To the Spring, by Night

by Seyhmus Dagtekin

  Instead of disturbing them with our hands and arms in our efforts to slow them down, hold them back, we had to wait with our arms and bodies still, so that they would resume their slow and graceful dance within the sunbeam. And so we stopped our gesturing and, after a while, the dust calmed down again, and returned to its weightless circling. Ourselves calmed in turn, we went back to watching them and following a few of them in their motions, just as from our beds we focused on a star to keep it company in the sky so that it would keep us company in our sleep.

  We took the dust motes to be the sun’s guests, to be messengers that only showed themselves in its company, that only revealed themselves in the sun’s presence. They were different from the stars. The stars only appeared when the sun was gone, as if they were what was left of it at night, preceding us into sleep to brighten our dreams. But these specks made us dream in the daytime, darting this way and that in the sun’s light. And since they came with the sun, they must have come at its behest; and they came at its behest because they were the sun’s messengers. And so we tried to decipher the message the sun was sending us, and made wagers as to where a particular speck of dust whose progress we were following with interest and impatience, with hope and devotion, was going to come to rest. What the sun had to say to us through the intercession of these specks of dust, these dancers and messengers, must be important. And these tiny things must be important because a being as powerful and majestic as the sun had made them its intermediaries. The worth of things could not be determined by their appearance. That too, the grownups had told us.

  Our sisters or cousins, more advanced than we were in the ways of the world, and more receptive to the dance of the dust, would place an object such as a comb or a mirror, a present from their boyfriends or fiancés, in a ray of sunlight. Then they would pick out a dust speck and with intense concentration fix their eyes on its trajectory. But they only resorted to this practice when the village was buzzing with rumours that might frustrate their desires, threaten their loves, and trouble their heads and hearts.

  Perhaps it was reported that someone had met someone else on the way back from the spring, that he had asked for water to drink and that, while the girl offered the cup of water, their hands had touched and they had smiled at each other. Or, more serious, that he had met a girl in another village when he had gone looking for a lost goat, or to buy tobacco for smuggling. On the way out of the village, he had seen the girl in the grapevines and had asked for some grapes. The girl had met his gaze and smiled at him as she gave him a big bunch of red grapes.

  For everything everywhere, for every word and act, there was always someone – a witness, a passerby, a labourer, a latecomer – to see, to hear, and to report. That was another mystery we couldn’t solve. Behind every tree an eye, under every stone an ear. How could everything be known, be spread around so swiftly, and then hit home, wounding the hearts of some, the pride of others? What wind could spirit words away from mouths and make them known to all so that they reverberated forever from these mouths to those ears? What eye was on the watch for the misstep, however small, of one person or another? A misstep that did its work, bringing ruin to the faces you saw and to what was hidden behind them, even when the misstep was long past and the wind long gone?

  There is an old saying that even if a goat becomes pregnant in hiding, it will give birth in the light of day. The grownups repeated it to us from time to time to impress on us that you could not hide things forever, that sooner or later the truth about what you did would come out into the open. That led us to exercise greater restraint when it came to behaviour that, were it to be known, would have incurred the wrath of the grownups, and it inclined us to be more circumspect when the threat of a reprimand was not enough to deter us from the act in question. However, that the eventual disclosure was inherent in the act itself – that the goat might not even get pregnant in secret – was to take things a step further, and this was something beyond our understanding.

  We also heard the story about an uncle by marriage and his daughter who, at odds with her husband, had returned to her parents’ home to calm her anger. The uncle by marriage, a man of great piety and wisdom, wanting to curtail the flight of his daughter, accompanied her back to her husband’s house. Halfway between the two villages, in a deserted spot, with no living soul around, he sat her down in front of him, listened to some of her complaints, and gave her some advice. At the end of their conversation, he lifted up a stone and said, “Daughter, let us leave everything that has been said here under this stone, and you can return to your husband with a light heart.”

  But hardly had they arrived when a few allusions, a few remarks, made it clear that their father-to-daughter conversation had preceded them to the village. “Daughter, I think the stone has made free with our words,” he said.

  So it was with the misdeeds of a fiancé or a loved one. The news made the rounds of the village, bringing joy to the hearts of a few unhappy contenders for his affections, and reached the young girl before her loved one had even returned. Then our sisters or cousins ran to their tokens to put their loves to the test, to see if there was any truth to the rumours. Their faces became radiant when the dust, responding to their wishes, came to rest on the chosen object. It was as if it had set itself down on the most intimate part of their heart, and had set it aglow with promises of happiness for the future, with promises of endless love.

  If it did not, they took the object, fixed it with a tender gaze, and set it down in another beam of light. When the dust refused three times in a row to come to rest on the loved one’s gift, their faces grew bitter. They tried to hide their pain from us, we who were making fun of them, of their weaknesses, of their avowals in the presence of grownups, especially in the presence of our mothers and our aunts, who could be of no help to them beyond a few comforting words. Words that only fed the fires that burned within them. They would put aside the object, now synonymous with bad luck or worse, the harbinger of a betrayal or an abandonment yet to come. They put it aside, hid it in their disappointed hearts, hoping that other signs, kinder, bearing happiness and good news, would follow to ease the pain that weighed on their hearts, and they averted their faces from us. Or, better still, they hoped that the loved one would arrive and deny the rumours with a smile and a new gift that they would put to the test under different circumstances.

  However, they said, it could have landed on her mirror, that wretched bit of dust that settled everywhere but where it was supposed to; he could have bided his time, that wretched lover, instead of becoming a miserable merchant of unhappiness, a seducer at village gates, a beggar of cups of water and bunches of grapes. Could he not have waited for the next spring outside the village to quench his thirst? Could he not have waited for a venerable old man to offer him a bunch of grapes a little farther on, a bunch of grapes that would have come with some wise words, with some advice? That would have been more worthy of a man than to go and worm a cup of water or a bunch of grapes out of a shameless woman who handed out smiles to passersby. At first we were disappointed too, even if later we resorted to mockery. And we were angry with the loved one who sought distraction elsewhere, with the sisters or cousins who couldn’t choose the right speck of dust or the right loved one, and with the sun, which refused them its signs.

  Let us talk about the sun, about his treachery and his lack of honesty. He could not decide on one way of behaving and stick to it. He had to change from season to season. He, the grand, the luminous, the beautiful, let himself be hidden behind a cloud, be drenched by tiny drops of rain, be frozen by flimsy flakes of snow just passing through. You had to leave the sun to his moods, to his codger-of-the-skies excesses, to his pranks.

  We became angry with him and stopped playing our game with the dust. Good luck signs for our sisters and cousins could be sought somewhere else. We had to find someone more receptive, less self-absorbed, someone who would not be so double-dealing with his games and with his light.

  Af
ter all, he was not the only one who could send forth signs, even if his were the most abundant and, when it was cold, the easiest and the most agreeable to await in the warmth of the room. But there were other signs in other seasons that would give the lie to his, and bring back the glow to those faces we loved so much, faces that returned that love so well.

  There might be other seasonal adventurers like stray raindrops in summer or the first snowflakes at the end of autumn, signs that could disrupt the course of the seasons and give the lovers’ gifts their blessing. Or perhaps, at the stable door, they might find a snakeskin that, without crushing it, they would coil around their gift and place close to their heart. Or the first woodland fruits fallen into their hair from a sparrow’s beak as it was bringing them to its little ones, fruits that they would place on the gift and dry in the sun, adorning the object and blessing it with this act. Or it could be a tortoise that left its tracks behind it, a dove that let fall a feather onto the mirror, or onto a still-unused handkerchief that they placed in its path. And they would keep the gift with the tracks, with the feather, until the next visit from their loved one or fiancé, which would dispel the rumours. Only then would they start using the gift that had made their wish come true.

  And there might be hundreds of other signs to set these faces aglow, to fill these hearts with joy. They would only have to bid farewell to this dialogue between dust and sun. Anything could be a sign once invested with their expectations, with their hope. All they had to do was to open their eyes to their surroundings, and the signs would be there. Signs that could even lead them to a new loved one, one who was worthy, wise, loyal to what they bore in their heart. Who would sue for smiles, for happiness, only with them. Who, whatever the path, whatever the thirst, could be relied upon not to stray, and would be sure to come back to them.

  Or, so as not to turn everything upside down, so as to preserve what was traditional and familiar, along with the sun and the loved one, they might try their luck with the dust once again, the following day, if the sun co-operated. For it is not so easy to set aside what one has come to know, and to find a better alternative elsewhere. The past feeds on regrets, we were told, regrets we associate with the past and compare to our present troubles, or what we think of as troubles, but which in the future will be looked back upon with regret. And what stories we heard from our aunts, our neighbours, about their failed, thwarted loves, their misunderstandings, and the regrets in which they draped themselves as if that was all that remained of their happiness! And so it was best to be wise and prudent, and give the dust and the sun another chance. If the sun was at the rendezvous.

  He had never failed to appear before, even though everyone was alert for the day when he might not be there, or when he would perhaps be there but show a different face. We could wake up to find things unlike the way we had left them. No one knew the hour, or the moment, but things would not keep their familiar appearance; they would don new vestments as they passed from one state to another. The grownups told us that every being and every object lived subject to decree, and that if the decree holding sway over them changed, then they would change. Their present state was not eternal. They moved toward a final state, toward fulfilling the purpose of their journey here on earth. The sun was also ruled by a decree, even if it seemed to reign over the other stars and the earth, even if it seemed to reign over life.

  We were told that at the end of time, for three days, the sun would rise in the west and set in the east. In those three days, time would roll back to its point of origin, and would restore everything to its beginnings.

  Those three days would play havoc with all that happened on earth. The chickens would attack the cats, the cats the dogs, the horses men, and men one another. The eyes of men would shift to the side, their mouths would move to the back of the head, their noses would turn upside down, their hair would leave their heads to go and hang in tree branches. Blood would spurt out of arteries, flesh would mix with the earth. Water would vanish from buckets, buckets from houses. Houses would break free from their roofs and their walls, and walls from their stones. Stones would rush to the mountains, earth to the quarries, water to the springs. Springs and mountains would scatter like dust in the wind. Man would find himself naked, naked in the midst of everything. It would be the end of his reign over himself and all things. It would be the end of all beings and all comings and goings. Man would find himself stripped of his roof, his clothes, his tools. He would find himself stripped of all those forebears and descendants who had shown him his place during his passage on earth. Stripped of his intelligence and the clairvoyance that guided him through the darkness of that passage. Stripped of the finery that lent him confidence. Stripped of his flesh. Denuded, and standing in the midst of nakedness. He would be alone again with the wind in the valley, waiting like a newborn to go back into the womb that would open for him one day.

  At the end of the third day, Israfil, the angel of the Apocalypse and the Resurrection, would sound his horn. The two letters of the beginning would contract, all beings and things would fragment, the high and the low would crumble to dust to make way for another beginning, another life after death, so we were told.

  Three days during which man and all things would unlearn what they had learned during their passage on the earth, and would reunite with the dust and the wonderment of their first day. We are of the earth and will return to the earth, the grownups said. And every day that was renewed with the return of the sun was only a day of reprieve that we should dedicate to bettering our condition in the course of this passage on earth. Because this passage was a journey and every journey had an end, and – beings and things – we were companions on this journey, we had to bring it to its conclusion by being the best we could be with our fellow companions. Every day was another opportunity granted to man for remembering the bond uniting him with other beings or things with which he shared that day; every day was an opportunity to honour that bond.

  We were also told that forgetfulness was a property of man, that it was one of his afflictions, and that it erased, or at least weakened, the link that bound us to all those worlds leading the same life as ourselves. That each disappearance, including that of the sun, was a reminder of man’s own disappearance, just as each appearance was proof of his eventual return to the source of his own re-emergence. Since there had been the journey, there would be the return. Since there had been birth, there would be leave-taking. And since there was leave-taking, there would be homecomings. Like the lamb, like the child, every being and every thing had its beginning and would have its end. Man’s leaving his birthplace behind was followed by a trial of distance and forgetfulness. Each instant of amnesia induced by distance led to disorder in the passage through life, set those embarked upon that passage at each other’s throats. But every moment that the birthplace was remembered brought serenity to the heart of man: brought the sharing of that first love with those together on the journey, filled them with calm and compassion. This love that brought us forth from nothingness, that brought forth from nothingness all beings and all things. This love that anoints our life with tenderness during the journey, the love that during the journey keeps us alive.

  But, until we undertook the struggle against forgetfulness, we lived oblivious to the end of the sun and everything on which it shone. We clung to the present tense of the child, the lamb, the sparrow, and the partridge. The moment of a stolen apricot, of a blackberry captured from its branch without making it fall, of a bunch of grapes or a gobbled fig. As long as we saw no end before us, we lived in an eternal present that never failed us. We lived from moment to moment, between laughs and whispers, as if crossing a river, leaping from stone to stone. The grownups told us that forgetfulness was the greatest of ordeals. But we behaved as if our being at the beginning absolved us from forgetting the end. We had this fierce desire to discover everything, to know everything, and that was all we needed to exhaust our days and fill our nights.

  As for the pre
sent, it was the sun that lit up the day, made it possible for us to see, even to see other signs. It was the sun that, with its light and heat, brought the dominion of life and of wakefulness to the surface of the earth. The grownups told us that without this love being there to keep everything alive, nothing would survive and nothing would endure. The sun would not be able to rise, and night would not be able to return. But beneath the sun, we lived. And it was the sun that prepared the night for us, whose absence allowed us to rest; and when its absence became unbearable, it was the sun that, shining down on the world again, freed us from the weightlessness of night. Even if we had our own opinions about its excesses or its caprices, it was the sun, the source of our light on this earth, that dissipated our night-time fears. It was the sun that, along with the stars and the moon, remained faithful to our sky. More than the moon, more than the stars, it was the sun that, even when hidden, steeped us in its presence, and never failed us. The day was still the day despite the clouds, despite the snow, despite the rain. On that score we had no doubts about the sun.

  The grownups told us one day that every living thing, everything that existed, had its weaknesses, that all of creation was deliberately designed so that no individual could lose his way in the blindness of pride and self-sufficiency. Just as forgetfulness was to be avoided along this journey, the mutual support of those making the journey was crucial if it were to be accomplished with as few mishaps as possible. It had to be done with humility, free of arrogance, with everyone aware, beings and things of whatever rank, that they were dependent on one another, that they were essential to each other. Nothing around us and that accompanied us on this journey was an exception to this rule, they said. And beyond the vagaries of the seasons, the alternation of day and night that had the sun giving up some of its power, accepting oblivion and absence like ordinary mortals, it also had another weakness that manifested itself less frequently, but which was more substantial and more worrying.