Three Drops of Blood Page 4

  “Well, what does a child understand of marriage? She thinks it’s all about wearing a sequinned shawl and putting on new clothes and being patted and caressed by a husband instead of being in her father’s house where she would be beaten and cursed. But she doesn’t know that life isn’t just a bed of roses in her husband’s house either.

  “In any case, it took me so much trouble to tame her. She was afraid of me. She would cry. I pleaded with her. I would say, ‘For God’s sake, stop embarrassing me. All right, you sleep at one end of the room, I’ll sleep at the other’, because I felt sorry for her. I really restrained myself not to force her. Besides, I had had a lot of experience and I could wait. In any case, she listened to my advice.

  “The first night I told her a story. She fell asleep. The second night I started another story and left half of it for the next night.

  “The third night I didn’t say anything, until she finally said, ‘You told the story up to the part where King Jamshid went hunting. Why don’t you tell the rest?’ And I – I couldn’t contain myself for joy. I said, ‘Tonight I have a headache. I can’t talk loud. If you let me, I’ll come a little closer.’ In this manner I went closer, closer, till she gave in.”

  Shahbaz was amused. He wanted to say something, but when he saw Mirza Yadollah’s serious face and his eyes full of tears behind his glasses, he restrained himself.

  With peculiar emphasis Mirza Yadollah said, “That story goes back twelve years, twelve years! You don’t know what a woman she was, so nice, so kind. She took care of all my work. Oh, now when I remember… She wore a chador all the time. She washed the clothes with her little hands, hung them on the line, mended my shirts and socks, cooked the food, even helped my sister. How well she behaved, how kind she was! She made everybody love her. How clever she was! I taught her how to read and write. She was reading the Koran in two months. She memorized poetry. We were together for three years, the best years of my life. As luck would have it, at that time I became the lawyer for a pretty widow who was wealthy too: well I hankered for her, all right, until it occurred to me that I should marry her. I don’t know what scoundrel brought the news to my wife. Sir, may you never see such a day. This woman who was apparently so silly and dumb! I didn’t know she could be so jealous. No matter how hard I tried to pull the wool over her eyes with sweet nothings, could I be a match for her? In spite of the fact that the widow owed me part of my fees, I decided not to marry her, and our relationship came to an end. But you don’t know what problems my wife created for me for a month!

  “Maybe she had gone mad, maybe she’d been bewitched. She had completely changed. She put her hands on her hips and said things to me which one couldn’t even imagine. She said, ‘I hope you’re strangled with your own deceiving turban. I hope to see those spectacles on your corpse. From the very first day I realized you were not my type. May my father’s pimping soul burn for having given me to you. Once I opened my eyes I saw I was being embraced by a pimp. It’s three years that I’ve put up with your beggary. Was this my reward? May God spare us from having to deal with unprincipled people. I vow not to make a mistake like this again. You can’t force me. I don’t want to live with you any more. I don’t want my dowry back, just let me go. I swear I’ll go, I’ll go and take sanctuary. Right now. Right now.’

  “She said so much that I finally felt infuriated. Everything went dark before my eyes. As we were sitting at supper, I picked up the dishes and threw them into the yard. It was evening. We got up and went together to Sheik Mehdi and in his presence I divorced my wife three times.* He shook his head. The next day I was sorry, but what was the use, when being sorry wouldn’t help and my wife was forbidden to me? For several days I prowled around the streets and the bazaar like a madman. I was so distracted that if an acquaintance ran into me, I couldn’t return his greeting.

  “I was never happy again after that. I couldn’t forget her, even for a minute. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I couldn’t bear to be in the house: the walls cursed me. For two months I was ill in bed. All the time I was delirious I kept calling her name. When I began to recover, it was obvious that I could have had a hundred girls if I was interested. But she was something else. Finally I resolved that no matter what it took, I would marry her again. The time during which she couldn’t remarry came to an end. I tried everything, but I saw it wasn’t any use. I sold everything I had, even the junk: I got together eighteen tomans. There wasn’t any other choice except to find a legalizer, someone who would marry my wife and then divorce her, so that after the one hundred day waiting period, I could remarry her.

  “There was a clownish good-for-nothing grocer in our neigh­bourhood. Even if seven dogs licked his face, it wouldn’t get clean. He was the kind who would cut off someone’s head for an onion. I went and arranged it with him so that he would marry Robabeh, then divorce her, and I would pay all the expenses plus five tomans. And he accepted. One shouldn’t be fooled by people – that bastard, that good-for-nothing…”

  Shahbaz, pale, hid his face in his hands and said, “He was a grocer? What was his name? What kind of grocer was he? What neighbour­hood was he from? No… No… Nothing like that could happen.”

  But Mirza Yadollah was so involved in what he was saying, and the past events had become so vivid to him, that he didn’t stop.

  “That damn grocer married my wife. You don’t know how hard I took it. A woman who had been mine for three years. If someone had mentioned her name I would have torn him apart. Think of it: now, with my own help, she had to become the wife of that damned illiterate grocer. I said to myself, ‘Maybe this is the revenge of my temporary wives, who cried when I divorced them.’ Anyway, early the next morning I went to the grocer’s house. He kept me waiting for an hour, which seemed a century to me. When he came I said to him, ‘Stick to your bargain, divorce Robabeh, and you’ve made five tomans.’ I can still picture his devilish face. He laughed and said, ‘She’s my wife, I wouldn’t sell a hair on her head for a thousand tomans.’ My eyes were blasting lightning!”

  Shahbaz trembled and said, “No, something like that couldn’t happen. Tell me the truth. God!…”

  Mirza Yadollah said, “Now do you see that I was right? Now do you understand why I can’t stand grocers? When he said he wouldn’t give up a hair of her head for a thousand tomans, I understood that he wanted to get more money. But who had the time to bargain? I was hurting. I was horrified. I was so upset, and I was so sick and tired of life, that I didn’t answer him. I gave him a look which was worse than any curse. From there I went directly to a second-hand store. I sold my robe and my cloak and bought a buckram robe. I put on a felt hat, adjusted my shoes, and set out. Since then I’ve been wandering from one town to the next, from one village to another, like a bewildered vagabond. It’s been twelve years. I couldn’t stay in one place any longer. Sometimes I work as a storyteller, sometimes as a teacher. I write letters for people, I recite the Shahnameh in teahouses, I play the flute. I enjoy seeing the world and its people. I want to spend my life just like this. One gets a lot out of it. In any case, we’re old. We’re flogging a dead horse. We’ve got one foot in this world and one in the next. It’s too bad that we can’t take advantage of the experience we’ve gained. How well the poet said it:

  A wise and skilful man

  Should live not once, but twice:

  At first to gain experience,

  Then to follow his own advice.”

  At this point Mirza Yadollah grew tired. It was as if his jaws stopped working because he had thought and spoken more than usual. He reached out and took his pipe, staring at the ricer and listening to the faint muffled melody which came from beyond the mountain.

  Shahbaz raised his head from his hands. He sighed and said, “Every pair of actions requires a third to be complete!”

  Mirza Yadollah was confused and didn’t notice.

  Shahbaz said louder, “She’s sure to turn yet
another wealthy man into a destitute tramp.”

  Yadollah came to himself and said, “Who?”

  “That bitch Robabeh.”

  Mirza Yadollah’s eyes popped out. Shocked, he asked, “What do you mean?”

  Mashadi Shahbaz gave a forced laugh. “It’s true that life really changes man. His face becomes wrinkled, his hair turns white, his teeth fall out. His voice changes. You didn’t recognize me and I didn’t recognize you.”

  Mirza Yadollah asked, “What?”

  “Didn’t Robabeh have a pockmark on her face? Didn’t she blink a lot?”

  Irritated, Mirza Yadollah said, “Who told you?”

  Mashadi Shahbaz laughed, “Aren’t you Sheikh Yadollah, the son of the late Sheikh Rasol, who lived in the alley with the public bath? You passed my store every morning. I am the legalizer, the same one.”

  Miraz Yadollah looked closer and said, “You’re the one who has made this my life for the past twelve years? You are Shahbaz the grocer? There was a time when we would have fought it out if I had found you in these mountains. What a pity that time has tied the hands of both of us.” Then he babbled to himself, “Very good, Robabeh, you’ve taken my revenge for me. He is wandering too, just like me.” Once again he fell silent, his lips set in a painful smile.

  The person sleeping on the bench opposite them rolled, sat up, yawned, and rubbed his eyes.

  Mashadi Shahbaz and Mirza Yadollah glanced stealthily at each other, afraid to let their eyes meet. Two miserable enemies, with their struggles in love behind them. Now they should be thinking about death.

  After a short silence, Shahbaz turned towards the coffeehouse patron and said, “Dash Akbar, bring us two cups of tea.”

  Whirlpool

  (from Three Drops of Blood)

  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 school days 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 blood stains 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 different. 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?