Atiq Rahimi - A Curse on Dostoevsky

Certain of what he will see, he approaches once more. Even closer. Still nothing. He walks cautiously into the smoky silence of the street, and up to the house. Not a soul. Except that idle dog who no longer even stands up to bark.

Stunned, Rassoul walks up to the front gate. It is shut. He pushes but it won’t open. Someone must have locked it from the inside. But then why is everything so quiet, so still?

It doesn’t bode well.

Go home, Rassoul!

HE DOESN’T go home. He wanders the city. He’s been walking for almost three hours now. Not rushing. Not bothered by his injured ankle, which has already been forgotten. He stops only when he reaches the banks of the Kabul River. The smell of sludge, the fetid stink rising from the riverbed in this late summer, brings him back to himself. As he pauses, the pain returns and stops him from wandering any further. He grabs the guardrail and rubs his ankle.

The air is becoming more and more impossible to breathe. Rassoul coughs. A tickly, noiseless cough.

His throat is dry.

His voice makes no cry.

Not a drop of hope in his mouth, the river, or the sky.

Obscured by a veil of dust and smoke, the old sun goes sadly off to sleep behind the mountains… the sun, going to sleep? What an absurd metaphor! The sun never goes to sleep. It travels to the other side of the earth, to shine on happier lands. Take me with you, Rassoul hears himself cry, deep inside. He screws up his eyes, stares at the sun, takes a few steps, and then stops. Shading his eyes with his hand, he looks around anxiously as if to check whether anyone has noticed his silent insanity. Don’t worry, dear Rassoul, the world has more important things on its mind than watching a poor madman!

Go back home. And sleep!

Sleep? Is that possible?

Of course. You’re going to do just what Raskolnikov did—after murdering the moneylender he went back home and fell into a feverish sleep on his couch. You don’t have a couch, I know, but you do have a filthy mattress, waiting compassionately for you on the floor.

And then?

Nothing. You sleep.

No, I faint.

OK then, faint, if you prefer—it doesn’t matter, as long as you do it till morning. When you wake up tomorrow, you will realize that this was all a bad dream.

No way, I can’t just forget it all like that.

You can. Look, you’re not carrying anything to remind you of the murder. No money, no jewels, no ax, no…

Blood!

He stops suddenly. Checks his hands in a panic. Nothing. His sleeves: nothing. His jacket: nothing. But then, on the hem of his shirt, a great stain! Why there? No, it isn’t Nana Alia’s blood. It’s the blood of that young girl you saved.

The uncertainty disturbs him. He reexamines himself. No other trace of blood. No trace of the murder. How can that be possible?

You probably didn’t do it. It was all in your wretched imagination. Your naive identification with a fictional character. Just something stupid like that! Now you can quietly go home. You can even forget that yesterday you promised your fiancée, Sophia, that you’d spend this evening with her. You can’t see anyone in this state.

Yes, I won’t go. But I’m hungry.

Well, you’ve got fifty afghanis, so you can buy yourself some bread and fruit. It’s been several days since you’ve eaten.

And so his empty belly draws him to Joy Shir Square. The bakery is closed. An old stallholder is shutting up at the other end of the square. After a moment’s hesitation Rassoul starts making his way over to him. He has barely taken three steps when a cry stops him in his tracks. “No, no, don’t buy anything!” A veiled woman bursts out of one of the lanes, running and shouting like a maniac. “…It’s flesh… the flesh of…” In the middle of the square she stops suddenly, surprised to find it so empty and quiet. She flops to the ground, moaning: “The flesh of young girls… the day before yesterday they were handing it out at the mausoleum…” Only Rassoul is there, so she spills her tears on him: “I’m not lying, brother, I swear to you. I saw…,” she drags herself over, “…the offering they gave me,” she lowers her voice, “…was a young girl’s breasts!”, she takes her hand out of her chador—“I swear to you, brother… it was the same men who were giving out offerings here today…”—she pulls off her veil—“the same men… the other day… outside the mausoleum…”; then finally, she is quiet. Wiping her tears with a corner of her chador, she asks weakly, “Brother, do you have any money? I’ve three children to feed.”

Without a word, Rassoul pulls out the fifty-afghani note and hands it to her. She throws herself at his feet. “Thank you, my brother… may Allah have mercy on you!”

He walks away, weary of the woman’s shouting but proud in his soul.

What a gesture! As if it were that easy to redeem yourself.

No. I am in no way attempting to redeem myself.

So why this act of charity? You’re not telling me it was a matter of compassion? No one will believe that. It was simply to convince yourself that you have a good heart, in spite of everything. You may be capable of killing a loathsome creature but you can stop a poor family from dying of hunger. Intention is what counts…

Yes! That is what counts for me…

He stubs his foot on a large stone. The pain in his ankle makes him grimace. He stops, for a moment. Not just walking, but also going over Raskolnikov’s words in his head. Praise be to God (or the stone)!

It isn’t far to the house where he lives. He can walk there, slowly and gently.

When he reaches the gate he pauses for a moment, checking one last time—as well as he can in the fading light of dusk—for any more traces of blood. The same stain remains; a stain that could be either proof of a murder or testament to virtue.

He takes a deep breath before entering the courtyard, which rings with the cries of the landlord’s two daughters, swinging on a rope attached to a branch of the single, dead tree. Rassoul creeps over to the other side of the courtyard, to the stairs that lead up to his little room. Just as he reaches the top step, the girls cry out:

“Salam, Kaka Rassoul!”

As he opens the door another voice, harsh and threatening, prevents him from going in. “Hey, Rassoul, how long do you think you can keep running off?” It is his landlord, Yarmohamad. Rassoul turns, silently cursing the daughters. Yarmohamad is standing by his window in his prayer cap. “So where’s my rent? Huh?”

Annoyed, Rassoul limps painfully back down the stairs, and stands under the window to tell Yarmohamad that he has tried to get his money back, as he promised he would yesterday. But it hasn’t worked out—the woman who owed it to him has disappeared. He’s been looking for her all day…

But he feels a strange emptiness in his throat. No sound comes out. He coughs. A dry, empty cough. Noiseless, without substance. He takes a deep breath and coughs again. Nothing. He anxiously tries to cry out, a simple cry, anything will do. But still nothing emerges, just a pathetic stifled breath.

What’s the matter with me?

“Well?” asks Yarmohamad crossly.

Why won’t he just wait! Something serious is happening. Rassoul has lost his voice.

He tries again, taking another deep breath of air, collecting all his strength in his chest to push the words out of his lips. Nothing.

“So did you find this person who owes you money?” asks Yarmohamad sarcastically. “Give me her name, then! You’ll have your cash by tomorrow. Come on, give me her name…”

If you knew, Yarmohamad, you’d never dare talk to Rassoul like that. He has killed her. And he’ll kill you, too, if you upset him. Look at all the blood on him!