Zelim said nothing: he was almost as discomfited by the sight of the fish as the women; it did seem to be watching them all with its swiveling eye, as if to say: you’re all going to die like me, sooner or later, gasping for breath.
The woman’s panic spread. Children began to cry and were ushered away, instructed not to look back at the demon, or at Zelim, who’d brought this thing to shore.
“It’s not my fault,” Zelim protested. “I just found it in my net.”
“But why did it swim into your net?” Baru piped up, pushing through the remaining onlookers to point his fat finger at Zelim. “I’ll tell you why. Because it wanted to be with you!”
“Be with me?” Zelim said. The notion was so ridiculous, he laughed. But he was the only one doing so. Everybody else was either looking at his accuser or at the evidence, which was still alive, long after the rest of the net’s contents had perished. “It’s just a fish!” Zelim said.
“I certainly never saw its like,” said Baru. He scanned the crowd, which was assembling again, in anticipation of a confrontation. “Where’s Kekmet?”
“I’m here,” the old man said. He was standing at the back of the crowd, but Baru called him forth. He came, though somewhat reluctantly. It was plain what Baru intended.
“How long have you fished here?” Baru asked Kekmet.
“Most of my life,” Kekmet replied. “And before you ask, no I haven’t seen a fish that looks like this.” He glanced up at Zelim. “But that doesn’t mean it’s a demon-fish, Baru. It only means . . . we haven’t seen one before.”
Baru’s expression grew sly. “Would you eat it?” he said.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Zelim put in.
“Baru’s not talking to you,” one of the women said. She was a bitter creature, this particular woman, her face as narrow and sickly pale as Baru’s was round and red. “You answer, Kekmet! Go on. You tell us if you’d put that in your stomach.” She looked down at the fish, which by some unhappy accident seemed to swivel its bronze eye so as to look back at her. She shuddered, and without warning snatched Kekmet’s stick from him and began to beat the thing, not once or twice, but twenty, thirty times, striking it so hard its flesh was pulped. When she had finished, she threw the stick down on the sand, and looked up at Kekmet with her lips curled back from her rotted teeth. “How’s that?” she said. “Will you have it now?”
Kekmet shook his head. “Believe what you want,” he said. “I don’t have the words to change your minds. Maybe you’re right, Baru. Maybe we are all cursed. I’m too old to care.”
With that he reached out and caught hold of the shoulder of one of the children, so as to have some support now that he’d lost his stick. And guiding the child ahead of him, he limped away from the crowd.
“You’ve done all the harm you’re going to do,” Baru said to Zelim. “You have to leave.”
Zelim put up no argument. What was the use? He went to his boat, picked up his gutting knife, and went back to his house. It took him less than half an hour to pack his belongings. When he went back into the street, it was empty; his neighbors—whether out of shame or fear he didn’t know or care—had gone into hiding. But he felt their eyes on him as he departed; and almost wished as he went that what Barn had accused him of was true, and that if he were to now curse those he was leaving behind with blindness they’d wake tomorrow with their eyes withered in their sockets.
IV
Let me tell you what happened to Zelim after he left Atva.
Determined to prove—if only to himself—that the forest from which the family had emerged was not a place to be afraid of, he made his departure through the trees. It was damp and cold, and more than once he contemplated retreating to the brightness of the shore, but after a time such thoughts, along with his fear, dissipated. There was nothing here that was going to do harm to his soul. When shit fell on or about him, as now and then it did, the shitter wasn’t some child-devouring beast as he’d been brought up to believe it’d be, just a bird. When something moved in the thicket, and he caught the gleam of an eye, it was not the gaze of a nomadic djinn that fell on him, but that of a boar or a wild dog.
His caution evaporated along with his fear, and much to his surprise his spirits grew lighter. He began to sing to himself as he went. Not the songs the fishermen sang when they were out together, which were invariably mournful or obscene, but the two or three little songs he remembered from his childhood. Simple ditties which brought back happy memories.
For food, he ate berries, washed down with water from the streams that wound between the trees. Twice he came upon nests in the undergrowth and was able to dine on raw eggs. Only at night, when he was obliged to rest (once the sun went down he had no way of knowing the direction in which he was traveling), did he become at all anxious. He had no means of lighting a fire, so he was obliged to sit in the darkened thicket until dawn, praying a bear or a pack of wolves didn’t come sniffing for a meal.
It took him four days and nights to get to the other side of the forest. By the time he emerged from the trees he’d become so used to the gloom that the bright sun made his head ache. He lay down in the grass at the fringe of the trees, and dozed there in the warmth, thinking he’d set off again when the sun was a little less bright. In fact, he slept until twilight, when he was woken by the sound of voices rising and falling in prayer. He sat up. A little distance from where he’d laid his head there was a ridge of rocks, like the spine of some dead giant, and on the narrow trail that wound between these boulders was a small group of holy men, singing their prayers as they walked. Some were carrying lamps, by which light he saw their faces: ragged beards, deeply furrowed brows, sunbaked pates; these were men who’d suffered for their faith, he thought.
He got up and limped in their direction, calling to them as he approached so that they wouldn’t be startled by his sudden appearance. Seeing him, the men came to a halt; a few suspicious glances were exchanged.
“I’m lost and hungry,” Zelim said to them. “I wonder if you have some bread, or if you can at least tell me where I can find a bed for the night.”
The leader, who was a burly man, passed his lamp to his companion, and beckoned Zelim.
“What are you doing out here?” the monk asked.
“I came through the forest,” Zelim explained.
“Don’t you know this is a bad road?’ the monk said. His breath was the foulest thing Zelim had ever smelt. “There are robbers on this road,” the monk went on. “Many people have been beaten and murdered here.” Suddenly, the monk reached out and caught hold of Zelim’s arm, pulling him close. At the same time he pulled out a large knife, and put it to Zelim’s throat. “Call them!” the monk said.
Zelim didn’t understand what he was talking about. “Call who?”
“The rest of your gang! You tell them I’ll slit your throat if they make a move on us.”
“No, you’ve got me wrong. I’m not a bandit.”
“Shut up!” the monk said, pressing his blade into Zelim’s flesh so deeply that blood began to run. “Call to them!”
“I’m on my own,” Zelim protested. “I swear! I swear on my mother’s eyes, I’m not a bandit.”
“Slit his throat, Nazar,” said one of the monks.
“Please, don’t do that,” Zelim begged. “I’m an innocent man.”
“There are no innocent men left,” Nazar, the man who held him, said. “These are the last days of the world, and everyone left alive is corrupt.”
Zelim assumed this was high-flown philosophy, such as only a monk might understand. “If you say so,” he replied. “What do I know? But I tell you I’m not a bandit. I’m a fisherman.”
“You’re a very long way from the sea,” said the ratty little monk to whom Nazar had passed his lamp. He leaned in to peer at Zelim, raising the light a little as he did so. “Why’d you leave the fish behind?”
“Nobody liked me,” Zelim replied. It seemed best to be honest.
>
“And why was that?”
Zelim shrugged. Not too honest, he thought. “They just didn’t,” he said.
The man studied Zelim a little longer, then he said to the leader: “You know, Nazar, I think he’s telling the truth.” Zelim felt the blade at his neck dig a little less deeply into his flesh. “We thought you were one of the bandits’ boys,” the monk explained to him, “left in our path to distract us.”
Once again, Zelim felt he was not entirely understanding what he was being told. “So . . . while you’re talking to me, the bandits come?”
“Not talking,” Nazar said. His knife slid down from Zelim’s neck to the middle of his chest; there it cut at Zelim’s already ragged shirt. The monk’s other hand slid through the shirt, while the knife continued on its southward journey, until it was pressed against the front of Zelim’s breeches.
“He’s a little old for me, Nazar,” the monk’s companion commented, and turning his back on Zelim sat down among the rocks.
“Am I on my own then?” Nazar wanted to know.
By way of answering him, three of the men closed on Zelim like hungry dogs. He was wrested to the ground, where his clothes were pulled seam from seam, and the monks proceeded to molest him, ignoring his shouts of protest, or his pleas to be left alone. They made him lick their feet and their fundaments, and suck their beards and nipples and purple-headed cocks. They held him down while one by one they took him, not caring that he bled and bled.
While this was going on the other monks, who’d retired to the rocks, read, or drank wine or lay on their backs watching the stars. One was even praying. All this Zelim could see because he deliberately looked away from his violators, determined not to let them see the terror in his eyes; and equally determined not to weep. So instead he watched the others, and waited for the men who were violating him to be finished.
He fully expected to be murdered when they were done with him, but this, at least, he was spared. Instead the monks had the night with him, on and off, using him every way their desires could devise, and then, just before dawn left him there among the rocks, and went on their way.
The sun came up, but Zelim closed his eyes against it. He didn’t want to look at the light ever again. He was too ashamed. But by midday the heat made him get to his knees and drag himself into the comparative cool of the rocks. There, to his surprise, he found that one of the holy men—perhaps the one who had been praying—had left a skin of wine, some bread, and a piece of dried fruit. It was no accident, he knew. The man had left it for Zelim.
Now, and only now, did the fisherman allow the tears to come, moved not so much by his own agonies, but by the fact that there had been one who’d cared enough for him to do him this kindness.
He drank and ate. Maybe it was the potency of the wine, but he felt remarkably renewed, and covering his nakedness as best he could he got up from his niche among the rocks and set off down the trail. His body still ached, but the bleeding had stopped, and rather than lie down when night fell he walked under the stars. Somewhere along the way a bony-flanked she-dog came creeping after him, looking perhaps for the comfort of human company. He didn’t shoo her away; he too wanted company. After a time the animal became brave enough to walk at Zelim’s heel, and finding that her new master didn’t kick her, was soon trotting along as though they’d been together since birth.
The hungry bitch’s arrival in his life marked a distinct upturn in Zelim’s fortunes. A few hours later he came into a village many times larger than Atva, where he found a large crowd in the midst of what he took to be some kind of celebration. The streets were thronged with people shouting and stamping, and generally having a fine time.
“Is it a holy day?” Zelim asked a youth who was sitting on a doorstep, drinking.
The fellow laughed. “No,” he said, “it’s not a holy day.”
“Well then why’s everybody so happy?”
“We’re going to have some hangings,” the youth replied, with a lazy grin.
“Oh . . . I . . . see.”
“You want to come and watch?”
“Not particularly.”
“We might get ourselves something to eat,” the youth said. “And you look as though you need it.” He glanced Zelim up and down. “In fact you look like you need a lot of things. Some breeches, for one thing. What happened to you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That bad, huh? Well then you should come to the hangings. My father already went, because he said it’s good to see people who are more unfortunate than you. It’s good for the soul, he said. Makes you thankful.”
Zelim saw the wisdom in this, so he and his dog accompanied the boy through the village to the market square. It took them longer to dig through the crowd than his guide had anticipated, however, and by the time they got there all but one of the men who were being hanged was already dangling from the makeshift gallows. He knew all the prisoners instantly: the ragged beards, the sunburned pates. These were his violators. All of them had plainly suffered horribly before the noose had taken their lives. Three of them were missing their hands; one of them had been blinded; others, to judge by the blood that glued their clothes to their groins, had lost their manhoods to the knife.
One of this unmanned number was Nazar, the leader of the gang, who was the last of the gang left alive. He could not stand, so two of the villagers were holding him up while a third slipped the noose over his head. His rotted teeth had been smashed out, and his whole body covered with cuts and bruises. The crowd was wildly happy at the sight of the man’s agonies. With every twitch and gasp they applauded and yelled his crimes at him. “Murderer!” they yelled. “Thief!” they yelled. “Sodomite!” they yelled.
“He’s all that and more, my father says,” the youth told Zelim. “He’s so evil, my father says, that when he dies we might see the Devil come up onto the gallows and catch his soul as it comes out of his mouth!”
Zelim shuddered, sickened at the thought if the boy’s father was right, and the sodomite robber-monk had been the spawn of Satan, then perhaps that unholiness had been passed into his own body, along with the man’s spittle and seed. Oh, the horror of that thought; that he was somehow the wife of this terrible man and would be dragged down into the same infernal place when his time came.
The noose was now about Nazar’s neck, and the rope pulled tight enough that he was pulled up like a puppet. The men who’d been supporting him stood away, so that they could help haul on the rope. But in the moments before the rope tightened about his windpipe, Nazar started to speak. No; not speak; shout, using every last particle of strength in his battered body.
“God shits on you all!” he yelled. The crowd hurled at him. Some threw stones. If he felt them breaking his bones, he didn’t respond. He just kept shouting. “He put a thousand innocent souls into our hands! He didn’t care what we did to them! So you can do whatever you want to me—”
The rope was tightening around his throat as the men hauled on the other end. Nazar was pulled up on to tiptoe. And still he shouted, blood and spittle coming with the words.
“—there is no hell! There is no paradise! There is no——”
He got no further; the noose closed off his windpipe and he was hauled into the air. But Zelim knew what word had been left unsaid. God. The monk had been about to cry: there is no God.
The crowd was in ecstasies all around him; cheering and jeering and spitting at the hanged man as he jerked around on the end of the rope. His agonies didn’t last long. His tortured body gave out after a very short time, much to the crowd’s disapproval, and he hung from the rope as though the grace of life had never touched him. The boy at Zelim’s side was plainly disappointed.
“I didn’t see Satan, did you?”
Zelim shook his head, but in his heart he thought: maybe I did. Maybe the Devil’s just a man like me. Maybe he’s many men; all men, maybe.
His gaze went along the row of hanged men, looking for the on
e who had prayed while he’d been raped; the one Zelim suspected had left him the wine, bread, and fruit. Perhaps he’d also persuaded his companions to spare their victim; Zelim would never know. But here was the strange thing. In death, the men all looked the same to him. What had made each man particular seemed to have drained away, leaving their faces deserted, like houses whose owners had departed, taking every sign of particularity with them. He couldn’t tell which of them had prayed on the rock, or which had been particularly vicious in their dealings with him. Which had bitten him like an animal; which had pissed in his face to wake him when he’d almost fainted away; which had called him by the name of a woman as they’d ploughed him. In the end, they were virtually indistinguishable as they swung there.
“Now they’ll be cut up and their heads put on spikes,” the youth was explaining, “as a warning to bandits.”
“And holy men,” Zelim said.
“They weren’t holy men,” the youth replied.
His remark was overheard by a woman close by. “Oh yes they were,” she said. “The leader, Nazar, had been a monk in Samarkand. He studied some books he should never have studied, and that was why he became what he became.”
“What kind of books?” Zelim asked her.
She gave him a fearful look. “It’s better we don’t know,” she said.
“Well I’m going to find my father,” the youth said to Zelim. “I hope things go well with you. God be merciful.”
“And to you,” Zelim said.
V
i
Zelim had seen enough; more than enough, in truth. The crowd was working itself up into a fresh fever as the bodies were being taken down in preparation for their beheading; children were being lifted up onto their parents’ shoulders so they could see the deed done. Zelim found the whole spectacle disgusting. Turning away from the scene, he bent down, picked up his flea-bitten dog, and started to make his way to the edge of the assembly.