The Big Book of Modern Fantasy
Page 38
“There’s no difference. Monsters and non-monsters have always been close to one another! What hasn’t been continues to be…”—I was speaking not only to the birds and the monsters but also to those I had always known, who were rushing in on every side.
“Qfwfq! You’ve lost me! Birds! He’s yours!” and the Queen pushed me away.
Too late, I realized how the birds’ beaks were intent on separating the two worlds that my revelation had united. “No, wait, don’t move away, the two of us together, Or…where are you?” I was rolling in the void among scraps of paper and feathers.
(The birds, with beaks and claws, tear up the page of strips. Each flies off with a scrap of printed paper in his beak. The page below is also covered with strip drawings; it depicts the world as it was before the birds’ appearance and its successive, predictable developments. I’m among the others, with a bewildered look. In the sky there are still birds, but nobody pays attention to them anymore.)
Of what I understood then, I’ve now forgotten everything. What I’ve told you is all I can reconstruct, with the help of conjectures in the episodes with the most gaps. I have never stopped hoping that the birds might one day take me back to Queen Or. But are they real birds, these ones that have remained in our midst? The more I observe them, the less they suggest what I would like to remember. (The last strip is all photographs: a bird, the same bird in close-up, the head of the bird enlarged, a detail of the head, the eye…)
Bilge Karasu (1930–1995) was born in Istanbul and studied philosophy at Istanbul University. He worked in the foreign broadcast department of Radio Ankara until a Rockefeller University scholarship allowed him to continue his studies in Europe. After returning to Turkey, he went to work at Hacettepe University, where he lectured in philosophy. By the mid-1960s, in addition to his teaching, he was also working as a translator and had begun to experiment with new forms of expression through his own writing, culminating with a collection of stories, Troya’da Olum Vardi (Death in Troy), in 1963. He won the Sait Faik Story Award eight years later with Uzun Surmus Bir Gundu Aksami (Evening of a Long Day). By the beginning of the 1980s, he attempted different uses of form and content in works he styled “texts” rather than “stories.” His 1985 novel Gece (Night), a fable of totalitarianism, was his first book translated into English. “The Prey” is included in Göçmüş Kediler Bahçesi (The Garden of Departed Cats, 1980), a narrative interlaced with fables.
THE PREY
Bilge Karasu
Translated by Aron Aji
To the Açars
I’M TORN BETWEEN a sunny winter day that faintly promises summer, and the one four days later, a day of snow, blizzard, with two feet accumulating. I can’t decide which day to choose for my tale.
I’m also thinking this:
Love means—literally or figuratively—eating and nothing else….
The sea: it will either become a mirror under the winter sun, or its tall jagged waves will rush and recede in the blizzard that turns day into night.
The sea must always come first. Because it holds the fish and the fisherman. Because its myriad fingers sweep the fish and the fisherman, wherever it wishes, now smiling on the fish now on the fisherman, now disappointing one now the other.
The fish comes next: it is an intermediary between the sea and the fisherman. The fish perceives the fisherman as the enemy, and doesn’t know that the sea, which holds them both, will use one to lure the other. The fish. If the day is sunny, the fish will exhaust the fisherman. If snowy, it will rise to the surface, numb, overwhelmed by the cold.
At last the fisherman: he knows nothing besides the sea’s annihilation or the bends. He will come to know love—if he ever does—through the fish. Human….
* * *
—
Suppose we choose the sunny day (perhaps also to please the most readers). Suppose the fisherman sails off, say, when the currents move gently, almost without a ripple, between the coast and the islands…Most often, the sea favors the fisherman. Yet when his journey proves plentiful, he credits himself, his good fortune, his skills. The sea knows well what humans refuse to understand, that what they deem obvious the sea knows is unintelligible. The one who knows remains silent.
And one more thing:
The sea loves this fisherman. It is the kind of love humans wrongly call “hopeless.”
Since the mind cannot even begin to fathom the love offered by an immeasurably vast sea, the fisherman responds to it in the only way he can: he is satisfied that the sea is his livelihood (and in due time, his death bed). To the outsider, everything appears crystal clear. Yet something is overlooked: the insider is inside and sees only what’s inside.
(Besides, don’t we know? People are outraged that one can commit murder in the name of love and they heap curse upon curse on the murderer. Then, one day, the same people are seized by the realization that they are just as capable of murdering in the name of love, that in their hearts they have already rehearsed the horrid act, already, felt it in the depths of their being. Then it is someone else’s turn to curse…)
Between the coast and the islands, the gentle currents will carry the fisherman to the spot where a young misguided fish will be circling greedily. The fish will catch the bait effortlessly, then fight the line with all its strength, fight and wear down the fisherman. When the fish is defeated at last and is being pulled into the boat, the fisherman’s arm…
In the struggle with the fish—that is like no other fish he has known or caught—he will be exhausted…In a way, what happens afterward will be his reward…
Or if the events happen on the day of the blizzard, then the sea will exhaust both the fish and the fisherman. People usually value something obtained after much struggle. Some believe they catch the difficult bounty with the strength of their arm, with their intelligence. Yet, others have subtler interests: they neither care for easy achievement nor enjoy being perceived as chasing what they desire; therefore, even in the most difficult circumstances, they feign indifference and wait instead for the prey—the object of their desire, or their chase—to give up the chase and surrender. Then their satisfaction is even greater. Could there be a prey this heedless? Absolutely.
The sea will assume a color between lead and olive, enduring turmoil between periods of hailstorm. In a few hours, the annihilation will start. The shores, the boats along the shores, will be covered in snow. The icy currents will flow into underwater shelters where schools of fish retreat. Numbed, the fish will gradually be overwhelmed by the cold, rise to the surface, half dead, and succumb to the currents. Later, they will be swept ashore, filling the scoops and buckets of those who may enjoy a difficult chase but won’t turn down easy prey.
* * *
—
The startled horse sprang forward. Falcons, lances, maces came flying behind the horseman. The Bey rode swiftly toward the rocky cliffs, chasing the deer, the leopard, the mountain goat.
* * *
—
Annihilation is still a few hours ahead of him. The fish that he hopes will come to him—although it never has, not even once—must be lost, inexperienced, a naïve creature. It doesn’t yet know the snow; the numbness, the annihilation that the cold weather brings. It mustn’t know.
So that, while the fish is being pulled into the boat, the fisherman’s arm…
Or we may suppose altogether differently and combine the two weathers. Say the sea is pale, the sky icy gray, the morning snow has stopped, and the sunlight is seeping through the folds of gray. Gathering snow, so to speak. Yet even so little sunlight suffices to warm the human heart, the veins that have grown thin, atrophied; it provides a faint reassurance that everything need not die in the cold, even knowing that the warmth will be brief, that the snow and the annihilation are about to start…
The fisherman pulls the line, his hand is covered with blood. He can s
ense the beauty of the fish, the sweet teasing in his heart.
* * *
—
This is not a fairy-tale horse. It lies on the ground, mutilated. The Bey rests his weight on his lance and stares at the beast. The leopard’s head is soaked in blood. How could he have loved this leopard?
* * *
—
This immense, this magnificent fish, if it caught the hook, it probably wasn’t because its palate was itching. When reeled in, the fish had its mouth open, as if to show where the hook tore through the skin, asking to be taken gently, unharmed. The fisherman did what he should never have done: he wrapped his right arm around the fish, pressed the creature to his body, and, in this embrace, he put his left hand inside the mouth to remove the hook carefully. The mouth closed shut. He felt the hook sliding across his hand, his wrist, his arm. He couldn’t free his hand, and his arm slowly began disappearing inside the mouth. He felt no pain. His arm wasn’t being bitten or torn; it was merely being swallowed. The fish stopped at his elbow. Without struggle, it stared at him with one enormous eye. The fish just hung on to his arm.
The fisherman managed to gather himself together somehow. First he tried to pull out of the fish gently but he couldn’t even move it. When he tightened his grip, he felt the spikes and sharp scales throughout the animal’s startled skin; his right hand was scraped all over, covered in blood. When he tried to open the jaws, he felt the teeth piercing his flesh. He stopped. He needed to think and act at once. He began to row with his free arm, even though he knew the act was futile. Soon he noticed that he was caught in a current. He pulled out the oar and surrendered to the movement.
Someone in the distance, somewhere deep in the water, was teasing him laughing at him. So it seemed to him.
* * *
—
A fish inside the sea’s darkness; a snake inside the earth’s darkness. Messengers from the dead.
A fish disappears in the brilliance of the sky. Or is it a seagull? Perhaps. A messenger from the resurrected. What counsel does it bring to us? To the fisherman above whose head it glides?
Behind a mound are men in turbans and hoods; they look at the Bey, as if spying on him.
A snake lays coiled by a tree, in its shade. Little farther, the same snake—it must be—slithers to its hole. Does it portend the Bey’s killing of the leopard? or his imminent death?
A creek below; in the creek, a gliding fish.
From behind the mound, an arrow shoots toward the Bey. Above him, among the tree branches, a bird stretches its wings, prepares to soar into the brilliant void.
* * *
—
From now on, the fish is his burden. He can neither sail nor row, nor even walk among the people. He cannot bring himself to kill the fish. How can he? What instrument can he use?
He remembers something from the drowsy past, vaguely stirring…
A boy is running the length of a sandy shore. He is holding a snake by its neck. The snake doesn’t resist, it simply administers the child his punishment: swinging its entire body like a flaming whip, it bloodies his arm, wrist and hand. The boy catches up with his brother, shows him the snake, slowly squeezes its neck one last time then releases it. The snake slithers, disappearing from sight like a flash of lightning. Without harming the boy. It has punished him enough. The smile doesn’t leave the boy’s face even for a moment. “Where did you find it?” “In the sand.” “How did you catch it?” “In a snap, grabbed it by its neck.” Much later he recites, as if by heart, “We are friends now.”
This is what he remembers. From the past, through the vaguely stirring darkness of its drowsy waters.
“We are friends now,” he repeats—feeling his voice inside his throat more than hearing it—as if to commit it to heart: “We are friends now.” The fish doesn’t move, gazing at his face with one enormous eye. Even after many hours out of the water, the fish is indistinguishable from any land creature. One could almost say it breathes, almost notice the breathing.
Who is the prey? the fish or the fisherman? Perhaps each has surrendered to the other in the mysterious hunt. “We are friends now.” The fish wants more than friendship, it is obvious. As the hours pass, what is between them will be love, will turn into passion. It is already love, already turning into passion…
* * *
—
Arrows come flying. They fall under the Tree of Eternity and become blades of grass. The shoots are the arrows that fall like rain—or the rain that falls like arrows. Among the blades, a snake uncoils, both male and female.
The Sacred Tree, the Tree of Eternity, is the mainmast of the universe. Kings camp under it and pour libations at its roots. They strangle the lion and the leopard between their arms and chest, snatch the last breath out of them with one hand. They tear wild beasts in two, grabbing them now by their jaws now by their hind legs, and choke the snake that wraps around their legs. The world belongs to the kings. The Tree grants them strength. Because they don’t know love, they enrage the Matriarch of animals, and yet, by pouring their libations that seep into the soil, they rejoin husbands and wives, lost lovers. The kings stand by the tree, as if holding together the universe: the sky is above them, the earth is their body, the underground streams carry their feet. Because their bodies are one with the Tree, their heads dwell among the birds, their feet among the fish.
* * *
—
The fisherman is inside the dream of a different kind of sleep. He no longer feels the weight on his arm. It’s as though the fish has somehow released his arm only to swallow his entire body. Whether his head is still visible or it has become one with the fish’s head, no one can tell.
Inside the fish and one with the fish, he leaves—whether leaving his room or his boat, this, too, no one can tell—and descends into the darkness of the cold currents. Night. The snow has stopped. The sun that once comforted the heart is extinguished. The two of them journey to the very depths, to a place that is eternally male, eternally female.
In the wake of the annihilation, the numbed fish begin their slow and fatal ascent to the icy surface, while the two, one inside the other, dive down among the colors, among the dead—new and ancient—bathed in strange brilliance, amid the ruins of sunken cities. The fisherman is not afraid of the colors, the brilliance, the moss-covered dead, or the petrified structures; he seems ready to feast on all shades of green. As long, he thinks, as long as, he says, hoping, knowing the fish also will understand him, as long as, he thinks and says, I don’t come face to face with the sultan of death. I’m not ready for that.
But the fish doesn’t seem to understand or know any of this. Its tail touches the rock at the end of their journey. The rock begins to split in two. He knows that only those who have befriended the snake and spoken to the seagull can enter through this narrow opening to kneel down and press their cheek against the feet of death. They alone can postpone the dark prince’s ascent to earth. If they’re not quick enough to go in, the crack closes, never to open again. Then, human hope is lost forever.
The fisherman repeats, “I am not ready.” The outcome of this encounter is always uncertain; one can emerge from the darkness and return to earth, having learned something; or one may never emerge, never return….
“I am not ready,” he says; he escapes by sacrificing the part of his fin caught between the closing halves of the rock. His pain is unbearable. Again, he feels the weight around his arm, becomes conscious of his torn flesh where the hook had pierced it, and he awakens. The torn fin that is bleeding belongs to the fish. A tear forms in the corner of his eye.
Perhaps the boat is still riding the currents above, in the distance above…The two begin to rise like the throngs of devastated fish, streaks of tears and blood marking their ascent. Then, “The bends,” he says, “the bends, I should have known,” he thinks—he finds the time to think—perhaps….Without rea
lizing that it is the sea that has struck him.
* * *
—
Once, he thought that he and the snake had become friends, equals. He had captured the snake, and the snake had punished him for its captivity. After that, neither one had attempted to harm the other. Yet, because the fish wanted something beyond friendship, it swallowed his arm inch by inch, all the way up to his shoulder. As it swallowed, the fish grew bigger, heavier.
While the fish grew heavier, the fisherman came to realize that he loved this weight which was making his heart feel lighter. Although he felt cold, an inner flame was warming him and the fish. Little by little, he began to understand the language of the fish. Who knows, perhaps it was the fish that began to understand the language of the fisherman. Either way, they gradually came to understand each other.
“Go back to sleep,” the fish told him. “We failed to enter the darkness because you said you weren’t ready; you were afraid of death. Yet, unless you enter, unless you feel the pain of being torn to pieces, your heart cannot be renewed, you cannot be reborn.
“I would go anywhere with you,” answered the fisherman. “But, if I’m not ready, what’s the point of going, even with you?” The words he spoke didn’t even persuade his own heart.
* * *
—
The boy brings his first prey and lays it before the elders. He waits, his eyes staring at the ground. The patriarch of the clan cuts the animal open, takes from its blood and smears it in nine places on the boy’s body. With his skilled hands, he strips the most beautiful bone off the animal’s right leg and gives it to the boy. “From now on, everyone will know you by the name I give you,” he says. “Your name…” At that moment, the sky roars with thunder. The boy remains nameless.