To Crush the Serpent

by Yashar Kemal

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Yashar Kemal

  Title Page

  To Crush The Serpent

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Since Halil was shot dead in his own home by his wife Esmé’s former suitor, the village has pointed the finger of guilt at the dead man’s beautiful widow: she must have arranged the murder. The task of vengeance falls on Esmé’s little son, Hassan: year after year he is groomed for it, his devotion to his mother sapped with talk of the unavenged ghost of his father, doomed to roam the countryside as a translucent red snake, an insect, a bird. Hassan hears tales against his mother. How long will her innocence protect her?

  The stark tale of cruelty and vendetta is told in a narrative of relentless tension, reminiscent of Greek tragedy. It is one of Yashar Kemal’s most beautiful and haunting novels.

  About the Author

  Yashar Kemal was born in 1923 in a village on the cotton-growing plain of Chukurova. He received some basic education in village schools, then became an agricultural labourer and factory-worker. His championship of the poor peasants lost him a succession of jobs, but he was eventually able to buy a typewriter and set himself up as a public letter-writer in the small town of Kadirli. After a spell as a journalist, he published a volume of short stories in 1952, and in 1955 his first novel, Memed, My Hawk, which won the Varlik Prize for the best novel of the year. It has sold over a quarter of a million copies in Turkey alone and has been translated into every major language.

  Yashar Kemal was a member of the Central Committee of the banned Workers’ Party. In 1971 he was held in prison for 26 days, then released without being charged.

  Kemal, many of whose books have been translated into English by his wife, is Turkey’s most influential living writer and, in the words of John Berger, “one of the modern world’s great storytellers”.

  By the same author

  MEMED, MY HAWK

  ANATOLIAN TALES

  THEY BURN THE THISTLES

  THE WIND FROM THE PLAIN TRILOGY:

  The Wind from the Plain

  Iron Earth, Copper Sky

  The Undying Grass

  THE LEGEND OF ARARAT

  THE LEGEND OF THE THOUSAND BULLS

  THE LORDS OF AKCHASAZ:

  Murder in the Ironsmiths’ Market

  THE SAGA OF A SEAGULL

  THE SEA-CROSSED FISHERMAN

  THE BIRDS HAVE ALSO GONE

  HASSAN MUST HAVE been six, perhaps seven, the year his father was murdered.

  Eagles were circling above the Anavarza crags, wing to wing. A cloud gathering in the distance cast its shadow over the swamp and glided on towards Dumlu Castle. The flowers of the asphodels reached up to the sun, alive with bees, iridescent, black, blue, yellow. Blue cardoons thrust their spikes out among the crags, bright blue.

  Hassan was scuttling along the rocks, partridge-like. The dizzy heights below made his head whirl. He had reached the eagles’ nests he was after, but had not found a single egg or chick yet. At his approach eagles started up from the wall-like cliff, the flutter of their huge wings shaking the air.

  The rocks were warm under the spring sun, with blue milkwort, yellow crocus and purple clover growing in between. The wild thyme was almost in flower, its scent already heavy.

  Hassan’s last hope was a nest at the foot of the steep incline. It was almost inaccessible and, once, he had slipped and remained hanging out from the rock over a void the height of ten minarets at least. If he hadn’t got hold of that wild fig snag, if it had snapped he would surely have been dashed to pieces even before reaching the bottom of the precipice.

  To Hassan the many many springtime scents were the very odour of the Anavarza crags. The bees and lizards and nestlings, the rattlesnakes and arrowsnakes all smelled of the crags, even people did, a pleasant honeyed heady smell. The rain on Anavarza smelled different from rain in other places. It was redolent of wet fragrant rock, and the clouds overhead too emitted a special smell, unforgettable for Hassan, as had been the smell of gunpowder in the darkness of that night. Gunpowder has a different odour among the rocks in the night, not at all as it has on the plain or on earthy soil … The night had reeked of gunpowder and the sound of shooting had sounded far out in the distance, whizz whizz whizz, echoing, re-echoing.

  The crags of Anavarza are these echoes for Hassan, the blast of shots, that smell … Blood-stained eagles had been circling in the sky above … He remembered it all. Forever imprinted in his mind was the terrible memory of that crepitating night and those eagles gliding in the early morning sky …

  Hassan was nine years old and lived alone with his mother. But for some time now he had not been able to look her in the face. If he happened to meet her eye he would be shaken to the core. Even before sun-up, when she offered him a pat of butter, fresh from the swinging-churn, he would spread it quickly over the warm bread and, retreating to the furthest clump of trees, would crouch down there to eat. It seemed to him as if he had not seen her for ages.

  It was very hot that morning. There was a weight on his heart and he did not know what to do with himself. It was always the same on mornings like these. Sometimes he would rush out madly into the village, not really knowing where he was going, what he was doing.

  This valuable rifle, its stock all inlaid with mother-of-pearl, had been given him when he was only seven, and ever since then he’d been firing it at every living thing under the sun, birds, goats, jackals … Even at people. Hassan had three uncles, his father’s brothers. Not one of them ever rebuked him so much as once, whatever he might have done. The village was a small one and people were all more or less related to each other. It was not long since they had settled here, having been nomads before that. His uncles, his father, when they were Hassan’s age, had minded the flocks up in the high Binboga Mountains. Their dwelling was a vast seven-pillared black tent. Strange with what pride they still evoked the memory of that tent …

  He finished his bread and butter in the pomegranate garden and went to his rifle. The mother-of-pearl glinted bluely in the first rays of the dawning sun. For a long time he stood gazing at it, rapt, his arms hanging, his head tilted to one side.

  His mother was bustling about in the yard, busy with the morning chores. How beautiful she was! And so young … Like a little girl … His father had been much older, so old his hair and beard were quite white. Hassan remembered him quite clearly. How long her hair was, reaching down to her waist … Everyone said she was the most beautiful woman in the Chukurova, perhaps in the whole world. Many a young man in these parts wanted to marry her, but she refused them all, for that would mean being parted from her Hassan, her one and only son. Hassan’s uncles were adamant. The boy must stay with them should she choose to leave. If she married she would never see her son again.

  The river Jeyhan was running low in a silvery glitter. For days on end Hassan had been hunting for kingfishers on its banks. When he spotted the mouth of one of their long burrows, he hung a thin-meshed net like a bag all about it and waited until the birds darted out and got caught in the net. Then he would put them into cages which he fashioned out of white gourds. How blue they were! There never was such a brilliant blue anywhere in the world. As he gazed Hassan would drift into a blue dream, his whole being suffused in a blue glow.

  Then there were the swallows. No one in this village could catch them, no one but Hassan. When he put his mind to it he would capture half a dozen swallows in one day, tie them to a string and fly them all through the day till night came. But he always let them go, always, even though sometimes with the string still attached.

  And up in a cave on the Anavarza
crags were the eaglets he had been raising secretly for some time.

  Every morning at break of day Hassan left the house, only to return when it was quite dark and no one was about in the village. And always, wherever he went, he took his nacre-inlaid rifle with him. And always with him this impulse to run away, never to seen his home again. Many a time he’d walked right on to the next village, but something, perhaps fear, had made him turn back. Once he’d even made friends with a shepherd from Farsak, beyond Kozan. He could very well have stayed with him, but …

  Yet he knew he must not remain in this village. Or else it was his mother who should go. Everyone was against her here. He felt the hate in the air. It was suffocating him. What was the good of staying on, of putting up with all this enmity? None of his relatives on his father’s side would speak to her, neither his grandmother, nor his uncles and aunts. His beautiful, beautiful mother … Bearing it all, only because of him, Hassan … People said that his uncle Ali, the youngest of his uncles, did not really hate her. He wanted to marry her, but she would not have him.

  And so his uneasiness grew day by day. Not a living creature could he turn to, confide in. He was alone, hemmed in on all sides, unable to break out of the iron circle around him. The boys of his age avoided him and he avoided them too. There was only the elusive Salih, but he never spoke a word. All the better. Hassan could pour out his troubles and talk and talk and never be interrupted. Ah, to have such a friend … How good it would be …

  If Hassan had not been able to forget himself in the blue kingfishers, the swirling eagles of Anavarza, the rattlesnakes, he would surely have died.

  First there had been that stealthy sound outside. His father’s spoon remained suspended in his hand. He looked at his mother. She bent her head. Hassan was watching them both. The sound outside grew nearer, then stopped altogether. His father’s hand moved again. He went on eating.

  It was evening. On the meal-cloth before them was a tureen of tarhana soup, a roast chicken and a platter of bulgur pilaff, glistening with butter. The odour of that pilaff was to haunt him always.

  There was a flash in the window. Then another. Hassan heard the burst of shots only afterwards, or so it seemed to him. The room was plunged in smoke, his father, his mother hidden from his view. He heard his father’s scream, his mother’s voice raised in anguish, then everything went blank.

  When he came to, the sound of shots on the Anavarza crags reached his ears, whistling through the night, raising the echoes. A muffled clamour rose from the village. Then he saw the blood. His father was slumped over the meal-cloth, his hair trailing in the platter of bulgur, blood flowing from his body as from a fountain.

  Of the man who had burst into the house, seized his mother by the hand and drawn her out through the pall of smoke Hassan recalled only a pair of feverish black eyes.

  He had not moved from his place and his eyes were still riveted on his father and the running blood, when people began pouring into the house with racking screams. His grandmother was weeping, and it was only then he realized his father was dead. But there was something else too, something he could not take in. It was his mother who was being blamed for all that had happened.

  He remained there, huddling in a corner all through that night, while people came and went, weeping, lamenting, and outside, somewhere, the sound of shooting and shouting never abated. And somewhere too, red flames flickering, flaring … Blazing …

  The east was only just lighting up when they brought the corpse and flung it into the village square. The dead man’s eyes were wide open, transfixed in the same wild stare Hassan had glimpsed the night before. Suddenly Hassan recognized him. This was Abbas, who came from the same village as his mother … He lay there, all covered with blood, green flies darting over him, strange, silent, bitter-green flies, sharp as a razor’s edge, a thing Hassan had always been afraid of.

  And then his mother was brought into the square. The uncles were raining blows upon her and her face, her white headcloth, her dress were torn and stained with blood. The villagers started hitting her too, everyone, even the children. And spitting on her … It was too much for Hassan. Blindly, he hurled himself upon them. Afterwards, they told him how he had bit his uncle’s hand, his teeth sinking down to the bone, how like one possessed he had struck out at those beating his mother and spat on them too. A kick from his eldest uncle had finally dashed him to the ground. That’s what he had been told, and how his mother had shot out, arrowlike, from where she had been crouching and flung herself upon him. “Don’t hurt my son,” she had cried. Those were the first words she had uttered since she had been caught. She stood up straight and faced them all. “I didn’t kill Halil,” she said. “I didn’t kill your brother.” She pointed to the dead man. “Here’s the man who killed him, dead in his turn …” She stepped close to the corpse. “Alas,” she murmured, “alas Abbas, I should have known you better …” Then, without another look about her, she walked away to her house.

  It seemed that on this same night fires had broken out in the village, and several houses had been burnt to ashes. The whole place had glowed like daylight, illuminating even the distant ramparts of Anavarza Castle.

  Later in the morning the gendarmes arrived. Their captain, rapping his boots together, started giving orders. A doctor came too. There, under the mulberry tree, he donned a white smock. His eyes were cold, glassy. They stripped Abbas’s corpse of its clothes and laid it onto a stone trough. The doctor set about slicing and carving it as though cutting up a sheep. Then he stitched it piece by piece again with a sacking needle. Hassan felt like vomiting.

  And there again was his mother. The eldest uncle was trying to draw her towards the dismembered body, but she would not go.

  “Come and look, bitch!” he was shouting. “See what’s become of your lover, your fancy man you put up to murdering my brother … Come, bitch, come and look …”

  His mother struggling on the ground, floundering in the dust … And the gendarmes, the captain, everyone watching indifferently. Not a cry came out of her, not a sound. Just that stubborn resistance …

  They buried his father with dirges and laments. His grandmother had taken to her bed from grief. She summoned her three sons. “Halil’s murderer is not that heathen, Abbas,” she said. “It is Esmé herself. You must avenge your brother’s death. I may not live to see it, but if his blood is unavenged I will never give up my claim on you, not in this world nor in the next. My son’s murderer is Esmé.”

  It was in jail that I got to know Hassan. They brought him in during the night. All the prisoners gathered about to show their sympathy, but Hassan never uttered a word. His jaws were locked. He could not open his mouth, neither to speak nor to swallow the soup they pressed upon him. Suddenly, his head fell forward and, right there, in the middle of everyone, he fell asleep.

  We learnt that after his deed Hassan had fled from the village and hidden up on the Anavarza crags. For three days and three nights they had searched for him in vain. It was his dog who betrayed him in the end. Someone had the idea to set it loose. The dog led them up the crags to the ruins and there, in an ancient Roman sarcophagus, was Hassan. He had even managed to move the heavy stone lid so as to be almost immured and had not stirred for three days and three nights. Who knows how long he would have remained there if his dog had not tracked him down.

  One of the gendarmes slapped his face. The villagers stared at him with fear. As he was taken away, as they passed through other villages, people poured out to catch a glimpse of him. Men, women, children, all gazed upon him as at a strange unknown creature, awesome, accursed, weird, almost holy.

  And that was how the inmates of the prison looked upon him too. The days went by and he still never said a word to anyone, although several of the prisoners attempted to give him help and advice. He was simply not there, an empty shell, his heart and mind in some other, far-off place. Even eating was a new experience.

  His eyes were huge, his face elongated, growing l
onger and longer as time passed. The skin hung loosely about his thin neck. His clothes, too, were much too large for him. His ears were splayed out like two large sails, away from his head, the tips drooping slightly. Never once did he request anything from anybody, nor did he ask a single question. Twice a day, morning and evening, he cooked his soup on a tiny brazier and, crouching down face to the wall away from everyone, he swallowed it, together with a large loaf of bread. Almost every day his uncles, relatives and other people from the village came to visit him. He would listen to them with apparent eagerness, but his head was always bowed and he never replied to anything that was said to him. Once or twice, I, too, tried to make him talk. He just looked at me, then lowered his eyes and drew back.

  All sorts of stories began to circulate in the prison about Hassan, a new one every day. The prisoners made a point of relating these stories in his hearing. The boy would listen, still as a stone, his face frozen, expressionless, his eyes veiled. Only his eyelids fluttered rapidly from time to time. And his colour too would suddenly change to a livid yellow.

  The more he refused to talk to them, the more the prisoners set at him. Yet there was something about the boy that held them in check, his terrible story, his level-headed bearing, a certain look in his eyes … Even the most brazen, vicious convict regarded him with a measure of respect, of secret awe. Lütfi, for instance, that disgusting creature, would make the most scurrilous attacks on him, but the boy never changed his stance. Eyes fixed on his aggressor, he kept on staring until the other, put out by that steadfast gaze, broke off, almost sorry he had ever begun. Yet he went at the boy again and again, this Lütfi, this scoundrel, lost to shame, to all human feeling, urged on by some mad instinct to destroy what is good and true and even holy. Treacherous too, toadying up to a man until he’d got him where he wanted, then turning upon him brutally.

  I was curious to see what Hassan would do. So I watched him closely. The first two times he held his peace. At the third offensive he lowered his eyes to the ground and stood quite still.