Birds Without Wings (86 page)

“As far as I know, all of them. They’ve all gone from round here. It was some months ago. The gendarmerie from Telmessos came, and took them all away. My father has the keys to many people’s houses.”

“How long have they been taken for?”

“For ever, it seems.”

“Holy Panagia, have mercy,” exclaimed Mehmetçik, utterly appalled. “Obviously I knew that all the Greeks had been taken away. I saw the columns. But I didn’t think my own family was included, I didn’t know we counted. Where have they gone?”

“Well, the people who came here to replace them were from Crete, wherever that is. They were a sorry bunch when they arrived, and they were many fewer than the number of people who left. That’s why the town seems so empty. There’s a big shortage of customers for us, and naturally the Cretans have nothing at all to buy anything with.”

“Crete,” said Mehmetçik, wonderingly. “Where is it, though?”

“I heard that it’s in Greece, which they say is not far across the sea in the west. If I were you I would go to Crete and try to find them. You should give up this outlaw business. You’ll come to a bad end, all for nothing, with no children or brothers to follow you to your grave.”

“We don’t know how to speak Greek,” said Mehmetçik. “What will they do in Greece?”

“Well, these Cretans are Muslims, but they mostly don’t speak Turkish. They mostly speak Greek, and life is very hard for them here. There are many people who spit at them and call them filthy Greeks, because of the bad feeling after the war. The ones in your house are Cretans. But you shouldn’t worry about your family. It was agreed by the great Frankish pashas and Mustafa Kemal that when they arrived they would receive compensation to the same value as everything they lost when they left.”

“That would be a good thing. I hope it has happened. They were not born to be beggars. But how will I find Crete?”

“Go to Kaş. I have heard that just opposite the town is a very small island called Megiste, which is full of Greeks, except that the Italians took it over a couple of years ago. You should get to the island. Perhaps a fisherman will take you. The Greeks on the island will probably know where Crete is and how to get to it. I think that’s the best thing to do. A lot of people who got left behind have done the same thing, which is how I know
about it. Apparently the Greeks on Megiste and the people of Kaş smuggle between each other at night.”

“The Cretans in my house. Are they good people? I would hate to think of my house full of bad ones.”

“The Cretans are mostly good. They have strange dress and customs, and they eat snails, but they do a dance called pentozali which is very good to watch. It makes us like them. Some of our young men are starting to do it. It’s good that they have some high spirits, because it reminds us of all the saints’ days that the Christians used to have.”

During the process of this long conversation, things were happening down in the town. The Cretan householder who had been disturbed by Mehmetçik’s appearance late the night before had hardly been able to sleep for fear and worry, and in the morning he naturally told his friends. One of these was a Turkish speaker, and he in turn went and told the two gendarmes who were to be found, as always, playing backgammon in the meydan on fine days, or in the coffeehouse on inclement ones.

What mobilised the gendarmes and the townspeople was the prospect of a large reward, because it was very obvious from the description of the man with the red shirt and the bandoliers that he was none other than the notorious Red Wolf, bandit and outlaw. Since Mehmetçik’s family had kept very quiet about his new identity, there were very few remaining in that town who had the smallest idea that Mehmetçik and Red Wolf were one and the same. Otherwise the reaction of the townspeople might have been a little different. As the rumour spread that Red Wolf had been seen in the vicinity, men got out their muskets, rifles and fowling-pieces, and began to gather in the meydan, where they were mustered into some kind of order by the two gendarmes, neither of whom would normally have been tempted from their backgammon by anything less than the prospect of a large bounty. Among the men who retrieved their weapons, hastily serviced them and rummaged for ammunition, was Iskander the Potter, who had cherished his rifle and his pistol for very many years, ever since the extraordinary Abdul Chrysostomos of Smyrna had finally produced weapons that conformed to the potter’s requirements. It was true that these beautiful guns had made Iskander feel more of a man, and he took great pleasure in hefting their weight in his hands, and aiming them at nothing in particular with one eye asquint. With the rifle Iskander had shot one or two deer, and a goose. In truth he was a little short-sighted, which unsuited him to great feats of marksmanship. Now, with the loaded pistol in his sash, and the rifle over his shoulder, he milled about with the other
men in the meydan, awaiting the most exacting and exciting hunt of them all, whilst the women fussed and fretted about them, begging them to be careful. The men’s thoughts were busy whirling in their heads, however, as they privately rehearsed possible arguments about how the bounty should be shared in the event of success. Very soon they would fan out and spread up the mountainside, where, amid the rocks and ancient tombs, were to be found the most obvious hiding places for a fugitive. None of them honestly believed that they would find the Red Wolf, but in any case the true point was to have an interesting and exciting day out.

Oblivious to these events, the two old friends relaxed in each other’s company, and continued their conversation. “I saw Ibrahim, this morning,” said Mehmetçik. “He looks terrible, and he wouldn’t even talk to me.”

“He’s gone mad,” said Karatavuk. “No one really knows why. It happened almost as soon as the Christians left.”

“He kept saying, ‘I killed the little bird.’ ”

“I know. That’s what he says all the time, ‘It was my fault. I killed the little bird.’ ”

“Wasn’t ‘the little bird’ his name for Philothei? He didn’t kill her, did he?”

“Not as far as I know, but I don’t know what happened to her. I suppose she left with the others.” Karatavuk paused. “You know the oddest thing?”

“What?”

“Leyla Hanim, you know, Rustem Bey’s whore. She left with the Christians.”

“Really? Why would she do that?”

“It’s a complete mystery to everyone. She must have been madder than Ibrahim.”

Appropriately to the talk of madness, the two friends were quite suddenly interrupted by the Dog, who sprang out before them, clearly in a highly agitated state, giving them both a very considerable surprise, and causing them to exclaim “Ey!” and leap to their feet.

The Dog was now an old man. His eremitic and arduous life among the tombs, all but naked, and subsisting on the charity of the desperately poor, had greatly reduced him. He was skeletally thin, his meagre hair fell in long white wisps upon his shoulders and face, and his black eyes had shrunk back into his wizened and sunburned face. It is true that people had long become reconciled to his grotesque and horrifying smile, and people
pitied him that he must once have had his lips pinned back, and been made to bite down on the red-hot iron rod that had been forced into his mouth. The state of his gums, tongue and teeth had long ceased to shock, but he still carried with him a daemonic air that continued to frighten people, and it was common for mothers to threaten their mischievous children with him, as if he were a bogeyman. This did not, however, prevent the same people from believing that he must be some kind of saint, since the popular imagination inexplicably but routinely associates sainthood with physical deprivation, suffering and the many varieties of masochism.

Now he appeared, almost dancing with excitement, before the two men, grunting incoherently, and gesticulating, with a strange curving motion of his arm, as if pointing over the boulder behind which Mehmetçik and Karatavuk were concealed. It took a moment for the two to gather their wits, and another for them to realise that they were being told to look over the boulder. When they did so, they both swore.

“Orospu çocuşu!” exclaimed Mehmetçik. “They’re coming after me!” Down below could plainly be seen the men of the town, spread out across the hillside, picking their way through the maquis, some armed with swords and knives, some with cudgels, and a great many with rifles and pistols. He turned pale, and ducked down behind the boulder. “Shit!” he said. “Shit, shit, shit.” He turned to the Dog, and grasped his hand, bringing it to his mouth and kissing it on the back. He pressed it to his forehead and then to his heart. “Thank you, my friend, thank you,” said Mehmetçik. Astonished and amazed by this gesture of gratitude and respect, the Dog stood motionless for a moment, examining the back of the hand that had been thus treated. Then he ran off, oblivious to the thorns and stones that cut into him, uttering strange and piercing cries of joy.

“Give me your shirt,” demanded Karatavuk.

“What?”

“Your shirt, idiot, give me your shirt.”

“Why? Look, I’ve got to run.”

“Give me your shirt. Swap shirts and I’ll lead them astray. When you see them coming after me, go in the opposite direction. For God’s sake get to Kaş, and take yourself to Crete. Come on, your shirt.”

“What if they shoot you? I can’t let you die for me.”

“Everyone dies,” declared Karatavuk curtly. “For your mother’s sake give me your shirt. Come on, come on!” He made an impatient beckoning motion with his fingers, adding, “I got through eight years of war and nobody managed to shoot me.”

Mehmetçik hesitated a moment, and then gave in. His friend commanded so imperiously and emphatically that he was ceded no choice. With both hands he seized the waistline of his shirt and hauled it upwards. There was a small crash at his feet, and he stood holding his red shirt, looking down at the fragments of the small terracotta birdwhistle that he had inadvertently jerked out of its place in his sash. “Shit,” he said.

“Never mind, take this,” said Karatavuk, handing him his sober and tattered working shirt.

They stood looking at each for a moment, caught between the reluctance to part and the necessity of flight. “Go to Megiste, get yourself to Crete,” said Karatavuk, and he stepped forward, embraced Mehmetçik and kissed him on both cheeks.

“Until paradise, if not before,” said Mehmetçik, smiling sadly.

“Stay here until you are sure they are following me, and then run,” said Karatavuk. Before he went, he took his own birdwhistle out of his sash, and gave it to Mehmetçik, saying, “I know it sings like a blackbird, but take it anyway, and remember me. I’ll make myself another one.” He turned abruptly and began to scramble away up the rocky path.

Mehmetçik watched him go, and noticed how he took pains to make himself conspicuous. Sure enough, a shout went up down below, and the line of hunters began to wheel about in pursuit of Karatavuk. Shots crackled and snapped, and bullets began to ricochet off the rocks. “Son of a whore,” muttered Mehmetçik to himself, ashamed of leaving his friend to take the bullets. He hesitated, torn between the alternatives, and then made off as fast as he could up a goat track which intersected with another that would lead him away. “Son of a whore, son of a whore,” he repeated to himself, as if it were an incantation against adversity.

Karatavuk lay low behind the tomb of the saint, his heart thudding. He had decided on a gamble, and now he was committed to it. He put his hand under the tomb and felt for the hole at the bottom where the olive oil trickled out, having passed over the bones of the saint. There were some drips still clinging to the stone. He touched oil to his lips and his forehead, and placed some on his tongue. He asked help from the saint and from Mary, the mother of Jesus the Nazarene, and hugged his knees to his chest. He rocked back and forth, attempting to conquer his fear by a stupendous effort of will, and, when at last he reckoned from the voices that his pursuers were only a few paces away, he stood up, raised his arms high in the air, and turned to face them. Thinking for the first time that he was going to have some explaining to do, in his embarrassment, he smiled sheepishly.

Iskander would never understand why he did it. It is true that he was short-sighted, and therefore did not recognise his son, but it is also true that he could see well enough to know that the fugitive had raised his arms in surrender. There was something about being keyed up with excitement, about being ready to shoot at a real man for the first time in the many years since his military service, about the chance to gain some notoriety and kudos as the one who had brought down the Red Wolf, about the chance to use in earnest the beautiful gun that had been made specially for him by Abdul Chrysostomos of Smyrna.

Iskander raised the rifle to his shoulder, aimed it at the slightly blurred figure standing not twenty paces in front of him, and pulled the trigger. As soon as he felt the bruise of the recoil against his shoulder, as soon as he heard the snap of the shot, as soon as he saw the cloud of cordite blossom from the barrel, he knew that he had dishonoured himself and made an irretrievable mistake.

In this way Iskander joined the ranks of the very many in those days who did wanton things for which they were never able subsequently to forgive themselves.

It was for this reason that Karatavuk entirely lost the use of one arm, and at the same time his destiny as a potter.

When the time came, however, for Mustafa Kemal to abolish the writing of Turkish in Arabic letters, Karatavuk swiftly learned the new Roman letters and, albeit endowed with an imaginative sense of orthography, became the town’s letter-writer. When it became clear that no one was coming back, he moved his growing family into the former house of Daskalos Leonidas, wrote at the same desk by means of the same stinking wick of the same oil lamp, used up Leonidas’s stock of writing paper, and kept a singing finch in the same wire cage outside the front door. Sometimes he even wondered if he were growing into the same irritable and cantankerous character.

Karatavuk prospered modestly, even though there were some people who adamantly refused to use his services because he was obliged to write with the left hand. By the time that the inevitable blindness overtook him in old age, there was very much less need of his services in any case, and he had become a legend in his own right. He was a hero of the great victory at Çanakkale, he had lost the use of his right arm in a most romantic and honourable way, he had been the friend of the Red Wolf, and he was a scholar who had read many books, and intervened to help many illiterate people in their troubles. He was therefore able to enjoy the pleasure of
whiling away the darkness of his declining years in the meydan, seated upright on a stone bench under the plane trees, with his left hand propped on a walking stick, a cloth cap set squarely on his head, receiving the respectful and affectionate greetings of passers-by, and telling stories about the old days to children who clung to his legs, or sat themselves before him in a semicircle in the dust.