Black Light

by Galway Kinnell

  chapter fourteen

  The world of the widow’s garden had its signs too. When the widow turned and passed Jamshid tea he glimpsed her eye and a bit of her face. He had assumed she would be near Ali’s age. He saw she was much closer to the age his own wife would have been. Her eyes were black, and lights seemed to float in them. He dropped sugar into his tea and drank from his saucer. She took and refilled his glass. When he had finished she came over and touched the rolled-up carpet.

  “He is dead then?” she asked. These were her first words. They were in the lovely Shirazi accent.

  “Yes,” Jamshid said.

  “Did he die of disease or was he killed?” she asked without a sign of emotion.

  “Killed.”

  She nodded. “And you were his friend?”

  Jamshid paused. In a way he had become Ali’s friend after the man was dead. He nodded.

  She was kneeling close to him. She hesitated, and then she said, “And you—are you a murderer too?” Jamshid wanted to deny it, or to put it in a less harsh way, but she had already seen his acknowledgment. She rose and went into the house. Jamshid felt it was time to leave. He had done what had to be done.

  As he got up to go she reappeared. She was carrying bedclothes in her arms. She spread them on a wooden trestle by the pool. “You may sleep here,” she said. “It is late, and you have traveled far.” She herself went to the other side of the pool and got into the other bed.

  As Jamshid lay in the darkness the effects of the opium made him feel innocent, childlike. He saw the stars. He remembered long ago, his wife beside him, looking up and seeing them framed in the nearly perfect rectangle of his garden in Meshed. He remembered how he had gone over the sky night after night, until it had become for him like a vast carpet, until he did not see its bizarre dippers, hunters, or lyres but the familiar dolmehs, fylfots, trees, and holy birds that lived in carpets. Now he saw them only as wild stars. They seemed terribly near, as if soon he would be lying among them. They grew larger and larger. It seemed they were rushing downward toward him, mouths of light opening and shutting. He could hear their bright yapping. He could smell their breaths, the scent of burnt stone. Then their downward rush stopped. It seemed they were moving outward again. Something near at hand caught his attention.

  Across the pool he could see the bed where the widow lay in the darkness. Lights floated in the water between them. And where the widow lay it seemed he could make out other, fainter lights, as though she lay open-eyed, her eyes, too, full of reflections. But he heard her steady breathing, that had in it some rhythm like that of the stars. He said nothing.

  When he awoke it was bright daylight. At dawn, as he lay looking up, he thought, marvelous, that a man can dream fearful things in the darkness and awaken suddenly to see carefree swallows flying in the bright sky.

  He thought of the widow. He felt shame. He who had felt lust for no woman but his wife—and in a dream the mad woman of the ruins—had fallen asleep lusting after the mourning widow of his friend. Closing his eyes again, he lay there reproaching himself. So this is what comes of committing one sin; before long you start committing them all.

  He resolved he would return to Islam and become as devout as once he had been. The first step, obviously, was to get up and say the morning prayer. He had not prayed once, he realized, since the morning of the murder.

  He got up. He would pray, and after morning tea, head for the police station. At the pool he splashed stagnant water on his feet, arms and face. It smelled badly and left him smeared with slime. He unrolled what remained of Ali’s carpet. The ground showed through in a dozen places. It was dark with old blood. It made him think of Ali. For Ali had been just such a person, bloodstained, worn, and ripped, in whom the earth gleamed.

  He pronounced a takbir to cut himself off from worldly things for the duration of the prayer. He took his stand facing the quibla. But as he raised his arms he saw the widow. She was watching over a little pink-ribbed teapot which sat in the coals. There was energy and grace in the way she squatted. She reached toward the teapot with a motion slow and definite. As she did so her chaddor pulled tight at her flanks. She took up the teapot gingerly and held it very close to her. To pour she tilted her body to one side, to stop pouring she straightened up again.

  “I’ve got to clear my head,” Jamshid thought, and he went over to her. Without raising her eyes she handed him the glass. Then she drew a slab of new bread from the little oven in the corner of the garden. She offered him bread with honey. He squatted down beside her and looked at her but she kept her eyes averted.

  “Did you sleep well?” she asked. The eyes of a woman who wears a chaddor get to be as expressive as an entire face, but these eyes said nothing. Jamshid wondered if he even existed for her.

  “Like the dead,” he said, regretting his metaphor. “Except I had a dream.”

  “A good dream?”

  “A hideous one. And late in the night, too.” Dreams that come late in the night were the ones that come true. Jamshid did not go in for dream-reading, but he saw the widow did.

  “You must tell me your dream,” she said, suddenly animated. “If you don’t, your hair and beard will curl right up.”

  “Well,” said Jamshid, “in the first dream I was working in my old shop—I used to be a rug-repairer—and I was looking at the sunlight on the floor beside me. I was knotting in the head of a bird—a white bird I think—when a shadow came across the embroidered curtain on the window. I got up and tore the curtain away. Instead of a window I found a dim room. In it sat a man covered from head to foot with wounds and running sores—he looked at me and said, ‘Jamshid! Jamshid!’ . . . there was more . . . I have forgotten it.” Jamshid turned to her. The widow was gazing gravely at him.

  “It is a ‘woman’s dream’, let’s hope,” she said in her quiet voice. “One which means something deeper than what it says. Let’s hope it means that inside you will be well even if outside you are sick and hurt.” She spoke these words so that Jamshid understood she felt concern for him. Until then she had seemed to live and move only by necessary impulses.

  As Jamshid drank his third glass of tea he remembered the police. Yet the sky had never been so blue and seldom had he felt so happy. Perhaps he would sit just awhile longer before turning himself in. He might as well get well rested up, in case the police should want to question him at great length.

  “Do you mind if I sit around awhile?” he said.

  “Sit,” the woman said. “You were Ali’s friend and now you are my friend too.”

  He watched the widow as she went about her chores. He fell into daydreams of starting a new life. If only the police don’t hang me, he thought. Let them do anything, but not hang me. He wondered what a new life would be like. It could not be anything like the old one, he knew that.

  A knock came at the door. Jamshid saw the widow put her eye to the peephole, then come quickly toward him. He already knew what she had seen.

  She seized his hand, closed her eyes a moment, then said, “Come!”

  She took him into a dark room. “Wait, I will be back soon.” As she went out she accidentally brushed against him.

  chapter fifteen

  “Murdered as he merited, if I may say so,” an official-sounding voice was saying. “And with that dog’s son of a carpet-repairer’s big carpet shears sticking right out of his chest . . .”

  “Quarreling,” another voice was saying, “unless I’m much mistaken. The one was as evil-tempered as the other . . .”

  In the darkness Jamshid felt shock and anger. Would the widow believe that he himself had killed Ali?

  “A murderer the like of whom hasn’t been seen in this country for a generation . . .”

  “Bloodthirsty as a lion. Cunning as a Zoroastrian. Strong as a strength-house champion. He had to be, to manage to kill, begging your pardon, that vicious old man . . .”

  The voices moved out of earshot. Nearly in tears of frustration and anger, Jamshid l
ay back on the bed to await the widow’s return. Would she betray him? But the minutes passed, and the police did not burst in. Or was she reserving the delights of revenge for herself? They would pay the thousand tomans for him dead just as well as for him alive.

  There was a sudden moment of light in the room, as the door opened and closed.

  “Widow,” Jamshid said, “is that you?”

  “It is,” came back her expressionless voice.

  “Widow,” he said, “I beg you get a candle, I hate the darkness.”

  After a few minutes she returned with a sputtering candle. She came over to him holding it in both hands. As the flame wavered it made a dark flashing across her face.

  “Listen,” Jamshid said, sitting up. “They lie. Ali was killed by five dog’s sons of Yazdis. I . . .” He stopped short. A look of anger had crossed the widow’s face.

  She put down the candle and took Jamshid’s hand. “I am angry with you for thinking I would believe the police,” she said. The chaddor had slipped off; her entire face and her hair were visible. The flame of the candle swayed again and black shadows moved in her features. She smiled at him. His head was clear. He saw her in a reality beyond the reach of opium. On the little bed, in the light of the candle, they made love.

  When they came into the garden, it was evening. They sat by the pool and ate a meal of rice, fruit and Shirazi wine.

  “So long as they think you killed Ali,” she told him, “they will not look for you here. You will be safe. I wish you to stay, if you would like.”

  “I would like to,” said Jamshid. He began to foresee what a new life might be like. It even seemed possible he could assume another name, learn another trade, grow fat and unrecognizable. He could mail money to his daughter, perhaps one day send for her . . .

  The night was warm, one of the last of the true summer nights. There were many stars. In bed they lay close together and they kissed. As he slid his body on top of hers he was aware, for a moment, of the dark ragged trees all around them. He gave a laugh. Then he knew nothing but their bodies, their mounting, hardly bearable rhythm, her moans which broke into a wild happy cry as they shuddered into each other.

  In the morning the air was still warm. The stars were still crawling across the darkness. He drew the covers back and looked at the widow’s body. He thought he had never seen a person so beautiful. He put his arm across her belly. She remained asleep, making purring, pacifying noises that were not quite snores.

  Someone was shaking him awake. He opened his eyes to see the widow and the yellow-faced opium smoker crouched beside him.

  “Tell him,” said the widow.

  “They know you didn’t kill Ali,” the old man said. “On learning who it was they killed, the Yazdi dogs have stepped forward and claim a reward. The police captain is sitting in my garden, having a pipe before he comes here. You must leave at once.”

  When Jamshid had dressed, the widow put bread and cheese in his pocket. She rolled up the carpet, put it in its harness, and hoisted it to his shoulder.

  “It’s yours,” Jamshid protested. “I was bringing it back to you.”

  “I give it to you,” the widow said.

  “As soon as I can I’ll come back,” Jamshid said.

  “Yes.”

  chapter sixteen

  The first person Jamshid saw in the street was a policeman. He turned and walked in the other direction. He saw some men asleep on the sidewalk, apparently workers from a construction. He spread his carpet beside them and lay down. Where his hand fell it touched the earth. He could see the little room again, with the light from the candle swaying ever so slightly on the wall. “Are you contented?” she had asked him. “I know you are, I am too.” The impassive quality of her voice now appeared to him as the deepest tenderness. “I loved Ali when he was my husband, but when many years go by and a man remains absent, he ceases to be one’s husband. Each time he came I had to love him anew, but when he was gone again, how could I keep loving him? For a long time I have been empty of love, a marrow plant without fruit.”

  Lying in the street, in the morning twilight, Jamshid could hear the bells of the camels coming into Shiraz with fruits and vegetables from the country. From all over the city, street after street, rang the dull, empty beating of their tin bells. It was a haunting sound. It made him think of Hassan the camel and of the trip on the desert, and beyond that his old empty life. He wanted so much to have a new life. He kept thinking of the widow, and of their lovemaking.

  “Father-dog,” a harsh voice cried. “Lying there in public with a growling hard-on!” Jamshid opened his eyes. It was full daylight. The construction workers were gone. A policeman was standing over him. Curse these flimsy pajamas, Jamshid thought, sitting up.

  “The snake must learn to uncoil itself if it is to get into its hole,” he said quoting the proverb. “Where are my mates?” he added, in feigned alarm. It wasn’t the right word. “Allah save me, I have overslept!”

  “I believe your mates . . .” the policeman said, stressing the word sarcastically, “have gone off to work.” He pointed up the street. “There, where you can see that other crane . . .” The policeman went off chuckling at his witticism. Jamshid got up and walked toward the construction site. Up in the open second story he saw some workers huddled at a fire making tea. When the policeman was out of view he inquired of a kerosene-vendor the whereabouts of the nearest highway out of town.

  “The Tehran road starts just over there,” the man told him.

  Why not? Jamshid thought. Where is it easier to lose yourself than in a great city?

  When he reached the outskirts of Shiraz he sat down under some trees. He was uncertain what to do. As for walking all the way to Tehran, it was out of the question. And yet he was afraid to hitch a ride, lest the police had put out a warning about him. He ate his bread and cheese and considered his situation.

  Once in a while a tank truck would roar by, throwing up clouds of dust. He watched them pass. Some part of him wanted to remain in this city, where he had learned it was possible to be happy. Perhaps he would never be able to come back. He would not see the widow again.

  While Jamshid sat brooding, a little white automobile drew to a stop before the trees. A foreign man got out and walked to the rear, where one of the tires was flat. He was muttering in a foreign tongue. Had the man been Iranian, Jamshid would have slung the carpet over his shoulder and trudged off. But these foreigners, everyone knew, drove about the countryside perfectly ignorant of the local murderers. They were known to be somewhat dim-witted and untrustworthy, but the best of them were said to possess a trace of charity. Probably due to their Christianity, Jamshid reflected. He recalled the religious dramas he had seen as a boy, in which an actor playing the part of the foreigner said to the cruel Yazd, as they stood over the body of the martyred Hassan, “Why did you kill this man?” The foreigner had always put much reproach into the question.

  Jamshid stepped out from the trees and watched the tire-changing over the man’s shoulder.

  “Salaam alaikum,” the foreigner said, without turning from his work.

  “Salaam alaikum,” Jamshid replied. The man rolled the old wheel around to the front of the car. Jamshid followed. The man looked up and spoke. It was a ludicrous sound, this foreign language. Jamshid wanted to laugh. The fellow was idiot enough to think you could stop your car way out in the middle of a foreign country and expect the first person who came along to speak the same language as you.

  The man spoke again, and this time Jamshid realized that the man was actually speaking Persian. It was the peculiar accent that made it sound like a foreign tongue. “Why are your roads covered all over with nails,” the man said, “when all your houses are made of mud?” He had finished changing the tire. After he screwed on the hubcap, he fumbled in the back seat of the car and came out holding a camera.

  “Stand over there, will you?” he said pointing to the trees.

  “What?” said Jamshid

&
nbsp; “Yes, stand over there, for just a minute. I’d like to take your picture.”

  Why not? Jamshid thought. “Only if you’ll give me a ride to Tehran,” he said, as a kind of joke.

  “Good,” the foreigner said. He was squinting and turning knobs on his machine. Yes, it’s true, these foreigners can be kind, thought Jamshid. If rather simple-minded. Now the foreigner aimed the camera. “That’s it,” he said. “Closer to the tree. And don’t look at me.” Jamshid looked at the car, which seemed much larger now that it was, so to speak, part his. “And stop smiling!”

  chapter seventeen

  They spent the night in Isfahan, the foreigner in the TPP Hotel and Jamshid on the sidewalk. He had wandered awhile looking for a quiet stretch of sidewalk to sleep on. It was the night the shops stay open and the great promenade was crowded. Many women in western dresses were on the streets. It was even possible to see couples strolling together. This air of freedom did not displease Jamshid. Rather he began to like Isfahan, and to imagine that one day he and the widow might come here and stroll down the promenade like the others.

  As he lay on the carpet he thought of her. He could not deny that, according to all law and custom, it was wrong to have made love to her so soon after breaking to her the news of Ali’s death. Yet nothing of what he and the widow had done seemed sinful. He felt surprised, and a little disappointed at the flimsiness of religion. He thought of Leyla. She seemed strange and unfamiliar to him. It seemed, for the first time, that he could forgive her—for anything, whatever it might be.

  In the morning he went to the TPP Hotel and waited in the dining room for the foreigner to appear. The man looked ill-humored when he finally came in, but he seemed to brighten up on seeing Jamshid. They ate bread with butter and goat’s cheese, and tea. The foreigner paid for it all. Jamshid had no scruples about allowing him to, though he protested several times. It was part of what one meant by ‘foreigner’, that the person had plenty of cash in his pockets.