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

 

Final Chapter

 

The entire display spread before him had the rusty smell of dirty things refused by life, as if he intended to blame people for what life has refused, or perhaps he intended merely to display them. Wasn't he himself old and dejected?

The articles in his display were all lifeless, dirty, and worn out; nevertheless, the display had a persistent life as well as profoundly meaningful forms!

The effect of these articles on me was greater than the effect of living human beings.

But nanny had already informed me; she told everyone… with a dirty beggar!

Nanny said that my wife's bed had become infested with lice and that she had gone to the bathhouse.

What kind of a shadow had she cast on the steamy wall of the bathhouse? Perhaps a lustful shadow quite confident of itself. But, on the whole, this time I did not disapprove of my wife's taste, because the odds-and-ends man was not a commonplace, vulgar and colorless man like the stud-males who attract foolish women with an inordinate desire for coition.

These pains, these layers of misfortune encrusted on the old man's head and face, along with the misery that emanated from him; perhaps he himself was not aware of it, marked him as a demi-god; and the dirty display in front of his was a manifestation and a representative of creation itself.

Yes indeed, I had seen the traces of two decayed teeth, from behind which Arabic verses came forth, on my wife's face. This woman who did not admit me, who humiliated me and whom I loved despite all this--even though she had not allowed me to kiss her on the lips even once!

The sunlight was yellowish and pale. I heard the plaintive sound of the kettle-drums; the sound of entreaty and supplication that revives all inherited superstitions and the fear of darkness.

The moment of crisis, the foretold moment for which I had been waiting, arrived.

My body was burning from head to toe, and I was suffocating.

I went to my bed, lay down and closed my eyes; due to the intensity of the fever it seemed that everything was bigger and had fuzzy margins.

Instead of sinking, the ceiling seemed more elevated. My clothes pressed against my body. Without any reason, I sat up in my bed and murmured, «This is the limit… it is unbearable…» Suddenly I became silent. Then mockingly, but loudly and clearly enunciating, I said to myself, «It is the…» and added, «I am a fool! »

I was not paying any attention to the meaning of the words that I uttered; I was merely amusing myself with the vibrations of my voice.

Maybe I talked to my shadow to dispel loneliness.

At this time I saw something incredible: the door opened and that whore entered.

Obviously, every now and then, she thought of me.

I should be grateful! She, too, was aware that I am alive and suffer and am undergoing a gradual death. I had to be grateful.

I only wished to know if she were aware that I was dying because of her; if she were, I would die peacefully and happily--I would be the happiest man on the face of the earth.

Upon the whore's entrance in my room, my evil thoughts vanished.

I don't know what rays emanating from her being or what blessing in her gestures comforted me.

This time she looked better; she had become plump and mature. She wore a cloak made of Tusi gusset material, her eyebrows were plucked and darkened with woad, and she wore a mole; to her face she had applied some white facial powder and rouge and she had added collyrium to her eyelashes. In short, she entered my room all made up.

She seemed content with her life. Involuntarily, she placed the index finger of her left hand in her mouth.

Was she the gentle lady, the delicate, ethereal girl who wore a wrinkled black dress, who played hide-and-seek with me on the bank of the Suren

River, the same childish, transient and free girl whose provocative, sexy calves were visible through her skirt?

Until now, whenever I looked at her, I was not aware of it, but now, as if a curtain was removed from before my eyes, for some reason I was reminded of the sheep in front of the butcher shop

She had become like a lump of lean meat and had lost all the traces of her inherent attractiveness.

She had become a mature, grave, made-up woman who was preoccupied with the thought of life.

A complete woman! My wife! With fear and dread I realized that my wife had grown up and become an adult, while I had remained a child.

To tell the truth I felt ashamed to look her in the face; I felt ashamed especially of her eyes.

The woman who yielded herself to everyone except me; and I consoled myself with the vague memory of her childhood when she had a simple childish face, was a vague, transitory being, when there was no trace of the odds-and-ends-man's teeth on her face. --no, she was not the same person.

She asked sarcastically, «How are you feeling? I snapped at her. «Are you not free? Are you not doing whatever you wish to do? What's my health to you?

She slammed the door and left; she didn't even turn to look at me. It was as if I had forgotten how to communicate with the people of the world, with the living.

She, the same woman I thought to be devoid of feeling whatsoever, took offense at my act!

Several times I wanted to get up, go and fall on her hands and feet and ask for forgiveness. Yes, to cry, because I thought if I were able to cry, I would feel comfortable.

How many minutes, hours, or centuries passed—I don't know.

I had become like the lunatics who become intoxicated with their own suffering. An intoxication that was beyond human conception; an intoxication that only I could experience. Gods, if they actually existed, could not experience that…

At that moment I discovered that I was indeed superior; I felt my superiority over the rabble,

above the phenomenal world, and I even felt that I had surpassed those gods who are the offspring of human lust.

I had become a god, I had become even bigger than a god, because within me I felt an eternal, infinite flux. But she returned. She was not as cruel as I had imagined.

I rose, kissed her skirt and, coughing and crying, threw myself at her feet. I rubbed my face against her calf and several times called her by her real name. Her real name seemed to have a special ring to it. But at the bottom of my heart, I continued to repeat, «whore … whore! » I embraced her legs that were bitter, soft and acrid, like the taste of the bitter end of a cucumber. For how long I cried? I don't know. I lost all track of time.

When I came to, I saw that she was gone.

For less than an instantaneous moment, I experienced the full impact of the intoxicating pleasures, caresses and sufferings of mankind. I remained seated, at the opium brazier, and before the smoking tallow burner, just like the odds-and ends man who sits at his display.

I was immobile, gazing at the soot of the tallow burner. The smoke, like black flakes of snow, was covering my hands and face.

When my nanny, carrying a bowl of barley-broth and some chicken pilaff, entered my room and saw me, she screamed in terror and backed away, dropping the tray and my dinner.

It pleased me that at least I was able to frighten her.

Then I got up, cropped the wick with a pair of snuffers, walked to the mirror, and rubbed the soot into my face--what a horrible face!

With my fingers, I pulled under my eye and let go, tugged the corners of my mouth, puffed out my cheeks, pulled the tip of my beard up and twisted the ends, I made all kinds of faces; my face was capable of assuming all manner of frightening and comical expressions. It was as if in this way I could observe all the shapes, funny, frightening and incredible expressions that were inherent and hidden in me.

I recognized all these states and felt them within myself and they seemed funny. All these shapes were within me and belonged to me.

Murderous, horrible and comical masks that could be changed, using the tip of a finger. I saw the reflections of the old Qur'an reciter, the butcher, and my wife in myself; it was as though an image of each had existed within me!

All these figures had existed in me, but none of them had belonged to me. Are not the substance and the expressions of my face responses to an undefined stimulus created by the cumulative doubts, copulations, and disappointments inherent in my ancestors?

And I, who was the custodian of this burdensome inheritance, due to some insane and humorous inclination; my mind was involuntarily unaware to keep these states in my figure!

Only at the time of my death, perhaps, will my figure be freed from the binds of this compulsion and assume the expression that it should naturally have!

But, in the last state, too, would the situations that my ridiculous will has continuously engraved on my face leave their mark more deeply and stronger?

In any event, I gained insight into my capabilities and realized my potential.

Suddenly, I burst into laughter. And what a hideous frightening laughter it was! It made my hair stand on end, because I did not recognize my own voice.

It was like a sound from the outside, a laughter that I often heard deep in my throat, now it resounded in my ear.

At this time I began to cough. A clot of bloody phlegm, a piece of my liver, fell onto the mirror. I moved the phlegm around on the surface of the mirror with my finger.

When I turned and looked behind me, I saw a terrified nanny, paled faced with dishevelled hair and lifeless eyes, staring at me; she was holding a bowl of barley broth like the one she had brought me earlier.

I covered my face with my hands and hid myself behind the closet curtain.

When I tried to go to sleep, a fiery ring pressed all around my head.

The pungent and lustful smell of the sandalwood in the tallow burner filled my nostrils.

It smelled like my wife's leg muscles. The mildly bitter taste of cucumber ends was in my mouth.

I rubbed my hand against my body and in my imagination I compared my body—my thigh, my calves, my arms—with my wife's. The outline of my wife's thigh and buttocks and the warmth of her body materialized before me.

It was stronger than materialized because it fulfilled a need. I desired her body near me. I felt that I needed her body to be near me. A movement, a decision was sufficient for getting rid of this lustful compulsion. But this fiery ring around my head became so scalding that it plunged me into the depth of a vague sea with frightening figures.

It was still dark.

The voices of a group of drunken watchmen passing in the alley woke me; playing practical jokes on each other they sang in unison: « Let us go and drink mey, The wine of the kingdom of Rayy If not today, then what day? »

I recalled, no, upon a sudden inspiration, I remembered that I had a flask of wine in the closet of my room. A wine in which poison from the fang of a Nag was dissolved. One cup of it was sufficient to dispel all the nightmares that life could create.

But that whore…? This word intensified my desire for her and made her appear livelier and more energetic than before.

What better thing could I imagine? I could give her a cup of that wine and gulp down one myself.

Then we could die together in the throes of the same convulsion.

What is love?

For the rabble love is a kind of indecency, a transient vulgarity; the rabble's conception of love is best found in their obscene ditties, in prostitution and in the foul idioms they use when they are halfway sober, such as «shoving the donkey's foreleg into mud» or «putting dust on the head.» But my love for her was of a totally different kind.

It is true that I knew her from before: strange slanted eyes, a narrow, half-open mouth, a subdued quiet voice. For me, all these were filled with distant and painful memories. And in all of them I sought something of which I had been deprived, something that belonged to me but somehow I was denied.

Had they deprived me forever?

It was for the same reason that a more frightening sensation had revealed itself to me. A different pleasure that I felt as a compensation for my disappointed sense of love had become a compulsion for me.

For some reason I was thinking about the butcher in front of the window of my room who rolls up his sleeves, says besmellah and cuts the meat.

His expression and attitude were constantly before my eyes. Finally I, too, made a decision—a frightful decision.

I got out of my bed, rolled up my sleeves and picked up the bone-handled, long-bladed knife from where I had put it under my pillow. I hunched my shoulders and also threw a yellow cloak across my back; then I wrapped a scarf around my head and face. I felt that I had acquired a composite attitude, one that blended the characteristics of the butcher with those of the odds-and-ends man.

Then I tip-toed in the direction of my wife's room.

Her room was dark. I opened the door quietly. As though muttering aloud to herself in a dream, she said, «take off your scarf! »

I approached her bed and held my face against her mild, quiet breath; what an incredibly pleasant and life-giving warmth she had!

It occurred to me that if I breathed in this warmth for some time, I would become alive again.

For a long time I had been of the opinion that everyone's breath, like mine, must be hot and scalding. I paid special attention to see if there was any other man in her room—that is if any of her lovers were present—but she was alone. I realized that all those things people said about her were absolute lies and slander.

How could one be sure that she was not still a virgin? I felt ashamed to have attributed so many fanciful acts to her.

This feeling did not last more than a moment; because, right then I heard someone sneeze outside. This was followed by a stifled, mocking laughter that made one's hair stand on end. This sound pulled all my veins out of my body. If I had not heard this sneeze and this laughter, if Providence had not willed that I should wait, following my decision, I would have cut her flesh into pieces and I would have given it to the butcher in front of our house to sell to the public. I personally would have taken a piece of her thigh to the old Qur'an reciter as a piece of sacrificial meat; then I would to go to him the next day and say, «The meat that you ate yesterday, do you know whose flesh it was?»

Were it not for his laughter! I should have done this at night when I did not have to look the Whore in the eyes.

Because I felt ashamed of the expression in her eyes. She reproached me.

At last, from the side of her bed, I picked up a piece of material that impeded me and hastily ran from the room.

I tossed the knife on the roof since it was this long-bladed knife that had created all these murderous thoughts in me.

I discarded the long-bladed knife that resembled the butcher's, and rid myself of it.

In my room, in the light of the tallow burner, I saw that I had picked up her dress, a dirty dress which had been in contact with her flesh, a soft, silk dress made in India which smelled of her body and of champac perfume; these scents had remained in the dress because of her warmth--because of her existence.

I smelled it, placed it in between my legs and went to sleep. I had never spent a night as comfortably as this.

Early the next morning I awakened to the sound of my wife's clamors; she was making a fuss about the loss of her dress, saying repeatedly, «It was a brand-new dress! » Even though it had a tear in the sleeve.

But even if it meant bloodshed, I was not about to give that dress up. Wasn't I entitled to one of my wife's old dresses?

When nanny brought ass's milk, honey and bread for me, I noticed that she had put a bone-handled, long-bladed knife at the side of my breakfast tray as well. She said she had seen it on the odds-and-ends- man's display and bought it.

Then, raising her eyebrows, she said, «It might come in handy! » I picked up the knife and examined it. It was my own knife.

Then, like one who is offended and who has a complaint, she said, «Well, my daughter (that whore, that is), at this early hour of the morning is accusing me of stealing her dress last night! » Really!

Now, would I tell you a lie… but yesterday your wife saw streaks of blood… we knew that the child… her explanation is that she had become pregnant in the bathhouse. One night I massaged her back; her arm was all black and blue.

She showed her arm to me and said, «I went into the cellar at the wrong time and the you-know-who pinched me! » Again she said, « Did you know that your wife has been pregnant for a long time? »

I laughed and said, «No doubt the child looks like the old Qur'an reciter. She must have been thinking of him when the child first moved in her womb! »

Then nanny left the room in a storm as though she was not expecting such an answer.

I got up right away and with shaking hands picked up the bone-handled, long-bladed knife, took it to the closet, placed it in my souvenir box and closed the lid.

No, it was impossible for the child to be mine; it certainly belonged to the odds-and-ends man!

In the afternoon, my door opened and her small brother—the whore's little brother—entered chewing his nails.

Everyone who saw them would recognize immediately that they were brother and sister.

They were that much alike! He had a small, narrow mouth, meaty, wet and lustful lips, languid eyelids, slanted, astonished eyes, prominent cheeks, dishevelled, date-colored hair and a wheat-colored complexion. He was a replica of that whore; he even showed a trace of her satanic temperament.

He had an insensitive Turkmen face devoid of any spirit, a face designed for life's combats, a face that validated anything that assured survival.

It seems that nature has taken some precautions; it seems that their forefathers had lived at the mercy of sunshine and rain and had fought the elements, giving them not only their shape and expression (with certain modifications), but also of their endurance, lust, greed and hunger.

I knew what the taste of his mouth would be: the mildly bitter taste of the stem end of a cucumber.

When he entered the room, he looked at me with his astonished Turkmen eyes and said, «Shajun says the physician said that you are about to die and we shall be rid of you. How do people die? »

I said, «Tell her I died a long time ago. »

Shajun said, «If the child was not lost, the whole house would be ours. »

Involuntarily, I burst into laughter; it was a dry, hideous laughter that made one's hair stand on end, such that I could not recognize my own voice. The child ran from the room in terror.

At this moment I knew why the butcher wiped the bone-handled, long-bladed knife on the legs of the lambs with pleasure.

The pleasure of cutting lean meat in which coagulated blood like silt had accumulated and issued in the form of bloody water dripping off the windpipes of the sheep.

The yellow dog in front of the butcher shop, the staring eyes of the severed head of a cow thrown on the floor of the shop, and the sheep heads with eyes on which the dust of death rested—they all had seen. They, too, knew!

Finally I realized that I had become a demi-god. I was beyond all the low, petty desires of mankind. I felt the eternal flux within me.

What is eternity?

Eternity for me was playing hide-and-seek with that whore on the banks of the Suren River, closing my eyes momentarily and hiding my head in her lap.

Suddenly I realized that I was talking to myself; in a strange way, to wit; I wanted to talk to myself, but my lips were so heavy that they would not budge.

Nevertheless, with immobile lips and with an inaudible voice I felt that I was talking to myself!

In this room that, like a grave, grew narrower and darker each moment, night and its horrible shadows surrounded me.

In front of the smoking tallow burner, my shadow was mutely cast on the wall. It was wearing my sheepskin, the cloak that I wrapped around me, and my scarf.

My shadow cast on the wall was more profound and more exact than my real being. My shadow had become more real than my existence. It seemed that the old odds-and-ends man, the butcher, nanny, my whore of a wife were all my shadows. Shadows among which I was held a prisoner.

At this moment I resembled an owl. My laments, however, were caught in my throat and I spat them like clots of blood.

Perhaps the owl, too, has a sickness which makes it think as I do.

My shadow on the wall was exactly like an owl; hunched over, it carefully read my writings.

Doubtless it understood well; only he could understand. When I looked at my shadow from the corner of my eye, I was terrified.

A dark, silent night, like the night that surrounded all my life, with frightful figures mocking me from the door, the wall and from behind the curtain.

Sometimes my room became so narrow that I felt

I was in a coffin. My temples burned and my limbs were not ready for the smallest movement.

A weight like the weight of the carcasses carried to the butcher on the back of black, gaunt packhorses pressed against my chest.

Death, like a mute who has to repeat each word and when he finishes reciting a hemistich must repeat it, murmured its own song quietly. Its sound penetrated the flesh like the reverberations of a saw; it shrieked and then suddenly was muffled.

I had hardly closed my eyes when a group of drunken night watchmen passed my room swearing at each other and singing in unison: « Let us go and drink mey The wine of the kingdom of Rayy If not today, then what day? »

I said to myself, «Now that my arrest is inevitable!»

Suddenly I felt an upsurge of superhuman force within me. My forehead cooled. I got up, threw my yellow cloak over my shoulders, wrapped my scarf a couple of times around my head, hunched my shoulders, picked up the bone-handled, longbladed knife from the closet where I had hidden it in my souvenir box, and tip-toed in the direction of the whore's room.

When I reached the threshold, her room was plunged in utter darkness.

As I listened attentively, I heard her voice saying. «Are you here? Take off your scarf! »

Her voice had a pleasure-inducing ring to it; she sounded as she did when she was a child—as if unconsciously murmuring in a dream. I had heard this voice once before in a deep sleep.

Was she dreaming?

Her voice was muffled and deep; it had changed to the voice of the small girl who played hide-andseek with me on the banks of the Suren River. I stopped for a moment and heard her repeat, «Come in and take off your scarf! »

Quietly I entered the dark room, took off my cloak and scarf, took off my clothes; but for some reason I entered the bed still holding to the bone handled, long-bladed knife. It seemed that the warmth of her bed gave me a new life.

Then I embraced her pleasant, damp and sensual body in memory of the slim girl with a pale face and innocent, large Turkmen eyes who played hide-and-seek with me on the banks of the Suren River. No—I attacked her like a savage, hungry beast loathing her from the bottom of my heart.

The feelings of love and hatred seemed to have become intermixed.

Her silvery, cool, body, my wife's body, the Nagserpent that tightens her coils around its victim, opened up and enveloped me.

The fragrance of her bosom was intoxicating; the flesh of her arm that coiled around my neck felt pleasantly warm.

I wished my life would end that instant, because at that minute all my feelings of hatred and vengefulness towards her had disappeared. I tried to keep from crying. Without my feeling it, like a mandrake, her feet were locked behind mine, and her hands were clasping the nape of my neck. I felt the pleasing warmth of live and fresh flesh.

All the particles of my burning body drank this warmth.

I felt that, like a prey being gradually swallowed, she was pulling me into herself.

My senses of fear and pleasure were blended in each other.

Her mouth tasted acrid like the bitter end of a cucumber. Amidst this pleasant pressure, I was sweating and lost consciousness. Like my body, all the particles of my being ruled over me and sang their song of victory in aloud.

I, condemned and helpless, had surrendered to these waves of whim and desire.

Her hair, which smelled of champac, was stuck to my face and cries of mutual anguish and joy issued from the depth of our beings.

Suddenly I felt that she bit my lip so violently that it was torn open in the middle.

Did she bite her own finger like this too, or did she discover that I was not the old man with the leprous lip?

I tried to cut myself loose, but I could not move even slightly; my struggles got me nowhere. Our flesh was welded together. I thought she had gone mad.

Amidst the struggle, I moved my hand involuntarily and felt the long-bladed knife in my hand enter some part of her body. A warm liquid poured over my face. She shrieked and let go of me.

I continued to hold onto the warm liquid that had gathered in my fist and threw the long-bladed knife away. With my hand that was now free, I rubbed her body. It was utterly cold--she was dead.

At the same time I began to cough, but it was not really coughing; it was the echo of a dry, hideous laughter that made one's hair stand on end.

Hurriedly, I threw my cloak over my shoulders and returned to my room. When I opened my hand in the light of the tallow burner, I saw that her eye lay in the palm of my hand and my whole body was soaked with blood.

I walked to the mirror, but out of fear I held my hands in front of my face. I saw that I resembled, no, as a matter of fact, that I had become the oddsand-ends man.

The hair of my head and beard was like the hair on the head and face of one who walks out of a room in which a Nag-serpent had been let loose.

They all had turned white.

My lip, like the old man's, was split open, my eyelids were without lashes, and a clump of white hair protruded from my chest—a new soul had descended upon me. I was thinking in a different way altogether and I was feeling in a different way altogether. I could not free myself from its clutches, from the clutches of the fiend that was awakened in me.

With my hand still covering my face, I burst into an involuntary peal of laughter, a laughter that was more violent than the first one, a laughter that shook my entire being, a deep laughter that could not be traced to any known recess of my body, a hollow laughter that reverberated in my throat and emerged from the depths of nothingness. I had become the odds-and-ends man. I felt the anguish of one who is awakened from a long, deep sleep. I rubbed my eyes. I was in my old room. It was dawn and the window panes were covered with cloud and fog. The crow of a rooster came from afar.

In the brazier in front of me, the red charcoal had turned to ashes and could hardly withstand a single breath.

I had the feeling that my thoughts, too, like the red pieces of charcoal, had turned into hollow ashes, and could not withstand the blow of a single breath.

The first thing I looked for was the Raq jar that the old carriage driver in the graveyard had given me, but it was not before me. I looked and saw someone with a stooped shadow, no, it was a stooped old man who had covered his head and face with a scarf and who was carrying something under his arm that looked like a jar wrapped in a dirty handkerchief.

He was laughing: a hideous, hollow laughter that made one's hair stand on end.

As soon as I tried to get up, he left the room. I got up, intending to pursue him and recover the jar which was wrapped in a dirty handkerchief; but the old man, with a peculiar agility, disappeared. I returned to my room and opened the window that gives to the alley. I saw the stooped figure of the old man in the alley, his shoulders were shaking from the intensity of laughter. He was carrying that bundle under his arm. He trudged along until he disappeared into the mist.

I returned from the window and looked at myself.

I saw that my clothes were torn, and coagulated blood from covered me from head to toe. Two golden flybees were flying around me and small, white worms were wriggling on my body; the weight of a dead body pressed against my chest…

 

THE END