Death and the Dervish (Writings From An Unbound Europe) (11 page)

I knew they were bringing him in from the quiet, excited voices that rustled like a light wind (it could produce anything, storms or calm weather). These voices were full of hatred and excitement; they quivered with curiosity and smelled of blood; they revealed a secret admiration, and a readiness for violence and revenge. His arrival was announced
by livelier movements in the crowd, by anxious, slight shuffles of feet shifting in place, by a curious turning toward those who were approaching, by a spasm that seized them and took their voices away, and probably their breath as well. Footsteps sounded in the complete silence of the cobblestone passageway, and without looking up I tried to determine whether there was an uneven one among them. Then I saw his feet between the two guards. He had both of his shoes on. I raised my eyes higher, unable to remember anything from the previous night except his white shirt and sharp face. His arms were tied crosswise, they had turned blue, their veins were swollen. I could not remember anything of his arms, either. My gaze stopped at his slender neck; I should have already left. And without haste, apathetically, I shifted my gaze to his face. He was not the man from the night before.

I had known that even before I saw him.

He stood in the circle, pale and calm. It seemed to me that he even smiled in one corner of his thin mouth: he did not care what happened to him, or he was satisfied that people were watching him. The guards cut a path through the crowd and led him into the room where the dead merchant lay.

I went down the corridor; this did not concern me. I was not surprised that he was not the same man; that would have been truly unbelievable. But I had wanted it to be so; I had expected a miracle. I had linked external appearances with one another, while forgetting everything that I had thought about him that morning and the night before. Maybe I thus did him an injustice, or maybe not. But he was not who was important: I was. I wanted to free myself from him, just as I had that morning. This was my second attempt to destroy him, to punish myself and to erase the trace that he had left. I had been too preoccupied with him, he had charmed me so much that I wavered within myself, even desiring for him to escape and remain free, like an
untamed river. His presence had offered a rare and unusual opportunity, one that needed to be preserved. That was what I thought, and I regretted it immediately. He had burst into my life in a moment of weakness, and was the cause and witness of a betrayal, short-lived but real. For this reason I wanted him to be the murderer; everything would thus have been easier. Murder is less dangerous than rebellion. Murder cannot be an ideal or an incitement; it evokes condemnation and disgust; it happens suddenly, when fear and conscience are forgotten. It is unpleasant, like an ugly reminder of the permanence of our base instincts, of which we are ashamed, as we are ashamed of our ignoble ancestors and criminal relatives. But rebellion is contagious; it can incite dissatisfactions that are always present. It resembles heroism, and maybe it is heroism, because it is resistance and dissent. It seems beautiful because it is borne by fanatics who die for beautiful words, who risk everything since they have nothing. Therefore it is attractive, just as anything that is dangerous can sometimes appear attractive and beautiful.

My father stood in the middle of a room; he had opened the door and was waiting.

I knew what I should have done; I should have gone up to him and embraced him, without hesitating or taking a moment to look at him. In that way everything between us would have been resolved in the best and simplest manner; I would have removed all of our inhibitions, and we would have been able to act like father and son. But it was difficult to reach out and embrace that gray-haired man, who was not standing for nothing in the middle of the room, fearing this encounter. We both felt awkward; we did not know how to behave or what to say to each other. Many years had passed since our last meeting, and we wanted somehow to conceal the fact that life had led us apart. We looked at each other for a few moments. His face was furrowed with age, his eyes fixed on me. He was not what he had once been. I had to reconstruct everything—his sharp, strained features,
his powerful voice, the simplicity of a strong man who knew how to work with his hands—and for some reason I needed to imagine him younger and healthier, as he had long been preserved in my memory. God knows how he saw me, what he sought and what he found. We were two strangers who did not want to act as such. And most painful of all was the thought of how things should have been between us, and what we could and could not do.

I bent down to kiss his hand, as all sons do, but he did not let me. We grabbed each other by the arms, like acquaintances, and that was best—it seemed intimate, but not overdone. Yet when I felt his arms, still strong, on mine, when I saw his gray, moist eyes from up close, when I recognized his hale scent, dear to me from childhood, I forgot about our awkwardness and leaned my head on his broad chest with a childlike gesture, suddenly moved by something that I thought had disappeared long ago. Maybe this very gesture excited me, or maybe hidden feelings were awakened by the old man’s nearness (he smelled of the lake and the wheatfield), or maybe the reason lay in his excitement, but I felt his collarbone tremble when I laid my forehead against it. Maybe my nature had taken control of me, or the miraculously revived remnant of what might have been my nature, surprising myself with an abundance of tears. That lasted only for a moment, and even before they began to dry I grew ashamed of that silly, childlike act, because it corresponded neither to my years nor to the garb that I wore. But surprisingly, long afterward I remembered that shameful weakness as an infinite relief: for a brief moment I had been separated from everything and returned to my childhood, under someone’s protection, freed from years, events, and painful decisions. Everything had been placed in hands stronger than mine, and I was wonderfully feeble, with no need for strength, protected by omnipotent love. I wanted to tell him how I had rushed through the mahals the night before, frightened by the sinful excitement of the people, poisoned
by strange thoughts myself. I always felt that way when I was upset and unhappy, as if my body were searching for a way out of my torments, and it was all because of my brother. And he, my father, had come because of him. I knew that, and wanted to tell him how the fugitive had hidden in the tekke and how I had not known what to do, how everything inside me had been pulled out of joint, so that I had wanted to punish both the fugitive and myself, that morning, and moments before, although it did not matter, nothing was in its place any more. And so I sought refuge on his chest, like the small child that I had once been.

But this feeling of tenderness passed quickly, like a flash of lightning. Then I saw an old man before me, confused and frightened by my tears, and I knew that they had been foolish and unnecessary. They would kill any hopes that he might have had, since there was only one thing on his mind; or they would convince him that I had failed in life, and this was not true. It was also clear to me that he would not understand anything I meant to say, things that I did not merely want but rather passionately desired to say, like a child, or a weakling: his horrified eyes and the watchful guards of my reason would have stopped me immediately. We wanted the same thing from one another, each placing his faith in the strength of the other, both of us powerless, and that was the saddest part of this pointless encounter.

I asked him why he had not come to the tekke. Even strangers stay there, and he knows how happy he would have made me. And people will wonder why he wanted to spend the night somewhere else, since we haven’t quarrelled or forgotten one another. The inn is a disagreeable place, everyone stays there. It’s only convenient for someone who has no place to go, you never know who’s coming or leaving—there are all sorts of people around these days.

To all of my entreaties, with which I tried to delay what was to follow, he gave the same answer: he had arrived late the previous night and had not wanted to bother me.

He waved me away when I asked whether he had heard about the murder in the inn. He had.

He did not agree to come over to the tekke. He was going to leave that afternoon, and would spend the night in a village with friends.

“Stay for a day or two. Get some rest.”

He waved me away again and shook his head. Before, he had talked well, slowly, he had had time for everything, arranging words into harmoniously composed sentences. There had been a certain peace and confidence in his soft, unhurried manner of speaking; it seemed that he was above all things and that he was in control of them. He had believed in the sound and meaning of words. And now this feeble gesture with his hand meant surrender in the face of life, an abandonment of words, which could neither prevent nor explain his misfortune. He shut himself up with this gesture, and hid his confusion before his son, with whom he no longer knew how to speak. He hid his horror at the town that had met him with a murder and darkness, and his helplessness in the face of the troubles that had ruined his old age. He wanted only to conclude the affair that brought him here, and immediately to flee the kasaba, which had taken all that he had, his sons, his confidence, his faith in life. He looked around, looked at the floor, pressed his knotty fingers together, hid his eyes. I was sorry and depressed.

“We’re scattered all over,” he said. “Only trouble brings us together.”

“When did you hear?”

“The other day. Some caravan drivers came through.”

“And you came at once? Are you afraid?”

“I’ve come to see what this is all about.”

We talked about the imprisoned man who was my brother and his son, as if he were dead, without mentioning his name. He, who had disappeared, brought us together. We thought about him even as we talked about everything else.

My father watched me with fear and hope now, anything
that I said would be fateful for him. He did not mention his fears or expectations; he superstitiously avoided saying anything definite, fearing the evil magic of words. He merely added a last reason, the one that had in fact brought him here:

“You’re respected here, you know all the important people.”

“It’s nothing serious. He said something he shouldn’t have.”

“What did he say? Can you really be imprisoned for a word?”

“Today I’ll go to the
musellim.*
To find out why and to ask for mercy.”

“Should I go as well? I’ll tell them that they’ve made a mistake, that they’ve imprisoned a most honest man, that he couldn’t have done anything bad. Or I’ll fall on my knees, let them see paternal sorrow. And I’ll pay them if need be; I’ll sell everything I own and pay them, only let them release him.”

“They’ll release him; you don’t need to go anywhere.”

“Then I’ll wait here. I won’t leave the inn until you return. And tell them he’s all I have left. I’d hoped that he would come back home, so the fire of my hearth won’t die out. But I’d still sell everything, I don’t need anything.”

“Don’t worry. Everything will be all right, with God’s mercy.”

I made up everything except the part about God’s mercy. I did not have the heart to leave him without hope, and could not tell him that I knew nothing about my brother. My father lived in the naive belief that my presence and reputation would be a possible shield for him. I did not want to mention that my presence had not only not helped him, but that my reputation had been cast into doubt as well. How could he understand that a part of my brother’s guilt had also fallen on me?

I left the inn, burdened by the duty that I had accepted
out of consideration for my father, without knowing how to perform it, oppressed by the careless words that he had blurted out in sorrow. He never would have spoken them had he been in control of himself; in this way I saw how great his sorrow was. And I also saw that he had written me off: I no longer existed for him, it was as if I were dead and my brother were all that he had left. That was what I should tell people: I’m dead for my father; my brother is all he has left, give him back to him. I no longer exist. Peace to the soul of the sinful dervish Ahmed, he’s dead, he only appears to be alive. If my father had not been so stunned by his sorrow, I never would have learned what he thought about me. And now I knew it, and saw myself differently, through the eyes of someone else. Was the path that I had chosen so worthless for my father that he would bury me alive because of it? Did my calling really mean nothing to him, were we so distant from each other, so different, on such totally opposite paths that he did not even recognize my existence? He did not even regret losing me; so long ago, so thoroughly had he recovered from this loss. But maybe I was exaggerating, maybe my father would have also come as quickly on my account, if something had ever happened to me. And maybe then he would have thought only about me, because one feels closest to whoever has it the worst.

What is it that suddenly happens, what stone slips from our foundations, leaving everything to collapse and crumble? Life had seemed to be a solid edifice, without a single crack, but an unexpected tremor, meaningless and unprovoked, demolished that proud edifice as if it were made of sand.

From the hills, from the Gypsy mahal rising up at the edge of town, a drum beat deafeningly and a zurna wailed. The festivities of Saint George’s Day poured down on the kasaba like rainfall, continuously, and there was nowhere one could go to escape it.

Fools, I thought, distraught, angry like the day before. They did not know that there were more important things in the world.

But my anger was not so fiery as it had been the previous night. It was not even anger, but rather indignation. That foolish celebration was a disturbance and an injustice. It deepened my anxiety, which had completely engulfed me, which had become my life and my world, so that nothing existed outside of it.

Everything I could have done was insurmountably difficult, and resembled misdeeds, or the first steps in life. But I had to do something, for myself: I was his brother. And for him: he was my brother. I would have been content with such conventional reasoning, so obvious and appealing, if there had not been this unrest in me, this restlessness full of dark foreboding, that drove me to think about my imprisoned brother with bilious anger: Why had he done this to me? At first I had tried to fend off that selfish thought. I told myself: this isn’t right; you’re viewing his misfortune only in terms of your own troubles. He’s the blood of your blood; you should help him without thinking of yourself.