Death and the Dervish (Writings From An Unbound Europe) (16 page)

At that time I was not aware that I had not agreed to this rupture, that I had persistently tried to maintain connections established long before, not knowing that I thus laid the blame on my brother, since someone had to be guilty. If only I had begun to speak, I would have stopped hiding from Hassan and myself. I did not know what would happen; maybe he could not tell me anything, maybe he could not help me at all, but the cramp in my soul would have eased, and I would not be alone. And maybe I would have avoided the direction that my life later took, had I accepted his greater and more bitter experience, had I not shut myself inside my pain. But even that was not certain, because our intentions were completely opposite; he wanted to save a man, while I was trying to save an idea. At least that was what I thought afterward. But at that moment I was
perplexed and bitter. I unconsciously resented him because he had told me what I did not know. I was conscious that I had to do whatever it took for the truth to come out. Now I had to. If I had not known I could have waited; my ignorance would have protected me. But now there was no longer any choice, I was condemned by the truth.

Preoccupied by worries of what was to come, tomorrow, in a couple of days, in the near future, I still thought of how painful it would be for us to part. Should he leave without a word? Should we say something too ordinary? Should we part coldly and angrily? I could not find the proper words and proper attitude since my own affairs were in question: until that moment I had always known what to say and how to act. After this conversation I felt a certain unease, a heavy foreboding and a dissatisfaction that not everything had been said. But I unwittingly restrained myself from showing coldness and anger, because I did not know whether I might need this man again. I say: unwittingly, because I was not maneuvering consciously; I had no idea how he might be useful to me, since I had not figured him out, but my sense of caution warned against losing him. And I might need his goodwill for the arrangement that I had made with his sister. Therefore I concluded our conversation in such a way that it could be resumed again, or maybe not, according to the will of God.

I spoke, trying my best to make my voice sound casual and kind:

“It’s late. You must be tired.”

He surprised me with an answer and an act that were unexpected but natural, so simple that they were even strange.

He put his long, firm fingers on my hand, which rested on the back of the bench, barely touching me, only enough for me to feel the pleasant freshness of his skin and soft fingertips. He said calmly, with a soft, deep voice, with which, for all I know, people usually declare love:

“It seems that I’ve hurt you; that wasn’t what I wanted. I thought that you knew more about people and the world, much more. I should’ve spoken with you differently.”

“How could you have spoken with me differently?”

“I don’t know. As with a child.”

These words might have meant nothing, but I was struck by the way in which he spoke them. His voice sounded like the deep notes of a clay flute, clear, without overtones and fitful breathing. He smiled sorrowfully, because of something that should have happened but had not. His smile was tender, intelligent, and assuasive; for the first time I thought with surprise that something very mature and full lived in him, which revealed itself only at times, when he lowered his guard. In that moonlight which flooded us with anxiety. In difficult moments. I remembered his full voice, which inspired confidence, his calm smile, and that hour before midnight, when secrets are revealed. All of this remained in my memory, because of something powerful, yet not entirely tangible. Maybe because it suddenly seemed to me, quite unexpectedly, that I saw a man show a side of himself that no one before me had seen. I did not know whether he had just been born, or was just emerging, shedding his skin like a snake. I did not even know what he had revealed to me, but I was convinced that the moment was extraordinary. I also considered the possibility that my own excitement could have distorted each word, each movement, each sensation. But the memory persisted.

Then he got up, having deftly untied the knots of awkwardness between us. He had found the right word, which had a pleasant and lasting sound, and now he could leave. My absurd emotions of a few moments before were gone. They were replaced by shameful intentions, peculiar not because they had appeared at all, but rather because they followed immediately upon such enthusiasm.

As he left, he took a small bundle out of his pocket and put it on the bench. “This is for you,” he said.

And he left.

I saw him to the gate. And when he went around the corner I started after him. I stepped quietly, close to the walls and fences, ready to stop if he turned around—he would think that I was only a shadow. He disappeared in the darkness of the streets. I followed him by the noise of his footsteps; mine were silent, soft, and secret. I had never walked like that before. At each moonlit corner I caught a glimpse of his blue mintan and his tall figure. I followed him, in circles it seemed, and then, with disappointment, I realized that these deceptive circles narrowed around a familiar place. I stopped at the mosque. He struck the door of his yard with its knocker, and someone opened it, as if they were expecting him. If he had gone into some other house, I would have thought that he was visiting the man whose name he had refused to tell me. As it was, I knew nothing.

I returned to the tekke, weary, but with something that was not physical fatigue.

Hassan’s gift lay on the bench: Abu Faraj’s
Book of Tales
⁸
in an expensive morocco binding with four golden birds in the corners. I was surprised that four golden birds were also embroidered on the silken kerchief that contained the book. This was not something that he had merely picked up on his way.

In a conversation I had once mentioned Abu Faraj, recalling my youth. I had mentioned it and I forgotten it. He had not.

I sat down on the bench with the book in my lap, caressing the smooth morocco leather with my fingers. I watched the river, which was deadened by the moonlight; I listened to the striking of the hour from the clock tower and, strangely calmed, I wanted to weep. This was the first time since that distant
Bairam*
of my childhood, already lost from memory, that someone had given me a gift, the first time that someone had thought about me. He had taken note of something I had said and remembered it somewhere in a distant land.

The feeling was quite unusual: as if it were a fresh, sunny morning, as if I had returned home from a long trip, as if an irrational but powerful joy had come over me, as if the darkness had vanished.

The clock struck midnight, and the night-watchmen could be heard calling out, like birds of the night. Time was passing, but I sat in amazement. Because of Abu Faraj’s book and the four golden birds. He had seen them on a thin cotton kerchief, which was all that I had from our house. Long ago, my father had brought me some hard pastries in a peasant cloth, and a much nicer kerchief spread over the coarse linen. And Hassan had remembered it.

It is hard to believe, but it is true: I was deeply moved. Because someone had remembered me. For no reason, not out of any need, from the goodness of his heart or maybe as a joke. So you see, then, how even an old hardened dervish, who thought that he had overcome his small weaknesses, can be bought with attention. But it seems that such weaknesses do not die so easily. And they are not small, either.

The night passed and I sat joyous, silly even to myself because of an excitement that I could not explain. But I did not want it to leave.

6

      
He who seeks is paltry, and what he seeks is paltry as well.
¹

IN THE MORNING I WENT OUT INTO THE FIELDS AND CLIMBED a hill that was in full bloom. I stood beside a low fruit tree, with my face next to its cluster of flowers, calyxes, leaves, petals—a thousand living wonders ready for insemination. I felt the intoxicating sweetness of that growth, the rush of juices through innumerable, invisible veins, and like the night before I wished that my arms would grow into branches, that the colorless blood of trees would flow into me, that I would bloom and wilt painlessly. And it was just this repetition of my strange desire that convinced me of the weight of my burden.

The forest echoed with the resonant strokes of an axe, at regular intervals, in time to the swing of strong arms, and each stroke was followed by a brief silence. Even at that distance I could tell that the axe was sharp and had a large blade; it bit into the wood, snapping angrily, chopping furiously into the pith. A cuckoo sang its two-syllabled lament, which was gloomily indifferent, like fate. Someone—a woman—was calling out, cheerfully, shrilly, unintelligibly; she was young, tanned by the spring sun, laughing. I could not see her, and turned toward that young voice, as if it were the
kiblah.*
But I knew everything about her. Only those
three sounds in the silence of the spring morning, in the vast space of a foreign world. I closed my eyes, savoring the sweet scent of pollen, listening: three utterly simple sounds. And then I experienced an extraordinary moment of forgetfulness. It was not memory, but rather existence in another time, long since passed; nothing of my present self had existed then. It was a light, joyful awareness of life, a trembling concord with everything around me. I knew that the axe was my father’s; those were his strong arms swinging it in the forest above our house. I recognized the voice of the cuckoo as well; I had never seen it, but its song always echoed from the same place. And I knew the girl; she was sixteen years old. I saw her across so much endless time, it was as if centuries had passed, but I had forgotten nothing, not the fine, golden down above her smiling lips, not her waist, so slender that it fit between your two hands, not the aroma of lovage on her, unfaded after so many years. To whom was that girl calling through time? I could not answer her call, I could not go back.

A lively encounter woke me from this spell of distant time. A boy was approaching on the path toward me, plucking flowers and tossing them over his head, throwing clumps of dirt at birds, and yelling unintelligible words in some language of his own. He was joyous and carefree, like a kitten. When he saw me, he quieted down and went to one side, serious. I did not belong in his world.

Many years before I had met such a boy, on another path, at another place. There was no reason for me to remember this and to compare the two boys. But I remembered it anyway. Maybe because that day had been destined for recollection, or because I had also been at a crossroads in my life then, as I was now; or maybe because both of them were chubby, carried away, content with themselves in the empty landscape, and because they both walked past me seriously, as if I had stifled their happiness. I asked the boy, who had eyes like hemp flowers, the same thing that I had asked the
other one long before, a question that was old and sounded gloomy, although he was not aware of that.

Fortunately, our conversation went quite differently from that earlier one. I wrote it down for refreshment, not out of any other need, just as a tired traveler stops in front of a cool spring.

“Who are you, little one?”

He stopped and looked at me, not at all in a friendly manner. “That’s none of your business.”

“Do you go to the
mekteb?”*

“I don’t go any more. Yesterday the
hodja*
gave me a thrashing.”

“He gave it to you for your own good.”

“If that’s true, then I should give loads of them to everyone else. But the hodja deals them out across our behinds. For our every word they turn blue as eggplants.”

“Don’t say bad words.”

“Is eggplant’ really a bad word?”

“You’re a little devil.”

“Don’t say bad words, effendi.”

“Did you speak so freely yesterday?”

“Until yesterday I was the hodja’s drum. Today I’m like that bird. Come on, let someone hit me now.”

“What does your father think?”

“He says ‘You’ll never be an alim anyway. And you can plow with or without reading and writing. The land’s waiting for you; I won’t give it to anyone else. And if it comes to giving thrashings, I can do that, too,’ he says.”

“Do you want me to talk with your father? I’ll take you to the kasaba; you’ll go to school, and become an alim.”

I had said that to the other boy, long before; now he was a dervish in the tekke. But this one was different. The cheerful expression disappeared from his face and was replaced by one of hatred. For a moment he looked at me with hostility, in angry confusion, then suddenly bent down and picked up a rock from the path.

“My father’s over there, plowing,” he said threateningly. “Go and tell him that, if you dare.”

Maybe he would have really thrown the rock at me. Or run into the hills crying. He was smarter than the other boy.

“No,” I said, placating him. “No one can force you to go. And maybe it’s better for you to stay here.”

He stood there, confused, but did not drop the rock.

I went on and turned around a few times. He did not move from the spot where he stood, like a barrier between his father and my offer, frightened and distrustful. Only when I was far away, when he no longer had any reason to be afraid, did he throw the rock far out into the wheatfield and run off toward his father.

I returned in a somber mood.

A small woman opened the gate, pretending to hide her face with her veil, and sent me into the yard. They’re over there, she said, the three fools are trying to catch a rabid beast, and I can go watch, if I want, or I can wait there and she’ll talk to Hassan and tell me what he says, if he says anything at all, because today he’s not very talkative.

I’ll go there, I said, and the woman shut the gate and went inside.

In a large yard behind the house, an open, grassy area surrounded with plum trees, two of Hassan’s stablehands were trying to catch a young stallion. Hassan stood just inside the fence and looked on calmly, saying nothing or spurring them on with quick shouts and curses.