Birds Without Wings

by Louis de Bernières

  “This horse of yours, she is very beautiful,” observed Rustem. “I have always thought that she is a very beautiful horse. A man with a horse like this has every reason to be happy.”

  “She is indeed a fine horse,” agreed Abdulhamid, “but capricious, for which I forgive her.”

  “How is Tamara Hanim?” asked Rustem, with every semblance of coolness.

  “She is recovering. She is young, and in these last two weeks she has made some progress. She is still in pain.”

  “When she laughed just now,” said Rustem, “that was the first time I have ever heard her laugh.”

  “She laughs prettily,” said Abdulhamid.

  “I have left some coins for you on the steps,” said Rustem, “in recompense for your troubles.”

  The imam was shocked. “There was no need for that …” but Rustem raised a hand and hushed him. “We are not divorced. A man pays for his wife.” With that he caressed Nilufer’s neck for one last time, said, “Indeed, she laughs very prettily,” and left without another word. Abdulhamid watched his retreating back, and noted that there was something defeated even in the conscious dignity of his gait.

  Abdulhamid sat down on his stool and drew a deep breath. From behind the drapes came once more the small and strangled voice of Tamara, saying simply, “That was my husband. I know his voice.”

  “He still loves you,” said Abdulhamid.

  “He doesn’t know anything about love,” said Tamara bitterly.

  “Neither do you, daughter,” said Abdulhamid, drily, “neither do you.” He stood up and began to saddle Nilufer.

  Meanwhile, Ayse had formulated her own plans for Tamara’s recovery. She was far from hard in the heart, but it had been a considerable burden, caring for a fallen woman when there was so much else to do and so little to do it with. It was not that she particularly wanted Tamara out of the way, either, it was merely that she wanted a return to the normal patterns and rhythms of life, and she found it a strain maintaining an imperturbable front against the gossips and finger-pointers who were joking behind their hands that the hodja was going to take Tamara as a second wife, or hire her out to strangers.

  Ayse wended her way through the clutter and chaos of the streets and went round to the back of Polyxeni’s house. She rapped on the shutter and removed her slippers, placing them in the nook carved out of the massive wall, along with the footwear of all sizes and vintages that nestled together there, so that anyone who knew the family well would know straight away who was out and who was in.

  Polyxeni poked her head out of the window and gave a little squeal of delight, exclaiming, “Merhaba! Merhaba!” and fluttering her hands. She and Ayse had been friends all their lives, playing together in the dust as children, and being bounced upon each other’s grandparents’ knees. They had even nearly died together, at the age of six, of diphtheria. The two women embraced, breaking into the torrent of pleasurable nonsense that invariably accompanies such reunions even if they occur almost every day, and went indoors.

  Sighing and laughing, they settled themselves into the divans and began to crack pistachios and melon seeds, tossing the shells into the brazier and patting the half-dozen children on the cheeks. Ayse took Philothei in her arms and hugged her so tightly that she grimaced. “You’re such a grubby little thing, my tulip,” chided Ayse indulgently, rubbing somewhat brutally at the dirt on Philothei’s face with the tip of her thumb.

  “She’s into everything,” said Polyxeni, “nothing but trouble, that one.”

  “She’s so pretty. Honestly, I’ve never seen such a pretty child.”

  “Everyone says that,” agreed Polyxeni. “It’s because she takes after her mother.” Polyxeni adopted a smug expression and affected to be preening herself.

  Ayse laughed and caressed her friend’s hands. “Of course it is, of course it is,” she said, and then renewed her affectionate assault upon the little girl. “Ooh, she’s so pretty and sweet I could just hug her to death.”

  “Stop,” said Polyxeni, “she’s vain enough already. Quite the one for standing over a puddle admiring herself. God help us when she’s tall enough to look in the mirror.”

  “I heard that little Ibrahim’s in love with her,” said Ayse. She pinched Philothei’s cheek, exclaiming, “Our little princess has an admirer!”

  “That poor little boy! He’s completely besotted! Wherever she goes, there he is, faithful as a shadow.”

  “How sweet! One day they’ll be married perhaps.”

  A cough alerted Ayse to the fact that Polyxeni’s ancient great-grandfather, Socrates, was propped in the darkness of the corner, as ever, completely indestructible, but capable of only one train of thought. “Watch out,” warned Polyxeni, sotto voce, “the old dog’s about to do his speech again.”

  “I’m ninety-four, you know,” he said, his voice cracked and wavering, his agued fingers working at his prayer beads.

  Ayse approached him and kissed his cold and papery hand respectfully. “Ah, Grandfather! Ninety-four years old! It’s remarkable!”

  “I’ve got twelve children.”

  “Oh, Grandfather Socrates, it’s remarkable!”

  “And I’ve got sixty grandchildren.”

  “You don’t say! It’s remarkable!”

  “And I’ve got one hundred and twenty great-grandchildren.”

  “Oh, Grandfather!”

  “And I’ve even got twenty great-great-grandchildren.”

  Polyxeni nudged Ayse, smiling, and whispering, “Here it comes!” and the ancient man leaned forward, saying, “And you know what?”

  “No, Grandfather,” replied Ayse dutifully.

  The old gentleman smiled seraphically, wagged his shoulders, and said, “They’re all shit.”

  Ayse and Polyxeni laughed together, and the old man beamed with satisfaction, his lips with their spiky white stubble extending practically to the elongated lobes of his ears. He raised a trembling finger, with the blue prayer beads draped over it, and pointed at Polyxeni. “She thinks I’m joking,” he said, and he retreated once more into the crepuscular world of his infinitely repeated memories.

  “Poor old dog,” said Polyxeni, a little discomfited, as this was the first time that old Socrates had ever added this particular coda. From outside there came an extraordinary flurry of very loud and exuberant birdsong that could not possibly have come from birds, and Ayse raised her eyebrows. Polyxeni waved her hand towards the window, so that her bracelets jangled together as they slid back down her forearm, and said, “It’s Mehmetçik and Karatavuk, calling each other on those birdwhistles again.”

  “What a pair they are,” exclaimed Ayse, “Mehmetçik in his red shirt running around pretending to be a robin, and Karatavuk in his black shirt pretending to be a blackbird. One day one of them’s going to fall over with one of those whistles in his mouth, and it’ll be goodbye teeth!”

  “You’re better off without teeth anyway,” observed Polyxeni. “Better to have them all out and be done with it.”

  “Anyway,” said Ayse, sticking to her own train of thought, “if you can’t be raving mad when you’re a child, when else will you get the chance?”

  Polyxeni suddenly asked, “And how is it with the adulteress? How soon before you’re done with her? I must say, I think you’re a saint. I mean, what’s to be done with her?”

  “There’s only one place for her,” said Ayse, “but I’m not sure she realises it yet.”

  “What a fate! Still, it’s no less than she deserves.”

  “She’s not a bad woman,” said Ayse.

  “Not bad! After what she’s done?”

  “I mean, she has no malice. Even so, she has no choice that I can think of, and I’m dreading it that I’m the one who’s got to tell her.”

  Polyxeni pursed her lips and suggested, “Well, it’s more than likely she’ll realise on her own, I should think.”

  “Inshallah,” said Ayse hopefully, and then she asked, “Look, can you help me out? Can you do
me a little favour?”

  “I don’t want to come and look after that whore, if that’s what you’re going to ask. Don’t ask me to touch her!”

  “No, no. I want you to ask your Virgin Mary Panagia to do me a favour. Look, here’s the money.” She fumbled in her sash and brought out a few paras. “Buy a candle and burn it for me, and kiss the icon, and beg the Panagia to cure Tamara Hanim quickly so that I can get my life again. Between you and me, and don’t tell a soul, because if you did it would kill me, it worries me that Abdulhamid talks to her so much. I can hear her laughing, and it worries me. That’s how a woman wins a man’s heart, by making him think that he amuses her.”

  “Husbands!” exclaimed Polyxeni. “How God must have hated wives!”

  She took the meagre coins and put them on the low table next to the bowl of pistachios. “Of course I will ask the Panagia,” she said, “and perhaps you can tie a rag to the tekke of your saint, and beg him to stop my great-grandfather from repeating that joke.”

  “You can tie a rag yourself,” said Ayse. “Everybody does. I even saw one of the Jews doing it, you know, the one with the funny eyes who lives in the same street as the Armenians. It might even be a Christian saint for all that anybody knows.” She paused, and then adopted a pleading tone: “Will you do it now?”

  So it was that the two friends went arm in arm to the Church of St. Nicholas, patron saint of virgins and children, and Ayse sat in the sunlight upon the steps outside, eating figs and looking out over the valley with its tiny river that soon disappeared into the sea. It was said that in the far past there had been a port down below, full of proud ships and merchandise, but then a sandbar had appeared in the bay, and now the river had clogged itself up and left a fine tilth to compensate for the loss of trade. Abdulhamid had a small patch of land on it, rented from Rustem Bey, and every day he went down and removed the obstinate tortoises that descended on his crops. He would ride away with them in a sack and leave them on the other side of the hill in the hope that they would not come back. Ayse reflected that it was hardly easy to be married to such a good man, because there was too much of a difference between “good” and “sensible,” and a sensible man does not waste his time being considerate to tortoises and fallen wives.

  Polyxeni went into the church and crossed herself. She kissed the icon, placed Ayse’s coins in the box, and collected a wax taper, which she lit from another before she pressed it into the sand-filled silver bowl. She crossed herself again, and contemplated the icon. It was said to have been painted by St. Luke himself, and to have belonged to St. Nicholas, and it was so laid over with silver and gold that by now only the faces and hands of the Virgin and Child were visible in their original colours. It was a particularly tender Panagia Glykophilousa, in which a sweet-faced, brown-eyed, golden-haloed Mary propped up the Christ Child in the crook of her elbow, while the child himself was caught in the act of throwing his arms about his mother’s neck. In each of the upper corners an angel prayed with its arms crossed upon its chest and a benignly inebriated expression upon its countenance. So touching was this portrait, and so many were its miracles, that it was scarcely surprising that it had inspired many centuries of devotion.

  Polyxeni adored the image for a short while, until the spirit of prayer came upon her. “Sweet Mother,” she began, “intercede for Ayse in her troubles, even though she’s an infidel, but she’s a good one, and she trusts in you, so that’s not bad, is it? Please find a way for Tamara Hanim to see what she has to do without Ayse having to break the news, because that would be a terrible thing, and please pray for us all, and watch over my children, and accept this kiss.”

  Polyxeni leaned forward and kissed the icon again, and went back out into the sunshine. She blinked, and Ayse asked, “Do you think she heard you?”

  A fortnight later, on a Friday, Ayse led Tamara out of Nilufer’s stable. Tamara was unsteady and faltering, as much from despair and foreboding as from the legacy of her injuries, but she knew that she had no other choice, and she permitted Ayse to lead her by the elbow.

  Ayse looked neither to right nor left, she ignored the stares, the pointing fingers and the comments. As she and Tamara passed, people stopped what they were doing and watched. When she and Tamara had gone by, they followed in their footsteps, until the two women had a crowd of almost all the townsfolk walking behind them as if at a funeral. “There goes Tamara Hanim,” ran the whisper. Everybody knew it was Tamara even though she wore a heavy shawl over her head that completely shielded her face as she walked slowly at Ayse’s side, with her eyes cast down to the ground in shame. No one was untouched by the young woman’s disgrace, and a sadness settled on the town’s stones like the fine white dust in the days when the wind blew in from Arabia.

  The two women and the silent crowd passed along the street where the Armenians lived, through the meydan where the old men waited under the plane trees for Grandfather Death, past the well where Rustem Bey had sat with his back turned during the stoning, past the mosque with two minarets where Abdulhamid Hodja was precentor, past the rough shelter where Iskander threw his pots, past the smallest of the Christian churches where there was an owl that perched on the beams, past the ossuary containing the wine-washed bones of the Christian dead, and beyond to where the street turned a corner sharply and ended with a final, isolated house, flat-roofed, whose façade was draped with climbing roses, and whose windows were latticed in order to conceal the dark interior.

  Outside the brothel, Ayse rapped on the heavy door. The people stood silently at a respectful distance, the men observing with set lips, and the women watching with their heads turned sideways and their çarşafs drawn across their mouths as if by this gesture they could shield themselves. In the door was a tiny wrought-iron grille at head height, and suddenly it squeaked open. Drifting out of it came a heavy scent of smoke and ambergris, olibanum, oil of lemon, musk and patchouli, and a huge pair of doleful grey eyes, heavily lined with kohl, looked out. “Welcome,” said a low voice.

  “I have brought Tamara Hanim,” said Ayse, full of regret, and a hennaed finger beckoned from the grille. Tamara approached, put one hand on the door to steady herself, tried to ignore the frightening thumping of her heart, and looked beseechingly into the sympathetic grey eyes. “What do you want, sister?” asked the low voice.

  “Sanctuary,” whispered Tamara.

  The prostitute sighed, and said, “Sister, we’ve been expecting you.”

  CHAPTER 24

  I Am Philothei (5)

  I went too far when I was looking for hórta, and there was almost nothing because of the time of year, and I was so busy looking that I forgot where I was and suddenly I took fright, because I heard a noise and I thought it might be Markala or some other demon because they like deserted spots, but it was only Ibrahim, and I sat down on a rock because I’d been so frightened in case it was the demon, and I had demons on my mind because it was only the day after epiphany and we’d just burned Siphotis to get rid of the evil and filth.

  They tied the rope across from the door handle of my father’s house over to the door handle of Iskander’s house, and they sealed up the cat in the jug and hung it from the middle of the rope, and then they lit the fire of thorns and twigs at one end of the rope, and when the rope broke the jug fell and shattered, and the cat was freed, and that was how Siphotis was got rid of, and everyone danced and sang around the embers, and then the men went round with the coals and put some smoke in everyone’s house and in the stables, and then the men collected gifts, and Ibrahim was tagging along with the men who came to our house to put smoke in it, and somehow he managed to put his hand against my breast when no one was looking, and I practically fainted from the possible shame.

  So when he came to the rocks when I was out on the day after epiphany, I turned away and wouldn’t talk. When he gave up and left, I regretted it, though, and I went to the top of a rock to watch him go, and he turned and saw me, and I was caught out and embarrassed, but he just raised
his hand in that small gesture that he has, and then he went on his way.

  CHAPTER 25

  Tales from the Journey to Smyrna

  In May the weather can be delightful, but sometimes the days are already too hot, and the roads are beginning to generate the fine white powder that clogs the traveller’s eyes and nostrils, and makes a glue of the sweat on the flanks of the horses. Dust also begins to hang over the sea, so that Rhodes becomes obscured to Carians, and those in Cilicia lose sight of Cyprus, that island where no one ventures without falling in love. At that time the spring flowers are beginning to wither, and the red-backed butcher birds have long since arrived, setting up their gibbets and larders in the trees by impaling their catch of small animals on the long spikes of thorns. The snows have undertaken the beginning of their tactical retreat to the pinnacles of the Taurus Mountains, and the few wolves that remain have returned to higher ground, along with the bandits and brigands, and the wild deer that follow the growth of fresh new grass.

  In March there are still rains and cold nights, quaggy patches of red and grey mud in the roadways, and the wind known as El Hossom whipping up the equinoctial gale that blows for eight long days. In the pastures the colossal Sivas Kangal mastiffs with their iron-spiked collars do nocturnal battle with subtle lynxes and desperate wolves, and the green sandpipers have not yet returned to the marshes and woods of the north.

  In April the days are bright and gentle, and the showers sweeter, so that when Rustem Bey let it be known that he was travelling with an armed retinue to the famous infidel city of Smyrna, there were many who eagerly jumped at the chance to take advantage of his protection.

  In those days the provinces were full of desperadoes who were mainly deserters. The machinations of the Great Powers, and the immemorial turbulence of the Balkans, had dragged the Ottoman state from one impoverishing, bruising and demoralising war to another. Those who were conscripted found themselves serving for indefinite numbers of years in vile and hostile places hundreds of miles from home, whilst the womenfolk broke their own health in the desperate attempt to run their farms and homes alone. They were hundreds of thousands of Penelopes waiting, sometimes forever, for the men who were blown by fate from one misfortune to another. What made it worse was that the Christians had won equal rights, and were no longer exempt from military service as they had been in the past, and so it was that the wild places of Anatolia were crawling with outlaws, most of whom had more than adequately mastered the arts of brutality, and all of whom were thieves. Harassed though these were by the gendarmerie and the occasional military expedition from Constantinople, it was still unsafe for anyone to travel the great roads alone, so that when Rustem Bey decided to go to Smyrna in the spring, there were many errands and missions that had been stored up against such an opportunity.