Birds Without Wings

by Louis de Bernières

  The Ottoman government makes rapid peace with Italy, and Mustafa Kemal has to wend home from Africa via Italy, Austria, Hungary and Romania. In Vienna he has his infected eye treated by Austrian doctors. Monastir falls to the Serbs. It is at the Egyptian border, at the beginning of his homeward odyssey, that a British officer recognises him, saying, “I know you; you’re Mustafa Kemal. You may go anywhere you like in this damned country.”

  CHAPTER 43

  I Am Philothei (8)

  Every time there was a harvest, we would give the first-fruit to a neighbour, and it so happened that since I was betrothed to Ibrahim, his family would give things to us and we would give things to them, and fortunately they often sent Ibrahim with the gifts, and so I would know that if I was in the right place Ibrahim would pass by, and in this way I would be sure of seeing him. This is how I got to see him on the first baking of the new wheat, and on the day of St. Theodoros when he came round with lokma, and on the afternoon of the Holy Cross when we broke the fast with grapes and olives and koliva.

  And this is how I saw him on Holy Thursday, when some of the Muslims joined us and sent yeast, salt, eggs and bread to the church, because Jesus Son of Mary and Mary herself are also theirs as well as ours, and these things were placed by the icon and then Father Kristoforos would read the gospel over them and then we had to fetch them home again, and we threw the salt into our larders, and the yeast we put back with the yeast, and the eggs we put among our own icons for the sake of Easter, and we all ate a little of the bread and kept the rest in tiny portions so that we could eat of them when an animal was sick and needed a cure. I saw Ibrahim during all these errands.

  I remember there was one night when Ibrahim showed how great his love was. It was at three o’clock in the morning on the night of the service for the Resurrection, and the town crier had come round and roused us by knocking on our doors, and we said the Jesus Prayer, and we were going to the church in the dark, and out of the corner of my eye I saw something moving in the shadows of an almond tree, and it was Ibrahim who had got up in the coldness of three o’clock in the morning on Resurrection Day even though he was a Muslim, and he did it just to catch a glimpse of me in the dark, and that is how much he loved me.

  All in all I was grateful to God for ordaining us so many feasts and obligations, because that was one way in which I often saw my beloved.

  CHAPTER 44

  In Which a Playful Conversation Takes a Bad Turn

  One evening Rustem Bey sat relaxing on cushions in the selamlik with a narghile before him whilst Leyla played to him on the oud. Pamuk lay curled up on the divan with her tail over her nose, snoring lightly, and the charcoal in the brazier glowed, giving off warmth and the deliciously incensuous smell generated by the garlic skins that Leyla periodically tossed upon them. Drosoula had called round to ask for her friend, and Leyla had allowed Philothei to leave her work and go home to her parents. The house had been cleaned that day, because it was a Wednesday, and Leyla Hanim said that this was the day on which the Sultan’s harem was cleaned. The brass ornaments sparkled and glowed in the gentle light of the oil lamps. Leyla Hanim played a song in Greek, in which a sailor was promising the Panagia that if she saved him from the storm he would silverplate her icon, and Rustem Bey, who did not understand the words at all, was marvelling once again that she knew so many songs in two languages, and was wondering how it came about that she had learned them. The music did not seem to be going very well, however, and Leyla ceased her singing and frowned. “What’s the matter?” enquired Rustem Bey.

  “It’s this plectrum,” she replied. “It’s new. The old one became thin and frayed, but on this one they’ve cut the cherrywood too thick, and now it doesn’t play on the strings as it should. It needs to be thinned down at the tip.”

  “Go and cut it down then, my partridge,” said Rustem Bey, contentedly puffing out a cloud of sweetly scented smoke.

  She stood up and went into the kitchen, where she carefully removed some very thin shavings with the blade of a knife, held at ninety degrees so that it would scrape rather than pare. Rustem Bey could hear the dull rattle of her bracelets on the chopping board. He reflected upon how happy he was, and also upon the undeniable fact that there was something in his soul that troubled him.

  When Leyla returned she tried the plectrum briefly and then set the instrument down beside her. She looked at her lover archly. “You’ll never guess,” she said, “what people are saying.”

  He raised his eyebrows in silent enquiry.

  “They’re saying that you are a bad master to me because you don’t beat me. I have heard women in the hamam saying it, and remarking how I never have any bruises.”

  Rustem Bey looked at her in amusement. “They have a saying around here that a woman is like an olive tree. She bears the best fruit when well thrashed.”

  “Do they? I have never heard of anyone thrashing an olive tree.”

  “Neither have I. If anyone really thrashed an olive tree, he would be thought mad.”

  Leyla crawled on all fours from her cushions to his, and lay down with the back of her head on his lap. She reached up a hand and placed it on the nape of his neck. “Kiss me, my lion,” she said.

  Rustem Bey leaned down, but stopped halfway. “I can’t,” he said. “Either I am too fat or too inflexible.”

  “Why don’t you beat me?”

  “I don’t feel like it. Perhaps if I felt like it, I would. Anyway, you don’t do anything to be beaten for.”

  “Some men beat their wives every week, on a Friday, just to ensure good behaviour,” she said teasingly.

  “These are not modern men,” replied Rustem Bey, impatiently. “This is all old stuff. Do you think that in France, in modern places, men still beat the women? Do you want to be beaten? Do you think it would do you good?”

  Leyla shuddered, and rolled her eyes in mock horror. “Certainly not. I only brought it up because it was amusing. If you beat me I would run away.”

  “Well, I couldn’t be bothered to beat you.”

  “Don’t you care for me then?”

  “I don’t beat my servants, I don’t beat my horses, I don’t beat my dogs, I don’t beat my olive trees. I care for all of them, and all of them are perfectly good. I don’t even beat Pamuk when she sticks her claws in my leg or leaves the guts of mice on the floor.”

  “Everyone beats their servants,” observed Leyla, “everyone but you.” She laughed mischievously, and suggested, “Why don’t we open the shutters, and you can pretend to beat me, and you can beat the doorpost and the divan with a belt or something, and you can shout and I’ll scream, and then everyone will know that you treat me right after all.”

  “I do believe you’re serious,” he said, amazed.

  “It would be fun, just to fool the neighbours, and hear the story spreading from mouth to ear. It would be wonderful, honestly. Go on. Let’s do it.” She jumped up, and her eyes glistened with a childish excitement and anticipation.

  Rustem Bey let himself admire her joy and her beauty for a moment, before saying, “If you don’t stop talking about this, I might beat you after all. You are spoiling the enjoyment of smoking, and if we were to do as you suggest, it would undoubtedly frighten the cat, and I don’t believe it would truly improve my reputation.” There was a long silence, and Leyla bent forward and kissed his face, dabbing her lips upon his eyes and his cheeks and his mouth. The aga was still unused to such affection even after so much time, and his reaction was always the same; he sat very stiffly and behaved as if she were doing nothing at all. He inhaled the scent of rosewater from her hair, and the musk and amber that she caressed into her neck and between her breasts.

  “I have never beaten anyone, but I killed someone once,” said Rustem Bey suddenly, “but it was in self-defence, and he deserved it.”

  Leyla drew back. “I know. I heard about it.”

  “In the hamam?”

  “Where else?” There was a long pause, and then she said
, very tentatively, “From time to time I see your wife. In the hamam.”

  Rustem Bey did not respond.

  “She asks after you. Her health is very bad.”

  There was still no response, but his face was darkening with displeasure. Finally he said sharply, “Do you talk with prostitutes in the hamam?”

  Leyla sat up abruptly and went over to where she had been sitting before. She rolled herself a very thin cigarette of Latakia tobacco, took it up in a long, delicate pair of golden tongs, lit it from the brazier and put it to her lips. She let the smoke curl out of her mouth, and finally replied, “Who do you think I sit with, when I am in the hamam? Who else do you think would let me sit beside them? According to the people of this town, I am anyway nothing but a whore.”

  There was anger and bitterness in her voice, and he repented and said softly, “You are my chosen one,” but she ignored the pacifying hand that he held outstretched, and went out, leaving him to feel ashamed.

  CHAPTER 45

  The Humiliation of Daskalos Leonidas

  Allow me to introduce myself, although you won’t have heard of me unless you have approached Eskibahçe from the lower end, where the road emerges from the pine forest that has all the Muslim graves in it, and where you would have found on your left the ruins of a pump house with constantly running water. It was modest enough, but it served to water both men and horses when they arrived, and was a very welcome addition to the amenities of the town, especially in high summer. What could be better than to enter a shady, cool and dignified little building of neoclassical design in order to drink water and wash your face after a long journey? Above the door you can still read, in Greek script, “Constructed for the Benefit of All, by Georgio P. Theodorou, 1919.”

  That’s me. I am Georgio P. Theodorou, at your service, ladies and gentlemen, and I wasn’t even a citizen of that town, but I did belong to one of the societies in Smyrna who engaged in little works of philanthropy aimed at improving the lives of our people in the more obscure places. I was a merchant, you see; you name it, I obtained it and sold it on at a profit. Smyrna was the ideal place for a port, halfway to Africa, halfway to Europe, and, apart from that, it was a delightful city altogether, before it was burned down, a real cosmopolis. I built that little pump house in Eskibahçe with funds I earned from supplying the Ottoman authorities with a few essential items during the Great War, and my connection with that town was that Leonidas the teacher lived there.

  I can say, with some truth, that I did know Daskalos Leonidas quite well, and was one of the few people that liked him. Most people thought he was a pain in the proctol aperture, as a medical friend of mine used to say. He was the son of another friend, a merchant like me, and so I watched Leonidas grow up. You could say that I was like an uncle to him. It was me who listened to him when he started to get big ideas as a teenager. Even then he was scrawny and dry-voiced, and if he laughed or smiled it gave you a sense of present discomfort and imminent unpleasantness. Nonetheless, he was very intelligent, and what made me sympathise with him was that he always suffered in his soul. I felt sorry for him in the same way as one feels sorry for an aged athlete or an overladen donkey, or a dedicated artist who is never quite good enough to sell any paintings.

  I remember one night when I was at his father’s house, and Leonidas was about twenty years old. We were at dinner when he mentioned quite casually that he had joined the local Philiki Etairia, knowing perfectly well that his father would throw a fit. He always was courageous, you can say that for him, and was always prepared to stand up to his father. In this respect he was quite out of the ordinary, because in those days everyone knew what was what, and you didn’t contradict your father. If he’d been my son I would have thrashed him I should think, but as he was someone else’s I was able to admire his independence of spirit.

  “What?” shouted his father, practically expelling a mouthful of meatballs. “You’ve joined the Philiki Etairia? Are you stupid or something? Do you want to get us arrested? Do you want your mother and me to be thrown in prison?” He glared at his son and gestured around at the walls, richly decorated as they were, with the carved furniture, the heavy carpets, and the silver candlesticks and samovar. “Do you want us to lose everything?”

  Leonidas paled under his father’s rage, but said simply, “It’s for Greece.”

  Perhaps I should explain that the Philiki Etairia were secret societies formed to bring about the reunification of Greece, because there were many who said that Thrace, the Black Sea coast, the west coast of Turkey, and, of course, Constantinople, were historically Greek, and mainly populated by Greeks, and ought to be Greek again. It was all about reconstructing Byzantium and turning Haghia Sophia back into a cathedral, and bringing about “Greater Greece,” and having a King Constantine back on the throne, and the whole caboodle was known as “The Big Idea.” For all I know there may be those who call it so still.

  “Those idiots with their Big Idea!” bawled his father. “They have no idea! Can Greece win a war against the Turks? Do you know how many of them there are? You’re crazy! You want to be ruled from Athens? Have you ever been to Athens? It’s a shitty little village, that’s what! A shitty little provincial village with some ruins and no theatre worth going to, and the people with no education and no culture, and the houses with all the paint peeled off, and they can’t even speak Greek properly! Is that what you want? You’re a fool.”

  Leonidas tried to defend himself: “The new Greece would be ruled from Constantinople, Father, just as the old Greece was.”

  “We are already ruled from Constantinople,” replied his father.

  “By Turks.”

  “Well, why should we care, precisely? Here in Smyrna we have the most pleasant and delightful city in the world. We are all prosperous. We don’t have to give a damn about what happens in the capital. We Greeks occupy all the most important and powerful positions. We virtually make our own laws. We are in paradise, and you and your friends want to mess it up with your stupid Big Idea, for God’s sake! It’s nostalgia, pure and simple! Do you want us all to go to the wall for the sake of nostalgia?”

  “We are governed by Turks,” replied Leonidas, with some dignity. “They are inferior to us in every way, and it cannot be natural. They breed like rabbits, and soon there’ll be no room for all of us to live.”

  “We are all Ottomans now. Times have changed. Anyway, look at all my servants. What are they? They are all Turks. Look at Georgio’s servants. They are all Turks. Who digs the roads and carries away the night-soil? Turks. Who slaves in the fields to grow the produce that we sell on? Turks. Don’t tell me we are governed by Turks, when the evidence to the contrary is right in front of your eyes. What would we do without them? How can a son of mine be so stupid? That’s what I want to know! And you want to destroy everything we are!”

  “Greece was great once,” replied Leonidas, his voice rising. “Some of us have more ambition for Greece! Greece was the light of the world! At one time you couldn’t be called civilised if you didn’t speak Greek. Why do you think the Turks call us Romans? Because eventually even the Romans spoke Greek! We are the greatest race in the world, and look what we’ve come down to, Father. Our time must come again. All it needs is our determination, and perhaps a new Alexander.”

  “Alexander?” sneered his father. “Spreading our culture and civilisation all over the world? Well, forgive me my heterodoxy, but he did it by spreading slaughter and destruction from Macedonia to India. How many weeping widows and raped virgins went and thanked him for his culture, do you suppose? Don’t you know what inevitably arrives in the wake of glorious military conquest? Famine and disease, famine and disease.”

  “It was worth it,” replied Leonidas. “The naturally superior must rise to the top by any means, because their superiority legitimates the means.”

  “I’ll tell you something, my son,” said his father, jabbing in his direction with a fork. “I’d have more respect for Alexander and you
and your friends if you were bright enough to understand that it’s money and enterprise and brains that make the world turn round. All these military campaigns, and revolutions, and conspiracies, and talk about racial this and racial that … What do they bring? Bloodshed and disaster. If you want to be any use in the world, put money in your pocket.”

  Leonidas looked at his father pityingly, and the latter repeated, “Put money in your pocket.”

  “Money won’t restore Greece,” said Leonidas.

  “Idiot! It’s the only thing that will. You should be like Georgio here! Make a lot of money and spend it on useful little works of philanthropy. That way you’ll live usefully and die respected. It’s simple.”