He shook himself to get rid of thoughts of this kind. The terrifying Decree of Caw-caw was intended to crush all insurrection above and below the earth. There was even a section, the most secret of all, about subduing the rancour of the dead, which was doubtless the bitterest resentment of all. But apparently only the Big Raven himself dealt with this. Their own duties were confined to horrors above ground, and they alone were enough to turn your wits.
Like someone trying to tame a kicking horse by exhausting it, Lala Shahini directed his thoughts to the long shelves of files, which seemed to him to spread beyond the edges of the world. They included everything to do with rebellion: the initial signs of discontent, imperceptible to begin with, like the first rats of plague, that appeared softly where you would least imagine, at vegetable stalls for example, and then the later symptoms, as the rebellion fermented, swelled and exploded in its intoxicating fury. Then followed its exhaustion and decline, the stupor after large-scale slaughter. Finally came the months, years and sometimes centuries of searching for and snuffing out every flicker of opposition, until the rebellion’s soul was crushed and would never come to life again, and not even its ghost remained.
The enormity of the task made Lala Shahini despair. Sometimes he could see no hope at all on the horizon. As for other depredations such as the dissolution of the language or memory, they were still far away, and never came any closer. These things seemed to dodge out of sight, like crabs. The argument over what should be suppressed first, language or memory, seemed futile. The prospect of wiping out either was so remote. Even more distant was the ultimate goal, the erasure of the nation from the face of the earth, what the chronicles called ‘reduction to terrain’, because this was the ultimate expression of the final purpose: turning a country from a ‘homeland’ to ‘terrain’. Everything had to return to its primal state, to the point where, if one single person retained some faint memory of what had been, he would be considered deluded and taken to a madhouse.
All these matters were enshrined in the secret doctrine. Nobody knew when, where, and still less who had created it. It was said that its source was a secret Mongolian manuscript. Its measures had since been enacted in reality, but some said the manuscript was merely the description of a hallucination, which had emerged from the brain of a monk in the steppes of Bek-Pak-Dala and been unable to go back inside, because the crack in his skull closed. As for the origin of the term ‘Caw-caw’, this was still more obscure, and it was generally thought to be a remnant of a more explicit expression. It was believed to imitate the cawing of ravens over the featureless terrain: Caw-caw, what nation was here, Caw-caw, where is it now, where did it go? This speculation seemed a little perverse, but in the absence of any other, it was accepted.
Conversation in the big tent lapsed again. The words petered out like in the files of dead languages and the wind seemed to fill the void left by human speech.
One after another, they ordered coffee. Their chief was delayed at the commander-in-chief’s lunch. Twice they thought of this lunch, automatically adding ‘God forbid’. The glassy-faced man, his eyes clouded by sleep, still swayed in his seat. Every now and then he seemed about to fall, like a vase, and scatter his scrawny limbs about the tent.
Hurshid Pasha did not lie down to rest as usual after his meal. He had invited to lunch the deputy director of the bank, and, in order not to draw attention to this, had also extended an invitation to two of the fattest and greediest pashas on his staff, as well as to the chief of the delegation from the Archive. Throughout the meal, he forgot, and did not conceal that he had forgotten, the presence of these three others, because his attention was totally focused on the tall banker, whose legs were crossed under the low table like two pitchforks. He was attempting by all means to find out what he could about the reasons behind the search for the so-called remainder of the treasure. But it had been impossible. Not only had he failed to discover anything, but the matter seemed even more obscure. The banker had been inscrutable. From under his eyebrows, Hurshid Pasha studied the man’s head, so curiously small for that lanky body. It was topped by a huge turban, in whose folds nestled an oval piece of glass, an imitation ruby like some motionless eye. This monstrous eye had agitated Hurshid Pasha throughout the meal, as if it were to blame for his failure to connect with the man under the turban. In fact Hurshid Pasha had never seen a man whose features were so thoroughly effaced by his headgear. The turban had usurped his guest’s real face, and the mouth, nose and especially his eyes were mere accessories. To come to terms with this man meant first dealing with the turban, and in particular with that unblinking eye planted like some gland among its folds.
Hurshid Pasha had never endured such a disagreeable lunch. At times he had felt an overwhelming desire to tear off that filthy turban, throw it to the ground and say to this man with the tiny eyes: Now that you’re without your turban, tell me why you’re really looking for the rest of the treasure. Have you really worked out the figures, and do you think there is more of it, or do you know yourself that there’s nothing and this is only a pretext?
When the lunch was over at last, Hurshid Pasha went outside for a walk. It would soon be evening. The field was covered with frost and the plains beyond were still dusted with floury snow. Out in the open, his gloomy thoughts evaporated, and his anxiety might have vanished completely if it were not for one small matter that drummed in his mind, as though tapping against a piece of wood in his head. This is not possible, he told himself. The sovereign could not do that. ‘My son,’ he had written in his last letter, ‘I know that you will not sleep until you send me the rebel’s head. My devoted subject, this is the only gift that I will ever expect from you.’ It isn’t possible, Hurshid Pasha thought again, listening to the frost crunch under his feet. I defeated the rebel and delivered his head. The whole world was talking about Hurshid Pasha. It was totally impossible. These were only insane suspicions, which a crazy lunch like this merely magnified.
Dusk was falling. The broad plain had now absorbed all the world’s misery. That round lunch table, that circle of delirium to which his flailing mind had been pinned a short time ago, seemed far away.
What a good thing that he had gone out for a walk. The frost crackled, krak kruk, under his heels. It was the earth that had won. This sound more than anything else conveyed a sense of triumph.
He was the man of the moment, and the newspapers were writing about him continually. His friend, the minister Gizer, had sent him some cuttings with the latest post. The empire’s strongman, who had restored the glory of Ottoman arms. The general of the day. But as his eyes skimmed those long headlines full of compliments, he had wondered with a dim, obscure distress if the typeface wasn’t a bit too large.
He had thrust aside this doubt at once. Ahead of him lay the state dinners in honour of the victory, and celebrations, new promotions. The grand vizier was said to suffer from an ulcer, and his position … Perhaps those above him really thought that Ali’s treasure had been larger. What could you expect from people who calculated such things, like this sinister deputy director, whom he shouldn’t have invited to lunch at all?
It was cold. The twilight was thickening. Ali’s widow must have arrived in the capital by now. One could imagine the general curiosity, the speculation of the journalists, the ladies’ envy.
He felt homesick for the capital. Like a warm wind, his memory brought back to him a fragment of its night sky, with the pale eternal smouldering lights of its minarets and the towers of its palaces, in which the city’s beautiful ladies slept. I’m tired, he said to himself. I need some entertainment.
He felt astonishingly relieved.
That’s why people relax in fresh air, he thought after a little. Their anxieties fly away, evaporate … but perhaps they don’t disappear. A worry can be felt in the atmosphere. It seems that space absorbs people’s excessive gloom, keeps it to itself for a while, and suspends it like mist above us all until it finds a chance to redistribute it.
He astonished himself with this cry from his soul. What did it mean? He was alone in the black, dusk-shrouded plain. Was his sovereign replacing his generals with stupid but loyal pashas? Or maybe …
Enough, he thought. How chicken-hearted. For the moment, you are lord of this entire conquered province.
The frost crunched under his feet as before.
For a while he walked on, empty, a nameless, spiritless moving form, over this wasteland carrying the burden of that winter.
That must be it, he said to himself.
Krak kruk, went the frost underneath him, and he was on the point of asking out loud what that ‘it’ could be.
The deputy director of the bank had departed for the capital, and all sorts of couriers had left and come back bearing messages with seals of every rank. Other officials with long and elaborate titles had arrived, as well as delegates from the Palace of the Registrar looking into Ali’s properties, undercover envoys from the centuries-old Palace of Psst-Psst, staff from the First Directorate of the Sheikh-ul-Islam, messengers from the Palace of Dreams in their blue-painted carriages or tabir arabalar, ‘vehicles of interpretation’, and dervishes travelling for reasons unknown to anyone. These people brought huge dossiers of documents, orders and instructions, but nothing about the treasure of the defeated vizier.
Hurshid Pasha was perpetually drowsy. Around him, the world seemed to pulse like some viscous grey mass with trembling pink veins within it. Life went on, orders were given and sent back, but Hurshid Pasha was half asleep.
One day, while taking his usual walk at dusk, his feet paused involuntarily by a hut at whose entrance was written the word tabir, ‘interpretation’. According to the regulations, these offices were set up in all the major army encampments, with the duty, among other tasks, to collect and interpret dreams. Those dreams that were connected to the outcomes of military operations were sent immediately to headquarters. Other dreams of more general import were sent off to the capital, to the famous Palace of Dreams, or Tabir Saray.
Hurshid Pasha had paid no attention to these offices, just as he had been indifferent to the offices of the pronouncers of curses, the astrologers, the sorcerers, the gunsmiths, and more recently the exorcists of spyglasses who, like every new profession, were highly valued. Preoccupied by dozens of other matters, he had forgotten the interpreters of dreams entirely, until now, looking at the word tabir written in sky blue by the entrance to the hut, it seemed to him that he had stumbled across a quaint relic.
He pushed open the door and entered. The two clerks inside bowed to the ground. They knew that he had paid no attention to their interpretations of dreams, even when the fortune of the war had hung by a thread, and he would hardly worry about them now that it was all over. Previously, these men’s lives had been ruled by fear. There had been little dreaming, and of those dreams sent to them, many had been valueless. The clerks were scared that if the war were lost, a storm of recrimination might fall on them. Two days before Ali’s death, they had seen with horror that their morning file was empty. In the hope of producing something, an entire battalion was then ordered to sleep under the threat of the whip. But the results cast the interpreters into deeper despair: most of the soldiers saw no dreams, and the others recounted mere nonsense.
The clerks remained bowed in front of the pasha.
‘At your service, my lord,’ stammered one of them at last.
Hurshid Pasha stretched out his hand to the shelf where the files were.
‘Have you got a dream for me?’ he asked, trying to make his voice as casual or even as sarcastic as possible.
The clerks leapt to the files and opened them eagerly. They talked continually as they rifled through the pages, interrupting each other, reading a line here and there, and muttering under their breath: ‘A minaret, with a few flies buzzing round it … no, no, wait, the dream of Janissary Selim from the Third Battalion, look, here it is, we still haven’t sent it to headquarters, but it has no connection to you, my lord. Tomorrow, we’ll send it with the first courier.’ Hurshid Pasha paid no attention to their muttering but watched their shaking hands as they leafed through the files. He imagined the pale blue towers of the Tabir Saray, towards which dream couriers were hurrying in their similarly pale blue carriages from all the corners of the empire. He tried to remember everything he could about this monstrous institution, but his recollections were vague. All sorts of things were said about the mysterious scrutiny of dreams in its innumerable offices and how omens were extracted from them. Now he was sorry that he had not been more attentive.
Hurshid Pasha, his hands crossed on his chest, watched as they wildly combed the files.
Strange, he said to himself, without knowing why, and he left the hut so quietly that the clerks failed to notice. Had some dream about him been delivered from some remote corner of the state, he wondered. Why else was he shaking like this, to the core of his being?
He tried to put the idea out of his head, and walked on for a while, but his thoughts kept returning to where he least wanted them. Whatever it was that coursed through his mind, it was something impalpable and distant. Dusk was falling. He tried to imagine how at this moment, at nightfall, the whole imperial land mass, for whose expansion he had fought all his life, was criss-crossed by dream couriers, like blue comets.
Hurshid Pasha felt sleepy.
This somnolent state, which Hurshid Pasha would have liked to prolong for the rest of his life, was unexpectedly interrupted on Friday. He received a letter delivered by private messenger from his friend, the minister Gizer, who had casually added at the very end: ‘It gives me no pleasure to tell you that the day after tomorrow a courier of the court’s Third Branch is setting off with a decree for you that bodes no good. Judge and decide for yourself. As the wise Ibn Sina said, the world is everywhere under the stars. I salute you and I would rather we never met again than for me to see you and you not see me.’
Hurshid Pasha held this letter in front of his eyes for a long time. As if he were outside his own body, he detected a muffled, almost silent wrangling, a perpetual psst-psst taking place among his various parts, which were no longer coordinated but at odds with one another. His lungs sent nothing to his mouth, his hands tried in vain to link up directly with his brain, and his palate, fingers, spine – they were all totally numb. At last, with an effort, he managed to impose a sort of approximate order. This was what he had expected.
He made a simple calculation. The letter had been written three days ago. Gizer had been careful to ensure that it reached him as soon as possible. In the meantime, Tundj Hata would have departed. Two days’ grace, he thought. His mind grasped hold of this concept as if it were a handle. A two-day period. A length of time consisting of two days. So, two days’ grace. And then what? he wondered dully. What sort of time came after that?
Again after a great effort, the creaking, bickering components of his being began to communicate with each other. Two days to save his skin, he thought. Gizer had told him plainly, ‘I would rather we never met again than for me to see you and you not see me.’ This was an almost transparent allusion to the Traitor’s Niche.
Two days’ grace, he repeated to himself, as if measuring its sufficiency for a specific task. His instinct of survival cried softly inside him, ah, if only there were more time. But then it struck him that there was enough time, indeed too much. It began to look terrifyingly protracted. Better not to have this two days’
grace at all. This was a hostile two-headed monster. What use was it, except to torture him? Gizer was subtly advising him to flee abroad, but he ruled out this idea at once. To live in Europe, under the sign of the cross – this was like swapping a wolf for a snake. Better here among the dead under the age-old royal earth, where the crescent moon dripped its yellow light to the ground like balm, rather than alive and over there.
He burned his friend’s letter and went outside. It was the same plain, the same frost breaking krak-kruk under his heels. The clouds had climbed higher in the sky, leaving room for a little more daylight to pass through them. He thought of Ali Pasha. How many will you drag down after you? He looked at the far horizon, where there had been mist since the start of the war. From which direction would Tundj Hata appear? he wondered.
Hurshid Pasha focused his eyes on the broad expanse of the sky, as if the courier in his carriage with the royal arms could sweep down through the clouds like Gabriel. But then his eyes wandered to the road. It was barely imaginable that such horror could come to him down this frail, narrow track.
He could not rid his mind of a tumult of horses, filthy Tatars, salt buckets, snow, honey and silver dishes. He imagined his own head under the arm of Tundj Hata, and strangely this thought did not terrify him but drew tears. Amidst his weeping, he recalled the silvery gleam of a fish head.
He pressed the palms of his hands to wipe his cheeks. You will be taken far away, he muttered to his own head. You will travel alone. Again he imagined his head pressed against the courier’s leather jerkin. The head of a six-times-decorated pasha under the arm of a middle-ranking civil servant.
The Traitor's Niche Page 13