Byron and the Beauty
Page 1
Table of Contents
BYRON AND THE BEAUTY
Imprint
Chapter One: October 6, 1809
Chapter Two: October 7, 1809
Chapter Three: October 8, 1809
Chapter Four: October 9, 1809
Chapter Five: October 10, 1809
Chapter Six: October 11, 1809
Chapter Seven: October 12, 1809
Chapter Eight: October 13, 1809
Chapter Nine: October 14, 1809
Chapter Ten: October 15, 1809
Chapter Eleven: October 16, 1809
Chapter Twelve: October 17, 1809
Chapter Thirteen: October 18, 1809
Chapter Fourteen: October 19, 1809
Afterword: The Men and the Mountains by John K. Cox
The Author
The Translator
Muharem Bazdulj
BYRON AND THE BEAUTY
A Turkish Tale
Translated from the Bosnian by John K. Cox
Remember’d yet in Bosniac song.
The Bride of Abydos, xiii, 219
English language edition first published by
Istros Books
London, United Kingdom www.istrosbooks.com
First published in Bosnian as Đaur i Zulejha, 2005
© Muharem Bazdulj, 2016
The right of Muhaem Bazdulj to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
Translation and afterword © John. K. Cox, 2016
Edited by S.D. Curtis
Cover design & typesetting: Davor Pukljak, www.frontispis.hr
ISBN 978-1-908236-28-9 (printed edition)
ISBN 978-1-908236-73-9 (MOBI edition)
ISBN 978-1-908236-69-2 (e-PUB edition)
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Chapter One: October 6, 1809
Dawn was coming. The rain fell softly. A flat greyness lay over the mountains. The city still lay in complete darkness. A kind of clear light, meanwhile, could be discerned on the far side of the encircling heights.
Byron had not had any proper sleep the entire night; he always slept worst when he was extremely tired. After three days of riding like the possessed, and three nights of sweet sleep under the stars, he could not fall asleep in a bed. Hobhouse was in the next room, snoring loudly. The other members of my party are surely asleep as well, he thought to himself, while I keep vigil like an eremite.
At first, it seemed that his bed was too soft. When he lowered himself onto the mattress, he sank in so far that, for a moment, he thought he had put on some disgusting amount of weight. He simply could not find the right position: either his leg ached, or he lay on his arm and felt it going to sleep, or he found himself lying on his back, his arms stretched out beside him like a corpse – but he could never sleep in that position. After that it seemed that the bedlinen was emitting an odd odour, but in reality it was quite clean: freshly washed and dried, it smelled like water and the powder that was used to wash laundry in these parts. Subsequently, he thought the ambience was too quiet. After all, this was a city, but there was no street noise; neither horses nor people were audible. Outside of the city, other sounds lulled him to sleep: the wind in the tree-tops, the roar of a freshet, the calls of the birds. But here the stillness was unbearable. In the end, he managed to settle down just before daybreak, blaming his insomnia on his own fatigue.
In his sleep, as in life, he was always at odds with the rest of the world. Insomnia had had the power to torment him since childhood. He would lie there in the dark all blessed night straining his ears and thinking. It was actually death on which he reflected the most. He was afraid of sleep; he was afraid of not waking up again. The thought of dying now struck him as less terrible than awareness of the final moment, but at the time there was nothing more horrifying to him than the idea of going to sleep and not waking up again. Once he heard his mother say that to die in one’s sleep was a blessed thing, and yet he was appalled at the thought of such a fate. No, it seemed to him that as a boy he never once fell asleep without dread.
By the time he was fifteen or sixteen, however, things had changed. He craved sleep, but it came sparingly, and unannounced, like a beloved but unexpected guest. It was at that point he grasped the fact that fatigue could not lull him to sleep. He could be up on a horse all day long and then toss and turn in bed the whole night, tired as a dog but as alert as a sentry. Later, at Cambridge, his classmates would sleep best when they were drunk, while he on the other hand could not sleep a wink even when inebriated. Only a few times in his life, when he was dead-drunk, utterly wasted, blinded, was he able to fall into a strange, short sleep that was more like unconsciousness than slumber. Such sleep, however, never lasted more than two or three hours, and was usually followed by a terrifying, instantaneous awakening, full of irrational anxiety. He would be sweating, his heart hammering and his head throbbing with a dull, insistent ache. It was on account of such things that he did not enjoy drinking.
Even the act of love deprived Byron of sleep. Indeed, spilling his seed did bring gratification, but peace seemed to depart from him along with his vital male fluids. The sight of the sleeping body next to him was cause for envy and unease.
Suddenly, the ezan interrupted the stillness. The Arabic ode to the greatness of the one God reverberated in the ravines of the Balkans, echoed in the mountains of ancient Hellas. ‘God is the greatest,’ the muezzin sang, and Byron recalled a verse he had heard two months earlier on the island of Malta, when he had tried his hand at Arabic. An Arab poet, from the days when the banner of the Prophet flew over Spain, had written: “When the bird of sleep sets about building its nest on my eyeball, it notices the lashes and is frightened by the cage.” Now that is poetry, thought Byron. Women had always told him that he had gorgeous eyelashes, long, shiny and full.
The call to prayer faded away. Morning, in its glittering white, had already conquered the room. The vague outlines of objects had regained their clarity. Byron resolved to stand up. He felt the urge to urinate, and the initial pangs of hunger.
* * *
Around noon the weather cleared up completely. With the greyish-white curtain removed from the clouds, Byron’s mood improved as well. The sun beat down as if it were high summer, and Byron decided to take a walk.
He went outside by himself. Hobhouse was writing in his journal, but even without the excuse of journal writing, he was hardly likely to have joined him. It was the strange arm on a nearby tree yesterday that had unsettled Hobhouse beyond all measure. To Byron, however, it now seemed completely improbable that they had seen such a thing yesterday; it bore more similarity to a half-forgotten nightmare than to a fresh, precise memory.
After ten days at sea, their ship had put in two days ago at Preveza. The Albanian governor was there to greet them. They had no interpreter, but somehow they could make out that Ali Pasha was sending them his personal welcome via this governor. The name of Ali Pasha opened all doors hereabouts. He would be waiting for Byron, the famous English nobleman, in Yannina, according to the overwhelmed interpreter who had finally shown up from somewhere and who was clumsily putting together sentences in ancient Greek. Byron had not been able to refuse an invitation like that. While Hobhouse and his retinue made the trip to Yannina circumspectly, and against their will, Byron was quite thrilled about this portion of the journey: before them stretched a genuine terra incognita, of virginal, unknown and completely unexplored regions. Every third English lord or count had already
taken a trip to Athens or Istanbul, but no one had been to Albania.
And the countryside was splendid, resembling the Scotland of his childhood – those landscapes at once rough and gentle that always reminded him of his grandfather William, that wicked lord. They had ridden for two days escorted by two gloomy Turks. Yesterday’s dusk had revealed to them the silhouette of Ali Pasha’s stone city that seemed almost rooted to the mountain. They spurred their horses and rushed forward as if returning home. They were already right by the city and the horses hooves were clacking on the cobblestones of the road, when a sight came into view that froze the blood in their veins. On a thick bough of a solitary poplar hung a human arm. A whole arm, long, which looked as if it had been ripped from a shoulder. It was moving back and forth like the pendulum of a wall clock, and the blue fingers were apparently lacking nails. Hobhouse and his suite averted their eyes immediately, and young Collins, one of the pages, had to vomit; but the two Turks were so conspicuously indifferent that it was obvious that this was a completely normal occurrence for them. It was a terrible, afflicting scene, but Byron was bewitched. He stared continuously at the dead member, at the almost beast-like, hairy underarm and the purple, bloodied upper arm, which was being picked at, slowly and patiently, by a raven of unnatural corpulence. The joy at reaching their destination had disappeared in a second.
In the main square of Yannina, a certain Hasan was waiting for them, a servant of Ali Pasha’s. Once again a Greek person was found, and with his assistance they understood what Hasan was telling them; namely, that Ali Pasha was not in Yannina. Apparently, the ruler was sojourning somewhere in the north, where he had his adversary Ibrahim Pasha cornered in the city of Berat. He had commanded, however, that a house and servants and anything else the great English aristocrat might need be placed at the disposal of the visitors; he would endeavor to return as soon as possible and receive Byron in person.
They had ridden, exhausted, through a labyrinth of murky streets until they arrived at the house that had been prepared for them. A royal supper awaited them: milk, meat and warm bread. They ate rapidly and went immediately to bed, though for Byron a sleepless night was in store. In the morning a boy silently served them a breakfast that was exactly the same as the supper the night before, and after that they were left to their own devices. Byron and Hobhouse communicated in whispers. Although it was unlikely that anyone for fifty miles around understood English, they spoke so softly that they could scarcely hear each other. Hobhouse was worried on account of the arm; evidently he feared that his own arm might end up like that, but Byron reminded him of Ali Pasha’s guarantee of safety. Hasan would come by later, Byron explained, and he’d most likely bring an interpreter with him, and they would be able to explain to Hasan that they could not remain very long. He’d be told to convey expressions of their esteem to the Pasha and they would then leave a nice present, such as the sword with the silver handle – and that would be that. Hobhouse seemed to calm down a bit and withdrew to his room in order to work on his journal, or so he said, while Byron felt drawn outside by the sunshine.
* * *
The streets were narrow and dusty, and the men on the street did not glance twice at him. Byron had the feeling that everyone knew who he was and under whose protection he stood, and that they were afraid even to look askance at him.
He took a long walk, ending up very far from the house in which he was lodging. For a brief moment, he thought he was lost and would not be able to find his way back, but he was saved by a minaret – that is to say, a white mosque with a tall minaret stood in the vicinity of the house, and using this to orient himself Byron found his way back. He had not seen a single woman in the city. And yet it felt to him as though women’s eyes had been riveted on him from behind windows and fences, and from houses and courtyards.
At the house, his entourage was eating lunch. Hasan and the Greek from the night before were also there. The atmosphere was excruciating; no one spoke. Byron’s arrival helped a little, with Hasan stating that the Pasha was likely to arrive in two or three days, but that Byron could continue his journey to wherever he wished and the Pasha would guarantee his complete safety. It also happened, Hasan informed the company, that tomorrow, or the day after, Isak, Ali Pasha’s physician, would be coming to Yannina. Apparently, Isak could speak English. Furthermore, it would be no problem to obtain anything needed to make Byron’s stay more pleasant. After the meal, they drank a full copper pot of boiling coffee and then Hasan left them.
Darkness settled over Yannina, and Byron sensed that this night was going to be one blessed with robust, beautiful sleep. The muezzin called the Muslims to another prayer, the penultimate, or final, one of the day. Byron was uncertain whether he should write to his mother or not. In the end he opted to wait a little.
* * *
He fell asleep quickly and when he awoke it was still the middle of the night. This, however, was not like waking up after a night of drinking. He came up to the surface of sleep slowly and unwillingly, like a snared fish. He was lying on his stomach: left arm under the pillow, right arm pinned under his body. After a few drowsy moments, he realized what had roused him. His right arm had grown altogether numb; he could not feel it at all. That had only ever happened to him once or twice before. He thrashed his way out from under the blanket, flipped onto his back and picked up his right arm with his left, then waited for his circulation to do its work. Half-slumber enveloped him like a cloak, until his body jerked as if it had been scalded.
He remembered the arm in the tree. Massaging his numb right arm with his hand, he thought feverishly about that severed or torn-off arm. In the mute, shadowy night he was plagued by the question of whether it had been a right or a left arm before it became a scrap of dead meat. The seconds passed slowly. The numbness in his right arm dragged on. Then he felt a prickling on his right palm, akin to the feeling he got when, as a boy, he would press his face to his grandfather’s cheek. Now the fingers were maneuverable again, and Byron opened and closed his fist anxiously. His arm rapidly returned to normal, and Byron lay on his chest again. He folded his arms and thrust them under the pillow as if he were preparing to swim away. Sleep, however, did not return so easily. As his eyes were closing of their own accord and he was gradually fading away, the image of that arm in the tree would rip through his mind just before he lost consciousness. He twitched a few more times, and then unexpectedly before dawn broke, drifted off to sleep again.
Chapter Two: October 7, 1809
It was a cool morning. It seemed to Byron that he’d been woken by the cold. His left leg was peeking out from under the blanket, his foot was trembling slightly, and he could feel goose bumps on his skin. The day before it had drizzled constantly, but it had been rather warm; the hot breath of summer was still noticeable. But this morning, by contrast, autumn was baring its teeth. Heavy rain had fallen and the loud, even thudding of the drops called to mind a march. Byron was awake, but he did not yet feel like getting up. He didn’t like autumn. He had never liked it. He once read a poem by that madman, Blake… how did it go? “O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained with the blood of grapes, pass not, but stay beneath my modest roof…”
That’s idiotic, he thought back then, and now it seemed even more preposterous. Accursed autumn, the damned change of the seasons, he thought; this is when the pain in my leg grows. There must be a catch in that phrase “pass not.”
An odd smile passed over Byron’s face. He remembered his first little book, those sixty-six pages to which he had given the title Fugitive Pieces. He loved the title more than anything else about the book, since it referred to loss, evanescence, or flight. He particularly loved that one short poem that still, to this day, gave him at least the intimation of an erection whenever he thought of it. But it was precisely on account of this poem that he had burned all the copies of the book. He didn’t even keep a copy for himself, and he had carefully counted each and every one before the auto-da-fé in order to be certain, and he
knew that he had torched all of them, but somehow, nonetheless, he didn’t believe that this book had ceased to exist. He didn’t know his own verses by heart, but he remembered the title, you see and he wasn’t the only one. The thing still existed, therefore, although barely. Indeed, he had felt strange, watching the pyre on which his poems were burning. Present in those flames were also sparks of contentment: the book appeared to have lived up to its title. Its existence in the form of an object was, in fact, fugitive. He was fond of both the thin volumes of his verse that appeared later. Nonetheless, it would not have caused his heart any grief if somebody else had collected them both in turn and incinerated them. The vain bards of yore, who believed that a massive book could ransom their empty lives, would have lived differently if in their youth they had subjected their own books to the treatment he had given Fugitive Pieces. Fire teaches us about proper proportions, he thought.
A second later, he felt a strong stabbing pain in his leg. My damn old bones, he thought; no sooner do they cease growing than they start to break down. A man is like an apple – as soon as his cheeks redden, he drops to the ground.
Then words began to flash through his mind; as when you hear a few beats of a familiar melody – the whole world around you ceases to exist until you remember what the music is. New words are grafted onto the framework of the original ones. A poem. Byron recited it to himself in a whisper:
A drop of rain
licks my eyebrow,
like a suppressed and secret tear.
It tracks across my cheek
as the Rhine the continent.
In a silent insurrection
autumn kills the sun of my summer,
just as the Achaeans did to Ilium
in their wooden horse.
Somewhere I have pen and paper, Byron thought; I have to write that down. And immediately another thought: why should I feel compelled to do that? Let it live in my head; it would be better for oblivion to devour it than flames.