The Blind Owl and Other Stories Read online

  Homayoun was whispering to himself, “Is this real?… Could this be possible? So young but lying in the cold damp earth out there in the Shah Abdolazim cemetery* among thousands of other corpses… The shroud sticking to his body. Never again to see the arrival of spring or the end of autumn or suffocating sad days like today… Have the light of his eye and the song of his voice been completely turned off?… He who was so full of laughter and said such entertaining things?…”

  The sky was overcast and the window was covered in a slim layer of steam. Looking out of the window you could see the neighbour’s house. The neighbour’s tin roof was covered with a thin coating of snow. Snowflakes were spinning slowly and neatly in the air before landing on the edge of the tin roof. Black smoke was coming out of the chimney, writhing and twisting in the grey sky and then disappearing slowly.

  Homayoun was sitting in front of the gas heater together with his young wife and their little daughter, Homa. They were in the family room but unlike the past, when laughter and happiness ruled in this room on Fridays, today they all were sad and silent. Even their little daughter who usually livened things up looked dull and gloomy today. She had put a plaster-made doll next to her – the doll had a broken face – and was staring outside. It was as if she too was sensing that something was wrong, and the thing that was wrong was the fact that dear Uncle Bahram had failed to come to see them as was his habit. She was also feeling that her parents’ sadness was on his account: the black clothes, the eyes red-rimmed from the lack of sleep, and the cigarette smoke which waved in the air all reinforced this suspicion.

  Homayoun was staring at the fire in the gas heater, but his thoughts were elsewhere. Against his own will, his thoughts had wandered off to his schooldays in winter. Days like today, when snow was one foot high. As soon as the bell rang to announce the break, no one had a chance against him and Bahram. They always played the same game. They would roll a ball of snow on the ground until it became a big pile. Then the children would split into two groups, and use the pile as a barricade, and so snowball fights would begin. Without feeling the cold, with red hands that burned with the intensity of the cold, they would throw snowballs at each other. One day when they were busy with this game, Homayoun pressed together a handful of icy snow and threw it at Bahram, cutting his forehead. The supervisor came and hit the palm of his hand with several sharp lashes. Perhaps it was then that his friendship with Bahram started, and until recently whenever he saw the scar on Bahram’s forehead he would remember the beating on the palm of his hand. In the span of eighteen years their spirit and thought had come so close together that not only did they tell each other their very private thoughts and feelings, but they perceived many of each other’s unspoken inner thoughts.

  The two of them had almost exactly the same thoughts, the same taste, and were almost of the same disposition. Until now there had not arisen between them the least difference of opinion or the smallest offence. Then, on the morning of the day before yesterday, Homayoun had received a phone call in the office that Bahram Mirza had killed himself. That very hour Homayoun got a droshky and went hurriedly to Bahram’s bedside. He slowly pulled back the white cloth that was covering Bahram’s face – it was bloodstained. His eyelashes were covered in blood, his brain had splashed on the pillow, there were bloodstains on the rug and the crying and distress of his relatives affected Homayoun as if he had been hit by a thunderbolt. Later, step by step, he walked alongside the coffin until near sunset when they buried him in the earth. He sent for a bouquet of flowers which was brought. He placed it on the grave and after the last goodbye he returned home with a heavy heart. But since that day he hadn’t had a peaceful minute, he hadn’t been able to sleep, and white hair had appeared on his temples. A packet of cigarettes was in front of him, and he smoked continuously.

  It was the first time that Homayoun had thought deeply and reflected on the problem of death, but his thoughts led nowhere. No opinion or supposition could content him.

  He was completely astonished and didn’t know what to do. Some­times a state of insanity would come over him. No matter how much he tried he couldn’t forget. Their friendship had started in primary school and their lives had been almost entirely entwined. They were partners in sorrow and happiness, and every instant that he turned and looked at Bahram’s picture all his past memories of Bahram would come alive and he would see him: the blond moustache, the blue, wide-set eyes, the small mouth, the narrow chin, his loud laugh and the way he cleared his throat were all before his eyes. He couldn’t believe that Bahram was dead, and that he had died so suddenly!… What self-sacrifices hadn’t Bahram made for him, in the three years that he had been away on duty and Bahram had been taking care of his household! According to Homayoun’s wife, Badri, “He did everything for us. We didn’t have to worry about a thing.”

  Now Homayoun felt the burden of life, and he missed the bygone days when they would gather so intimately in this same room. They would play backgammon and would completely lose track of time. But the thing that tortured him most was the thought that since they were so close together and hid nothing from each other, why hadn’t Bahram consulted with him before deciding to commit suicide? What was the cause? Had he gone crazy or had there been a family secret involved? He would ask himself this question continually. At last it seemed that an idea had occurred to him. He sought refuge with his wife, Badri, and asked her, “Have you got any suspicion? Any idea why Bahram did this?”

  Badri, who was seemingly preoccupied with embroidery, raised her head and, as if she had not expected this type of question, said unwillingly, “How am I supposed to know? Didn’t he tell you?”

  “No… That’s why I asked… I’m surprised by that too… When I came back from the trip I felt that he had changed. But he didn’t say anything to me. I thought this preoccupation of his was because of his office work… Because being cooped up made him depressed, he had told me many times… But he didn’t hide anything from me.”

  “God bless him! How lively and happy he was. This is unlike him.”

  “No, he pretended to be like that; sometimes he would change and be very different… When he was alone… Once when I entered his room and didn’t recognize him, he had put his head between his hands and he was thinking. As soon as he saw that I was startled he laughed and made the usual jokes in order to cover up. He was a good actor!”

  “Maybe there was something that he was afraid of telling you for fear of hurting you. He was probably being considerate and was thinking of you. After all, you have a wife and a child, so you have to think about getting on in life. But he…” She shook her head in a meaningful way, as if his suicide had no importance. Once more the silence obliged them to think. Homayoun felt that his wife’s words were not sincere and she had said them for the sake of expediency. The same woman who eight years ago used to worship him, who had such delicate thoughts about love! He felt as if a curtain had lifted from before his eyes. His wife’s attempt at consoling him had made him feel disgusted with her, especially in the face of his memories of Bahram. He became weary of his wife. She had become materialistic, wise and mature, and had started to think of wealth and worldly life and didn’t want to give way to sadness and sorrow. And the reason she gave was that Bahram didn’t have a wife and child. What a mean thought. Since he had deprived himself of this common pleasure, his death held no cause for regret. Was his child worth more in the world than his friend? Never! Wasn’t Bahram worthy of regret? Would he find anyone else like him in the world?

  That Bahram should die and this mumbling ninety-year-old, Sayyed Khanom, should live! She had come today, in the snow and cold, hobbling with a walking stick all the way from Pah Chenar,* looking for Bahram’s house to eat the halva given out to invoke God’s blessing. This was God’s policy, and in his wife’s opinion it was natural, and his wife Badri too would someday come to look like this Sayyed Khanom. Even now that she is not wearing make-up she looks d
ifferent. Her appearance had changed a lot. Her voice and the expression of her eyes had changed. In the early morning when he went to work she would still be asleep. There were crow’s feet around her eyes and they had lost their lustre. Probably his wife had the same feeling about him too, who knew? Hadn’t he himself changed? Was he the same old kind, obedient and good-looking Homayoun? Hadn’t he cheated on his wife? But why had this thought occurred to him? Was it because of the lack of sleep or the painful reminiscence about his friend?

  At this point the door opened and a servant, who held the corner of her chador between her teeth, brought a large sealed letter, gave it to Homayoun, and left. Homayoun recognized Bahram’s short, irregular handwriting on the envelope, opened it with haste, pulled out a letter and read:

  Now, at 1:30 in the morning on the thirteenth day of Mehr 1311,* I, Bahram Mirza Arjanpour, of my own free will and preference, am bequeathing all my possessions to Miss Homa Mahafarid.

  Bahram Arjanpour

  Astonished, Homayoun reread the letter and then, in a state of amazement, let it slip through his hand.

  Badri, who was watching him out of the corner of her eye, asked, “Who is the letter from?”

  “Bahram.”

  “What does he say?”

  “Do you know that he has given all his possessions to Homa?”

  “What a fine man!”

  This expression of surprise mixed with affability made Bahram even more disgusted with his wife. But involuntarily his glance caught Bahram’s picture. Then he looked back at Homa. Suddenly something occurred to him so that he started to tremble helplessly. It was as if another curtain had fallen before his eyes: there was no doubt that his daughter resembled Bahram. She didn’t look like him or her mother. Neither one of them had blue eyes. The small mouth, the narrow chin, in fact all the features on her face were just like those of Bahram. Homayoun came to understand why Bahram had loved Homa so dearly and why after his death he had bequeathed her all his possessions! Was this child whom he loved so much the result of intimacy between Bahram and his wife? And Bahram, a friend whose soul was in the same mould as his and in whom he had so much trust? His wife had been intimate with him for years without his knowing it and Bahram had deceived him all this time, had mocked him and now he had sent this will too, this insult after death. No, he couldn’t tolerate all this. These thoughts passed like lightning through his mind. His head ached, his cheeks felt cold, he turned a fiery gaze on Badri and said, “What do you say, huh, why did Bahram do this? Didn’t he have sisters and brothers?”

  “Because he loved this child. When you were at Bandargaz,* Homa got the measles. For ten days and nights that man was a nurse at the foot of this child’s bed. God bless him!”

  Homayoun said angrily, “No, it isn’t that simple…”

  “Why isn’t it that simple? Not everyone is indifferent like you are, going away and leaving your wife and child for three years. And when you returned, you came back empty handed; you didn’t even bring me a pair of stockings. People show affection through giving. To him, loving your child was the same as loving you. After all, he was not in love with Homa! And then didn’t you realize that she was the apple of his eye?…”

  “No, you aren’t telling me the truth.”

  “What do you want me to say? I don’t understand.”

  “You’re feigning ignorance.”

  “Meaning what?… Someone else kills himself, someone else gives away his belongings and I am being held to account?”

  “That much I know for sure: you’re not telling everything.”

  “You know what? I don’t understand hints and allusions. Go and get medical treatment, you’re not feeling well, your mind is all over the place. What do you want from me?”

  “Do you believe that I don’t know?”

  “If you know then why do you ask me?”

  Homayoun shouted with impatience, “Enough is enough. You’re mocking me!” Then he picked up Bahram’s will, crumpled it and threw it in the gas heater where it flared up and turned to ashes.

  Badri flung down the purple cloth she had in her hand, got up, and said, “So you’re being spiteful to me, that’s fine, but why can’t you allow your own child some indulgence?” Homayoun got up, leant against the table and in an ironic tone said, “My child… my child?… Then why does she look like Bahram?” With his elbow he hit the inlaid frame which held Bahram’s picture and it fell to the floor.

  The child, who had been sulking till now, burst into a loud crying. Badri, looking pale, said in a threatening tone, “What do you mean? What are you trying to say?”

  “I want to say that you have fooled me for eight years, mocked me. For eight years you’ve been a disgrace to me, not a wife…”

  “To me?… To my daughter?”

  Homayoun showed the picture with an angry laugh and said, breathing heavily, “Yes, your daughter… your daughter… Pick her up and have a look at her. I want to say that now my eyes are opened, I understand why he left everything to her, he was a kind father. But you – it’s been eight years that…”

  “That I’ve been in your house, that I’ve suffered every kind of hardship, that I put up with your misfortunes, that I took care of your household for three years when you weren’t here, then, later, I found out that you had fallen in love with a Russian slut in Bandargaz, and now I get this reward. You can’t find any excuse so you say my child looks like Bahram. But I can no longer put up with this. I won’t stay in this house for another minute. Come darling… let’s go.”

  Homa, pale and in a state of fright, was trembling and watching this strange and unprecedented quarrel between her father and her mother. Crying, she took hold of her mother’s skirt and the two of them went towards the door. Near the door Badri took a key chain from her pocket and threw it heavily so that it rolled in front of Homayoun’s feet. The sounds of Homa’s crying and of footsteps in the hall became faint. Ten minutes later the sound of the wheels of a droshky was heard carrying them off in the snow and cold. Homayoun stood astonished and giddy in his place. He was afraid to lift his head: he didn’t want to believe that these events were real. He was asking himself if he had gone crazy or was having a nightmare. At any rate, the thing that was evident was that this house and this life had become unbearable for him, and his daughter Homa, whom he loved so much, he couldn’t see any more. He couldn’t kiss her and caress her. The memories of his friend had become stained. Worse than everything else was that, unbeknown to him, for eight years his wife had been cheating on him with his only friend and had polluted the heart of his family. All of this hidden from him, without his knowing it! They had all been very good actors. He was the only one who had been fooled, and ridiculed. Suddenly he became completely weary of his life, he was disillusioned with everything and everyone. He felt limitlessly alone and alienated. He had no other choice but to be sent on a bureaucratic mission to a distant city or to a port in the south and pass the rest of his life there, or else do away with himself: go somewhere he wouldn’t see anyone, wouldn’t hear anyone’s voice, sleep in a ditch and never wake again. Because for the first time he felt that between him and all the people who were around him a frightening whirlpool existed that he hadn’t perceived until now.

  He lit a cigarette and took several paces. Once again he leant against the table. Outside the window snowflakes were landing on the edge of the tin roof neatly, slowly, and heedlessly, as if they were dancing to the tune of mysterious music. Without intending to, he remembered the happy and wholesome days when he and his father and mother would go to their village in Iraq. During the days he would sleep by himself on the grass under the shade of the trees, the same place where Shir Ali would smoke his pipe and sit on the wheel of the threshing machine. Shir Ali’s daughter, who had a red chador, would spend long hours there waiting for her father. The threshing machine with its plaintive sound would crush the golden stalks
of wheat. The cows with long horns and wide foreheads whose necks had been scarred by the yoke walked in circles until nightfall. Now his condition was like that of those cows. Now he knew what these animals had been feeling. He too had passed his life with closed eyes, in an endless circle, like a horse on a treadmill, like those cows that crushed the stalks of wheat. He remembered the monotonous hours when he sat behind a desk in the small customs room and continually scribbled out the same papers. Sometimes his colleague would look at his watch and yawn, but he would carry on, writing the same numbers in their proper columns. He would check, add, turn the notebooks inside out – but at that time he had something to be happy about. He knew that although his vision, his thought, his youth, and his strength were diminishing bit by bit, he still had something to keep him happy. He knew that when he returned home at night and saw Bahram, his daughter and his wife smiling, his tiredness would disappear. But now he was disgusted with all three of them. It was the three of them who had brought him to such a pass.

  As if he had made a sudden decision, he went to his desk and sat down. He pulled out a drawer and took out a small pistol that he always carried when he was travelling. He checked it. The bullets were in their place. He looked inside the cold black barrel and moved the pistol slowly towards his temple, but then remembered Bahram’s bloody face. Finally he put it away in the pocket of his trousers.

  He got up again. In the hall he put on his overcoat and galoshes. He picked up the umbrella too and left the house. The alley was empty. Snowflakes were whirling slowly in the air. He set out without hesitation, although he didn’t know where he was going. He just wanted to flee, to get far away from his house, from these frightening events.

  He came out on a street which was cold, white and sad. Passing droshky wheels had formed furrows in the middle of the street. He was walking with long footsteps. An automobile passed him, and watery snow and mud from the street spattered on his head and face. He stood and looked at his clothes. They had been drenched in mud and it was as if they gave him consolation. As he went he came across a little boy selling matches. He called him. He bought a box of matches, but when he looked at the boy’s face he saw he had blue eyes, small lips and blond hair. He remembered Bahram, his body trembled, and he continued on his way. Suddenly he stopped before the window of a shop. He went forwards and pressed his forehead against the cold glass. His hat almost fell off. Toys were arranged behind the window. He rubbed his sleeve on the glass to clean off the steam but it was useless. A big doll with a red face and blue eyes stood in front of him smiling. He stared at it for a while. He thought of how happy Homa would be if this doll belonged to her. The store owner opened the door. He started out again, and passed two more alleys. On his path a poultry seller was sitting next to his basket. Inside the basket, there had been put three hens and a rooster whose legs were tied together. Their red legs trembled from the cold. Red drops of blood had fallen near the poultry seller on the snow. A little further on, sitting in front of a house, was a boy with ringworm. The boy’s arms stuck out of a torn shirt.