bled and bled.
While this was going on the other monks, who’d retired to the rocks, read, or drank wine or lay on their backs watching the stars. One was even praying. All this Zelim could see because he deliberately looked away from his violators, determined not to let them see the terror in his eyes; and equally determined not to weep. So instead he watched the others, and waited for the men who were violating him to be finished.
He fully expected to be murdered when they were done with him, but this, at least, he was spared. Instead the monks had the night with him, on and off, using him every way their desires could devise, and then, just before dawn left him there among the rocks, and went on their way.
The sun came up, but Zelim closed his eyes against it. He didn’t want to look at the light ever again. He was too ashamed. But by midday the heat made him get to his knees and drag himself into the comparative cool of the rocks. There, to his surprise, he found that one of the holy men—perhaps the one who had been praying—had left a skin of wine, some bread, and a piece of dried fruit. It was no accident, he knew. The man had left it for Zelim.
Now, and only now, did the fisherman allow the tears to come, moved not so much by his own agonies, but by the fact that there had been one who’d cared enough for him to do him this kindness.
He drank and ate. Maybe it was the potency of the wine, but he felt remarkably renewed, and covering his nakedness as best he could he got up from his niche among the rocks and set off down the trail. His body still ached, but the bleeding had stopped, and rather than lie down when night fell he walked under the stars. Somewhere along the way a bony-flanked she-dog came creeping after him, looking perhaps for the comfort of human company. He didn’t shoo her away; he too wanted company. After a time the animal became brave enough to walk at Zelim’s heel, and finding that her new master didn’t kick her, was soon trotting along as though they’d been together since birth.
The hungry bitch’s arrival in his life marked a distinct upturn in Zelim’s fortunes. A few hours later he came into a village many times larger than Atva, where he found a large crowd in the midst of what he took to be some kind of celebration. The streets were thronged with people shouting and stamping, and generally having a fine time.
“Is it a holy day?” Zelim asked a youth who was sitting on a doorstep, drinking.
The fellow laughed. “No,” he said, “it’s not a holy day.”
“Well then why’s everybody so happy?”
“We’re going to have some hangings,” the youth replied, with a lazy grin.
“Oh…I…see.”
“You want to come and watch?”
“Not particularly.”
“We might get ourselves something to eat,” the youth said. “And you look as though you need it.” He glanced Zelim up and down. “In fact you look like you need a lot of things. Some breeches, for one thing. What happened to you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That bad, huh? Well then you should come to the hangings. My father already went, because he said it’s good to see people who are more unfortunate than you. It’s good for the soul, he said. Makes you thankful.”
Zelim saw the wisdom in this, so he and his dog accompanied the boy through the village to the market square. It took them longer to dig through the crowd than his guide had anticipated, however, and by the time they got there all but one of the men who were being hanged was already dangling from the makeshift gallows. He knew all the prisoners instantly: the ragged beards, the sunburned pates. These were his violators. All of them had plainly suffered horribly before the noose had taken their lives. Three of them were missing their hands; one of them had been blinded; others, to judge by the blood that glued their clothes to their groins, had lost their manhoods to the knife.
One of this unmanned number was Nazar, the leader of the gang, who was the last of the gang left alive. He could not stand, so two of the villagers were holding him up while a third slipped the noose over his head. His rotted teeth had been smashed out, and his whole body covered with cuts and bruises. The crowd was wildly happy at the sight of the man’s agonies. With every twitch and gasp they applauded and yelled his crimes at him. “Murderer!” they yelled. “Thief!” they yelled. “Sodomite!” they yelled.
“He’s all that and more, my father says,” the youth told Zelim. “He’s so evil, my father says, that when he dies we might see the Devil come up onto the gallows and catch his soul as it comes out of his mouth!”
Zelim shuddered, sickened at the thought. If the boy’s father was right, and the sodomite robber-monk had been the spawn of Satan, then perhaps that unholiness had been passed into his own body, along with the man’s spittle and seed. Oh, the horror of that thought; that he was somehow the wife of this terrible man and would be dragged down into the same infernal place when his time came.
The noose was now about Nazar’s neck, and the rope pulled tight enough that he was pulled up like a puppet. The men who’d been supporting him stood away, so that they could help haul on the rope. But in the moments before the rope tightened about his windpipe, Nazar started to speak. No; not speak; shout, using every last particle of strength in his battered body.
“God shits on you all!” he yelled. The crowd hurled abuse at him. Some threw stones. If he felt them breaking his bones, he didn’t respond. He just kept shouting. “He put a thousand innocent souls into our hands! He didn’t care what we did to them! So you can do whatever you want to me—”
The rope was tightening around his throat as the men hauled on the other end. Nazar was pulled up on to tip-toe. And still he shouted, blood and spittle coming with the words.
“—there is no hell! There is no paradise! There is no—”
He got no further; the noose closed off his windpipe and he was hauled into the air. But Zelim knew what word had been left unsaid. God. The monk had been about to cry: there is no God.
The crowd was in ecstasies all around him; cheering and jeering and spitting at the hanged man as he jerked around on the end of the rope. His agonies didn’t last long. His tortured body gave out after a very short time, much to the crowd’s disapproval, and he hung from the rope as though the grace of life had never touched him. The boy at Zelim’s side was plainly disappointed.
“I didn’t see Satan, did you?”
Zelim shook his head, but in his heart he thought: maybe I did. Maybe the Devil’s just a man like me. Maybe he’s many men; all men, maybe.
His gaze went along the row of hanged men, looking for the one who had prayed while he’d been raped; the one Zelim suspected had left him the wine, bread, and fruit. Perhaps he’d also persuaded his companions to spare their victim; Zelim would never know. But here was the strange thing. In death, the men all looked the same to him. What had made each man particular seemed to have drained away, leaving their faces deserted, like houses whose owners had departed, taking every sign of particularity with them. He couldn’t tell which of them had prayed on the rock, or which had been particularly vicious in their dealings with him. Which had bitten him like an animal; which had pissed in his face to wake him when he’d almost fainted away; which had called him by the name of a woman as they’d ploughed him. In the end, they were virtually indistinguishable as they swung there.
“Now they’ll be cut up and their heads put on spikes,” the youth was explaining, “as a warning to bandits.”
“And holy men,” Zelim said.
“They weren’t holy men,” the youth replied.
His remark was overheard by a woman close by. “Oh yes they were,” she said. “The leader, Nazar, had been a monk in Samarkand. He studied some books he should never have studied, and that was why he became what he became.”
“What