The Blind Owl By Sadeq Hedayat (Translated by Iraj Bashiri), Chapter 10

 

Chapter 10

 

Early in the evening when I left the pot of fire for smoking opium, I looked out of the window.

I saw a black tree and the shuttered entrance door to the butcher shop. Dark shadows had blended into each other, I felt everything was empty and transient.

The pitch dark sky looked like an ancient black tent pierced by innumerable shining stars.

And at this same moment I heard the call to prayer; it was an untimely call—perhaps a woman, maybe that whore, was giving birth, or was on the bricks, so to say.

Interspersed with the call was the barking of a dog. I thought to myself, «If there is any truth in the saying that everyone is assigned a star in the sky, my star must be remote, dull and insignificant; Maybe I have never had a star! »

At this time I heard the voices of a group of drunken watchmen who passed in the street and played practical jokes on one another. Then, altogether, they sang in chorus: « Let us go and drink mey. The wine of the kingdom of Rayy. If not today, then what day? »

Frightened, I pulled myself aside. Their singing echoed in a peculiar way in the air until gradually it grew distant and faint.

 No. They were not looking for me; they did not know…

Once more darkness and silence returned, covering everything. I did not light the tallow burner in my room; I felt like sitting in the dark.

Darkness, that dense liquid that permeates everywhere and everything. I had become accustomed to it.

It was in the darkness that lost thoughts, forgotten fears and terrifying and incredible recollections that were hidden in the unknown recesses of my brain, would come to life, move about and mock me.

The corner of the room, behind the curtain and at the side of the door was filled with these threatening, formless figures.

There, beside the curtain, there was a frightening figure that did not move. It was neither gloomy nor cheerful. Every time I turned my head in its direction, it stared right at me.

The face was familiar, as if I had seen this very face when I was a child.

It was on a Thirteenth of Farvardin. I was playing hide-and-seek with some children on the bank of the Suren River. This very face had appeared to me along with other ordinary faces, short, comical, and harmless. His face was like the face of the same butcher across from the window of my room.

It seems that this man had been involved in my life and that I had seen him quite often.

Possibly this was the shadow of my twin, located in the limited boundaries of my life…

As soon as I got up to light the tallow burner, the figure disappeared automatically.

I walked to the mirror and concentrated on my own face. The picture in the mirror seemed to be that of a stranger.

It was incredible and terrifying. My reflection was stronger than myself and I had become like the reflection in the mirror. It seemed that I could not remain in the same room with myself.

I was afraid that if I ran, it would chase me, like two cats facing each other to fight.

But I raised my hand, held it in front of my eye to create an eternal night in the palm of my hand.

Often moments of fright were accompanied by a special intoxication for me; I felt giddy, my knees gave way and I felt nauseated.

Suddenly I realized that I was standing on my feet.

This was a strange thing for me, it was like a miracle.

How could I be standing on my feet? I felt that if I moved one of my legs I would lose my equilibrium; I was feeling quite dizzy.

The earth and its creatures had sought great distance from me.

Vaguely I hoped for an earthquake or a tornado, so that I could be reborn in a quiet, bright world. When I wanted to enter my bed, several times I said to myself, «death… death…»; my lips were closed but my own voice frightened me. As a matter of fact, I had lost the courage that I once had.

I was like the flies that invade the house at the onset of fall: lean, lifeless flies afraid of the buzz of their own wings. They cling to a spot on the wall and remain motionless until they realize that they are alive; then they ricochet wildly against the doors and windows until their dead bodies fall all around the room.

As soon as my eyes closed, a vague world materialized before me, a world wholly of my own making, compatible with my thoughts and observations.

In any event, it was a more real and a more natural world than the one of wakefulness.

It was as though no obstacles or impasses barred my thoughts and imagination. Time and space would lose their effect.

This feeling of purged lust that had given rise to sleep was the product of my ultimate needs. It materialized incredible, but natural, shapes and events before me. produced in the depth of my being, a product of my latent needs, created some. And after I woke up, at that instant, I was still doubtful of my existence. I was heedless about the time and space around me.

It seems that my dreams were all of my own making and that I was already familiar with their interpretation.

It was quite late at night when I fell asleep. I suddenly found myself walking and breathing freely in the streets of an unknown city, the houses of which were built in strange geometrical shapes: prismatic, conic and cubic; they had dark, low windows with lily plants clinging to the doors and windows.

But the inhabitants of this city had died a strange death.

They were all petrified in their places and two drops of blood had run from their mouth to their clothes.

Whichever I touched, his head broke off and fell down. I came to a butcher shop.

There I saw a man who resembled the odds-and ends man who sits in front of our house. He wore a scarf and was carrying a long-bladed knife in his hand; he stared at me with red eyes, the lids of which seemed to have been cut.

When I tried to take the knife away from him, his head came off and tumbled down.

Overcome with fright, I escaped. I ran through the streets.

Everyone that I saw was petrified in his place. I was afraid to look behind me.

When I reached my father-in-law's house, I saw my brother-in-law, that whore's little brother; he was sitting on the platform.

I took two cookies out of my pocket to give to him, but when I touched him, his head came off and fell down. I shrieked and woke up.

It was still dusk.

I was suffering from palpitations of the heart.

The ceiling seemed to be pressing on my head.

The walls were extremely thick and my chest seemed about to burst open. My sight was dim.

For a while, in a frightened state, I stared at the rafters, counting and recounting the beams.

When I pressed my eyes shut, I heard the door open.

Nanny wanted to sweep my room. She had taken my breakfast upstairs to the upper chamber. I went upstairs and sat in front of the sash-window on the balcony. From there I could not see the odds-andends man who sits in front of my room, but I could see the butcher to my left. His activities, however, which had seemed frightening, grave and measured from my window, seemed comical and poor from up here.

Apparently he was not a real butcher, but was only play-acting.

They brought in the lean black packhorses who coughed heavy, dry coughs and on whose sides two sheep carcasses were hung.

The butcher stroked his moustache with his greasy hand, appraised the sheep with a buyer's eyes; then with difficulty he carried two of them to his shop and hung then on the hooks there.

He rubbed his hand over the legs of the sheep as if caressing them.

Perhaps, last night, too, when he played with his wife's body, who knows that he did not remember the sheep; he might even have thought of the profit that she might have brought if he were to kill and sell her.

When the cleaning was finished, I returned to my room and made a decision; a frightening decision. I fetched the bone-handled, long-bladed knife from the tin can in the closet of my room, cleaned the blade with the tail of my shirt and put the knife under my pillow. I had made this decision a long time ago, but something in the activities of the butcher, in his chopping, weighing and appraising the legs of the sheep, revived a sense of imitation in me.

It was necessary for me to experience this pleasure.

Through my window, among the clouds I saw a patch of absolutely deep blue.

It seemed that to reach there I must climb a very high ladder.

The horizon was covered with thick, yellow and deathly clouds which weighed heavily on the city. The weather was horrible yet intoxicating.

For some reason, I found myself bending toward the floor.

At this time they were carrying a coffin in front of my window. The coffin was covered with black drapes and on top of it two candles were burning.

The sound of la ilaha il-allah, there is no god but God, drew my attention to the procession. The tradespeople and the passersby halted their activities and walked seven steps behind the coffin.

Even the butcher, for the sake of having performed a ritual good deed, followed the coffin for seven steps and returned to his shop.

But the odds-and-ends man did not move from where he sat at his display.

Everyone had assumed a stern, serious face!

Perhaps he had been reminded of the philosophy of death and of the other world.

When my nanny brought herbal extracts to me, she was frowning. She was passing the large beads of a rosary through her fingers and praying to herself; then she said her prayer aloud in a contemptible way behind my door, reciting, «allahomma, allllahomma…»

She behaved as though I was in charge of the forgiveness of the sins of the living!

But none of this buffoonery had the slightest effect on me. On the contrary, I was pleased to see that, even though temporarily and deceitfully, the rabble were living several seconds in my world.

Was not my room a coffin?

Was not my bed colder and darker than a grave?

The same ready-made bed that constantly invited me to sleep!

Several times the thought that I was in a coffin had occurred to me.

 At night my room seemed to shrink and press in on me from all sides.

Isn't this the same as the feeling that one experiences in the grave?

Is anyone informed about the condition of the senses of the deceased? Although at the time of death the blood ceases circulation, and although after twenty-four hours some parts of the body begin to decompose and disintegrate, for quite some time the hair and the nails continue to grow.

Do senses and thoughts also cease when the heart

stops, or do they continue a vague life using what blood remains in the smaller vessels?

The feelings surrounding death are already frightening in themselves; so much more then the feeling of being dead!

There are some old people who die with a smile on their lips, so quietly that one could say they go from one sleep to another. They are like tallow burners that quietly burn themselves out. But a robust youth who dies suddenly and whose bodily powers put up a fight with death, what are his feelings? I had often thought about death and about the disintegration of my body so that this thought did not frighten me

On the contrary, I wished earnestly to die, to cease existing.

The only thing that frightened me was that the particles of my body might blend with those of the rabble. I could not bear this idea.

Sometimes I wished that I had long hands and long sensitive fingers so that I could gather the particles of my body carefully and prevent them from getting mixed with those of the rabble.

Sometimes I thought that my observations were very similar to those of people in their death throes; the zeal for life, as well as anxiety, awe and fear, had abandoned me.

The rejection of all indoctrinations imposed on me produced a special sense of tranquillity.

The only thing that consoled me was the hope for nonexistence after death.

The thought of a second life frightened me and made me tired. I was still not used to this world in which I was living; what good would another world do me? I had a feeling that this world was not made for me but for a group of shameless, rude, beggarish pseudo-intellectual , mule-drivers suffering deprivation.

It was made for those who were created to suit the world, and who, like the hungry dog in front of the butcher shop that wagged its tail for a bit of offal, are used to flatter the mighty of the earth and of the sky.

The thought of a second life frightened me and made me tired. No, I had no need to see all these nauseating worlds and those repulsive figures.

Had God acquired his worlds so recently that he wished to intimidate me by exhibiting them?

But I cannot tell lies. Were I to have a second life, I should wish for dull and blunt thoughts and feelings; I would like to breathe freely and without feeling fatigued; and lastly I would like to continue my life in the shade of the columns of a Linga temple--a world in which I could run around freely without the sun hurting my eyes or people's voices and the bustle of life hurting my ears.