The Undying Grass

by Yashar Kemal

  Suddenly three riders appeared tearing out of the horizon. They came at a breakneck gallop, leaving behind a cloud of dust that hung persistently in the air. Their shadows fell on the glass-green stillness of the river. One of the horses was a chestnut, the other a bay and the third white. The riders were clothed in long white robes, with red bandannas tied about their heads. Their feet were bare. The horses had no bit, halter, reins or saddle.

  Memidik lunged at the stone cover of the well and pushed with all his strength. But it was stuck fast. He pulled and tugged, his hands flayed and bleeding, and all the while the horsemen drew nearer. Now they were galloping through a stubbled field, the horses’ shoes flashing like mirrors in the sun as they pounded over the stubble.

  Memidik was wet with perspiration. The sweat streaked down his face like a fountain. His clothes stuck to his body as though he had taken a plunge into the river. He heaved again, violently, desperately, and something went crack in his back. They were making for the well, there was no doubt about it. He let go of the stone and threw himself into a clump of laurels nearby. Only just in time … As he crouched there trembling they were already upon him. The horses were black with sweat; now all seemed to be of one colour. It was hot, hot and clammy. They jumped over the well. One of the horses stumbled and threw its rider. The man sat up and leaned over the well. The others reined up. They dismounted, tied their horses to the bay-trees and went straight to the well.

  Memidik shook like a leaf. His eyes were riveted on the three men who were leaning over the mouth of the well, their buttocks raised as in the genuflexions of the namaz prayer. Now was his chance to run, while the men were engrossed, motionless. But his legs would not obey him. He dragged himself out of the clump of bay-trees, and then, as if by a miracle, his legs came alive. Streaking down to the river-bank he flung himself into the water. In the incandescent deep blue of the evening, he swam across to the opposite bank. Even his hands and feet turned a deep blue.

  The day was fading when he came to the cotton field. A huge fire blazed away and the air was hot and clammy, pervaded by the heavy, bitter odour of burdock bushes. Whiffs of fresh, sap-filled rice plants and of rotting swamp drifted in from some rice-paddy nearby. Mosquitoes whirred through the air. The Bald Minstrel was singing. It was an old song, old as the earth, a song that carried the misery and affliction of the thousands and thousands of years that had passed. The mounds of cotton, the fields, the star-spangled Jeyhan River gleamed palely in a strange magic twilight.

  ‘Durmush, brother, how are you?’

  ‘Not well. It’s going to start again. I know, because I had a fit of shivering a little while ago and that’s how it always comes.’

  Memidik took his hand. ‘Come, let’s go and sit by the river.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Durmush said. ‘I’m sick of doing it on the earth like that. I’d much rather beg Batty Bekir’s wife for five days running and risk her refusing me too!’

  ‘It’s not the earth business,’ Memidik said. ‘And anyway, Batty Bekir’s wife is in a good mood these days. She won’t turn a fellow away. But come along. I want to talk something over with you.’

  Durmush was his only friend in the village. He trusted him implicitly, but still he hesitated to confide in him this time.

  ‘Durmush, brother,’ he began when they were seated by the river, ‘I saw two men. One of them …’

  ‘One of them was Tashbash!’ Durmush broke in excitedly.

  ‘No, he wasn’t. It was someone I didn’t know, a small man, tiny like me, very small and thin and timorous. And the second man was tall and huge, like Muhtar Sefer. And then, one night, the man who looked like me killed the Muhtar Sefer man …’

  ‘Shh! Don’t say things like that. You’ll get into trouble.’

  ‘But I saw him! I saw him with these two eyes, the little man carrying the corpse on his back, looking for a place to hide him.’

  ‘He ought to have buried him.’

  ‘That’s what he did, but then he took him out again for fear they’d find him … And if they do find him they’ll hang that little man. The one who’s like me …’

  Memidik rattled on, telling his friend everything, how the little man had to strain every muscle to carry that huge heavy body, how he had hidden it again and again, and how no hiding place had seemed safe enough.

  Durmush thought for a little while. ‘Where are they now?’ he asked. He felt suddenly sorry for that poor little man.

  ‘They’re by the dry well,’ Memidik said, and told his friend about the three strange men. ‘Now, who can they be, Durmush?’

  ‘They must be the dead man’s brothers,’ Durmush decided. ‘They’re waiting there by the well because they know the little man will come back to the body, that he won’t rest till he’s sure the body’s in a really safe place. So they’re waiting to catch him, and then they’ll hang him.’

  ‘Aaah,’ Memidik groaned, ‘they’ll hang him by the neck …’

  ‘Come,’ Durmush said, rising, ‘let’s go to the well so we can warn the little man.’

  The river was gleaming with a myriad stars as they crossed the bridge and came to the well.

  The three men were there, in the same position, their heads hanging over the mouth of the well. The horses were munching grass from a freshly-cut heap before them.

  ‘How still they are!’ Durmush whispered. ‘Is there something wrong with them? And where’s the little man?’

  ‘He’s in that clump of bay-trees over there,’ Memidik said.

  Dawn was breaking. The bay-trees bloomed in a riot of pink flowers from which emanated a light, pungent odour.

  ‘Let’s go and warn him to run away,’ Durmush suggested.

  Suddenly the three men straightened up. Memidik and Durmush took to their heels and ran for their lives.

  12

  On their way down to the Chukurova the Yalak villagers had met a small pot-bellied man. ‘This year you’re going to pick my cotton,’ he had told them. When they came to his plantation they could not believe their eyes. A thousand dönüms of rich blooming cotton, each boll as large as your fist! Surely it was Tashbash who had shed his blessings on this crop … And the man? Who had sent him to them? Tashbash, of course. And so the villagers were happy, in spite of the heat and the mosquitoes. Only three persons were not happy. One was the black-fated Sefer, whom nobody would speak to, the other the black-fated Memidik, and the third, the equally black-fated Long Ali.

  Long Ali lay on the ground, frozen, his body muscle-bound and sore. He tried to shake himself awake, but sank again into a half-dream, his hands moving as though still picking cotton.

  He opened his eyes. Not a glimmer of light pierced the darkness to herald the dawn. Only in the east, over the distant mountains, the morning-star flashed brilliantly like a small sun. All at once a cool soft breeze arose and Ali felt better. It is always so when a man wakes with the dawn and the cool dawn breeze caresses his brow. Then he is filled with an ineffable joy. It is as though he were reborn. He feels blithe again and light as a feather.

  He forced himself to his feet. The others were still asleep. A loud sonorous snoring came from Shirtless’s wattle-hut. He heard the pitter-patter of Zaladja Woman’s lips. She must be dreaming again. Home-Leave slept in the open on a thin pallet. He was blubbering and sniffling with pain.

  The cotton field paled into the distance like a snowy steppe and as the brightness of the snow blanches the night, so the white-blooming cotton field lit up the darkness. Ali stretched his limbs until his bones cracked. As he crossed the field, he heard a moaning sound from the ditch. He pricked up his ears and recognized Batty Bekir’s wife by her short, spasmodic breathing. She always moaned in that peculiar strangled way when she was making love. He could see her quite clearly now, writhing on the ground, panting with desire. But who was the man? He could not make him out. The two lovers rolled over. Now they were only three yards away and he knew him by his head of curly hair.

  ‘It’s Memidik!’ h
e exclaimed in surprised admiration. ‘Good for him! I didn’t know he could be like that …’

  He tiptoed off along the ditch until he was out of earshot, and relieved himself, taking his time. Then on his right he saw a dark crouching shadow.

  ‘Is that you, Uncle Halil?’ he called.

  ‘It’s me, my child, it’s me,’ Old Halil replied in his rasping voice. ‘Come here, I want to talk to you.’

  Together they walked down to the riverside. The dawn breeze blew in cool soft whiffs, ruffling the deep, dark greenish surface of the water.

  Old Halil took Ali by the hand and made him sit down on a grassy tussock. ‘Ah, my child,’ he began, and drew a deep sigh. ‘My own Ali, you’ve played into that Muhtar’s hands. Now he’ll go to the Government and denounce you. Listen, Government brother, he’ll say, that Long Ali’s murdered his own mother because she couldn’t walk down to the Chukurova any more. She was a burden to him, so he killed her and buried her too. And then the Government will throw you into jail. How could you do such a thing? How can a man kill his own mother? And a mother like Meryemdje too! Look, she and I, we were like cat and dog for fifty years, but still we couldn’t do without each other. Ah, Ali, how could you do it? How?’

  He began to cry. Ali tried to say something, but the other was sobbing so loudly that it was some time before he could make himself heard.

  ‘But it’s not true, Uncle Halil!’ he kept protesting. ‘I never did such a thing. Mother’s up there in the village. I told you so already. Why won’t you believe me? She wanted to stay. Ali, my son, she said to me, you all go down to the cotton. Just bake me a basket of yufka bread and I’ll manage till you come back. That’s what she said …’

  Old Halil was sure now that Meryemdje was not dead. He hesitated. ‘Ali,’ he said suddenly, grasping his hands, ‘there’s one thing you must promise me. Look, I was your father’s best and dearest friend. For his sake where he lies in his grave, you must keep your promise.’

  Ali pressed his hand warmly. ‘Uncle Halil, have you ever known me to refuse you anything?’

  ‘Then don’t tell Meryemdje I wept for her. Not ever! D’you promise?’

  ‘Of course I won’t,’ Ali said. ‘But the villagers? They saw you …’

  ‘I’ll fob them off. They’ll never know. Now swear you won’t tell.’

  ‘I swear it.’

  ‘Not like that,’ the old man said. He drew out a tiny Koran from his pocket. ‘Put your hand on this holy book and say: “I swear on the heads of my two children I’ll never tell a soul that Old Halil wept because he thought Meryemdje was dead. Amen.”’

  ‘Amen,’ Ali repeated dutifully after him.

  Old Halil drew a deep breath and put away his little Koran. ‘Now listen to me,’ he said. ‘Even if you haven’t killed her, Meryemdje will die there all by herself. Did you leave her anything besides that dry bread?’

  ‘Well … there was some tarhana … And then … Mother said … She said she’d go to the Peri King’s magic palace and look after Spellbound Ahmet’s children. Maybe even now …’

  ‘You fool!’ Old Halil almost spat at him. ‘Spellbound Ahmet! Who’s Spellbound Ahmet that the Peri King should have him for a son-in-law!’

  Ali was about to take up the idiot’s defence but he thought better of it. There was a long silence between them.

  ‘Listen,’ the old man said at last. ‘The only thing to do is to go back, and as quickly as you can.’

  ‘But how can I?’ Ali cried, almost in tears. ‘How can I leave the cotton picking now? And such a crop too, as we never saw in years. Why, this year we’ll be able to pay back Adil Effendi everything we owe him and be rid of him for ever! How can I go back, Uncle Halil?’

  ‘Well then,’ Old Halil said with decision, ‘you must work twice as hard as the others. You must move heaven and earth and be back in the village in a fortnight. I’ll help you. And don’t you go thinking I’m too old to be of any use! You’ll see what Old Halil, the old eagle of these mountains, can do.’

  Ali kissed Old Halil’s hand and touched it to his brow.

  From the field above them came a clatter of tin cans. Some people coughed and the sound of voices grew louder.

  ‘Quick now,’ Old Halil said. ‘They’re waking up. Let’s put our backs into it. This year my pick goes to you and not to that snivelling son of mine.’

  ‘Oh no, Uncle Halil! I’ll have none of that. That’s one thing you must promise me, or I won’t go back at all.’

  Old Halil did not like the obstinate note in Ali’s voice. It would not do to contradict him now. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But then you must work twice as hard, three, five times as hard …’

  ‘I will, don’t worry,’ Ali replied.

  ‘Because if something happens to her up there and the villagers return and find her dead, you’re finished. So don’t you lose one minute.’

  ‘I won’t, Uncle Halil, don’t worry,’ Ali said. He walked away, his eyes full of tears, a lump in his throat. Strange, he thought, how one can never tell what people are really like. We always thought Old Halil and Mother hated each other. They’ve been at daggers drawn ever since I can remember. And now look at the old man … Why, he’ll die of sorrow if something happens to her! Who would ever have suspected such a thing? …

  In the grey dawn the motions of the pickers were slow and clumsy. Their clothes, wet with the night dew, clung about them as though rain-soaked and they shivered in the dawn breeze. The Gavur Mountains were visible now, a curtain of blue smoke in the distance, and over them the morning-star, brighter than ever, flashed with corruscating radiance. A thin line of light was widening gradually over the mountains.

  Long Ali’s hands worked at a furious speed. His sack was full in no time and he rushed off to empty it under the thatched porch of his wattle-hut. As for Old Halil, that master-thief, that wily old deserter from the Yemen wars, nobody had ever seen him pick cotton with such zeal. The villagers stared.

  Memidik, by his mother’s side, was working slowly today. He kept lifting his head to stare at the sky. There in the dim half-light of dawn a group of great large-winged eagles were gliding towards the river.

  ‘What’s the matter, my child?’ his mother asked. ‘You’re like a cat on hot bricks.’

  It was a question she asked him all the time now, and Memidik would answer or not, according to his mood, saying anything that came to his mind.

  ‘It’s nothing, Mother, nothing … Only I miss our Lord Tashbash. Last night I saw him in a dream. He stood in a flood of light beside a cool spring which sprouted from under a bed of mint, and all about him the flowers bloomed and the mountains sang softly for joy. His face was a little pale, sad perhaps. And then I woke up …’

  ‘Is that so, my child?’ his mother said, puzzled. ‘Well, I hope he comes to us soon, our Lord Tashbash, and then you’ll feel better. Maybe he’ll be able to do something about the heat and those mosquitoes that plague us night and day …’

  Anakiz Woman, who was working next to them, now joined in. Although people called her Anakiz Womanfn1 she was still young. Her husband had been arrested for some infringement of the forestry regulations, but he had escaped and never been heard of since. Nobody feared prison more than he did. As for Anakiz, her hair had turned white in a single night. Such was her sorrow that she had shut herself up in her house without seeing anyone for months on end. Yes, she was still young, Anakiz, and pretty too with her delicate chin, her huge dark eyes and soft silky complexion. It had taken her a long while to get over the mortification of being abandoned by her husband. Then with time she forgot him and returned to life. Yet, although offers of marriage rained upon her not only from Yalak village but from neighbouring villages as well, she refused them all. She was never known to have a lover either, nor even to look at a man again.

  ‘I’ve been picking cotton in this cursed Chukurova for fifteen years,’ she said, ‘and I’ve never known such a heat nor seen so many mosquitoes.’

 
; Memidik could not take his eyes off the eagles. ‘We’ve never seen such wonderful cotton either, Anakiz sister,’ he murmured. ‘The hotter the weather, the better the cotton crop. Just look at these bolls, sister! Clusters and clusters of them on every stalk and each one as large as my fist! Why, if we could have cotton like this every year, we’d soon be rich. We’d pay off Adil Effendi and have no debts left. No debts! Think of it … And d’you know what? It’s our Lord Tashbash who’s done this for us. From now on all the fields we pick will be like this.’

  ‘I hope to God that Muhtar is struck blind! Inshallah, he’ll be covered with boils and his skin will rot away! No one speaks to him, not even his three wives nor his own children, for fear Tashbash will cast the crippling spell on them. All this winter he beat them black and blue, but they never opened their mouths once, not once! I know because my house is just next door and I could hear him curse our Lord Tashbash all day long, horrible, unheard-of curses, God preserve us … And now d’you know what he’s saying? I heard him, when he had those visitors from the town. They were eating francolins and drinking raki. Wolves, he said, devoured Tashbash’s frozen body as sure as we’re eating these francolins, and now, he said, those stupid villagers worship him, that wolves’ muck! He said that if Tashbash had one jot of power he wouldn’t have let himself be turned into wolves’ muck! The people from the town were roaring with laughter. And then Sefer complained how he was still plagued by Tashbash, dead and wolves’ shit though he was, how the whole of the Chukurova knew that nobody talked to him because Tashbash had ordered them not to, how he had become the laughing-stock of the townsfolk, how this was going to kill him … Ah, what we really should do is tear this Sefer to pieces …’

  Memidik’s mother was squatting on her heels steadily plucking the fluffy dew-wet cotton bolls. ‘Anakiz sister,’ she said with conviction, ‘d’you think the villagers wouldn’t have done just that, and thrown each piece of him to the dogs too? But what did our Lord Tashbash say? You won’t touch a hair of that skunk’s head, he said, you mustn’t foul your hands. Just don’t talk to him, he said, and that’ll be enough to drive him into his grave. If he hadn’t said that the villagers would have torn him to pieces long ago …’