(The magazine, which has received a patriotic welcome beyond the ordinary, presents to its readers in this issue a long, illustrated story by our brother Ömer Seyfettin Bey, who is well known for his national-patriotic stories and nationalist reflections, depicting a most tragic scene from the dark fate of unfortunate Rumelia. We are confident it will be read with curiosity, excitement, and finally with tears.)
The Fleet
To the Unfortunate Rumelian Muslims
The army, defeated at the border, had been passing through Serez for two days. The weather was cool and beautiful. A warm autumn sun illuminated the fields and the wide roads that still bore fresh and timid traces. Those who came looked nothing like those who left. Nearly all of them had long beards, dirty and red faces, and tattered clothes. They walked slowly, hunched over under their mud-covered rifles on their shoulders, exhausted and wretched, as if they would collapse if they stopped. This unexpectedly crushing defeat had left the city’s Christians bewildered with joy. Men gathered at street corners; women leaned from windows, watching the passing clusters with guilty smiles, enjoying what seemed like a free and very entertaining cinematograph. The Greek children had found the perfect opportunity to manifest the Turkish hatred that had been poured into their souls since the cradle.
Putting their hands to their noses like trumpets, they paraded between the clusters, amusing themselves, and once they moved a bit away from them, they would turn their backs and shout “Kopsi ha… Keranadis Türkos, oksa, oksa, oksa…”
After the army’s withdrawal was complete, Bulgarians with Mannlichers, appearing from who knows where, began to wander through the Turkish neighborhoods. The non-Greek and non-Bulgarian part of the city slept in deep silence. All curtains were drawn. Anxious shadows played in the latticed windows, and pale-faced men listened all day and all night behind their iron-bolted doors, as if listening to the pounding of their hearts.
This oppressive, distressing silence did not last long. The next day, on the morning of the twenty-fourth of October, the victorious Bulgarian army entered the city with music, marching through the Christian greeters who were waiting with sweets, fried meats, sparkling wines, mandolins, guitars, and flags. They went straight to fill the government buildings and barracks. At the same time, many [Issue: 53/5, p. 71] komitadjis swarmed into the streets like ants. The victors couldn’t stay in one place from their joy; they were running here and there as if they had invisible wings on their feet.
It was the duty of Major Radko Balkaneski, appointed as the central commander before even entering further, to manage the looting of the city and the massacre of the population in an orderly and systematic manner.
He was a very well-educated and refined young man. He had completed his secondary education at the Galatasaray Imperial School in Istanbul, graduated from the Sofia Military Academy with a staff officer rank in 1900, and had been transferred to the reserves a few years later. He lived on the seemingly endless money of his father, who was a noble and wealthy farmer, spending part of his life in wild entertainments and part in national affairs—namely, with the Macedonian organization and bomb-making. He was a bachelor. He hadn’t found time to marry. Because he spent all the summers of his life in Macedonia, inspecting the organization and executing the pending and sacred decisions given by the committee court that had somehow not been carried out. Being very wealthy, money didn’t matter much to him. His entire soul, his entire being was concentrated in his ideal, accumulated in his ideal: The Great Bulgarian Empire… He had a body as beautiful and proportionate as a bronze statue dressed in clothes. He was tall, only a bit too fat. He always kept his left arm on his hip when walking and standing. He spoke little, and under his thick, black eyebrows, he always fixed his large, bright, steady, and black eyes that never blinked straight ahead, as if constantly studying an imaginary map painted in green Bulgarian color from the Danube to Corinth, from the Bosphorus to Durrës.
Upon entering the central command office of the Turks opposite the government building, he took off his hat. He threw back his thick, stiff hair with his hand. He gave the order to his aide: “Whatever komitadji leaders there are, all of them here in five minutes…” The aide rushed out. Soon, cavalrymen began galloping through all the streets of the city. The soldiers of the regular and volunteer battalions had not yet dispersed. Radko didn’t want to waste the five minutes. He hadn’t eaten anything since morning. He called his servant. He hurriedly gulped down the roasted meat, wine, and large, juicy apples the servant brought. Then he settled into the soft and wide armchair of the Turkish commander, which hadn’t yet gathered dust. He lit his cigarette. This was a room with thick fez-colored curtains, carpeted and ornate. It resembled the chamber of a widowed and elderly woman rather than a military post. On the walls, there was not a single military chart, program, or emblem. On top of a glass-fronted walnut cabinet in the corner, a large hookah stood quiet and still, as if it hadn’t fled with its master but had frozen in place from fear. A tabby cat, smelling the meat and undoubtedly hungry for two or three days, was looking from the door, fixing its eyes on Radko’s eyes and meowing with an innocent and emotionless sound. Radko couldn’t stay in this soft armchair that brought sleep to a person. He stood up, went and leaned on the edge of the open window. Looking at the soldiers swarming below, he went over his plan in his mind. The Turks in Serez were very wealthy. Now those who couldn’t escape would be gathered, first their money in their safes and banks would be taken through torture, then like ransom, all their properties would be transferred to Bulgarian schools, and finally, after they were all baptized and made Christian, they would be killed. This was a half-hour job. But a difficult thing remained. To determine which was the most beautiful Turkish girl in the city… They had brought him nine girls aged fourteen or fifteen selected from Cuma and Osenova. He had them undressed in the tent, looked at their bodies, and didn’t like them. Two of them were somewhat beautiful but very thin and malarial. Seven were practically peasants. Their arms, legs, and waists were thick. They were crying at the top of their lungs, trying to cover their faces with their hands roughened from work. Angered by their noise and sobbing, he had given them all to the battalion soldiers. They divided them among themselves, one falling to each squad. They stripped them completely naked, made them drink wine, made them dance the hora, and had fun until morning… In the morning, passing by on his horse, Radko had seen the bayoneted corpses of these girls in the ditch by the roadside… The girl worthy of him was here, in Serez. He would select three of the most beautiful, not kill them until the end of the campaign, and have his pleasure. The vision of these three beautiful Turkish girls wouldn’t leave his mind, and the pleasure he would find in their arms couldn’t be compared to the dubious delights of Parisian actresses or Sofia chanteuses that smelled of whale bone, rubber, and heliotrope. The fragrances of these precious flowers, growing secretly within an eternal and invisible mystery, must be different, different, very different…
From the direction of the mosque, he saw the komitadji leaders coming, talking with a few soldiers. These leaders were wild-looking fellows with very long hair, long beards, armed from head to toe. They all knew “Balkaneski” and bore toward him a love mixed with fear, a respect mixed with terror. Because it was impossible for a Macedonian going to Sofia not to see him. This terrible inspector of the Macedonian committee did not take pleasure in cutting people. He would put the person he would kill, the person he would make talk, alive into an oven and burn them before his eyes. Even the most hardened komitadji leaders who had killed more than a thousand men felt their hearts shudder before Balkaneski’s infernal oven and trembled at his cold-bloodedness.
He heard the komitadjis coming up the stairs talking. He left the window. He leaned against the green cloth-covered table in front of the armchair and waited. This was his official posture. When there was a knock on the door, he said “Enter.” There were twelve leaders. Smiling, he shook all their hands. He caressed the shoulder of the oldest, white-bearded Dimcho, this old killer who had not come down from the mountain for a full half-century, and seated him beside him. They all gathered around the table, sitting on the chairs brought by the servant soldier from the corridor. Their rifles were in their laps. After the soldier went out and closed the door, Radko stood up. He placed his hand on the table.
“Do you know why I called you, brothers?” he said. “To discuss and decide our important matters…”
And without needing any preamble, he began to explain the situation and position with the eloquence peculiar to free and great men. Serez was an important place. Especially the consuls… The operations to be carried out must not be visible to the eyes of these treacherous and immoral Europeans. Now all the wealthy would immediately be gathered in one building. [Issue: 54/6, p. 86]
The city’s largest oven would be prepared, the chairs needed for the high court, the large table, red cloth, Bible, rope, olive oil, pliers, razor, skewer, and such things would be taken there, and they would get to work without wasting time. After all the money was taken from the wealthy, general looting would be permitted, the city’s Turkish girls would be distributed to the soldiers, and to prevent fighting and competition among the soldiers, the neighborhoods would be divided into company districts. Each company would keep the girls in their district for a week in turn, and patrols to be organized by the committees would ensure that no one misbehaved during this time.
Staying with the girls all night, drinking raki and wine was forbidden. A soldier could not stay in a girl’s room for more than an hour; after finishing his business, he would leave for the soldier waiting his turn. Girls under eight years old would not be touched; the ugly and weak ones among them would be killed. The beautiful and strong ones would be gathered, baptized, and sent to Bulgaria. Only the very old would be left alive if they became Christian. All males from one to sixty years old, and all women and girls from eight to forty-five years old would be quietly cut down so their corpses wouldn’t remain in the square, and through forced laborers sent out from the central battalion at night, under the supervision of two komitadji leaders, they would be buried in ditches outside the city. White-bearded Dimcho took out from his trouser pocket the silver snuffbox he had kept as a keepsake, taken from the sash of a Turkish bey he had ambushed thirty years ago.
As he rolled his thick cigarette, he interrupted Balkaneski’s speech.
“Forgive me, gospodin,” he said. “What do we want from small children and women? We fought. We took these places. We should spare their lives. They didn’t shoot at us. Besides, they can’t stay here anymore anyway, they’ll all become refugees, they’ll be gone tomorrow…”
The central commander smiled. He despised old age, that is, weakness. As people aged, as they approached death, they disliked death, which was nothing but a natural transformation phenomenon, and feared death, which necessarily caused another life with its occurrence. This old Dimcho too was listening to his nerves worn down by the years; to his diseased, dried-blooded, weakened heart. Whereas if he were young… He knew his youth stories. In the old Russo-Turkish war, he had surrounded the Turks withdrawing from Samakov and with this curved, short sword he still carried at his waist, had chopped and torn to pieces men, women, along with their oxen, horses, and carts until not one remained. He leaned back. He fixed his steady eyes on Dimcho. He placed his arms crosswise on his broad, protruding chest.
Smiling, he said, “You’ve become senile, Captain Dimcho. Why did you cut down the Samakov refugees in ninety-three? For whatever reason you cut them then, you’ll cut them today for the same reason. Mercy, like lace, earrings, dresses, bracelets, like diamonds, suits women. Mercy looks very ugly on a real man. It degrades him. We are working for Great Bulgaria. No enemy must remain within Great Bulgaria. Men over sixty years old, women over forty-five cannot have children. They resemble fields covered with sand. We will make Christians of such people who will not raise enemies for Great Bulgaria and leave them. We will send girls up to eight years old to Bulgaria and deliver them to villages and priests. They will all become Bulgarian. Think about it. We will not cut down children. We will cut down tomorrow’s great men. A young woman can bring forth fifteen enemies from her womb. To kill a young woman or a girl means to kill fifteen enemies at once. If the Turks had listened to their old men’s words when they took these places and cut us all down, would there be a Bulgaria today? Would we be able to drive them before us like this? They were wrong. When the opportunity was in their hands, they did not cut down our women and children.
The Bulgarians who were not cut down multiplied pair by pair, grew stronger. They rose up from under their merciful, that is, weak rulers. And now they have mounted on top of them.”
The other komitadji leaders were not ignorant like Captain Dimcho. They all read newspapers eagerly, were knowledgeable about political currents, enlightened heroes who truly felt their ideal. In the ammunition pouches around their necks were the latest books Europe had published about Bulgaria. In fact, four of them had graduated from the University’s Law and Natural Sciences departments. They had completed their education in Lausanne. Radko [87] Balkaneski turned to them. He leaned his arms on the table. The words came from his mouth like an invisible, unquenchable flame, passing through the eyes, ears, and nostrils of the komitadjis listening in serious silence, entering the darkest depths of their hearts and souls, sparking poisonous sparks there.
“Pay attention, brothers, pay attention,” he continued, “do not do anything contrary to the high council’s decision! Massacre is a social medicine. Social bodies are subject to the same laws as organic bodies. When treating a patient, allowing bad microbes to remain in the organism means wanting them to reproduce again and kill the patient. When a country is taken, allowing a foreign element to remain is nothing but wanting these defeated people to reproduce armed with the very natural hatred and resentment they will harbor toward their conquerors, to rise up one day when the homeland is at its weakest moment and take revenge. We will not make this mistake.
We will not believe in empty, meaningless, or rather harmful lies like civilization, humanity, mercy. We will act not with our hearts and nerves, but with our brains and minds. Look at Spain. See how comfortably they live today because when they saved their homeland, they left no foreign element within. No Arab danger threatens them, nor will it. Because they did not leave even a single Arab in Spain, even as a specimen, even for museums.
Then look at the Turks. The stupidity of these fellows is to such a degree that not only do they not accept the principles of ethnography, but they also don’t believe that something like ‘nationalism, nationality’ exists in the world. They even vehemently deny their own nationalists. Their history is full of curses against their greatest emperors like Genghis and Hulagu. Due to this lack of nationality, the Turks, who remained without literature, art, civilization, strength, family, tradition, naturally could not comprehend even the simplest truths. Somehow they did not cleanse the peoples in the places they seized. They did not swallow them. They did not make them Turkish. They even gave them the broadest freedoms under the name ‘reaya.’ Do you know what this word reaya that they gave to Christians means? It means ‘people to be respected.’ The state of these foolish Turks, who are beginning to see the punishment for the follies they committed centuries ago, is a lesson for us. We will benefit from these lessons that they will not understand from now on either. Even Mithat Pasha, supposedly one of the Turks’ greatest men, did not know that something called ‘nationalism, nationality’ existed. He could not comprehend the national passion, the national meaning in the first Bulgarian uprisings, attributing this noble movement to things like economic difficulties, trying to develop our lands with Anatolia’s money, to open roads, schools, churches. Whereas even our smallest village priest is knowledgeable about ethnographic truth.
Captain Dimcho, not really understanding these words, was stroking his white beard with the thick, hunched fingers of his round hand that resembled a shelled turtle; the others were standing serious and calm like young, vigorous Apostles listening to a new Messiah born from the love affair of the god of science and truth with intellect. Radko Balkaneski, yes, this new Messiah was reciting by heart a new gospel of truth without blinking his large, bright eyes. He was telling his Apostles the religion of “Force.” There was no right. Everything was force. Those who could not crush would be crushed, those who could not kill would die. Nature’s unchanging, never secretive supreme law was the enemy of the weak. Wasn’t the entire universe nothing but a struggle? Life came from death. Strength was born from the weaknesses that were swallowed. One must not be deceived by the lies of Europeans, by empty theories, by socialist dreams. The idea of “humanity” was the world’s biggest, most inappropriate, oldest, most disgraceful
nonsense. Before Christianity, it had entered some brains like a plague and caused the destruction of many nations, many societies. Today’s Europeans were one thing when talking, another when doing. What did the greatest European, the greatest German, Prince Bismarck¹ do during war? Didn’t he set fire to houses filled with French peasants, burning them all alive, listening to their screams like the most delightful concert, then smoking his pipe while laughing as he smelled the fiery smoke scattered around, amusing himself by saying “These French peasants smell like roasted onions!”? Didn’t he get angry with generals on the pretext that they didn’t fire cannons at castles that raised white flags? Didn’t he have surrendered French soldiers killed by starvation? Didn’t he have them drowned in waters? Bismarck, who insulted his enemies by saying “Scratch a Frenchman a little and you’ll find a Turk underneath,” this great man who was truly a genius, believed only in force both in peacetime and wartime. There were no morbid, harmful conditions like mercy and humanity in his brain. He would order that no mercy be given to regular French soldiers, and that as much evil as possible be done to the civilian population. He would be annoyed because he could not see the great strength of his great soul identically in his entire nation, saying “Ah, these Germans of ours! They kill the French, but they don’t kill with appetite, with desire!”
The French were in no way inferior to the Germans. They would shave the heads of Arabs they captured in Africa, bury them in sand up to their throats, leave them under the sun, under the rays of the noon sun, and pour water on them from time to time so they wouldn’t die quickly. The massacres committed by the English were countless. This serious, intelligent nation looked at nothing of the defeated who fell under their knife—neither their nobility, nor their beauty, nor their old age, nor their childhood. Wasn’t it thanks to this that they now ruled the world, the entire world? [Issue: 55/7, p. 110]
Yes, they… Didn’t they cut down the tiny Prince Modellyas of Kandy, whose beauty became legendary, like cutting quails, inside the high and historic temple in that old and mournful capital of Ceylone? Then there’s the China expedition. German, French, English, and Russian divisions all went there. What did they do? So much so that officially a horde of Jews were coming behind the army, buying the things these Europeans plundered. The civilized Europeans were emptying houses, destroying temples, breaking bronze idols that had seen long and uneventful centuries pass in their places for thousands upon thousands of years, sleeping peacefully, and selling them to the Jews following behind. During this expedition, Europe was filled with silk fabrics. They left nothing behind wherever they went regarding gold and silver. Not a single boy or girl remained in Peking and its vicinity. Although it was not a war of invasion, the harmless population who did not defend themselves at all were being bayoneted; when soldiers got tired of bayoneting and complained, orders were given for this population, who had never held a weapon in their lives and were as cowardly as a blind chicken, to be thrown into rivers and drowned. All soldiers participating in this expedition were given a hundred francs from the value of plundered goods. Then the Italians… No need to go far. Just the other day, hadn’t they cleaned out the Tripoli oasis in just a few hours?
Radko prolonged his speech. He spoke and spoke. In an undeniable manner, with the most logical and material evidence, with historical and scientific examples, he explained the emptiness and evil of the idea of humanity, what a [111] terrible and dreadful danger it was for a society. He didn’t like Europeans at all, he hated them, and he would say “Ah, these people…” “They can’t stand anyone but themselves becoming strong.” For that reason, one had to be wary of consuls. Guards in disguised clothing, dressed in Turkish clothes, would be posted at the consulates, and they would be kept under surveillance at all times. Because they would certainly try to cause mischief. Time was passing. It had been two hours since they entered Serez. Work hadn’t even started yet.
“Come on, brothers,” he said, “let’s be quick. Take out your notebooks. Let’s write today’s program. Order and unity both make our work easier and don’t tire us.”
Except for Captain Dimcho, they all took out a pencil and a notebook from their pouches. Radko would first write an item in his own notebook, then read it aloud and have them write it:
- The two largest ovens will be lit and prepared within half an hour. Captain Dimcho is assigned to this. The things needed for the high court will be found there.
- The wealthiest will be gathered in a separate building within half an hour. A squad from the central battalion will guard this building.
- All old carpets, antique prayer rugs, and valuable plaques in the mosques belong to our great and brave Tsar, Ferdinand. All will be brought to the central command to be sent to Sofia by the first means of transport.
- The minaret of Sultan Mosque, the most famous and large mosque in the city, will be demolished as quickly as possible and a sign saying “Prince Boris Church” will be hung on its door. The crescent on the dome will be taken down and replaced with the Bulgarian coat of arms. Gazi Evrenos Mosque will have rings nailed to it and will become a stable for army mules. Halil Pasha Mosque will become a depot for pork bacon. Katakoz, Süleyman Efendi, and Tarhuncu Muhittin mosques, having no use, will be demolished from their very foundations. Tomorrow morning prayer will be performed by priests in this new “Prince Boris Church.”
- Each gang will be given two platoons of soldiers as assistants and one cavalry courier each.
- Before the above items are executed, seventy to eighty women from Turkish neighborhoods will be quickly gathered for interrogation and brought to the first oven that is lit.
Radko stood up. “Come on, brothers, let’s be quick, time is money,” he said. The komitadjis also stood up. Standing, Radko gave his order for the platoons and cavalrymen to be mixed with the gangs to his aide, a young man with a face as black as a gypsy whom he had summoned.
As Dimcho was leaving, he turned around and smiled, “Excuse me, gospodin Balkaneski, what are you going to ask the women? We know who the rich people are. We will gather them all. They can’t hide their money from us.”
Radko answered angrily: “You’ve become senile. You step aside and take care of yourself. They’re not gathering women for money investigation. There are generals, colonels, commanders in the army. They need girls tomorrow night, they need women, they need entertainment. Should the soldiers, corporals, sergeants, officers have their fun while they pine away like Catholic priests? The most beautiful girls of the city will be set aside for them. Hey, how will we know which are the most beautiful girls in the city? We’ll ask the women coming from each neighborhood. We’ll separate and arrange accordingly. Of course, order in everything, rank and respect in everything.”
Captain Dimcho didn’t say a word. He saluted. He went out the door. And slowly headed to his duty station, to have the oven lit.
When Radko was alone, he called his aide again. He had him write many orders. He sent word to his deputy. He assigned him to secure the soldiers and barracks. Then he put on his hat. Dragging his sword, he put his left hand on his hip. He went outside. He went down the stairs. He didn’t see the salutes given by the soldiers in the corridor. He passed through the street. He entered the government building. His aide was always following behind him like a muddy and dusty shadow. He went to the commander. Rayef, the new governor of Serez, as famous as himself, and Zangok, one of the gang leaders who was the new gendarmerie commander, and the police chief Lapof were also there. They all decided on the massacre program together. [Issue: 57/9, p. 142]
On the twenty-eighth of October, Governor Rayef would have a notice posted on the streets and have a town crier called out, saying “Muslims from eighteen to forty-five years of age should apply to the government at half past ten Turkish time in the evening to register their names. Those who do not register will be punished.” The population, not suspecting the massacre, would gather in the government courtyard and on the street. When the number of those gathered exceeded nine or ten thousand, a gun would be fired and immediately a rumor would be spread that “Turks shot a Bulgarian officer.” After that, soldiers, gendarmes, and policemen who knew the password would line up and shoot everyone in the garden, surround those on the street from the corners and destroy them with swords and knives. Because gathering them one by one and secretly cutting them so the consuls wouldn’t see—though appropriate—was not a job that could be accomplished. After Radko consolidated all his decisions with his comrades, he didn’t stop, and as he left there and returned to the central command office, a tall, large cavalry soldier stood before him at the door. His hand on his hat, he said, “Fifty women have been brought to the oven lit by Captain Dimcho,” he said, “I’ve been waiting for you for ten minutes, commander…”
Radko turned to his aide who was always following behind him and asked for his horse. The animals were already standing at the corner of the command building, eating barley poured in front of them. He jumped on the horse brought before him with the agility of an acrobat and said to the cavalry soldier, “Come on, go ahead… To the oven… Full gallop…”
438 ALL STORIES
They galloped past Government Street, past the Education Café. The bandits and soldiers on the road were stopping and saluting Mayor Balkaneski, whom they knew very well. They emerged from the covered bazaar. They turned left from the street where some shops were open. The cavalry soldier stopped his horse in front of a large gate. He immediately dismounted.
His hand always on his hat, “Here it is, commander…” he said. From inside came a mournful murmur mixed with thin moans. Radko jumped from his horse and entered through the gate. This oven did not resemble market ovens at all. It was spacious. Its high ceiling was painted yellow. Its large and high furnace was at the very end. Abundant light was pouring in from the shutters opened at the top and filling everywhere. The Turkish women had gathered in the corner like a colorful silk fabric… They were separating the old ones. Eleven came out who were over forty years old.
They piled these old women behind the door. Among those who remained were eighteen-year-old girls, young and fresh mothers giving milk to their babies in swaddling. Radko, smiling at them, said again and slowly, “You see, ladies, it’s hot inside. I’m going to ask you some things. Don’t sweat. Come on, all of you, take off your clothes. Undress. Throw away your dresses, shirts, underwear, stockings. Stay completely naked. As if you’re entering a bathhouse… As if you’re entering your husband’s embrace… Only your hair should remain on you… Completely naked, stark naked. Come on, come on…”
These women, who had never shown their faces to anyone other than their husbands, fathers, and brothers in their lives, could not obey this terrible command. The komitadjis were hitting them with rifle butts, tearing their sheets and cloaks, but they couldn’t undress even one. Radko became annoyed at this inappropriate resistance. He got angry. His protruding and red [143] cheeks began to tremble. Why were they getting tired? What need was there to get tired? Since
the oven was burning. Once one of them was burned, the others would be frightened and would never resist.
“Stop, don’t struggle in vain, time is passing,” he said. And when the komitadjis turned toward him, he added: “Pull out one of those who won’t agree to undress, bring her here.”
Two large komitadjis, like bandits, dragged a woman they grabbed from the cluster. They brought her before Radko. This was a woman with a fair complexion, brown hair, and young. She could be estimated to be only twenty, twenty-five years old. Under her torn cloak, European-style clothes made of lead-gray wool were visible, and she was holding a swaddled baby in her arms. Radko roared like lightning: “Don’t cause trouble, woman…”
The komitadjis pulled back. The woman left alone in front of the table was trembling, sobbing and squeezing her baby in her arms, and the squeezed and frightened child was crying and screaming at the top of its lungs. The noise of this child enraged Radko completely. He stood up. Going before the woman, he asked: “Tell me, will you undress?”
The woman fell to the ground. She was holding his feet to kiss them, rubbing her tearful face, her disheveled hair on his unpainted and dusty boots. The child was screaming more violently, drowning the inside of the oven in noise. Radko couldn’t stand it. With a sudden movement, he bent down. He tore this child that wouldn’t stop from its mother’s arms. He turned toward the oven. The woman, whose eyes were spinning, was clinging to Radko’s waist, begging “Fear God, fear God…”
Radko brought down a terrible punch on this delicate woman’s head. He knocked her to the ground and threw the still-crying child into the oven, saying “Let God fear me…” Suddenly the child’s voice ceased. But all the women inside the oven began to cry and scream at once. The mother who saw her child disappear in flames leaped at Radko’s throat with the speed of a wounded female tiger. With her weak fingers, she tore his collar. The komitadjis were hitting the women’s heads and eyes to silence them, painting them all blood red. Radko bent this delicate woman who was clinging to his throat, trying to strangle him, with his strong arms. He took her down. He called three of the komitadjis by their names. They tore the clothes, shirts, and underwear of the woman they had laid on the ground.
They left her stark naked. And tied her hands behind her back.
Then Radko turned to the women who still hadn’t undressed and shouted with a poisonous voice, “Pay attention, women! Don’t trouble us in vain. Those who don’t obey will be executed. Now watch how we will roast this wench who won’t undress and who resists. Take heed. Then all of you will be like this…”
The horror of this voice that made hair stand on end froze the women, even the komitadjis, like ice. Captain Dimcho wasn’t looking at the furnace, he was turning his face toward the door. Radko took a razor from the table. Just as chestnuts to be roasted are split so they won’t burst, he would split the body of the person he would burn in the oven. An unsplit person wouldn’t burn quickly. Whereas if split, it would catch fire quickly with a sweet sizzle, turning to ash while releasing a blue and ashen vapor. This blue and ashen vapor… Radko loved its smell more than its sight. And this smell changed according to the nationality of the person being burned. Radko had observed and experienced this very carefully. In fact, now if he smelled a person being burned from afar, he could tell without error what nationality they were. Bulgarian peasants gave off the smell of roasted garlic, Serbs of burnt potatoes, Greeks of fried fish and wine. He hadn’t yet burned a German, an Englishman, or a Frenchman. He didn’t know their smell. But Turks… These strongest and most bloodthirsty men of the Balkans emitted a sharp milk, a butter smell.
He said to the komitadjis who had stripped and tied the condemned, “Turn her back, don’t let her move, hold her tight.”
The woman with tied hands and naked, with closed eyes, was moaning. She had lost consciousness. When her back was turned, Radko looked at this living fruit he would split with the razor in his hand. The back covered with thick and disheveled hair looked small and disproportionate on her broad hips. Her hairless and spotless thighs were white and shiny. The flames of the furnace were reflecting on their surfaces, making pink and fleeting shadows tremble. Radko struck the razor on these pink reflections. He made two large crosses. The crosses starting from the waist went down to above the calves. The woman screamed with the pain of the sharp and terrible razor that entered her flesh, severed her nerves [144], touched her bones. She wanted to struggle. But her killers were holding her tight. The gushing blood was falling to the ground, Radko was pulling back so his clothes wouldn’t get dirty.
“Turn her, turn her, turn her belly,” he said. The condemned, whose eyes were bulging, was giving her last remaining strength to her hoarse voice, writhing saying “God, God, God…”
Radko was answering his victim, laughing, “I am God, I am God…” He passed the bloody razor horizontally over the swollen and milk-filled breasts. Then with an even quicker movement, he inserted this sharp and red tool into the poor woman’s womb. And pulled it upward so rapidly that from her split belly, the stomach and intestines burst out like red and thick balls of yarn. Radko backed up two steps, wiping the blood on his hands with a handkerchief he took from his pocket, shouting: “Come on, quick, inside.”
Two komitadjis pushed the condemned into the oven, holding her by her arms and thighs. A pink vapor, a blue and ashen smoke rose from the living pile of flesh surrounded by flames like thousands of red and invisible dragon tongues. A terrible and agonizing sizzle began. Radko sat in his chair, fixing his eyes on the furnace. The ashen smoke wasn’t showing the body. And that smell… That milk and oil smell, Radko was now sensing, inhaling deeply as if drinking a very sweet and dreamy milky coffee.
The sizzle continued, sometimes decreasing, sometimes intensifying suddenly as if it had caught fire again. [Issue: 58/10, p. 151]
The women who didn’t see this hellish scene by closing their eyes couldn’t close their ears to not hear the sizzle, couldn’t close their noses to not smell the nauseating odor. They had all lost their minds, their tongues, they had all lost their voices. Radko ordered them to undress again. This time no one could resist. All these poor women, with mechanical hesitations, slowly undressed. They remained stark naked. Radko, satisfied and relieved by this absolute obedience, leaned on his table. He took out a paper from his pocket. He drew three parallel lines on this paper. In the first column he wrote “white,” in the second “brown,” in the third “dark.” He would always say “numbers don’t lie,” and like all Bulgarians, like all civilized and serious men, he believed that the greatest truth could only be found in proportion and statistics.
The women, with instinctive and unconscious persistence making their hands cover their private parts, were being brought before him in groups of ten and lined up side by side. First he would have them all raise their arms up, spread their legs right and left. Then to each one, separately, he would ask the names of the three most beautiful girls in the city. He would learn their neighborhoods, their house numbers, who their fathers were. This Pompeian investigation lasted more than an hour. Those who gave their statements and had nothing left to say were going to the large warehouse behind the oven, into the laps of drunk komitadjis. The komitadjis were getting confused in this flood of breasts, bellies, legs, calves, and hair, not knowing what to do, suffering from a terrible “sadism” delirium and inventing the most vile, unthinkable fantasies. The most terrible of these fantasies was what they called the “living pit.” First they would lay a fat woman on the ground, then spread another beautiful woman they liked on top of her, on her back and crosswise. This [152] woman too they would have held by her hands and feet by other women. Then the komitadji whose turn it was would approach, stab a small dagger right in the middle of the naked and protruding belly, just below the navel, and immediately pull it out. Then he would satisfy his lust over this small hole spurting dark red blood, on the belly of the poor thrashing, screaming woman, among her bloody intestines, extinguishing the most vile, most filthy, most ugly fires of his bestiality.
And the women whose bellies were pierced wouldn’t live at all, they would die moaning and writhing within an hour or two.
Radko carefully examined the chart on which he had written the names of the most beautiful girls. In the white column, the most repeated name was “Lale Hanım, daughter of Hacı Hasan Bey.” In the brown column “Naciye Hanım, daughter of Teacher Ahmet Efendi,” in the dark column “İclal Hanım, daughter of Kadri Ağa”… Which one would he choose? First of all, he didn’t want dark. Because almost all Bulgarian girls were dark. He was also tired of brown. Almost all the chanteuses filling Sofia were brown. White… The white one… he thought. The most beautiful must be this Lale in the white column. Indeed, her name was repeated the most. One woman had even said “World beauty Lale Hanım.” Who knows what kind of girl this was? Suddenly in his imagination a harem chamber told in fairy tales came alive, and there, between large and silk curtains, he saw a white and naked girl lying on a soft divan. This exquisite Turkish girl, who had grown up almost like a fairy in shadows and silks, far from every foreign and alien eye, would be his in an hour. He pulled his arms from the table. He put his hands in his trouser pockets. He grinned. His legs, chest, under his armpits, everywhere was itching. He stood like that for a moment. He listened to these sweet and intense itches. The dream of happiness an hour later had seemingly spurted all the blood in his veins, turned it upside down. With his left hand that he took from his pocket, he scratched his nose, then his hair, his neck… And suddenly he turned to Dimcho at the base of the furnace, smoking his endless pipe.
“Captain, come on, get up, very quickly, you will bring Hacı Hasan Bey to me. I’m going to headquarters. Within ten minutes… You will leave two guards at his house door. No one will go out. Come on, very quickly…”
He stood up swiftly. He seemed not to hear the screams coming from the warehouse in the back. He walked to the door. He went out. And he mounted his waiting horse. He was now passing slowly through the places he had come galloping through earlier. Many shops had opened. The people were standing and saluting him. But he wasn’t seeing his surroundings at all. He had fixed his eyes on the shadowy line created by the saddle holsters and the horse’s chestnut neck [153]. An inaudible voice was spreading through his veins from within, leaving a sweet echo in his brain, in his heart, “in an hour… in an hour…” He arrived at the central command. The city clock was striking six Turkish time. He dismounted. The itches from the oven had now subsided. Now his entire body had stiffened, as if it had become rigid. Absent-minded and unaware, he went upstairs. He entered his room. Gendarmerie commander Zankof and police chief Lapof were waiting for him. As soon as he sat down, they began to talk. Things were going well. In fact, some of the consuls had even thanked Governor Rayef for the order and justice shown during the occupation. They began to discuss how to carry out the cleansing in the surrounding and plain Islamic villages. They made a decision. The massacrers were appointed. Zankof and La-
pof didn’t stay to avoid delaying the giving of orders, they left. Radko didn’t remain alone. Four bandits from Dimcho’s gang had brought Hacı Hasan Efendi. This was a turbaned man in a cloak, thickened from his comfort and happiness, from inactivity, plump, gentle, of medium height. His pink and puffy cheeks shone above his round and dark brown beard, and a yellow shadow of fear appeared on his wrinkle-free face. He seemed bewildered not to see the courtesy he expected from the enemy commander. Radko hadn’t even seated him…
“What’s your name?”
“Hacı Hasan…”
“How many liras do you have in the bank and at home?”
Hacı Hasan Efendi, unable to assess the situation and position, did not answer. He stupidly looked at the face of the Bulgarian officer before him. If he had known such things would happen, wouldn’t he have retreated with the army, fled to Salonica? But he had hoped that the Balkan armies would bring civilization, constitutional government.
“Tell me, how many liras?…”
“…”
“You’re silent. I’ll refer you to the court, there you’ll sing like a nightingale. How many people are in your house?”
“Six…”
“Say their names, I’ll write them down.” Hacı Hasan Efendi was confused again. What need was there for this? Wasn’t this inappropriate?
“Raciye…”
“Man or woman, who is she to you?”
“Woman, my mother-in-law.” [154]
“One… Then?”
“Fatma, my wife.”
“Two… Then?”
“Tarık, Zeynelabidin, Halit, my sons.”
“Five… Then?”
“Lale… My daughter.”
“Lale. Six.”
Hacı Hasan Efendi corrected him with recitation and Arabic effort, forcefully cracking the letter ayn:
“Not Lale, La’li, sir.”
“Lale, La’li, whatever it is… Is there no one else?”
“There are four servants.”
“Anyone else?”
“And an old manservant. That’s all…”
445
“Your house is beautiful. We need it. You will go to the court, you’ll tell them about your money. Except for Lale, your wife and children will be taken elsewhere. Lale will stay to look after [Issue: 59/11, p. 175] the cleanliness of the house…”
Hacı Hasan Efendi couldn’t believe his ears. Could such a thing happen? With so many consuls around… He didn’t answer. He swallowed. His head was spinning, his wrists were trembling. Radko gave his order in Bulgarian to the komitadjis standing at attention like soldiers, extending the note on which he had written the names.
“Hand this man over to the court at the oven. They shouldn’t wait for me, let them continue his interrogation. He’s hiding his money. Then we need the house. There are twelve people in his house. Only the girl named Lale will stay. The others will be taken out of the house within five minutes. Those who leave are free. Immediately tie the freedom ribbon around their necks…”
“Tie the freedom ribbon” was komitadji-speak for “cut off their heads.” Radko paused a bit. And he hit his hand on the table.
“Come on quick, tell what I said to Captain Dimcho. Be careful, don’t let the girl escape. Don’t let the guards leave the house door. Quickly send me word with a cavalryman. I’ll come and visit. Come on, march… Quick.”
Hacı Hasan Efendi wanted to say something. But the komitadjis took him out. When the door closed, Radko stood up. He began to pace up and down. Finally, in half an hour, Lale, the most beautiful girl of Serez, would be his. Again in his imagination, that harem corner he had mocked at the oven was coming alive mixed with purple and bright halos, the vague echoes of a mythological poem entering into dreams were growing, lengthening, deepening in his imagination. On a silk couch resembling a spring bed made of unseen flowers, with flowing shadows of lights with light blue halos, a naked girl was stretching, faint and tired, turning face down, stretching her legs, leaning on her white and pointed breasts covered with scattered black hair, squeezing the soft violet-colored pillow she embraced. And Radko, who never heard the noisy hoofbeats of the cavalry units outside, the murmur of those gathering at the government building, could very well hear the pounding of his heart before his dream. Half an hour hadn’t passed. When the door was knocked, he stopped and… woke up. The cavalryman who entered was saying that the house was ready and only one girl had been left inside. Radko [176] called his aide. He instructed him that he would go somewhere for three hours, that if he absolutely needed to be found during these three hours, Dimcho Kaptan should be asked, that he should read the reports coming from the units and discipline officers, and if there was something very important and urgent, that too should be sent to Dimcho Kaptan. Then he slowly went downstairs. He was passing through the streets with the cavalryman, again slowly, without seeing his surroundings. He thought that if he made his horse gallop a bit, that pleasure resembling drunkenness that remained in his soul, in his brain, in his nerves from his earlier fantasy would be spoiled. Narrow streets with high walls… Small and quiet neighborhood mosques with white minarets… Cemeteries with cypresses… Tiny stream bridges… Sparrows were also mixing with the flocks of chickens and geese wandering on the pavements with poor and disorderly but clean and white stones. This once-upon-a-time road pleased Radko. As he advanced in the cool and bright silence of this road, he imagined himself a foreign fairy tale hero immersed in the mystery of a real and living oriental tale, and his heart beat with that never-satisfied sweet and thirsty excitement that great conquerors feel when trampling on their defeated enemies who couldn’t escape and survived. When he saw the large green door in the middle of the long and high wall with yellow plaster that he was passing, he said, “This must be it.” A soldier and two komitadjis were standing in front of the door, talking. And this door… Even the Turks in Bulgaria, when they went to their God’s house in Arabia and became hajjis, wouldn’t they paint their doors green upon their return? This must definitely be Hacı Hasan’s mansion. He turned around. He asked the cavalry soldier: “Is this it?”
“Yes, gospodin…” [Issue: 60/12, p. 191]
And with unconscious haste, he struck his spurs into his horse’s belly. In an instant he reached the huge door and jumped to the ground. The
komitadjis and the guard were already waiting for him anyway. They held the animal’s reins. Radko walked toward the door that stood ajar. On the side, a rough bell button the size of a saucer was shining white, blind, like a single eye. He touched this button with his hand, the sound of a bell barely audible from afar echoed.
“No one enters inside,” he said, “If Dimcho comes, you’ll ring this. I’ll come out.”
His head was again bowed to the ground, his left arm was again on his hip. He entered through the opening. He leaned his right shoulder against the door and closed it. But he remained like that. He couldn’t move. Suddenly a paradise had opened before him. A paradise of emerald… He looked with his dazzled eyes. Looked. He knew Ferdinand’s palace, Europe’s most beautiful and famous parks. But he had never seen this dreamlike silence in any of them. The jade shadows of the great trees spread over the flowers like heavy velvet carpets. And a path of herringbone sand went toward a marble pool, ending at the door reached by marble steps at the very end. Radko rubbed his eyes with his right hand. He turned to both sides. Not a single stone of the wall that rose like a fortress from the outside was visible from the inside. It was covered with thick vines and honeysuckles. He walked slowly. Flowers whose names he didn’t know, that he was even seeing for the first time in his life, were sleeping like unborn fairy babies in shaded beds, giving off intoxicating, sharp and sweet smells. He came to the pool. The sandy path united with the other paths coming from right and left, forming a square here. And again, large and centuries-old trees whose names he didn’t know were rising from the corners of the beds, forming a green and wide dome over the pool with their branches invisible through their large and drooping leaves. He stopped. He looked at the transparent column emerging from the marble fountain of the pool. Sun drops slipping from the shadows were gathering in this crystal column that scattered two meters above as blue dust back into the pool, trembling its reflection on the water, and all colors were simmering in the tiny rainbows opening piece by piece.
Radko remembered his own life before this view. Even in Sofia, cow sheds were found on one side of the gardens, the smell of manure and excrement never diminished. There was no house without pigs. The gardens of the rich were bare and ugly, arranged in the European style.
Even Bulgaria’s public parks would remain shadeless and devoid of beauty, bald and mangy, next to this paradise of emerald. On the sides of the adjacent paths whose ends were lost in tunnels of dark green shadow, gilded gazebos shone like large cages… What a delightful life would pass here. Radko thought of capturing this place. Its owner, except for one daughter, had now probably been cut down with all his family. He would come every year, live for a few weeks in this secret paradise hidden between these high walls, in these narrow and broken streets, and would understand the taste of living. When he decided this, he rejoiced. In this paradise of emerald, there was also a houri… Who knows how beautiful she was… He passed by the pool. He walked to the door. When about eight or ten steps remained, he stopped. He looked at the building. This was a large mansion with wide windows, painted blue, three stories, tiny. Behind its open windows, tulle curtains were visible. Prince Boris could very well live here. But it was said that there were higher and more magnificent mansions. He walked looking ahead. His sword was dragging on the sand. He climbed the wide marble steps. The door was closed. And if the girl didn’t open it, it didn’t look like anything that could be broken. It was heavy walnut. He looked carefully to see if its thick and shiny rings were silver. It would definitely be necessary to call a few men from outside, have a ladder brought, and enter from one of the windows. He knocked three times on the door with his fist and waited. No sound came. Once more, but faster, he knocked and waited. He thought he heard a very faint footstep. He stopped and listened, listened. The crow of a rooster singing very far away seemed to be answering him… And a fragrant wind escaping from among the trees was waving the globe flowers in the marble pots on the steps, passing over the gardens, making currents toward the eaves and producing light, inaudible and secret whispers. Once more he knocked with all the strength of his arm. This time a trembling and thin voice from inside said “Who is it?” [Issue: 61/13, supplement section]
Radko’s heart suddenly began to beat. Lale had come… It was necessary to be gentle and cunning. He softened his voice: “It’s me, madam.”
“Who are you?”
“The commander… The commander of the Bulgarian army!”
“What do you want?”
449
“I will tour the inside. We are looking for a place to stay for a few days for His Highness the Prince, son of our Tsar. Your father agreed to give his house to this noble guest. He is at the government building, with the general.”
“Why didn’t you come with my father?”
“Your father has business at the government building now. He cannot leave until evening. They are forming a militia from local Muslims so there won’t be any trouble in the city.”
“And my mother, grandmother, brothers whom you took away by force a little while ago…?”
Radko swallowed. But he had no difficulty making up an excuse: “Forgive me. We all felt bad about them. A bad mistake was made. When our Prince would stay, it was deemed appropriate for all of you to go to another house. The order was misunderstood in haste. Some crude villagers, thinking the prince would come immediately, took them and brought them to a house in the Islamic neighborhood. The general apologized to your father. In less than half an hour, they will all come… Please open up. Because my time is passing. I have work.”
“…”
“Why aren’t you opening? Be sure. Don’t be afraid. We are civilized people. No one will be harmed by us. You will see, during our prince’s stay, not even a needle will disappear from your house. Thanks to us, the Muslim and Christian population of Macedonia will be saved from the tyranny of the murderous Young Turks. Everyone will understand what real Constitutional Government, real brotherhood, real equality, real justice are… Cover your face. We, honorable men, consider others’ honor more sacred and supreme than our own honor. Open the door. I’ll look at everything in two minutes and go. I’m telling you, don’t be afraid. If we had bad intentions toward you, would it be difficult to enter from the window with a ladder, to break the door? Open it, please… Don’t keep me waiting, madam…”
Radko was speaking so gently that poor La’li did not find it appropriate to insist before this enemy commander who promised happiness, equality, freedom.
Besides, even if she insisted, if she didn’t open the door, for a commander who had captured the entire country, would it be a difficult job to enter from the window or even to demolish the house from its foundation? Then who knows what disasters would befall her and her family. Whereas it was being said that her mother, grandmother, brothers who had been taken away crying just a few minutes ago would be released. Wasn’t it her duty to save her loved ones from a second humiliation, to treat those who saved them kindly? She didn’t think long. A cold and light tremor chilled her entire body. She felt a pain in her chest, a bitterness in her mouth. And involuntarily, she opened the door.
When Radko entered, he seemed to freeze. He remained like stone. His left hand was still on his hip. And his unblinking eyes, on the miracle before him… Behind La’li was a black and loose cloak and on her head a thick, white silk prayer veil. Her face shone like a dreamlike moon emerging from a white dream cloud. And her tall height, her unique and perfect figure was emerging with a vague clarity under the loose cloak, like the deep and stirring meaning of a sublime poem covered with meter and rhymes. She became annoyed at Radko standing so bewildered. She looked ahead. Her thick and curly eyelashes covered her eyes with tiny black halos, the transparent and pink shadow of her small and pink nose fell on her cheek, and the color of her small mouth, which had more halo than a red rosebud, was deepening.
“Please come in,” she said. She began to walk ahead. She opened the mahogany-painted door on the right of the hall lit by large windows. This was the guest and reception room.
She stepped back for Radko to enter. She gave way. She was always looking ahead. But Radko wasn’t seeing anything. Carpets, sofas, heavy curtains, large paintings, full-length mirrors, marble tables, silk armchairs, heavy divans with fringed tassels, purple-painted walls, carved ceilings, everything, everything… was melting in a red and trembling fog; in this burning, this exciting red darkness, he only saw La’li, who never took her eyes off the ground.
They toured everywhere. He also looked at the rooms on the second floor, without seeing. He went up to the third floor from a wide and bright staircase, as if swimming in this fiery fog that erased everything. The body resembling a phantom statue in front of him
was playing with movements that would drive one mad under the black and thin cloak, and the shape its hips and thighs took at each step was kindling unbearable excitements in his heart.
Suddenly he shook as if he had sunk to the bottom of a boiling red sea of vapor and was struggling with a last effort to get out. What was happening: Was he drunk? Only with that quick and correct perception peculiar to material and doubtless intellects that receive serious and supreme education without remaining foreign to science, who properly discern the boundary between the first cause and second causes, who comprehend simple and practical truths, he was coming to himself, asking himself the question “Am I doing literature?” that suddenly flashed from within with the clarity of lightning. He lowered his left arm from his hip. He brought his right hand to his head. He wiped his forehead. As soon as he saw La’li, he slipped out of that dizziness cloud that had enveloped his entire being, his entire existence. The walls, ceilings, hall, the door of the balcony with blue and green glass took their real position. He was on the top floor. The sun flowing from the open windows was filtering through the tulle curtains, flowering mirrored shadows on the oilcloths of the floor.
“My brothers’ room…”
Radko didn’t even enter. Inside were three small beds, one round center table. And how clean it was… He saw five rooms too. La’li hadn’t opened the sixth.
Radko said, “Let’s look at this room too.” This was La’li’s bedroom. The torture of showing it to a foreign man embarrassed her again. She became uncomfortable, turned bright red. Unwillingly, she opened the door. When Radko entered, he sensed a light and pure toilet, a soap, a cleanliness smell. This delightful smell began to ring in his ears like the spiritual music of a white and calm spring dawn heard without realizing what it was. Curtains of light purple silk stretched down to the floor like faint and large butterfly wings, creating lazy heaps on the carpet. The white and wide bed in the corner whose tiny dome was hung from the ceiling with green ribbons resembled an airy fairy temple from captivity, an angel’s nest fallen from the heavens. The red smoke that had just died out and hadn’t shown him the whole house and its furnishings was beginning to envelop Radko again slowly. But
this fog was now white. From within, he said, “Let’s not prolong it, let’s not do literature…” And… suddenly he lunged at La’li. While pulling the covering from her head, he scattered her thick, black and shiny hair. He wrapped around her waist. He was striving to kiss her. La’li was struggling, pushing him with her arms, moving her cheeks away from his lips, shouting “Let go, scoundrel, let go!…” [Issue: 62/14, p. 223]
She was as strong as she was beautiful. With the agility her nineteen years gave her, she was resisting the enemy, she could wrestle with him. Ah, she had been caught off guard, deceived, tricked. If she hadn’t opened the door below, she wouldn’t have been captured alive, she would have resisted until death and wouldn’t have defiled her body to this dishonorable tyrant’s filthy lips. This violent struggle lasted more than half an hour. Radko’s hat had fallen to the ground, his collar torn, his epaulette ripped off, the strap of his sword broken. Poor La’li was exhausted, finished, had fallen under her merciless, unforgiving enemy.
“Kill me, kill me…” she moaned, begged, pleaded. Hot tears were flowing from her beautiful and large bloodshot eyes, her breath was choking from excitement and fatigue. Radko, biting and kissing her flushed cheeks, sucking her sweaty transparent neck, said “What will I do killing you, beautiful Lale, I don’t need you dead, I need you alive…”
He was kissing, biting, sucking, and at the same time tearing her clothes, ripping them, trying to leave his captive who was now too tired to move completely naked. He removed her shirt, her skirt, her underwear, even her stockings. He embraced the poor girl left stark naked. He lifted her from the ground. And took her to the bed and laid her down. La’li seemed to have fainted. From between her closed eyelids, her long and curly eyelashes, only a white line was visible. Her hair was spilling on her shoulders shining and spotless like snow, her protruding and hard breasts were rising and falling rapidly. Radko stopped. He looked, looked. He couldn’t believe his eyes, saying “What marrow, what marrow.”
This was like a mythological statue that had come to life by falling but still hadn’t opened its eyes, a goddess girl. Her arms separating from her round shoulders with a sweet thickness were getting thinner, her small and delicate hands were opening like a dreamlike bed. Her belly was so pure, so innocent, so white and small that Radko wanted to worship it, he was afraid to touch it. And her hips that seemed to have been frozen after being kneaded from diamond,
appearing so shiny and transparent…
Radko began to undress hastily. He took off his boots. He threw off his jacket, trousers, undershirts, underwear as if tearing them. The sharp smell of sweat on his very hairy body and the foul odor of his dirty feet were spreading into the clean air of the room, disgusting even himself. He looked once more at La’li, who was still breathing fast, chokingly, in gasps, as if suffocated. And he lay down on the bed, beside her. He clung to her breasts. He began to bite. As this tyrant’s hands, lips touched her body, La’li was screaming as if burning in flames, writhing, locking her legs with all her strength and doubling over. What would she do? What would she do now? The vile saliva of the enemy who knew no sanctity had been smeared all over her. Her honor was being torn by force. Her screams echoed no response, no one was coming to her aid. So she would become a tool for the most filthy and disgusting pleasures of a wild animal. No, no, no… But how would she escape? Her strength was finished, she had no ability to move. She was moving her arms by force. As if iron rings had been passed around her throat, an invisible torture shirt made of lead had been put on her back. Sobbing, she stammered: “Stop, stop, let go, I’m feeling ill… Let me rest… Let me rest and then…”
Radko was pleased by the surrender with tears of the exquisite and stubborn prey in his clutches. He relaxed. So she too had understood there was no escape. She was now consenting. Besides, what pleasure was there in a love to be taken by force?
“Very well, very well, rest and then…”
And he withdrew to the edge of the bed. He stayed very still. Like scabies, under his armpits, his arms, his thighs were itching, and the rustling his hard nails made from his thick skin was growing with wild and torn echoes in the terrible silence of the room. In fifteen or twenty minutes, La’li’s thrashing subsided. The movement of her chest slowed. With her arms, she had covered her flushed face, with tears of pain falling on her neck. Now she was trembling. All of her was trembling as if seized by a malaria attack. Radko attributed this trembling to her also getting an appetite for making love. Extending his hand between her legs, saying “Come on, you’ve rested now…” he wanted to kiss her breasts. La’li answered without removing her arms from her face: “Wait a little… I’m cold… Let me close that window and then…”
And she sat up. Without touching Radko, she jumped over him.
Radko found this exquisite agility very coquettish. He held her by her arms. He bit her back, bit her. When he let go, La’li went swaying like a drunk to the open window. And in an instant, with a movement so sudden it couldn’t be seen with the eye, she disappeared there. As if she flew…
The dumbfounded Radko leaped from the bed. He ran to the window. And leaning out, he looked. Below was deepening like an endless abyss whirling with green shadows, thick [224] branches, distant flowers, and La’li was lying face down on the thick and dense grass. A burning, shattering lightning struck in his brain: “What if she’s dead…” Yes, what if she was dead? Would this happiness that had become reality, that he had gotten so close to, taken into his embrace, smelled, kissed, bitten, be extinguished like a dreamlike, false and incomplete wet dream? He turned with a maddened excitement. He walked to the hall. He jumped the stairs four, five at a time. He passed the second and first floors with the speed of a pebble released from a slingshot. He went out to the garden. He lunged on La’li. He immediately turned her on her back. He held her pulses. They weren’t beating. He felt her heart with his hand. He bent down. He put his ear. He listened, listened. It wasn’t beating at all. She was dead. Ah, this beautiful Lale had escaped from his embrace and given her soul to death, but… but she still hadn’t withered. The sublime and moonlight color of her fresh life, her matchless beauty was still there. And “before it cools,” he murmured, “before it cools…” This priceless corpse was still warm. Before it cools… Couldn’t at least a bit of that exceptional pleasure that was who knows how different, of her unworn love, her untouched virginity, be tasted? He didn’t think. He was afraid it would cool quickly. He took in his arms the delicate corpse whose shoulders were bruised, clotted with invisible blood, whose hair was wrapped around her chest and breasts. With the composure of a treacherous devil who kidnaps an angelkin who fell asleep while worshipping her God in a corner of heaven far from houris and believers, he climbed the stairs he had run down, again slowly. He entered the room. He laid La’li’s corpse on the bed with wrinkled sheets where, a minute ago, she had struggled while alive. Now these relaxing exquisite arms couldn’t resist, now the legs that relaxed and couldn’t lock with an unbreakable insistence like before were opening by themselves.
Radko gave this corpse the position he wanted. He ignited the darkest, most filthy, most dirty fires of his vile desire on it. He drank its last remaining warmth. He sucked, bit. He even wanted to eat. He tore off her cheeks that wouldn’t bleed with his teeth.
He wasn’t satisfied, wasn’t sated, didn’t get bored.
But he got tired. He paused a bit. A shivering coldness was beginning to spread to her flesh, her veins, her bones. He was frightened, he withdrew, he looked at her long and curly eyelashes mixed together. Her eyes were open as a small black pit silently screaming unspeakable complaints with her livid mouth. Her breasts that he had torn by biting were flattened, her belly had sunk in. Her marbleizing legs, bent backward, were stretched out. And as if the sacred mourning of this destruction after death, from her spotless and luminous groin, pale and colorless blood drops were oozing. He looked, looked, looked… As he looked, instead of increasing, his fright passed. And… he got an appetite again. To ravage and defile this corpse whose front side was ruined in another way too, this time he wanted to turn it face down. As he was getting on his knees…
A bitter bell sound…
Radko remained like that. And he pricked up his ears. This bitter bell sound echoed once more from deep down, probably from the basement. Dimcho was calling him. So there was important work. He got down from the bed. He wiped the sweat from his temples, forehead, neck on the untied and torn curtains of the mosquito net. While getting dressed with his clothes on the floor, stretching and yawning, he still couldn’t take his stiff and dazed eyes kindled by that unquenchable wild passion off the bed. And there La’li’s corpse, now cooling, freezing, stiffening, lay with the silence of a great, white, spiritual and otherworldly tulip crushed under a very heavy and infernal stone, and one arm hanging down from the bloodied pillow seemed to be searching the endless voids of non-existence to hold on to.
THE END
