by Yashar Kemal
Two large tears rolled down his cheeks and into his collar. He looked at Meryemdje’s face and the tears flowed down more quickly. ‘Tomorrow,’ he thought. ‘Tomorrow morning she won’t be here any more, the little Mother, smiling like a babe in her sleep …’
Just then Meryemdje woke up. ‘Omer, my child!’ she exclaimed and clasped him in her arms. ‘My good brave lad, what’s wrong? You’re in trouble and you never told me! What is it? What’s making you weep like that in the grey dawn? Tell your Mother Meryemdje. I’ll do everything to help you, my child, everything …’
Somehow he could not stop his tears. Then he pulled himself together and gave a forced smile. ‘It’s nothing, my good sweet Mother,’ he said. ‘Nothing …’
Still smiling fixedly he wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve.
Meryemdje looked at him sternly and hurried down from the roof. She washed her face and tidied up her hair. Then she waited for Omer to come down. ‘It’s no use,’ she told him, taking the little finger of his right hand. ‘You’re going to tell me what’s worrying you and together, the two of us, we’ll think out something. Don’t say no, because you will. I won’t let go of you till you do. I’ll pester you day and night until I find out what made you cry. Now come on, child, tell your Mother, tell her and see if she won’t find a way to drive away your sorrow … Either you kill me or you tell me.’
Omer laughed. ‘I’ll tell you tonight, Mother,’ he promised. ‘I’m going hunting now, so let me go. Tonight at midnight you’ll know.’ He drew his hand from hers and walked off towards the forest. ‘You stay here today, Mother dear. Make us a good large fire, for I’m going to bring back partridges and mushrooms and lots of yalabuk. And at midnight I’ll tell you everything.’
‘All right then, go my child,’ Meryemdje called after him. ‘Good hunting!’
For the first time she thought about Omer and his untimely coming to the village. She had been so overjoyed at his arrival that it had never occurred to her to ask him a single question. But now she began to wonder. Why had he left the Chukurova, this lad, when the picking was in full swing? What evil had come upon him? Was he in hiding? In trouble with the authorities?
‘Ah,’ she blamed herself, ‘fool woman that you are! Never once asking the lad if anything’s wrong … He, of course, couldn’t say anything. And now he’s hurt. That’s it, he’s hurt and won’t speak any more. His pride won’t let him. Ah, you stupid, fool woman, Meryemdje!’ She was so vexed and angry with herself she felt like tearing her hair. ‘Hard-hearted Meryemdje,’ she cried. ‘It’s a stone you’ve got here, not a heart … But I’ll get it out of him yet,’ she said obstinately. ‘Pride or not … And I’ll help, oh yes I will. I’ll sacrifice myself for my Omer, I will. Sacrifice myself …’
Omer returned in the afternoon with three partridges and a basketful of large mushrooms. He was grinning, pleased with himself. ‘I laid a snare for them and they fell for it in no time. And just look at these mushrooms! They’re always very big at the foot of that rock. Come, Mother, let’s pluck the birds and … But you haven’t got the fire ready … All right, I’ll do it.’
Meryemdje barred his way, firm as a rock. ‘I’m not stirring from here until you tell me what’s been worrying you.’ She seized him by the collar. ‘Tell me now, Omer dear, and I’ll find a way. I’ll give my life to help you … Now look, if you don’t confide in me I won’t touch those partridges of yours. I’d rather die of hunger. Ah, stupid head of mine! How is it I never realized you must be in trouble! And in bad trouble too …’
The partridges lay there on the ground, the mushrooms in the basket, the yalabuk in its pieces of bark, but Meryemdje would not budge. Omer saw that there was no escape. She would not yield. It was growing dark.
‘Well, Mother, I’m going to tell you what it is,’ he said. ‘But there’s nothing you can do about it.’
‘We’ll see,’ she snapped.
‘Mother,’ he began, ‘you know Bedriyé. Well, I’m in love with her. Madly. But her parents will not give her to me. I was so sick at heart I didn’t know what I was doing. I found myself up in the mountains, walking to the village. And then I saw you. We all thought you were dead. So, you see, you saved me really. That’s all. This morning I thought of Bedriyé. I thought that she will never never be mine, and so I cried. Who’d give his daughter to an orphan, a nobody like me?’
Meryemdje was relieved. ‘Bedriyé will be yours, my child,’ she said calmly. “Your Mother Meryemdje will see to that. I’ll tackle her father and see he gets whatever he wants, money, cattle … Or else we’ll take the girl by force. You’re not an orphan. You’re Meryemdje’s own son. Now, don’t give it another thought. I’ll have your wedding festivities going full swing as soon as the village is back. Bedriyé will be yours.’
Omer’s heart thrilled with pleasure. ‘Oh, Mother, d’you think so?’
He built up a huge fire and Meryemdje plucked the partridges, washed and salted them, talking all the time.
‘Look what the lad’s worrying about! Call that a worry? Well, I wish everyone had troubles as easily solved. Yes, Omer dear, you just watch and see how your Mother Meryemdje will get you your Bedriyé as smoothly as drawing a hair from a pat of butter.’
They ate the partridges and mushrooms and, when they had had their fill, they climbed up on to the roof and sat on the bedding.
Omer had heard the story of his mother and his father from many lips. There was even a song about them that the Bald Minstrel used to sing. And this is how Meryemdje told it:
‘Your mother, my child, was from the village of Kirkisrak, the White Mare, up in the Binboga, which are the Mountains of the Thousand Bulls. There the trout in the streams are a remedy for sickness, and the heather-scented honey has healing gifts. It is a lovely country, the Binboga, alive with the scent of flowers. The earth there sings out softly like a lullaby. Its people are beautiful, the loveliest in the world. Your father was from our village. He went to the Binboga hills and there he saw your mother. He was a good horse-keeper, your father. Your mother was the daughter of a Turcoman Bey who had a stable full of noble horses. Your father became groom there. Every day the horses he groomed grew more beautiful and the Turcoman Bey was ever so proud. But then your father lost his heart to your mother, the Turcoman Bey’s daughter, and when the Bey got wind of it he turned your father out. But your father simply could not tear himself away. All about the village he wandered, day and night, hungry and thirsty and wretched, until one day your mother said: “Take me away. I know he’ll kill us both in the end, but we can’t go on living like this. At least if we die, let it be together, in each other’s arms.” So your father took her by the hand and brought her to our village. And then you were born. And three years later there was a great tumult in the village all of a sudden, shouting and screaming and people running to your house. I ran too. And when I came to the door what should I see! Your mother and your father dead, murdered in their sleep, their heads severed from their bodies, and you there between the two bodies, a tiny baby steeped in blood, playing with the severed heads … After that you were left to the mercy of the villagers. They looked after you somehow, my poor unlucky child. The dirges they sang over your mother … About the cruel Turcoman Bey …’
Above in the sky the stars teemed and flowed, and under the stars a stirring song sang by a warm male voice spread in the night through the steppe. We have sat together on the spring earth of a hundred thousand years, sang the voice, and loved with a love of a hundred thousand years, a love as old as the earth. In love we have found each other and in death again we are together. Ah, together we have sat on the warm earth of a thousand springs and our fresh young blood has flowed and mingled … And the song unfurled and dwindled into the distance. As it faded away Meryemdje slept.
‘Mother,’ Omer said softly. And then, ‘Mother,’ again. But Meryemdje was fast asleep.
He took her hand. It was warm …
But what a thin neck she has, Omer
thought. One would hardly give it a squeeze and she’d breathe her last.
Slowly his hands went to her neck, tense. They rested upon it, warm, soft, withered. Suddenly he broke into a cold sweat, his hands went numb and his heart thumped against his breast. Well, go on, a voice inside him said, what are you waiting for? Go on, just a little squeeze and it’ll be over. Squeeze, squeeze … He was bathed in sweat. The hands came away. He found himself sitting on his bed again, his whole body sore, as though it had been beaten in a mortar.
‘It doesn’t matter if I don’t do it tonight,’ he said to himself. ‘I can always do it tomorrow. Sefer’s getting impatient, I know, but what does it matter! Let her live another day. Dear good Mother Meryemdje. Another day, just one more day in this world she loves so much … Tomorrow I’ll get three more partridges for her. Let her eat them and go full and happy into the other world.’
Slowly Omer came to himself. Half asleep … Half in a dream …
45
The event is a staggering shock for the villagers and strikes terror into them. Then, gradually, the smouldering fire in their hearts turns to ashes.
From below the woodswamp where the willows grow thick near the stream the voice of a woman rose in a long piercing cry that filled the plain and resounded from the mist-swathed island of the Anavarza crags. The labourers in the fields were chilled with fear by the strange unearthly sound.
The first rays of the sun fell among the willows. The dead man’s shalvar-trousers, the cords of his sandals had got tangled in the roots and branches of the trees. One arm, flung out like the broken wing of a bird, flowed down with the stream. The other, on his breast, held in a rigid grip the nylon bag of matches, Hassan’s gift. His hair undulated in the downflowing water. His black eyes were open, huge and alive. They opened and closed again as the water passed over them. On his face was the ghost of a smile, only half asleep, dreaming, in a vision. His long shadow fell over the pebbly bed of the stream and swayed gently in the morning sunshine.
Damsel flies flashed back and forth from the body to the shore like lightning. A big green fly grazed the surface of the water in a sparkle of wings, striving to get at the submerged form. Surprised, frustrated, it buzzed angrily, diving down and zooming up again with furious speed. His shalvar-trousers were rent from the knee down and the torn strip flowed away from the leg. A shoal of tiny fish dashed over the shadow swaying on the white pebbles. One instant they clung to the dead man’s ears and face like leeches, and the next, at a slight movement, they scattered away to flit back again and again.
The shrill, long scream pealed through the plain three times. Three times the Anavarza crags returned the sound.
Shirtless held the screaming distracted woman by the arms to keep her from throwing herself into the water over Tashbash’s body.
‘Sister, don’t! Sister, be patient,’ he kept saying. ‘It’s Allah’s will … He’s dead, our saint, our great Lord Tashbash. May Allah grant you patience to bear your sorrow. Anyway he was lost to us, dead already when he became a holy man. Now it’s his body that’s gone too …’
She let out three rending screams and struggled to free herself from Shirtless’s hold. ‘My saint! Mine! My own, my holy one,’ she sobbed. ‘This is what they’ve brought you to with their spite and their jealousy. You were above them. You were the chosen one and they couldn’t bear it.’ Her screams rolled through the endless plain.
All the Yalak villagers were gathered on the edge of the bank, quite still, frozen, their eyes riveted on the gently-swaying body in the water and its long, long shadow at the bottom of the stream. Away from the others, three hundred paces down the bank, Sefer stood on the shingle facing the sun that was up now the height of a poplar. His face was yellow, drained of all blood, even the lips. Vague things flitted through his mind, and as he looked at Tashbash’s dead eyes, huge and staring, he felt himself sinking into black despair. There was nothing he could do any more. Nothing.
The villagers were paralysed. They just stood there, fear growing in their hearts. The sun rose in the sky.
In the end Old Halil seized Durmush by the arm. ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and get the poor fellow’s body out of the water. Alive you worried the life out of him, and now you’re afraid of his corpse. And well you may be … You’re quite capable of not even giving him a proper burial! Now look sharp, you dogs … Memidik, get going at once.’
They were afraid, but they dared not disobey Old Halil. Reluctantly they followed him down the bank to the willows. Old Halil rolled up his trousers and entered the water. He disentangled Tashbash’s sandals from the willows and his trousers from the branches. The body started floating off with the stream.
‘Hold him!’ Old Halil shouted in alarm. ‘Catch him, you idiots. He’s slipped out of our hands.’
Memidik plunged into the stream and caught Tashbash by the arm. He dragged the body out on to the shingle. At that moment Tashbash’s wife shook off Shirtless’s hold and flung herself over the corpse.
‘My Tashbash, my noble kind companion, they’ve killed you,’ she wept.
The villagers stirred at last. They crept down to the shore and formed a circle round them. Shirtless came up and pulled her off her husband.
‘Be patient, sister, be patient. One can’t die with the dead,’ he said to her.
Then the Bald Minstrel approached slowly. His shadow fell over the dead man. ‘His body is here, but he himself is on the Mountain of the Forty Holy Men,’ he said, his voice loud and solemn.
Hassan crept up after him. The nylon bag with the matches was still in Tashbash’s rigid hand over his breast. The water had not penetrated it. Hassan’s eyes filled with tears. He bent over and looked at Tashbash’s face very closely. Then he stroked his hand gently.
The sun grew hotter and hotter and the body dried. He lay there very lonely under the sun. His wife suddenly collapsed on a tussock and intoned the traditional lament in her beautiful husky voice, broken with grief.
‘Why do you lie there, oh my beloved, in the heat of the morning,’ she keened, ‘and I waiting for you …? Why, oh my beloved, oh why …? Ah woe, ah woe, the light is raining on your grave … Oh, why do you lie there under the sun …? Why don’t you mount your fine white steed, oh my beloved …? Why don’t you come to me …?’
Some women joined her, taking up the keening in turns.
From over Mount Aladag the great eagle winged down into the plain. Tracing a large circle he glided along the river and his shadow fell on the clear bright river-bed. There he remained above the crowd, his huge wings outstretched in the misty blueness, floating, immovable in the sky.
The dead man lay there on the shingle.
‘This body does not need the washing rites,’ the Bald Minstrel pronounced knowingly. ‘Nor a shroud either. He’s got his clothes anyway and we have no shroud here. I’ll say the prayers over him and we’ll make the funeral namaz here right away. Then we’ll build a shrine for him on that hill over there. Anyway Tashbash won’t remain in his grave, that’s sure. He’ll go up into the Mountain of the Forty Holies not later than tonight. This body doesn’t need any of the ordinary funeral rites.’
And at once he intoned the prayers. The villagers took up positions behind him and afterwards they all made the namaz together.
‘Now then, let the young men carry him. Come on, Memidik …’
Muhtar Sefer had never moved all this time. He still stood there on the shingle, away from the others, his face yellow and drawn.
Four youths picked up the body and held it high in the air as they would a coffin. They made their way up the hill amidst the scent of marjoram. Slowly the others followed, sad and frightened. The grave was quickly dug. The villagers threw into it large bunches of marjoram they had picked on the way. Tashbash was covered with blue-flowering marjoram. Not a word, not a sound came from anyone. And still Sefer stood planted there by the side of the stream.
No one picked cotton that day. The women set to cookin
g the funeral feast. Tarhana soups, bulgur pilaffs with tomatoes, even okra and aubergines from a nearby vegetable garden … Memidik had also provided some francolins and pigeons. In the afternoon, as the sun was sinking in the west, all the food was carried to Tashbash’s wife and laid on large cloths outside her wattle-hut. The villagers sat down cross-legged around the cloths, the women apart from the men. Before starting to eat and also after the end of the meal the Bald Minstrel recited prayers for the peace of Tashbash’s soul. And then, in the evening, after the last yatsi namaz he said an extra prayer and everyone joined in.
‘Allah grant you long patience, sister,’ they said to Tashbash’s wife. ‘One doesn’t die with the dead. Allah grant him mercy and peace. He was a good man. He never did anyone any harm …’
One by one they went up to her with these words and then left.
That night Muhtar Sefer never slept at all. He felt crushed inside and afraid too, but why he could not tell.
They were roused long before sunrise by the sound of the Bald Minstrel’s voice. They sat up in their beds listening to his deep strong tones accompanied by the saz.
That instant the waters held their flow, the Minstrel sang. The rivers and streams were frozen in their courses that instant. The fountains and springs turned dry. And that instant the winds dropped, not a leaf stirred, the seas and lakes were smooth. The birds stopped in mid-air, their wings bound. The grass did not grow, the flowers did not bloom. The night never ended, nor did it begin. And there was no light, nor darkness. The darkness was frozen. The stars did not shine or twinkle. They froze. The forest held its rustling and the ants did not creep. That instant even men’s hearts stopped beating and everything on earth and everything in heaven came to a standstill. Young buds would not break open, fires would not flame. The mountains would not awake to the day and even the smoke would not rise in the sky. That instant when our Lord Tashbash died, when he gave up his earthly breath, the whole of creation paid its silent homage and all was hushed and still.