The Colonel (26 page)

Amir was knocked out. Knocked out and hollowed out, with nothing more to live for. He was sitting on the floor leaning against the damp basement wall with his head down. He felt as if Khezr Javid had taken over his home, his bed, his life and his loneliness. At every snore from Khezr, he felt his own breath becoming shorter. Even more paralysing was the feeling that he had lost the strength to do anything, that all the vigour had been knocked out of him, even the ability to feel any hatred against the killer of his wife.

“You and your kind were dangerous, and you were getting more dangerous. With the Shah behind you, you were untouchable, but then God saw fit to save the country.”

Khezr got up to look for his cigarettes and lighter. He went on:

“For thirty years, pressure had been building up in the country, but the lid was firmly screwed down on top of it. It was like a swelling abscess that sooner or later would burst and shower blood and pus everywhere. When the muck is squeezed out of a boil, the pain goes away and the body is soothed. Which is why this boil had to be lanced to make our beloved people calm down. Then you get a deluge of blood and guts, and only idiots and sheep stand in its way. Forty-seven percent of the population of this country were young and wriggling about inside this abscess, my friend, so it needed the lancet of God to burst it.”

Amir was staring, glassy-eyed, seeing nothing, silent. All he could think about was what he had gone through with Khezr Javid. As for the colonel, he was still thinking about the mystery of his own voice over the loudspeakers, and was worried about who might have heard him – Amir for instance.

“You… Amir, do you remember any of that? I don't suppose you do… Can't you remember what I told you? What they said about your sister? You don't understand me? Well, I don't understand why you don't understand what your father is talking about. What's up with you? Am I speaking in some alien tongue, or what?”

“I don't understand, I don't understand.”

“Say it again, go on!”

“I don't know what you're talking about, papa.”

“That's extraordinary, truly extraordinary, why don't I get it? Talk to me in words I can understand.”
How is it that I don't recognize my son's voice or even understand what he's saying?

“Papa, you seem to have a fever. You're becoming delirious. Lie down and rest for a while. These voices are getting on your nerves. Why upset yourself? You're just making it worse.”

“Amir… Amir… Just try not to torture your father so much. Just talk to me like you used to, Amir. Why can't I understand what it is you're saying?”

“Papa, go and lie down for a couple of hours, and then I'll talk to you. I've decided to have a long chat with you before I die. But now… it's impossible to talk to you right now. Because, in your present state, I'm not sure you'd be able to grasp what I'm trying to say.”

“Amir… Amir… I never expected that you'd go so disastrously dumb at this stage in your life. Your jaw opens and shuts, your lips move, but there's no sound. I can't hear anything. What's happened?”

“Don't get in a fuss, papa… But what am I to do? I need to talk to you before I die. There isn't anybody else. I've only got you, papa. If I want to die, I just want to tell you this; it's because I feel I have lost faith in everything I ever believed in. I can't bear my past any longer, I can't go on living just hating myself. After all, how long do you imagine a person can go on living just filled with nothing but hate? So why should I go on living? What I am trying to tell you is this, that Farzaneh brought a can of paraffin round today and I tried telling her how I felt, but however hard I tried, I couldn't get through to her, I just couldn't, and she ran out of the house, crying. What I was trying to say was perfectly simple; I just wanted to tell my sister that I had had just as much to do with the deaths of my brothers and sisters as Qorbani had. But I couldn't get through to her, papa.”

the colonel said nothing. He thought Amir could not grasp that he did not understand what he was saying; he did not recognise his language. And he thought that his son was not ready to pay attention to why his father might want to explain things to him before his death, and therefore ‘will' him to understand why he wanted to die. He wanted to tell Amir not to think about the tragedy that had befallen his father, and to know that he himself had brought all their problems on the family, and was still doing so. He had decided to die and his conscience was now at ease, for he had never shirked his duty.
I was a soldier, and I always will be, and I'll prove it in the manner of my going
. If he had decided to die, it was because he could
not bear to be seen in the street in this state. Nor could he stand idle children throwing stones and hurling abuse at him any more.

He also wanted to say that, if he decided to cut out his tongue before he died, nobody should be surprised, or think that he had gone mad.
No, I shall be punishing myself for what I was made to say over the loudspeakers at the cemetery, things which I could hear with my own ears.

Even so, he clung doggedly to the belief that it had not been his voice, but someone else's, speaking through his mouth. Still, there was a risk that that voice might speak from his mouth again and become second nature to him. Before his final metamorphosis took place, he was determined to ward it off, so long as his mind was still clear and he had control of his wits. Before he died, he wanted to have a talk with Amir and hear from his son that he had not been a bad father to his children. He wanted Amir, as the closest person to him, to bear witness that he had willingly sacrificed his children to this country, even though they had ultimately fallen victim to a vile conspiracy.

He wanted to impress upon Amir that this devastating tragedy should not lead people to question or mock his children's own genuine readiness for self-sacrifice. For the only reason they had entered the game and had honestly and laudably risked their necks was because they believed that their lives were inextricably bound up with their country and their people. This was what made them different from those evil
bastards who were still alive and kicking today…
This is what I wanted to say to Amir, so that those people who won't let history be written down should not think that we come into the world as donkeys and leave it as asses. But it's all too late. Amir can't understand what I'm saying and I don't even recognize his voice, or even his language. And I should have explained to him that my killing his mother was not a crime, but just a natural reaction on my part. I had to kill her, so I did it. I killed my humiliation. Anyway, if regrets could change anything, I would regret killing my wife, even though Amir knows – and might even bear witness to it – that I should not regret what I did.

Amir shook his head, affected by this. He could see from the colonel's face that he had formed a sad judgement of him, but this feeling was not so much from the fact that he felt sorry for his father as from the way his father was changing. He appeared to be fading away and vanishing before him.

the colonel thought this was rubbish. He expected his son to have the intelligence to see, written on his face, his determination to fade away. Because a decision, even if that decision will result in certain self-annihilation, in itself counts as a sign of the will to live. Just because the colonel had decided to fade away, that was no reason for Amir to treat him as if he had already gone.

But what can I say, when he doesn't even understand me?
What was the colonel supposed to do?
Pen and paper!
He got pen and paper and began to put down what he had been unable to say to Amir. A will, after all, had to be on paper. That was why it was called a written will and testament. He was astonished to see Amir also take up pen and paper and begin writing. They were both busy writing now, but they did not look at each other's papers. They were both sure that what they were
writing was for the writer's eyes only. The content of both wills was clear: ‘Death.'

the colonel wanted to tell Amir that he intended to die and that, before he did so, he wished to give his son the benefit of some of his long experience of life. But what was it that Amir wanted to commit to paper? Not another nightmare, he hoped.

When he had put the last full-stop to his piece, the colonel looked up at Amir and saw that Amir had also finished writing and was looking up at his father. the colonel puts his sheet of paper in front of his son. Amir does the same. They pick up each other's letters and carefully study the writing. When they finish reading they stare at one another for an unusually long time, as if trying to get to know each other and place each other again. They seem like strangers in each other's eyes. Finally, they accept that they are two figures of death sitting opposite each other…

The tea had grown cold in the glasses. Matters were drawing to a close.

Taking care not to let the blanket slip from his shoulders, the colonel stood up. It occurred to him that he had long since been meaning to tuck Masoud's photograph into the frame of The Colonel's portrait, next to Parvaneh and Mohammad-Taqi. He found the key to the suitcase, knelt down beside the bed, pulled out the suitcase, opened it, found Kuchik's photograph, got up and placed it where he had thought a thousand times about putting it. Then he sat down again.

Amir had also stood up and was making ready to go out. He was in no hurry, but he did not dawdle either. As he was doing up his raincoat, he fished a scrap of photograph out of a notebook in his side pocket. He hesitated, then gave the
colonel, who was now staring into his cold glass of tea, a look to seek his permission, before lining up a picture of himself as a boy on the mantelpiece, beneath the shiny black boots of The Colonel, right next to the photographs of his brothers and sister. Then, as though he were bidding farewell to himself, he began muttering under his breath: “Finally… at last…” and slipped quietly out of the house.

the colonel sat and stared for a long time at the half-closed door, trying to imagine Amir in the form of a grey coffin being carried out of the room. He was struggling to control his emotions. But at the same time, he felt a great sense of relief at Amir's departure. In his guts, he felt that Amir had consciously lifted the burden of his own death off his back. But a hidden feeling of fatherly love,
which there is no reason to hide
, took hold of the colonel and forced him to the window where, to stop himself worrying about his son, he stood by the cracked pane and looked out into the courtyard and at the sky, as ever filled with rain. The first thing his eyes lit on was the pick and shovel propped against the wall by the gate. He had imagined that Amir would pick them up and take them with him. But what completely flummoxed him was the fact that the bust of Amir Kabir, which had been standing on the platform over the pond, had vanished. At first he could not believe that Amir Kabir had been removed, but then, as he peered through the finely falling rain, he saw that both leaves of the courtyard gate had been wrenched from their hinges and the lintel had been smashed. This convinced him that Amir had been taken away. He could not stand it, and went out on to the verandah, careless of the blanket flapping round his naked body. He caught sight of a distraught Amir emerging from the cellar and looking frantically round the yard for the bust. Lifting an
arm out from under his blanket, he pointed silently at the gap in the wall where the gate had been. Amir, as if he had just noticed the wreck of the gateway, rushed out into the alley, ignoring the pick and shovel.

the colonel stood there, bemused, with his arm still pointing at the gate. All thoughts of death were behind him now. The rain kept on coming down, echoing silently in the colonel's head, stirring no memories in his mind, not even a faint image of a sunset after the rain on the rusty tin roof. And then he saw Khezr Javid coming in through the gate, dragging someone behind him in handcuffs. Khezr stepped into the yard and paused by the pond for a moment, as if making up his mind. Then he turned back, as if to measure up his companion.

The sight so unnerved the colonel that he woke from his daydream. Who had Khezr Javid arrested? The man was looking nervously around. Khezr Javid clicked the handcuffs round the single, withered branch of the orange tree to secure his prisoner and then went down to the basement, presumably to search it. the colonel blinked, and blinked again, as if he could not believe what he was seeing. But no, everything was as he had seen it: handcuffed to the tree in the rain by the pond was a hunchbacked creature, all huddled up and wrapped in an old army blanket. The only parts of him that were visible were his tethered arm and his extraordinary eyes, one like Masoud's and the other like Abdullah Kolahi's, whom he had last seen with a packet of sugar plums in the living room. On closer inspection now, he saw that Abdullah's strange eyes divided his half-burned and mutilated face into two distinct halves, like two mismatched panes of glass. These extraordinary glassy eyes were darting anxiously around the yard. the colonel could still remember Abdullah's words: