The Colonel (14 page)

“You see how hard it is on a man, don't you, gentlemen? Now I am at your service.”

He had given the bundled-up shroud to Forouz. Now he had to go and fetch the pick and shovel, which he had left at the bottom of the crumbling wall of the mortuary. When he got there, he started grumbling out loud:

“What kind of mortuary is this, anyway? It hasn't even got electricity. This sort of town needs more and more of it, what with all the migrants, refugees, and war wounded, not to mention all the executions that are taking place, and all those young comrades on the run…”

The rain, lack of sleep and the long wait had knocked the stuffing out of the young policemen. Even so, one of them tried to cheer the colonel up by telling him that the city had plans for a brand-new mortuary to meet the needs of the community. It had been approved by the city councillors and had been put out to tender, and work had even started on it. The other policeman chipped in morosely, “Why did those bastards in the Shah's day never think to build a decent mortuary anywhere outside of Tehran?”

the colonel felt his coat tails flapping round his legs as he walked, as if the coat had grown too big for him and he was
getting lost inside it. Perhaps he had shrunk without noticing it. Or maybe his knees had doubled up with exhaustion and he was turning into a hunchback. He tried to ignore it, not wanting to show the slightest sign of weakness. He still had an old soldier's sense of pride, and he was determined to keep a stiff upper lip. Strange, but there it was. And so, when they found the place where they had to dig, he stuck the shovel into the mud like a seasoned peasant and, rubbing his hands together, grasped the pick and set to work.

“Not bad for an old man, eh? I dug a lot of training trenches as a young man.”

Ali Seif just grinned, but the other one, Abdullah, seemed to take pity on the sweat-drenched old man and decided to pitch in. He passed Ali Seif his weapon, took the shovel and started digging. the colonel stood at the foot of the grave. Wiping the sweat from his brow with his left sleeve, with his right hand he groped in his coat pocket for his brass cigarette case. Then he turned up his collar, pulled his hat down and turned his back to the rain so that he could light his cigarette without getting it wet. Before it had a chance to get soaked, he lit one up and sank into a daydream.

Abdullah had shovelled all the loose earth out of the hole. the colonel took up the pick to carry on digging the grave: “Wouldn't things go a bit quicker if they dug these graves in advance, gentlemen?”

Clearly touched by the colonel's plight and frustrated by the slow pace of his digging, Abdullah took him gently by the arm and helped him respectfully out of the grave. The colonel was grateful for this, as he was utterly exhausted and demoralised. If he had to do it all by himself, the sun would be well up before he was finished. He knew that he should show his gratitude to the young man for helping him,
but The Colonel's dazzling boots had completely distracted me, and were drawing me towards him, as if to say that it was not my duty to dig my daughter's grave; it had never been up to me to do that.

Forouz, with her white hair and red eyes, was leaning over Parvaneh's corpse on the concrete laying-out slab. the colonel could see that her arms were smeared with blood up to the elbows. The mother seemed to be washing Parvaneh's thin, frail
body with tears of blood. the colonel saw his daughter's whole body covered in blood, and blood had dripped down all four sides of the slab into the channel below and was now licking at the toes of The Colonel's shiny black boots. the colonel went and stood next to his wife to get a better look at Parvaneh's face, and saw her skinny arms and hands, drenched in translucent blood, moving over the newly ripening body of their daughter. He bent down and looked at Parvaneh's face, more intently than he had ever done before. Her eyes opened, and she looked at him briefly with a cheerful smile, before slowly closing them again. He could not believe it; leaning over the slab, he stooped to look at her open eyes once more, but it was too late… For his wife was laying her long bony hands on Parvaneh's forehead and drawing them gently down from her hairline to below the girl's delicate little chin, ending in a kind of tired shrug that signalled that her work was now done. And when she took her hands away, Parvaneh's eyes were closed, her lips were closed and her face seemed mummified in blood… the colonel felt suddenly giddy.

The Colonel's black field boots were on the march, heavy and hard as stone, crashing in the silence of the mortuary and keeping time with the beat of the old man's heart as, stiff and frozen, he stood by the concrete table, staring at them. Their soles and polished toes were now red and, with each stride, they left a bloody trail behind them. Presently, the boots came to a halt by the table and he found himself saying, “You need more than your heart to see with, Colonel; it's a pity you didn't bring your head with you.” His voice echoed round the mortuary and, as it echoed back, it sounded as if someone else had been speaking. But then normality returned. Continuing with her task, the colonel's wife had taken hold of Parvaneh's hand and
was busy lifting her down off the concrete table, handling her as carefully as if she were a mirror, a full-length dressing mirror. Parvaneh was being careful, too, putting her dainty little feet down softly on the cold floor of the mortuary. Looking as if she was wearing a shirt of blood and earrings of red dewdrops, she strode off and away, hand in hand with her mother, who floated along like a white cloud beside her. the colonel stood gazing at the trail of blood left by their feet as they crossed the cold, wet floor, as if he had forgotten for a moment that he should be going along with his daughter and his wife.

At the door Forouz, soft and translucent, turned her head and glanced at the colonel with her bloodshot eyes, as if she were about to call him. the colonel quickly pulled himself together, plodded towards his wife and stood beside her
as if ready for anything that she might suggest
. Forouz turned to him and whispered reproachfully into his ear:

“I expected you to invite me to Parvaneh's wedding; you should have come to pick me up!”

the colonel stood transfixed, his mouth gaping in astonishment. He did not know what was going on or what his wife was talking about. With the fingers of her left hand, she pushed back a loose strand of white hair that had fallen over her cheek and was dangling beside her nose. Then, carefully lifting the hem of her shroud with her fingertips, she left the mortuary. As she receded into the distance, her figure seemed to grow in stature, like a tall white cloud, hand-in-hand with Parvaneh, who was glowing like a bright red tulip. the colonel stood in the doorway, watching the vanishing cloud and the moth-like wings of his Parvaneh and muttered: “Did you hear that, Colonel? She was talking about a wedding, Parvaneh's wedding, Colonel!” But he could not sense The Colonel's presence there
any longer. His polished black boots, which seemed to be made of steel, had marched out of the mortuary in a huff, away from the rain, the night and the mud. So there he stood, a broken old man, abandoned in a mortuary and drained of all emotion. He felt paralysed, his head felt swollen and odd voices were buzzing round inside it. All he could remember was that, if he did not get a move on, he would not be able to find the grave and would have to spend the whole night wandering about in the mud looking for it. He had to find a way out of this dead end of congealing death before he got caught in it.

That night was the first and last time that the colonel would drink himself nearly to death. While Amir was at his little table by the window reading his lecture notes, the colonel sat on the edge of the bed, tossing back glass after glass of arack. He did not know what he was doing, or more accurately:
I knew exactly what I was doing and I was drinking myself into oblivion.

The sabre glinted in the dim glow cast by the streetlight. There was no-one in the alleyway save the colonel and a soggy stray dog with its tail between its legs. the colonel listens to the cars, as they roar past the entrance to his street on the wet main road. He is waiting for one to stop at the road end and drop off Forouz. She will open her little umbrella and head towards her house, and the car will move off.