Death and the Dervish (Writings From An Unbound Europe) (34 page)

It was no use; Hassan was difficult to stop when someone aroused his attention. Often it was for no reason, or for some reason that was important only to him.

“Why are you asking about him so much?”

“I’m not asking. We’re just talking.”

“You have an uncanny ability to sense unhappy men.”

“Is he unhappy?”

I told him everything I knew, or almost everything, about the plain, the boy, about his mother, and while I was talking it became clearer and clearer to me that the youth was a victim.
As I was. I did not know whose suffering was greater. His had begun very early in life, and mine near the end. I did not say it, but I myself sensed that I pitied his misfortune too much: I was also talking about myself, creating my double.

Hassan listened, looking to the side, without interrupting me, excited, but sober enough to guess the core of the matter:

“It seems you understand him only now. He needed to be helped.”

“He doesn’t want anybody’s help; he doesn’t let anybody get close to him; he doesn’t trust anybody.”

“He’d have trusted love. He was a child.”

“I loved him. I was the one who brought him here.”

“I’m not accusing you. We’re all like that. We hide our love and thus stifle it. A pity, both for you and him.”

I knew what he was thinking: he could take the place of my brother now. But no one could take the place of my brother.

I had not helped Yusuf! And who had helped me?

I had been speaking about myself, but all he heard was the boy’s name. By telling about him I pushed myself aside. Was it because Yusuf was young? Or because I was proud and strong? No one pities the strong.

“And now? How is he now? Do you two keep silent about everything?”

“Unhappy people are too sensitive. We might hurt each other.”

There was no use talking about what was hard to explain, that I loved the memory of the plain, but hated his cold detachment and gloomy silence, which killed all hope. I simplified that complex relationship, telling only part of the truth, that we were somewhat estranged but that the bonds between us were still strong, because a man cannot easily walk away from someone he has helped. He tries to keep a pretty memory of himself. Yusuf and I were like the closest
of kin, so our disagreements were like family problems, they always bordered on love.

“You can also hate your family,” Hassan said with a laugh.

He did not surprise me. He had been serious for too long.

I answered with a joke:

“We haven’t gotten that far yet.”

From then on they saw each other more often. Hassan came to the tekke or invited him to his home. They ran around taking care of Hassan’s business, wrote out contracts and settled various accounts, and in the evening took walks along the river. Mullah-Yusuf changed visibly: I knew, Hassan’s straightforwardness hovered around him like a mist. He still wore his obedient, lost expression, with which he separated himself from others, but he was no longer dejected and difficult. It was as if that distant boy were coming back to life, although slowly, still hidden in shadows.

He would become restless if Hassan did not show up. He looked at him, beaming, when he finally did appear, and rejoiced at his serenity and friendly words. He never left, as he had before, when Hassan and I would begin a conversation; he stayed with us, almost forgetting the due respect, with the right that this new friendship gave him. And Hassan was content with his silent devotion and the joy with which the boy met him.

And then everything changed. Too quickly, too suddenly. Hassan stopped coming to the tekke, and did not invite Yusuf anymore. They no longer saw one another.

I asked him, surprised:

“What happened to Hassan?”

“I don’t know,” he said nervously.

“How long has it been since he came?”

“Five days already.”

He looked depressed. Once again his expression became
insecure; a deep shadow covered his face, which had begun to cheer up.

“Why haven’t you gone to see him?”

He bowed his head and answered with difficulty:

“I did. They wouldn’t let me in.”

I also barely managed to see Hassan.

The small woman, who looked at everyone absentmindedly, smiling quietly at her memories or expectations, with a flower in her hair, made up and perfumed (her husband certainly thought that it was for him, and was happy), let me in fearfully, asking me to say that I had found the door open; it would be easier for her to excuse herself for forgetting to lock it than for letting me in. They had not gone out for three days and nights, she said, without reproach. For her the world was cheerful.

I found him on his spacious veranda, with his friends. They were throwing dice.

The place was a mess, full of tobacco smoke, which drifted like fog in the half-darkness, since the thick curtains had been closed. Although it was morning they still had candles burning, and their faces were pallid and exhausted. Dishes and glasses all around them. And piles of money.

The expression on Hassan’s face was stiff, uncomposed, almost malevolent.

He gave me a surprised look, showing no kindness at all. I was sorry that I had come.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“I’m busy now.”

He was holding an ivory die in his hand and he tossed it on the carpet, preoccupied with the game.

“Sit down, if you want.”

“I don’t have time.”

“What did you want to talk about?”

“It’s not important. It can wait.”

I left, insulted. And surprised. Who was this man? An empty babbler? The April sun? A weakling overcome by vice?

I was in a bad mood, oppressed by the thought that there were no people who were always good. He squandered pretty words and forgot them immediately.

But when I reached the end of the long corridor, Hassan came out of the room.

For the first time I saw him slovenly, neglecting himself. As if he were someone else. His eyes were not serene or clear, but dim and sunken, worn out from drinking and lack of sleep. He blinked obscenely at the light.

We watched each other without smiling.

“Forgive me,” he said gloomily. “You’ve come at a bad time.”

“I see.”

“It’s not bad that you know everything about me.”

“I haven’t seen you for days. I wanted to find out what’s happened to you.”

“I’ve had business to attend to. Other than this.”

“I’ve also come because of Yusuf. Has something happened? He came looking for you, but you didn’t let him in.”

“I’m not always in the mood for conversation.”

“He’s gotten used to you. He’s come to love you.”

“To love me—that’s too much. To get used to me—that’s nothing. And I’m not to blame for one or the other.”

“You reached out to him, you brought him out of his solitude, and then you left him. Why?”

“I can’t tie myself to anyone for my whole life. That’s also my misfortune. I keep trying but I can’t succeed. What’s strange about that?”

“I’d like to know the reason.”

“The reason is within me.”

“Then nothing. Forgive me.”

“You told me you loved him. Are you sure about that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then you’re not. Why did you bring him here if you didn’t want to take him in?”

“I did take him in.”

“You only did your duty, expecting his gratitude. But he isolated himself more and more and fortified his hatred.”

“His hatred? Against whom?”

“Against everyone. Maybe even against you.”

“Why would he hate me?” I asked, astounded by that possibility, although I had considered it before.

“You should’ve made a friend out of him or sent him away. As it is, you’re both entangled, like two snakes that have swallowed each other’s tails and can no longer separate.

“I was hoping you’d do what I haven’t.”

“And I’d like for someone else to do it, too. And so would everyone else. Therefore we do nothing. Is that all? They’re waiting for me.”

He smelled of liquor and tobacco. He was cross and bitter, ready to argue, disagreeable.

“Did Yusuf tell you all of this?”

He turned and left without a word.

It was good that I had also seen him like that.

Hassan was inconsistent. Hassan did not know what he wanted, or he knew but could not get it. Hassan had good intentions but was unbearable. Hassan tried but did not succeed, and maybe his misfortune truly lay in those hopeless beginnings, in building bridges that he never crossed. His was the curse of a desire that never went away, but was never fulfilled. He continuously searched with enthusiasm, and then gave up, empty and uninspired. It was as if he were drawn by ideas, and repulsed by people. That was a strange defect and a problem, not because he gave up, but because he always tried again. Which meant that the problem lay in him and not in others.

But I still sought a cause beyond him.

He was to blame for driving Yusuf away. And yet I asked myself, quite irrationally: Why? I did not realize that I was thus shifting the blame on someone else.

I tried to figure out why Hassan’s enthusiasm had dwindled
so quickly. What had Yusuf done? I had hoped that Hassan would tell me, but he only made accusations against himself. I tallied this self-accusation onto his account, but I continued to wonder: what had Yusuf done?

I asked myself, and asked Hassan on account of myself. The mystery tormented me, like darkness. I was obsessed. I connected it, like everything else, with my misfortune, which had engulfed me and become my food and air, the pith and marrow of my life. I had to solve it; everything depended on that. So I struggled feverishly, reconsidering every man, every event, every word that concerned me and my dead brother. Can anything that happens between people remain a complete mystery?

Their split forced me to go backward.

Everything happened over and over again in my memory, and all of it was familiar to me. But I kept churning up everything that had settled in my mind, again and again, until this painful game began to produce unexpected connections and vague hints of a solution. In my more rational moments it seemed that there was no purpose in those wearisome, tangled interrelationships, that I could gain nothing from my quest for hidden meanings in the most insignificant gestures or someone’s words. But I could not abandon it; I gave myself up to it, as if to fate. When I put all the pieces together, I would see what I had discovered. It seemed like gambling; it was just as hopeless and just as impassioned. I did not expect a sure win, but the suspense had its charms, too. I was encouraged by the gold nuggets that I kept finding, which spurred me to search for the vein.

But maybe this was also a defense against the fear that might seize me. It was not far away; it danced all around me, like a ring of flames. I was trying to protect myself by pretending that I was doing something, that I was defending myself, that I was not utterly hopeless. It was not easy to bring to life within me people whom I had once met, and to induce them to speak their familiar words all over again. But
in those ghostly movements, in that droning, whispering, and confusion, in that occasionally absurd linking of clues I managed to hold on to one idea, as a sailor does to his helm so that the waves of a storm will not carry him overboard.

And when I untied all the knots, when I made the choice myself, I would know whether I had fallen into the muddy current by accident or whether there were causes and culprits.

In my isolated world, bounded by the unstoppable sound of the rain, the cooing of pigeons, the grayness of a cloudy day, or the blackness of a pitch-dark night, witnesses settled into my room. They were clumsy at first, upset as I was, but I gradually managed to bring them to order, singling them out, one by one, as at an interrogation. I divided them into two kinds: important and unimportant. The unimportant ones were those who were obvious in their guilt before me. The important ones were those who had not said everything they knew.

And after I reconstructed what I could, in conversations between myself and their shadows and words, I found it necessary to check my suspicions and hunches—something I could not do with shadows and words that never changed. I set out among living people for the solution to the mystery.

I only had to wait a while, for everything to fall into oblivion. Fortunately, people easily forget what does not concern them. I tried to convince everyone that I had also forgotten, gotten over it, become afraid, or withdrawn into prayer. They could each believe whatever they wanted.

I called Mullah-Yusuf. In lonely nighttime interrogations I also made him repeat everything that he had said and done. I was nervous, because the conversation was important. I admitted that I had sinned before God and the world, as I had behaved absurdly in my misfortune, not at all worthily of the position that I held. I had been blinded by grief, and love, and that was my only excuse. I had forgotten
that God had wanted it so, and that He had punished my brother, or me, or both of us, for our unknown sins. With someone else’s hand, but with His own will.

He listened attentively, lacking the caution with which he usually guarded himself. Whether it was because of my calm speech and soft voice, or because the memory of his own misfortune began to hurt, he looked at me freely and openly. And yet, he was upset, almost irritated.

“What sins?” he asked, rebuffing me.

“We’ll find out on Judgment Day.”

“Judgment Day is far away What will we do until then?”

“We’ll wait.”

“Is the hand with which God punishes us also guilty?”

That surprised me. He had never spoken so sharply or asked me anything so angrily. He interrupted my confession and began to talk about himself. He was thinking about the soldiers who had killed his mother because of her strange sins, and himself, because of no sin whatsoever. He himself hastened the arrival of what I wanted.

“I don’t know, my son,” I said calmly. “I only know that we’ll each answer before God for everything we’ve done. And I know that not all men are guilty, but only those who indeed are.”

“I’m not asking for those who commit evil, but for those who’ve had evil committed against them.”