Because human beings have not found a remedy for it and its only remedy is forgetfulness through wine and artificial sleep induced by opium or other drugs. But alas, the effect of these types of drugs is transitory and instead of soothing, after a while, they add to the intensity of the pain.

One day would someone reveal the secret behind these supernatural happenings, this reflection of the shadow of the soul that manifests itself in a coma-like limbo between sleep and wakefulness?-

I shall describe only one of these incidents that happened to myself and which was so shocking that I shall never forget it; its ominous scar will poison my life throughout--from the beginning to the end of eternity where no man's understanding can fathom.

Did I write poison?

But, I meant to say that I have carried, and will carry its scar with me for ever.

I will try to put down whatever I recall, whatever has remained in my memory about the relations among events.

Perhaps I can make a universal judgement about it.

No!

I want merely to become certain, or else to become able to believe it for myself, because for me it does not matter whether other people believe it or not.

I only am afraid that I may die tomorrow but still not know myself, because in the course of life experiences I have realized what frightful chasm lies between others and me.

I also have realized that one should keep silent. I should keep my thoughts to myself as much as possible. If I have decided to write, it is only in order to introduce myself to my shadow. The shadow that rests in a stooped position on the wall, and which appears to voraciously swallow all that I write down. It is for him that I want to do an experiment to see if we can know each other better.

Because since the time that I have severed my relations with the others, I want to know myself

better.

Absurd thoughts!

Fine, but they torture me more than any reality.

Are not these people who resemble me, who seemingly share my whims and desires--are they not here to deceive me?

Are they not a handful of shadows that have been brought into existence only to mock and deceive me?

Isn't that which I feel, see and measure imaginary throughout and quite different from reality?

I write only for my shadow that is cast on the wall in front of the light. I must introduce myself to it.

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.

Chapter 3

I was not allowed to rest.

How could I rest?

I had formed the habit of taking promenades at sunset.

I don't know why I wanted, insisted to find the stream of water, the cypress tree and the lily plant.

In the same way that I had become addicted to opium, I had become accustomed to these promenades; it was as though some force compelled me to them.

All along the way, I thought only of her, recalling my initial glimpse of her.

I wanted to find the place where I had seen her on the Thirteenth day of Farvardin.

If I could find that place, if I could sit under that cypress tree, surely some tranquillity would appear in my life.

But alas, there was nothing there but refuse, hot sand, the ribcage of a horse, and a dog sniffing the top of the trash.

Had I really met her?

Never!

I only saw her stealthily through a hole, through an ill-fated hole in the closet of my room.

Like a hungry dog who sniffs the garbage and searches, but who, as soon as people appear with more trash, runs away and hides himself out of fear. Later he returns to seek his favorite pieces I was in a similar situation, but the hole had been blocked up.

To me she was a fresh and tender bouquet of flowers thrown on top of a trash pile.

The last evening that, like other evenings, I went on a walk, it was dark and it felt like rain, A thick mist covered everything.

In the rainy weather that decreases the sharpness of colors, and diminishes the rudeness of the lines of objects, I felt a particular freedom and relaxation, as though the raindrops washed my black thoughts away.

During this night, which should not have happened came to pass.

I walked about involuntarily

But during these lonesome hours, during those minutes the duration of which I cannot recall exactly, in spite of the fog, her vague and shocking face--like the picture on pencase covers emerging from behind the clouds and smoke—her motionless, expressionless face continued to materialize before my eyes much more powerfully than ever before.

When I returned, I think it was quite late at night.

A dense fog was hanging in the air, so thick that I could not see in front of my feet clearly.

But out of habit, and through a special sense which was awakened in me, when I arrived at my

doorstep, I perceived a black-clad figure, the figure of a woman, sitting on the platform of my house

I struck a match to find the keyhole, but for some reason my eyes involuntarily caught sight of the black-clad figure. I recognized the two oblique eyes--two large, black eyes amid a silvery thin face--the same eyes which stared at a man's face without actually seeing.

I would have recognized her, even if I had not seen her before. No. I was not mistaken.

This black-clad figure was she.

Astounded and bewildered, I stood petrified in my place, like someone who is dreaming, and who knows that he is asleep, but who cannot wake up when he wants to.

The match burnt itself, and then my fingers.

Then, suddenly, I returned to reality and turned the key. The the door opened. I drew myself to the side. Like someone familiar with the way, she got off the platform and crossed the dark corridor. She opened the door of my room and entered. I, too, following her, entered my room.

Hurriedly I lit the lamp. I saw that she had retired to my bed and was now lying on it.

Her face was in shade. I did not know whether she sees me or not! Could she hear my voice or not! Her outward showed no trace of fear or of desire to resist.

Chapter 4

It seemed as though she had come here involuntarily.

Was she sick? Had she lost her way? She had come here involuntarily, like a sleep-walker.

At this moment, no living creature can imagine the mental state I experienced.

I felt a kind of pleasant, yet indescribable, pain.

No. I was not mistaken.

This was that same woman, the same girl who had entered my room without astonishment, without uttering a word.

I had always imagined our first meeting to be like this.

This state was like a deep, endless sleep for me; because one has to be in a very deep sleep to have such a dream.

This silence was like an eternal life for me, because one cannot speak at the beginning, or at the end of eternity.

To me she was a woman, and she had something supernatural about her.

Her face reminded me of the confounding oblivion of other people's faces so strongly that upon seeing her, my whole body began to shake, and my knees gave way.

At this moment, I saw the whole painful story of my life behind her large eyes, her extremely large eyes, wet and glistening eyes, like black diamond balls thrown into tears.

In her eyes, in her black eyes, I found the eternal night, the dense darkness that I had been searching for, and I plunged into its awesome, enchanting darkness.

I felt as though some force was being extracted from my being.

The ground shook underneath my feet. Had I fallen to the ground at that moment, I would have drawn an indescribable pleasure from that fall.

My heart stopped. I stopped myself from breathing.

I was afraid that if I breathed, like a piece of cloud or a puff of smoke, she might disappear.

Her silence was like a miracle.

It was as though they had built a glass wall between us.

This moment, this hour suffocated me until eternity.

Her weary eyes, as if witnessing something extraordinary that others cannot see--as if she had seen death--were gradually closing. Her eyelids closed and I, like a drowning person who after much struggle comes to the surface, from the intensity of fever, was shaking.

With the edge of my sleeve, I wiped the perspiration on my forehead.

Her face had the same calm and motionless expression but it seemed that she had become smaller and thinner.

As she reclined she was chewing on the index finger of her left hand. Her face was the color of silver, and through her thin, black garment which

fit her tightly one could see the outline of her legs, arms, the two breasts, and all the rest of her body.

In order to see her better, I bent over, because her eyes were closed.

But no matter how closely I looked at her face, it was as if she was completely away from me.

Suddenly I felt that I had no information whatsoever about the secrets of her heart and that there exists no relationship between the two of us.

I wanted to say something, but I was afraid that her ears, her sensitive ears accustomed to some distant, heavenly and soft music, might become hateful of my voice.

It occurred to me that she might be hungry or thirsty.

I entered the closet of my room in order to find something for her, although I knew that there was nothing to be found in the house.

But, as if inspired, in the niche, I had a flask of old wine which I had inherited from my father.

I used the stool and brought the flask down.

Tiptoeing carefully, I went to the side of the bed.

I saw that she was sleeping like a tired, exhausted child.

She was in a deep sleep and her long eyelashes, like velvet, were closed.

I took the cap off the flask and through her locked teeth, gently poured a cup of wine down her throat.

For the first time in my life a feeling of sudden tranquillity appeared.

Because I saw that those closed eyes, like a canker that tortured me, and a nightmare that pressed my insides with its iron claws, had somewhat subsided.

I brought my own chair, placed it beside the bed and stared at her face.

What a childish face, what a strange disposition!

Was it possible that this woman, this girl, or this angel of torture (because I didn't know what else to call her), was it possible that she had the double life?

So quite, so unceremonious?

Now I could feel the warmth of her body, and I could smell the damp scent that rose from her heavy, black locks.

I don't know why I raised my shaking hand, because my hand was not under my control, and caressed a lock of her hair, the lock that was always stuck to her temple.

Then I sank my fingers in her locks.

Her hair was cold and damp, cold, and absolutely

Cold. It was as though she had died several days ago. And I was not mistaken, she was dead.

I passed my hand in front of her chest and placed it on her breast and her heart.

There was no sign of a heartbeat.

I brought the mirror and held it in front of her nose. There was not the slightest trace of life in her.

I wanted to make her warm with the heat of my own body, to give her my warmth and receive the coldness of death from her, perhaps I could possibly blow my own soul into her body.

I took off my clothes, climbed onto the bed and lay down beside her.

Like the male and female mandrake we became stuck to each other.

As a matter of fact, her body was like the body of the female mandrake severed from its mate, and it had the same burning love of the mandrake.

Her mouth, acrid and bitterish, tasted like the bitter end of a cucumber.

Her whole body had become as cold as hailstones.

I felt that blood was freezing in my veins, and the cold was penetrating to the depths of my heart.

All my efforts were useless.

I climbed off the bed and put my clothes on.

No. It was not a lie. She had come here to my room, to my bed and surrendered her body to me.

She gave me her body and her soul—both! While she was alive, while her eyes were brimful with life, only the memory of her eyes tortured me, but now, devoid of feeling and motionless and cold, with closed eyes, she has come and surrendered herself to me. With closed eyes!

This was the same person who had poisoned my entire life; or originally my life was susceptible to being poisoned, and I could not have had any life other than a poisoned life.

Now here in my room she gave her body and her shadow to me.

Her brittle, transient soul, which had no relation to the world of earthly beings, slowly came out of her black, wrinkled dress--the body that tortured her--and went into the world of wandering shadows. Perhaps it took my shadow with her as well.

Her body, however, devoid of any feeling or motion, was lying there.

Her soft, lax muscles, her veins, tendons and bones were waiting to rot. A delicious feast was prepared for the worms and rats that dwell under the ground.

I had to live next to a dead body for an endless, long, dark and cold night, beside a corpse in this adversity-stricken, miserable room, itself a grave, amidst the darkness of the eternal night which

was surrounding me, and which was sinking into the walls.

With her corpse.

It looked as if as long as the world has existed, as long as I have existed, a corpse, a cold, corpse, devoid of feeling and motion, has been with me.

At this moment, my thoughts had become frozen.

A unique, singular life was created in me.

Because my life was bound to all the existences that surrounded me, all the shadows that trembled around me, I felt a deep, and inseparable connection with the world, and the movement of all creatures and with nature. All the elements of myself and of nature were related to each other by the invisible streams of some mind-disturbing, agitating current.

No thought or image seemed unnatural for me.

I could discover with ease the secrets of the ancient paintings, the mysteries of difficult, philosophical texts, and the eternal foolishness of shapes and types, because at this moment I was participating in the revolution of the earth and the planets, in the growth of the plants, and in the activities of the animal world.

The past and the future, far and near, shared my sentient life and were at one with me.

At such times everyone takes refuge in a strong habit in his life, or to one of his scruples that he has developed in his life: the drunkard goes and becomes drunk, the writer writes, the stone-cutter cuts stones, each giving vent to his anxiety and anger by escaping into the strong stimulant of his

own life. And it is in such moments that a true artist can create a masterpiece out of his own talent.

But I! I who was devoid of talent and who was poor, a painter of pencase covers, what could I do?

What could I paint with these dry, glistening and lifeless pictures, all of which were the same, as models, that would become a masterpiece?

But in my whole being I felt an excessive upsurge of talent and warmth; it was a special agitation and stimulus. I wanted to draw those eyes, which were now closed forever, on a piece of paper and keep them for myself.

This sensation forced me to put my decision into action, that is, I did not do this voluntarily—one does not when one is imprisoned with a corpse.

This very thought filled me with a special joy.

Eventually, I extinguished the lamp which was giving off smoke, brought two candlesticks and lit them over her head. Against the flickering light of the candle, her face assumed more repose, and in the interplay of the light and darkness in the room, it acquired a mysterious, ethereal air.

I picked up paper along with my working tools and went to the side of her bed, because now this was her bed.

I wanted to copy this form that slowly, and very gradually, was condemned to disintegration and nothingness, this form that was apparently motionless and expressionless, without being disturbed. I wanted to record its fundamental lines on paper. I wanted to choose from this face those lines which affected me.

A painting, no matter how sketchy and simple, must have an impact and a soul.

But I, who was accustomed to printed paintings on pencase covers, now had to make myself think and I had to materialize in front of me, my own image, that is, that aspect of her face that had an effect upon me. I wanted to look at her face once, close my eyes, and then draw on the paper those lines of her face that I would choose.

In this way, maybe, using my own thought, I could find a remedy for my tortured soul.

Eventually, I took refuge in the static life of lines and shapes.

This subject had a special relevance to my dead style of painting--painting with a corpse as a model.

As matter of fact, I was a painter of corpses.

But the eyes, her closed eyes, did I need to see them again?

Were they not sufficiently engraved in my thought and mind?

I do not know until near morning exactly how many times I painted her face!

But none of them satisfied me. I tore them up as I finished painting them. I

neither felt tired because of doing this, nor did I feel the passage of time.

It was daybreak. Through the windowpanes, a dull light had entered my room.

I was busy working on a picture that I thought was better than the rest. But the eyes? The eyes that had assumed a reproachful expression as if I had committed unforgivable sins! I could not put those eyes down on paper.

Suddenly, all life and the recollection of those eyes vanished from my memory.

My efforts were useless.

No matter how intensely I looked at her face, I could not recall its expression.

Suddenly I saw at this same time that her cheeks gradually reddened; they were a liver-red color like the color of the meat in front of a butcher shop. She came to life and her exceedingly wide and astonished eyes, eyes in which all the brightness of life was gathered and glimmering in a sickly light, her sick, reproachful eyes very slowly opened and looked at my face.

For the first time that she was aware of me. She looked at me and again, her eyes closed.

Perhaps this event did not last more than a moment, but it was sufficient for me to capture the expression of her eyes and put it on paper.

With the sharp tip of the brush, I drew this expression, and this time I did not tear up the picture.

Then I got up and walked slowly to her. I thought she is alive, has come to life, my love had invested my spirit with her body; but closer, smell of a dead body, I felt the smell of a decomposing, dead body--

On her body, small worms were wiggling, and in

the light of the candle, two golden flybees were flying around her.

She was completely dead, but why and how did her eyes open? I don't know. Had I seen this in a dream?

Chapter 5

Was this real?

I do not want anyone to ask me this question.

But the main concern was her face, no, it was her eyes, and now I possessed those eyes. I had the spirit of her eyes on paper.

Her body was no longer of any use to me. The body that was condemned to destruction, to nourishing the worms and rats that dwell under the ground.

From now on she was under my control; rather than I serve as her vassal.

Any minute that I desired, I could see her eyes.

I took the painting with the utmost care, and put it into my own tin can, where I keep my profits and hid the tin can in the closet of my room,

The night was stealthily tiptoeing away.

It seemed that it had sufficiently recovered from its weariness. Soft, distant sounds, like the sound of a fowl or a passing bird's dream or perhaps the whisper of the growth of the plants, could be sensed.

At this time, the pale stars were disappearing behind the mass of clouds.

I felt the gentle breath of the morning on my face, at the same time I heard the crow of a rooster from afar.

What could I do with the body? A corpse whose mass had already started to disintegrate!

First it occurred to me to bury her in my room; then I thought of taking her out and throwing her in a well, a well around which black lilies have grown.

But all these plots, to prevent other people from seeing, entailed much thought, labor, and dexterity.

Furthermore, I did not wish any stranger to look at her. I had to do all this alone and with my own hands.

Forget me! As a matter of fact, after her, what use did my life have?

But her, never, never any ordinary human being, no one except myself, should ever glance at her corpse.

She had come to my room and surrendered her cold body and her shadow to me, in order to prevent others from seeing her; in order not to become defiled by the looks of strangers.

At last a thought crossed my mind: if I were to chop her body up and put it in a suitcase—my very own old suitcase--then I could take the suitcase out with me to a distant place, far away, very far from people's eyes, and bury it there.

This time I no longer hesitated. I fetched the bone-handled knife that I had in the closet of my room and, very carefully, first I tore the thin black dress which, like a spider's web, had imprisoned her within itself; or should I say, I tore the only thing that covered her body.

It seemed that she had grown taller.

،Because she appeared to me to be taller.

Then I severed her head. Drops of cold, coagulated blood poured out of her throat.

Then I cut off her hands and legs and arranged her whole body, torso and limbs, in the suitcase and covered her body with the same black dress.

I locked the suitcase and put the key in my pocket.

When the job was complete, I picked up the suitcase and weighed it: it was heavy.

Never before had I felt so fatigued.

No. I could never carry that suitcase out by myself.

اIt was cloudy once again, and a light rain was falling.

I left my room to look for someone who would help me carry the suitcase away.

Not a soul was to be seen anywhere near there.

I paid more attention, a little farther away, through the fog, I saw an old man who had hunched his shoulders and who was sitting under a cypress tree.

His face, over which he had wrapped a wide scarf, could not be seen.

Slowly I approached him,

Before I could utter a word, a hybrid, dry and repulsive laughter issued from the old man; a laughter that made my hair stand on end.

Then he said,

«If you are looking for a porter, I can help you, huh.

I also own a hearse.

Everyday I carry corpses to Shah Abdul Azim and bury them there. I also make coffins.

I have coffins for every person's perfect measurements, not a hair off.

I am ready myself--right now!…»

He laughed so hysterically that his shoulders shook.

With my hand, I pointed in the direction of my house.

Without giving me the opportunity to utter a word, he said,

«It's not necessary. I know where you live. Right now. Right away, huh.»

He got up from where he was sitting, and I started to walk towards my house.

I entered my room and, with great difficulty, brought the «dead» suitcase to the front of the door.

There, I saw a ramshackle old hearse to which a pair of thin, black, skeleton-like horses were hitched.

The old man, shoulders hunched, was sitting up there on the driver's seat. He had a long whip in his hand, and he did not turn to look at me.

With difficulty, I placed the suitcase in the carriage, in the middle of which there was a special place for putting coffins.

I, too, climbed into the carriage and laid myself down in the middle of the place intended for

coffins. I placed my head on the edge so that I could see the surrounding scenery.

Then I slid the suitcase on my chest, and held it tightly with both hands. The whip whistled through the air, and the horses, whose labored breath issued through their nostrils like columns of smoke in rainy weather, began to move with long but gentle leaps.

Their slim forelegs, like the hand of a thief severed of its fingers by law and plunged into hot oil, struck the ground gently and noiselessly.

In the damp air, the sound of the bells on their necks had a special ring.

An indescribable relief, the cause of which I did not know, had filled me from head to toe so thoroughly that I could barely feel the movement of the hearse.

I only felt the weight of the suitcase on my chest.

Her dead body, her corpse. It seemed as though this weight had always been pressing on my chest.

A thick fog covered the sides of the road.

The hearse was passing mountains, plains, and rivers with a special speed and comfort.

Around me a new and unique scene, one that I had seen neither in a dream nor in wakefulness, came to view.

Serrated mountains with jagged tops and strange, suppressed, cursed trees were on both sides of the road. From among the trees grey, triangular, cubic and prismatic houses with dark, low windows lacking any panes, were visible.

These windows resembled the giddy eyes of one who is experiencing a delirious fever.

I don't know what these walls had in them that put coldness and chill into a man's heart.

It looked as if no living being could dwell in these houses.

Chapter 6

Maybe they had been built to accommodate the shadows of ethereal beings! Apparently the carriage driver was taking me along a special road or he was taking a by-road.

In some places the road was surrounded only by hacked tree trunks and crooked, bent trees.Behind them there were high and low geometrical houses--conic, truncated cones with narrow, crooked windows--from within which black lilies grew, climbing on the doors and walls.This scene suddenly disappeared under a thick fog. Pregnant, heavy clouds were hugging and pressing on the mountain peaks, and drops of rain, like wandering particles of dust, were floating in the air.

Chapter 7

After traveling for quite some time, the hearse stopped near a high, arid mountain. I slid the suitcase away from my chest and got up.

Behind the mountain there was a secluded, quiet and pleasant spot that I had never seen or recognized, but seemed familiarAs though it was not beyond my imagination.

The surface of the ground was covered with scentless black lily plants.

It seemed to me that until now no mortal had visited this place.

I put the suitcase down.

The old carriage driver, turned his face and said, «This is Shah Abdul Azim. You cannot find a place better than this. Even birds do not fly here! »

I put my hand into my pocket to pay the carriage driver, but all I had in my pocket was two qerans and one 'abbasi.

The carriage driver uttered a disgusting laugh and said, «Forget it. Pay me later.

I know where you live. Anything else I can do for you?

Only know this. --as far as digging graves is concerned, I am quite experienced. Don't be shy!

Let's go right over there near the river, by that cypress tree. I shall dig a ditch the size of the suitcase for you, and then I will leave.»

The old man, with an agility the like of which I could not imagine, jumped down from his seat.

I picked up the suitcase and together we walked to a tree trunk, on the edge of the dry riverbed.

Then he said, « Is this place good? »

And without waiting for my answer, he began digging the ground with the pick and shovel that he had with himself.

I put the suitcase on the ground and astonished stood in my place.

The old man with his hunched back and the dexterity of an expert went about his business.

While digging, he found something resembling a glazed jar.

He wrapped it in a dirty handkerchief then he got up and said, «Here is the ditch, huh. It is exactly the size of the suitcase, not a hair off, huh! »

I put my hand in my pocket to pay him.

All I had was two qerans and one 'abbasis.

The old man uttered a ghastly laugh and said, «Don't bother. Forget it.

I know where you live, ha.

Beside—for my wages I found a jar.

«It is a Raq jar from the ancient city of Rayy, huh.

Then, with bent and hunched figure, he laughed so hard that his shoulders shook.

He had put the jar, wrapped up in a dirty handkerchief, under his arm. He walked towards the hearse, and with a special agility climbed up onto the seat.

The whip sounded through the air. Panting, the horses began to walk. In the damp air, the sound of their bells had a special ring. It gradually disappeared from sight into the fog.

Once alone, I felt relieved, as though a heavy burden had been removed from my chest. A pleasant tranquillity enveloped me from head to toe.

I looked around.

This was a small area, located amid pitch black hills and mountains.

On one mountain range there were some ruins and ancient buildings made of thick bricks. A dry riverbed could also be seen in that vicinity.

This location was cozy, secluded, and quiet.

I was happy from the bottom of my heart, and I thought that those large eyes, when they woke from their earthly slumber, would find this place suitable to their structure and mood.

Besides, she had to be away from other people's dead, in the same way that in life, she lived away from other people.

I picked up the suitcase carefully and put it in the middle of the ditch.

The ditch was exactly the size of the suitcase, not a hair off.

But, for the last time, I wanted to take just one peek in the suitcase.

I looked around. Not a soul could be seen.

I took the key out of my pocket and opened the suitcase.

But when I pushed the edge of her black dress aside, there, amid the coagulated blood and wiggling worms, I saw two large black eyes that, without any expression, looked directly at me.

My life had sunk to the depths of those eyes.

Hastily, I closed the suitcase and covered it with dirt; then I walked on the dirt until it was well packed.

I fetched some scentless black lilies and planted them on her grave.

Then I fetched some rocks and sand and strewed them on the grave to obliterate all traces so completely that no one could distinguish it.

I accomplished this task so well that even I myself could not distinguish her grave from the rest of the ground.

When my work was finished, I looked at myself.

I saw that my clothes were soiled and torn, and a black piece of coagulated blood was stuck to them.

Two golden flybees were flying around me, and small worms, wiggling among themselves, were stuck to me.

I tried to clean the bloodstain off the tail of my garment. The more I wetted my sleeve with saliva and rubbed it onto the stain, the more the bloodstain expanded and assumed a darker color.

So that it covered my whole body, and I felt the chill of the coagulating blood on me.

It was near sunset.

A light rain was falling.

Involuntarily, I began to walk, following the tracks of the hearse; but as soon as it grew dark I lost trace of the carriage tracks.

Aimlessly, thoughtlessly and involuntarily, I walked slowly in a thick, tangible darkness towards an unknown destination.

Because after her, after I had seen those large eyes amid the coagulated blood, I was walking in a dark night, in the deep darkness that had shrouded my entire life, because the two eyes that had served as my life's beacon were extinguished forever.

Under the circumstances, it was immaterial for me whether I would arrive at a place or an abode or not.

An absolute hush covered everything.

I felt that everyone had abandoned me. I took refuge in the lifeless universe.

A relationship was established among the cycle of nature, the deep darkness which had descended on my soul, and me.

This silence is a type of language that we do not comprehend. The intensity of the intoxication made me dizzy; I felt like vomiting.

My feet began to give out and I felt extremely weary. I walked into the graveyard which was on the side of the road and sat on a tombstone.

I took my head in my hands, puzzled about my own situation.

Suddenly, a dry, repulsive laughter jolted me back into reality.

I looked behind me. I saw a figure whose head and face were wrapped in a scarf sitting beside me. Something wrapped in a handkerchief was under his arm.

He turned his face toward me and said, « I bet you were going to town, and you lost your way, huh? Perhaps you are asking yourself what I am doing in the graveyard this late at night!

But do'nt be afraid. My calling is dealing with the dead. I am a gravedigger by profession. Not a bad job, huh?

I know every inch of this place. For instance, right today I went to dig a grave, and I uncovered this jar. Do you realize that this is a Raq jar from the ancient city of Rayy, huh?

As a matter of fact, price doesn’t matter. I give it to you to keep as a souvenir from me. »

I put my hand in my pocket, took out two qerans and one 'abbasi to offer him.

The old man, with a repulsive, dry laugh, said,

«Never, forget it!

I know you.

I also know where you live.

I have a hearse right around the corner. Let me take you home, huh?

It's only a couple of steps away. »

He placed the jar in my lap and rose.

He laughed so violently that his shoulders shook.

I picked up the jar and followed the old man's doubled-up figure.

At the turn in the road, a ramshackle hearse with two meager black horses was standing.

The old man, with amazing agility, climbed up the hearse and sat down on the seat.

As for me, I entered the carriage and lay down in the special place made for coffins and placed my head on the high edge, so that I could see the scenery.

I put the jar on my chest and held it tightly.

The whip whistled through the air, and the horses, panting, began to move with long and gentle leaps.

Their hooves touched the ground softly and noiselessly.

In the damp air, the sound of the bells on their necks had a special ring.

From behind the clouds, the stars, like the balls of some glistening eyes, emerging from amid clotted blood, watched over the earth. A pleasant relief filled me; only the jar, like the weight of a corpse, pressed on my chest.

In the darkness, fearing that they might slide and fall, the intertwined trees with their twisted branches seemed to be holding each other by the hand.

Along the side of the road, there were some strange houses with distorted geometrical shapes and a few black windows.

An evil, dull radiance, like the light from a glowworm, emanated from the walls of these houses.

In an awe-inspiring manner, the trees were passing by in groups and clumps, escaping one after the other.

But it seemed that the lily stalks became tangled in their legs and feet and made them fall to the ground.

The smell of dead bodies, the smell of decomposed flesh, had filled my whole being as if the smell of the dead had always been penetrating my body and as if I had passed all my life lying in a black coffin, being carried about amid mist and hovering shadows by a stooped, old man whose face I could not see.

The hearse came to a halt. I picked up the jar and jumped down.

I was in front of my house.

I hurried into my room, put the jar on the table, picked up the tin can, the same can which served as my piggy bank and which I had hidden in the closet of my room.

I came to the door to give the tin can to the old carriage driver instead of a reward.

But he had disappeared.

There was no sign of either him or his carriage.

Again, disappointed, I returned to my room, lit the lamp, took the jar out of the handkerchief and, using my sleeve, cleaned the dust off of it.

The jar had an ancient, transparent purple glaze that had been transformed into the color of a crushed golden bee; on one side of its body, in the form of a diamond, there was a border of black lilies.

In the middle of the diamond frame, the face of a woman had been painted, who.... had black and large eyes, larger than normal, reproachful eyes.

As if I had committed some unforgivable crime of which I was not aware.

Spell-binding eyes that were, at once, worried, perplexed, threatening and hope-inspiring.

These eyes were timid and attractive, with an intoxicating, supernatural light shining in their depths.

She had prominent cheeks, wide forehead, slender and connected eyebrows, half-open full lips, and disheveled hair, a strand of which was stuck to her temple.

I took the picture that I had painted of her the previous night out of the tin can and compared; there was not the slightest difference with the picture on the jar –as if they were pictures of each other.

They were identical and were painted by the same unfortunate painter of pencase covers.

Perhaps, at the time of the painting, the spirit of the painter of the jar had entered my body and taken possession of my hand.

One could not be distinguished from the other.

Only my painting was on a piece of paper, while the painting on the jar had a transparent ancient glaze that imparted a mysterious air, an unusual, strange soul, to it so that the flames of an evil soul shone in their depths.

No, it was incredible.

Those same large, thoughtless eyes, those same secretive, yet, at the same time, free disposition!

No one can comprehend my feelings at this moment. I wanted to run away from myself. Could such a thing really happen? All my life's misfortunes materialized in front of my eyes once again. Weren't the eyes of one person enough in my life? Now two people were looking at me with eyes that belonged to her. No, this was decidedly unbearable. The eyes that were buried near the mountain, by the trunk of the cypress tree on the edge of the dry riverbed.

[Eyes that were buried] underneath black lilies, amid thick blood, in the middle of the feast of the beasts and insects and that, before long, plant roots would penetrate and suck their sap.

Chapter 8

Now they were looking at me with a brimful and vigorous life!

I never imagined myself to be this unfortunate and damned. Nevertheless, because of a latent guilt hidden within me, I felt an unjustifiable, strange sense of pleasure, Because I realized that I have had a fellow-sufferer. Wasn't this painter of ancient times, who hundreds or perhaps thousands of years ago had painted this picture on this jar, wasn't he a fellow-sufferer of mine? Had he not passed these same stages that I am passing? Until this moment I had thought myself to be the most wretched of all creatures, but now I realized that at some time on those mountains, in those ruined houses and habitations built of heavy brick, among those people whose bones have rotted and whose limbs have turned into particles of living black lily plants-- among them there had lived an afflicted painter, a damned painter; an unfortunate painter of pencase covers—one exactly like me. And now I realized, or could understand that he, too, exactly like me, had been burning and dissolving amidst two large, black eyes.

This realization comforted me.

Finally, I put my painting at the side of the painting on the jar. Then I went and prepared my own special pot of fire. When the charcoal turned red, I brought it in and placed it in front of the paintings. I gave several pulls to the opium pipe, and in a state of ecstasy, stared at the pictures; because I intended to collect my thoughts.

Only the ethereal smoke of opium could collect my thoughts and produce relief for my mind.

I smoked all my remaining opium so that this strange narcotic agent would dispel all the difficulties and would push aside all the veils that covered my sight and dispel all those dense, distant, grey recollections? The state that I was expecting and was beyond my expectations: Gradually my thoughts grew exact, large and enchanting. I entered a state of half-sleep and half-coma. Then it was as if the pressure and the weight on my chest were lifted.

As if the law of gravity no longer affected me, I was flying freely in pursuit of my large, delicate and precise thoughts. A profound, indescribable pleasure filled my being from head to toe. I had become relieved from the burden of my body. A quiet world but full of enchanting and delectable shapes and colors. Then the trail of my thoughts was interrupted and dissolved in these colors and shapes. I was drowning in waves that were full of ethereal caressing. I could hear my heart beat, and I could feel the blood moving in my veins. This state was full of meaning and intoxication for me. From the bottom of my heart I wanted and wished to give myself up to the inactivity of oblivion. If such a forgetfulness could exist!

If it could endure; if when my eyes closed, beyond sleep, they would enter utter nothingness so that I could not feel my existence; if it were possible for my existence to become dissolved in a black stain, in a musical note, or in a colorful beam of light; and if these colors and shapes would become larger and expand until they disappeared—[Only then] my wishes would have been fulfilled.

Gradually, a state of sluggishness and numbness overtook me; it was like a pleasant fatigue or delicate wave that flowed from my body. Then I felt that my life was passing in reverse.

Gradually, I could witness the stages and events of the past; the obliterated, forgotten reminiscences of my own childhood advanced before my eyes. I was not only observing but also participated in these events and felt them.

Moment by moment, I was growing smaller and younger. Then, suddenly, my thoughts grew dark and vague. It seemed as though all my existence hung at the end of a thin hook and I was suspended at the bottom of a deep, dark well. Then I was unhooked. I was sliding and falling down without encountering any obstacles. It was a never ending abyss in an eternal night. After that, some vague and obliterated veils took shape in front of my eyes. I experienced a moment of utter oblivion. When I came to, suddenly, I found myself in a small room, in a special position that seemed strange to me yet, at the same time, natural for me.

Chapter 9

I always thought that silence is the best of things. I thought that it is better for one to, like a bittern, spread his wings on the seashore and alone, sit there.

But now I am no longer in control, because that which should not happen has come to pass.

Who knows? Perhaps right this moment, or an hour from now, a group of drunken night watchmen come to apprehend me. I have no desire whatsoever to save my own carcass. Besides, there is no room for denial. Even if I obliterate the blood stains, before they lay their hands on me, I will drink a cup of the wine in that wine flask; my own inherited wine that I have placed in the niche.

Now I want to press my entire life, as if it were a bunch of grapes in my hands and pour its essence, no, its wine, drop by drop, like water containing the holy dust of Mecca, into the dry throat of my shadow. I only want, before I go, to put on paper all the sufferings that, like consumption or leprosy, have eaten away at me in the corner of this room.

Because, in this way, I will be able to arrange and organize my thoughts better.

Do I intend to write a will?

Never. Because I do not own any property that the government could confiscate, or profess a faith that Satan could take away.

Besides, what on earth is there that could have the least value for me?

That which is usually referred to as «life» I have already lost; I intended it to be lost… and after I am gone, what the heck! I don't give a damn if anyone does or does not read my tattered notes! I am writing only because of this compulsion to write that has become a necessity for me. I need--I need more than before to relate my thoughts to my own imaginary creature, to my own shadow. This ominous shadow that is bending on the wall in front of the tallow burner and seems to be carefully reading, and swallowing whatever I write. This shadow definitely has a better sense than I. I can only hold a meaningful conversation with my shadow. He is the one who makes me talk.

Only he can know me. He certainly understands. I want to pour, drop by drop, the essence, no, the bitter wine of my life into the dry throat of my shadow and say to him, «This is my life! »

Whoever saw me yesterday, he saw a broken and ailing youth; but today, he sees a stooped old man with white hair, sore eyes and a leprous lip. I am afraid to look out of the window of my room or to look at myself in the mirror, because everywhere I see multiple reflections of myself.

But to be able to describe my life for my stooped shadow, I must narrate a story.

Oh, how many stories exist about childhood days, loves, fornication, weddings and deaths, with not a grain of truth in any of them? I have become tired of stories and fanciful phraseology. I shall try to press this cluster, but will there be the slightest bit of truth in it or not?

This I do not know. I do not know where I am and whether the patch of sky above my head, or the few spans of ground on which I sit, belongs to Nishapur,

Balkh or Benares.

In any event, I do not trust anything.

Because I have seen so many contradictory things and have heard so many inconsistent speeches; and because the vision of my eyes--this thin yet hard substance behind which the soul abides—has rubbed itself over so many different surfaces, now I do not believe anything. I doubt the weight and the permanence of objects as well as the visible and manifest facts related to this very moment. I don't know were I to touch the stone mortar in the corner of our yard and ask it, «Are you stationary and firm? » if it responded in the affirmative, whether I should believe it or not.

Am I a distinct, singular being?

I don't know. But when I looked into the mirror just now, I did not recognize myself.

No, that «I» of previous times is dead; it has disintegrated. There exists no physical obstruction or obstacle between us, however. I should narrate my story, but I don't know where to begin.

All of life is stories and tales.

I must press the cluster of grapes and pour its essence, spoon by spoon, down the dry throat of this old shadow.

Where should it begin? Because all the thoughts in my head at this moment belong to this moment.

They do not have any hour, minute or history. For me, an incident that happened yesterday might be more ancient, or less effectual, than an event that took place a thousand years ago. Perhaps because all my relations with the world of the living have been severed, reminiscences of the past materialize before me. The past, future, hour, day, month and year are all the same to me. The different stages of childhood and old age are nothing to me but meaningless prattle.

These stages make sense to the ordinary people, to the rabble--yes, that is exactly the word I was looking for--rabble with two b's. It would be meaningful to the rabble who live in the temperate zone of life, whose lives like the seasons of the year have recognized seasons and limits.

But my life, all of it, has had one season and one state. It is as if it has passed in a cold zone and in eternal darkness. While in the center of my body, a constant flame burns and, like a candle, melts me away.

In the middle of the four walls that create my room and the wall that is built around my life and thoughts, like a candle, my life is gradually melting away.

No, I am mistaken. It is like a fresh stump of wood lying at the side of a tripod; it is scorched and charred by the fire of the other burning wood, but it has neither burnt thoroughly nor has it stayed fresh and green. Only the smoke and the fumes of the others have suffocated it.

My room, like all other rooms, is built of sun-dried and baked bricks on the ruins of thousands of ancient houses. It has a whitewashed interior with a strip of inscription. It is exactly like a grave.

The smallest details of my room, like the spider in the corner, are sufficient to occupy my thoughts for many long hours.

Because since the time that I have become bedridden, they pay much less attention to my affairs.

The horse-shoe nail that is hammered into the wall is the supporting nail of my cradle and my wife's. It might possibly have carried the weights of other children as well.

A little below this nail, a piece of the plaster has fallen off. From this exposed crevice the smell of objects and creatures that previously occupied this room can be scented to the extent that no current or breeze has been able to dispel the stink of these stagnant, lazy and dense odors: the smell of bodily sweat, the smell of past sicknesses, the smell of bad breath, foot odor, smell of bodily odor, smell of urine, the smell of rancid oil, of rotting mats and burnt omelettes, smell of fried onion, smell of boiled medical herbs, the smell of mallow and newborn's first stool, the room-smell of a boy just beyond puberty, smell of vapours that have come in from the outside, as well as the dead smell or dying smells--all which are still alive and have retained their distinctive qualities.

There are other smells, too, that, in spite of their unknown source, have left their imprint.

My room is a dark closet that is connected to the world outside --to the world of the rabble—with two windows. One of them opens onto our own courtyard, the other onto the street.

From there it connects me with the city of Rayy, the city that is known as the bride of the world" and which has thousands of streets, alleys, unpretentious houses, madrasahs and caravansaries.

The city that is considered the biggest city of the world breathes and lives behind my room.

Here, in the corner of my room, when I close my eyes, the vague and scrambled shadows of the city, that which has affected me, including its mansions, mosques and gardens, all materialize before my eyes.

These two windows connect me with the outside, with the world of the rabble; but in my room there is a mirror on the wall in which I see my own face. In my limited life, a mirror is more important than the world of the rabble, which has no relation to me.

Of all the sights of the city, there is a butcher shop in front of my window that uses two sheep a day.

Each time I look out of the window I see the butcher.

Early every morning, two black, gaunt packhorses--consumptive horses with deep dry coughs and whose skeleton-like forelegs end in hoofs as though, following some severe natural order, their forelegs had been cut off and the stumps plunged into boiling oil, and with carcasses hanging on each side, are brought to the front of the shop.

The butcher strikes his hennaed beard with his greasy hand, then, with a buyer's eye, he appraises the carcasses, chooses two of them, weighs their fat tails in his hand and takes them and hangs them on the hooks in his shop.

Breathing heavily, the packhorses get on the way.

The butcher rubs and caresses the bloodstained, slit-throated bodies whose eyes are transfixed and whose bloodstained eyelids seem to emerge from the middle of their black skulls. He then takes a bone-handled knife, carefully cuts their bodies up into pieces and sells the lean meat, with a smile, to his customers.

With what pleasure he performs all these tasks!

I am certain that he draws some kind of pleasure and intoxication, too, from this.

The burly yellow dog who has dominated our locale, and who constantly begs the butcher with submissive and innocent-looking eyes, that dog, too, knows all this.

That dog, too, knows that the butcher enjoys his profession

A little distance farther away, under an archway, there sits a strange old man who has spread a display cloth in front of him.

On his display he has placed a sickle, two horseshoes, several types of colored beads, a long-bladed knife, a mousetrap, a rusted pair of pliers, a dropper for adding water to inkpots, a gaptoothed comb, a trowel, and a glazed jar on which he has spread a dirty handkerchief. I have watched him for hours, days and months from behind the window. He always wears a dirty scarf and a cloak made in Shushtar; his collar is open and through it the white hair of his chest protrudes. With a talisman attached to his arm, and fistular eyelids afflicted by some stubborn, shameless disease that eats at them, he sits in that same position. But on

Thursdays, in spite of his yellow or missing teeth, he recites the Qur'an.

This seems to be how he makes his living, for I have never seen anyone buy anything from him.

It seems that this man's face has been a part of every nightmare I have ever had. From behind his close-cropped head around which he wraps a yellowish turban, and behind his narrow forehead, what stubborn, foolish thoughts, like weeds, have grown? There seems to be a special relationship between the old man's life and his assortment of wares.

Several times I decided to go and talk with him or to buy something from his display, but I did not dare.

My nanny told me, in his youth this man had been a potter and he has kept only this one jar for himself. Now he earns his living as a retailer.

These were my links to the outside world.

Now the world inside: the only people left for me were a nanny and a whore of a wife.

But nanny is her nurse as well. She is the nanny of the two of us.

Because not only were my wife and I close relatives, but granny had breastfed both of us together.

As a matter of fact, her mother was my mother as well, because I have never seen my own parents.

Her mother, that tall lady with grey hair, brought me up.

It was her mother that I loved like my own mother, and it was because of this same love that I married her daughter.

I have heard several different stories about my parents.

Only one of these stories, the one that nanny told me, I imagine, must be true.

Nanny told me that my father and uncle were twins; both of them had the same face, the same physiognomy and the same disposition; even the quality of their voices had been similar, so much so that they could not easily be told apart.

In addition to this, there had existed between them an intrinsic bond and sense of mutual sympathy that if one became ill, the other became ill as well.

They were, as they say, the spitting image of one another.

Eventually, they both chose to be merchants and, at the age of twenty, they went to India. They took Rayy goods such as different types of material, shot silk, printed cloth, cotton cloth, jobbas, shawls, needles, ceramic bowls, fuller's earth, and pencase covers to India and sold them there. Apparently my father stayed in the city of Benares and sent my uncle to the other cities of India for commercial enterprises.

After some time my father falls in love with a virgin, Bugam Dasi girl, a dancer at the temple of the Linga. This girl's profession had been performance of religious ritual dances in front of the large Lingam idol, as well as taking care of the temple.

A warm-hearted girl with olive-colored skin, lemon-shaped breasts, large, slanted eyes, and narrow connected eyebrows between which she wore a red beauty-mark.

Now I can imagine in myself that Bugam Dasi, that is to say my mother, dancing with measured and harmonious movements to the tune of sitars, drums, lutes, cymbals and horns. She is wearing a gold-embroidered, colorful silk sari; her dress is open at the neck; her brocaded headband, heavy, black tresses as dark as the eternal night, knotted at the back of her head; bracelets on her ankle and wrists, a golden ring pierced into her nostril, large, black, languid and slanted eyes and brilliant teeth, dancing to a soft and monotonous melody of a setar, drum, lute, and cymbals played by naked men wearing only shalmas; a meaningful melody in which all the mystery, magic, superstitions, lusts and sufferings of the people of India are summarized and collected. Using appropriate movements and lustful gestures, holy movements, Bugam Dasi opened up like flower petals, shimmied her shoulders and arms, bent, and once again returned to normal. What effect must these movements of special import, eloquent without the use of words, have had upon my father?

In particular the acrid, pepperish smell of her sweat, mingled with the scent of champac and sandalwood oil increased the lustful intent of this scene. The scent which smells of the sap of the trees of distant lands, which revives all those suppressed, distant sensations:

The smell of a medicine chest, of Indian drugs kept in nurseries, of unidentified oils from a land full of meaning, tradition and ancient rituals--perhaps a smell like the smell of my homemade concoctions. All of these must have revived my father's latent and suppressed memories.

My father becomes so ensnared in the love of Bugam Dasi that he embraces the dancing girl's religion and joins the cult of the Linga.

But after a while, when the girl becomes pregnant, they expel her from the service of the temple. I had just been born when my uncle returns from his travel to Benares.

His taste and his sense of love apparently being the same as my father's, he too falls deeply in love with my mother and eventually seduces her—his external and intrinsic resemblance to my father facilitates his task.

When the affair is exposed, my mother threatens to abandon both, unless my father and uncle undergo the trial by a Nag-serpent; she will belong to the survivor of the trial.

According to the rules of the trial, my father and uncle were to be in a dark room, like a dungeon, with a Nag-serpent. Whoever is stung by the serpent will naturally scream; then the snake charmer will open the door of the room and save the other. Bugam Dasi will belong to him.

Before being confined to the dungeon, my father asks Bugam Dasi to perform the sacred ritual of the temple and dance one more time before him, to perform the sacred temple dance. She agrees and, in the light of the flame, dances to the tune of the snake charmer's flute. With the meaningful, harmonious and wanton movements of a Nag-serpent, she twists and turns.

Then my father and my uncle are confined in a special room with a Nag-serpent. Instead of the shriek of anguish, a moan amid a hair-raising peal of laughter, the laughter of a madman, is heard.

The laughter of a madman. They open the door, my uncle walks out of the room.

But his face is aged and anguished and his hair, from the intensity of the fear and dread, the hissing sound of the snake's coils sliding upon one another; the snake's round, evil eyes, its poisonous fangs; and its body comprising a small head and a long neck, terminating in a spoon-shaped pustule.

Aged and deranged from dread and fright, my uncle walks out of the room with his hair turned white.

According to the condition and the promise,

Bugam Dasi is given to my uncle. A frightful fact!

It is not clear whether the man who had survived the trial was my father or my uncle.

Because, as a result of this trial, he had become deranged; he had forgotten his past life completely, and did not recognize the child. For this reason they assumed that he was my uncle.

Isn't the totality of this story related to my life? Or the resonance of that hideous laughter, and the terror of this trial. Have they not impacted my life and are they not related to me?

Henceforth, I have been nothing more than a stranger and an extra mouth to feed.

At last my uncle, or father, returns with Bugam Dasi to the city of Rayy for mercantile affairs. He brings me along and entrusts me to the care his sister who is my aunt.

Nanny said that my mother, when saying goodbye, entrusted my aunt with a flask of purple wine for me, wine in which poison from the fangs of Nag, the Indian serpent, has been dissolved.

What better keepsake can a Bugam Dasi leave behind for her child than purple wine, the elixir which bestows eternal tranquillity?

Perhaps she, too, has squeezed her life like a cluster of grapes and bestowed its wine upon me--some of the same poison that killed my father,

Now I realize how valuable a gift she has given me!

Is my mother alive?

Perhaps at this very moment that I am writing, she is dancing; twisting and turning her body like a serpent in the light of a torch in the meydan of some remote Indian town; she twists and turns like a Nag-serpent and dances.

It is as if she is bitten by a Nag serpent, she is surrounded by women, children and curious naked men, while my father or uncle, white haired and stooped, sits in the corner of the meydan and watches her, recalling the dungeon, the hissing and the sound of the angry snake's body as it slides, holding its head high up; the snake's eyes

glitter, its neck assumes the shape of a hood, with a gray line resembling a pair of spectacles appear at the back of its neck.

In any event, I was a nursing child when I was put in the arms of the same nanny, and nanny, has nursed my cousin, this same whore who is now my wife as well.

And I grew up under the supervision of my aunt, the tall lady with grey hair on her temple. I grew up in this house with her daughter, this same whore.

Ever since I have known myself I have looked upon my aunt as though she were my mother, and I have loved her. I loved her so much that later on,I married her daughter, that is, my own fostersister, because she resembled her.

That is to say, I was obliged to marry her. This girl gave herself to me only once. I shall never forget that; it happened at the bedside of her dead mother.

It was quite late at night when, to pay my last respects, at a time everyone else in the house was asleep, in my pyjama, I entered the dead woman's room. I saw two camphor candles burning at her bedside.

A Qur'an was placed on her abdomen, to prevent Satan from entering her body.

When I pushed the cloth that covered her face aside, I saw my aunt with her usual dignity and attraction.

It seemed that her face had abandoned all earthly concerns; an expression that inspired reverence in me.

But, at the same time, death appeared to me to be a normal and natural event. A sarcastic smile had dried on the corner of her lips. I wanted to kiss her hand and leave the room but, when I turned and looked, to my astonishment, I saw this same whore, who is now my wife, enter the room and opposite the dead mother, her mother, she pressed herself as hard as she could against me, pulled me to herself and kissed me passionately!

I was so ashamed of this that I wanted to sink into the floor. I didn't know what to do.

The dead body with its protruding teeth seemed to be mocking us.

It seemed to me that the dead body's quiet smile had changed.

Involuntarily, I embraced her and kissed her.

But at this moment the drapes of the adjacent room were drawn and my aunt's husband, the father of the same whore, hunched up and wearing a scarf, entered the room.

He burst into such hideous laughter that made one's hair stand on end; so that his shoulders shook violently. But he did not look at us.

Out of embarrassment, I wished I could sink into the ground. If I was able to, I would slap the dead body that was looking at us mockingly.

What a disgrace!

Filled with fear, I ran from the adjacent room. For the sake of this same whore.

Perhaps she had arranged this affair so that I would have to marry her.

In spite of our being foster brother and sister, and in order to uphold their family reputation, I had to marry her; Because this girl was not a virgin. I was not aware of that fact.

As a matter of fact, I never could know.

Others had intimated.

On our wedding night when we were left alone, no matter how much I implored and begged her, it was useless. She did not take off her clothes.

She said, «Wrong time of the month. » She did not admit me in any way near her.

She put out the light and retired to the other end of the room and slept there.

She shook like a willow tree, as if she were thrown into a dungeon with a dragon.

No one believes this, and it is incredible; she did not allow me even to kiss her on the cheek.

The next night, like the first night, I slept on the same spot on the floor, and the following nights it was the same as the first night; I did not dare.

In short, I slept on the other side of the room for some time.

Who believes this? For two months, no, for two months and four days, I slept on the floor and did not dare approach her. She had already fixed a virginity token by sprinkling a pigeon's blood on a kerchief. I don't know.

Maybe it was the handkerchief that she had used on the night of her first lovemaking; she had kept it in order to ridicule me.

Ironically people congratulated me and exchanged winks.

Perhaps in their hearts they were saying, «Last night he must have discovered», but I pretended that I didn't know what they were talking about.

They laughed at me; they laughed at my stupidity. I had made it a condition for myself to one day write all this down.

After I discovered that she had all sorts of lovers; she did not like me perhaps because a mullah, reciting a couple of Arabic verses had placed her under my authority, or perhaps she wanted to be free! At last, one night, I decided to possess her by force.

I carried out my decision.

But after much struggle she got up and left and I had to be satisfied with sleeping in her bed that had the warmth of her body and her scent, and by rolling in her bed. The only time that I have ever had a satisfying sleep was during that night.

After that night she separated her room from mine.

In the evenings, when I came home, she would still be out. I didn't know whether she was in or out.

As a matter of fact, I didn't want to know.

Because I was condemned to loneliness, condemned to death. I wanted to, by all means possible, establish contact with her lovers.

No one will believe this. When I knew that she had taken a fancy to a certain person, I would watch for him and with much humility and disgrace, cajole and flatter him, until eventually, I would make his acquaintance and bring him to her.

And what lovers: a tripe-peddler, a jurist, a liverpeddler, the chief magistrate, a judge, a trader and a philosopher that although their names and titles differed, they all were the apprentice of the man who sells boiled sheep's head.

She preferred all these men to me. With what disgrace and servility I belittled and downgraded myself!

No one will believe it; I was afraid that I might lose my wife. I wanted to learn manner, ethics, and charm from my wife's lovers, But I was no more than a sorry pimp mocked by fools.

As a matter of fact, how could I learn the ways of the rabble anyway?

Now I know she loved them because they were shameless, foolish, and smelly. Her love was inseparable from dirt and death.

Was I really willing to sleep with her; Was it her apparent beauty that had attracted me or was it her hatred towards me? Was it her coquettish gestures or my life-long love for her mother, or was it a combination of all these?

No--I don't know. I know one thing, though. This woman, this whore, this witch, I don't know what poison she had poured into my soul, into my existence, that I not only wanted her, but all the atoms of my body need the atoms of her body.

They shrieked that they needed and I had a great desire to be on a lost island where there were no people. I wished that an earthquake, a storm or a tornado would strike all the rabble, who breathed outside my door and who raced around having fun, dead, so that only she and I would remain.

Even then, wouldn't she prefer any other animal, an Indian serpent, or a dragon to me? I wished we could spend one night together and die in each other's arms.

That seemed to me to be the sublime culmination of my existence and my life.

It was as though this whore enjoyed torturing me, as if the suffering that consumed me was not sufficient; at last, I became disabled, gave up all activity, and was confined to the house, like a moving corpse.

No one was privy to our mutual secret.

My aged nanny, who had become the companion of my gradual death, reproached me.

For the sake of the same whore, I used to hear all around me and behind my back, «How does this poor woman put up with this lunatic husband? ».

They were in the right, because the degree of my helplessness was incredible. I wasted away daily; when I looked at myself in the mirror my cheeks were red, the color of meat at the butcher shop.

My body was feverish and my eyes had assumed a languid and sorrowful expression. I enjoyed my newly acquired state, and in my eyes I could see the messenger of death; it was evident that I was dying.

At last they sent for the physician, the healer of the rabble, the family doctor who, in his own words, had «brought us all up. » He entered wearing a yellowish turban and a long beard.

He took pride in having administered a drug for strengthening my grandfather's virility, in pouring rocket seed and rock candy down my throat and in making my aunt take cassia extracts.

Anyhow, upon arrival, he sat at the side of my bed, took my pulse, looked at my tongue, and prescribed that I should take ass's milk and barley juice, and advised that I fumigate twice a day with mastic and arsenic.

He also left several lengthy prescriptions with the nanny, containing weird and strange extracts and oils like hyssop, oil of bay, extract of licorice, camphor, maiden's hair, chamomile oil, goose oil, linseed, fir-tree seed and other such trash. I grew worse.

Only my nanny was her nanny, too. With an old face and grey hair, she sat in the corner of the room at the side of my bed, pressed cold cloths on my forehead and brought me herbal extracts. She talked to me about the facts and events of my childhood and of the whore's as well.

For instance, she told me that my wife's habit of chewing on the nails of her left hand until they are sore goes back as far as the cradle.

Sometimes she told me stories, too.

It appeared that these stories minimized my age and made me feel like a child, because they were related to those days, when I was very small.

In the room that my wife and I slept in the same cradle. In a large double-sized cradle. I am certain that she told the same stories. Now some of the incredible episodes of these stories are more natural to me.

Because the illness created a new world in me, an unrecognizable, vague world full of images, colors and desires unimaginable to a healthy person. I felt the change of events in these stories with an indescribable anxiety and intoxication, I felt that I had become a child, And this very moment that I am writing I am participating in feelings, these feelings, all of them, belong to the present, not to the past.

Perhaps the actions, thoughts, desires and habits of the ancients bequeathed to later generations through these tales have been among the necessities of life.

For thousands of years, they have said these same things, performed these same sexual acts, and have faced these same childish predicaments.

Isn't all of life a comical story, an incredible, foolish tale?

Am I not writing my own incredible account?

Stories are but one way of escaping unfulfilled desires, desires that have not been realized.

Desires that different storytellers have imagined, each according to his own mentality and hereditary traits. I wish I could sleep as in the days when I was an innocent and ignorant child--a comfortable and tranquil sleep. [I wish] when I woke up my cheeks would be red, the color of meat at the butcher's, that my body would be hot, and that I would be coughing—horrifying, deep coughs.

Coughs that could not be traced to any known recesses of my body, like the coughs of the packhorses that brought the sheep carcasses to the butcher shop early in the morning. I recall clearly that it was completely dark; for several minutes, I was in a coma. Before going to sleep, I talked to myself.

At this moment I felt--I was sure--that I had become a child and that I was lying in a cradle. I felt that someone was at my side. For a while, everyone in the house had gone to sleep,

It was around daybreak. The sick know that at this time it seems that life transcends the limits of this world.

My heart was beating hard but I was not afraid at all; my eyes were open but because of the density of the darkness I could not see anyone.

Several minutes passed, an unpleasant thought crossed my mind. I said to myself, «Perhaps it is she! »

At this very moment I felt a cold hand touch my feverish forehead. I shuddered. Two or three times I asked myself, «Wasn't that the hand of the Angel of Death? »; and went back to sleep.

When I awoke in the morning, my nanny said: my daughter (she meant my wife, that whore) had come to my bedside, placed my head on her knee and rocked me like a child.

Perhaps a sense of maternal love had been awakened in her. I wish I had died at that moment.

Maybe the child she was carrying had died.

Had her child been born? I did not know.

In this room that steadily grew narrower and darker than the inside of a tomb for me, I was constantly waiting for my wife, but she never came. Isn’t my current situation of her making?

This is not a joke. For three years, no, for two years and four months, but what are days and months? It does not make sense to me

Time loses its significance for one who lives in a grave. This room was the grave of my life and thought.

All the activities, the sounds, the pretentious life of the others, the life of the rabble who were bodily and mentally moulded alike, was strange and meaningless to me.

Since I had become bedridden, I had awakened in a strange and incredible world in which I did not have any need for the world of the rabble.

A world in which I was unto myself, a world full of mysteries, a world every nook and cranny of which I felt compelled to examine.

During the night when I wallowed at the edge of the two worlds, moments before I sank into a deep and empty sleep, I dreamed.

In the twinkling of an eye, I was living a life different from my own; I breathed in a different atmosphere, I was far away, as though I intended to escape from myself and change my destiny.

When I closed my eyes, my real world appeared to me

These imaginary pictures had a life of their own, they appeared and disappeared freely, as though my will had no influence on them.

But I cannot be too sure about that either; the scenes that materialized before me were not normal dreams, because I was not asleep yet.

In silence and with composure, I separated these pictures from each other and made comparisons between them.

It seemed to me that until this time I had not known myself, and that the world had lost its meaning and power and in its place the darkness of night ruled. Because they had not taught me to look at the night and to love the night. I am not sure whether at this time my arm was under my control; I thought if I were to leave my hand to itself, following some unknown and unidentifiable stimulus, without my influencing it in any way, it would begin to move by itself.

If I was not constantly controlling my body, and was not consciously aware of it, it was capable of doing things that I did not expect it to do.

For a long time now I had the feeling that I was undergoing a process of living degeneration.

Not only my body, but my soul, too, contradicted my heart; they were constantly in disagreement. I was constantly undergoing some sort of strange dissolution and disintegration.

Sometimes I thought of things that I myself could not believe.

At other times I experienced a feeling of pity, while, my intelligence reproached me.

Often when holding a conversation, or when attending some business, I would enter the discussion of various subjects, while my attention was elsewhere. I was engaged in thinking about myself and, in my heart, I blamed myself. I was a mass undergoing a process of degeneration and disintegration.

Apparently, I have been and shall always continue to be like this: a strange, incompatible mixture...

Something that is unbearable. I felt myself quite detached from the people whom I saw and lived with; but, at the same time, a superficial resemblance, a vague and remote, yet close, resemblance united me with them. It was these mutual necessities of life that diminished my astonishment.

The resemblance that tortured me most of all was that the rabble, too, like me, loved that whore.

They loved my wife. She, too, was more inclined towards them. I am sure that in the character of one of us there was flaw. I refer to her as the whore because no other designation suits her as accurately as this word does. I don't want to say «my wife,» because the wife-husband relationship did not exist between us; I would be deceiving myself. I have always, from the beginning of eternity, referred to her as the whore.

But this name held a special attraction.

If I married her, it was because she approached me first, That, too, was part of her cunning and duplicity. No, she did not have the slightest love for me.

As a matter of fact, how could she be in love with anyone? A sensual woman, who needed one man for lust, another for love and still another for torture. I don't think even this triad would satisfy her.

But I am sure that she had chosen me for torture. Indeed, she could not have made a better choice.

As for me, I married her because she resembled her mother, because she had a vague and distant resemblance to myself.

Now not only I loved her but the atoms of my body desired her, especially my midsection.

Because I do not wish to hide true feelings under the fanciful blanket of love, fondness, and theosophy. Because I do not like euphemism. I felt that an emanation or an aureole, like those one paints around the head of a saint, was seated in the middle of my body; and that my sickly and unpleasant aureole desired the aureole in the middle of her body and strove, with all its might, to attract it to itself.

When I felt better, I decided to leave, to go and lose myself.

Like a leprous dog that knows it must die, like birds that hide themselves away to die. I got up early in the morning, picked up the two cookies in the niche and, making sure that nobody saw me, I ran away from the house; I escaped from the affliction that had enmeshed me.

Without any predetermined destination, I passed through many streets and distraughtly walked by the rabble, who with greedy faces, were in pursuit of money and lust. I did not need to see them, because one of them was enough to represent the rest.

They were all like one mouth leading to a wad of guts, terminating in their sexual organ.

Suddenly I felt that I was more agile and lighter; my leg muscles were operating with a special momentum and rapidity that was beyond my imagination. I felt that I had been cut free from all life fetters. I raised my shoulders, this was a natural movement for me dating back to my childhood days when I did the same thing upon being freed from a task or a responsibility.

The sun was rising and burning hot. I reached some quiet and empty streets.

On my way there were some grey houses designed in strange, singular, geometric shapes: cubic, prismatic and conic houses with low, dark windows.

These windows appeared to be without any shutters, without an owner, and temporary. It was as if no living being, could possibly live in those houses.

Like a golden knife, the sun sheared the edges of the shade on the wall and took them away.

The streets, confined between old, whitewashed walls, were adding to their own length.

Everything was quiet and speechless, as though the elements of nature were obeying the sacred law of the quietude of the burning atmosphere, the law of silence

It seemed as though every place harbored some mystery so that my lungs did not dare to inhale.

Suddenly I realized that I had left the city gate behind.

With a thousand sucking mouths, the heat of the sun was drawing sweat from my body.

Under the blazing sun, the desert bushes had assumed the color of turmeric.

From the depths of the sky, like a feverish eye, the sun bestowed its burning heat on the silent, lifeless scene.

But the soil and the plants of this area had a special aroma, an aroma so strong that upon inhaling it I was reminded of my childhood. I not only clearly recalled the activities and the words of those times, but that, for a moment, I felt that whole era within myself, as if it had happened yesterday. I felt an agreeable giddiness as though I had been reborn in a lost world. This feeling had the intoxicating quality of an ancient, sweet wine; it penetrated my veins and sinews, reaching my very existence.

In the desert, I knew all the thorns, rocks, tree trunks, and the tiny shrubs of wild thyme. I recognized the familiar scent of the vegetation. I was reminded of my own past--of my own far and distant days--but all those recollections, as if through some magic, had been distanced from me; they were living an independent life together.

While I was no more than a detached, helpless witness with the feeling that there existed a deep whirlpool between them and me. I felt that today my heart was empty and the shrubs had lost the magical fragrance that they had on those days. The distance between the cypress trees had increased and the hills were dryer. I was no longer the creature that I used to be, and if I could materialize that creature and speak to him, he would not hear me, nor would he understand my words. He had the face of an acquaintance of times gone by, but he was not mine or a part of me.

The world appeared like an empty and depressing mansion. A special agitation filled my chest as though I were compelled to investigate all the rooms in this mansion with bare feet. I passed through interconnected rooms, but at the end of each, I was confronted by that whore. One by one the doors, of their own accord, closed behind me. And only the trembling shadows of the walls with their obliterated corners, like some female and male black slaves, stood guard around me. When I reached the Suren River, a dry and barren mountain appeared in front of me.

The dry and hard figure of the mountain reminded me of my nanny. I do not know what connected the two in my mind. I passed by the side of the mountain and reached a small, pleasant spot surrounded by mountains.

The ground was covered with black lily plants, and above the mountain there was a high fort made of hefty mud bricks.

At this time I felt fatigued. I retired to the bank of the Suren River and there I sat on the sand beneath an ancient cypress tree. It was a quiet and secluded spot.

It seemed that up until now no one had visited this place.

Suddenly I noticed that a small girl emerged from behind the trees and walked in the direction of the fort.

She wore a black dress of very thin and light warp and woof, apparently of silk.

Biting the index finger of her left hand she moved freely, as if sauntering in a carefree mood.

It seemed to me that I had seen her before, and that I knew her; but because of the distance between us, and because she was directly under the intense light of the sun, I could not recognize how she suddenly disappeared. I was petrified; unable to move even slightly.

But, all of a sudden, I saw her with my own bodily eyes as she passed in front of me and disappeared.

Was she a real creature or was she a figment of my imagination? Had I seen her in a dream or in wakefulness? No matter how hard I tried to recall, it was useless. I felt a special tremor in the column of my spine and it seemed to me that, at this hour, all the shadows in the fort on the mountain had come to life and that that girl was one of the ancient citizens of the city of Rayy.

Suddenly, the scene in front of me became familiar. I recalled that as a child, on a Thirteenth day of Farvardin I had come to this same place; my mother-in-law and that whore, too, were there.

For a long time we chased each other and played behind these same cypress trees.

Later on, I don't recall exactly, a group of other children joined us. We were playing hide and seek.

At one time when I searched for this same whore, I found her by the side of the same Suren River.

She slipped and fell into the river.

She was pulled out and taken behind the cypress tree to change her clothes. I, too, followed. They held a prayer veil in front of her, but stealthily I saw her whole body from behind the tree.

She smiled as she chewed on the index finger of her left hand.

Then they clad her in a white cape and spread the black silk dress, made of very delicate warp and woof, on the ground to dry in the sun.

At last, I lay down on the fine sand at the foot of the cypress tree.

The sound of the water, like a discontinuous, unintelligible speech murmured in a dream, reached my ear.

Involuntarily, I sank my hands in the warm, damp sand; I pressed the warm and moist sand in my fist: it felt like the firm flesh of the body of a girl who was just pulled out of the water and whose clothes were changed.

I don't know how much time passed. When I stood up, I began to walk involuntarily.

Everywhere was quiet and still.

I walked without seeing my surroundings.

A force beyond my control made me go.

All my attention was concentrated on my steps, I was not walking; rather, like the girl in black, I was sliding on my feet and move on.

When I came to, I found myself in the city in front of my father-in-law's house.

I don't know why I happened to be at my fatherin-law's house. His small son, my brother-in-law, was sitting on the platform.

He was the pitting image of his sister.

Slanting Turkmen eyes, prominent cheeks, wheat-colored complexion, a lustful nose, and a thin, strong face.

As he was sitting there, he had put the index finger of his left hand in his mouth.

Involuntarily, I approached him, took the cookies out of my pocket and gave them to him, saying, «Shajun sent these for you»--he used to call my wife Shajun instead of calling his own mother by that name.

He cast a curious glance, with his slanted

Turkmen eyes, at the cookies that he held doubtfully in his hand.

I sat on the platform, put him on my lap and hugged him tightly.

His body was warm, the calves of his legs were like those of my wife and he had the same unceremonious disposition.

His lips resembled his father's but, that which in the father evoked a sense of disgust in me was attractive and charming in the son. It seemed that his half-open lips had just finished a long, warm kiss.

I kissed him on his open lips which resembled my wife's.

His lips tasted like the end of a cucumber--bitterish and acrid. Probably that whore's lips, too, have the same taste.

At this very moment I saw his father, the stooped old man who wore a scarf, leave the house.

He went on his way without looking in my direction. He laughed convulsively, a dreadful laughter that caused one's hair to stand on end.

The intensity of the laughter made is shoulders shake.

I was so ashamed that I wished I could sink into the ground.

It was getting near sunset.

I got up as if trying to run away from myself and, involuntarily, headed for home.

I did not see anything or anyone; it was as if I were traveling in some unknown and unidentifiable town.

I was surrounded by scattered, geometrically designed houses with only a few black, deserted windows.

It seemed that no living creature could ever inhabit those houses. But from their white wall a faint light emanated.

The strange thing, the thing that was incredible is that whenever I stood between the moon and one of these walls, I cast a very large and dense shadow, but it was a headless shadow.

My shadow did not have a head.

I had heard that those whose shadow is headless die before the year's end.

Frightened, I entered my house and took refuge in my room.

At this same time I had a bloody nose and after losing much blood, I fell unconscious on my bed.

My nanny began tending me.

Before going to bed, I looked at myself in the mirror; my face was distressed, vague and lifeless, so vague that I did not know myself.

I climbed into bed, pulled the quilt over my head, rolled over and faced the wall. Then I curled up, closed my eyes and continued my ruminations.

These delicate images which form my dark, depressing, dreadful, yet intoxicating destiny. The realm where life and death mingle and distorted images take shape, past, slain, obliterated and suppressed desires come to life again and shrieking for vengeance.

At moments like this, I was cut off from the world of matter, and was ready to be annihilated in an eternal flux. Several times I murmured to myself,

«death, death … where are you? » This calmed me down and my eyes gradually closed.

Upon closing my eyes, I found myself in the Muhammadiyeh Square. There a high gallows was set up and the odds-and-ends man who sits in front of my room had been strung up. At the foot of the gallows several drunken watchmen were drinking wine. I saw my mother-in-law, her face glowing with anger--like my wife's face when she becomes angry: now I see that her lips pale and her eyes become round—pulling at my arm and plowing among the crowd, she was trying to attract the attention of the hangman who wore a red garment. She was shouting, «String this one up, too! »

Terrified, by this nightmare, I jumped up from sleep; I was extremely feverish. My body was drenched with sweat and a consuming heat glowed on my cheeks.

To save myself from the clutches of this nightmare, I got off the bed, drank some water and sprinkled some on my face and head and returned to bed, but I could not make myself go back to sleep.

In the shadowy light of the room, I was staring at the water jar in the niche.

It seemed to me that as long as the water jar was in the niche I would not go to sleep.

I was overwhelmed by a groundless fear that the jar was going to fall down. To prevent this, I got off the bed to secure the jar but, in response to some unknown stimulus, my hand purposefully struck the jar; it fell down and broke into pieces.

At last, I pressed my eyelids together but, it struck me that my nanny was up and was looking at me. I clenched my fists under the quilt, but nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

In a coma-like state I heard a sound at the front door. Then I heard the sound of my nanny's slippers as she went out and bought bread and cheese. Then I heard the cry of a vendor from afar, shouting, «Mulberries are good for bile! »

Yes, as usual, tiresome life had started all over again.

The amount of light was increasing. When I opened my eyes, I saw a trembling reflection of sunlight thrown onto my ceiling by the water in the pool; it had entered my room through a hole in the wall.

It seemed as though my previous night's dream was so distant and so vague that I had seen it many years ago as a child.

My nanny had brought my breakfast. It was as if her face had fallen on a magic mirror. It looked elongated and thin. It had assumed an incredible and comical form, as if it was being pulled down by some weight.

Even though nanny knew that the smoke of the hooka was detrimental to my health, she smoked in my room.

As a matter of fact, she had to smoke or she wouldn't be herself.

Nanny had spoken so much about her house, her daughter-in-law and her son to me that she had made me a partner in her own lustful pleasures.

How foolish! Sometimes, for no reason, I would think about the lives of the people at my nanny's, but for some reason everything related to the life-style and the joys of others nauseated me.

When I knew that my life has come to an end and is being extinguished tragically, what business was it of mine to direct my attention to the lives of the fools and healthy rabble who were well, who slept well, who performed the sexual act well, and who had never felt the wings of death on their face every moment.

Nanny treated me like a child; she wanted to see every part of my body while I still felt embarrassed before my wife.

Whenever I entered my room, I would cover my phlegm in the basin, comb my hair and beard, and put my nightcap straight

I did not feel shy with my nanny in any way. Why should this woman, who bore no relationship to me at all, involve herself so deeply in my life?

I recall in this same room, during the winter, they used to put up a korsi on the cistern.

My nanny and I, and the same whore used to sleep under the korsi. In the morning light, when I opened my eyes, the design on the embroidered curtain hanging in front of the doorway came to life. What a strange, terrifying curtain it was!

Depicted on it was a stooped old man resembling the Indian yogis. He wore a turban and sat underneath a cypress tree. In his hand he held an instrument which looked like a sitar. In front of him stood a beautiful young girl, like a Bugam Dasi or a dancer at the Indian temples. Her hands were in chains and it seemed that she was being forced to dance in front of the old man.

I used to think to myself that perhaps they had thrown this old man, too, into a dungeon with a Nag-serpent. That's why his figure was the shape it had and for his hair and beard to have turned white.

It was one of those gold-embroidered curtains that perhaps either my father or my uncle had sent from far-off lands.

When I concentrated excessively on this picture, I was frightened.

Half asleep, I would awaken my nanny, who with her bad breath and coarse, black hair rubbing against my face, would hug me tightly.

In the morning, when I opened my eyes, she appeared to me in exactly the same shape, except the wrinkles on her face appeared to be deeper and harder.

Often, in order to forget, to run away from myself, I would recall my childhood.

This was to help me feel the same as I did before

the sickness, to make me feel that I was healthy. I still felt that I was a child and that for my death, for my elimination, there was a second being who pitied me, who pitied this child who will die.

During frightening times in my life, whenever I saw my nanny's quiet face—pallid complexion, dull, motionless, sunken eyes, thin nostril wings and wide, bony forehead—memories of those times were revived in me.

Perhaps some mysterious rays emanating from her brought me comfort.

A fleshy mole was on her temple that was covered with hair.

I believe this is the first time I saw that mole.

Usually I did not look so closely at her face.

Although nanny had changed on the outside, her thoughts had remained unchanged.

Only she showed more enthusiasm for life and had a fear of death.

Flies that take refuge in the room at the beginning

of the fall season.

My life, however, was changing at every day and every minute.

It seemed to me that the amount of time and activities that normal human beings accomplish in several years were speeded up a thousand times more for me.

While the pleasures for it, on the contrary, were heading for nil, perhaps less than nil.

There are those who begin to struggle with death when they are twenty years of age, while others die in a moment, a very quiet and peaceful death, like a tallow burner that having run out of fuel is extinguished.

When at noon my nanny brought me my lunch, I upset the soup bowl and shrieked; I shrieked with all my might.

All those living in the house gathered in front of my door.

The whore, too, came, but she did not stay.

I looked at her belly. It was swelled up.

No, she was still carrying the child.

They sent for the physician.

It pleased me inwardly that I had created some trouble for this foolish lot.

The physician, who wore a long beard, arrived and had me smoke opium.

Opium was indeed a wonderful drug for my suffering-ridden life!

When I smoked opium, my thoughts grew large, subtle, magical, and ready to fly away. I paid visits to a world beyond the ordinary. My thoughts and my imagination, free from the attraction and the weight of earthly things, rose toward an empyrean tranquillity and stillness. It was as though they had put me on the wings of a golden bat and roamed in a radiant, empty world unimpeded.

This experience was so profound and so delightful that it surpassed even the intoxication induced by death.

When I left the pot of fire where I was smoking opium, I walked to the window that opens onto our courtyard. My nanny was sitting in the sunlight cleaning vegetables.

I heard her say to her daughter-in-law, «We all have lost our hearts. I wish God would kill him and put him out of his misery! »

It seems that the physician had told them that my disease was incurable.

But that did not surprise me at all.

How foolish these people are! When, an hour later, she brought my herbal extracts, because of excessive weeping, her eyes were swollen and blood shot. But in front of me, she forced herself to smile.

They were play-acting for me, but they were quite clumsy at it. Did they think that I did not know about it?

Anyway, why was this woman so very fond of me?

Why did she think of herself as the companion of my sufferings?

Some time ago, she had been paid and she had thrust her bucket-like, black, wrinkled nipples into my mouth. I wished her breasts were struck by leprosy.

Now, looking at her breasts, I am nauseated even to think of having sucked the sap of her life through those breasts and that our body temperatures met and became one.

She must have rubbed her hand over all my body.

That is why now, too, she treats me with the boldness of a widow. She still regarded me as a child, because at some time in the past she had held me over the latrine.

Maybe she had used me as her lesbian partner as well, or as the adopted sister that some women choose for themselves.

She indeed «took care of me, » as she put it, with a great deal of curiosity and attention.

If my wife, that whore, attended me, I would never allow nanny to touch me, because in my estimation, my wife's dominion of thought and her sense of beauty were vaster than nanny's, or else lust had created a sense of shyness and bashfulness in me.

For this reason I felt less shy with my nanny, and only she took care of me.

Perhaps my nanny believed that fate, or her star, had arranged things in this way.

Additionally, using my sickness as an excuse, she told me all the intimate details of her family's life: their joys, their quarrels; she revealed every corner of her own simple, cunning and beggarlike soul. She told me that she was not happy with her daughter-in-law, as if that woman were a second wife, encroaching on her son's love and lust for her. She said all this in a most indescribable, vengeful tone!

Her daughter-in-law must be beautiful!

I have seen her through the window that opens onto the yard. She had hazel-colored eyes, blond hair and a small, straight nose.

Often my nanny talked to me about the miracles of the prophets. She thought that by so doing she would console me, but I was merely envious of her low level of thinking and of her foolishness.

Sometimes she came to me to gossip. For instance, several days ago she told me that her daughter (the whore, that is), at an auspicious hour, had been sewing a resurrection garment for the child, for her own child. Then, she comforted me, as if she, too, knew.

Sometimes she goes around the neighborhood and brings me medicine, from the magician, the fortune-teller, the cupper, and the augur. She discusses my situation with them.

On the last Wednesday of the year she went eavesdropping; she returned with a bowl full of onions, rice and some rancid oil. She said that she had begged these for the sake of my health—later, stealthily, she fed all that crap to me.

Several days ago she brought me a prayer book with a span of dust on top of it.

Neither the rabbles' prayer book, nor any of their writings or thoughts was useful for me.

What use did I have for their nonsense and lies?

Wasn't I myself the result of many succeeding generations, and weren't their hereditary sufferings inherent in me?

Wasn't the past in myself?

But never has any mosque, the call to prayer, the ablutions, the noisy spitting, the bowing and prostration in front of an Almighty and absolute Creator with Whom one could converse only in Arabic had any effect upon me.

Although, before this, when I was healthy I was forced to attend the mosque several times, and make every effort to harmonize my thoughts and feelings with those of others. But my eyes stared at the glazed tiles and the intricate designs on the walls, designs that relieved me from the obligations of the mosque and transported me into a realm of delightful dreams. During prayer, I closed my eyes and held the palms of my hands before my face. In this night that I had created for myself, I uttered prayers as if they were some irresponsible words repeated in a dream. But the pronunciation of these words was not from the bottom of my heart because I preferred to speak to a friend, or an acquaintance rather than to God or to an all powerful One—Because God overwhelmed me! Inasmuch as I was lying in a warm, damp bed, none of these problems was of the slightest interest to me.

At this time, I did not wish to know whether God existed, or whether He is the embodiment of the wishes of the rulers of the earth that they had created to confirm their own divinity and to facilitate their robbing of their subjects. An imaginary picture of this world projected onto the heavens! I only wished to know whether I would make it through the night or not. I felt that, in comparison with death, how much creed, faith and belief were weak and childish, like a kind of entertainment for the healthy and fortunate. Compared with the frightful reality of death and my state of degeneration, all my education on the subjects of spiritual reward and punishment and the Resurrection Day was nothing but a tasteless, deceitful notion. The prayers they had taught me for warding off the fear of death were wholly ineffectual. No, the fear of death would not leave me alone. Those who have no experienced suffering do not understand the meaning of these words. The urge to live had been intensified so much that the smallest moment of pleasure compensated for long hours of palpitation and anguish. I realized that suffering existed, but, it lacked any import and meaning. Among the rabble I had become an unknown and unrecognizable breed, so much so that, I had forgotten that in the past, I had been a part of their world. The dreadful thing is that I did not feel either completely alive or totally dead; I was a moving body that was neither connected to the world of the living, nor benefiting from the oblivion and tranquillity of the dead.

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 than 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.

Chapter 11

I was growing inward incessantly; like the animals that hibernate during the wintertime, I could hear other peoples' voices with my ears and my own voice in my throat.

The loneliness and the solitude that lurked behind me were like a condensed, thick, eternal night, like one of those nights with dense, persistent, sticky darkness that waits to pounce on unpopulated cities filled with lustful and vengeful dreams.

But I, this throat that I had turned into, was no more than an insane, absolute proof.

The force that, out of loneliness, brings two individuals together to procreate has its roots in this same insanity that exists in everyone and which is mingled with a sense of regret, tending gradually toward death…

Only death does not tell lies!

The presence of death annihilates all that is imaginary.

We are the offspring of death and it is that death delivers us from the tantalizing and fraudulent attractions of life; it is death that beckons us from the depths of life.

During the ages that we still do not understand language, when, at times, in the middle of playing we come to a halt, we do so to hear the call of death… throughout our lives, it is the finger of death that points at us.

Has it not happened for someone to suddenly and without a reason experience a moment of deep thought, so deep to lose his bearing in time and space and not know what he is thinking about?

Then, afterwards, he has to make an effort to become reacquainted with his situation and the real world?

This is the call of death.

In this damp bed that smelled of sweat, when my eyelids grew heavy and I was about to surrender to nonexistence and eternal night, all my lost memories and forgotten fears came to life: fear that the feathers in the pillow might turn to blades of daggers, that the button on my bed-clothes might grow as big as a millstone, that the piece of bread that falls to the floor might shatter like a piece of glass.

I was apprehensive that should I fall asleep, the oil in the tallow burner might spill over and cause the whole city to go up in flames. The compulsive thought that the paws of the dog in front of the butcher shop might echo like the sound of the hoofs of a horse.

Nagging fear that the odds-and-ends man sitting at his display might suddenly begin to laugh, to laugh so much that he could no longer control his laughter. Fear that the worm in the footpath of our pond might become an Indian serpent.

Fear that my quilt might turn into a tombstone with hinges that would slide and lock its marble teeth and bury me. I was afraid that I might lose my voice and no matter how much I screamed, nobody would come to my help. I wished to recall my childhood; but when my wish came true and I felt as I did in those days, it was as difficult and painful now as it had been then.

Coughs that resounded like the coughs of lean black packhorses in front of the butcher shop; spitting phlegm with the fear that there might be traces of blood in it.

Blood, that tepid, salty liquid, the essence of life that emerges from the depths of the body and must be vomited, and the constant threat of death that irrevocably tramples over all thought and passes on without any fear or trepidation.

Life, coolly and dispassionately, reveals to each person his own mask, as if everyone carried several faces with him!

Some constantly use only one of these masks. Naturally it becomes dirty and wrinkled. This group is the thrifty group.

The other group saves its masks for their children, and there are still others who constantly change their masks but as soon as they begin to age they realize that that had been their last mask and that, before long, it becomes used and useless. Then their real faces emerge from behind that last mask. I wonder what lethal influence permeated the walls of my room that poisoned my thoughts. I was certain that a condemned criminal, before he was put to death, a chained lunatic, had occupied this room.

Not only the walls of my room, but the view outside, the butcher, the odds-and-ends man, my nanny, that whore and all that I saw, including the bowl from which I ate my soup, and my clothes; all these had conspired to create these thoughts in my mind.

Several nights ago in the cloakroom of the bathhouse, when I took my clothes off, my thoughts took a different turn.

When the bath-attendant poured water on my head, I felt as though my black thoughts were washed away.

In the bathchamber I saw my shadow on the steamy wall. I noticed myself to be delicate and brittle as I was ten years ago when I was a child. I recalled exactly that my shadow used to fall on the steamy wall just like that. I looked closely at my body. My thigh, my calf and the middle of my body; it was a disappointing, lustful sight.

Their shadows, too, were like they were ten years ago when I was a child. I felt that my entire life has passed me just like the aimless shadow, like flickering meaningless shadow, on the wall of a bathhouse.

But the others were sturdy, heavy and robust.

Perhaps they cast a bigger and denser shadow on the steamy wall of the bathhouse; a shadow that left a trace of its existence for a long time, while my shadow was erased very quickly.

In the cloakroom when I was dressing, my appearance and my thoughts, once again, changed. It was as though I had entered a new world; as if I were reborn in the very world that I hated.

In any event, I had acquired a second life because it was miraculous that I had not dissolved in the bathing pond, like a chunk of salt would.

Chapter 12

My life appeared to me as unnatural, uncertain and incredible as the design on the pencase I am using at this moment.

It seems that a painter who has been possessed, perhaps a perfectionist, has painted the cover of this pencase. Often, when I look at this design, it seems familiar; perhaps it is because of this same design... perhaps this same design makes me write.

Depicted is a cypress tree underneath which a stooped old man, like an Indian yogi, is squatting, wrapped in a cloak and wearing a turban.

He has placed the index finger of his left hand on his lips in astonishment.

Opposite him, a girl wearing a long, black dress and assuming an unnatural posture--perhaps a Bugam Dasi--is dancing before him. She is holding a lily. A brook separates the two.

At the side of the opium brazier, I dispersed all my dark thoughts in the delicate and heavenly smoke.

Now it was my body that thought, it was my body that dreamed, it glided as if it were freed from the gravity and pollution of the air; soaring in an unknown world full of unknown colors and shapes.

The opium had inspired in me a vegetable soul, a sluggish vegetable soul, and I was traveling in the world of the plants. Had I become a plant? But as I sat at the brazier on the leather mat, wrapped in my cloak, dozing off in front of the pot of fire, for some reason I thought of the odd-and-ends man; he, too, sits before his display with hunched shoulders as I sit. This thought frightened me. I got up, threw the cloak to one side, and walked to the mirror. My glowing cheeks were the color of meat at the butcher shop; my beard, though dishevelled, lent me an expression of attractive spirituality.

The look in my sickly eyes was offended and childish, and fatigued, as though all that was terrestrial and human had abandoned me. I liked my face; I was lustfully intoxicating myself. Looking at my reflection in the mirror, I said to myself, « Your suffering is so profound that it is caught at the bottom of your eyes… even if you cry, it is not certain that you will be able to shed any tears!… »›

Then again I said, «You are a fool, why don't you finish yourself?

What are you waiting for?…

What more is there for you to expect? Isn't the wine flask in the closet of your room?…

Take a slug and there you go!… fool!…you are a fool…» I was addressing the empty air!

The thoughts that converged in my mind were not related to each other.

I could hear my voice in my throat, but I could not understand the meaning of the words.

In my mind these sounds blended with other sounds.

Like the time when I was feverish, my fingers seemed to be longer; my eyelids were heavy, and my lips had become thick.

When I looked behind me, I saw my nanny standing in the doorway. I burst into laughter.

My nanny's face was motionless. Her lifeless eyes stared at me, but they showed no trace of surprise, anger or sorrow.

Generally a foolish act makes one laugh, but my laughter was more profound than that.

This grand folly was related to all that man has failed to solve and which are difficult to comprehend; that which is lost in the darkness of the night. It was related to affairs beyond man's reach, to death.

My nanny picked up the pot of fire and, with measured steps, walked out of the room. I wiped the sweat off my brow; the palms of my hands were covered with white flecks. I leaned against the wall and placed my head upon it. I seemed to feel better.

Then I began to whisper this tune, the origin of which is not known to me: « Let us go and drink mey. The wine of the kingdom of Rayy If not today, then what day? »

Occurring to me before a crisis, this tune always made me agitated and uneasy; like a knot around my heart, like the calm before the storm.

At such times the real world abandoned me and I lived in a luminous world immeasurably distant from the terrestrial one.

At such times, I was afraid of myself; I was afraid of everyone. Perhaps this state was related to my sickness, because my thoughts had become weak.

Even when I saw the odds-and-ends man and the butcher through the window of my room I was frightened. I don't know what was frightening in their actions and in their appearance!

My nanny told me something that frightened me.

She swore by the holy prophets that she had seen the odds-and-ends man visit my wife's bedchamber at night; she had even heard the whore's own words through the door, saying, «Take off your scarf!»

This is incredible even to think about: the day before yesterday or the day before that, when I shrieked and my wife appeared behind the halfopen door of my room, with my own eyes I saw the traces of the old man's dirty, yellow and decayed teeth, teeth from between which Arabic verses flow, on my wife's cheek.

As a matter of fact, what prompted this man to appear in front of our house and remain there since my marriage?

Did he forsake the world for the sake of this whore? I recall that on that same day I went over to his display and asked him the price of the jar.

Through his scarf, two decayed teeth and leprous lip, and laughing hysterically, with laughter that made one's hair stand on end, he said to me, «Don't you look at what you buy? This jar is not worth much, huh. Young man. Take it! His voice had a peculiar tone as he said, "This jar is not worth much. I hope it brings you luck!" I put my hand in my pocket, took out two derhams and four peshizes and placed them on the corner of his display. He laughed again; a hideous laughter that made my hair stand on end. I could have sunk into the ground with shame. Covering my face with my hands, I returned home.

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

Search This Blog

Farshad

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

Chapter 1