Balthasar's Odyssey (4 page)

I reached home to find Boumeh weeping and wringing his hands with rage.

“Why did you give him that book? I don't understand it!”

I didn't understand it either. In a moment of weakness I'd lost
The Hundredth Name,
the statuette I was so fond of, and the respect of the emissary. I had even more reason to lament than my nephew. But I had to defend myself somehow.

“What can I say? It just happened! I had no choice! He
is
the envoy of the King of France, after all!”

My poor nephew was sobbing like a child. I took him by the shoulders.

“Cheer up! It was a forgery, as you and I both know.”

He pulled himself free.

“If it was a forgery, we committed a fraud by selling it to him at that price. And if by some miracle it wasn't a forgery, we shouldn't have parted with it for all the gold on earth! Who sold it to
you?”

“Old Idriss.”

“Idriss? How much for?”

“He gave it to me.”

“In that case, he certainly didn't mean you to sell it.”

“Not even for 1,500 maidins? With that he could buy a house, new clothes; hire a maid; perhaps even get married.”

Boumeh didn't feel like laughing. He seldom does.

“If I understand you correctly, you intend to give all this money to Idriss.”

“Yes — without even putting it in our till!”

I stood up, put the coins in a leather purse, and left the house.

How would the old fellow react?

Would he reproach me for selling what was meant as a present?

Or would he see the incredible amount of money I was bringing him as a gift from Heaven?

As I pushed open the door of his hut I found a neighbour sitting on the threshold with her face buried in her hands. Before going in, I asked her if hajj Idriss was at home. She looked up and spoke one word.

“Twaffa.”

He is dead!

I'm sure his heart stopped beating at the very moment when I gave his book to the Chevalier de Marmontel. I can't get the idea out of my head.

Hadn't I asked myself how the old man would react to what I'd done? Now I knew!

Is my bad conscience preventing me from thinking straight? Alas, facts are facts — the coincidence is too striking. I have acted very, very wrongly, and I must make amends!

It didn't occur to me at once that I ought to follow the book to Constantinople. As a matter of fact, I'm still not sure there is any point in it. But I have allowed myself to be persuaded it's the best thing to do.

To begin with, there were Boumeh's moans and groans. But I expected and was annoyed by them in advance, so they didn't really affect my decision. Especially as the foolish fellow wanted to set out straight away! To hear him, you'd think all that had just happened was made up of signs from Heaven especially directed at me. And despairing of seeing me interpret them correctly, Providence was supposed to have sacrificed the life of poor Idriss with the sole object of opening my eyes.

“Opening my eyes to what? What am I supposed to understand?”

“That time is short! That the accursed year is at hand! That death is lurking around us! You've held your own salvation and ours in your hands, you've had
The Hundredth Name
in your possession, and you couldn't hold on to it!”

“Well, I can't do anything now. The Chevalier's miles away. That's the work of Providence too.”

“We must catch him up! We must set out right away!”

I shrugged. I didn't even intend to reply. There was no question of my going along with such childish behaviour. Set out at once? Ride all night? And get our throats cut by brigands?

“As for dying, I prefer to die next year with the rest of my fellow-men rather than anticipate the end of the world!”

But the boy wouldn't budge.

“If it's too late to catch him in Tripoli we can still meet him in Constantinople!”

Suddenly a lively voice from behind us:

“Constantinople! The best idea Boumeh ever had!”

Habib! Now
he
was putting his oar in.

“So
you've
deigned to honour us with your presence! I always knew it would be my unlucky day when you and your brother agreed about something for once!”

“I care nothing for your tales of the end of the world, and I'm not in the least interested in that confounded book. But I've been wanting to go to the Big City for a long while. Didn't you say that when you were my age your father, our grandfather Tommaso, wanted you to see Constantinople?”

This had nothing to do with the case, but it touched me on my weakest spot — the reverence I'd felt for my father since he died, and for all he'd ever said or done. As I listened to Habib, a lump came into my throat, my eyes glazed over, and I heard myself murmur:

“True, true. Perhaps we should go to Constantinople.”

Next day Idriss was buried in the Muslim cemetery. There weren't many mourners there — my nephews and me, three or four neighbours, and Sheikh Abdel-Bassit, who conducted the service. When it was over he took me by the arm and asked me to go home with him.

“I'm glad you came,” he said as I helped him over the little wall round the cemetery. “This morning I wondered if I'd have to bury him on my own. He had no one, poor man. Neither son nor daughter, nephew nor niece. No heir at all — though it's true that if he'd had one he'd have had nothing to leave him. His only bequest was to you. That wretched book.”

This left me deep in thought. I'd seen the book as a token of thanks, not as a bequest. But, in a way, that was what it was — or had become. And I'd gone and sold it! Would old Idriss, in his new abode, forgive me?

We walked in silence for a while, up a steep and stony road without any shade. Abdel-Bassit was plunged in his thoughts and I in mine — or rather in my remorse. Then he said, straightening his turban:

“I hear you're leaving us soon. Where are you going?”

“To Constantinople, God willing.”

He stopped and put his head on one side, as if to catch the din of the distant city.

“Istambul! Istambul! To those who have eyes it's hard to say the world has nothing to show. Yet it's the truth, believe me. If you want to know the world, all you need do is listen. What people see when they travel is never more than an illusion. Shadows chasing other shadows. The roads and the countries teach us nothing we don't know already, nothing we can't hear within ourselves in the peace of the night.”

The man of religion may be right, but my mind is made up — I'm leaving! Against my better judgment, and to some extent unwillingly — but I'm leaving! I can't bear the thought of spending the next four months, then the twelve months of the fateful year itself, sitting in my shop listening to predictions, setting down signs, listening to reproaches and endlessly mulling over my fears and regrets!

My beliefs haven't changed. I still execrate stupidity and superstition. I'm still sure the lamp of the world isn't about to go out…

But that said, how can I, who doubt everything, not doubt my own doubts?

Today is Sunday. Idriss was buried last Monday. And we're to set off tomorrow at dawn.

There'll be four of us — me, my nephews, and Hatem my clerk, who'll see to the animals and the provisions. We're taking ten mules, no less. Four for riding, the others to carry the baggage. That way, none of the beasts will be overloaded, and we should, God willing, be able to keep up a good pace.

Khalil, my other clerk, who is honest but not very resourceful, will stay behind to help Pleasance look after the shop — my excellent sister Pleasance, who takes a poor view of this impromptu journey. It makes her sad and anxious to be parted like this from her two sons and her brother, but she knows it would be no use trying to oppose it. Nonetheless, this morning, when we were all caught up in the bustle of last-minute preparations, she came and asked me if it wouldn't be better to put off our departure for a few weeks. I reminded her that we must cross Anatolia before the winter. She didn't insist — just muttered a prayer, and began to weep silently. Habib did his best to tease her out of it, while her other son, more horrified than sympathetic, told her to hurry up and go and bathe her eyes with rose-water, because tears shed on the eve of a journey are an evil omen.

When I'd first told Pleasance I planned to take her children with me, she hadn't objected. But it was only natural for her maternal instincts to break out in the end. Trust Boumeh to imagine a mother's tears could bring bad luck.

Pages written in my house at
Gibelet on the eve of my departure.

I'd gathered together my notebook, ink, reeds and blotting powder ready for the journey, but this same Sunday evening I've had to set them out on my desk again for use. A stupid incident occurred at the end of the afternoon which nearly prevented us from leaving. Something I find not only highly exasperating, but humiliating as well. I'd have preferred not to mention it, but I promised myself I'd record everything in my journal and I mean to keep to my resolve.

The cause of all this bother is a woman called Marta, known around here, with a tinge of sarcasm, as “the widow”. A few years ago she married a fellow everyone knew to be a lout. He was from a family of louts, all of them crooks, pilferers, scoundrels, footpads, wreckers — every single one of them, old and young alike, as far back as anyone can remember! And pretty Marta, then a pert young thing, impish, wilful, mischievous but not a bad girl, fell in love with one of them. His name was Sayyaf.

She could have had any eligible young man in the village — I'd have been more than willing myself, I don't deny it! Her father happened to be my barber, and a friend of mine. When I went to his place in the morning for a shave and caught a glimpse of her, I'd come away humming a tune. There was something in her voice, her walk, the way she fluttered her eye-lashes — something no man with blood in his veins could resist. Her father had noticed how attracted I was, and had given me to understand that he'd be delighted, even flattered, at such a connection. But the lass had fallen for the other fellow, and one morning we heard she'd let him carry her off and a renegade priest had married them. The barber died of grief a few months later, leaving his only daughter a house, an orchard, and more than 200 gold sultanins.

Marta's husband, who'd never worked in his life, then decided to go into trade in a big way and charter a boat. He persuaded his wife to let him have all her father's savings, down to the last penny, and off he went to Tripoli. He has never been seen again since.

At first the story went that he'd made a fortune with a cargo of spices, and built a whole fleet of ships for himself, and planned to come and show off sailing past Gibelet. People said Marta spent all her days by the sea with the girls she knew, proudly waiting for him. But in vain — no ships, no fortune and no husband ever turned up. After a while, other less splendid rumours began to circulate. He'd been drowned in a shipwreck. He'd turned pirate, been captured by the Turks and hanged. But some said he'd got a hideout on the coast near Smyrna, and by now had a wife and children. This mortified his wife, who'd never got pregnant during their brief life together and was reputed to be barren.

For the unfortunate Marta — alone for six years already, neither married nor free, without resources, without brothers or sisters, without children, spied on by all her louts of in-laws lest she think of sullying the honour of her vagabond of a husband — every day was agony. So she started to maintain, with a persistence bordering on madness, that she'd heard from a reliable source that Sayyaf was dead, so she really was a widow. But when she dressed in black, the family of the alleged departed attacked her mercilessly, accusing her of bringing the absent Sayyaf bad luck. After being the victim of several blows, the marks of which anyone could see on her face and hands, “the widow” resigned herself to wearing colours again.

But she did not admit defeat. In recent weeks, it was said, she'd told some of her girlfriends that she planned to go to Constantinople to check with the authorities whether her husband was really dead, and that she wouldn't come back without a firman from the Sultan proving that she was a widow and free to begin a new life.

And it seems she carried out her threat. This Sunday morning she didn't attend mass. It was said she'd left Gibelet during the night, taking her clothes and jewels with her. Rumours at once arose, implicating me. This is annoying and insulting, and above all — do I have to swear it on the Gospel? — it is simply untrue, absolutely and entirely untrue. I haven't exchanged a single word with Marta for years — since her father's funeral, I think. At the most I've greeted her in the street from time to time, furtively raising my hand to my hat. That's all. For me, on the day I heard she'd married that rascal, it was all over.

But hearsay now has it that I've made a secret arrangement to take her with me to Constantinople. And as I couldn't do so openly before the whole village, I'm supposed to have told her to go ahead in advance and wait for me to pick her up at an appointed place. It's even said that it's because of her that I've never re-married, which has nothing to do with the truth, as I may one day have the opportunity to explain.

Untrue though it is, this story looks quite plausible, and it seems to me most people believe it. Beginning with Marta's brothers-in-law, who claim to be sure of my guilt, insulted by my alleged tricks, and determined to avenge their honour. This afternoon Rasmi, the most excitable of them, burst into my house brandishing a gun and swearing he was going to do me in. It took all my self-possession, and that of Hatem my clerk, to calm him down. He insisted I delay my departure to demonstrate my good faith. It's true that would have done away with all the rumours and suspicions. But why should I guarantee my honesty to a gang of louts? And for how long would I have to postpone my journey? Until Marta showed up again? And what if she'd gone away for good?