Death of the Snake Catcher

On The Emerald Shore-1

On The Emerald Shore Translated by Lois Kapila

“What thing is most reliable?”

“Earth.”

“And least?”

“Sea.”

Pittacus, a sage of ancient Greece

On the third day, a mist enveloped the sea. Albescent, rising up off the water, it languidly wrapped around the shore, then the town, little by little covering the entire surroundings. People said that it was no coincidence, while Arta, the steward at the holiday house, who for some reason was called “The Hunchback” behind his back, did not mince his words: it was the work of the drowned.

They had already been looking for her for three days, round the clock – but in vain. The search group, hastily thrown together, two amateur divers from the local Sea Wings club, took turns in searching through the water’s depths. A policeman and a mechanic, on a grey, ugly, skeletal fishing boat, the Yagmur, moved further and further from the shore. From there, the vacationers watched them, and also carried out their own search. They raked over the waves with their gaze, in the hope that, sooner or later, the drowned girl would wash to shore. Just as he had done...

He had drowned. The sea had swallowed him – an act of vengeance for something. But for what, nobody knew.

Mergen, tall and brown-haired, a sceptic with grey, vapid eyes, immediately said that those who show off, or rather, as he put it, all posers and ponces who come here to holiday and plot evil jokes with the sea, end in this very way. Everybody listened closely to his words, but not everybody agreed. It seemed to me that this was a simplification by Mergen, or maybe he had been offended by the drowned guy, and so now was mocking him. I continued to think there was something strange in this death, for surely a man such as Charlie, for this was the name of the deceased, could not drown in the shallow waters of the Avaza. His body glistened with health, and spread-eagled on the empty shore, even dead, instilled those around with a quiet respect.

Nevertheless, death came – the medical report later stated, “Cause of death: drowning” – and all of the conversations turned around this. Murad said that it probably wasn’t because he swam badly or anything. Sometimes unfortunate things happen, and even the most outstanding swimmers can be swallowed up by the sea. Cramps, for example. Who can claim to be immune to cramps? Maybe the young man had been struck with just that fate?

I observed him closely, as he was talking about the death of this guy he had never met, and realised that he was genuinely grieved. This handsome man, dressed in an imported fabric of the highest quality, always in a bubbly mood, on that evening sat across from me sorrowful and dull. I admit, I suddenly felt ashamed for dismissing this guy as a playboy until now. On top of this, Murad seemed sentimental; admittedly, this seems to be a natural trait in this type. Yet all the same, he astonished me with his extreme sensitivity:

“I can picture the very last moment of his life. He probably said to himself as he died, ‘What else can I do to save myself? Nothing. Everything I could do, I have done.’”

And then he unexpectedly turned to me:

“How long does a man live after his death?”

I replied, “Two to three minutes, at most, until the mind cools down. Until that moment, he can hear. That’s why, when somebody dies, those who sit around his bed cry with more fervour, so that the dying, or I should say, dead man, believes that those close to him are grieving over him, that they are unhappy.”

“So that means,” said Murad, “that he battled the waves until his very death and, only having died, his mind turned to those close to him: ‘You understand what else I could do? Nothing...’.”

And then Murad rushed headlong towards the sea. Adelina did her best to hold him back. I tried to talk him out of it. But he continued to maintain, “What will be will be! Let the sea take me and do with me what it will!”

And with those words, he almost broke down in tears, and became indescribably embarrassed. He missed his wife and his child who were far away at home, without the faintest idea of where he was. But he was not alone here. He said that something terrible could also one day happen to him, and he would ingloriously disappear, cease to exist to those close to him – without trace, without honour...

The sea was agitated throughout the night – it simply did not want to calm. The entire night, we listened to the raging waves beat on the rocky shore.

The following day, we – the regulars at the billiard table at Parus, the only respectable holiday house on the empty Caspian shore – gathered together, and once again talk, of course, turned to the drowned man. Everybody offered different theories. Samed recalled that Charlie had, on that ill-fated day, played billiards for a long time, something that nobody had seen him do before, and he either got into an argument with somebody, or simply being out of sorts, let slip several sad phrases that now seemed very strange and mysterious. According to him, it was as if the deceased could sense some impending disaster and, who knows, maybe even knew about his imminent death?

Samed recounted that it was as if Charlie muttered, “A life without risk is not worth a brass farthing.” But somebody disagreed vehemently with him, recalling he had said something different: “Life is only worth anything when you take risks.” Whatever he said, everybody agreed about one thing: his demeanour had definitely been somewhat downcast.

Then another young man stepped forward, attempting to bring us from these soaring heights of fancy back to earth. Banal phrases do not have magical powers, or the inexplicable will of fate, he said. Many people, he said, voice that motto and it’s a commonplace truth: “Risk is a noble thing,” or “He who dares, wins.”

But it wasn’t that easy for the vacationing gossips and tattle-tongues to put a full stop on this whole affair of the deceased, because too much remained unclear. It was Aman that brought up the topic again – a chubby guy, who, regardless of his ample belly, was something of a sharp-shooter when it came to billiards. He could pot a ball with his eyes closed, doubling it into different pockets, or into one, but in such a way that the other person’s ball by the pocket yields to the object ball, and then, if not all the time, certainly sometimes manages also to deflect the cue ball into the opposite pocket. We all marvelled at his skill and when he was lining up to sink a shot, egged him on, good-naturedly chuckling as we watched him get flustered and search for a comfortable position at the edge of the table to rest his giant belly.

Aman only rarely swam, something that was strange for local residents. He always walked along the sandy beach, attracting attention because of his amusingly protruding paunch, which bounced over his unfailingly fashionable trousers – he was a dandy. It seemed like he came to the seaside for the sole purpose of demonstrating his prowess on the billiard table. He now told us that on the very last day, the drowned boy said to him: “All the same, to die on dry land is easier than to perish gulping down salt water, although the sea for some inexplicable reason draws one in.”

This recollection stunned all of us because we had by this point come round to the idea that the whole event had been purely an accident. But now … very true, it all seemed even contrived: twilight, the desolate shore, and most importantly, a storm. So it seems this stranger was preparing himself for death. Maybe he, not without forethought, picked that day, that hour, and that place? Having been one of the first, and as I later found out, of the few to actually see the body of the drowned man, I noticed blood on his right temple. So I couldn’t help but have certain thoughts: the craggy shore, boulders, the noise of the waves, the nocturnal emptiness … who on earth knows what happened?

I tried to dislodge from my memory all details that might relate to the perished man, Charlie, and it seemed as if I inadvertently teased out a link ... the youngest daughter of the Hunchback of Arta was called Jergi. That’s what she was called, although that only vaguely resembled a female Turkmen name. Maybe, it is a strange derivation from the name Jamal, or from some other similar name. There she is, Jergi, walking barefoot along the water’s edge, you could often see her at the shore, and hear her rapid, Yomut speech. Was she seventeen yet at that point? I doubt it, barely. Rough around the edges but charming because of her youth, she seemed to be a princess on the wild shore where there were so few women. Many stared at her in wonderment. This meant the young creature had an overwhelming sense of pride that was equalled only by the overwhelming anger the looks induced in her spindly father. These glances from mature men directed at his daughter, both flattered and distressed him.

Once, I happened to overhear how coarsely he cursed one holiday-maker because of her. I saw at that moment the rage stored up in that little man with the wart on his nose. His eyes, dark as the night, burned with a violent flame, while with Jergi those same eyes drew you into the unknown distance ... And straight into that panicked situation fell one hapless heart-throb, who risked making a throw-away quip about the young girl’s bare calves, unaware that her father was standing right beside her! (Judging by their exchange, the girl, walking past the holiday-maker, unintentionally raised her ankle-length Turkmen dress a little higher than permitted).

Charlie always swam alone, only sometimes an unknown blond woman would appear beside him - not wildly beautiful, but delicate and dainty as Venetian glass. Generally she swam rather badly and would quickly return to the shore. Charlie though was a strong swimmer, and therefore would venture far out from the shore. We often lost sight of him. The idea of competing or chasing after him didn’t even come into anyone’s head. While he, it seemed, didn’t even notice anyone around him.

The emerald shore, the indescribable purity of the water – it is unlikely you’ll find this at the Baltic or the Black Sea. Only here, the unbelievable heat wears down holiday-makers so much that after just two weeks they care about very little, and will desperately run wherever they can to find some cool relief.

The billiard room, where, as I have already said, all of the men (and two or three European women) gathered, was the only place where you could wind down, as it was cooled by Japanese air conditioners. Here, people generally took cover from the swelter of the midday heat.

Charlie didn’t go to the billiard room that often, seeming to prefer to spend time alone on the shore, gathering rare rocks or, sitting under a parasol, simply gazing contemplatively out to sea. When I later thought about it, it seemed to me that Jergi had also been there doing the same, but she, in my opinion, was more fond of shells, out of which she would try to fashion necklaces to wear. Only once did I notice her give something to Charlie, laughing and staring deep into his eyes. Maybe she was giving him shells?

As for the tragedy, which had played out on the emerald shore, by the fifth day a great deal had already become clearer to me – and even if it had not become clearer, then, in any case, I had now put my finger on one obvious link between the episode and the wrath of the Hunchback of Arta. Judge for yourself: would a father argue with his grown daughter in such a way over a trifle? It came about like this...

One day as the evening was drawing near, I lay on the shore. It was almost time for dinner, and I was summoning my energy to get up, when from the other side of the enormous boulder next to which I had taken shelter, voices suddenly rang out. The pounding of the sea drowned them out, yet every now and then fragments of phrases reached my ear, and indeed it was shameful to eavesdrop on the conversation of others. I don’t know what prevented me from getting up immediately and leaving, but I, having pulled my shirt back on already, stayed there for a while.