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The Blind Owl
By: Sadeq Hedayat
Translated by: Iraj Bashiri
n life there are certain sores that, like a canker, gnaw at the soul in solitude and diminish it.
Since generally it is the custom to relegate these incredible sufferings to the realm of rare and singular accidents and happenings, it is not possible to reveal them to anyone. If one does talk or write about them, people pretend to accept them with sarcastic remarks and dubious smiles, while adhering either to prevalent beliefs or to their own ideas about them. The reason is that as yet man has not found a remedy for these sores; the only remedy now is forgetfulness induced by wine or, artificial sleep induced by opium and other narcotics. It is a pity, however, that the effect of these drugs is transitory and that after a while, instead of soothing, they add to the pain.
Will it come to pass one day that someone will penetrate the secrets of these supernatural happenings and recognize this reflection of the shadow of the soul which manifests itself in a coma-like limbo between sleep and wakefulness?
I shall only describe one such incident which happened to me and which has shocked me so much that I shall never forget it; its ominous scar will poison my life throughout-from the beginning to the end of eternity where no man's understanding can fathom. Did I say poisoned? Well, I meant to say that I am scathed by it and will remain so for the rest of my mortal life.
I shall try to put down whatever I recall, whatever has remained in my memory of the relations that connect the events. Perhaps I can make a universal judgment about it. No. I want merely to become sure, or else to believe it myself, because it is immaterial to me whether other people believe me or not. Simply, I am afraid that I may die tomorrow but still not know myself, because in the course of life experiences I have realized that a frightful chasm lies between others and me. I also have realized that I should keep silent as much as possible and that I should keep my thoughts to myself. If I have decided that I should write, It is only because I should introduce myself to my shadow--a shadow which rests in a stooped position on the wall, and which appears to be voraciously swallowing all that I write down. It is for him that I want to do an experiment to see if we can know each other better, because since the time I severed my relations with the others, I have wanted to know myself better.
Absurd thoughts! It may be so, but they torture me more than any reality. Are not these people who resemble me, and who seemingly have the same needs, whims and desires as I do--are they not here to deceive me? Are they not shadows brought into existence merely to mock and beguile me? Isn't that which I feel, see and measure imaginary throughout and quite different from reality?
I write only for my shadow which is cast on the wall in front of the light. I must introduce myself to it.
In this base world, full of poverty and misery, for the first time I thought a ray of sunshine had shone on my life. But alas, it was not a sunbeam, rather it was only a transient beam, a shooting star, which appeared to me in the likeness of a woman or an angel. And in the light of that moment, lasting only about a second, I witnessed all my life's misfortunes, and I discovered their magnitude and grandeur. Then this beam of light disappeared again into the dark abyss into which it was destined to disappear. No. I could not keep this transient beam for myself.
It was three months, no, it was two months and four days since I had lost her, but the memory of her enchanting eyes, no, the attractive malice of her eyes, remained in my life forever. How can I forget one who is so pertinent to my life?
No, I will not call her by name, because she, with that ethereal body, slim and misty, with those two large, wonder stricken, sparkling eyes behind which my life was gradually and painfully burning and melting away, she no longer belongs to this base, fierce world. No, I should not disgrace her name with earthly things.
After seeing her I withdrew from the circle of people. I withdrew completely from the circle of the fools and the fortunate; and, for forgetfulness, I took refuge in wine and opium. I passed, and still pass, my life daily within the four walls of my room. My whole life has passed within the confines of four walls.
My daily occupation was the painting of pencase covers; my entire time was dedicated to the painting of pencase covers and to the consumption of alcohol and opium. I had chosen the ridiculous profession of pencase-cover painting to kill the time.
By a lucky chance my house is located outside the city, in a quiet and restful spot, away from the hustle and bustle of people's lives. Its boundaries are well defined and around it there are some ruins. From beyond the ditch, however, some low mud-brick houses are visible and the city begins there. I do not know which madman or which ill-disposed architect built this house in forgotten times, but when I close my eyes, not only all its nooks and crannies materialize before my eyes but I feel its pressure on my shoulders. It is a house that could have been painted only on ancient pencases.
I must write about all these events to assure myself that they are not figments of my imagination. I must explain them to my shadow which is cast on the wall. To begin with, before this incident there had remained for me only one source of cheerfulness or of content. I used to paint on pencase covers within the confines of the four walls of my room, and I used to pass the time with this ridiculous amusement; but after I saw those two eyes, and after I saw her, every work, every movement lost its inherent value and meaning entirely. What is strange, however, and what is incredible is that, for some reason, the subjects of all my painted scenes have been of the same type and shape. I always used to draw a cypress tree under which an old man, wrapped in a cloak, hunching his shoulders in the manner of the Indian yogis, sat in a squatting position. He wore a shalma around his head, and he put the index finger of his left hand on his lips as a sign of astonishment. Opposite him a girl, wearing a long, black dress, was bending to offer him a lily. She was bending because a brook intervened between them. Had I seen this image before, or was it inspired in a dream? I do not know. I only know that whatever I painted revolved around this scene and this same subject; my hand drew this scene involuntarily. And still more incredible than this is the fact that there were customers for this picture. I even used to send some of these pencase covers to India in care of my uncle, who used to sell them and return the money.
I do not recall it correctly, because this picture used to appear to me to be distant as well as close by at the same time. Now I recall an incident. I said that I must write down my recollections; but the writing of these notes occurred much later. It has no relevance to the subject at hand. Although it was to devote myself to writing that I abandoned pencase-cover painting. Two months ago, no two months and four days ago, was the thirteenth day of Farvardin. Everybody had rushed to the countryside. In order to paint undisturbed, I had shut the window of my room. Around sunset, when I was busy painting, the door suddenly opened and my uncle entered--that is to say, he said he was my uncle. I had never seen him before because from his early youth he had been on a distant journey. Perhaps he was a ship captain. I thought he had some mercantile business with me, because apparently he was a merchant as well. In any case, my uncle was a stooped old man who wore an Indian shalma around his head and a yellow torn cloak on his shoulders. He had covered his head and face with a scarf. His collar was open and his hairy chest could be seen. One could count the hairs of his thin beard as it protruded through his scarf. With his red, fistular eyelids and leprous lip, he bore a very distant and ridiculous resemblance to me, as if my reflection had fallen on a magic mirror. I had always imagined my father as looking something like that. Upon entering, he retired to the corner of the room and sat there in a squatting position. Thinking that I should prepare something and offer it to him, I lit a light and entered the closet of my room. I searched everywhere for something that would be suitable for an old man to eat. This I did though I knew there was nothing in the house. There was neither any opium nor any wine left for me. Suddenly the built-in niche below the ceiling caught my eye. As if inspired, I recalled an ancient wine flask that I had inherited. I think they had made the wine on the occasion of my birth. The wine flask was In the niche. I had never thought of this wine before. In fact I had forgotten that such a thing existed in the house. To reach the niche, I put a nearby stool under my feet. But as soon as I tried to pick up the wine flask, I was distracted by the following scene through the air inlet in the niche: In the field behind my room a bent, stooped old man was squatting under a cypress tree, and a young girl, no, a heavenly angel was standing in front of him, bending to give him a black lily with her right hand. The old man was chewing on the index finger of his left hand.
Although the girl was located exactly opposite me, it seemed that she did not pay attention to what was happening around her. She was looking without seeing anything, and an unconscious, involuntary smile had dried to the corner of her lips; it seemed as though she was thinking of an absent person. It was from the stool that I saw her dreadful charming eyes, eyes which were enchanting and reproachful at the same time. It was to the shining and dreadful balls of those worried, threatening and inviting eyes that my single beam of life was attracted, and it was to the depth of those same eyes that my life was drawn and in them annihilated. This attractive mirror drew my whole being to itself in a way unthinkable to any human being. Her curved Turkmen eyes with their intoxicating supernatural beam frightened as well as attracted. She seemed to have witnessed, with those eyes, supernatural happenings beyond those any mortal could witness. Her cheeks were high, her forehead wide, her eyebrows thin and connected and her lips meaty and half open. Her lips seemed to have just finished a long, warm kiss with which they were not yet satisfied. A tress of her disheveled, uncontrolled black hair which framed her silvery face was stuck on her temple. The tenderness of her limbs and the heedlessness of her ethereal movements bespoke her transient nature. Only a dancing girl at an Indian temple could have her harmonious gait.
Her placid form and her sorrowful happiness distinguished her from normal human beings. Her beauty was not normal at all. She appeared to me like an image in an opium hallucination. She induced the heated love of the mandrake in me. She had a slim, tall body with a line symmetrically dividing her shoulders, arms, breasts, buttocks and shins--it was as though she was separated from her mate.
She wore a wrinkled, black dress which, fitting her well, stuck to her body. When I saw her, she was about to jump over the brook which separated her from the old man. She failed. The old man laughed hysterically. He had a dry and repulsive laughter, a hybrid mocking laughter, which made one's hair stand on end. His facial expression did not change. It was the resonance of a laughter emerging from the depth of a hollow.
With the wine flask in my hand, I jumped off the stool out of fright. For some reason I was shaking: a shiver in which fright and enjoyment were intermingled. I felt as if I had jumped up from a pleasantly nightmarish dream. I rested the wine flask on the ground and held my head between my hands. How many minutes--hours? I don't know. When I came to, I took the wine flask and reentered the room. My uncle had gone and the door of my room, like the open mouth of a corpse, was left ajar. The ring of the old man's laughter still echoed in my ears.
Even though it was getting dark, and the lamp was smoking, the effect of the pleasant and frightful shiver that I had felt was not wearing off. From this moment my life's direction changed. One glance was enough to bring about the change, because that heavenly angel, that ethereal girl, touched me more deeply than any human being would be able to comprehend.
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