The Blind Owl (14 page)

When Nanny brought me my ass's milk, honey and bread I found that she had placed a bone-handled knife on the tray beside the breakfast things. She said she had noticed it among the old odds-and-ends man's wares and had bought it from him. Then she said, raising her eyebrows, ‘Let's hope it'll come in handy some day.' I picked it up and examined it. It was my own knife. Then Nanny said in a querulous, offended tone, ‘Oh yes, my daughter' (she meant the bitch) ‘was saying this morning that I stole her nightdress during the night. I don't want to have to answer for anything connected with you two. Anyway, she began to bleed yesterday. . . . I knew it was the baby. . . . According to her, she got pregnant at the baths.
*
I went to her room to massage her belly during
the night and I noticed her arms were all black and blue. She showed them to me and said, “I went down to the cellar at an unlucky time, and the Good People gave me an awful pinching.”' She went on, ‘Did you know your wife's been pregnant for a long time?' I laughed and said, ‘I dare say the child'll look like the old man that reads the Koran. I suppose it gave its first leap when she was looking at the old man's face.'
*
Nanny looked at me indignantly and went out of the room. Apparently she had not expected such a reply. I rose hastily, picked up the bone-handled knife with a trembling hand, put it away in the box in the closet and shut the lid.

No, it was out of the question that the baby should have leapt when she was looking at my face. It must have been the old odds-and-ends man.

Some time during the afternoon the door of my room opened and her little brother, the bitch's little brother, came in, biting his nail. You could tell the moment you saw them that they were brother and sister. The resemblance was extraordinary. He had full, moist, sensual lips, languid, heavy eyelids, slanting, wondering eyes, high cheekbones, unruly, date-coloured hair and a complexion the colour of ripe wheat. He was the image of the bitch and he had
a touch of her satanic spirit. His was one of those impassive, soulless Turkoman faces which are so appropriate to a people engaged in an unremitting battle with life, a people which regards any action as permissible if it helps it to go on living. Nature had shaped this brother and sister over many generations. Their ancestors had lived exposed to sun and rain, battling unceasingly with their environment, and had not only transmitted to them faces and characters modified correspondingly but had bequeathed to them a share of their stubbornness, sensuality, rapacity and hungriness. I remembered the taste of his lips, faintly bitter, like that of the stub end of a cucumber.

When he came into the room he looked at me with his wondering Turkoman eyes and said, ‘Mummy says the doctor said you are going to die and it'll be a good riddance for us. How do people die?'

I said, ‘Tell her I have been dead for a long time.'

‘Mummy said, “If I hadn't had a miscarriage the whole house would have belonged to us.”'

I involuntarily burst out laughing. It was a hollow, grating laugh, of a quality to make the hairs on one's body stand on end. I did not recognise the sound of my own voice. The child ran from the room in terror.

I realised then why it was that the butcher found it pleasant to wipe the blade of his bone-handled knife on the legs of the sheep. The pleasure of cutting up the raw meat in
which the dead, coagulated blood had settled, like slime on the bottom of a tank, while a watery liquid dripped from the windpipes onto the ground—the yellow dog outside the shop, the severed oxhead on the floor, staring dimly, and the heads of the sheep themselves with the dust of death on their eyes, they too had seen this, they too knew what the butcher felt.

I understood now that I had become a miniature God. I had transcended the mean, paltry needs of mankind and felt within me the flux of eternity. What is eternity? To me eternity meant to play hide-and-seek with the bitch on the bank of the Suran, to shut my eyes for a single moment and hide my face in the skirt of her dress.

All at once I realised that I was talking to myself and that in a strange way. I was trying to talk to myself but my lips had become so heavy that they were incapable of the least movement. Yet although my lips did not stir and I could not hear my voice I felt that I was talking to myself.

In this room which was steadily shrinking and growing dark like the grave, night had surrounded me with its fearful shadows. In the light of the smoky oil lamp my shadow, in the sheepskin jacket, cloak and scarf that I was wearing, was stretched motionless across the wall. The shadow that I cast upon the wall was much denser and more distinct than my real body. My shadow had become more real than myself. The old odds-and-ends man, the butcher, Nanny
and the bitch, my wife, were shadows of me, shadows in the midst of which I was imprisoned. I had become like a screech owl, but my cries caught in my throat and I spat them out in the form of clots of blood. Perhaps screech owls are subject to a disease which makes them think as I think. My shadow on the wall had become exactly like an owl and, leaning forward, read intently every word I wrote. Without doubt he understood perfectly. Only he was capable of understanding. When I looked out of the corner of my eye at my shadow on the wall I felt afraid.

It was a dark, silent night like the night which had enveloped all my being, a night peopled with fearful shapes which grimaced at me from door and wall and curtain. At times my room became so narrow that I felt that I was lying in a coffin. My temples were burning. My limbs were incapable of the least movement. A weight was pressing on my chest like the weight of the carcases they sling over the backs of horses and deliver to the butchers.

Death was murmuring his song in my ear like a stammering man who is obliged to repeat each word and who, when he has come to the end of a line, has to begin it afresh. His song penetrated my flesh like the whine of a saw. He would raise his voice and suddenly fall silent.

My eyes were not yet closed when a band of drunken policemen marched by in the street outside my room, joking obscenely among themselves. Then they sang in chorus,

‘Come, let us go and drink wine;

Let us drink wine of the Kingdom of Rey.

If we do not drink now, when should we drink?'

I said to myself, ‘Since the police are going to get me in the end . . .' Suddenly I felt within me a superhuman force. My forehead grew cool. I rose, threw a yellow cloak over my shoulders and wrapped my scarf two or three times around my neck. I bent down, went into the closet and took out the bone-handled knife which I had hidden in the box. Then I went on tip-toe towards the bitch's room. When I reached the door I saw that the room was in complete darkness. I listened and heard her voice saying, ‘Have you come? Take your scarf off.' Her voice had a pleasant quality, as it had had in her childhood. It reminded me of the unconscious murmuring of someone who is dreaming. I myself had heard this voice in the past when I was in a deep sleep. Was she dreaming? Her voice was husky and thick. It had become like the voice of the little girl who had played hide-and-seek with me on the bank of the Suran. I stood motionless. Then I heard her say again. ‘Come in. Take your scarf off.'

I walked softly into the dark room. I took off my cloak and scarf and the rest of my clothes and crept into her bed. For some reason I kept the bone-handled knife in my hand. It seemed to me that the warmth of her bed infused a new life into me. I remembered the pale, thin little girl with the big, strange Turkoman eyes with whom I had played
hide-and-seek on the bank of the Suran, and I clasped her pleasant, moist, warm body in my arms. Clasped her? No, I sprang upon her like a savage, hungry beast and in the bottom of my heart I loathed her. To me love and hatred were twins. Her fresh, moonlight-pale body, my wife's body, opened and enclosed me within itself like a cobra coiling around its prey. The perfume of her bosom made my head swim, the flesh of the arm which encircled my neck was soft and warm. I wished that my life could cease at that moment, for the hatred, the rancour that I felt for her had vanished and I tried to hold back my tears.

Her legs somehow locked behind mine like those of a mandrake and her arms held me firmly by the neck. I felt the pleasant warmth of that young flesh. Every atom in my burning body drank in that warmth. I felt that I was her prey and she was drawing me into herself. I was filled with mingled terror and delight. Her mouth was bitter to the taste, like the stub end of a cucumber. Under the pleasant pressure of her embrace, I streamed with sweat. I was beside myself with passion.

I was dominated by my body, by each atom of my material being, and they shouted aloud their song of victory. Doomed, helpless in this boundless sea, I bowed my head in surrender before the stormy passion of the waves. Her hair, redolent of champac, clung about my face, and a cry of anguish and joy burst forth from the depths of our beings. Suddenly I felt that she was biting my lip savagely, so
savagely that she bit it through. Used she to bite her nail in this way or had she realised that I was not the hare lipped old man? I tried to break free from her but was unable to make the slightest movement. My efforts were useless. The flesh of our bodies had been soldered into one.

I thought to myself that she had gone mad. As we struggled, I involuntarily jerked my hand. I felt the knife, which I was still holding, sink somewhere into her flesh. A warm liquid spurted into my face. She uttered a shriek and released me. Keeping my fist clenched on the warm liquid in my hand, I tossed the knife away. I ran my other hand over her body. It was utterly cold. She was dead. And then I burst into a fit of coughing—but no, it was not coughing, it was a hollow grating laugh, of a quality to make the hairs on one's body stand on end. In terror I threw my cloak over my shoulders and hurried back to my own room. I opened my hand in the light of the oil lamp: in the palm of my hand lay her eye, and I was drenched in blood.

I went over and stood before the mirror. Overcome with horror, I covered my face with my hands. What I had seen in the mirror was the likeness, no, the exact image, of the old odds-and-ends man. My hair and beard were completely white, like those of a man who has come out alive from a room in which he has been shut up along with a cobra. My eyes were without lashes, a clump of white hairs sprouted from my chest and a new spirit had taken possession of my body. My mind and my senses were operating
in a completely different way from before. A demon had awoken to life within me and I was unable to escape from him. Still holding my hands before my face, I involuntarily burst into laughter. It was a more violent laugh than the previous one had been and it made me shudder from head to foot. It was a laugh so deep that it was impossible to guess from what remote recess of the body it proceeded, a hollow laugh which came from somewhere deep down in my body and merely echoed in my throat. I had become the old odds-and-ends man.

THE VIOLENCE OF MY AGITATION SEEMED TO HAVE
awakened me from a long, deep sleep. I rubbed my eyes. I was back in my own room. It was half-dark and outside a wet mist pressed against the windowpanes. Somewhere in the distance a cock crowed. The charcoal in the brazier beside me had burnt to cold ashes which I could have blown away with a single breath. I felt that my mind had become hollow and ashy like the coals and was at the mercy of a single breath.

The first thing I looked for was the flower vase of Rhages which the old hearse-driver had given me in the cemetery, but it had gone. I looked around and saw beside the door someone with a crouching shadow—no, it was a bent old man with his face partly concealed by a scarf wrapped around his neck. He was holding under his arm something resembling a jar, wrapped in a dirty handkerchief. He burst into a hollow, grating laugh, of a quality to make the hairs on one's body stand on end.

The moment that I made a move, he slipped out through the doorway. I got up quickly, intending to run after him and get the jar, or whatever it was that was wrapped in the handkerchief, from him, but he was already a good way off. I went back to my room and opened the window. Down the street I could still see the old man's crouching figure. His shoulders were shaking with laughter and he held the bundle tucked under his arm. He was running with all his might and in the end he disappeared into the mist. I turned away from the window and looked down at myself. My clothes were torn and soiled from top to bottom with congealed blood. Two blister-flies were circling about me, and tiny white maggots were wriggling on my coat. And on my chest I felt the weight of a woman's dead body. . . .

*
The national festival of Iran. It begins on March 21 and lasts for thirteen days. It is the custom to spend the last day of Nouruz picnicking in the country.

*
A mosque and cemetery situated among the ruins of Rey, a few miles south of Teheran. Rey (the Rhages of the Greeks) was an important center from at least the eighth century B.C. and continued to be one of the great cities of Iran down to its destruction by Genghis Khan in the thirteenth century A.D.

*
Coins worth respectively 5d. and 1d.

*
In old Persia bedsteads were not used. The bedroll (mattress, sheet, pillows and quilt) was stowed away in the daytime and unrolled on the floor at night.

*
The burial place of the Shia martyr Hosein. Water in which a little earth from Karbala had been steeped was employed as medicine.

*
A reminiscence of a quatrain of Omar Khayyam:

‘Since life passes, whether sweet or bitter,

Since the soul must pass the lips, whether in Nishapur or in Balkh,

Drink wine, for after you and I are gone many a moon

Will pass from old to new, from new to old.'

*
A three-stringed instrument resembling a mandolin.

*
The Angel of Death.

*
A convention of Pahlavi writing by which the scribe substituted an Aramaic word for a Persian one.