Birds Without Wings

by Louis de Bernières

  “Let’s go and look at the Dog,” suggested Mehmetçik. “If we take him a present he might smile.”

  Karatavuk shuddered.

  “Come on,” persisted Mehmetçik, “let’s.”

  The children were no different from everyone else in their continued and insatiable fascination for the Dog. If the Dog had taken up residence in the Lycian tombs with the intention of living as an anchorite, then those intentions had definitely been confounded. Apart from anything else, the tombs were considered to be haunted, and even the bravest regarded them with superstitious dread. It was true that the Lycian inscriptions were said to speak of the whereabouts of hidden treasure, but only half of the alphabet was Greek, and the other letters had fallen out of use so long ago that not even Abdulhamid Hodja had any idea what their sounds were. Those who pored over the epitaphs and the other messages to posterity that were engraved on the stones came away frustrated, having been unable to concentrate in any case, on account of the fear of ghosts.

  The Dog, therefore, was either wildly brave or quite insane to live in the tombs, and this added to his intrinsic and extraordinary mystique.

  It had not taken long for him to become an integral part of the town’s conception of itself, because the rules of hospitality were inflexibly observed. Visitors were either the responsibility of the aga, who was obliged to entertain them in his konak, or else of the entire community, in which case the guest stayed in the khan, and the men would arrive with small dishes of food, sitting afterwards, smoking their çubuks in exemplary and companionable silence, until it was time to sleep. It was bad manners indeed for a guest to be left alone even for a moment, and their resolute and stalwart hosts soon developed a mental technique for enduring hours of abject boredom with perfect equanimity.

  In the case of the Dog, however, it was unclear as to whether this was a guest or a new resident, or even whether he could be considered to be a bona fide human being. Besides, nobody, however bold their disposition or generous their nature, very much wanted to sit about with a creature of such ghastly aspect, amid the evening chill of the tombs and the emerging stars, and so it was that they arrived with their small but honourable offerings of kadinbudu köfte, green beans in olive oil and iç pilàv, and then departed, having greeted him with a quiet “Hoş geldiniz.” Upon their return they told their wide-eyed wives and children about the grotesque and horrifying smile of the stranger, and from that time on the Dog went barely a day without a steady trickle of small gifts from those who arrived to observe him quite shamelessly, as if he were an entertainment provided for them by fate. When the aga heard about his arrival he sent a servant up with the customary sabre and loaded pistol, so that the stranger would have the capacity for self-defence. The weapons rusted in a corner of a tomb, until finally they were stolen by one of the unwashed at the time of the olive harvest.

  Karatavuk and Mehmetçik scrambled through the rocks, their steps releasing the scents of oregano and thyme, and the sun causing the stones to radiate with a borrowed but mysteriously magnified heat. They passed the first of the sarcophagal tombs, whose sides were carved with serried naked warriors brandishing swords and shields, and then stopped to catch their breath and look around. The Dog had got into the habit of moving from tomb to tomb, living in one, and then another, as if he were spoiled for choice and could not make up his mind. The boys spotted him further up the hillside, and then spied on him with disgusted delight as he scraped a hole in the earth with a stone, defecated into it painfully and then covered it once again with soil. “He does it like a cat,” whispered Karatavuk, his voice full of wonder.

  “He’s supposed to be a dog,” said Mehmetçik.

  “Let’s go and see my father working,” suggested Karatavuk, feeling guilty about having watched the Dog at a moment that should have been absolutely private. In any case, it was always wonderful to see his father shaping pots and getting splattered by mud. “I’ll race you down the hill,” said Mehmetçik, and set off at a run before his friend had had a chance to agree. “Cheat! Cheat!” shouted Karatavuk, leaping down the hillside in Mehmetçik’s wake, pulling threads out of the legs of his baggy shalwar as they caught on the thorns of the maquis.

  Iskander the Potter looked up with pleasure as the two little boys thudded breathlessly to a halt in the shadow of the wicker canopy that served him as shelter for his work. Karatavuk was his favourite child, and it always gave him a thrill of pride and pleasure when his beloved son took his hand, kissed it, touched it to his forehead, and called him “Baba.” The child never minded getting wet clay on his lips, and strained upward when his father bent down to kiss him on the top of his head, calling him “My lion.” Karatavuk was glad of his father, and basked in such signs of affection. As far as he was concerned, his father’s only shortcoming, albeit a grievous one, was that he did not possess a gun, although he did have a yataghan with a heavy curved blade and engraved handle, inlaid with silver, and he did have a few equally beautiful daggers that he wore through his sash. Iskander the Potter felt the lack of a gun as keenly as his son, and was in fact producing a surplus of pots so that he could sell them in Telmessos, in order to raise the money for the smith.

  Iskander was tall and wiry, with massive hands whose fingers had been worn flat and smooth by so much shaping of clay. He was burned dark by the sun, even though he worked in the shade, and the roots of his hair were just beginning to turn grey. His moustache drooped at the corners of his mouth, and when he laughed his teeth, like those of almost everyone else, were revealed to be browned and corroded by so much toping of sweetened apple tea. His legs were lean and muscular from so much kicking of the stone wheel, and for the same reason he moved with a subtle and graceful rhythm that reminded women of making love. He was fond of inventing riddles and improbable proverbs, and possessed the kind of impatient wit that showed a certain lack of resignation.

  Iskander had three sets of clothes: one for working at the wheel, when he would become caked in clay, one for the tea house, and one for high days. In general he was pleased to be a potter, and therefore such a necessary man, but he was wearied by life’s lack of variety. Like everyone else, he also worked his own small plot of land, in addition to another one rented from the aga in return for a proportion of his crop, and was irritated with himself because whenever he was at his pots he wished he was at his fields, and whenever he was at his fields he wished he was at his wheel.

  When the two boys arrived, Iskander was making a crock large enough to hold a fair measure of water, and his hands were moving in concert up and down the surface of it, leaving behind the even spiral created by his fingers. “Which is more useful,” he asked them, “the sun or the moon?”

  “The moon,” said Mehmetçik.

  “How did you know?” asked Iskander, disappointed.

  Mehmetçik rubbed his nose with his hand and replied, “I guessed.”

  “Well, you’re right, but you don’t know why.” He paused for effect, and said, “The moon is more important because you need the light more at night than you do during the day when it’s light.” He smiled, gratified by his pleasantry, and scratched his forehead, passing his finger under his turban, and leaving yet another dirty streak upon it. The boys looked at each other in bemusement, trying to figure the sense of the potter’s answer, and Iskander asked them, “Why is a potter second only to God?”

  The boys shook their heads in unison, and Iskander explained, “Because God created everything out of earth, air, fire and water, and these are the very same things that a potter uses to make his vessels. When a potter makes something, he acts in the image of God.”

  “Are you more important than the Sultan Padishah, then?” asked Mehmetçik, astonished.

  “Not on earth,” replied Iskander, “but perhaps in paradise.” He got up from his seat and stretched, saying, “I’ve made something for you, something special.” He reached into his sash and brought out two small terracotta objects, presenting one to each of the boys, one for Abd
ul his son, and the other for Nicos.

  What he gave them appeared at first sight to be a small amphora, except that he had moulded the neck so that it resembled the head of a bird, with a beak and two small holes for eyes. Out of sheer whimsy, he had given each one a small turban. Instead of a handle he had made a hollow tail whose extremity was skilfully pierced so that it became a whistle, and he had placed two simple loops of clay upon the shoulders of the pot on either side of the neck, so that they resembled wings. “I’ve made you some musical birds,” he said. “Give them back to me, and I’ll show you. You half fill them with water, like this, and then you blow down the whistle.” Iskander tried some experimental puffs, emptied a little water out of each, and then blew again, placing one at each corner of his mouth. To the amazement and delight of the little boys, a torrent of birdsong cascaded out of the terracotta birds, liquid, warbling and utterly enchanting. They jumped up and down with pleasure, and, forgetting their manners, reached out their hands, impatient to receive them. “This one,” said Iskander, “sounds exactly like a karatavuk.” He gave it to his son, asking, “You know the karatavuk? The one which is completely black and has the yellow beak? It goes vuk vuk vuk in the oleander to warn you away, and then it praises God at the top of the tree in the evening.” Iskander gave the other to Nicos, saying, “and this one sounds like a mehmetçik, which some people call kizilgerdan and some call the fire-nightingale.”

  “It’s the little one with the red breast,” said Nicos, excited, but at the same time a little resentful that Abdul’s produced the song of a larger bird than his.

  The boys blew hard into their clay birds, and Iskander laughed. “Gently, gently, you’re blowing out the water.”

  In the months that elapsed afterwards the two boys became maestros at imitating the songs of the karatavuk and mehmetçik, using the clay birds to call each other across the valleys and rocks. From time to time they became carried away, running about the hibiscus shrubs and wild pomegranates with the whistles in their mouths, flapping their arms, and wondering whether or not it might be possible to fly if only they flapped their arms enough. “Man is a bird without wings,” Iskander told them, “and a bird is a man without sorrows.”

  Abdul begged his mother for a black shirt and waistcoat, embroidered with golden thread, and he had them before a year was out. Thereafter, because of the natural process whereby everyone in a small community ends up with a nickname, it was not long before even his mother was referring to him as Karatavuk.

  Nicos, soon to become Mehmetçik, interrupted his mother’s labours with similar requests, until finally he obtained the red shirt and waistcoat for which he had pestered her, kissing her hand and pressing it to his cheeks. She had raised her eyes to heaven, saying, “She who has children has torments,” but she had bought the cloth from a pedlar and made the garments in the few days before the hoeing season.

  Iskander lost count of the number of times that the boys came to him, holding back their tears because they had lost their clay birds, either in a fight, or by dropping or misplacing them. He made entire batches, to sell to indulgent parents in the market at Telmessos, so that one day he would be able to afford a beautiful gun, and every time that he gave a new one to the boys he would ask, “And who is second only to God?” withholding the toy until he had heard the correct and satisfactory answer, “The potter, the potter, the potter.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Ibrahim Gives Philothei a Goldfinch

  When Ibrahim was six years old he found a dead goldfinch in an orchard near the Letoun, where Mohammed the Leech Gatherer was wont to spend hours in the water, waiting patiently for the leeches to attach themselves to his legs. Ibrahim had been amusing himself by trying to catch lizards in his hands, a project which is altogether impossible to achieve, but is a pastime to which every child necessarily commits many oblivious hours. Catching tortoises is somewhat less of a challenge, and for this reason those creatures quickly lose their interest, unless one is simply waiting to see how long it takes a tortoise to put out its head after having been poked with a stick.

  Ibrahim found the little bird because his eye was caught by the brilliant yellow markings on its wings, and the rich scarlet of the mask. It was wedged between two rocks, as if it had simply tumbled out of the sky, overtaken suddenly by death. He picked it out and turned it over in his hands, and although it had stiffened and dried into a contorted posture, he thought that it was the most pretty thing that he had ever seen. He turned it over and over in his hands, amazed by its perfect lightness and insubstantiality.

  Karatavuk and Mehmetçik were swinging from a low branch of a nearby tree, and Drosoula and Philothei were sitting on a fallen pillar by the Letoun, conversing, watching Mohammed talking and grinning to himself, and throwing stiff blades of grass into the water, in order to watch them float.

  Ibrahim went up to the girls, and held out his hand. “Look what I’ve got,” he said.

  “It’s a dead bird,” said Drosoula scornfully. “Take it away, it’s horrible.”

  “Oh, but it’s so pretty!” exclaimed Philothei, putting her hands to her face.

  “It’s a kushu,” Ibrahim told her, proud of his knowledge. “Do you like it?”

  “It’s so pretty!” exclaimed Philothei again.

  “What are you going to do with it?” asked Drosoula, her voice still scornful.

  Ibrahim ignored her, and held it out to Philothei. “Do you want it?” he asked.

  Philothei blushed with pleasure, and said, “Oh yes. Thank you.” She put out both hands, and he laid it gently in her palms.

  The little girl raised the tiny corpse to her face so that she could look more closely at it, and then quite suddenly threw it to the ground, saying, “Öf! Öf! It stinks. It’s disgusting.”

  “Of course it stinks,” Ibrahim told her sensibly. “It’s dead.” Philothei stared down at the bird in continuing horror, and Ibrahim, a terrible feeling of disappointment growing in his gut, asked, “Don’t you want it, then?”

  Philothei was sensitive to his feelings, even at so young an age, and she replied, diplomatically, “Of course I want it, but not when it’s stinky.”

  “You’re mad,” observed Drosoula, with every affectation of maturity. “It’s no use to anyone.” She would have loved it if someone had offered her such a gift, but she knew that no one ever would.

  “It’s pretty,” reproved Philothei.

  “What if I cut the wings off, and you keep those?” asked Ibrahim. “They’re very nice, and they won’t stink. Wings don’t stink when you cut them off. I’ve got some magpie wings, and they’re quite big, but they don’t stink and they’ve never stunk.”

  “I’d like the wings,” said Philothei, who did not really like the idea at all, but who was already caught up in the subtleties of the courtship that would last until the day of her death.

  So it was that Philothei became the owner of a small pair of wings, black, speckled with white and golden at the leading edge. With time she was to become very fond of the curious and useless gift, and would feel a warmth in her heart, and a modest thrill of pleasure every time that she came across them in her small collection of treasures.

  From that time forward, Ibrahim began to associate Philothei with birds, and he would think of her as “the little bird.” Later on, when they were betrothed, he would refer to her by that name among his friends, without sentimentality and without embarrassment. It would also be his pet name for her during those few incandescent and illicit moments when, at the risk of their reputations, they found themselves together and alone.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Proof of Innocence (1)

  Polyxeni had much trouble sleeping, because that night the bulbuls were singing their hearts out, and in any case there was a full moon. She tossed restlessly on her pallet, and blinked because her eyes felt hot and dry. At about the hour before dawn she saw her mother, but afterwards was not sure whether or not she had seen her mother’s ghost, or had been vi
sited in a dream. As she told her friend later:

  “It was so strange, Ayse, there she was, such a familiar shape, with her shoulders a little bent, and the grey hair poking out in wisps from the sides of her scarf, and that afflicted look in her eyes that she always had, and yet I felt nothing but peace. I said, ‘Mother, is that you?’ and she sat on the edge of the divan and said, ‘Who else?’ and I said, ‘Mother, it’s been so long, what are you doing?’ and she said, ‘The earth is weighing on my chest. Show me some light, so that I can breathe.’ And I lay there thinking, and I said, ‘Mother, it’s been only three years, and you know what people have been saying.’ My mother says, ‘Well, I am innocent, and everyone can see it if you do as I ask. My bones need wine.’ And I say, ‘But Mother …’ And she sighs and says, ‘Even my child suspects me,’ and I say, ‘No, no, no,’ and my mother says, ‘Just think, afterwards you can give up mourning,’ and I say, ‘I will always mourn. Your death burns me every day. Look, I am burned all over.’ And I hold out my arms to her. She sighs again and says, ‘If you do as I ask, the burning will be healed by water.’ And so finally I say, ‘I will do as you ask,’ and she stands up and says, ‘When you have done it, I would like to know. Send me a message.’ And I say, ‘Yes, Mother, I will,’ and I tell myself, ‘Polyxeni, you’ve got to remember this when you wake up,’ and then I go back to sleep, and in the morning when the azan wakes me up, I do remember it, and that’s why I’m telling you about it.”