The Blind Owl By Sadeq Hedayat (Translated by Iraj Bashiri), Chapter 2

Chapter 2 

In this base world, full of poverty and misery, for the first time I thought a ray of sunshine shone on my life. But alas, it was not a sunbeam, rather it was only a transient beam, a shooting star, that appeared to me in the likeness of a woman or an angel. And in the light of that moment, for only a second, I witnessed all my life's misfortunes, and discovered its magnitude and grandeur. Then this beam of light disappeared again into the dark abyss into which it was destined to disappear.

No. I could not keep this transient beam for myself.

It was three months, no, it was two months and four days since I had lost track of her.

But the memory of her enchanting eyes, no, the fatal malice of her eyes, remained in my life forever.

How can I forget her; she who is so relevant to my life?

No, I will never call her by name, because she, with that ethereal body, slim and misty, with those two large, wonder stricken, sparkling eyes behind which my life was gradually and painfully burning and melting away, she no longer belongs to this base, fierce world.

No, I should not soil her name with earthly things.

After seeing her, I withdrew from the circle of people. I withdrew completely from the circle of the fools and the fortunate; and, for forgetfulness, took refuge in wine and opium.

I passed, and continue to pass, my life daily within the four walls of my room. My whole life has passed within four walls.

My day-long occupation consisted of painting on pencase covers; my entire time was dedicated to painting on pencase covers and consumption of alcohol and opium. I had chosen the ridiculous profession of pencase-cover painting in order to confuse myself, to kill the time.

By a lucky chance my house is located outside the city, in a quiet and restful spot, away from the hustle and bustle of people's lives.

Its surrounding are completely free and around it there are some ruins.

Only from the other side of the ditch some low mud-brick houses are visible and the city begins there.

I do not know which madman or which ill-disposed architect has built this house in forgotten times. When I close my eyes, not only do all its nooks and crannies materialize before my eyes but I also feel their pressure on my shoulders.

It is a house that could only have been painted on ancient pencases.

I must write about all these events to assure myself that they are not figments of my imagination.

I must explain all these to my shadow that is cast on the wall.

Well, before this incident there had remained only one source of cheerfulness for me.

I used to paint on pencase covers within the confines of the four walls of my room. With this ridiculous amusement, I passed the time; but after I saw those two eyes, after I saw her, every motion, every movement lost its meaning, purport, and value entirely.

What is strange and what is incredible is that, for some reason, the subjects of the scenes of all my paintings, from the beginning, have been of one type and shape.

I always painted a cypress tree under which a hunched up old man, resembling Indian yogis wrapped in a cloak, sat in a squatting position.

He wore a turban around his head, and put the index finger of his left hand on his lips as a sign of astonishment.

Opposite him a girl, wearing a long, black dress, was bending to offer him a lily; because a brook intervened between them.

Had I seen this scene before, or was it inspired to me in a dream?

I do not know.

I only know that whatever I painted revolved around this same scene and subject.

My hand drew this scene involuntarily. More incredible, there were customers for this picture. I even used to send some of these pencase covers to India in care of my uncle, who sold them and sent me the money.

This picture used to appear distant as well as close by to me. I do not recall it correctly.

Now I recall an incident.

I said that I must write down my recollections; but this incident occurred much later and is not relevant to the subject at hand.

It was because of this incident that I abandoned pencase-cover painting altogether.

Two months ago, no, two months and four days ago. It was the Thirteenth day of Farvardin.

All the people had rushed to the countryside.

I had shut the window of my room in order to paint undisturbed.

Around sunset, I was busy painting. Suddenly, the door opened and my uncle entered—

I mean, he himself said that he was my uncle.

I had never seen him before, because from his early youth he had gone on a distant journey.

I think he was a ship captain.

I thought he had some mercantile business with me, because I had heard that he was a merchant as well.

In any event, my uncle was a stooped old man who wore an Indian turban around his head and a yellow, torn cloak on his shoulders. He had covered his head and face with a scarf. His collar was open and his hairy chest could be seen.

One could count the hairs of his thin beard as it protruded through his scarf.

He had red, fistular eyelids and a leprous lip.

He bore a very distant and ridiculous resemblance to me, as if my reflection had fallen on a magic mirror.

I always imagined my father as looking something like that.

Upon entering, he retired to the corner of the room and sat there in a squatting position.

It struck me that I should prepare something to entertain him.

I lit the light and entered the dark closet of my room. I searched in every corner in order to find something for an old man to eat, although I knew that there was nothing to be found in the house.

Because there was neither any opium nor any wine left for me.

Suddenly the built-in niche below the ceiling caught my eye.

As if inspired, I saw an ancient wine flask that I had inherited.

Perhaps they had made the wine on the occasion of my birth. It was on the niche.

I had never thought of this wine before. As a matter of fact, I had totally forgotten that such a thing existed in the house.

To reach the niche, I put a nearby stool under my feet.

But the moment I tried to pick up the wine flask, suddenly, through the air inlet in the niche, something outside caught my sight.

I saw in the field behind my room a bent, stooped old man sat under a cypress tree, and a young girl, no, a heavenly angel stood in front of him, bending to give him a black lily with her right hand, while the old man was chewing on the nail of the index finger of his left hand.

The girl was located directly opposite from me, but it seemed that she was not aware of her surroundings at all.

She was looking without seeing anything, and an unconscious, involuntary smile had dried on the corner of her lips; it seemed as if she was thinking of some absent individual.

It was from there that I saw her dreadful, beguiling eyes, eyes that seemed to blame one bitterly, eyes that were disturbed, surprised, threatening and inviting. My beam of life fell on these bright and meaningful sunken eyes and was absorbed to their bottom.

This attractive mirror drew my whole being to itself to the point that no human being is able to fathom.

Curved Turkmen eyes with an intoxicating supernatural beam that at once frightened and attracted. It was as if with her eyes she had witnessed supernatural and frightening happenings that not everyone was able to see.

High cheeks, wide forehead, thin, connected eyebrows, half-open meaty lips that seemed to have just finished a long, warm kiss with which they were not yet satisfied.

Disheveled, uncontrolled black hair framed her silvery face; a strand of it was stuck on her temple.

The tenderness of her limbs and the heedlessness of her ethereal movements bespoke her weak and transient disposition.

Only a dancing girl at an Indian temple could have her harmonious gait.

Her placid form and her sorrowful happiness, all these indicated that she was not like ordinary people.

As a matter of fact, her beauty was not normal.

She appeared to me like the image of an opium hallucination.

She induced the same heated love of the mandrake in me.

A slim, tall body with a line that ran symmetrically through her shoulders, arms, breasts, buttocks and shins—It was as if they had separated her body from the embrace of her mate.

She was like the female mandrake that had been separated from the embrace of her mate.

She wore a wrinkled, black dress that, fitting her well, stuck to her body.

When I was looking at her, it was as if she wanted to jump over the brook that separated her from the old man, but she failed.

Then the old man laughed.

It was a dry and repulsive laughter that made one's hair stand on end.

He uttered a hard, hybrid and mocking laughter without there being any change in his facial expression. It was like the reflection of a laughter that emerges from the depth of a hollow.

With the wine flask in my hand, out of fright, I jumped off the stool. I don't know why I was shaking.

It was a kind of shiver full of fright and enjoyment.

It was as if I had jumped up from a pleasant and frightful dream.

I put the wine flask on the ground and held my head between my hands.

How many minutes, how many hours did it last? I don't know.

When I came to, I picked up the wine flask and entered the room. I saw that my uncle had gone; the door of the room, like the mouth of a corpse, was left ajar.

But the ring of the old man's dry laughter continued to echo in my ears.

It was getting dark, the lamp was smoking, but the effect of the intoxicating and frightful shiver that I had felt persisted.

From this moment my life's direction changed.

One glance was sufficient to do it. Because that heavenly angel, that ethereal girl, left her effect on me more deeply than any human being would be able to comprehend.

At this point, I was no longer myself, as if I knew her name from before.

The evil in her eyes, her color, her scent and her movements were all familiar to me.

As if my soul, in the previous life, in the world of imagination, had bordered on her soul and that both souls, of the same essence and substance, were destined for union.

I should have lived this life very close to her.

I had no desire at all to touch her; the mere invisible beams that emanated from our bodies and mingled were sufficient.

This frightening happening that appeared familiar to me at first glance. Don't two lovers, who had seen each other before, have the same feeling that a mysterious relationship had existed between them?

In this base world I wanted either her love or no one else's.

Was it possible for someone else to influence me?

But the dry, repulsive laughter of the old man.

This ominous laughter tore our bonds asunder.

This thought preoccupied me the whole night.

Several times I wanted to go to the hole in the wall and look, but I was afraid of the sound of the old man's laughter.

The next day I was still thinking of the same thing.

Could I give up seeing her entirely?

The next day, eventually, with great fear and trepidation, I decided to put the wine flask back in its place.

But as soon as I pushed aside the curtain which covered the entrance to the closet, a dark, black wall, the same darkness that permeates my whole life, stood in front of me.

As a matter of fact, no hole or crevice at all to the outside could be seen.

The square hole in the wall was completely closed and had become a part of the wall, as if it had never existed from the beginning.

I pulled the stool to me, but no matter how hard I struck my fists against the wall and listened, or looked at the wall in the light of the lamp, there was not the smallest trace of a hole in the wall.

My blows had no effect on the thick, massive wall. It had turned into a wall of lead.

Could I give all this up permanently?

But it was out of my control.

From here on, like a soul being tortured, no matter how long I waited, guarded, or searched for her, it was futile.

I covered all the area around our house, not for one day, not for two days, but for two months and four days. Like murderers who return to the scene of their crime, every day about sunset, like a chicken with its head cut off, I walked all

around our house, so much that I recognized every rock and pebble around there.

But I did not find any trace of the cypress tree, the brook of water, or of the people I had seen there.

How often at nights I went on bent knees,

implored to the trees, rocks, the moon, that perhaps she might have looked at, and cried. I

asked all sentient things to help me but I did not see the smallest trace of her.

As a matter of fact, I realized that all these activities were useless, because she could not have any relationship with or connection to the things of this world.

For instance, the water with which she washed her hair must have come from a unique and unknown spring, or from a magical cave.

Her dress was not made of the warp and woof of ordinary wool and cotton, nor was it sewn by corporeal hands or ordinary human hands.

She was a distinguished creature. I realized that those lilies were not ordinary lilies.

I became certain that if she were to wash her face in ordinary water, her face would wither and if she were to pluck ordinary lilies with her long and delicate fingers, like flower petals, her fingers would wither.

I understand all these.

This girl, no, this angel, was the source of unspeakable inspiration and wonder for me.

Her being was delicate and intangible. It was she who created the sense of worship in me.

I am certain that the gaze of a stranger, or of an ordinary person, would make her shabby and withered.

Since the time when I lost her, since the time when a heavy wall, a solid, moist dam as heavy as lead, was created between her and me, I have

felt that my life has become useless and lost for ever.

Although her kind look, and the deep pleasure

that I drew from seeing her, were one-sided—and provided no answers for me; because she had not

seen me--nevertheless, I needed those eyes, and only one glance from her was sufficient to solve

all philosophical difficulties and theological enigmas for me.

With one glance from her, there would remain no mystery or secret for me.

From this time on, I added to the amount of my drinking and smoking opium.

But alas, these remedies for hopelessness, instead of paralyzing and numbing my thoughts, instead of making me forget, day by day, hour by hour, and minute by minute materialized the thought of her, her figure and her face in front of me more strongly.

How could I forget?

When my eyes were open, or when I closed them, in sleep and wakefulness, she was in front of me.

Through the hole in the closet of my room-- like a night that has enshrouded people's thought and logic--through the square hole which opened to the outside, she was constantly in front of my eye.