Zahei The Blind

PART II - THE SALT MINEexcerpt The second day in the salt mine Zahei's push-cart lay broken. The man was free to do whatever he wanted to. He asked to return to his tally on the walls. But the guard was not allowed to leave his post in the mine and no one was allowed to climb up to the exit without an escort. "Take him and show him the salt mine," Boeru urged them, "you don't have anything to do whatsoever. Mare, take him to Zdrelea's grotto, show him the church and your carvings." The blind man started once he heard about the church and consented. He took his guide by his counseling hand and moved away, accompanied by the others' grins. The lanterns on their chests rolled before them only one step of light… They were still in the middle of the mine with its huge crossroad where push-carts were rumbling and the ropes were creaking. Alexandru described him the straight crystal walls of green and black, like glistening mirrors interspersed with all the diamonds in the world, soaring hundreds of meters. He also told him about the endless gulfs that formed a real gorge of hell. And up there in the cupola broken by the ropes, tightly encircled by the chasm, the sky was sometimes of such a gloomy blue, that the jailbirds with good eyes could spot the stars even in the middle of the day. Then they walked through low drifts until they arrived under a large and high vault, referred to as the church. It was hollowed out in salt. The companion had to describe it to him in detail: the walls polished all around up to the ceiling cut in vaults by the great church, and sustained by large bluestone pillars. Up there burst the voids of four spires that breathed in other drifts of the upper storey. In the back there was a huge, dazzling ice-like wall that separated the altar. On it there were carved faces and other figures. The blind man stood stock-still and listened. "Now you can lead me to the icons." "These are not icons," stuttered Alexandru with surprise. "How come?" "There is no service held here." "Then what did you build it for?" He didn't receive any answer… "You said there were carved faces… and the blind man insisted that he should be led to the altar and was ready to crawl on his own. As he reached the wall on the back, carved in the archway like an alcove, he started to touch the rock and reached some strange limbs with his hands. "What is here?" "Some statues." "What's that?" "Saints carved in salt," mumbled Alexandru… "Show them to me." He had to walk with him along the huge iconostasis adorned with rows of carved blocks, each of them depicting women. There were naked women, some of them chiseled meticulously and others lathed coarsely, as the carver had only insisted on certain body parts and organs. They were all bigger than life and stood for profligate nudity, with their huge calves of legs, pot-bellied, with great tits pointing to the viewers. Some had their thighs spread wide open so one could see their gaping sexes and others had their loins tensed by spasms. Few of them stood still on all fours with their round buttocks turned to their worshipers, others turned over with their knees apart, as if they were keen on welcoming their lovers. There were also some of them slammed on the ground with their feet up in the air. One could barely see them in the dark; they were made only for the night and served only for touching and hugging in the dark. But now they were sending out sparks of all their immodest skills sprinkled with shiny diamonds.It was the brothel that every generation of jailbirds carved at during all those years, each one of them with his own cravings and desires, ever since the jail was opened. Maghereanu had carved in honor of Boeru the most knavish of all, a bold idol of most daring nudity with four haughty tits and two lustful and vampire-like sexes, one on front and the other one on the back. Here, in the dark altar, they would all run around tormented by lust, heated by desire, eager to pet, to hug, to kiss the stony breasts in order to end the boiling of their senses that were driven mad by some raw violence and to calm down their burning desires in the wet coldness. "Where is the Holy Virgin?" "Here she is," whispered the young man and smothered. Zahei touched around in a shy way, felt the bare thighs and didn't climb higher with his hands. He fell on his knees and prayed silently for a long time, with his forehead in the salty dust that clung to his eyebrows. "Please help me mark the way up to here," he said as he got up. "I want to come here every morning and evening". Alexandru was out of his mind – he was shocked. The just and pure nature of the blind man impressed him from the very beginning in a different manner than Boeru's evil power… But in the present context that was crushing him. After he finished praying, the blind man asked in high spirits that he should be helped to sit down. He pulled his young companion next to him and decided to say what was on his mind. "Listen, Alexandru, how about you and I becoming friends?" Alexandru felt like he wanted to cry. "I conjure you here in the holy church to tell me the truth… Are you following me?" "Yes, I am." "What is happening here with all of you?" Zahei stressed every single word. "Why do you say with you?" asked Alexandru in an attempt to divert him from the subject. "You are among us as well. A jailbird, like the rest of us." "It's true, but you don't seem to be like all the other people". "How could we? Once we were thrown in this hell we lost any trace of shame and kindness," confessed the companion. "I wonder how you can keep them." "I earned them recently and in a difficult manner," started the blind man his confession. But he immediately changed his mind and kept silent. "Listen," he frowned, "is this a women's prison as well?" "Only a man's prison," answered his companion. "But aren't also women allowed among you?" "No, God forbid!" "Really? I hear their lovers every evening as they call them by their names to come to bed." Alexandru kept quiet. "Yesterday one was cursing Marioara and another one was begging for Lina. In a corner, Luxandra's man beat her up and then kissed her. What does this mean?" The young man's cheeks burned as if they had just been slapped. He made up his mind.. "Didn't you get it at all, Zahei?" "What are you talking about?" "We jailbirds live together, in pairs!" "What do you mean by pairs?" the blind man's voice trembled. "That is, man with man, just as a man lives with his woman in the outside world." "Is this possible?" Zahei started… "Is this what I hear at night?" Alexandru kept quiet. "And who taught you this?" "Who? This animal-like drive inside us, the weakness, the fear." Now it was Zahei's turn to keep silent and think… Then, at once, he asked carefully: "All of you?" "No, but almost all. Most of us." "So there must be some of you who keep away from all this," the blind man said relieved. But his companion didn't allow him this trick either. "You didn't get it. There are few of us who are not bonded officially. They spend a night with one partner and the second one with another. It means that they don't want to commit, they are bachelors." "Are there also others among you?" asked Zahei. "What others?" "Well, men whores… or how do you call them?" "There are still 3-4 left," confessed Alexandru. "Those are the most dissolute fellows. You can hear them being named in the curses of those who are calling them… Soft Mare, Little Bitch, Bold Eye, Tufty." "So what kind of a man are you?" the blind man turned his head away as if to prevent a blow. "Who, me?" asked the young man, deeply troubled. "Yes, you!" "Well, before I was assigned to you, I used to be Boeru's girlfriend; he punished himself, "as he has three of them…" "Is that why you lay next to me?" the blind man got up all of a sudden, without waiting for the answer, and tried to find his way groping about, until he banged his head against some salty woman's legs. Alexandru couldn't move an inch. He was paralyzed. Zahei fell face down in the salty dust and started to pray again. When the light of the lantern that rolled down his chest shone upon him lying down like a corpse, the young man came to his senses and rushed to help him get up. Seeing the blind kowtowing in front of the smutty creation filled him with fear, as if he had committed a great sin, and gave him the guts to destroy the whole web of lies he had told him. Thoughts and memories came upon him. And he rebelled against the filthy things made up by the craziness of desperate people who stuck their vices into each other like sprockets of huge wheels that caught him too in their spinning. But now he craved to escape. "Old Zahei," he shouted while he was panting, "get up, stop defiling your prayers. I lied to you. Kill me. This is not a church." "But what is it then?" he asked frightened. "It's the brothel!" "The brothel?" The blind man got up instantly. Alexandru took him by the hand and pulled him aside. "Let's get out of here," he groaned… I can't take it any more… This filth is choking me." Zahei felt through his own flesh his companion's trembling of repentance and so he followed him. They wondered silently through other corridors and vaults until the young man couldn't take the burden of his sins any longer and stopped. He had to get rid of them and to confess. The confession burst out like pus from a furuncle that one has accidentally hit. He was born as the only child of a merchant and he grew up on his own, living a life of leisure and spoiling, and becoming a naughty child with a feeble body and a halting nature, sometimes stubborn and other times easy to allure, never able to try hard or to show steadiness. He had run away from all the schools never knowing exactly why. He had only listened to some inner voice. After they found him who knows where and took him back, he would forget it all. He'd change for a while, act as if he were another person. But he would disappear again, as if he suffered from a disease that struck him once in a while. That's how he became a young man. Finally, his desperate father sent him to a sculptor's workshop because he showed certain skills for this trade. Sometimes he would carve strange puppets in wood, quaint faces and masks of people and animals. They all looked like grimaces, as if they had come out of a dream. At first he didn't like the new surroundings. Because of the mildness of the foreman and the kindness and beauty of his wife, he made up his mind and decided to stay in their sheltering home. The foreman too was interested in the apprentice because he had sharp eyes and a fine sense of lines and forms and so he decided to give him a place to stay, hoping that he could show him the way back to the right track. He believed that his flaws were only due to his unfortunate upbringing. For three years now Alexandru had found shelter in that nest of art and love. He had run away several times and been forgiven for that and for a few other things that he had done wrong. But they were only like some passing crises that didn't harm the relationship between them. As the young man grew older, his feelings of gratitude towards the foreman's wife turned into admiration, and finally into ardor. He didn't dare to reveal them and that's what bothered him so much that he sometimes felt like he was going to lose his mind. He started to secretly hate the sculptor and occasionally offend him for no reason whatsoever. He refused to go to dinner together with them and kept out of the house. He locked himself up in the workshop and crushed the stone instead of carving it properly. One night he followed the foreman on the way to his bedroom. The foreman's wife had just undressed. He saw her naked in her husband's arms. That was all. He doesn't remember anything from that moment on. No matter how hard he tried and still does. In his memory there is only a black hole that covers the event. The next day he was caught by the police and was forced to face the victims. The sculptor and his wife lay down on the ground with their heads crushed. Next to them was the heavy chisel that he had worked with the day before. It was covered with blood. His clothes and his fingers were clean. There was no evidence of blood under his nails. He fainted when he saw the bodies. When he came to his senses, he could only say that he didn't know anything. He admitted that he had left the workshop with the killer tool in his hand on the night of the murders. Neither torture, nor hitting or other tricks of the police could convince him to confess the murders. After the defense claimed that he had been temporarily insane, he was confined in a mental hospital. There he proved that he could think clearly and act totally normal. Considering the fact that the young man was just about to come of age, the jurors convicted him to twelve years of hard labor. The crushed blind man listened to his confession, his head leaning on his chest. "What do you think, old Zahei, did I murder them?" He was shocked by the unexpected question. He raised his hand and, for the first time, touched the head of his companion, feeling with his palm his long and soft hair, that he guessed was blond, and his nape hollowed out deep by the hole of lies. Then he went slowly down with his hand, stopping at times, over the prominent forehead, with two bumps on the sides, pushed the bulging eyes with their trembling eyelids, as if he suffered from constant fear, caught the small and tapering nose, slightly pointed at the top. He then carefully analyzed the tightly shut mouth with thin lips, flattened like two silky ribbons, and the long, feminine chin, cut in the middle by a small hole. He touched the frail neck and slid over the small breast, with the chest inside. Now he took him differently by the hands, observing the fact that they were big, square, heavy, with unruly, worm-like fingers, short, stumpy and with nibbled fingernails. The young man was exactly as the blind had imagined him: he was just a boy, still uncertain, who would never become a whole person from any point of view. He turned to him once again and touched his head. "Weren't they supposed to cut your hair?" "They were, but Boeru keeps them from doing this to me. He likes to play with my hair. What do you think about this, old Zahei?" The companion waited patiently. The blind man didn't rush to answer."Well, what do you think?""What can I say…? Maybe.""Maybe what?""Maybe you are right," his voice trembled, as he was not sure of what he had just said."So you think I didn't kill them?""Well, what do I know?" he sighed… "So how long have you been in jail?" he said, trying to change the subject.He had been in jail for more than a year. At first he had suffered greatly because of the mockery of the jailbirds who considered him an easy prey. He told the blind man how he used to shout and cry while they would ravish him. In the end he got lucky because of Boeru, who protected him from the others by driving them away and by keeping him only for himself. He liked the young man because he was fresh, white and childish and he could read; so he turned him into an intimate secretary of his."So why did he leave you now? Did you do anything wrong?""I don't know," confessed the young man with a certain spite in his voice. "He just did it! He is moody and whimsical and becomes angry out of the blue.""Do you regret this? Don't forget that you had certain privileges by being by his side."Alexandru felt the hurting words. He took the blind man by his hands and hugged him. "Old Zahei, please don't leave me. Protect me!""So you are supposed to be some kind of a girlfriend of mine," he said determined. "You are lucky you didn't try anything on me, for I would have beaten the hell out of you."The young man started to cry…"Listen to me!" said the blind man touched, "I don't need this. But if this is going to prevent Boeru and the others from being mean to you, let them think whatever they want. We'll just pretend it is true… But you have to become an honest man. Only this way can you count on my friendship and support."Alexandru started crying with his face in the blind man's palms.They went back to the other jailbirds very late and were welcomed with wedding cheers. But the blind man and his companion went back with the guard and started carving crosses and zodiac signs all over the dark road of the mine.On Saturday evening, the blind man went alone to Boeru's sleeping place. Boeru was just about to become angry because he noticed that the blind was not accompanied by the Mare, as he was supposed to."I don't need to be accompanied," said the guest plainly. "I know every inch of your room.""How come?" all the jailbirds asked surprised."Well, I followed with my ears every step you made in this room.""What about your wife?" grinned the host.The blind man tried to stay calm."His name is Alexandru," he said, emphasizing his companion's name, "and he will be here any minute. He had to dust the clothes and make the beds."On week-ends the leaders of the jailbirds used to throw secret parties in their bedrooms. Boeru, surrounded by important guests, gladly welcomed Zahei, offered him a place to sit on his bed, and introduced him to the other fellows that he ruled upon."That's how I want you to be, my friend, not grumpy and sullen like you appeared in the beginning!... Please, meet your other fellows."The bind man shook the hands of about thirty strapping fellows. He touched each one of them for a long time, in order to be able to recognize them anytime. Among all the hands he shook was Manaila's too – the bony shepherd who murdered his wife after he caught her sleeping with the head shepherd. He told in high spirits how he was just about to take her skin off by filling her with air, like sheep, when the police caught him. After him came Vanzoala, a servant who set the mansion on fire after he had locked in all the boyars and watched them burn. Priest Turca, also called Chubby, murdered his wife by cutting her all over and sprinkling salt over the wounds. Irmilie was an angry Adventist, always in wrath with the priest. He had butchered the priest in his village. When he was told in Court that real Adventists do not kill, he burst into laughter and said that priests were not people but beasts and therefore should be killed. Bosota, Liscota and Benches were ordinary killers, so they shook hands quickly with the blind man. Hadambu followed them. He was mean, ugly and lippy, with white teeth, shiny cheeks and hairy arms like bear paws. Serbota was tall as a tree above his waist, with a cheesy face, blue eyes and a prominent chin rounded nicely. Below his waist he was a midget on two crippled legs, with the soles twisted inwards. He had poisoned about seven or eight men whose wives wanted to get rid of, in order to get married with others. On trial, he told about how he killed the dogs of the house and of the neighbors, and then extended his experiment to relatives such as cousins and nephews. The last one to introduce himself was Ghinghirliu, a dry little man of pagan origins, quick and angry, who had got into a fight, killed two Greeks and injured four other people who rushed in to help. No one knows how he managed to keep his thick girdles but he always wore them under the jailbird suit. On his girdles he kept four knives and two pistols made of raw salt. Whenever he lost his temper, his Tartar eyes would shimmer and he would immediately feel his weapons with his right hand.All ten jailbirds were sentenced for life. Each one of them had his partner seated next to them, hugging each other with affection. Just as many fellows sat on the floor, cowered or else. They were all civil-law jailbirds, with no saying in the council. Bachelors like Soft Mare and Bold Eye would show airs and frills to each other. Being pushed around they would pinch and shout at each other like whores.Once they found themselves locked in the bedroom, the jailbirds felt freer than in any other place and caught their breath. After they secretly sold them tobacco and brandy, the guards made sure that no one disturbed them. They could do whatever they wanted as long as they kept quiet. For a day's work they received ten pence and for a week's money they could buy themselves enough booze and tobacco. The treasurer gathered the money for he was the most trustworthy person and he also closed the deal with the guards. Thanks to the efficient management, Boeru's sector possessed the most booze of all. That was about one and a half pint a person. But as the most influential jailbirds took a bigger share for themselves, there was only a few cups left for the rest. In order not to lose a drop in the darkness, three jailbirds would bend over the cup with their lit cigarettes. This way they provided for a bit of light and Boeru could see the bottle for a few seconds and pour in properly. Afterwards no light was necessary as the hands knew the way to the throat well enough. They would never switch on the lantern lest the guard should see light in the window and blow the alarm. They wouldn't even strike the flint steel once in a while, as it was highly used because of the cigarettes, and they were short of wick."Good luck and welcome, my friend," said Boeru and gallantly offered him a full bottle. "You shouldn't drink out of a cup but of a cask."And he burst into laughter starring at the lickspittles around him. They all laughed with him. The blind man smelled the vapor of alcohol and didn't move. As the host remembered that his guest couldn't see, he smoked heavily out of a cigarette in order to find his way, grabbed him by the hand and tried to pass him the bottle."Here it is, have some…""I don't drink!" he said determined and pulled his hand away."But this is your fair share, you don't drink from other people's portions," explained the leader, thinking that his guest might be too proud. "We took money from you for brandy. Here is also your rightful share of cigarettes.""I don't smoke."For a second, nobody understood anything. Everybody was both wonderstruck and indignant! Once Boeru came to his senses, he expressed his emotion in a perfect manner:"Zahei, you are not like all the other people!" and after a moment of silence: "You don't get married, and more than this, you neither drink, nor smoke! Alas! What shall we do with you?"Zahei stood there like an accused before the court… Vasile Voiculescu (1884-1963), a physician by education, wrote poetry on religious themes and fantastic prose until his imprisonment (1958-1962) by the communist authorities. The deep significance of Zahei's destiny, a picaresque character imbued with contradiction, is summed up by the hero himself: "Blindness – the school of God."


by Vasile Voiculescu (1884-1963)