call a saint uncle. You must call him our Lord. He used to be your Uncle Tashbash, but now he’s our Lord Tashbash.’

  ‘You’re right, Ummahan,’ Hassan said. ‘But what can I do, my tongue’s so used to calling him uncle. I know I should say Lord now …’

  They walked over to Tashbash’s house and sat down there leaning against the wall.

  ‘His wife never thought of waiting for him,’ Ummahan mused. ‘She went with the others … Won’t he be sad if he comes and doesn’t find her?’

  It was on the tip of Hassan’s tongue to say: ‘Neither faith nor loyalty will you find in women …’ But he checked himself. That was the kind of thing that made Ummahan mad. ‘Well, he’ll find us,’ he said. ‘He’ll be very glad to see us and he’ll solve all our problems. Those who join the Forty Holies are all-powerful and they live for ever … Till Judgement Day …’ A cold shiver ran down his spine. What if I should become one of the Forty Holies too one day, he thought. A man must spend his time praying and fasting and doing a lot of good to the poor … When I grow up I’ll make my namaz prayers every day. I’ll be so good …

  ‘Did our Lord Tashbash make his namaz often before he became a saint?’

  ‘Hush!’ his sister admonished him. ‘Granny says one shouldn’t ever meddle in the affairs of saints. It’s a sin.’

  Till evening they dreamed there, in the shadow of Tashbash’s house, of Tashbash’s coming, how the darkness would be as the day, how their meals would abound with rich foods … A whole roomful of shoes, another of new clothes … Hassan wished for lots and lots of matches and cherry-shoots …

  ‘What do you want with cherry-shoots?’ his sister objected. ‘If it’s to swap them for matches as you did last time, why you’ve already wished for a roomful of matches!’

  ‘It’s not for swapping I want them,’ Hassan replied. ‘It’s because I love them. I couldn’t bear it when I had to swap them, but I needed the matches. Now, since our Lord Tashbash can give us anything we want, I’ll have a roomful of cherry-shoots too.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Ummahan said. ‘That’s different.’

  He would come, that was sure, and darting all about him, filling up the whole sky, would be thousands and thousands of steel-blue flashing humming-birds.

  ‘Clouds and clouds of humming-birds! That’s how it will be when our Lord Tashbash comes.’

  ‘Shh,’ Ummahan said. ‘He’ll come as he chooses to come.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hassan agreed. ‘It isn’t for us to say.’ He bent down and kissed the doorsill of Tashbash’s house. ‘Come, Ummahan, you too … I wish to God he’d never become a saint. I miss him so much, my Uncle Tashbash …’

  ‘Hush, you’re sinning again.’

  ‘I don’t care! Let him come and punish me then. Let him cast the crippling spell on me. Let him strike me blind if he likes. He’s still my Uncle Tashbash.’

  Ummahan smiled. ‘It’s because you’re sure he loves you, that’s why you talk like that. You think he’ll never touch you. But I wouldn’t be so confident. They say a saint can cut both ways.’

  Tashbash’s kind pleasant face rose before his eyes. Only it was swimming in a scintillating halo of green. ‘Don’t worry, Ummahan,’ he said. ‘It may be like that with other saints, but Lord Tashbash loves me more than his soul.’

  They were floating in a world of golden dreams, Tashbash’s world of birds and flowers and love, a world that was pleasant and easy to live in. Smiling blissfully, still wrapped in their dream, they strolled home. It was like being plunged into an icy stream. Meryemdje was tossing on her bed, moaning in anguish, and Elif was hovering distractedly over her. Long Ali sat in a corner, his back to the wall, his head hanging, listless, oblivious to everything around him.

  Hassan felt himself choking. ‘Let’s go, Ummahan,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t let’s ever come home again until our Lord Tashbash returns.’ He seized her hand and they slipped out unnoticed.

  Elif rose early, as usual. She had hardly slept. Outside, the sight of the smokeless chimneys brought home their isolation to her in all its sharp intensity. Ali came out after her. He made straight for the stack of firewood near Blindish Hassan’s hut and returned with an armful of wood with which he quickly kindled a fire. Then he placed the baking sheet over it. Meanwhile, Elif emptied their flour sack into a large basin and began to knead the flour. Meryemdje, who had been watching her apathetically, now rose and crouched down beside the fire. She took the spatula and began turning over the thin layers of yufka bread which Elif laid over the red-hot baking sheet.

  The deliciously-appetizing smell of baking bread spread through the village. Hassan could not stop himself. He pounced on a wafer and deftly made a roll, stuffing it with a little cheese and onions he had been holding in reserve.

  ‘Ummahan, have some too,’ Elif said. ‘Ali, you too. And make one for Mother with some butter in it.’

  Soon they were all munching away hungrily. Meryemdje cast a grateful look at her daughter-in-law. Then she seemed to think better of it and kept her eyes lowered.

  It was evening by the time they had finished baking the huge mound of dough. Meryemdje and Elif rose, tired and sweating, and brushed the flour from their hair and clothes. Hassan stared at the heaped bread. ‘Aboov!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s taller than me …’

  Everything was clear to Meryemdje now, yet she said nothing. Not a single question did she ask about the unusual amount of bread that had been baked that day. What her son and his wife were plotting was so inhuman that she was struck dumb. She felt nothing but a strange impersonal curiosity. She sat there, her eyes following them unblinkingly as they piled layer upon layer of bread into the wide flat wicker baskets that hung from the ceiling.

  The hour of the evening prayer came and still no one spoke, not even the children. They crouched in a corner, sad, dispirited. They felt something evil in the air. Elif spread out the bedding for the night. Meryemdje was the first to lie down. Then Hassan and Ummahan tucked themselves in after her. The children had always been used to sleeping with their grandmother.

  Ali and Elif did not go to bed. They sat up, silent and still, until they heard the midnight crowing of Okkesh Dagkurdu’s runaway cock. Then Ali rose.

  ‘I think she’s asleep now, Elif,’ he whispered.

  But Meryemdje was wide awake. That’s what you think, Longish Ali, may you be struck down, she muttered to herself under the blanket. I know very well what you’re up to, God damn you … She peeped out. Ali and Elif were up and about, busy collecting things and packing them into a large bundle for the road. It was nearly dawn when they had finished. Ali carried the bundle out.

  Just then Okkesh Dagkurdu’s runaway cock crowed again.

  Elif went up to Meryemdje’s bedside. ‘Mother,’ she called in a low voice.

  There was no answer. Meryemdje let off a loud snore.

  ‘Ali, we’ve got to get the children out of bed without waking her. You do it. Careful now. Slowly …’

  That’s it, you whore of a daughter-in-law, that’s it! So it’s slowly, is it? So you mean to leave me here all alone in this empty village, a prey to the birds and beasts? Well, go then. See if I can’t follow you on my own two feet right down to the Chukurova and pick more cotton than the lot of you put together …

  Ali had managed to extricate the sleeping boy from under the blanket. He carried him outside and set him down against the mulberry tree. Then he came back for the girl.

  Take them away then, Longish Ali. Snatch my own grandchildren right from my very bosom … Now Ali’s lifting up the pack, she thought. And now Elif’s herding the goats out of the shed.
The children, she thought, sleep-crazed, made to walk in the night … Ah, you godless Longish Ali, how can you do this!

  Their footsteps were growing fainter. They must be passing before the muhtar’s house now. Meryemdje flung off the blanket and rushed out. She could still see them, dim elongated shadows, ghostly in the half-light of dawn.

  ‘Go!’ she shouted. ‘Go to the very pit of hell …’

  The children were unaware of what was happening. They dragged on dully, only half awake. It was still quite a while before sunrise when they reached the foot of the Big Hill. It loomed before them, darker than ever. The pain in Ali’s breast grew sharper. Fighting the sudden urge to give up everything and go back, he broke into a run. The load on his back bounced up and down. Elif and the children rushed after him driving the goats on more quickly.

  In this way they passed the summit of the Big Hill and descended into the valley where the forest began. Here Ali slowed down, the pain in his heart sharper than ever.

  ‘Elif,’ he said, ‘was Mother really asleep? Or was she only pretending? You know she’s much too proud to ask us anything …’

  ‘Who knows? … I must say I’ve never known her sleep so soundly.’

  Ummahan pricked up her ears. ‘Mother,’ she said suddenly, ‘where’s Granny?’

  ‘Hush,’ Elif said, casting an anxious glance at Hassan who was whistling as he drove the goats some distance ahead of them. ‘Don’t let Hassan hear …’

  Ummahan gulped with fear and fell silent.

  The east was aglow now and the peaks of the lofty mountains were bathed in brightness. Little sparkling balls danced for a while between two mountain tops. And then the tip of the sun appeared, casting the shadows of Ali and Elif, of the children and the goats, on to the dusty road, strange unfamiliar shadows that seemed to share their owners’ sorrows. Ali’s long shadow writhed in despair as it jumped from stone to stone.

  Hassan was only just beginning to understand. ‘Where’s Granny?’ he blurted out, looking back down the road.

  Elif clapped her hand on his lips. ‘Hush,’ she said, alarmed. ‘Don’t let your Father hear.’

  Hassan looked at his father. Suddenly he was afraid. He dared not utter another word.

  ‘Go to the pit of hell,’ Meryemdje muttered again. ‘Brutes, renegades, godless beasts! What son ever treated his mother so? Who ever left a helpless old woman all by herself in a mountain village, a prey to the birds and beasts?’

  She turned back into the house, found her cotton jacket and put it on. Then she took the bundle in which she kept her few cherished belongings and started off on the road at a running pace. She rushed all the way to the Big Hill, but there her strength failed her and she sank to the ground, her face coated with dust and sweat.

  ‘So this is what you do to me, Ali! You, my own child, nursed at my breast, cherished and lulled to sleep with the softest lullabies …’

  When she was able to get up again it was already noon. Slowly, gingerly she walked on in the direction of the Chukurova.

  ‘I won’t stop. I’ll go down to the Chukurova even if I have to die on the way. And I will die, I know it. And what will people say then, eh? Tell me that, Longish Ali! Leaving your old mother to perish on the roads … Think of what people will say! Yes, I will die just to spite you. I’ll walk on and on until I drop down dead. And when the villagers come back from the cotton picking they’ll find my bones right here, and they’ll spit in your face …’

  She heard a distant baying of dogs and quickened her step. ‘Bark away, bark away, Yalak mongrels. You won’t stop me! They’ll give me some bread at the next village. What a turn Elif will have when she sees me, the bitch!’

  The baying grew fainter and died away and an eerie silence fell, as though the world was suddenly emptied of all its creatures, as though the blowing wind, the shooting-stars, the coursing clouds, the rustling forest, all nature had been blotted out, leaving no trace. A tall dark tree … Dark leaves in the night … The clouds, the streams, the stars, the moon, the flowering trees, all quite dark … An all-encompassing darkness, the world in confusion flowing through the night, flowing endlessly …

  The sun was sitting behind a mountain peak, blood-red, with the clouds all about it afire. Soon it would set and vanish. Meryemdje felt cold. ‘It’ll be dark in a minute,’ she thought. Her stomach was pinched with hunger. She could not take another step. But how could she give in? She dropped on all fours and crawled on.

  ‘Aah, if only the villagers could come along now and see me like this,’ she thought. ‘If only they could come and give Ali and Elif a good trouncing, so that they’d be ashamed to the end of their lives …’

  The sun had gone now. It was getting really cold and large bright stars were filling up the sky. But still Meryemdje crawled on obstinately, swimming through the thick dust of the road. From the forest before her rose the howling of jackals, and Meryemdje shivered.

  ‘Jackals! If they get at my body once I’m dead … But I won’t go back to that empty village, I won’t!’

  The dust was cold now. Her hands, her feet refused to bear her on. She slumped down and huddled herself tightly into a tiny round ball.

  6

  How Memidik carried the corpse from one hiding-place to another

  He lay mouth up on the bank, a long, long body with his long arms and legs spreadeagled. Beside him a wide pool of blood had soaked into the sand and dried into a crust. His striped shirt was torn from the right shoulder down and a dark streak of hairy chest showed through like a festering wound in the sun. On the left side of the shirt the blood had hardened into a large patch as stiff as a block of wood. Midges swarmed over his face, fighting for his eyes, and now and then a big bright-winged green fly whizzed by, slashing through the sunlight like a long flash of lightning. His hands lay wide open, huge, wet hands. The pebbles, the dusty burdock shrubs, the tamarisks, the laurels, the planetrees shone wetly as the sun rose. His grey hair fell over his forehead. His head, half sunk in the stream, lay pillowed against a large striated stone. Shoals of tiny fish skimmed up, sniffing at his right ear, then swam off like quicksilver to rally again the next instant. The sluggish river flowed, crystal-clear in the sunlight, its polished green-lichened stones bright as the darting fish. The sun was higher now, warming up the earth. A bitter smell rose from the burdock shrubs as the sultry heat sank deeper into the water, the trees and the grass.

  A giant steel-green fly zoomed up wildly from the body and struck Memidik in the face. He had crept into an agnus castus bush and sat there, his eyes fixed unblinkingly on the dead man’s face, which was changing with each passing moment, the sleepy downward curve of the lips growing sharper, almost mocking.

  The haze that trembled over the river grew denser instead of lifting as the sun rose in the sky. It was a luminous translucent haze that gave varied hues to the dead man’s face.

  Memidik’s eyes, keen as a preying wolf’s, scanned him intently, taking in every detail, down to a straggling untied shoestring. But how many knife-wounds, how many holes were there in his back? Five rillets of blood had furrowed the fine sand right down to the river. There must be five holes then …

  And so there he lay in the mid-morning heat …

  A large orange butterfly came to rest on the man’s left hand. It folded its fan-like wings vertically and seemed to fall asleep. The antennae quivered once as though in a dream. Then the wings fanned out again and their shadow fell darkly over the clotted blood. The dead man’s hand seemed to stir, as though he was going to lift it. The butterfly started up and flew off to settle on the stalk of a mauve-flowering mint.

  A frog splashed suddenly into the stream and Memidik started. A group of mud-turtles sunning on the bank were also disturbed and scurried into the water. His heart beat fast. A slim-legged greenish heron alighted beside the half-submerged head and dipped its long bill into the water.

  The heat-haze deepened and spread and a thin vapour trailed across the dead man’s face. And th
en he moved. Memidik jumped up and started running.

  It was only when he came to a thorn-infested, long-stubbled wheat field and the knife in his hand flashed in the sun that he stopped. He put the knife back into its sheath.

  ‘Careful, Memidik, careful,’ he muttered. ‘What are you doing?’

  There was not a living thing in sight; it was as though the world had been emptied of all its creatures. Only a few grasshoppers struck his face and hands and rebounded with a pat to the ground.

  He sprinted back to the river-bank, grabbed the body by the feet and began to drag it downstream. Its head looked stranger than ever, misshapen under the water, bouncing against the stones, its ears now large, now small, its floating hair folding and unfolding, weed-like. At each glance Memidik summoned all his strength and spurted on faster than ever.

  At last, gasping for breath, he stopped and took the rope that was tied to his waist. It was old and full of knots but it would serve its purpose. He trussed up the dead man’s feet. The tamarisk bush rose fresh and green almost from inside the water. One of its branches dropped into the river, forming a thick curtain. Its trunk was smothered by the bright, rambling, red-leaved shoots of a blackberry bush. Holding the rope, Memidik crawled into the bush to where the tamarisk’s roots sprawled, some buried in mud, some branching out like veins into the river. He looped the rope over one of the branches and pulled. He pulled and pulled and the feet came into view against the trunk. He pulled again and the feet crept up, soles upward. Another long pull and the legs were clinging to the trunk upside down. The dead man’s face hung under the water, the eyes huge now, growing larger or smaller with the passing ripples.