Birds Without Wings (9 page)

Abdul begged his mother for a black shirt and waistcoat, embroidered
with golden thread, and he had them before a year was out. Thereafter, because of the natural process whereby everyone in a small community ends up with a nickname, it was not long before even his mother was referring to him as Karatavuk.

Nicos, soon to become Mehmetçik, interrupted his mother’s labours with similar requests, until finally he obtained the red shirt and waistcoat for which he had pestered her, kissing her hand and pressing it to his cheeks. She had raised her eyes to heaven, saying, “She who has children has torments,” but she had bought the cloth from a pedlar and made the garments in the few days before the hoeing season.

Iskander lost count of the number of times that the boys came to him, holding back their tears because they had lost their clay birds, either in a fight, or by dropping or misplacing them. He made entire batches, to sell to indulgent parents in the market at Telmessos, so that one day he would be able to afford a beautiful gun, and every time that he gave a new one to the boys he would ask, “And who is second only to God?” withholding the toy until he had heard the correct and satisfactory answer, “The potter, the potter, the potter.”

CHAPTER 11

Ibrahim Gives Philothei a Goldfinch

When Ibrahim was six years old he found a dead goldfinch in an orchard near the Letoun, where Mohammed the Leech Gatherer was wont to spend hours in the water, waiting patiently for the leeches to attach themselves to his legs. Ibrahim had been amusing himself by trying to catch lizards in his hands, a project which is altogether impossible to achieve, but is a pastime to which every child necessarily commits many oblivious hours. Catching tortoises is somewhat less of a challenge, and for this reason those creatures quickly lose their interest, unless one is simply waiting to see how long it takes a tortoise to put out its head after having been poked with a stick.

Ibrahim found the little bird because his eye was caught by the brilliant yellow markings on its wings, and the rich scarlet of the mask. It was wedged between two rocks, as if it had simply tumbled out of the sky, overtaken suddenly by death. He picked it out and turned it over in his hands, and although it had stiffened and dried into a contorted posture, he thought that it was the most pretty thing that he had ever seen. He turned it over and over in his hands, amazed by its perfect lightness and insubstantiality.

Karatavuk and Mehmetçik were swinging from a low branch of a nearby tree, and Drosoula and Philothei were sitting on a fallen pillar by the Letoun, conversing, watching Mohammed talking and grinning to himself, and throwing stiff blades of grass into the water, in order to watch them float.

Ibrahim went up to the girls, and held out his hand. “Look what I’ve got,” he said.

“It’s a dead bird,” said Drosoula scornfully. “Take it away, it’s horrible.”

“Oh, but it’s so pretty!” exclaimed Philothei, putting her hands to her face.

“It’s a kushu,” Ibrahim told her, proud of his knowledge. “Do you like it?”

“It’s so pretty!” exclaimed Philothei again.

“What are you going to do with it?” asked Drosoula, her voice still scornful.

Ibrahim ignored her, and held it out to Philothei. “Do you want it?” he asked.

Philothei blushed with pleasure, and said, “Oh yes. Thank you.” She put out both hands, and he laid it gently in her palms.

The little girl raised the tiny corpse to her face so that she could look more closely at it, and then quite suddenly threw it to the ground, saying, “Öf! Öf! It stinks. It’s disgusting.”

“Of course it stinks,” Ibrahim told her sensibly. “It’s dead.” Philothei stared down at the bird in continuing horror, and Ibrahim, a terrible feeling of disappointment growing in his gut, asked, “Don’t you want it, then?”

Philothei was sensitive to his feelings, even at so young an age, and she replied, diplomatically, “Of course I want it, but not when it’s stinky.”

“You’re mad,” observed Drosoula, with every affectation of maturity. “It’s no use to anyone.” She would have loved it if someone had offered her such a gift, but she knew that no one ever would.

“It’s pretty,” reproved Philothei.

“What if I cut the wings off, and you keep those?” asked Ibrahim. “They’re very nice, and they won’t stink. Wings don’t stink when you cut them off. I’ve got some magpie wings, and they’re quite big, but they don’t stink and they’ve never stunk.”

“I’d like the wings,” said Philothei, who did not really like the idea at all, but who was already caught up in the subtleties of the courtship that would last until the day of her death.

So it was that Philothei became the owner of a small pair of wings, black, speckled with white and golden at the leading edge. With time she was to become very fond of the curious and useless gift, and would feel a warmth in her heart, and a modest thrill of pleasure every time that she came across them in her small collection of treasures.

From that time forward, Ibrahim began to associate Philothei with birds, and he would think of her as “the little bird.” Later on, when they were betrothed, he would refer to her by that name among his friends, without sentimentality and without embarrassment. It would also be his pet name for her during those few incandescent and illicit moments when, at the risk of their reputations, they found themselves together and alone.

CHAPTER 12

The Proof of Innocence (1)

Polyxeni had much trouble sleeping, because that night the bulbuls were singing their hearts out, and in any case there was a full moon. She tossed restlessly on her pallet, and blinked because her eyes felt hot and dry. At about the hour before dawn she saw her mother, but afterwards was not sure whether or not she had seen her mother’s ghost, or had been visited in a dream. As she told her friend later:

“It was so strange, Ayse, there she was, such a familiar shape, with her shoulders a little bent, and the grey hair poking out in wisps from the sides of her scarf, and that afflicted look in her eyes that she always had, and yet I felt nothing but peace. I said, ‘Mother, is that you?’ and she sat on the edge of the divan and said, ‘Who else?’ and I said, ‘Mother, it’s been so long, what are you doing?’ and she said, ‘The earth is weighing on my chest. Show me some light, so that I can breathe.’ And I lay there thinking, and I said, ‘Mother, it’s been only three years, and you know what people have been saying.’ My mother says, ‘Well, I am innocent, and everyone can see it if you do as I ask. My bones need wine.’ And I say, ‘But Mother …’ And she sighs and says, ‘Even my child suspects me,’ and I say, ‘No, no, no,’ and my mother says, ‘Just think, afterwards you can give up mourning,’ and I say, ‘I will always mourn. Your death burns me every day. Look, I am burned all over.’ And I hold out my arms to her. She sighs again and says, ‘If you do as I ask, the burning will be healed by water.’ And so finally I say, ‘I will do as you ask,’ and she stands up and says, ‘When you have done it, I would like to know. Send me a message.’ And I say, ‘Yes, Mother, I will,’ and I tell myself, ‘Polyxeni, you’ve got to remember this when you wake up,’ and then I go back to sleep, and in the morning when the azan wakes me up, I do remember it, and that’s why I’m telling you about it.”

Ayse put her hand on Polyxeni’s cheek, and pressed her own head
against that of her friend. “Well,” she said at last, “I suppose it’s not for me to say, really. We don’t do what you people do. Our dead don’t like to be molested. But in my opinion, for what it’s worth, which probably isn’t much, you ought to do what your mother asks.”

“I am going to do it on the day after the next psychosavato, which is only next week, but there’s plenty of time to get the food ready and tell Father Kristoforos.”

Ayse pursed her lips and thought for a moment. “Do you really think it’s wise to do it so soon? I mean, I’m no one to have an opinion, if you ask me, but you know what everyone’s been saying. Ever since someone started that rumour about your mother, may she rest in paradise, everyone’s been saying that perhaps she made the poison that killed a lot of other people who didn’t die of poison at all. This is a filthy town for gossip. I keep things to myself, you know me, but there’s many who don’t.”

“My mother didn’t know how to make any poison,” protested Polyxeni. “Why should she make poison to kill the family of Rustem Bey? They died of the plague that comes back from Mecca every year like a curse! She has asked me to prove her innocent, and so I will.”

“I wish you good success,” said Ayse, with a mote of scepticism in her voice, “but I still think you should wait the full five years. And how will you send your mother a message? Can you go to her in a dream?”

“I don’t know if dead people have dreams,” replied Polyxeni, knitting her brow in perplexity, “and if they do, how can you be sure of getting into one?”

“She might come into one of yours, and then you can take advantage of the opportunity.”

“It might be a long time, though.”

“I know how you can do it,” said Ayse suddenly, tapping the side of her nose with a forefinger, in benign appreciation of her own genius.

Accordingly, Polyxeni left her friend’s house by the back door, pulled on her slippers, blinked in the sunlight, which by now was growing pointed and fierce, throwing knife-edged shadows upon the pastel walls of the houses, and made her path through the alleyways down towards the meydan. She passed Iskander throwing his pots and perspiring in his little shelter, she passed the streethawkers whose cries of “Megla! Megla!” (made in England) were universally known to be implausible, and she passed the coppersmiths whose din provided by day the racket that was provided at night by nightingales and disconsolate dogs. She arrived finally in the meydan, where she found Stamos the Birdman, selling his
wares in the shade of a quince tree. He had been called Stamos because his grandfather was from Chios, and he was called the Birdman because he sold live birds in the market from the back of a venerable handcart which had belonged to his wife’s father and who-knows-who-else before that. In wicker cages he stacked angry partridges upon ludicrous cockerels upon scruffy ducks, crowning the heap with a few cages containing pretty finches and robins that people bought to adorn the wall beside their front doors, so that their houses should be full of birdsong at dawn and even, and visitors would be greeted by bright, curious and friendly eyes, and a peck on the finger.

“Stamo’ Efendi,” asked Polyxeni, “can these birds fly?”

Stamos scratched his stubble and smiled slyly. “Well, sort of yes, and sort of no.”

“Stamo’ Efendi!” protested Polyxeni, “what kind of answer is that?”

“Give them some time,” replied Stamos, “and if they don’t die, then they’ll fly one of these days, God willing.”

Polyxeni realised that she was being teased, and joined in with the bantering turn of the conversation. “So why can’t they fly now, and if they live, God willing, why will they be able to fly later?”

Stamos the Birdman blinked and rubbed his nose with his hand. There was something about the sunlight of spring that made his eyes itch and his nose want to sneeze. He looked at Polyxeni and said, “Well, the mystery is a shallow one, and not very difficult to fathom, Polyxeni Hanim. I clip their wings because most people don’t want to buy a bird that might escape so that they have to sprout their own feathers in a flash and take off in hot pursuit. Most people couldn’t be bothered, you see. People make odd birds; they don’t fly much.”

“I want a bird that flies,” said Polyxeni, and Stamos, seeing the disappointment in her face, asked, “Why?”

Polyxeni explained, and Stamos grew serious. “Well, I could easily get one that isn’t clipped, but it would take a few days. I think it would be after All Souls’ Day, which isn’t much use to you, really. Anyway, the ideal bird for that is a dove, and I don’t usually have any. I think the best thing would be for you to find someone who can catch one. The red pines are full of them. You know, the ones where people climb up and tie rags to make a wish.”

“Do you know anyone?” asked Polyxeni.

Stamos rubbed his nose again, sneezed, and replied, “Little boys.”