Birds Without Wings (79 page)

It was a full hour before the Christians were once more gathered in the meydan, and ready to depart, now bearing bundles of bones in addition to their essentials. Sergeant Osman regarded them balefully. As far as he was concerned, it was sacrilege to disturb the remains of the dead, and he found himself feeling outraged and repelled. After some minutes of discussion with his corporal, he decided that it would now be impossible to travel any significant distance before the intervention of darkness, and he climbed up on the table to address the Christians.

“Return to your houses. We depart an hour after dawn. Listen for the azan, and make sure you are out of your houses promptly. Anyone causing delays will be dealt with very severely. Get well rested, and prepare yourselves for a long hard day. That is all.”

He jumped down, landed awkwardly because of his bad leg, and straightened up. He and his men would spend the night in the town’s khan, and awaiting them they anticipated yet another unappetising dinner of bulghur wheat, bread, cheese and raw onions. They were more than delighted when a servant of Rustem Bey’s appeared, bearing platters of kadin budu and chicken with saffron. Rustem Bey’s sense of
noblesse oblige
had made it a matter of principle for him always to bestow hospitality upon new arrivals in the khan, and his servants were instructed so to do, even, as in this case, in their master’s absence. That evening the gendarmes went to sleep replete, their bellies pleasantly rounded, and their mouths tingling with the softly bitter taste of cooled tobacco smoke, inhaled from the waterpipe that had also arrived from the aga’s house in the wake of a tray of rosewater lokum. “I tell you what, lads,” commented Sergeant Osman as he rolled out his pallet, “I wouldn’t mind staying here and forgetting about this whore’s cunt of a job altogether.”

“Well,” said the corporal, “there’ll be plenty of empty houses if you ever feel like coming back.”

“I might just do that,” said Osman. “I’m getting too old for all this.”

In the first light of dawn, as the sun ascended from behind the mountains and spread its rosy fingers across the horizon, the entire population of the town reassembled in the meydan, the Muslims remaining at its periphery under the lime trees, and the Christians milling about at the centre.
There was a better sense of order than there had been on the eve, and Osman felt vindicated in having made the decision to postpone their departure. He was enjoying the first chill, and the first cigarette, of the morning, and was feeling more confident about the task that lay ahead of him. He had no delusions about the difficult decisions that awaited him, or the occasional brutalities that might have to be committed for the good of all, in order to keep the column moving. That morning, as he had touched his head seven times to the prayer mat, he had explicitly asked God to forgive him in advance, and to be merciful, and now he felt himself fortified.

Osman saw that the Christians must have spent much of the night in preparation. Those who owned goats had improvised little pack saddles for them, which were laden with provisions tied up in bundles of clothing. Chickens had been tied by the feet to these saddles, and they flapped and squawked as they repeatedly lost their balance. The few that possessed mules or donkeys had piled them with preposterous loads that would almost certainly topple off before long. The most curious thing of all was that everybody had, by some process of apparently telepathic unanimity, decked themselves out in their very best clothes, as if they were going to a wedding or celebrating a saint’s day.

Just as Osman was thinking that it was time to go, Father Kristoforos appeared from the direction of the Church of St. Nicholas. Behind him came Lydia, his wife, bearing a large bundle of bones upon her back, which was held in place by means of a band of cloth circumposed about her forehead.

Attired in his priestly robes, Father Kristoforos, his eyes half closed either in grief or in meditation, was singing the theotokian from the prayers for the departed. The people fell silent as his rich baritone sent the ecclesiastical Greek echoing from the walls of the town. “O pure and spotless Virgin,” he sang, “who ineffably bore God, intercede for the salvation of the souls of thy servants.” Suspended about his neck on a chain, and held out before him, his hands gripping the thick, elaborately engraved silver frame still draped with tamas of the faithful, Kristoforos bore the icon of the Virgin Panagia Glykophilousa.

The Christians fell to their knees and crossed themselves. How could they have forgotten about their icon? The Muslims, too, could not help but let out a low moan of despair. Was there any one of them who had not at some time asked a Christian acquaintance to solicit some favour on their behalf from Mary Mother of Jesus? Wasn’t it true that the icon had for centuries watched over the town for all who had lived in it, and mitigated its bad luck, regardless of faith? Those who were destined to remain in
that town suddenly had the appalling feeling that they were being left helpless.

Father Kristoforos processed through the kneeling people, and stopped before Sergeant Osman. “Sergeant Efendi,” he said solemnly, “you will not drive my flock. I will lead it.”

There was one of those moments that sometimes pass between two people, when they look into each other’s eyes and come instantly to a kind of understanding which is akin to the recognition of oneself in another. Osman looked at Kristoforos, with his haunted and unhappy face, and his tatty black robes, and realised that in the priest’s position he would have demanded exactly the same thing. He found it admirable that the priest had found the courage to address him so directly, when there was such a disparity of power between them. Normally a gendarme would have had no reason to take notice of any demand or request from the likes of Father Kristoforos. Kristoforos, for his part, thought that he detected a certain humanity, a lack of self-consequence, in the gendarme that made it easier to approach him so directly. The two men regarded each other for a while, the one downcast but proud, and the other weary but humorous. “As you wish,” said Osman, eventually, “just as long as we arrive in Telmessos. If you want to play the shepherd, my men and I will be happy to play at being the dogs, as long as it is understood that in this case it is the dogs who are in charge.”

“We will arrive in Telmessos,” assured the priest. He turned about and raised his voice. “Be comforted,” he called, “and follow me. We are all in the hands of God.” With great dignity and at a measured pace, he set off in the direction of the entrance to the town, holding out the icon before him, reciting the kontakion to the Mother of God: “… Do not despise the voices of us sinners as we pray. In your love, haste to help us who cry to you in faith. Hurry to intercede, make speed to entreat, O Mother of God, for you ever protect those that honour you.”

The crowd began to drift in his wake, with the bemused gendarmerie bringing up the rear, but no one had gone much more than fifty paces before the first small drama had occurred. Polyxeni, already deeply distressed by the inexplicable disappearance of her daughter, Philothei, when there was so much to carry, was incapable of walking any further, because of the burden that she had taken upon herself. She and Charitos had argued about it for much of the night, but there had been no possibility that she would ever agree to leave behind her ancient great-grandfather, Socrates, or, God forbid, do away with him as a matter of mercy.

Socrates had gone past the age when it was possible to age any further.
For years he had remained the same, propped in a corner of the house, repeating the same senescent inanities, and mulling aloud over the same memories. He was tiny and wizened, his birdlike bones shining through the yellow and mottled skin of his face and limbs, his few wisps of hair concealed under the same rotting turban that he had been wearing for decades, and from which he had always refused to be parted. Finally Charitos had agreed that he would carry the heavy bundle of essentials, and the bones of Mariora too, but Polyxeni would have to carry the venerable Socrates on her own back.

Socrates was delighted to be out in the light, surrounded by so many people. “I’m ninety-four, you know,” he said, in his small, cracked voice.

“You’re much older than that, Socrates Efendi,” said somebody, but the old man’s mind was away on its own. “I’ve got twelve children,” he said.

Polyxeni was not a big woman, and she was by no means young herself, but even so, it had seemed to her that it ought to be possible to carry her great-grandfather on her back all the way to Telmessos. He was as light as a straw, after all.

However, with his arms tightly around her neck, so that she felt she would choke, and the weight of his body bearing down on her arms, she stumbled almost immediately over a stone down by the new wash-house at the entrance to the town, and she and her great-grandfather fell together to the ground. Despair gripped Polyxeni suddenly, and she sat up in the dust and began to wail, her hands over her face. She rocked and howled, and everything came to a halt around her.

Sergeant Osman hurried over, saying, “Get up, woman, get up. Keep moving.”

“Oh God, oh God,” cried Polyxeni. She had fallen face down on the stones, unable to protect herself because of the greater need to protect the old man. Her nose bled, and her cheeks were cut. One knee of her shalwar was slashed, and underneath she could feel a wound beginning to bleed. “Come on, get up,” repeated Osman, and old man Socrates lay on his side, parroting, “I’ve got one hundred and twenty great-grandchildren.”

Polyxeni was immovable. She knew that it would be utterly impossible to carry the old man, and the desperation and grief of it overwhelmed her completely. Osman prodded her with his boot, and was beginning to think that he might have to beat her. “They’re all shit,” said Socrates, triumphantly.

“Oh God, oh God,” moaned Polyxeni.

“Will no one carry the old man?” asked Sergeant Osman of the people
who had gathered around. It was impossible. Everyone was fully laden. No one spoke, but each of them felt a pang of guilt.

It was at this point that Ali the Snowbringer intervened. He had been planning to go and fetch ice after the Christians had gone, and was stationed at the entrance to the town, preparatory to his own departure. He had found himself feeling increasingly upset as he began to realise the full import of what was happening, and now he was quite suddenly moved to action. He came forward with his donkey, bent down, and placed the rope of its halter into Polyxeni’s hand. She felt the strange sensation of the rope’s roughness between her fingers, and looked up through her tears, to see Ali the Snowbringer leaning over her.

Initially she was puzzled. Ali the Snowbringer was not someone with whom she had ever shared any discourse. For many years he had lived in the meydan, in the hollow of a gigantic tree, with his wife, children and donkey. He was among the world’s poorest and lowliest of beings, an emaciated old man now, his teeth broken yellow stumps, his face creased and baked dark brown by his lifetime’s treks into the mountains. His clothes were barely better than rags, and more often than not he went barefoot.

He indicated his donkey with a wave of his hand, and said humbly, “In the name of God.”

Polyxeni took some moments to understand what he meant. “In the name of God,” he repeated, gesturing again towards the donkey.

“You are giving me your donkey?” asked Polyxeni incredulously.

“Not giving, Polyxeni Efendim, lending. When you arrive at Telmessos, inshallah, let her go, and she will find her own way back, inshallah. She is a good donkey, and she has been lost before, and found her own way back.”

“Get up, woman,” said Sergeant Osman, “you will never receive such an offer again. I for one am glad that I lived to see it.”

Polyxeni did not get up. On her knees before the Snowbringer, she took his right hand in her own, kissed it repeatedly and pressed it to her forehead, all the while sobbing with gratitude. She looked up at him at last and said, “Snowbringer, for this one good deed you will rest forever in paradise.”

Ali the Snowbringer had never previously had his hand kissed by any other than his own children and grandchildren, and the unexpected respect nonplussed him. He was moved by it, and his lips began to tremble. It seemed to him that his life had been worth living, now that this point had
been reached. “Apart from Rustem Bey I have no customers any more,” he said,
sotto voce
, as if to excuse his self-sacrifice.

Charitos, who had dropped his own bundle in order to attend to his wife, began to help her to her feet, now that she had recovered her hope, and with it her strength. Then the two men lifted Socrates on to the donkey, and some of the load with which Charitos had been laden. Into the ice bags Polyxeni put the bones of Mariora.

Polyxeni kissed Ali’s hand again, and then Charitos kissed it, saying, “Blessings be upon you.”

“And upon you be peace,” said Ali.

“I have sixty grandchildren,” interjected the bemused old man astride the donkey.

This scene had produced a great effect upon everyone present; it had brought home the true significance of what was occurring, and caused a welling-up of emotion in the witnesses. A woman’s voice rose up clearly and desperately into the morning air, echoing from the stone walls of the buildings: “Don’t go! Don’t go! Don’t go!”

It was Ayse, widow of Abdulhamid Hodja, who had lost all her sons in the war, and now understood that she was losing many of those who had kept her going in the subsequent years of want and despair. She had made her farewells with Polyxeni only an hour before, and they had already wept together, but now she was confronted by the reality of this final departure. She would never see her life’s best and most long-standing friend again. Never again would she enter Polyxeni’s house through the haremlik door, and throw herself down on the divan, sighing and giggling in their gentle conspiracy of intimacy and affection. “Don’t go!” she cried. “Don’t go!”

Ayse’s wailing was infectious, and others among the onlookers began to moan as the Christians passed them by. Before long the men were choking back tears, and the women were giving free rein to them. Soon it was like the howling and ululation of those who become carried away by grief at a burial, multiplied beyond understanding by the sheer number of people. Up in the ancient tombs above the town, the Dog cocked his ears to listen, and down among the refugees, Sergeant Osman felt that he had never heard anything quite so disturbing in all his life, not even when men are dying between the lines after a battle.