To Crush the Serpent

by Yashar Kemal

  She had not gone far before the horsemen overtook her.

  “Where’s Hassan?” Mustafa demanded angrily. “Answer me or you’ll pay for it.”

  “He’s at home, asleep. That’s how I left him. In bed …”

  “You’re lying!” Mustafa thundered. “Lying! You were seen, the two of you, running away.”

  “He was asleep, I tell you. He’s not here …”

  “I’ll kill you,” Mustafa threatened.

  “Kill me then!” Esmé cried. “You’ve been killing me anyway all this time. Killing me every day! As though it was I who killed your brother! Why don’t you take your revenge on Abbas’s family? Why don’t you go after his brothers? But no! You pick on me, a defenceless woman. You’re afraid of them, those Leks, is that it? You’d never dare to take it out on them. Abbas killed your brother and what’s more he abducted your brother’s wife. Revenge yourself on his relatives then and clear your family’s honour.”

  With a sharp whistle a whip hit her face. Again and again the men lashed out at her. Esmé screamed, but regretted it at once. What if the boy …?

  Hassan had emerged from the thicket. At his mother’s anguished cry, he dashed up and before anyone had time to stop him he was pelting the horesemen with stones. Madly, like one possessed he kept on picking up stones and hurling them with lightning swiftness.

  Aah, he was thinking, why didn’t I take my rifle? I could have shot them down, I could, every one of them …

  “And why didn’t you take your rifle, Hassan?”

  “Because they had given it to me. I wanted none of their damned gifts, nothing that had to do with them. I told myself I’d return when I was grown up and get back by force what was mine. I didn’t have so many years to wait …”

  “But why didn’t you take a horse, Hassan? You’d have been able to make good your escape then.”

  “That’s what I thought, but my mother wouldn’t take anything from that house. I want none of their goods and chattels, she said, not a scrap. Only my son, only my life …”

  Under this hail of stones a couple of horses shied and reared. One of the stones struck his uncle’s face. Blood ran down his cheek.

  Esmé lay on the ground, her clothes, her hair, her whole person white with dust. He ran to help her to her feet, sobbing uncontrollably all the while.

  “Look at him!” one of the men exclaimed. “How can you expect the son of that vicious bitch to be anything but a son-of-a-bitch himself, a wretched pandering whelp! Look how he’s clinging to that woman, his father’s murderer! Mustafa, what good can you ever look for in such a miserable worm? Why in God’s name d’you want him back?”

  He spurred his horse at them, almost trampling them down and galloped away. Hassan was hurling invectives after him, when his uncle grabbed him and forcibly hoisted him onto the saddle.

  “You can go to hell now, Esmé,” Mustafa hissed. “And don’t you dare come back or there’ll be blood spilt.”

  Whipping up his horse, he rode off at full speed followed by the other men and only reined in when they had reached the grandmother’s house.

  The minute he was set down Hassan made a spurt for the road, determined on getting to his mother. They brought him back, struggling like a madman, in a black rage. His face was bleeding, his clothes in shreds, and still he tried to escape from the grip of those strong men as they dragged him into the big hall.

  “Truss him up, the rabid dog,” his grandmother ordered. Then she relented. “No, no don’t! Don’t hurt my grandson.” She drew up to him. “Stop my child, my brave little darling, stop. You’re wearing yourself out. Ah, I know how it is, there’s no one like one’s mother. You want your mother, but look, my brave little one, it’s that very mother of yours killed my son. You can’t bring yourself to part from your mother even though she murdered your father, so how can I, a mother too, forget that my beloved son has been mowed down in the prime of life, how can I forgo my vengeance? Isn’t that so, my Hassan, my brave son’s son? How can I watch her preening and prinking about my son’s house while he lies rotting in the black earth? And when she goes away how can I bear it, how can I live on if she takes with her my son’s only keepsake in this world? Listen my Hassan, if you go, it’s the half of my heart that will go with you … But I won’t stop you. Set him free,” she told the men. “Let my Hassan go wherever he wants to.”

  Hassan was still kicking and scuffling, biting the hands that held him and anything else he could get his teeth into.

  “All right, let him go,” Mustafa said, his voice suddenly soft and gentle. “He’s a brave loyal lad and won’t be parted from his mother. Very well. For his sake we shall allow her to come back. From now on not a word of blame will pass our lips, nor shall we touch a hair of her head. You’ll go now, my friends, taking Hassan with you, since that’s how he wants it, you’ll find Esmé wherever she is and bring her back to her house. What can we do, it’s his own father was killed, but if he’s going to turn out a man who can suffer his father’s being murdered without seeking revenge, without so much as a murmur, then there’s nothing for us but to resign ourselves … It’s his father who’ll never rest in his grave with his blood unavenged, whose bones will rattle, who’ll weep and moan till kingdom come, who’ll shrink in shame when at last in the presence of Allah and his Prophet … Doesn’t he know this? Doesn’t he know …”

  They had let go of Hassan. He remained standing in the middle of the big hall, utterly drained, desolate, quite still now. The men were wiping the blood off their hands with dirty handkerchiefs. Hassan’s face was bleeding. He did not know it. He felt nothing. His eyes were on his uncle. He seemed to be listening, but his mind was elsewhere. In a trance, he saw his mother making her way back along the road, stumbling, falling, yet pressing on …

  “Doesn’t he know that the curse of his unavenged father will be on him for ever and ever? That Halil will never never rest in peace, that the earth of his grave will never dry? Never never till the end of time …”

  Mustafa paused. There was an expression of racking grief on his face. The lines of his brow stretched and deepened. He turned this way and that, his hands fluttering, seemed about to say something, then changed his mind, hesitated and fixed a feverish gaze on Hassan. His eyes had grown huge.

  “Doesn’t he know?” he shouted suddenly. “Doesn’t he know that …?”

  Again he stopped short and fell to pacing up and down the hall, waving his arms distractedly and shaking his fist at some imagined person.

  “Doesn’t he know that …?”

  His anguished eyes rested on his mother and the bitter look on his face deepened.

  “This is a mother. A mother! How can she bear it when her dear son’s bones shake and tremble in his grave … A mother … Hassan … Doesn’t he know that …?” His voice strangled in a sob.

  When he spoke again his tone was weary, yet resolute, as though aware he had no other choice.

  “Doesn’t Hassan know that the body of the unavenged man will rise from its grave? Every night, ever since he was murdered I have seen my brother wandering about the house, all swathed in his white shroud. Yes, I’ve seen him and never told a soul up to now. One night, I woke up to the sound of a loud wailing moan, as though the very stones were crying out. I rose and went out, and there was this figure shrouded in white. I realized that the moaning sound came from him and as I drew nearer I recognized him. It was my dead brother Halil, his face all pale, white as his shroud. Brother, I cried, oh my brother Halil … Slowly, he began to glide away towards the graveyard. I followed him and all in a moan I heard him speak. Tell my son Hassan, he said, tell him not to let my blood go unavenged. Even though my murderer be a woman, even though it be his mother … And I saw the ground yawn open. Halil sank into his grave, the earth closed over him and the moaning sound was heard no more.”

  He bent closer to Hassan. The boy felt his breath hot on his face.

  “I shouldn’t have said all this …” Mustafa murmured.
“A mere child … Shame on me for having told the boy that his father had turned into a ghost, that he would haunt the world as long as his murder was not avenged … How could I have done this? How could one expect a chit of a child to take his father’s revenge, how, and when the murderer is his own mother …”

  He walked to the door, then turned and said: “Go with Hassan now, put him on a horse too and ride off to find his mother. And when you find her, bring her back home. On horseback, mind you. Since she’s our dear nephew’s mother, since he wants her, we mustn’t let her get tired walking. Though she be our brother’s murderer … Though …”

  He did not finish his words, but disappeared through the door.

  As soon as he had left, his wife, Döné, hurried up to Hassan.

  “Oh my poor poor child,” she mourned, “what have they done to you? You’re all covered in blood! Come my poor orphan, come and let me wash your face and hands and then you can go and meet your mother.”

  She led him out of the room, cleaned him up and stanched and dressed his cuts.

  The men were waiting at the gate, astride their horses. One of them reached out a long arm and lifted Hassan up behind him.

  As day was drawing to a close they came upon Esmé. She was sitting hunched up on a grey slope by the roadside, oblivious to everything. Hassan jumped down quickly and ran up to her.

  “Mother,” he cried, “look, I’ve come to you. We’re going back together.” Then in a whisper in her ear: “My father’s risen from his grave,” he said. “Uncle Mustafa has seen him. So have other people too, I’m sure, all swathed in his white shroud and moaning all the time.”

  His voice was so low it seemed no more than the buzzing of a fly in Esmé’s distracted ears. She hardly grasped what he was saying.

  Hassan was afraid. This ghost, had he risen from the grave in order to kill his mother?

  “What shall we do about him, mother?” he asked huddling up to her. “They say he comes every night and stands at our door. It must be true. I heard him moan one night myself, very faint …” He straightened up and took his mother by the hand. “Come, let’s go.”

  The horsemen had been waiting by, staring at mother and son. One of them dismounted and helped Esmé onto his horse. Then he lifted Hassan up behind her. They set off, the men walking ahead and leading their horses by the rein.

  The whole village was gathered about their house when they arrived. At the sight of Esmé a rumble rose from the silent crowd.

  An old man raised his voice. “Esmé, Esmé,” he cried. “It’s all up with you, Esmé. Halil’s risen from the grave. His ghost has been seen by everyone in this village. He wants his blood. His blood! And if he’s not satisfied he’ll take his son and nobody will ever see him again. Never!”

  Without a glance about her, Esmé cleaved through the crowd and entered the house.

  An unusual calm fell over the village after that, as though people had forgotten all about Hassan and Esmé and the ghost. How long this lasted Hassan could not remember. Perhaps six months, perhaps a year … But Esmé was frightened. This sudden quiet after what she had gone through, after the threats made on her life, boded no good.

  Then one morning the whole affair flared up again, but not as Esmé had expected.

  Kerim, that artful old runaway from the army, was all over the village with tales that went from ear to mouth at lightning speed.

  “I’ve seen him,” he announced, straining his long neck like a stork’s, “Halil himself, as I was going down the crags above Alikesik last night, a huge figure in a white shroud, glittering in the darkness, his eyes breathing fire. He barred my way, tall as a poplar he was, and bent his eyes on me from his towering height. Stop, O Kerim, he hailed me, do you know me? I do, I do, I said. I know you by your voice, aren’t you Halil, Cholakoglu Halil, who’s been dead and buried these many months? … His very self, O Kerim, risen from the grave, doomed to haunt the earth because of my heartless mother, of my degenerate brothers, of my milksop son who’s old enough to know better, because of that woman, my wife, my murderer. I have no mother, Kerim, go tell her that. No mother, and no brothers either. I do not know them. My son Hassan, a strapping lad now, ah, but of what use to me when I cannot rest in my grave, when the demons of hell prod me day and night with their burning forks … He was weeping now, the ghost of Halil … Ah Kerim, he went on, how can you know the torments I have to endure? You see me now before you, tall as a minaret in this white shroud, but don’t you believe it. Those demons of hell never let me rest, never. Every day they change my outward form and shape, every day I find myself transformed into some repulsive creature, now a dog roaming wild in the crags, howling all night long, feeding on carrion, now an eagle flying down to perch over my very own door and from there watching that faithless son of mine, and him carrying a rifle too, shooting birds, rabbits, foxes. Instead of killing all those poor dumb animals why doesn’t he kill that wicked one and save his father from this ghostly state, from having to be a snake or a centipede or a cat? Being a cat’s not so bad, but … Once, those demons had turned me into a cat, and what will a cat do, I went straight home, to my house. That woman I took to wife, she looked into my eyes and said, this cat looks like Halil. And thereupon she dealt me such a kick … And when I wouldn’t go she knocked me on the head with a club. She would have killed me, that murderess, if I hadn’t fled in time. I still can’t hold my head up, such a blow it was. Hear me well, Kerim, go to that woman, tell her that it’s she who must save me, since my mother, my brothers, my son have turned out so chicken-hearted, since no one has dared to kill her, not any of my relatives, not my friends, then it’s up to her. She must kill herself to save me from being a ghost. After all, it was she who bore me that good-for-nothing cowardly son, she’s the one who has sinned and brought all this upon me. Let her then clear my honour, my son’s honour, or we shall always be accursed. I shall haunt the world like this, a ghost for ever, and my son will never be able to hold his head up among men … Tell him, tell my son, my mother, everyone, that it’s all up with my soul, that these demons are killing me every minute, now a frog, now a snake, now a snail … How many times have I not begged for mercy, O demons, let me breathe, I said to them, but that only made them roar with laughter. This is nothing, Agha, we’ve been kind to you up to now. Why, we can turn you into a hundred thousand tiny button-sized snails and scatter you about the earth so that all the demons of hell won’t be able to put you together again in time for Judgment Day and you’ll have to appear before Allah in the form of just those hundred thousand snails we’ll have turned you into. You’ll be the ghost of a hundred thousand snails in the next world … Ah, it’s hard, hard for a man when his blood lies unavenged! God forbid anyone should suffer what I’m suffering! As I listened, trembling of all my limbs, the long shrouded creature who was Halil suddenly disappeared. I looked about me and saw a cat rubbing itself against my legs. I realized this was Halil, but the next thing I knew the cat was not there any longer. Instead, an owl was sitting on the rock opposite me, hooting mournfully. Just as quickly the owl melted away. I heard a hissing sound and there, creeping towards me was a rattlesnake! I fled for my life, stumbling and falling down the rocks, so that I was full of cuts and gashes and had to go to the health man to have them dressed. And he said to me, for heaven’s sake Kerim, take care! Halil has put his trust in you, you must do what he wants. You must alert his mother, his wife, his son, all the village. You must tell them the dreadful state he’s in. Poor Halil, he mustn’t be left to wander about the earth in the shape of slimy snails till doomsday. You, too, will be cursed for ever if you don’t tell everyone what you’ve seen and heard …”

  For days the villagers could talk of nothing else. Some there were who scoffed at the whole story and made merry with the idea of Halil’s being seen as a snail, an owl, a cuckoo or even flying over the village in his white shroud. But others swallowed it all trustfully and began to devise the most extravagant plans to release Halil from his ord
eal.

  And Hassan was the prime target. People felt that in the long run everything rested with him and that they were duty-bound to bring him to book, to make him see how wrong, how very wrong he was. A mother’s a mother, all right, but it was because of her that his own father had turned into a ghost. What son, even the most graceless, could stand by and allow his father to haunt the world prodded by demons’ red-hot pitchforks and condemn him to creep about in the shape of a snail till kingdom come?

  As for Kerim, he made it his task to exhort Esmé. A hundred times he recounted to her his vision of Halil and his torments, begging her tearfully to heed his message. Esmé was silent. He could not get a word out of her.

  In the end he lost patience.

  “On your own head be it, Esmé,” he flung at her wrathfully. “I’ve been trying to spare you, but let me tell you this. It’s your blood or your son’s. That’s what the ghost said. I must be avenged, he said, or I’ll take the boy away from Esmé. So there! Don’t kill yourself and see what’ll happen!”

  Esmé maintained her stone-like silence.

  Kerim gave up and decided to tackle Hassan instead. But somehow he could not get hold of the boy. Hassan knew exactly why Kerim was looking for him, what he would tell him word for word, so the minute he spied him from afar he vanished as if the earth had swallowed him up.

  But Kerim had made it his only business in life to get this thing off his chest. Finally, he cornered the boy as he was swimming in a secluded bend of the river Savrun. Hassan was naked and could not escape this time. Resigned, he sat down and listened while Kerim at great length related the whole story of his encounter with the ghost up beyond Alikesik.

  “Well, I’ve paid off my debt to the ghost,” he concluded. “You know what the ghost said, you know what your mother did. It’s up to you now, Hassan.”

  At that moment he caught sight of a lizard poised on the pebbles along the bank.

  “Look, look!” he cried excitedly. “That lizard there, look! It’s your father. See its eyes? So like Halil’s black eyes … See how it’s waving its head as though pleading with us. Look, look! It’s been listening to us, wanting to hear if I’ve told you everything and what you have to say …”