The Undying Grass

by Yashar Kemal

  ‘Hey, you!’ the first-lieutenant called in a loud voice used to command. ‘You there, the tall one picking cotton! I said come here.’

  But Ali never moved.

  ‘He’s pretending not to hear, the sly fox!’

  ‘A man who would chop off his own mother’s head …’

  ‘And in cold blood too! Just look at him! As though he had nothing to do with it …’

  The first-lieutenant crossed over to Ali’s side and dealt him a kick in the ribs with the tip of his boot. Ali started and jumped to attention. ‘At your orders, commandant,’ he shouted, confused, his face suddenly yellow, his lips trembling.

  The first-lieutenant was gratified at this effect of military discipline. ‘Go and join the others,’ he said.

  Stiffly, Ali marched off towards the group.

  The first-lieutenant’s bright, youthful eyes scanned the crowd with a kingly confidence.

  At that moment the three panama-hatted riders galloped into the field and dismounted. One of them came up to the first-lieutenant and bowing and scraping doffed his hat. His head, quite bald and shining crimson under the sun, was twitching nervously. His green, bleary eyes were red-rimmed.

  ‘It’s these people, commandant,’ he said. ‘We’ve been investigating for days. Everything leads here, and ends here too. We’ve got to question them all, one by one …’

  Memidik looked at the eagles that were flocking in from the Anavarza crags and clustering over the well. ‘They’ll see them! Oh God, draw a curtain over their eyes!’ he prayed. ‘Make the eagles go away for a little while at least. Just for a little while. They can come back afterwards as much as they like …’

  The first-lieutenant’s gaze came to rest on Ali, to whom he had taken a sudden liking. This was a man who, if he knew anything, would speak the truth. Ali was still standing at attention, his body so rigid that his legs quivered.

  ‘Stand at ease,’ the first-lieutenant said. ‘You there, come with us.’ And he led Ali away from the others, accompanied by a sergeant-major and two plainclothes men. They stopped under a tree near the river-bank and there started the cross-questioning.

  ‘It’s a lie,’ Ali kept repeating. ‘It’s just calumny. I’m not a murderer. Would a man ever kill his own …’

  ‘We’re not saying you did it,’ one of the plainclothes men said. ‘We’re asking you who did.’

  ‘But no one!’ Ali protested. ‘No one! There’s enough bread to last two months … A large cock … And the cherries in the valley, just ripe now … Would I ever! … I’d be out of my mind to do such a thing. Why, you can go there right away and see …’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Why, our village of course! My house. It’s lonely now up there, to be sure, with nobody left to talk to, but …’

  ‘Where’s your village?’

  Ali pointed to the faintly-visible range of the Taurus swathed in a blue haze. ‘There! Right behind those mountains. That’s where my house is, with my mother in it, alive as you and me.’

  They could make nothing of it. Funny creatures these villagers, thought one of the plainclothes men. Dumb as the earth … ‘Shevket Bey!’ he shouted. ‘Who’s asking about your mother? Who cares whether you leave her up in the mountains or not? D’you know anything about Shevket Bey, that’s what I’m asking you!’

  ‘I don’t know a thing,’ Ali stammered, terrified. ‘I wasn’t here. I came down after the others … I never saw him in my life.’

  They gave up and Ali hurried back to the safety of the crowd, weak with relief.

  Shirtless stepped up to the first-lieutenant. ‘If you ask me, he did kill her. And by hacking her head off too. He’s lying. Lying a thousand times. He says he left his mother up there with a cask of honey, a firkin of butter, thirty-eight chickens, sixteen goats and a two-month store of yufka bread. Don’t you believe it! If Meryemdje wasn’t dead she’d have found a way of getting down to the Chukurova. Ah yes, he’s killed her, his own mother, that angel, Meryemdje! The whole village is mourning for her. No one has the heart to pick cotton any more. Don’t you let yourself be deceived by Long Ali’s meek looks. He’s deep, that one … Ah, Meryemdje, poor Meryemdje … Look, commandant, I come from a long line of spahis. And d’you know how we got to be called Shirtless? My great-grandfather, who was a high lord and chief of the spahis, had this habit of giving his shirt to the poor. Each time he’d come back shirtless, half-naked; my noble great-grandfather couldn’t bear to see a poor man. So he went without a shirt most of the time. The name stuck to us. I am the last of the race to uphold its honour. A heavy load I bear, my commandant …’

  ‘Yes, yes. That’s all very well, but what about Shevket Bey?’

  ‘Because, you see, my great-grandfather had oceans of mercy in him, for all that he was a valorous knight who killed so many in battle that he could build towers with their skulls. I’m full of mercy too, my commandant, just like him. And so I say, don’t hang Long Ali. It’s not good to hang a man. But send him to prison, do, by all means. Because if you don’t, then other people will follow his example. Old mothers are a bother to everyone. If you don’t punish him people will just jump at the chance to do the same. Even you, even I, we’ll kick ourselves for not having done away with our old mothers.’

  ‘Now look here, man, I’m asking you about Shevket Bey!’

  ‘Oh, him? Well, you can be sure he hasn’t been this way. People always come straight to me. Nobody would dream of disdaining my house. So you can be sure Shevket Bey never came here. Why, nobody’s ever heard of him, let alone seen him. As for Long Ali, he’s right there before you. Do as you like …’

  Memidik’s eyes were on the eagles. One of them had swung away from the swirling group over the well and was heading east, towards the Gavur Mountains. It flapped its long wings hurriedly as though fleeing from the others. Then he noticed the stocky young gendarme. His bright eyes were raised in the direction of the eagles. Among all these people he was the only one. Memidik came up to him, his heart in his mouth.

  ‘If that fellow hadn’t killed his mother, there wouldn’t be so many gendarmes after him, would there, brother? As for Meryemdje, she was such a pig-headed quarrelsome old woman … She asked for it. So what are you waiting for? Just take Long Ali and go. Your brain will boil in this heat. You’ll get the fever like our Home-Leave Memet you see there. The poisonous fever … The sun will strike you down. It’s like that when you’re not used to it, comes down on you like a rock … And the mosquitoes will tear you to pieces. Quick, quick, get into your trucks and go. Those eagles? Oh, you’ll see eagles all the time in these parts. Eagles love the beautiful wide Chukurova skies. Look, one of them’s left the group and the others will soon follow it. Eagles are like sheep, you know … Look, brother, Long Ali wouldn’t kill a fly, let alone Shevket Bey. As for his mother, that’s another matter. She was at her last gasp anyway. He couldn’t leave her to come down here with the rest of us. But he couldn’t wait up there for ever either, until she died. If it were you or me dying … But this is Meryemdje. She’s so obstinate she could lie there on her death-bed for days and days. Even for a year if she wanted to. So what could poor Ali do? Wait up there until all the cotton had been picked? Meryemdje was dying anyway. If not today then tomorrow. So he simply pressed her throat a little to help her on, that’s all. I know, because Ali told me everything. So, you see, he couldn’t have killed Shevket Bey. Nobody here would have done such a thing. Did Shevket Bey carry a firearm on him?’

  ‘No …’

  ‘Our people would never attack an unarmed man, so there you are … Save your honour …’

  The air was torrid, stifling, the earth like a live coal, the plants and trees frayed by the leaden, crackling heat. Long Ali was sweating. The perspiration spurted from his shoulder-blades, turning to mud the dust on his clothes. It ran down his brow, his arms, his legs like a torrent. The first-lieutenant was sweating too. So were the gendarmes, the policemen, everyone and everything, even the trunk of the
tall willow-tree on the edge of the stream.

  A strong gust whipped up tall dust-devils and sent them spiralling through the fields. Round and round they went, engulfing husk and chaff from a newly-harvested wheat field and swooping down upon the villagers. Then they swept on, leaving so many statues of dust in their wake. The sun was like glass, hard and sharp and brittle. Blinding. All the hotter for the whiteness of the cotton plain.

  The first-lieutenant was thirsty. They brought him some water, hot, muddy, smelling of swamp. He tried to drink it, but his gorge rose. One of the policemen was lying under a bush, his tongue hanging out like a panting dog.

  ‘I saw him!’ Zaladja’s dress hung open down to her shrivelled breasts. The thin plaits of her hair stuck wetly to her parched wrinkled skin. ‘I saw him with these two black eyes of mine. It was dark. I was riding a deer. A light blazed out and I saw this huge man, just like our Muhtar Sefer, moaning in pain. Our Lord Tashbash was at his throat cutting it with a knife. The man was struggling. Then the blood gushed out as from a fountain and he was still …’

  ‘Where did you see this?’

  ‘Where would it be! In the Chukurova, of course. With all those mosquitoes … Ravening, their sting like poisonous needles. They swarmed about the big man’s naked body and in an instant they had picked him clean to the bone. Yes, only a heap of white bones, as white as this cotton, was left.’

  The eagles were flying in three large groups now and the largest group circled ever more thickly over the dry well.

  ‘They were always together from sun-down to sun-up,’ Memidik added. ‘The one you call Shevket Bey or whatever, and Muhtar Sefer. And in the dark they grew to three, four times their real size. One day I saw him, Shevket Bey, running for all he was worth. He fled running all the way to the sea and jumped in.’

  ‘Shevket Bey? Into the sea?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s strange; Shevket Bey was afraid of the sea.’

  ‘He was borne away on the current … Muhtar Sefer went after him. In our village no one speaks to Muhtar Sefer. You’ve heard of our Lord Tashbash, of course? Well, when the gendarmes were taking him away with the seven balls of light in his wake, our Lord Tashbash turned to us and said: “Not one of you shall ever speak to this man again, ever. But you shall not kill him. This will be punishment enough …” But it’s not enough! It’s not! Our Lord Tashbash wasn’t beaten to within an inch of his life by Muhtar Sefer. He wasn’t the one who pissed blood for three months. It was I. It was I who couldn’t look people in the face again, who didn’t dare show myself before Zeliha … I tell you I saw them talking in the night. Muhtar Sefer and Shevket Bey … Whispering together all night long.’

  ‘That’s strange! Shevket Bey never spoke to anyone …’

  Hassan trimmed off the willow-branch at both ends. Then he worked away diligently until he had made a beautiful pipe. He started playing, just like the Bald Minstrel. With the green pipe in his hands the air was cooler, the sun less scorching.

  ‘Father killed my Granny. What else could he do? As for Shevket Bey, it’s Old Halil who knows him well … Oh, how I wish I could see my Uncle Tashbash again. I’d make him a pipe too … Oh, I forgot! Uncle Tashbash isn’t my uncle any more, he’s our Lord Tashbash now and he lives with the Forty Holies up in the highlands where the cool springs smell of marjoram. The Forty Holies … They have long white beards and they never die. Our Lord Tashbash’s beard is white too now. That’s what everybody says. I don’t know … Only I wish he’d never become a saint. He’d be with us now and we wouldn’t have all these troubles. What’s he got out of being a saint, anyway? What good is a long white beard to him? … It’s Old Halil who killed Shevket Bey, I know. I saw him one night plunging a dagger into his breast and Shevket Bey crashed down like a huge tree. What did he do with the body? Hah-ha, use your heads! Old Halil, that master-thief, that deserter from the Yemen wars … He tied a rope round his neck and threw him into the weir. And now the fish have eaten him …’

  ‘That’s strange …’

  The sound of the pipe, now gay, now sad, floated far into the neighbouring fields. Everywhere people left off their work and stared, hands on hips, wondering what was happening in the Yalak villagers’ field.

  Batty Bekir’s wife was counting the men. Fifteen gendarmes … The first-lieutenant … That was sixteen. And six policemen, that made twenty-two. The three broad-hatted men … Twenty-five nights in all … She felt a strange distaste, a repulsion, a kind of shame. They were from another world.

  ‘Shevket Bey? He slept all the time. He took me by the hand and his hand was burning hot. He took me in his arms and my bones cracked. But still he slept. He slept all the time, even as we lay on the ground locked together. The sun rose and we plunged into the stream and still he slept. After that I never saw him again.’

  ‘That’s strange! Shevket Bey never slept at all …’

  The sun set. The earth gave out a caustic smell of corrosion. Mosquitoes arose in clouds. Arms swiped and flailed the air. Legs stamped and kicked, but it was no use. Nothing prevailed against their tearing sting.

  ‘Take these handcuffs off,’ Old Halil cried. ‘Set me free so I can do something about these mosquitoes. I wouldn’t murder a man. I may have done some thieving in my time. I may have deserted from the wars. I may lie, I may skip the namaz prayers and the Ramazan fast, but I wouldn’t kill a man.’

  ‘Old Halil wouldn’t kill a man,’ the villagers attested in chorus.

  They unlocked the handcuffs.

  ‘Quick,’ he shouted. ‘Gather dry stalks, sunflower stalks, cornstalks, anything, as much as you can, and bring them over there near the river.’

  Soon a tall fire was blazing away on the river-bank. They all drew near, braving the heat to get away from the mosquitoes.

  ‘That’s enough,’ the first-lieutenant said. ‘We’ve questioned everyone. It’s quite clear Shevket Bey never came this way. Let’s go quick or we’ll stifle to death.’

  They ran to their trucks, threw themselves in and were off almost at once.

  After them the broad-hatted men mounted their horses and rode away into the night. ‘Shevket Bey’s here all right,’ one of them said. ‘He must be here or they wouldn’t have paid us to look for him here …’

  Tonight their sleep would be calm and restful. The wind was growing stronger, getting the better of the mosquitoes.

  Memidik was dead tired. He tried to get up once or twice, but his bones hurt as though they had been beaten to pulp. Yet he had to get up. He had to go to the dry well. Today he had had a narrow escape. Allah or perhaps the Lord Tashbash had saved him. But the eagles were multiplying. More and more of them would come by tomorrow morning and then someone would surely think of looking into the dry well …

  And then he saw him, walking out of the cotton field with long strides, slightly bent. His heart gave a jump. He was on his feet at once and within fifty yards of the figure. It must be him … The man stopped and looked back. Memidik stopped too. The other walked on and Memidik followed. And so in the night, the man in front and Memidik behind, they came to the well. The man sat down on the stone trough and Memidik halted some distance away.

  In the sky eagles were gathering in ever greater number, their wings grazing each other. The night was filled with the sound of eagles’ wings.

  14

  Long Ali is in a bad way indeed, almost ready to believe, like everyone else, that he has killed his mother. She may easily have died up there all alone, after their hurried departure. A worm gnaws at his heart, and this is how he talks it over with his wife one moonlit night on the edge of the cotton field.

  He chewed the bitter, squashy cotton stalk that frothed like soap lather in his mouth and spat out the slithery suds. It gave him a strange satisfaction.

  The whole village was talking about him. No one, not even his close friends, would look him in the face now. If anyone did, it was with contempt or pity or disgust, as though he were a murderer or some k
ind of monster. The ostracized Muhtar egged them on, for though no one spoke to him they could not prevent him from speaking to them. After all, Tashbash had said nothing about shutting their ears to his voice … So Sefer spoke to everyone, and though he obtained no answer, not a single word, still he attained his end, he sowed doubt in people’s minds.

  Ali was afraid. The hostility against him was growing every day. Even people who never loved Meryemdje any more than they did the devil would burst into tears whenever her name was mentioned. And when was it not! A thousand and one rumours circulated about the terrible death he was supposed to have inflicted on his mother. Zaladja Woman had at least three dreams every night about Meryemdje’s death. No one, from seven to seventy, had the smallest doubt that Ali had indeed killed his mother.

  ‘Elif!’ he cried. ‘Elif, what have I done to them that they should do this to me?’

  Even Hassan and Ummahan were changed. In their eyes he thought he read the same reproach, the same hostility as in those of the other villagers. Only two pairs of eyes in the whole village still looked at him with sympathy and friendliness as in the past. One pair was Old Halil’s, peering like two buttons from under his white bushy brows, and the other Elif’s, large, pure, loyal and warm.

  Elif shared her husband’s grief. The deep worried lines of her face were visible even in the moonlight.

  ‘D’you think Mother will die up there all alone?’ Ali asked again.

  ‘Of course she won’t.’

  ‘Will the bread we left last long enough?’

  ‘She can make it last if she wants to.’

  ‘Will she be able to cook a meal for herself?’

  ‘She will if she wants to.’

  ‘What is there for her to cook?’

  ‘There are at least a dozen chickens running loose up there. If she catches one every day and cooks it …’

  ‘How can Mother catch chickens at her age?’

  ‘She can if she wants to.’

  ‘You know what I want more than anything in the world, Elif?’