To Crush the Serpent

by Yashar Kemal

  “Worm, murderer! Bloody son-of-a-bitch! Bastard! Everyone here knows you’re a bastard. Get that into your pate. And in this world … A bastard … They ought to kill you, son-of-a-bitch. An ugly bastard like you, his hands steeped in blood, shouldn’t be allowed to live another day. Wretch! Pig’s balls! Skunk! Aaah, if it wasn’t for the Government treating you like a man, I’d wring your neck right here. Your eyes would pop out of their sockets and I’d fling your carcass over that wall. A good feast for the dogs! They’d soon make shit out of you. Dog’s shit! Dog’s stinking shit! Strutting around this jail, giving yourself airs, a paltry murderer. Pooh, God strike you down, you mangy son-of-a-bitch.”

  On and on he ranted, Lütfi, foaming at the mouth, working himself into a passion, while the inmates of the prison pressed around, all agog. Suddenly, Hassan stamped his foot hard and pivoted on his heels as though trying to escape, but Lütfi intercepted him with a fresh outpouring of the most unheard-of invectives. Hassan now broke into a sweat. He lifted his head, looked at Lütfi and in the same instant his hand went to the pocket of his shalvar.1 We hardly saw the switchblade snap open as he lashed out at his tormentor. Somehow, with surprising quickness Lütfi avoided the blow and took to his heels. Hassan spurted after him. Round and round the prison yard they went, Lütfi howling for help, pleading abjectly now. Once or twice Hassan got near enough to wield his knife, but only succeeded in rending Lütfi’s old patched jacket. At last, Lütfi flung himself into one of the wards and held the door fast. From there he even started cursing again, after all his craven pleas. Hassan stood at the door and waited silently. Then he went and squatted down against the wall in the farthest corner of the yard. His switchblade was still open and he was glaring at it angrily.

  Well, that was the last of Lütfi’s badgering. He never ventured near Hassan again.

  This time, the prison barons tried to pit Lütfi against me. The creature’s attitude had always been so obsequious that his attack was all the more unexpected. He approached me one day and I thought he meant to ask something.

  “Yes, Lütfi?” I said, offering him a cigarette.

  “Only a lousy bastard, only a dog would smoke the cigarettes of the likes of you,” he yelled.

  For a moment I was struck dumb. The prison barons stood by, watching for me to strike out at Lütfi so they could then fall upon me in a body. Suddenly, Hassan shot into view.

  “Stop, brother,” he said to me. “Don’t you have anything to do with him. I’m sorry I ever looked at the son-of-a-bitch. He’s lower than the most miserable cur.”

  It was the first time Hassan had spoken since his arrival in the prison.

  After that we became friends. I cannot now remember how many months we remained in jail together, but throughout Hassan never talked to anyone but me. He had a certain sympathy for Buffalo Hüseyin, that seasoned old jailbird. Hüseyin would read Hassan’s fortune in the grounds of his coffee, but always from a good distance and only to me. And then I would relay his findings to Hassan. The boy must have been gratified, but he never gave a sign of it.

  Little by little, he told me his story. We would retire into a quiet corner. Hassan would talk, I would listen, he on his guard, watching warily for any sign of derision, for the slightest disparaging look or gesture, I careful not to discourage him in any way, more and more engrossed by his poignant story. He was a talkative creature by nature, but through the years he had taught himself to keep quiet. In fact, he had become a master at it. But when he did open his lips, when he found someone he could trust, it was a torrent bursting the dam.

  Fear was an emotion unknown to Hassan. For him death was a kind of garden of Eden. Nobody had dared take his switchblade away. To approach people as brave as Hassan, who have crossed beyond the pale, into the very valley of death, was no easy thing, not even for gendarmes, bandits, murderers, not even for the boldest of men. Only those, like him, for whom life is a thing of the past, who live in death, could attempt to grapple with him on the same tightrope.

  Hassan’s friendship made the other prisoners keep their hands off me and protected me from their taunts. If anyone levelled the slightest crack at me, he would find Hassan’s murderous gaze fixed on him and would slink away, utterly discomfited.

  If he had wished it, he could have been one of the strongmen in that prison, even among all those bloody murderers, this frail-bodied lad whose scraggy neck seemed as if it might easily snap in two.

  It happened that we were discharged on the same day, Hassan and I, and a month later I went to visit him in his village. Fifteen days I stayed there and not once did Hassan speak to anyone but me, not to his grandmother, nor his uncles, nor any of his other relatives. It was as though he had taken an oath not to speak to anyone of them again.

  “If you hadn’t happened to cross my path,” he would say to me every so often, “I’d have forgotten all that is human.”

  Our friendship lasted a long time, but in the end we lost touch with each other.

  The period of mourning for his father did not last long. Soon his mother was going about her business as though nothing had happened.

  His father had owned a lot of land and plenty of farm machinery, two tractors, a harvester, grain drills … There were carts and horses too, and the fields sown with cotton, sesame, wheat and rice stretched over several acres on the Chukurova plain. After the murder of her husband Esmé lost no time in taking up the reins of the farm. She was no illiterate country woman and had even completed all the classes of the primary school in her village. It was soon clear to everyone that she was wonderfully efficient and could very well fend for herself without help from the uncles or any other of their relatives.

  A couple of months after his father’s death Hassan was summoned to his grandmother’s side.

  “Come, my poor luckless child,” she said. “Come to me, my orphan, all that is left me of my dear ill-starred son.” And she clasped him in her arms, weeping and keening at the same time. She had the warmest, most moving voice Hassan had ever heard.

  After a while she handed him a pair of bright patent-leather shoes.

  “These are for you,” she said, “a present from your Uncle Mustafa. He brought them this morning all the way from Kozan town …” And she went on to tell him how Mustafa, the second of his three uncles, had adored Hassan’s father, how he therefore cherished Hassan all the more since his death. Then, from an embroidered wrapping cloth, she produced a navy-blue suit. This was from his eldest uncle, Ibrahim, who loved him just as much, more than his soul. Wouldn’t Hassan like to put on all these new things and let his grandmother see how he looked in them? No sooner said than done. Hassan cast off his shalvar and country shirt and proudly donned his new town suit and shoes.

  Though elderly, Hassan’s grandmother was still very handsome. Tall and slim, she had delicate features with very large, slanting black eyes. Up to his father’s death Hassan had not seen so much as a frown on her face. But now she never even smiled. Day and night she wandered about the village like a grieving lament. All this endless weeping and keening, even if it was for the loss of an excellent son, seemed strange to Hassan.

  And now, as he stood before her in his new clothes, she suddenly smiled for the first time and her face lit up. Hassan was relieved. That dark sorrowful look did not become her at all, he felt.

  He spoke up and told her so.

  The grandmother sighed. “Ah my child, my Halil’s one and only keepsake,” she said, “it’s hard, it’s agony for a mother to lose her son. It’s a pain like no other. I will not go to my grave without seeing my son avenged. And if I do, I shall not rest in peace. My bones will rattle, my eyes remain wide open … How can I bear to see the one who had my son killed going and coming as she pleases before my very eyes? Walking over my heart, crushing it … And now planning to leave her innocent little mite in order to marry another man … Like a bitch wagging her tail to a dog, she inveigled that wretch into killing my son. The earth over his grave still fresh, she want
s to marry and make my own darling grandson die of grief. But I said to your uncles, to Ibrahim, to Mustafa, I said to them, let her go off and marry, what matter? My grandson, my Halil’s son, so like his father … Yes, you take after your father and a real man you’ll be, just like your father … Would my Halil’s son, my darling little Hassan ever submit to the rule of a stepfather? Would he stay meekly with the woman who’s shed his father’s blood, who’s taken another man into her bed? Would my own grandson …”

  She was holding him close, speaking in sing-song dirge-like tones, the tears streaming down her face.

  When she allowed him to leave at last, his head was in a whirl. What was his grandmother getting at? Why was she saying such things? Quite plainly she was accusing his mother, making out that it was she who had killed his father …

  At home he found his mother in a cheerful, bustling mood. She was giving orders to the farmhands, discussing business with the tractor driver and there was nothing about her that could be even remotely connected with what his grandmother had been insinuating. Yet Hassan felt a strange reluctance to face her and when she bent down to kiss him he pushed her away. Playfully, she caught him in her arms, saying how fine he looked in his new clothes, how she loved the bright patent leather shoes, but he froze at her touch and felt his hair stand on end. Esmé straightened up, suddenly aware that something was wrong. She gave him a long long look, then drew a sharp breath.

  “Alas,” she murmured. “Alas, my Hassan, what have they done to you?” Her face was ashen, white as a corpse’s.

  That afternoon his uncle Mustafa made an unwonted appearance in their house. He was holding a beautiful rifle, its stock all inlaid with nacre.

  “This rifle is for you, Hassan,” he said. “It belonged to your grandfather. He bequeathed it to the first man of our family who would have to right a wrong done to us. It’s yours now. You can go hunting with it if you like or, when the time comes, take revenge on our enemies. Come, let’s go out and let me be the first to see you using your rifle.”

  They went down to the foot of the Anavarza crags near the banks of Jeyhan River.

  Mustafa inserted a bullet into the breach of the rifle. “There,” he said, “take it, Hassan. Aim at that white stone. Let’s see if you manage to hit it.”

  Hassan was in seventh heaven. After the beautiful clothes and shoes, this wonderful nacre-inlaid rifle! He had never expected such attention from any of his uncles. They had always looked upon his mother as an enemy and never spoke to her if they could help it. As for his grandmother, she never even uttered her name.

  He took the rifle, levelled it and fired. Smoke rose a short distance from the white stone. His uncle handed him another bullet. He tried again. And again. And at last he managed to hit the stone just on the tip.

  Mustafa unfastened the cartridge belt from his waist and held it out to Hassan. “Here you are,” he said. “From now on, with time, you’ll be able to shoot straight. You must practise a lot. Shoot and shoot again and you’ll end up being a good hand at it. Marksmanship can only be acquired by steady continuous practice.”

  Carried away with excitement Hassan was firing without a break, making the rocks around them smoke. What a beautiful rifle this was! And how loudly the shots echoed back from the Anavarza crags!

  “Don’t be afraid to run out of bullets,” Mustafa told him. “I’ve arranged with the shopkeeper in Kozan that he should give you as many as you wish. I can get them for you too whenever you ask me. And if you become a good hunter and shoot some francolins, you’ll bring me one too. Or stock doves or plovers … And when you’re a really good hunter and bag a hare, I hope you won’t forget your uncle!”

  The embroidered cartridge belt also delighted Hassan. Finely worked with silk and silver thread were little animal figures, wolves, ducks, birds, tiny rearing horses, deer with branched antlers, gazelles tensed in full flight … And also a little boy with a laughing face. Just like Hassan …

  They returned home in the evening, Hassan overflowing with joy. He jumped into his mother’s arms and kissed her. There was no trace of his strange mood that morning after the visit to his grandmother. All that was quite forgotten. Esmé tried to share his pleasure. It was good that the uncles should begin to take an interest in her son. Yet something painful gripped at her heart. An intimation of she knew not what sorrow …

  Hassan saw the cloud pass over her face. He felt her sadness and ran to kiss her again.

  “Mustafa,” Esmé said, “won’t you stay and have dinner with your nephew?”

  Mustafa did not reply. He just shook his head and left the house.

  “What did you talk about with your uncle?” Esmé asked Hassan.

  “Nothing special,” Hassan answered.

  “And your grandmother? What did your grandmother say to you this morning?”

  “Nothing special,” he said again, dropping his eyes.

  That night he slept with the rifle and cartridge belt in his bed beside him. And at crack of dawn he dashed out into the Anavarza crags. After that, morning to nightfall, people could hear the crackling of shots from the cliffs and soon all the village knew that it was little Hassan shooting up there.

  A fortnight later Hassan came back flourishing a huge hare. Esmé made a nice stew of it with onions and invited the uncles to partake of her son’s first game. They all came with their wives and children. All except the grandmother.

  Some days later the eldest uncle, Ibrahim, made a present to Hassan of a three-year-old Arab colt. Hassan’s happiness knew no bounds. For days on end he could hardly sleep for joy.

  The dust raised by passing trucks lingered cloud-like, low over the distant road. Tractors rumbled in the fields. The cotton pickers had retreated into the shade of their wattle huts and were plucking the seeds from the pods. White piles of cotton lay far and wide about the plain. Through the yellowed stubble stalked red-beaked storks, their long necks jerking up and down.

  Hassan was walking along the stream. A welter of confused thoughts rushed through his mind as in a misty dream. The clouds cast shadows on the ground before his eyes and moved swiftly on towards the mauve Taurus Mountains. Alongside, the water flowed sluggishly, its surface filmed with dust and chaff.

  Hassan’s neck was drawn out, longer suddenly. It had taken on a darker hue and was creased like an old man’s. He had the air of someone mumbling to himself, or asleep, in the throes of a dream. Broken, incoherent images, familiar voices, saying things … His grandmother perhaps, his uncles … Maybe one of the village women, Old Zala, Maid Elif … People talking, talking, talking, never letting up … Events unrolling at a giddy pace … He listened. All the time he listened, more and more enmeshed in this web of talk.

  Would Abbas ever renounce Esmé? He escaped from prison and came after her. Esmé pleaded with him. Go Abbas, she said, you’re a fugitive now, everything’s over between us … But Abbas would not go. For a while they stood like that, their eyes locked. Someone might see us, Esmé said at last, go Abbas, go hide in the hills. Only then did Abbas go away. He had a brand new Mauser rifle and was bristling with ammunition from top to toe. He waited in the hills. Esmé did not join him. And the next night he was back again, standing in the shadow of the mulberry tree, a tall straight figure, very still. There was a radiant moon that night. Esmé went down the stairs and out to meet Abbas. Her husband, Halil, was fast asleep. Abbas, she said, you must go away. Look, I’ve got a son, he’s seven years old now. Don’t do this to me. They’ll kill you, these people here, they’ll kill me too … It was no use. Abbas stood rooted there under the mulberry tree, the moonglow about him brighter than ever. He was silent. Abbas go, Esmé urged him, they’ll kill you. He never said a word …

  Esmé had heard of Abbas’s escape from prison and knew it was a matter of time before he sought her out. His love for her was too strong to overcome. When they had refused to give her to him in marriage, he had wounded three people, maiming them for life. His sentence had been severe and he had
been sent to the prison in Diyarbakir province to serve it out. It was then that Halil saw Esmé and fell in love with her. She would not have him, so one night, with the help of six men, he abducted her from her father’s house and carried her off to his village. He tried to have her by force, even binding her hands and feet, but Esmé held fast. A week later he achieved his end by drugging her with an opium sherbet. When Esmé came to and realized what had befallen her, she was seized with vertigo and started to vomit. She was bleeding too. Her shame was more than she could bear. Halil fetched a doctor who stopped her bleeding. Then he took her to his house, summoned an imam who married them before God. That very same day the civil ceremony was performed.

  For a whole year she never spoke a word, neither to her husband, nor to anyone else in the village. Three times she attempted to run away. Halil found her and brought her back every time. That bitch is no good for you, Halil, his mother said, send the strumpet back to her family before she brings trouble on your head. But Halil only laughed at her fears. Listen to your mother, Halil, she insisted, you can’t force a good thing down a person’s throat. There’s one man already serving time because of her …

  In the end Esmé emerged from her mutism. Everything seemed forgotten. It was impossible to recognize in her the dumb haggard creature of the day, the dead frozen body of the night. The birth of the child had transformed her. She could think of no one else, she saw nothing else in the world but him. She could laugh now, find pleasure in things, even work about the farm. People in the village were beginning to like her. She was always ready to be of help. Whenever a neighbour was sick or in need, Esmé would be the first to be there.

  The years passed. The boy was growing up, thriving …

  And now Abbas had come into her life again. Everyone in these parts had heard of him, knew the story of his passion for Esmé. It was a legend on the Anavarza plain. Ballads were still being sung about it, even here, in this very village.