The Colonel Page 15

  “Are you awake?”

  “Yes, and I’m listening to you.”

  “Don’t imagine I had some sort of illness. No, I was fed up with being humiliated. I wanted recognition. I wanted a sniff of power, because there was nobody who knew how good I was, how deserving I was and how strong I was. I was going to prove this, at any price. So I went and knocked on the colonel’s front door and I told him that I wanted to serve my country, because I had had enough of all the flies buzzing round the filthy heads of my children and I was fed up with the classroom that stank of goodness knows what. But power… real power… that was what I wanted.

  “the colonel told me to show him how deserving I was. I said to him, ‘give me forty-eight hours, colonel,’ and he gave me till the end of the week. On the Saturday morning I produced full reports on all the six teachers who were doing commentaries on Nima Yushij and George Politzer45 and put them on his desk, to show him what sort of man I was. Six months later they were behind bars. That showed them. I wanted to get their attention, and I certainly did. I wanted to show them that they shouldn’t judge people by their lack of inches and excess of nose, and I did. Then I ordered a pair of shoes with built-up heels and decided to get a nose job. But the office wouldn’t let me have one. They said that if I had one, I wouldn’t look intimidating enough. Then I realised that everything in thisa Catholic school in Tehran, which may be why there is such a biblical flavour to Dowlatabadi’s writing.

  world has a place and that I had the most perfect nose for my chosen job. But this revolution has made me worry about it now, and I need to get it done. So, if I live long enough, the next time I come back here you won’t see this surplus lump of meat and cartilage squatting on my face, because I’m thinking of having more than half of it cut off.”

  “Your cigarette butt, Khezr Javid, let me take it.”

  “I’ve made myself pretty clear, haven’t I? Here, put it out.”

  “Yes, crystal clear. When you used to interrogate me, I always thought you were very straight, and even very courageous. But why did you turn those qualities of yours against the people? You must be afraid now, surely?”

  “You’re a bloody fool.” Getting no answer from Amir, he went on: “I’ve killed a lot of people.”

  He was silent for a while, staring obliquely into Amir’s face, waiting for his words to flow like toxin through his veins. He continued:

  “…But a coward cannot kill in cold blood. A coward usually talks about humanity and morals, to hide his fear behind such waffle. Such people are just chicken. But me… I’ve got courage. I’ve only been frightened once in my life, when I began to worry that those teachers’ fear might take root in me and suck me in. That’s when I went to see the colonel. So, I overcame my fear of the secret police by becoming one myself. You see, by surrendering to my fear before it got the better of me, I ended up beating it. After that I was never afraid again, only excited. When I knocked on the colonel’s door I knew what I was doing; I was giving myself up to the vocation of torture and death, so I had to be brave.

  “Are you asking me why I’m still carrying on? You’re so naïve, you’ve got no idea. What should I do, then: give myself up? Make a public confession and repent of my sins? Where, who to, and when exactly? And you expect me not to be brave? If I’m not brave, I’ll be killed all the sooner. If I’m afraid, I’ll die a hundred deaths before they kill me! Quite a few of the lads lost their nerve when they heard the first clarion call of the revolution and then cocked everything up for themselves for lack of balls. Chickenshit cowards! So I have to be brave, because I want to stay alive and I don’t want to get my throat cut. No, if you were me you wouldn’t want to get killed and you – as I well know – would definitely not want to be in my shoes! Do you hear all that racket outside?”

  Yes, he could hear it all right. Had Masoud come back home? Or had Mohammad-Taqi gone out into the street? Would he smell blood, lose his nerve and charge down into the basement and shoot Khezr?

  He could not help looking at Khezr’s holster resting on the left side of his stomach, and then he looked at the revolver. At that very moment, Khezr’s right eyelid twitched open and shut in his mask-like face, and his hand moved to grip the butt of his revolver. Amir decided to lie down, have a cigarette and stare up again at the bulging ceiling, so as not to have to look at the revolver.

  “If I’d passed the entrance exam for the officer training school, then maybe everything would have been different. But I failed. You had to be over five foot seven. It was fourteen years before I faced that selecting officer again, who meanwhile had become a brigadier-general. That was the day I went personally to staff headquarters to arrest one of his subalterns, a young second-lieutenant. I twisted his little finger and dragged him off to the general’s office, hurled him to the floor, looked the general straight in the eye and then kicked that second-lieutenant, who was over five foot seven, hard on the shins, and told the useless lanky bastard to get up!”

  They are banging on the basement door and Khezr and I can hear heavy footsteps coming down the stairs. We sit up together and I can feel his hand shaking on his pistol holster. I am sure it is only Mohammad-Taqi at the door and my heart is exploding in my chest. I glance at Khezr and he has gone white as chalk, as if he has just walked into a trap. His face has gone purple from all the arack. I can feel him struggling to control himself.

  “Brother!”

  I am getting up – now – and I am putting on my shoes and going out. Mohammad-Taqi is standing at the top of the stairs and, as I am pulling the door shut behind me, two or three volleys of shots shatter the silence in the alleyway outside, and I think I can see the colonel’s face through the window. I am stunned by Mohammad-Taqi’s confusion. He is about to say something, which I know Khezr is going to hear too:

  “Did you hear that?”

  I did hear it, but Mohammad-Taqi wanted a reply. What needed to be said had not been said. I take him by the elbow and steer him up the stairs to Parvaneh’s room. She has come in without my noticing it and is tearing up sheets for bandages. I see a cardboard box beside her bed full of medicines and… I sit Mohammad-Taqi down on a chair beside the bed and I can see that the vein across the middle of his forehead has swollen up and that he is looking down so that I can’t see his bloodshot eyes. I pace up back and forth for a bit and then stand in front of Mohammad-Taqi: “I beg you to…” but Taqi does not let me finish. He looks up, and this is the first time that he looks into my eyes like this and he says, “Masoud is out on the street, he is in trouble and your guest’s partners in crime are shooting people; can’t you hear them?”

  “Yes, I can. And I get your point!”

  “My point doesn’t matter. You need to know what the people on the street are saying.”

  Amir didn’t respond. He knew that was the only way to calm his brother down. And it worked; Mohammad-Taqi became more mollifying:

  “I’m sorry I shouted at you, brother. I was angry.”

  “I know, it’s all right. But please try and see my position and put up with it just for tonight.”

  But Mohammad-Taqi had already dashed out of the room in response to a frantic banging on the outside gate. Parvaneh appeared, clutching her makeshift bandage strips. She was so bound up in her work that she seemed not to notice Amir. Amir ran out onto the verandah to see if his young brother Kuchik Masoud had come home. Yet it was not little Masoud who ran into the yard, but Abdullah, Habib Kolahi’s son. Mohammad-Taqi shut the gate behind the young man and pressed him for news of Masoud: “Kuchik, Kuchik… do you know what’s happened to him?”

  “They went off into the forest.46 Kuchik and his lot followed them. I’m slightly…”

  “Have you been wounded?”

  He had been. Mohammad-Taqi led him past the pond towards the verandah steps. Meanwhile, Amir had disappeared into the basement, aware all the time of the colonel looking at him through the window. He seemed to be exultant:

  “My children… ah, my chi
ldren!”

  Khezr Javid was sitting on the bed, smoking. He had got some colour back into his cheeks. Amir was beginning to understand that he was not as brave as he made himself out to be. His courage was the courage of men who know they have got the backing of a system behind them. Amir sat down, without drawing attention to the upside down turn of the events happening outside. Khezr was too clever to be easily led up the garden path, but he had not faced up to the facts of the situation. He either couldn’t, or wouldn’t face it. Stubbing out his cigarette, he simply remarked:

  “I’ve put you in a bit of a spot, haven’t I?”

  “No, no, not at all.”

  “You know, If I had passed into officer training school, things might have turned out very differently, but I failed. I’ve no regrets. I’m not going to whine like a child the others won’t play with.”

  “You still think you have a future, then?”

  “I can see my future very clearly, rather more clearly than you can, with your crazy distorted view of life.”

  Amir heard Mohammad-Taqi and Abdullah Kolahi going back down the verandah steps and hurrying to the main gate. Their footsteps were fast and light; Amir guessed they must be wearing trainers. He could take no more of it and ran up the stairs, just in time to see them going out into the alleyway with the boxes of medicines and bandages that Parvaneh had made. She peered out of the half-open gate and watched them go, then closed it and headed back to her room. Before she came in, Amir slipped down to the basement, closed the door softly behind him and waited until he was sure that his sister had gone upstairs. Then he went and sat down again. Khezr Javid was still lying there, with his arm over his forehead and his eyes closed. Sarcasm had got the better of him:

  “So, the lads are out doing their bit for the movement, are they?” Then, as if talking to himself: “I suppose I shall just have to go out and sort something out with them in the morning.”

  Two shots, one after the other. Amir’s heart missed a beat, and he forgot what he was going to say to Khezr. Khezr did not press him but instead, as if a great calm had come over him, began to snore loudly. As one eye was half-open, Amir assumed that he had gone to sleep, and lit himself a cigarette.

  I know Khezr hadn’t want Mohammad-Taqi to open the door to him, but he had, and I could have done something about it. Khezr is deeply worried, I know, but he won’t face it. I know that Khezr is not unhappy that I went up and spoke to Mohammad-Taqi, and I’m damn sure Khezr is well aware of what Mohammad-Taqi thinks of him. I did my best not to let things get out of hand with Mohammad-Taqi and end in a fight, and they didn’t, but it was only about him letting Khezr stay just for one night, and not for ever. I tried to go straight back down to Khezr, which I did, and he didn’t say a word directly about what had happened, but… I’m still worried. I’m worried about my brothers, and I could see the same worry in the colonel’s eyes. Mohammad-Taqi has gone out, if only to take Abdullah home. Little Kuchik is still out there and, according to Abdullah, the trouble has spread beyond the city, out into the forest.

  I was in a cold sweat. My eyelids felt like dried bricks rubbing together. One cigarette, then another…

  Just as the morning call to prayer was called, I heard someone at the gate. I slipped out, dodging the watchful half-open eye of Khezr Javid, and went upstairs. Mohammad-Taqi was in the courtyard, squatting by the pond and washing his hands and face to freshen up after his long night. What on earth had he been getting up to all that time?

  “Where’s little Kuchik? Did he spend all night at the mosque? Why hasn’t he come home?

  “He’s just fine.”

  “I was worried.”

  “It came off all right this time.”

  And with that, Mohammad-Taqi got up and went up the verandah steps. Amir thought he might as well have a wash too. He sat down on the edge of the pool and sluiced the grime and tiredness of the night off his face. But he was still worried. He waited to see what Mohammad-Taqi was going to do. He felt in his bones that his brother was not going to stay in. And nor did he. A minute later, he came back out on the verandah with a bag slung over his shoulder. Amir wanted to ask him if he was going out by himself or with someone else, then realised there could be no more pointless a question. So he kept quiet, waiting for Mohammad-Taqi to come down the steps towards the gate. He could feel his heart beating, worrying that, in his huff, Mohammad-Taqi might leave without a word, without even saying goodbye. But Mohammad-Taqi reined in his bad temper. Stopping by the gate, he turned round and, as if not knowing why, stroked his index finger over his thin, golden moustache and looked at Amir:

  “Forgive me, but I am not setting foot in this house again as long as there’s a policeman in it. Parvaneh’s asleep. Say goodbye for me to her, and to Father and little Kuchik.”

  Amir had no answer to that, and Mohammad-Taqi did not expect one. As he went out, he braced his foot against the wall to do up the laces of one of his trainers, which must have been loose. Amir stood there until his brother had gone and then turned round to go back inside. As he did so, he caught sight of the colonel, who had been watching Mohammad-Taqi’s departure through the window.

  My son… my son… oh, my children…

  Amir could not meet his father’s gaze, and carried on down the steps to the cellar. Khezr opened the door in his face before he reached it. He was astonished to see that Khezr was all ready to go out and was just bending over to do his shoe up.

  “What about some breakfast?”

  Khezr did not answer. Amir could hardly ask him where he was off to at this hour of the morning so, like a lizard, he darted after him into the yard, as far as the gate. As he opened it, he remembered that Khezr had left his walking-stick behind.

  “Your stick, Doctor.”

  Khezr did not answer, but just muttered something about being back soon. Amir shut the gate after him, but it was a while before he was conscious of having done so. As the sound penetrated to his brain, he felt as if he had been shot. Everything went black…

  Why has he gone out straight after Mohammad-Taqi?

  Amir was overwhelmed by a dreadful sense of foreboding. He felt that he was losing his mind. This was worse than any of his nightmares.

  My children, oh my poor children…

  He had no idea how long he stayed there behind the gate, in the rain, endlessly turning over in his mind the last thing that Khezr had said to him: ‘I suppose I shall just have to go and sort something out with them in the morning.’ The words ‘sort something out’ hammered over and over again in his head, but he was unable – or maybe he just did not have the courage – to grasp the ominous meaning behind the words. Only now was it beginning to dawn on him how much he detested both himself and Khezr Javid. In his mind he saw only his own wretched, morbid self and the savage visage of Khezr Javid during those terrifying interrogations in the small hours of the night. Grilling after grilling, and that damned bloodstained knife…

  And he also felt ashamed at the sight of the colonel, who was still standing there by his sitting room window, just where he himself had been standing, watching the colonel crossing the courtyard having killed his mother and standing in the pouring rain with his bloodied sword, shouting: ‘I’ve killed her! I’ve killed her at last!’

  He dared not look up to meet the colonel’s eyes. Parvaneh’s canary was going berserk: its trilling had turned into one long scream. It just would not shut up. A thousand nightmares were wheeling inside Amir’s brain now, all hammering at him the same thing: that Mohammad-Taqi would not be coming home alive.

  And neither did he.

  “Amir… Amir… Amir… what are you up to? Are you going to come with me to your brother’s funeral or not…”

  “No, no! I am a brother to nobody and a son to no-one. I am nobody and I don’t know anybody, anybody at all!”

  Maybe the boy is right. It’s not easy; dying peacefully is no easy matter. Now I’m over sixty, I’ve realised people don’t know how lucky they are to have a qu
iet and peaceful death. One gets fed up with the headache of dying; the weariness of it sticks to one like a layer of grime. Just thinking about it infects one with a clammy feeling of lethargy. It even makes one feel ill. Even my most unsympathetic listeners know that I don’t normally bang on about death. It’s simply that here I am, drenched and rotting away under this never ending morbid rain. If I have a fault, it is just that I am trying to give a simple, unbiased account of dying. I feel that the last trace of my own human vigour is this rather inadequate account of dying. It is the only thing I can do; I’m not banging on about dying, not at all. What else can I do? Didn’t I want to spend the rest of my life sitting on my verandah in a beautiful sunset, with a bubbling samovar, the charcoal set alight by the wife sitting beside me – my companion through all the ups and downs of my life – as I work my way through a glass of vodka with a bowl of yogurt and cucumber, and I’m playing a gentle mahur on the setar on my knee, safe in the knowledge that my children are all doing well in good jobs in different parts of the country?

  Oh yes, I did want that, and I believed I deserved it. It was not an unreasonable expectation, after all. But now there is a thick layer of greasy brown dust on my setar, the dust of death. As for the other broken old bits and pieces lying around my house, I don’t even know what they are now. The paraffin in the heater has run out and my clothes never get dry in this damp; I’m like a stiff, rolled up in this dirty, clammy old sheet; I can’t be bothered to go and keep an eye on my daughter’s canary in its cage, and the voices I hear echoing from every brick and every door in every street just add to the sum total of my misery, and this deathly rain never stops and it never will stop.