Birds Without Wings

by Louis de Bernières

  Rustem Bey told no one why he was going. This was not the kind of world where men unveiled their hearts to anyone, and in any case the aga had no one in whom to confide, but the truth was that Rustem Bey was looking for a woman. His brief time with Tamara had provided him with inklings of what might be between a man and a woman, and his heart, his stomach, his loins and his throat yearned for something that he could not articulate even to himself. He needed someone to meld with. He knew himself to be something like a garden where the only flowers were those of potatoes, ragweed and neglected onions, but where a true gardener would have been able to drape the trellises with vines, and coax up tulips from the earth. It would be too simple to say that Rustem Bey was looking for romantic love, because in reality he was looking for the missing part of himself, and these are not often the same quest, even though we sometimes think they are. Rustem Bey had conceived the idea that if only he could find himself a Circassian mistress, amusing in demeanour, accomplished in music, red-lipped and fair of skin, excellent and enthusiastic in the techniques of physical love, then his life would be transformed. Every night he lay sleepless, tormented by the implacable songs of the nightingales, reaching out the arms of his imagination to the Circassian odalisque whose face and arms would light up his chambers like the moon. He was going to Smyrna so that he could buy himself several clocks, some patent leather shoes, some black trousers, a Stamboul frock coat of the highest quality and a new red fez. From Smyrna he was going to continue by train to Constantinople, and he was determined that when he arrived he would not be garbed like a provincial lord, in baggy shalwar, his waistcoat and sash crammed with armament. He would arrive in the capital dressed as a thoroughly modern gentleman, with a trimmed moustache, and he would return with a beauty worthy of his state, who would be the only woman in the vilayet always to know exactly what time it was. He had decided that if God should see fit to let him find a truly marvellous woman, he would build a new mosque at the southern edge of the town, and pay for its upkeep too.

  Early that morning the meydan buzzed with activity as the many travellers arrived with their animals, provisions and bedrolls. Iskander the Potter, lean and sinewy, was to make the voyage on foot, as was Mohammed the Leech Gatherer, who had agreed with Ali the Snowbringer that the latter’s donkey should carry his harvest of leeches in return for a small share of his takings. Ali did not have to come far for this assembly, since he and his family had taken up residence in the vast hollow of a plane tree on the square, which now boasted a roofed extension and a proper door.

  Levon the Sly, Armenian, apothecary, and one of the astutest merchants of the town, arrived with three camels laden with goods that he had accumulated through half a hundred small but careful deals during the winter, which he would trade in return for drugs and potions, cosmetics and aphrodisiacs.

  Stamos the Birdman, his nose red and streaming as usual, carried a cage in which he held a pair of exquisitely colourful bee-eaters. They were green, russet and yellow, with long grey beaks, breasts of Aegean blue, and eye-stripes and collars of black. He reckoned that from one of the great houses that lined the harbour at Smyrna he would be able to obtain a high price for them that would make it worth his while to spend this journey scratching in the barbarous undergrowth of the verges for insects that they could batter to death before eating. Dead insects, he had discovered, were of no great interest to the birds, and it made him smile to think of the rich people’s servants having to go out looking for live ones every day as long as the birds lived.

  Daskalos Leonidas was also to make the journey on foot, and was already imagining the dreadful blisters and weariness with which he would soon be afflicted. He was determined upon visiting his family, even though it was not one in which there existed much mutual affection. More importantly he was to attend a meeting of his clandestine society that devoted itself to plots of Byzantine complexity, whose ultimate aim was to restore to Greece the lands lost to the Ottomans so many centuries before. Britain no longer mourns the throne of France, Spain has no project to reclaim the Netherlands, and Portugal has no ambitions on Brazil, but there are those who are incapable of letting the past pass on, among them the Serbs who will always be obsessed by the loss of Kosovo, and the Greeks who will always be obsessed by the fall of Byzantium. Leonidas was one of these, and he was very far from alone. He was possessed by beautiful visions of Constantinople restored to its place as capital of the Greek world, and, like all who have such beautiful visions, his were predicated on the absolute belief that his own people and his own religion and his own way of life were superior to others, and should therefore have their way. Such people, even those as insignificant as Leonidas, are the motor of history, which is finally nothing but a sorry edifice constructed from hacked flesh in the name of great ideas.

  There were perhaps twenty souls in this caravan, which was to be conducted in the customary manner. It would travel from khan to khan, each one day’s journey apart, and it would be led by a man on a donkey, who would proceed at a regular pace whilst smoking copiously and admiring the scenery. In this case the man on the donkey was a character who went by the name of Veled the Fat. Veled was a perfectly spherical man whose short legs stuck out quite straight on either side of his donkey’s flanks, and whose cratered face betrayed an early encounter with smallpox. Fortunately for his donkey, Veled was hardly more than four feet tall, so the fact that he was also four foot wide at his greatest diameter did not entail too great a burden.

  After the faithful had made their prayers in response to the dawn call from the minarets, the train made ready to depart, except that very little actually happened. Veled and his donkey started off, but the first camel refused to move. Veled wheeled his donkey about, and prodded the camel’s flank with his foot. “Son of a bitch,” he exclaimed, but not in an unfriendly manner, “what’s the matter now?”

  The camel eyed him sorrowfully and disdainfully, and Veled prodded it again, to no avail. “Damned camel won’t go,” he explained to the travellers, as if they may not have noticed. Veled rolled a cigarette, lit it and, with a theatrical flourish, inserted it in one corner of the camel’s nostril. “All right now, are you?” he demanded. “Can we go?” The beast heaved itself up and sighed contentedly, inhaling the fume of the cigarette. Veled turned to the other travellers. “It’s from always walking behind me. He got used to the smoke from my cigarettes, and then he got to like it, and now he won’t do anything unless I let him have a smoke first.”

  “It’s an expensive camel, then,” said Stamos the Birdman.

  “But a good one nonetheless,” replied Veled over his shoulder as the train moved on.

  “What happens when the cigarette is finished?” asked Iskander. “Doesn’t it burn his nose?”

  “When it gets too hot, he sort of sneezes and blows it out. You’ll see in a minute. Once he blew it out and it landed on my donkey’s arse, and before I knew it I was on the ground and my donkey was a little cloud of dust in the distance. Generally it’s a good donkey though.” Veled patted its neck and flicked his hand back and forth between its ears. “There’s something nice about donkeys’ ears,” he observed.

  The retinue began in a burst of chatter, but an hour’s trudging was enough to subdue the travellers somewhat. Some of them kept their eyes on the ground, as if they might find a coin there, and some gazed around, as if seeing the Taurus Mountains, or pink poppies, or a caper plant in full flower for the first time. All of them cast glances at Rustem Bey, the aga, because by now most of the men of both faiths had been to the brothel to try out his rejected wife, Tamara. It was said that she would only consent to begin if the shutters were closed, and that the experience of being inside her was like one of those dreams where you are searching for something without knowing what it is. You came out disconcerted by those liquid, unfocused eyes that gleamed in the dark, and infected by her loneliness and stillness, and it made you nostalgic and sorrow-shot. There had been, it turned out, little satisfaction in using the wife
of the landlord. People wondered if he knew what had been going on, whether he had heard about the queues for that motionless, unresponsive flesh, and whether or not any feelings about it had stirred in that proud breast.

  Those walking were shifting their bags from one shoulder to another, and Daskalos Leonidas was already feeling tetchy and hard-done-by. Stamos the Birdman snatched at flies to feed to his birds, and Levon the Sly silently did mental arithmetic as he calculated over and over again the amount of profit that might be expected from this trip. At their first stop, which was by a domed water cistern, Mohammed the Leech Gatherer swigged ayran from his leather bottle, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and said, “I’ve got an idea.”

  “Oh no,” said Ali the Snowbringer, “I know all about you and your ideas. May we be spared this one, inshallah. Your ideas ought to be strictly haram, both forbidden and punishable. I am surprised that the Prophet, peace be upon him, did not foresee the terribleness of your ideas, and forbid them in advance.”

  “This is a good idea, Ali Efendi,” protested Mohammed. “It is an idea that is both recommended and meritorious.”

  “A good idea is not a good idea just because the one who has it says it is,” said Iskander, running his finger along the line where his turban lay across his forehead. This was a mannerism that he employed every time that he believed himself to have come up with a particularly good epigram.

  “Doesn’t anyone want to hear my idea?” demanded Mohammed.

  “I’ll hear it,” said Rustem Bey. “A landlord has his duties to his tenants, after all.”

  “All right. My idea is that this is going to be a long and boring and weary journey, and each one of us should tell a story to while away the time.” He looked around triumphantly, and the travellers raised their eyebrows and exchanged glances.

  “It’s an excellent idea,” declared Rustem Bey. “When we reach Smyrna I shall give a new yataghan to the man with the best story.” Rustem pointed to Mohammed. “And as it was your idea, you can be the first.”

  “Me? I don’t want to be first. I only had the idea.”

  “It’s too late,” said Ali, rubbing his hands together. “It’s been decided.”

  “I won’t be telling any stories,” said Leonidas, abruptly.

  “We didn’t expect you to,” said Rustem, “and in any case we don’t want any stories from a sour-faced infidel wretch like you. Our lives give us enough bitterness without having to listen to you.”

  Leonidas set his face grimly and walked on ahead, whilst the others gathered in a knot around Mohammed, nudging and pestering him until finally he announced, “I know a good Nasreddin Hodja story.”

  “We’ve heard it,” said Ali and Stamos together.

  “There are hundreds,” replied Mohammed, “you might not have heard this one. It’s about when Nasreddin Hodja was riding along with his donkey’s saddle on his shoulders, and someone stops him and says, ‘Hodja, why are you riding along bareback with your donkey’s saddle on your shoulder?’ and the hodja says, ‘It’s because my poor old donkey was getting tired, so I thought I’d carry the saddle for him.’ ”

  “We know that one,” said Iskander.

  “Everyone knows that one,” said Ali.

  “Well, you might not have.”

  “It’s probably the most famous one,” said Levon.

  Rustem Bey was mildly outraged. “You call that a story? When we’ve all heard it before and it only lasts twenty paces? At that rate we’ll need a hundred thousand stories before we get to Smyrna. Hasn’t anyone got a decent one?”

  “I know another one about why nomads won’t eat cabbage,” offered Mohammed, and the others sighed and shook their heads. “All right, I won’t tell you,” said Mohammed, much aggrieved.

  “I know a story,” offered Ali the Snowbringer. “I was told it by a dervish when he was drunk. He said it was true.”

  “There’s nothing like a drunken dervish for good stories,” observed Iskander, “except that half of them don’t seem to have any meaning.” He turned to Ali. “Give us your story, then, and let’s hope it’s a better one than the last.”

  “Well, this one is about a good woman of Mecca. She was very rich and very respectable, and she had two hundred camels of her own because her husband had died and she was running a business, and these camels carried spices and brass pots all over the place …”

  “What about clay pots?” demanded Iskander.

  “Clay pots, too, for all I know,” said Ali, “and dates and dried figs and fine cloths, and Korans decorated with gold, and gold jewellery for the Sultan’s wives, and fine boxes made with cedar of Lebanon.”

  “This is more like a proper story,” commented Rustem Bey.

  “And anyway,” continued Ali, “this woman lived in Mecca, just on the outside, and she was the very finest example of womanly chastity in the world. She had never had an unclean thought in her life, and even her shit smelled of rosewater and cinnamon.”

  The company laughed, and Ali waggled his shoulders with pleasure. “So just imagine,” he said, “her shock and horror when one night she dreamed that she fornicated with every one of all the pilgrims who came to Mecca on the haj.”

  “Every one of them?!” exclaimed Veled the Fat. “This sounds like my kind of story! Do you happen to know where she lives exactly?”

  “It was hundreds of years ago,” said Ali.

  “So what happened?” asked Rustem Bey.

  “Well, she woke up, and she was so ashamed and embarrassed, even though no one else knew, that she was red from head to foot all day, until she went to bed. And that night she had the same dream again, and when she woke up she was so distressed that she poured ashes over her head and went and sat on the top of a dungheap. And then the next night she had the same dream again, and it went on like that for forty days and forty nights, until she couldn’t stand it any more, and finally she decided to go and see a very wise mullah who might be able to advise her.

  “Now, she goes in, all in fear and trembling, and not knowing how to say it, but she veils herself and speaks in a funny voice so that the mullah won’t know who she is, and she weeps a bit, and beats her own chest with her knuckles, and finally the mullah gets impatient because he has hundreds of things like this to clear up every day, and he says, ‘Daughter, tell me what it is, because God is merciful and forgiving, but I don’t have much time,’ and so finally she says, ‘Mullah Efendi, every night I dream that I fornicate with every one of all the pilgrims who come on the haj, and I am so ashamed, and I don’t know why I have such a dream, because I am a respectable woman.’

  “ ‘Yes, I know you are,’ says the mullah, ‘your husband used to be a friend of mine.’

  “Anyway, she nearly faints with shame, and she starts to cry and flap her hands about, and then the mullah sits and thinks for a while, and he strokes his long white beard, and he drinks a cup of mint tea with a medium amount of sugar in it, and he smokes his narghile, and then he strokes his long white beard again, and then he goes out for a piss, and then he drinks another cup of tea, and then he gets a little polished stick that he keeps for the purpose, and he puts it up inside his turban and scratches his head with it, and then he says, ‘Daughter, I think I know what your dream means,’ and she says, ‘Mullah Efendi, take away my shame,’ and he says, ‘Daughter, it’s like this. You are a good Muslim woman, and what you should know is that when a woman wants to make love with a man it’s the best thing in the world for him, apart from going to paradise, inshallah. So what this dream means is that you have a great desire to do something wonderful for all the pilgrims on the haj. Now, making love makes life, and water also makes life, so in my opinion what the dream means is that you should make a well by your house so that all the pilgrims can drink from it when they come into the city.’

  “ ‘Ah, yes,’ she says, ‘they always look worn out and thirsty.’ So anyway, she goes away and she calls some labourers, and she has them dig a well, and the well is still her
e today, and it’s named after her, and all the pilgrims drink from it on the way in.”

  “So what’s the name of this well?” asked Rustem Bey.

  “That I can’t remember,” said Ali.

  “I think it’s important for the story,” advised Rustem. “There is a certain frustration in not knowing, and it spoils it somewhat.”

  “It was a good story, though,” said Veled. “I know one a bit like it, except it has a judge in it.”

  “Go on then,” said Rustem Bey.

  “Well,” said Veled, lighting another cigarette and depositing it carefully in the left nostril of the leading camel, “there was a married couple, and they’d been married for five years, but there weren’t any children. I can’t remember their names, but this is a true story, and it was told to me by a man I met in Antiphellos when I went there, but I can’t remember why. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is, that they’d been married for five years and they had no children, and everyone was getting at them about it. The girl’s mother would arrive, and say, ‘Why don’t you have any children?’ and then the man’s mother would arrive and say, ‘Why don’t you have any children?’ and then the woman’s sisters would arrive and say, ‘Why don’t you have any children?’ and then the man’s cousins would arrive and say, ‘Why don’t you have any children?’ and in the coffeehouse the man couldn’t play backgammon without someone putting him off at a vital moment by saying, ‘By the way, why don’t you have any children?’ and in the hamam the other women would ask the poor wife, ‘Why don’t you have any children?’