The Undying Grass

by Yashar Kemal

  ‘Yes, I have become a holy man now, Hassan,’ Tashbash replied.

  ‘And you have gone up into the Holy Mountain?’

  ‘I haven’t, but I will.’

  ‘And do you wear silver-embroidered robes of green?’

  ‘I don’t, but I will.’

  ‘Haven’t the Forty Holies chosen you for their leader?’

  ‘They haven’t, but they will.’

  ‘But you do roam the earth with seven thousand balls of light behind you?’

  ‘No, but I will.’

  ‘They say that you hold sway over the birds and beasts, the blowing wind and the falling rain, the ant and the creeping serpent …’

  ‘I shall hold sway over them one day.’

  ‘That you speak the tongue of every living creature …’

  ‘I shall learn to do so.’

  Hassan sighed.

  ‘What is it, my Hassan?’ Tashbash asked. ‘Why are you sighing so?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Hassan said.

  ‘Tell me, boy. You can tell your holy uncle everything.’

  Hassan took his hand. ‘Before you learn to do all these things the villagers will kill you. They’ll tear you to pieces.’ He burst into tears. ‘I know, I heard them. They’re terribly afraid of you. After the gendarmes took you away they didn’t sleep for nights on end. They sat up by the fireside talking about you, waiting for your return. Then, that huge whiskered Corporal Jumali came and told us you’d turned into a blazing ball of light and had flown up into the heavens. So people were still more afraid. Granny said to Ummahan, and Ummahan told me when we were up in the forest, that she hoped you would never come back. She said that if you did the villagers would kill you.’

  ‘And why would they kill me? Did your granny say why?’

  Hassan considered this while Tashbash waited impatiently. Then he found what he was searching for. ‘Granny says that it’s fear. If they get to fear a man so, they’ll kill him in the end, even if he’s a saint. And they’re all frightened to death of you …’

  Tashbash lowered his voice. ‘I haven’t seen your granny. Where is she?’

  Hassan put his mouth to his ear. ‘Father killed Granny,’ he whispered. ‘She was very old. Her legs would not bear her any longer. She could never have walked down to the Chukurova. So Father pressed her neck a little while she slept. But you mustn’t tell anyone I told you so, will you? And you won’t forget that you’re still my Uncle Tashbash even though you are a saint, will you?’

  ‘I won’t tell anyone,’ Tashbash promised. ‘What a good, proud, generous woman she was, Meryemdje! God rest her soul.’

  ‘God rest her soul,’ Hassan echoed.

  There was a long silence between them. The mountain peaks had begun to whiten. Hassan broke the silence at last.

  ‘You have gone through a lot, Uncle Tashbash,’ he said.

  ‘A lot,’ Tashbash said.

  ‘And you’ve no money. One can see that.’

  ‘I haven’t, that’s true.’

  ‘Then take this. There are twenty boxes of matches in here. You can get a lot of money for them and buy yourself cigarettes. I’m giving them to you. What would I do with matches after this and you need them more than I.’ He held out the nylon bag. Tashbash could find no way to refuse.

  ‘Thank you, Hassan,’ he said. Then a lump rose in his throat and he could not say another word. Tears were flowing down his face. He clasped Hassan in his arms. His heart was warm with a feeling of love he had never known before. This moment was enough to make a man happy for a lifetime.

  ‘Uncle Tashbash, please be careful. They’ve done nothing but watch you in secret since you arrived. They’re so afraid, it’s making them mad. You will be careful, won’t you?’

  Tashbash pressed him to his breast. ‘Dear crazy boy!’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll look after myself.’

  Voices rose from the wattle-huts. Fires flared up here and there and the mountain peaks began to glow.

  A large giant of a flower spread its orange leaves over the green mossy edge of the marsh, diffusing a strange unfamiliar scent. It was so wide a man could not have joined his arms about it. Bees flitted into the orange-pollened corolla and vanished in its depths. The orange leaves glistened and oozed with drops of sweat. A bright, amber honey-bee buzzed out of the corolla, hovered above it an instant to find its bearings, then tensed its red-veined wings and flew off. A spring bubbled out from the roots of a planetree. Bright and cool, it gurgled over the white pebbles and caught the orange glow of the huge flower. Dragonflies in a deathlike trance dotted the pebbly bed of the spring with their shadows. Like lightning one of the dragonflies shot out to the far end of the water, followed by another that had also been lying deathly still with its long slim legs inert over the water. As the dragonflies came and went the pebbles were crisscrossed with myriad thread-like shadows straight as though traced with a ruler.

  The droning grew louder about the big flower. Hundreds of bees swarmed into the corolla, their shimmering wings aquiver … A verdant haze hung over the distant rice-paddy that was bursting with freshness. Then a cloud of dust drifted in and smothered the greenness. The air smelled of marsh and of the strange-scented flower, of burdock and petrol, of scorched stubble, dried grass, sweat and dust and stagnant water.

  Memidik’s head whirled.

  From the far end of the plain a slow-moving cloud-shadow was creeping along the fields of cotton, the harvested stubble-strewn land, the sunflowers, the sesame plants and the orange orchards. Up in the sky the cloud was motionless, edged with brilliant light, but its shadow inched on imperceptibly over the plain where the long-legged storks strolled at leisure. A dense heat-haze shimmered over the Anavarza crags and the Akchasaz swamp.

  Memidik breathed hard. He was sweating.

  ‘Don’t, Zeliha. I can’t face you. I have a good reason not to. Don’t, please don’t press me …’

  He says the words but do his lips move, does a sound come from his mouth? Memidik does not know. He is in a magic dream when she is near him. The full firm breasts heaving gently, the large jet-black eyes, the shadow of the long lashes over the narrow sunburnt face … Her eyes grow misty as she looks at him. Tall and slender, she walks like a young gazelle. So lovely …

  With an effort he rose and walked away from her, almost at a run. He looked back and there she was, coming after him. He crossed the Karabujak marsh and came to Dry Jeyhan, a long wide hollow where the river used to flow before it had changed its bed. Here the earth was a maze of cracks with clumps of mauve-flowering camelthorns, a bright sun-drenched mauve. A stream of molten steel-mauve flowed through the dry river-bed, glinting, blinding to the eyes. The leaden cloud-shadow came to rest awhile over this molten flow. The sunny colour of the camelthorns changed. The mauve became darker and softer. It stopped flowing. Then the cloud moved on and the sun-drenched molten steel-mauve of the Dry Jeyhan flashed on again faster than ever.

  Memidik’s feet were bare. At every step, he jerked his foot away quickly from the ground which was as hot as glowing embers. He seemed to be performing some strange halay dance. Zeliha’s gait was the same. The hot Chukurova earth obliges all who go barefoot to walk by fits and starts just as though they are dancing the halay.

  An enormous snake slithered into the camelthorns. Another followed it with a large frog clamped in its fangs. Both snakes were more than three yards long and their colour as mauve as the camelthorns. Their backs glistened brightly.

  ‘Don’t come, Zeliha,’ Memidik said in a moan, and plunged into the thornbushes. His legs were torn and bleeding. ‘I have a reason, a good reason. Don’t come near me now. One day I shall come to you.’ His eyes became slits. His lips closed tight. ‘When I see you I feel like sinking to the bottom of the earth. My bones ache again. He is tearing at my flesh and I am pissing blood. I cannot touch you, Zeliha, however much I burn for you. Why should you look on me as a man when nobody else does? That Muhtar Sefer stripped me of my manhood, Zeliha. I
cannot touch you until I get it back.’

  Far in the distant sky the eagle was nothing but a black speck tracing ever-widening, barely perceptible circles.

  At the far end of the Dry Jeyhan a huge planetree stretched its lofty branches into the sky. As Memidik stopped to rest under its shade, Zeliha caught up with him.

  Evening came. The sun sank. Memidik was behind the hill down which the Jeyhan River flowed before widening out into the plain. Willow-trees grew all the way to the gushing spring at the foot of the hill. Where the pebbles spread out, gleaming and polished, over the flat land, there were tamarisks and fragrant chaste-trees. Blue-flowering marjoram, man-high, abounded at the head of the spring, and sent out their aroma wave after wave into the path yards away.

  Memidik washed his face at the cool spring and lay down on his back. The world about him was all a soft blue now. The sky, the marjoram, the strewn pebbles, the hill, the water, the earth, the trees and grass, the clouds, the dust suspended in the air, everything was a soft velvety violet blue. Zeliha came and washed her face too. She lay down and took his hand. His body came alive then, and caught fire. His weariness dropped off. He turned and kissed her. And suddenly in the deepening blue of the evening they had shed their clothes. Memidik touched her hip. A wild tremor shot through her body. He took her in his arms. Their bodies twined and joined in an ecstasy of passion, then sank back utterly spent and the crushed marjoram exuded a sharper fragrance. They began to tremble again. Spasmodic tremors shook their burning bodies as they came together once more in a long embrace. Three times they were united, tense and trembling, fused into one single body by their love. And three times they fell back exhausted, feather-light, over the crushed fragrant marjoram. Their sweat dried.

  Memidik was suddenly overwhelmed with shame. ‘Zeliha, forgive me,’ he said. ‘I let myself be carried away by my love for you. I shouldn’t have touched you. I’m not worthy of you, nor of anyone else. I’ll never be a man until I take back my manhood from Muhtar Sefer.’

  ‘Take it then! I’ll wait for you. I’ll wait till I’m a hundred years old.’

  The racking pain in his bones, the sting of the old wounds, the twinging ache in his groin … He felt it all again agonizingly.

  ‘Worse than death … I nearly took my revenge … But it was another …’

  He leapt to his feet and fled down the bank and along the river. He looked back but she had not followed him. She was still lying there naked on the bed of marjoram, panting, quivering, longing for Memidik’s return. ‘Memidik, love me,’ she moaned. ‘Oh, Memidik, love me.’

  He climbed up the bank to the road and saw the three galloping horsemen. They were longer and bigger in the night, three giants who drew up and dismounted beside him.

  Memidik smiled. ‘Have you found him?’

  ‘Not yet, but we will.’

  ‘He floated off down the river … Huge in the moonlight … Green flies frozen steel-like over him.’ Memidik’s lips barely moved.

  ‘We’ve got to find him.’

  ‘The Chukurova’s burning …’

  ‘The horses are tired. Their bits are white with lather.’

  ‘We must ford the river. And quickly too.’

  ‘It’s going to rain again … And still no sign of Shevket Bey. Where can he be?’

  They mounted their horses and rode off across the dark waters of the Jeyhan River, vanishing into a cloud.

  The river flowed brown and turbid in the first light of day. Small, white clouds rested on its surface and drifted along with the waters. Ethereal in the morning light, on and on they floated, never ending.

  All over the plain the smoke of the labourers’ fires began to rise, long and thin, tapering out high into the sky.

  The Bald Minstrel towered in the night like a sheer mountain, perfectly still. His face was longer, a maze of bitter wrinkles.

  The giant flower waxed larger, more orange.

  The night was bright. At each step you took you left a pool of light. Everything around you was bright. It rained but it was a rain of light, not the soaking rain we know. A light divided the darkness, it cut across the mountains and the night Your brow was furrowed. You were deep in thought. Th villagers came and thronged about you. Save us, they pleaded. A thousand years we have been slaves, pinioned and fettered … We passed through fields and orchards and entered the woods, a thousand lights blazing behind us, a thousand fulgurant flares, and as we went everything about us burst into bloom. The world was shedding its old skin. It was being born anew, a fresh sparkling brand-new world created only that very morning. The crops fruited and the stalks could hardly bear the plump ears of the long black-spiked wheat. Hives, rock cavities, ancient tree hollows brimmed with sun-bright amber honey. Each hive sent out five new colonies and every bough was a flurry of thousands of vibrant wings. Honeyed figs, fat pomegranates burst open, their seeds a crystal-red. The earth all tilled and friendly … The fecund land lying open and sweating … The people happy. No more going barefoot, no more malaria. An end to oppression. Nobody to beat you till you passed blood, to humiliate you, to take away your manhood. We crossed the mountains as if they had not been there at all and came to a burning desert. Just a small, wispy cloud in the sky and it cast its shadow over us. For your sake, in homage to you … That’s how I saw you. The desert turned into verdant meadows with tinkling brooks.

  ‘I am not the first to strive for you. The first to be born. How many times have you seen me! How many times …’

  Of a dawntime you walked over the waters of the Mediterranean. You became wind and streamed through the air. You became cloud and floated through the heavens. Myself I saw you with these eyes. A sloe-eyed gazelle lay weeping at your feet. Run, sloe-eyed gazelle, you said.

  They uprooted the trees, emptied the branches of birds, and the skies too. They dried up the waters and brought sickness to mankind. Then you came with the light blazing behind you, tall as a minaret.

  ‘I was not the first to appear, the first to be born. You have seen me many times.’

  In the forest we lost our way and the villagers killed you. But after a little while they raised you from the dead. With these eyes of mine I saw it.

  ‘I was not the first to die, to be born again …’

  The Bald Minstrel’s face lengthened, its deep furrows spread all down his body … Once upon a time the world was not. There were no heavens, no earth, no seas. No birds and beasts, no men and women, not even the jinn and peris, no one, nothing. You and me were yet to be. There was no night, no day. Nothing at all. Only the root of darkness, which is the root of light. Nothing else, nothing, nothing at all.

  One side of the Minstrel’s face became dark, the other was still light. His voice flared out, wave after wave, over the plain, louder and louder, awesome, clamant. There were no sounds then … The Anavarza crags resounded … The crags did not exist either. Only the light, that glaring dazzling single ball of light, no bigger than a fist. Ten million years, a hundred million, a million million years it floated in the void, the void that did not exist.

  Three of the saz’s six strings snapped. The instrument dropped from the Minstrel’s hands. Clouds drifted down close to the ground.

  ‘I saw you. May my two eyes drop down before me if I didn’t …’

  ‘Brother, you’ve seen me many times. Many, many times …’

  Memidik sank to the ground weeping. His old wounds stung, his bones ached. He grasped Tashbash’s hand. ‘It was you, I know. With my own eyes I saw you.’

  The Bald Minstrel sang the lay of the empty universe once more.

  Tashbash was dazed.

  Memidik stood by the giant flower. It glistened more brightly, more orange than ever.

  ‘Have you never seen me at all, Memidik?’

  It was raining, pouring. Yet as you walked under the rain not a drop touched you. The dusty path on which you trod was quite dry … With these very eyes … I swear it …

  ‘Have you never never seen me, looked at m
e?’

  A herd of untamed horses, hundreds of them running wild in the plain. Nobody could get near them. Yet they came to you one by one and stood there beside you.

  ‘Have you never looked on me, seen me before?’

  The spring that gushed out of the rock at a flick of your finger, ice-cold, white as milk … With these very eyes …

  ‘Have you seen nothing, nothing?’

  One pomegranate you plucked from its bough, half open. You opened it to the full and a whole village ate of its seed and still there was more …

  ‘Never, never …’

  Quilts and pillows of softest birds’ feathers …

  ‘Never, never? …’

  The huge giant flower glistened, its orange deepened. The bees swarmed in hundreds about its corolla, a scintillation of wings.

  Evening came. The sun sank.

  ‘Never, never …’

  The Bald Minstrel’s arms opened out like wings into the dusk, then closed again. His hand thumped once on the saz like a blow.

  Memidik took his hand, kissed it and put it to his brow.

  The huge giant flower glowed out its bright orange colour and dropped into the void, solitary.

  33

  Meryemdje wrestles with her fears and with the stars too. And Spellbound Ahmet … She remembers a famous brigand of old. At dawn the speckled cock crows three times and three answering crows float in from the neighbouring village.

  Evening came and the sun set. Meryemdje took some of the dry yufka bread from the flat wicker basket and softened it with water. There was still a good half of the bread Elif had left her, more than enough until they came back. The bulgur pilaff was simmering over the fire. Meryemdje took an onion and broke it open with her fist, the only way to take the edge off it. Cut it with a knife and the onion is uneatable.

  Meryemdje had had nothing all day, only some yalabuk from the pine-barks in the forest. The yalabuk kept up her strength and she liked to while away the time in the forest. She was very hungry now. There was no butter left, but no matter, she plunged her spoon into the dry bulgur pilaff.