Birds Without Wings (16 page)

It was a hard life, trudging through the stones from one town to another all year long, in all kinds of weather, dizzy with heat in the summer and knee-deep in clinging mud in the times of rain. He learned to accept the attentions of brigands, losing his earnings over and over again to ruffians who sometimes even took all his clothes, and so it was with pleasure and relief that he had found a place in life at Eskibahçe, where he had had the good fortune to be recognised by his fair cousin, Tamara, one day as he was hawking his elixir in the meydan, in the shade of the plane tree where the old men sat.

Rustem Bey, with his hand on the latch, unable to enter, knew only that someone as heavily veiled as a shia woman from Persia arrived almost every day, knocked softly, and was admitted to the haremlik by his wife, leaving those crumpled sandals outside. When it was just the embroidered slippers from Smyrna, Rustem Bey knew with bitter certainty that his wife had no visitors at all, but was merely employing a shallow ruse to keep the private quarters to herself. What he did know was that there was something not quite right about the hunched figure with bowed shoulders and head who slipped out of the haremlik and hastened away. The voice that piped a muffled “Aleikum salaam” when greeted did not seem quite right, and neither did the bony, angular feet that slipped on the dusty sandals and pattered away down the hill past the houses where the few Armenians lived.

Rustem Bey was reduced to the shameful and shaming expedient of spying. He repeatedly tried to follow the figure through the streets, in order to find out where it lived, but was always defeated, partly because of the chaos of dogs, traders, camels and gossiping friends, but mainly because, being one of the most important men in the whole region, he was automatically waylaid by those who wished to pay their respects, or beg for alms, or a favour. He would look down on his interlocutor who had taken hold of his sleeve, and a sweat of anxiety would break out on his forehead as he tried desperately to see where the swathed figure had gone. It occurred to him that he might have the person followed by a servant, but
he restrained himself. The last thing that any self-respecting man needs is to be demeaned in the eyes of his servants by involving them in skullduggery.

One evening Rustem Bey entered the haremlik after the visitor had departed, but before Tamara could put out her slippers, and asked, “Who is that woman who comes here? Every day she is here, and I demand to know who she is.”

With studied coolness, Tamara took a morsel of lokum from the small brass tray, chewed it a while, and then looked up innocently. “She is a friend. No one of any importance.” A little insolently, she drew the corner of her çarşaf across her mouth.

Rustem Bey felt his anger mount. “No woman veils herself in front of her husband! Unveil yourself! I want to know who she is.”

Tamara let the çarşaf fall away, and cast her gaze modestly to the ground. “I don’t have any friends here. In the hamam they don’t talk in front of me because of who my husband is, and all my relatives are in Telmessos. I need to have a friend who visits me.”

“Listen. You women do what you want. You slip in and out of each other’s back doors when a man has to stand at the front and knock. Have as many friends as you like. But who is that woman?”

“She is nobody. She is my only companion in this place.”

“You have a husband. If you were less indifferent, you would have children, and the company of other women who have children.”

Tamara flushed. “I try to do my duty.”

Rustem Bey raised his right hand in a small gesture of exasperation. “There is no pleasure in your duty. I might as well go to a whore and couple with my eyes closed. You should know that there is more to a marriage than ignoring your husband while you idle at his expense.”

“You shouldn’t talk to your wife so coarsely. It disturbs me.”

“I am disturbed,” declared Rustem Bey vehemently. “I am disturbed that my wife has an unknown visitor almost every day. Any other husband with a wife like you would give her a beating, I swear it.”

“Beat me then,” said Tamara levelly, “but you have no reason to be disturbed, my husband. She is an old woman called Fatima who has befriended me.”

“In this place all the women are called Fatima. Which ‘Fatima’ is it? Who are her family? Where do they live?”

“She lives at the edge of the town. Beyond the Armenians. I have never been there. She is ashamed of her poverty, because she is a widow and all
her sons have been called away on military service for ten long years. They call her ‘Fatima Lackluck.’ She comes here, and for charity I let her eat and drink a little, and ease her poor heart in talking.” Tamara gestured towards a piece of blue fabric that lay carelessly across the divan, and added, “She has been teaching me to embroider, and I pay her a little slipper money, just a few paras. So, you see, I am not so idle.”

Rustem Bey looked into the dark eyes of his wife, but found no clue as to her veracity. He turned on his heel and left. Outside the door he paused, thought a while, lit up a fat cigarette, and then strode down the hill, past the houses and workshops of the Armenians, and began to ask around for a widow called Fatima Lackluck whose sons were all away upon military service.

The next evening, Rustem fetched a low stool and waited outside the haremlik, smoking so many cigarettes, one after the other, that a small heap of butts grew at his feet. His mouth felt as dry as summer’s clay, and his heart beat so unevenly that from time to time he had to catch his breath. All day a suspicion had burned like acid into his thoughts, and a terrible agitation had taken possession of his mind, so that he knew he would not know equanimity again unless he broke a rule that in the normal course of life he held as sacred and inviolable. He knew that he might be about to disgrace himself in the eyes of his wife and the whole town, and he knew that, despite his rank, it was possible that outraged family members might arrive to take vengeance upon him, yet he knew exactly what had to be done.

Accordingly, when the bowed and veiled figure emerged from the door and closed it, Rustem Bey rose quickly to his feet, and stood in the way. “Fatima Hanimefendi, I must speak to you.”

Fatima mumbled something indistinct, and turned away, as if in modesty, but Rustem reached out, and took hold of the corner of her veil. The woman reacted with a curious movement of her arms beneath her garment, as if she were fumbling desperately for something but failing to find it, and then, just in time, Rustem saw the flash of a blade and leapt back. From his sash he took out one of his pistols, and pointed it at his attacker. Without thought he pulled the trigger, only to recall with a mixture of impatience, panic and embarrassment that he had not carried a loaded pistol in his sash ever since an uncle of his had caused fatal damage to himself by so doing. The stranger crouched, balancing on his heels, and brandished the shining curved steel of the yataghan in his face. Rustem struck out with the pistol. He caught his victim across the side of the temple and
took advantage of the moment to draw out his own dagger, the same good weapon with which his doughty ancestors had cut off the ears and lips of rebel Serbs and Bulgarians.

Rustem thrust hard, slicing himself across the forearm on the other’s weapon as he did so, and he watched dispassionately as the stranger sank slowly to the ground. He slashed downward with his yataghan, leaving a horrible gash upon the hand, and forcing it to relinquish hold of its weapon. Rustem picked the blade up, placed it carefully in his own sash, and then leaned down and tore the scarf and veil away.

He beheld a tousled head of black hair, bowed down in pain. He grasped the mop of hair and forced the head back. That handsome, fine face had malicious black eyes, a week’s stubble, and a superb and glossy black moustache. Rustem saw the lips move. “Orospu çocuşu.”

Rustem laughed bitterly. “I am a son of a whore? Think again.” He lashed out with his left foot and sent the young man toppling sideways. The fine lips moved again, even though the eyes were dull with the nausea of approaching death: “Cehenneme git. Kerata.”

“A cuckold I may be,” declared Rustem, “but it will surely be you who goes to hell. You and my whore of a wife.” Rustem felt as if it were not he but someone else using his body, who was saying and doing all these things. He was both surprised and alarmed by his own efficiency in dealing with a matter so untoward and vile. He pushed open the door of the haremlik, and called, “Wife, come out and see your whore-maker die. You shouldn’t miss it.”

He had expected Tamara to emerge cowed and trembling, and was startled when she hurtled out of the door, pushed him aside, and threw herself upon the body of the dying young man. “Selim! Selim!” she wailed, “My aslan, my lion! What has he done? Selim! Oh God, oh God! No! No! No! My God, my eyes’ light!”

She stroked Selim’s cheek and with her çarşaf she dabbed at the blood and saliva that frothed at his lips. She was whimpering desperately. Suddenly she stood up and confronted her husband. He saw that her lips were trembling and that tears streamed down both cheeks even though she was not sobbing. She took off her scarf, so that her long hair fell loose about her shoulders. She swept it back with one hand, and offered him her throat. “Now kill me,” she said.

Rustem was puzzled to find a half of himself feeling sorry for her. He even admired her defiance and her bold resignation. He saw the grief and the anger in her eyes, and realised anew how lovely she was, but by now he
was caught up in a current of events from which there was no possibility of extricating himself with honour. Her lover lay dying at his feet, and before him stood an unfaithful wife. He reached out his hand and grasped a hank of her hair. “Come with me,” he said, “and take this opportunity to beg God for forgiveness.” With a heavy, unwilling heart but with every semblance of implacable resolution, Rustem Bey did what he knew he had to do, and dragged his wife by the hair to the meydan.

A crowd gathered almost instantaneously, as Rustem knew it would, a crowd that assembled for the lowest motives of meanness and curiosity. It was an astounding thing to see a husband revealing his wife’s hair to the shame and indignity of public exposure, and such public abuse of a wife could mean only one thing. In the meydan, Rustem Bey, his voice shaking with both anger at what had been done and horror at what was about to be done, announced to the crowd: “This woman is my wife. She is a whore and an adulteress.”

He stood aside from Tamara and watched, as calmly she placed her hair back under her scarf. He bowed his head when she looked up and said simply, “I am guilty and I do not wish to live. Kill me, like the wolves and dogs you are in this disgusting place.”

The first stone was flung half-heartedly, almost humorously, and fell at her feet. She looked down at it and smiled. The second stone was thrown more boldly, and struck her upon the thigh. The third stone flew past her head and glanced off the trunk of one of the planes. A buzz of animal noises began to stir in the crowd, and an ugliness spiralled up in it, the evil that emanates as if from nowhere when people are permitted to act basely in a righteous cause. Women whose hearts would normally be brimming with concern and tenderness picked up stones and began to shriek as they hurled them. Children whose parents beat them for throwing stones at dogs fought each other for stones to throw at a young woman. Men for whom it was beneath their dignity to strike a woman picked up stones and bayed like hounds. Faces that were habitually calm and beneficent began to contort with gleeful cruelty, and steadily a malevolent barbarism rose up and began to feed upon itself. It was satisfying, in any case, for those lowly folk to have the opportunity to destroy a spoiled and perfumed darling from a higher walk of life.

Tamara was struck upon the head by a large cobble, and fell to her knees. The crowd drew in upon her as people hustled forward to pick up once more the stones that had already been flung. Rustem Bey sat on the low wall of the well at the foot of a plane tree, with his back to the horrible
scene, feeling his heart clench within him like a fist. He heard the rabble chanting “Orospu! Orospu! Orospu!” and put his hands over his ears. In his mind’s eye he saw Tamara on their wedding night, her eyes glowing with grief in the lamplight as she turned her head aside and parted her legs as she had been warned she would have to do. He remembered her flinching, her rhythmic gasps of pain, and the sadness that had come upon him afterwards, when he had found himself wishing that he had been born to another kind of life.

The crowd were directly over her now, pelting her, those without stones resorting to savage blows with their feet. Old women and small children darted in to spit. Tamara, curiously detached from all this fury and the cruelty of the pain, began to dream of Selim.

Nobody saw Abdulhamid Hodja ride up on Nilufer, and the first thing anyone knew was that people had been thrown aside and that his horse was standing over the fallen adulteress. Abdulhamid himself was roaring at the crowd with such passion and authority that it pressed back as if pushed by invisible hands.

“Who is responsible for this?” he bellowed. “By whose authority is this? Stand back, by God, stand back.”

Rustem Bey stood up slowly and came forward. “It is by my authority, efendi. She is my wife and I caught her lover coming out of the haremlik. I killed him, and I am responsible for this.”

Abdulhamid glowered down at him, and Rustem added, “She is an adulteress, and has to be stoned.”

The imam ignored him and demanded of the entire assembly, “Don’t you know the law? I know it. I am not a doctor, but I know it.” He paused, and then continued, “The law is that …” He stopped suddenly and examined the faces in the crowd. “You,” he said, pointing at Charitos. “Come forward. I have never seen you in the mosque. You are a Christian.”

The father of the lovely Philothei stepped forward, nervously adjusting his fez upon his head. The imam pointed to other Christians, one after the other. “Do you follow the prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, peace be upon him? Well, do you?”

Charitos and the other Christians murmured that they did, and Abdulhamid commanded, “Go and find your priest. Ask him what it was that the prophet Jesus said when he prevented the stoning of an adulteress. Leave this place! Go and ask him. Father Kristoforos will tell you what you ought to know already. Go now, and do not condemn yourselves any further.”