The Colonel

by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi

  Back in the house, the colonel opened his cigarette case, lit one and stared silently at his son… Amir hoped for at least a brief look of approval from his father, albeit mixed with the customary measure of mistrust. He wanted to know that he had impressed the colonel and had finally persuaded him to believe in his son. Perhaps it was this burning, yet unspoken, urge that prompted him to ask: “What did you think, colonel?” But the colonel did not give him the answer he wanted. He just closed his cigarette case and tried to suppress the faint smile that played across his lips, a smile that made Amir blurt out, “It’s the revolution – we’ve got a revolution!”

  It was the revolution, yes it was. And now I’m not sorry that I didn’t say anything about Parvaneh’s execution to her sister. If I’d told her, I’d then have had to ask her to come and wash the body and lay her out. It was just as well I didn’t have to tell her and ask her to do such a thing. I’m not just not sorry, I’m quite glad about it now. I’m bloody sure that if I’d said anything, Qorbani would not have let her go. It would have been a bloody disaster… So now…

  So now he had to find a quick way of putting Farzaneh’s mind at rest.

  “With all this rain coming down, you could get flooded out if you didn’t have a pick and shovel to hand,” he said to her, as casually as he could, while laying the pick and shovel together to hoist them over his shoulder. Without waiting for an answer he turned round and set off.

  But he had only gone a few steps when a terrible, keening wail of sorrow and grief broke from his daughter and made him shake at the knees. He knew that, if he did not keep a tight grip on it, the cat would be out of the bag. He stopped and waited in the rain. Farzaneh did not say anything in particular, didn’t ask any questions. She did not even beg him to stay. In a voice that shook from the searing dryness of her throat she uttered just one word: “Papa!” Her voice froze his whole body and, for a moment, he stood nailed to the spot. But then, like someone fighting desperately for his life, he tried to pull himself together. Knowing he was invisible in the darkness of the false dawn, and relying on his old age and deafness as an excuse, he pretended not to hear her. The incessant hiss of the falling rain helped him in his ruse. He turned into a dark alley and disappeared out of his daughter’s sight, back into the darkness and the rain.

  On the way back to his house, so as not to forget, he kept repeating one word over and over again: ‘shroud.’ He hummed it out loud all the way: ‘shroud, shroud, shroud, shroud.’ As he turned the key in the lock he had to break the rhythm, but after opening the door and stepping into the courtyard, he picked it up again, but this time whimpering the word, like a dog shivering in the cold, wailing the word out, with long pathetic pauses: shroud… shrou…oud… shrou…oud. He carried on whining softly as he switched on the light and opened the chest and rummaged through blankets and his old abandoned uniforms until he found a length of canvas at the bottom. His soft whimpering was like a camel pack, on which he was loading all the burdens of his misery, sending them off to their fate. His only worry was that he might get so carried away that he would forget to collect the pick and shovel, which he had left propped up by the gate. He told himself never to let himself become so absent-minded in such a situation.

  I’ll never allow myself to get absent-minded! I have made up my mind to keep a cool head through this awful business. I’ll wrap up the shroud, just like the country people wrap their lunch in a cloth, and sling it over my shoulders, with two corners tied round my chest. I’ll stick my hat on my head and I’ll put the pick and shovel on my shoulder, just like the Khorasani peasants I’ve seen in Birjand15 and I’ll roll up my trouser bottoms, just in case I trip over them. My overcoat, I’ll have to do something about that… but before all that I’ve got to switch off the lights and lock the door. I can’t help it, this door locking has become an old habit and I can’t do anything about it, but… oh, nothing…

  It was not clear why he could not bring himself to look the photograph of The Colonel in the eye, or even in the boots. He just felt a sense of shame, which prevented him from raising his head to look at him. He thought that the smaller and more abject he became, the greater became the distance between himself and The Colonel. He felt he had lost the capacity for friendship with him, that they no longer had anything in common. If the day ever came when he could no longer look The Colonel straight in his bright black eyes when he spoke to him, he would die. He knew that with every step that he took away from The Colonel, a man who throughout his life had embodied all his ideals, he was moving one step closer to his own death.

  Yet he must be able to see the bind I’m in. If the person closest to you can’t see the problems you’re having, what can you expect from anyone else?

  He thought that it was nearly time for the dawn call to prayer, but the false dawn had fooled him. The blackness of the night was made even darker by the heavy clouds. The rain beating down on the tin roof rasped his nerves.

  Is that Amir? Is that his voice I can hear? Amir… Amir?’

  He would have to turn back and go down to the basement. There was nothing else for it. Hearing Amir speak was becoming quite a rare event. This was only the second or third time since Amir had retreated to the basement that the colonel had heard him clearly. Going down the steps to the cellar now, he called Amir’s name once more, this time loud and clear. But he got no answer, no proper answer, just a string of broken syllables, like the noise someone might make who had just been struck dumb. Odd, frightening gargles. the colonel was so distracted that he realised he had forgotten to turn on the light. He reached out for the switch. The basement lit up and he saw his son huddled on the wooden bed with its rumpled sheets, an old army blanket over his head. He was shaking all over and staring blankly into space – his squint even more noticeable now – as if dazed. He was so wrapped up in his own misery that he had not even noticed his father coming in. the colonel stood and looked at him. Sweat was running down his forehead and his long unkempt hair was matted together. He seemed to have been fighting with his demons in a nightmare. His body twitched convulsively as if struggling against terrible forces from another world, against things that were so unspeakable that he could not bring himself to say what they were.

  the colonel had to sit down for a minute to rest. He lit a cigarette, pulled up his stool and, sitting with his back to the half-finished bust that Amir was working on, he could see half of Amir’s face. He proffered him the cigarette. He knew that it would be better to get him a glass of water first, but it was too late and Amir snatched the cigarette from the colonel’s hand. As he dragged deeply on it, the colonel noticed that Amir’s lips were as dry and cracked as a flake of bark. Amir held the smoke in his lungs for as long as he could and, when he finally exhaled, it had mingled with his own damp breath and came out like a jet of steam. Neither of them could think of anything to say. So this, then, was his son – a broken man with grey hair sprouting on his forehead, shattered, desperate and ill.

  Amir suddenly seemed to come to, but even when awake he could not seem to escape his nightmares. His lips did not move, and neither did his face, but the colonel could hear his voice, a voice that was broken and changed, as if he were conversing with his bones:

  “…the madman, that same madman that I once saw in Birjand, the one they called the Caliph.16 No-one knew where he had come from. His face, his eyes, his beard and even the hairs on his temples were dark blue and they said that he would never age and that he had never been any younger than he was now. They said that, to avoid his evil eye, you had to give him alms every time you passed him. They said that a look from him brought a curse and that his breath was poisonous. Yes, that’s right, it was him. He was sitting in a porchway and pissing blood. He was pissing blood into my eyes and I couldn’t shut them. It had run down to the corner of my mouth and in through my clenched teeth. Clotted now, it was blocking my throat and I was choking while I was forced to look at his cock, which he had sliced up with a barber’s razor. I had seen t
his all with my own eyes when I was a boy. He had painted a face on the tip of his dick and now he was ripping it up with a razor. Then the police came running up. They bundled him into a droshky and carted him off to hospital and we all thought he’d bleed to death. But a week later he was back under the same porchway, sitting on the same charpoy. He’d got himself another razor and was weeping and preparing to mutilate his cock again. He was acting like a man possessed. Now and then, he wiped the snot off his nose with a handkerchief and kept maundering on in a whiny voice. I saw it all myself in my childhood, or maybe in some other childhood, perhaps in a previous incarnation several generations back. But I was seeing it now, and I couldn’t do anything about it and I couldn’t stand it. I was in agony from pain and pus and suffocation and just wanted to die, but… there was worse to come. The Caliph laid his dick on a piece of black stone from an old tomb, got another sharp stone and… ugh! My skull was bursting and I was yelling, but the Caliph kept beating me about the head with his sharp stone until it was all mashed up and I was still screaming and screaming and I pulled at a cord that was round my neck until it was tight round my throat and I couldn’t move, because I was squashed. But I could still feel the Caliph beating and bashing me all over with that piece of stone, which had probably come from a tomb in a cave, trying to break every bone in my body, and my mouth was full of blood and shit and I couldn’t shout, but I could hear the cries coming from the throats of the people in their streets, in their alleyways and in their homes, as they were crushed between those two little pieces of black gravestone. Voices… screams. I had lost so much blood and I had vomited up so much blood that I was fainting. I’m amazed I didn’t die.”

  “Ah, colonel, it’s you. I’m not dead, am I?”

  “No, not yet, my son.”

  the colonel’s reply to his suddenly aged son came from the creaking of his own bones. Sitting there dazed, with his teeth clenched, he seemed incapable of further speech. He was struggling to keep his composure, telling himself that he must not be shocked or surprised by anything, whether it was by Amir not calling him his father or by his disinhibited obscenities. the colonel had begun to think that the strangest things could happen in life, and that mankind had been created to go through life in a string of bizarre experiences, then to die with its eyes wide open in amazement, proud of never having been shocked by anything.

  So why should he now be shocked to see his son reduced to this state – his eldest son, who had witnessed his mother’s murder so manfully that he had become almost an accomplice in the deed? Just for a moment it crossed his mind that he should take Amir to hospital, but he dismissed it immediately as pointless. He remembered that the city hospital was overflowing and that the only psychiatrist had gone mad and had been locked up in one of the cells of the Tehran mental asylum, accused of being a spy, and was undergoing ‘re-education.’

  He decided to tell Amir the news that his sister had been hanged, thinking that the shock might shake him free him his nightmares. After all, you were supposed to be able to snap people out of shock by giving them another one. It was no fault of the colonel’s that he had never been a psychologist. There were other reasons that prompted the colonel’s decision. It would soon be morning and he had to get on with burying his daughter because, if he hung about any more and did not get back in time, it would be too late and he might lose her. He also thought of taking Amir with him: for one thing, he could do with a hand burying her, plus it would be a good way to get Amir out of the house for some fresh air. More than ever, he was deeply anxious about leaving Amir alone. If he didn’t take Amir along with him, he would not be able to concentrate on the job in hand. He took the plunge:

  “Parvaneh has been hanged.”

  “Really?”

  That was all he said. He just looked at his father, as if frozen. the colonel saw a frightening change come over him, as his whole face took on the expression of an old man now at peace. There was a long silence while the colonel sat quietly, waiting for Amir to react. Amir finally took his eyes off his father’s face and hung his head. Then, as if totally unaffected by the news, as if struggling with a geometry problem:

  “Wasn’t she too young to be hanged?”

  the colonel had no reply to that. He took his watch out of his waistcoat pocket and studied it to work out how long it was left before the dawn call to prayer. Putting it back in his pocket, he felt for the knot holding the shroud together. As if giving his son an ultimatum, he pronounced his last word on the subject:

  “I’m going to the cemetery. I’m going there to bury Parvaneh. Are you coming with me?”

  Amir, still staring blankly in front of him, drained of colour and petrified, suddenly began to shake. His whole body shook stiffly, as if he was having a bout of malaria. His teeth started to chatter and his hands began to punch one against the other, as if some outside force had hold over them, as he tried to grasp the blanket and wrap it round his scrawny body and lose himself in its folds. To the colonel, this was not a cold fever, but fear – dread and horror – that sought refuge in the old blanket that protected him from his nightmares. Amir’s whole face was now hidden and panic had turned him into a shaking wreck. the colonel could just hear his voice, muffled by the damp warp and weft of the old blanket:

  “No, I’m not coming. I’m nobody’s brother. I’m not anybody. I’m nobody. I don’t even exist…”

  the colonel was already on his way down the stairs when he wondered why he hadn’t warned Amir about the ‘Immortal Prophet Khezr Javid.’ He should have put his foot down. He would have been perfectly within his rights; it was still his home, after all, and he had a duty to act against suspicious types who drifted in and out of his house. But what Amir had said was ambiguous. What did he mean by saying that he hadn’t got a brother? Was it just him being mad, or did he mean something else? Was he trying to get at me? Was he trying to make me feel even more wretched than I am? What was he driving at? What did he really mean? Was he aware of the venom behind his words? Was he saying that I’m not… not the father of all my children? Has my son become so heartless and cruel as to bring up my wife’s whoring – his own mother’s whoring? All right, so I killed her, I killed Forouz; right in front of him, I killed my wife. So everything needs to be scrubbed and purified now, does it? Why, why? I’ve absolutely no doubt in my own mind that none of my children are bastards, no doubt at all. If Forouz had wanted to break the rules, she’d never have agreed to those two operations. And in any event, I’d have noticed. Gut feeling and animal instinct don’t lie. No, I loved you all and I love you still. Why else do you think I regret not warning you about Khezr Javid, or why would I be feeling so much love for my little daughter Parvaneh? So much love that I feel I shall die if I return to the cemetery and find that they have already buried her without my seeing her for one last time? Come on now, don’t be so foul to me!

  As the colonel made his way along the muddy streets in the rain, holding the pick and shovel firmly on his scrawny shoulder, his thoughts were never far from Khezr Javid. At times he even felt that ‘the immortal one’ was following him in the darkness and mocking him.17 He could picture him standing before him right now: with the collar of his raincoat turned up and the brim of his hat pulled down over his forehead, his coat belt tied at the waist and his shoes shining, as always, in spite of the rain and mud. For Khezr Javid moved in mysterious ways and appeared to walk on air without his devilish shoes ever getting wet, no matter how hard it rained. On the many occasions that the colonel had seen him come to the house he never seemed to be the least bit wet. Incredible! Even on that fateful evening – was that the last time he had seen him? – it had been raining.

  the colonel had been sitting on his bentwood chair by the window, looking out and listening to the rain falling into the pool in the courtyard. He noticed that the black cat that usually sat on the edge of the pond was not there. It must have hidden itself away in a corner, out of the wet. This time, Parvaneh opened the door to Khezr Ja
vid. She had rushed out into the courtyard and lifted her face to the rain as it ran down in heavy drops over her cheeks and forehead, enjoying the game as if she were a small girl. As he looked on, the colonel felt embraced by the warm feeling of sharing in her simple pleasure.

  Khezr Javid knocked on the gate. Parvaneh opened it and, without looking at him, hid herself behind the gate as he swept in. As usual, he made straight for the stairs to the basement. the colonel felt his daughter looking at him and noticed that she had by now shut the gate and was running her palms softly down over her face and down her chin to her neck and throat. The last that the colonel remembered seeing of Khezr Javid that night was of his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his parka, and of his epaulettes and the diamond shaped crease in the top of his woollen cap disappearing down the stairs.