The Undying Grass

by Yashar Kemal

  At that moment Ali rose and walked off towards the river. A burst of voices howled after him: ‘Catch him! He’s running away!’

  The villagers were on their feet as though impelled by a single spring. Ali broke into a run, but they had closed upon him in an instant. For a while nothing was to be seen but a dark teeming hill-like mass, furling and unfurling, again and again. There was no sound, save the squelch of the down-pouring rain. And then the crowd was gone and only the long body caked with mud was left there stretched out in all its length. Where had they all vanished to like that, all those people? Even Old Halil was amazed. He rushed up to Ali and leaned his ear to his breast.

  ‘They haven’t killed him,’ he whispered quickly to Elif. ‘He’s alive.’

  Hassan and Ummahan huddled close to each other, drained of tears and fear, and stared at the trampled figure that was their father.

  ‘Elif, come let’s lift him up. You take one arm and I’ll take the other. Quick, let’s get him to the hut and dry him.’

  Ali’s body was limp as a corpse’s and as heavy. As they bore him along Shirtless appeared. He waved Elif aside and took Ali’s arm.

  ‘Is he dead, Uncle Halil?’ he asked. There was grief in his voice. ‘Ah, he was a good man, Ali was … Fate …’ Shirtless had been in the fore of those who had jumped after Ali and dealt him the first blow. He was stricken with remorse now.

  ‘Fate found a good helper in your fist,’ Old Halil retorted. ‘That was a fine blow you dealt him! You’re to blame if anything happens to him.’

  They came to the hut only to find that it had been carried off by the wind.

  ‘This won’t do,’ Shirtless said. ‘Let’s take shelter under that planetree. We’ll set up a tent and light a fire.’

  They laid Ali down. He remained stretched out, senseless. The booming sound of waters flooding into the Jeyhan River filled the night. In a few hours Shirtless had a tent up beneath the planetree and a fire roaring in it. They cooked some tarhana soup and tried to make Ali swallow it. He was breathing with difficulty and never uttered a word.

  Shirtless sat watching over him till morning, while outside the rain poured down furiously and the torrents resounded through the night.

  26

  Memidik runs under the rain, never stopping once. And when he arrives what should he see! The Jeyhan River has burst its banks, flooding the ditches and fields. The rain is pelting down harder than ever. A dull haze envelops the earth rising from the ground, and Memidik begins his search under the rain.

  Memidik sank down on to the mud.

  ‘It must have been here,’ he said to himself and looked about him, but the rain screened everything that was not within a foot of his face. ‘We’d found a good field, with cotton in plenty to pick. We would have paid back Adil Effendi and have had money left over to spare. Not in fifteen years had we had such good fortune. And now this rain’ll play hell with us … I can’t even find my corpse! What shall I do?’

  He rose, trying to remember the exact place. There had been a young mulberry-shoot nearby with blackberry shrubs all around. He darted from bush to bush, crossed the bed of a torrent which was full to the brim, climbed up the bank and on past thickets of blackthorns and burdocks and then he came upon it. A few coloured rags had been tied to the blackberry shrub. At once he saw that the grave had been flooded. It was empty and half-filled with water. He jumped into it, groped about everywhere, but the corpse was gone.

  He was surprised at the wave of relief that swept over him. ‘A good thing it rained like this! A good thing I didn’t go to the commandant … Wouldn’t he have asked, where’s the body then, eh, Memidik?’

  He sat down on the edge of the hollow. A great load had been lifted off his shoulders. Zeliha rose before his eyes and he dallied with her in a day-dream. How lucky he’d been. If it hadn’t been for the rain and the flood, he would have been saddled with that body for ever, he would never have got rid of that wretched Shevket Bey. What would he have done if this rain hadn’t come to his rescue? How could he have disposed of the body when it was time to go back to the village?

  He smiled to himself. The body? Why, he’d have thrown it to the dogs, what else! Why should he worry about the old thing? … But had it really gone? What if it had got stuck in a bush down there? Ah, that bane of his life, that miserable Shevket Bey would never leave him be so easily …

  His hands sinking into the mud, he picked himself up. His body felt as though it had been beaten in a mortar and his back ached. He began to walk down the bank of the river looking behind every bush and tree, rummaging in every hollow.

  The Jeyhan River rushed on, red and angry, carrying with it a whole world of debris and litter, uprooted trees and bark, grass, stones, earth … A heavy acrid odour of mud rose to Memidik’s nostrils. The river always smelt like this in times of flood, a sharp musty odour of swamp and rotting vegetation. A few ox carcasses drifted along, capsized on their backs, bloated, with rigid upstretched legs. All about them the water was strewn with hay and pine-bark and red foaming bubbles. They flowed by, out of sight.

  ‘That’s how Shevket Bey must have been carried away,’ Memidik murmured. ‘All swollen like that, his arms and legs quite stiff, right down to the sea …’

  The river was rising. It was overflowing its banks. Under the driving rain Memidik stood and watched the surging waters. If the rain did not let up, all the neighbouring fields and villages, the greater part of the plain would be flooded by that evening. As the raindrops hit the red waters of the river thousands of tiny blobs spurted up, studding the surface with endlessly swelling and bursting bubbles.

  Memidik opened his hands. ‘Well, that’s the end of it,’ he said. ‘Our corpse has gone. He’s left us and gone …’ A deep lancinating sorrow took hold of him. He was left forlorn, under the rain, on the Chukurova plain without a friend to turn to. A hollow emptiness settled in his heart like some poisonous dregs. He felt a loss. Something was missing that he could not do without. He searched and searched, but could not find what it might be. His legs dragged him on farther down the river. His eyes, now on this bank, now on that, scanned the waters insistently. All at once the cause of the nagging emptiness in him flashed upon his mind and he began to run. He ran like mad from tree to bush to hollow. He ran to every shadowy form he saw, only to discover it was the carcass of a donkey, an ox, a goat, or else a basket or a log, anything but the body he was longing to find again.

  Darkness fell. The night was pitch-black, unrelieved by the slightest glimmer of light. His stomach ringing with hunger, Memidik still plodded on down the river through the fields, under the rain, listening to the awesome rumble of the waters.

  The Jeyhan River flows out to the Mediterranean Sea. If it doesn’t throw up the body on to some bank or other, it’ll carry it right to the sea and there the fish will make short work of it, bones and all. That’ll be the end of Shevket Bey, the real death …

  Day dawned and still it rained. Memidik came to a village. It was quite empty, half-submerged under the flood waters. Its inhabitants must have fled and taken refuge on a nearby hill. Memidik went through the houses. In one of them he found some bread and a large bowl of yogurt which he gulped down instantly. He lit a fire and dried himself. He longed to lie down and sleep but he knew that if he slept now he would not be able to wake up for three days. He went out again into the rain. The red waters of the Jeyhan, loaded with pots and pans and baskets, with straw and bark and trees, their roots in the air, had risen still higher. The plain was like a great sea now.

  All through that day he walked on, following the banks of the river. Towards evening the rain stopped and the sun came out, and a rainbow, all its seven colours perfectly clear, spanned the sky from the Gavur Mountains to the Gülek Pass. The encircling hills were suddenly very close, as though he could have held out his hand and touched them. And then all at once the Chukurova was plunged in a thick cloud-like haze.

  The mud was knee-deep, but soft as water, and Mem
idik sploshed through quite easily. He went on for about a mile and came upon a village. There again, he found bread and ate it. He lit a fire. He had chosen a sturdy two-storied building. The water had risen over a yard high on the ground floor. The rain’s stopped now, Memidik thought. This house will stand up to the flood. He cooked himself some tarhana soup and drank it piping hot. From the closet he brought down a thick mattress, then selected a pink-flowered quilt and a pillow, also pink-flowered. He undressed and laid out his clothes to dry before the fire. It was cold. When he slept the empty feeling was still there inside him, tenacious, inexorable.

  At the first ray of light he woke up and felt that unbearable heavy emptiness still in his heart. He rose at once and went to the road. The waters had ebbed away a little and the flat plain lay shimmering in a coat of red mud. He was going back the way he had come with a dim hope that the body had got caught somewhere and that he had missed it.

  The sun came up red-hot, and a muddy, sticky, stifling day began, the nauseous, viscid aftermath of rain in the Chukurova. A thick murky haze spread through the plain and Memidik walked through it, weary, his body strange and alien, wrapped in a dream, only half awake. He had seen Tashbash again. The seven balls of light, like seven tall poplars, were dancing in his wake. He was treading over the bright waters of the flooded plain. And behind him, bathed in light, thousands of soft-eyed gazelles, thousands of fluttering white doves, turtle-doves, eagles, kingfishers, starlings, storks, all the birds of heaven … With the gazelles were wolves and jackals, bears, deer, leopards, all the animals in the world. And horses, beautiful Arab horses, bays, chestnuts, blacks, iron-greys … Riderless, free … All bathed in light. Brilliant gaudy beetles, huge butterflies tall as a man with great open wings, yellow, green, blue, orange, red, white, drowning the sky in a glittering splendour of light and colour. And in the midst of this teeming multitude our Lord Tashbash walks the Chukurova plain. His smile is like the light. He is real, not a dream. He comes to stand before Memidik, smiling a refulgent smile of light.

  ‘Memidik!’

  ‘My Lord!’

  ‘I am pleased with the villagers. They did not speak to him. Tell them I am pleased. As for Shevket Bey, his body has been swept out to sea. The fish have eaten it. He had to die, for of what use is a living man who sleeps all the time? You are not to worry.’

  ‘I won’t, my Lord Tashbash.’

  ‘And now, Memidik, listen to what I have to tell you.’

  ‘Your word is my law, Lord Tashbash.’

  ‘You must kill that heathen. As long as he lives, you are dead. And so am I.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘My eye is upon you. My hand is your hand. Give me your hand.’

  Memidik held out his hand.

  ‘Shevket Bey had to be killed. It was I brought him to you. And now you will kill Sefer and throw his body into the well. You will do it on the last day, before you return from the Chukurova. Nobody will see you. No one will have the slightest suspicion.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Memidik, I have given you my hand. With this hand of mine you will kill Muhtar Sefer. The hand that kills him will be mine.’

  ‘Your hand, my Lord Tashbash …’

  ‘And Zeliha is waiting for you. She loves you. She doesn’t understand why you will not look at her. She doesn’t know that you cannot look her in the face, or anyone else, unless Sefer is dead. So kill him. Then take Zeliha’s hand and lead her into your house. This winter you’ll catch lots of martens and make a lot of money. For my hand is your hand now … You can tell the others that you have seen me. But tell no one that I have given you my hand, that you are going to kill Muhtar Sefer! Tell my villagers that one day I shall return and bring God’s plenty to the village. I shall bring them happiness and well-being. There will be no more sickness and ill-health, poverty and dissension. No more tyranny. No humiliations … I shall bring about the brotherhood of men. Tell them I shall come back to my village one day. I shall come again. One day … One day …’

  It was like the first day of Creation. A festival for all the creatures of this earth … Smiling gently in the midst of this bright teeming fluttering multitude, Tashbash glided away towards the Mediterranean Sea, followed by his seven balls of light. His garments were holy green, such a green the world had never seen …

  ‘I shall bring friendship. No one will be poor and miserable any more. No one will go unclothed and naked. I shall bring Halil Ibrahim’s plenty …’

  A light blazed over the Mediterranean and for a long while the white cumulus clouds were illuminated with a radiant glow.

  Drunk with fatigue, swaying on his feet, Memidik came to the field. The villagers were squatting before their huts, idle, motionless, silent. He saw their eyes turn to him, dazed, staring. Memidik smiled, but there was no answering smile from anyone. There they sat, their wet clothes stuck to their bodies, their heads a tangled mess, drying themselves in the sun. They had spread out their cotton to dry and a sharp, damp, sweaty odour pervaded the field. The earth, the cotton plants, the sun, the river, everyone, everything steamed under the sun. A long cloud hung over the river all the way down to the Mediterranean.

  This time Memidik’s mother let fly. ‘Where’ve you been, you wretched so-called hunter? Where, tell me, you sow’s spawn? Leaving your old mother all alone in the wilds of the Chukurova plain in the rain and the flood …’

  But Memidik only smiled contentedly, mysteriously, as though he held a great secret that he would not divulge. ‘I saw him,’ was all he said. ‘It was to me again that he showed himself. He was smiling, a smile of light.’

  ‘Here’s some soup, you miserable hunter,’ his mother said. ‘Eat. You must be hungry.’

  Memidik plunged his spoon into the bowl, smiling. ‘I saw him …’

  People were gathering about him.

  ‘Who did you see?’ his mother asked.

  But Memidik only smiled.

  A murmur came from the villagers: ‘Who did he see?’

  ‘Who did you see?’ his mother repeated.

  They all waited expectantly.

  ‘I saw him,’ was all they could get out of Memidik. He drank up his soup quickly and, pillowing a canvas sack under his head, went to sleep on the spot.

  The crowd swelled. ‘What’s happened? What’s the matter?’ each newcomer asked. And the answer came, given with a knowing, secretive smile just like Memidik had done: ‘Memidik’s seen him. He’s seen him again!’

  27

  Long before sunrise they are all there, an anxious group around the sleeping Memidik. Their clothes are rumpled and mud-caked. They do not speak at all. Their hands stuck into their breasts, they sit huddled up, as though at a wake, waiting for whatever comfort Memidik has in store for them.

  The Bald Minstrel was a man who kept to himself. He was not one to meddle in other people’s business and he always avoided crowds. But for his songs and minstrelsy he might not have been in the village at all. Today, his eyes wide as saucers, trembling with excitement, he waited with the others at Memidik’s side. He paced up and down, rubbing his hands, he bent over him, listening to his deep peaceful breathing, he could not keep still. In the end he knelt down. ‘Wake up, Memidik, son,’ he said. ‘Wake up, Allah’s favoured servant, and give us tidings of our Lord Tashbash, blessed be he among the saints … Wake up!’

  He stroked Memidik’s head gently. Memidik opened his eyes once, then closed them again. The rumpled, bedraggled, mud-caked crowd was silent and motionless. Their eyes were fixed on Memidik. The dense haze that lay over the Chukurova plain like a white cloud began to lift. The tree-tops soared above the haze and the woodswamp swam in a strange misty lake.

  Suddenly Memidik opened his eyes and looked about him in a dazed way. Then, as though shot from a bow, he jumped to his feet, ready to run. But the villagers were all around him, watching. He smiled uncertainly and went to the water barrel which was strapped to a cart nearby. He washed his face and dried it with his dirty cru
mpled handkerchief. It was still damp and his face stayed wet.

  The cotton in the field had all been flattened to the ground. Here and there a few bolls remained on their stalks, but grimed with mud. It would be torture to gather cotton in the Chukurova now. Take the soiled cotton, clean it, pile it into baskets and then sell it at half-price! A hopeless job. And today and tomorrow there would be no picking at all. It would be at least two days before the earth dried. Even the hot Chukurova sun was not enough to dry the earth before that after such a rain.

  At last Memidik realized what was happening and he revelled in the thought that all these people had been waiting there all through the night, on tenterhooks, for him to wake up. What a marvellous thing to happen! How he wished he could keep them dancing attendance like this for three, four days! But alas, he himself could not hold out that long. No matter, this was enough, this glory …

  First he squatted down on the straw mat and drank the hot steaming tarhana soup his mother had brought him. He plied his spoon slowly, deliberately, without even a glance at the crowd that was waiting with Job-like patience. Then he got to his feet. For a long time he gazed at them and they stared back silently. The Bald Minstrel broke from the circle and took three steps towards him. Memidik looked up into the air and saw the eagle hovering above with shimmering wings. What a huge giant of an eagle he was …

  ‘Well, huntsman, are you going to speak or not? All these people have been hanging on your lips since last night while you lay there farting in your sleep! Tell us what you saw.’

  Memidik’s eyes swept the crowd and came to rest on Muhtar Sefer. He was standing a little apart from the others, his teeth clenched, his face contorted with fury. Memidik spoke quickly and his tone implied: Take that, you low-down wretch!

  ‘I saw our Lord Tashbash,’ he began. He hawked and spat forcefully at the muddy steaming ground. ‘May I be struck blind, may these two eyes of mine drop down before me if it wasn’t our Lord Tashbash himself, the saint of saints, the sultan of the world. His eyes flashed defiance at the muhtar. ‘I had gone for a walk, when the rain caught me. It began to pour, but I could not stop. What force was it that pulled my feet along, what hand that led me? I ran, I flew, my feet scarcely touched the ground. I never stopped, I did not get tired. Swiftly I made my way down the Jeyhan River towards the sea. The rain came down in sheets, the Jeyhan rushed along, swollen and red. Night fell and I heard a great booming voice that reverberated from earth to heaven. A salt-tanged wind was blowing in my face. I opened my eyes, and the Mediterranean Sea stretched before me, its angry waves surging high as a minaret, rolling at the shore and beating against the night. With each breaking wave the earth shook as in an earthquake. The rain stopped, the wind dropped, the sea was suddenly smooth and motionless, slumbering … Yes, that’s how the world changed in an instant. And then I looked and saw lights springing out of the centre of the waters. I counted them. Forty balls of light, each one as tall as the tallest poplar, gliding swiftly towards me over the sea. I looked up into the sky. It was alive with thousands of birds, ten thousand, a hundred thousand, as many as you could count. I looked again and saw all the creatures of the earth, wolves, gazelles, deers, jackals, horses, camels, bees and insects. Count them if you can! All the creatures of the earth thronging after the forty balls of light! They drew nearer and nearer and lined up on the shore, and the world became as bright as if forty suns had dawned. Then with a great crack the sky was rent asunder and the sea split in two. A long narrow streak of light began to widen and I threw myself face down on the ground. I opened my eyes again and saw that the forty poplar-tall balls of light had also prostrated themselves, and so had all the birds and beasts around them. Not a breath, not a sound, not even the buzzing of a fly. And then, drifting out of the bright cleft that parted the skies, I saw our Lord Tashbash with his long glowing beard and his robes of green light. He came to me and laid his hand on my head. His smile was like the light. Rise, Memidik, he said, taking me by the hand. And the forty poplar-tall balls of light also rose up with me. The birds began to flutter again and all the creatures of the earth lifted up their heads. Go, Memidik, he said, and tell my villagers that I shall send to them the Lord Halil Ibrahim’s plenty. They will never know want and poverty again. Wherever I walk on this earth man will not kill man. They will be like brothers … Like brothers … I shall make this world a paradise for them. He who has no paradise in this world will have none at all in the next. Go now and say to my villagers that I shall come back one day and that when I return men will never suffer want and poverty again … And I saw that he was going away, our Lord Tashbash, leaving me alone on the wide plain. I stretched out my hand, but met only with empty air. His voice came from very far: Wait for me. I shall come back one day, Memidik, he called. The forty balls of light gleamed like forty bright stars from way over on the slopes of the Gavur Mountains and in front of them our Lord was shining a hundred times brighter. Yes, with these very eyes I saw him. Wait for me, he said. I shall come again …’