The Undying Grass Page 7

  Hidden in the bush, Hassan kept on striking match after match. ‘Father’s killed my Granny,’ he was thinking. ‘He killed her because he didn’t want to carry her on his back all the way down to the Chukurova, like last year. Granny who loved him so … Now she’s dead … Poor Granny!’ His face was wet with tears. The mosquitoes had stung him everywhere and the tears were like salt over a raw wound. That night Hassan sobbed himself to sleep in the blackthorn bush.

  As the night wore on the big fire died out, the gossiping tongues were still, the scratching hands fell back inert and people gave up their bodies to the ever-swelling swarms of hungry mosquitoes. Too tired to care any more, they laid themselves down over the warm earth and now the mosquitoes could suck away unhindered till they were gorged with blood.

  Two people could not sleep. One was Long Ali and the other Batty Bekir’s wife.

  Long Ali was thinking of his mother. How was she faring, all by herself in the empty village? What if she died? The villagers would eat him alive then. They’d make short work of him. At the very best he would be forced to leave the village. Fear gripped at his heart. A decrepit old woman, all alone for two or three months! What if she fell ill and not a soul was around to feed her, not even to give her a little water? She would never survive. A dead, bloated body rose before his eyes, his own mother, her hennaed hair trailing in the dust, her palms upturned, quite still, hundreds of green flies settling on her and rising with lightning speed in myriad green flashes under the beating sun …

  ‘She’ll die! She’ll never survive this … What possessed me to leave her behind? What? …’

  Remorse swept over him. Now he blamed himself bitterly. His own mother! He couldn’t bear to think of her … But who knows, maybe she would fare all right. After all she had food and water. There must be some stray chickens left behind, to say nothing of Okkesh Dagkurdu’s bee-hives, brimming with honey. But would she think of them? And if she also peeled some yalabuk from the pine-trees, then what more could she ask for. The yalabuk would keep up her strength. It was like a youth elixir, that white lining of the pine-bark.

  Could Tashbash really have been a saint? he wondered. Had he really gone to join the Holy Men? Or was he dead, frozen and buried under last year’s snow? If he were now living with those immortal Holy Men up on their magic mountain, wouldn’t he rush down to Meryemdje’s aid? Could he forget how she had lavished love and help on him and his wife? Does a man forget everything when he becomes a saint? As for Spellbound Ahmet, Meryemdje had always believed that he was the Peri King’s own son-in-law. He might come to her and, who knows, maybe take her to the peris’ enchanted palace.

  Then he smiled. ‘Oh dear,’ he thought. ‘What a fool I am!’

  The Peri King’s son-in-law … Tashbash and the Forty Holies … What nonsense! Who knows where poor Tashbash was now? Most probably in the mad-house. Poor Tashbash, those shameless villagers had wrecked his life. He called to mind that last day, the day the gendarmes had taken him away, a dark snowy winter’s day, and Tashbash walking in front of Corporal Jumali like a sheep going to be sacrificed. It was only when he had turned and given the villagers his last commandments that his stature had grown. ‘You shall not speak to this Muhtar Sefer again,’ he had said, ‘not a single one of you, down to the very dogs and cats of the village.’ He had blazed out like a nine-plumed prophet. And later? Everyone knew what Corporal Jumali had reported to the Captain. How a sudden burst of light had enveloped Tashbash, how he had glided out of the cave and the light had gone with him … A huge ball of light sweeping up to the mountain top! Corporal Jumali had seen it with his own eyes. ‘Ah,’ he had said, ‘if I could just see him once more, our Lord Tashbash, I’d throw myself at his feet and beg his grace and mercy. Ah, aaah …’

  No, there was no doubt about it. Tashbash was a saint. But did saints remember their earthly friends? Did they bring to mind their Mother Meryemdjes? ‘Ah, help me, brother Tashbash! Aren’t you my old friend? Do something for me, quickly …’

  As for Batty Bekir’s wife, she rolled over the warm earth, stark naked, writhing, in the grips of a ravening desire, still feeling on her flesh Memidik’s hot young body. There was hardly a man in the village she had not gone to bed with and usually she never wanted the same man again, but this undersized, skinny lad had set her whole being on fire. And now he was nowhere to be found, although she had looked for him high and low. So there she lay, her naked body exposed to the bite of mosquitoes, letting them sting her and tear at her flesh. But for the mosquitoes she would never have been able to bear the unquenched desire, the burning voluptuousness that tortured her. They whizzed about her, biting, drawing out her blood. She sated her frenzy a little by scratching at her body.

  Ali raised his head and saw three shadows in the middle of the field. He recognized them, rose from his bed and went to the stream. There on the bank he crouched down to relieve himself and remained half asleep for a long time. Shouts coming from the field and the clink of cans roused him. Quickly he tied up his shalvar-trousers, slapped a little water over his face, and ran to the cotton field. Elif was already there. He dropped into the row beside her.

  The peaks of the mountains were still dark. Only a thin glimmer at the edge of a cluster of clouds in the east heralded the dawn. The glow of the star-studded sky fell over the white cotton field, easing the task of the labourers’ groping hands.

  I must gather a great deal of cotton, Ali thought. I must work fast, night and day, so as to be able to go back to the village in a month, long before the others … Mother won’t die till then. A woman like her, old as she may be, doesn’t die in four weeks.

  His hands flew. They went so fast that he himself was amazed. Were these swift, agile hands really his?

  10

  Memidik has an urge to see the dead man again, where he lies tied to the root of the planetree beneath the stream. He heaves him out and props him against the tree-trunk and peers into his face in the dark till dawn breaks, and then rushes back to the cotton field, leaving the corpse there against the tree. And then three men in white suits and large straw hats arrive in a black motor-car and search for the dead man.

  He had snuggled into a bush and was crouching there, his unblinking gaze fixed on the dead man. It was as though he were seeing him for the first time. Why hadn’t he looked at him properly before? Now he scanned the face down to its smallest feature, the sparse drooping moustache, the way the lower lip was thrust out perplexedly, the lank wet hair half hiding the brow, and that air, that look just like Sefer, hard, cunning, smooth …

  He’s the spit and image of him, Memidik thought distractedly. Yet I’ve seen Sefer in the flesh today … So who can this be? His clothes are different. He’s got white shoes and town trousers, silver-grey, and a dark grey coat. Those wide-open eyes … They seem to have grown larger now.

  A steel-green fly flashed down like lightning from a branch of the planetree on to the dead man, whizzing up again, and for a while a bright steel-green line was stretched between the branch and the corpse. More steel-green flies sprang up, and now it was not a line but a luminous steel-green web of light that was being spun in the air. Then Memidik raised his head and the web was wiped away, leaving only the empty, blinding heat-shimmer of the day.

  He crept out of the bush and took a few steps towards the dead man. Then he stopped short as several green flies zoomed up before his eyes at a dizzying speed. The steel-green web flashed blindingly on and off, on and off, and behind it the dead man seemed to sit up. Memidik’s heart leapt to his mouth. He stood rooted to the spot, unable to take a step. The body was moving. It was making a lunge for him. Memidik closed his eyes very tight. When he opened them, the body was still there, leaning against the planetree. A large yellow-veined leaf spiralled down to rest on the dead man’s right foot.

  Suddenly Memidik turned and streaked back into his bush. His heart was pounding. He longed to get away, to escape, anywhere. But he could not do it. He could not leave without tou
ching the body once at least, to make sure that it was really cold, quite dead. And so he crouched on there, numb with terror.

  It was hot. The three men wore wide-brimmed white straw hats. Their trousers were newly pressed and all had neckties despite the sweltering heat. Their black dust-coated car gleamed darkly under the beating sun. A smell of petrol hung over the plain. One of the men was very tall, his face and neck furrowed by long vertical wrinkles. He had a tiny white moustache.

  The second man was fat and cross-eyed. His straw hat was twice as big as the others’. The third was very young, a skinny lad with sunken cheeks and thin lips in a tiny pointed face.

  ‘Have you seen Shevket Bey?’ was the question they kept asking everyone. ‘You know, Shevket Bey …’

  Zaladja Woman raised her voice in answer: ‘I haven’t seen him, but he was in my dream. They were hacking him to pieces … In my dream …’

  ‘No, we haven’t seen him …’

  ‘You must know Shevket Bey … A huge tall man, with a moustache. He’s got the largest hands … Three times as large as anyone else’s …’

  ‘No, no, we haven’t seen him. We don’t even know him …’

  They found the muhtar lying low in a ditch, his rifle cocked in readiness for a hare he had sighted.

  ‘Have you seen Shevket Bey? You know Shevket Bey …’

  Sefer sprang to his feet, eager to find someone to speak to. ‘I think it was Shevket Bey,’ he said artfully. ‘He was going down that way. He has huge feet, hasn’t he? Shevket Bey … But I’ve seen Tashbash too, you know, the so-called saint who disappeared last winter. He put this ban on me, and now not even my own wives will talk to me, not even my own faithful watchman. Nor Omer, the lad I brought up like my own son … They’re afraid of being struck with his curse. Can’t they see you talking to me, and nothing happening to you? If he’d really been a saint, that Tashbash, he would have struck you down on the spot. Saint indeed! That wretch, that dog! … And some fools believe he’s one of the Forty Holy Men now! Even that Corporal Jumali swears he saw him enter a ball of light and rise up into the sky. Who ever heard such nonsense! Is it so easy to be a saint? And a saint who walks in magic light … I don’t believe it. It’s those villagers who got him into this mess. They felt like having a saint of their own and so they forced him to act like one. God knows, the poor wretch himself didn’t want to. And what happened was that he gave the gendarmes the slip and fled or got frozen to death in the blizzard. As for Corporal Jumali, he made up that story of lights to save his own skin …’ Then suddenly in a tearful voice: ‘It’s nearly a year now, and nobody’s even so much as said my name aloud. I’ll go mad at this rate or kill myself. Why don’t you be my guests this evening? See these three fat juicy francolins?’ He held them up one by one. ‘I’ll shoot you a hare or two as well in no time. There’s a big bottle of raki at home, the most excellent raki you’ve ever tasted and just right to go with roast game. Come and be my guests this evening and I’ll make it my business to find Shevket Bey for you. See if I don’t bring him back to you, bag and baggage. Please come …’

  The men stared at him with expressionless faces. ‘You’d better stay here and get on with your cotton picking,’ the tall one said at last. ‘As for that Tashbash … Shevket Bey was looking for him too, God knows why! He rattled on about him all the time …’

  They turned and strode off down the river-bank.

  Memidik saw them coming. A terrible fear gripped him and he sank to the ground. Suddenly the flies started buzzing up and down, spinning their steel-green web of light. The men were drawing nearer. With a tremendous effort he threw himself on the dead man where he sat with his staring, wide-open, yellow-streaked, blue eyes, and pressed his finger to his thigh. The finger sank into the flesh. Then he ran quickly to the shelter of his bush. He could hear nothing but the loud drumming in his breast.

  All at once the men were there, close to the planetree; then one of them came right up to the bush in which Memidik was hiding. The other two were standing pretty near to the dead man. They were talking. It seemed to Memidik that they must be speaking to the dead man.

  A cool gust of wind blew in from the south. Soon it freshened, whipping up the dust on the roads. Long columns of dust formed on the opposite bank of the Jeyhan River and scoured the plain in a whirl. A dust-devil tinted with blue came hurtling on towards them and closed upon Memidik, the men, the steel-green flies and the corpse. It swept on, snatching off the three men’s panama hats, leaving a covering of white dust over everything. The corpse was almost invisible now, and the planetree had become a tree made of white dust. The flies had turned into small blobs of dust. Nothing was left of their former lightning brightness, of the delirious steel-green flashing under the sun. A ball of dust now kept up a rapid shuttling between the branches and the dead man.

  ‘Damn it all,’ the tall man cried. ‘Shevket Bey will never find this Tashbash. It’s impossible. Tashbash has gone up to the mountains. He is with the Forty Holy Men now …’

  ‘Let’s arrest this man then,’ the thin one said.

  ‘What’s the use?’ the fat man remarked. ‘It won’t bring back Shevket Bey …’

  ‘It won’t,’ the tall man replied. ‘Let’s find our hats. Now, where has this damn dust-storm sprung from!’

  The sun set. The men vanished. And now the cotton field shimmered palely again under the light of the stars and glowworms flitted from cotton plant to cotton plant. A wet, clammy odour of rot and swamp spread through the night.

  ‘Where can I put him? What shall I do?’ Memidik groaned. ‘This is going to cost me dear. There’s no place where they won’t find him. And then they’ll hang me. They’ll hang me by the neck …’

  He saw himself dangling at the end of a rope, his tongue sticking out all purple, his feet ugly and dirty and yellowing, their toes pointing to the earth, and he shivered.

  Quickly he slung the body over his shoulder and walked down the stream. There was an old dry well, he knew, this side of the swamp … It was getting on for dawn when he found it. They had closed up the opening with a large heavy stone and he pulled and pushed and strained for a good while before he moved it. Then he flung the body down the dark mouth of the well and sighed with relief. He felt a frothy feeling inside. Dawn was breaking and he ran back to the cotton field. His mother was already there. He fell in beside her and began to pick. On his left was Long Ali. His hands were moving so fast that you could not see them.

  11

  Memidik is sorely perplexed. Is it real what is happening to him, or only a dream? Is he sleeping or waking? He doesn’t know. All he is conscious of is the intense heat and the clouds of mosquitoes. And also that thing in the well that he cannot get rid of …

  It was nearly sundown. The surface of the Jeyhan River paled first to a powdery blue, then its blue became incandescent, as though the river was being illuminated from within. And all at once the whole riverside was dyed blue, the grass, the bushes, the marshy wooded hollow, even the snow-white cotton field. Not a ripple marred the surface of the water. Still as a lake, it seemed to have stopped flowing.

  A tenuous ray of light shot arrow-like over the water, tracing a fleeting luminous line, that vanished almost at once, then it came again and went, three times. It was very hot. Hundreds of swallows flitted overhead, a medley of dark specks in the sky like criss-crossing bullets. Now and then they darted right in front of Memidik’s nose, playing with him as swallows do. Memidik had seen swallows keep up with the fastest horses and plague them to death with their persistence. Swallows could even keep up with motor-cars.

  I wonder whether they can go as fast as an airplane … An airplane! he thought suddenly. That’s where I ought to put the body. All dressed up, his eyes wide open looking like glass, unblinking … He’s still got his shoes. His clothes are a little rumpled, but no one would notice … But who can he be? He looks like one of them, one of those rich aghas. He’s got that uppity look on his face. His moustache droops jus
t like Okkesh Dagkurdu’s, a good clean Moslem’s moustache. I’ll put him on that plane, and then … Over a forest, as we fly very very high … No, no, it must be over the sea, the vast boundless sea. Or would an empty desert be better? …

  ‘Ah, you fool!’ he sighed aloud suddenly. ‘Ranting about airplanes! Where will you find an airplane?’

  Wasn’t the body safe there, in the dry well? No, he told himself, anybody could find it. How? Well, dogs for instance. And then the smell … What if the stink of the rotting body rises out of that well and spreads all over the Chukurova plain? He saw the labourers holding their noses and running in the direction of the well; a thousand, five thousand, a hundred thousand, the whole population of the Chukurova, young and old, all converging on the well.

  A flying swallow dropped a twig that ruffled the blue calmness of the river.

  The inside of the well was dark. But deep down Memidik saw something round like a mirror, and right in the centre of this mirror two glassy protruding eyes in a yellow face. The eyes stared at him from the mirror, from this remote glassy disc that gleamed at the bottom of the well. A shudder ran through him.

  ‘Anyone can see him,’ he thought. ‘Anyone who’s got eyes to see … And people are always curious about dry wells. They never miss a chance to poke their noses into them …’

  He could see his own face too, beside the dead man’s, small, tiny as the palm of a hand, his hollow cheeks, his sunken eyes and even his chin quivering with fear.

  ‘I’m frightened,’ Memidik said aloud to the man in the well. ‘Frightened to death, and it’s all because of you, damn you. What a plague you’ve turned out to be! What shall I do? Where shall I take you? Whatever I do, they’re sure to find you and they’ll know soon enough that it was I who killed you. What shall I do? Tell me, what, what?’

  He burst into tears. The reflection at the bottom of the well puckered up its face too and cried like a child. Even the glassy-eyed face with its drooping moustache seemed to be crying with him.