My Son Heydari and the Karkadann Read online

  Now if this were a fairy tale out of the Shahnameh , the boy and the karkadann would become such fast friends that the monster would give up all its evil ways and turn to loving and aiding humanity, even against its own folk. Hardly. It did stop trying to kill Heydari,having finally connected his ministrations with its survival and recovery; but it permitted no liberties, such as petting or grooming—only the ringdove was permitted that sort of intimacy—and it would clearly have died itself before ever taking food from his hand. He tried to explain to me once why he could not help liking that quality in the beast.

  “It was so proud, Father,” he said. “No, it was not even a matter of pride—it was just what it was, and not about to yield a fraction of itself to anyone, whatever the cost. Yes, it was a dreadful creature, wicked and heartless like all the rest of its kind . . . but oh, it was magnificent too—splendidly terrible. Father, can you understand a little of what I am saying?”

  Of course I hit him. You can’t go around asking your father questions like that.

  But that was later, well later. Meanwhile, he was caring for that karkadann every day—I should have been able to smell it on him; they smell like hay just starting to turn moldy—while the ringdove murmured smugly to them both, and his brothers were shouting for him to put his worthless self to some use cleaning the elephants’ quarters. And now and then, so he told me, he would look up from his medicating andsee those yellow eyes fixed on him, and he would wonder what the creature was thinking, what it could possibly be thinking at that moment. Which I, or any man with the sense of a bedbug, could have told him, but let that pass. What difference? Let it pass.

  Finally, there came the day when Heydari made his way to the cave, and found the karkadann standing erect for the first time. It was grotesquely thin for its great size, and it seemed barely able to lift its head with that monstrous horn, but it stayed on its feet, swaying dazedly from side to side, and looking every moment as though it might crumple completely. Heydari clapped his hands and shouted encouragement, and the karkadann snarled in its chest and made a weak feint at him with the horn. The boy was wise enough to come no closer, but went off to find as much of the creature’s preferred vegetation as he could carry in both arms. Then, as always, he simply sat down and watched it eat, rumbling evilly to itself. And as far as I can ever suppose, he was perfectly content.

  At least, he was until Niloufar discovered them.

  She was a shepherd girl, Niloufar—I knew her father well, as it happens. When I think about it, it’s a wonder she had a flock to tend, as many sheep as the old man slaughtered on the day she was born. He had six sons, which was more than enough for him when he thought about the battles to come over their inheritance, and the celebration of Niloufar’s arrival lasted almost a week. So she was undoubtedly spoiled, treated like a princess from her birth, shepherdess or no; but she was actually quite a good girl, when all’s said and done. A little bit of a thing, but pretty with it—Farid was already eyeing her, and so was Abbas, my second boy—but I am not sure that Heydari had even noticed her, or remembered her name, for that matter. She’d noticed him, though, or I’m more of a fool than he.

  Her flock had winded the karkadann, of course, and were having none of it, but fled in panic to rejoin in the little valley below the cave. Niloufar left her two dogs minding them and—being just as idiotically inquisitive as my idiot son—climbed back up to the cave mouth, having heard a familiar voice there. She knew the smell of a karkadann as surely as any sheep, and she was afraid, but she kept coming anyway. The rest of her family are quite sensible.

  The karkadann growled savagely as soon as it saw her, and made as though to charge. Heydari cried out, “No!” and the beast halted, being still so weak that it almost fell with the first steps. But Niloufar was mightily impressed with a boy who could make a karkadann obey, and she said, “Have you actually tamed it, then? I never heard of anyone doing such a thing, not even a wizard.”

  It was a great temptation to Heydari to say that he had indeed done this, but he was a truthful boy, even when he should lie, and he explained to Niloufar how he had found the karkadann near death and done what he could for it. This impressed her even more, for all that she feared and hated the creatures as much as anyone. And then . . . well, he is not a bad-looking boy, you know—favors his mother more than me, which is as well—and between one thing and another, she said, “I think you must be a remarkable person, and very brave,” which is all any boy of his age cares to hear from a girl. And I am sure he found the wit somewhere to mumble that he thought she was a remarkable person too . . . and all this with that bloody karkadann rumbling and eyeing them, ready to spear them and toss them and trample them to rags, as kind as my Heydari had been to the thing. And I suppose one compliment led to another . . .

  . . . and so they began meeting at the cave—always by chance, naturally—to sit solemnly together and eat their lunches, and watch the karkadann gaining strength every day. As great fools as they were, the pair of them, they knew just how dangerous the beast was, and how unchanged in its nature, for all that it owed its life to Heydari. But they were young, and stupidity is exciting when you are young. I remember better than I should.

  As Heydari tells it, Niloufar was always the one asking, “But what will you do if one day it should suddenly turn on us? What is your plan?” That dreaming boy of mine with a plan—there’s a notion for you!

  But he had been thinking ahead, it turned out. Girls will have that effect on you. He said, “You and I are both quick—we will run in different directions. It cannot follow us both, and I will make certain that it follows me.”

  “And how will you do that?” she wanted to know. Smiling, I am sure, for what girl does not want to hear that a boy will risk his life to lure a monster away from her? “How can you be so sure that I will not be the one it pursues?”

  To which Heydari answered her, “Because I did it a good turn. For such a creature as the karkadann, that is intolerable. It will seek to wipe away the stain on its pride along with me.” Then Niloufar became genuinely frightened for him, which was doubtless exciting too, for both of them. It is exhausting, even thinking about the young.

  So Niloufar watched over her father’s sheep, and Heydari watched over the recovering karkadann; and both of them shyly watched over each other as best they knew how. I am sure she must have practiced chiding and warning him, as he must have copied me telling his mother to be quiet, in the name of all the gods, and let me think. I hope they did not reproduce us too closely, those children. It is uncomfortable, somehow, to imagine.

  And then there was the ringdove. It is important not to forget the ringdove.

  It must have had no family responsibilities, for it was there all the time, or the next thing to it. Now and then it would fly away for a little while, tending to its bird business, but it always returned within the hour. And it always perched on the karkadann’s immense horn, and it always cooed the softest, gentlest melody, over and over; and the karkadann would always, sooner or later, close its yellow eyes and fall into as peaceful-seeming a sleep as you can imagine those creatures ever enjoying. Sometimes it would even lie down, Heydari said, and rest its head on its front feet, which are as much like claws as they are like hooves. It would even snore now and then, in the daintiest manner imaginable, like that teakettle we only bring out for company. “You know, the way Mother snores,” he explained, and I cuffed him for it, even though she does.

  Heydari sometimes dozed briefly, with his head on Niloufar’s shoulder, but she herself never closed an eye in the presence of the karkadann. As she told me long afterward, it was not that Heydari trusted the creature any more than she, or that she was less fascinated by it than he was; rather, she liked knowing that he trusted her with his safety, his protection, which no one but a sheep had ever done before. At times her eyes would meet the karkadann’s yellow glare, the one as unblinking as the other, and on a few occasions she spoke to it while Heydari slept. “Why are
you what you are? Why do you and your folk have no friends, no companions—not even each other—but those birds? Is there truly nothing to you but hatred and rage and solitude? Why are you in the world at all?”

  Girls ask questions like that. Sometimes they ask them of men.

  The karkadann never showed any sign of interest or comprehension, of course, except for one moment, when Niloufar asked, “The song of the ringdove—does it run so?” and she imitated it in her throat, for she had an excellent ear for melody, like all her family, even all those boys. The karkadann made a strange, perplexed sound; it woke Heydari, who blinked from one to the other of them as Niloufar repeated the run ofnotes, again and again. The ringdove itself fluffed out its gray and blue-gray feathers, but remained asleep on the great horn, while the karkadann stamped its front feet, and the questioning rumble grew louder. But Niloufar kept singing.

  Perhaps fortunately for my unborn grandchildren, Heydari put his hand over her mouth and held it there while he shouted at her. “Are you mad, girl? Do you think you are some sort of wizard, some sort of wisewoman? In another moment, you would have been decorating that horn like a flower, and there would have been nothing, nothing, I could do to save you. Get back to your accursed sheep if you are going to behave so!” I myself have never seen him so angry, but this is what Niloufar told me.

  Another little girl would have burst into tears and flounced away—but looking slyly over her shoulder, expecting the boy to call her back. Not that one. She drew herself up to her full height, such as it is, and stalked out of the cave and down the hill without a backward glance. And no, Heydari did not call, though I am certain he wished to, very much. But he is as stubborn as I am—in that one way at least he is like me—so all he did was stare back at the growling karkadann, having some notion of stilling it with his eyes. And presently, for that reason or another, the beast did grow quiet, though it did not sleep again, for all the cooing of the ringdove. Neither did Heydari.

  He did not leave the cave until Niloufar had driven her sheep homeward; nor did he even look to notice whether she had returned to the valley the next afternoon when he climbed to see to the karkadann. She did not come at all that day, nor the next, nor the next, when at last he was watching for her; and when at last he gave that up, he felt older than he was. And that is how we grow old, you know, waiting for whatever we insist we are not waiting for. I know this.

  By and by, there was no question but that the karkadann was fully restored to wicked health, its wounds entirely healed, and its terrible strength revealed in even the smallest movement it made. It even left the cave to forage for itself, now and again, and to make its way to the spring for water. Yet it lingered on with Heydari, surely not out of need or affection, but as though it too were waiting for . . . something, some certain moment when it would know exactly what to do about this annoying, baffling little creature. Not that there was any mystery about what that was going to be. Karkadanns only do one thing.

  Why Heydari continued to visit the cave and care for the creature . . . ah, if you ever solve that one, explain it to him before me, because he still can’t say himself. The best he was ever able to tell me was that for him it was like dancing on the edge of a knife blade, or a great abyss, knowing that if you keep dancing there you will very likely fall to your death—but that if you stop dancing, you surely will. He said he was terrified every moment, but in a wonderfully calm way, if that made any sense to me. Which it did not, no more than anything he’s ever done has made sense, but there you are. There’s my son for you.

  And after Niloufar stopped coming . . . oh, then nothing much really seemed to matter, living or dying. And there’s a boy, if you like, any boy at all. It’s a wonder any of them survive to father a new crop of idiots like themselves. He meant it, too. They all mean it. He said he almost wished the karkadann would make up its mind and kill him . . . but at the same time he could not keep from wondering, as he stared at it day after day, whether it might not have some sort of a weak spot, a vulnerable place under all that hide and power that no one had ever discovered. He imagined it being his legacy to Persia, and to me. Boys.

  I wonder now and again whether the beast truly felt no gratitude at all toward my son. I have never known an animal—human beings excepted—to be totally incapable of showing some form of appreciation for a kindness. My wife has tamed a snake enough that it will come to her and take milk from her hand; Heydari himself took such care of a baby elephant when its mother was killed by a karkadann that to this day that enormous animal—Mojtaba, biggest male in my herd—follows him around, holding Heydari’s hand with his trunk. And maybe there was some way in which Heydari, all the while knowing better, believed that the karkadann—his karkadann—would never, at the last, actually turn on him. Mind you, I say maybe.

  Very well. There came one hot and cloudless afternoon when the air was so still you almost had to push your way through it, like a great sticky mass of old cobwebs. The karkadann had already been to the spring twice to drink, and now it half-crouched against the cave wall, eyes half-closed, growling to itself so deeply and softly that Heydari could barely hear the sound at all. The ringdove was perched, as ever, on the tip of its horn, its rippling murmur rasping at Heydari’s nerves for the first time. He felt the way you feel when a storm is coming, even though it may yet be a day, or even two days, from reaching you: there is a smell , and there is a kind of stiff crackle, like invisible lightning, racing up and down your arms, and you have to think about each breath you take. He found that he was crouching himself, ready to spring in any direction; and at the same time—so he told me—thinking, as he studied the light and shadow playing over the brutal majesty of the beast’s flanks and high shoulders, that if it had to be, now would be the time to go. Did you ever think such a thought when you were fourteen years old? I never thought anything like that.

  But the boy isn’t a total fool, not even then—not all the way through. When the yellow eyes seemed to have closed completely, under the influence of the ringdove’s endless cooing, Heydari began edging toward the cave mouth on his haunches, inch by inch, watching the karkadann every moment. He’s never said what instinct made him do it, only that it felt suddenly very close in the cave, what with that moldy-hay smell of the creature, and that birdsong going on and on, and he began to feel in need of fresh air. Another foot—two feet at most—and he would simply rise and walk out and down into the little valley . . . and perhaps Niloufar would be there, even though her sheep were not. Not, you understand, that he cared a rap about that.

  And what finally tipped the balance—what woke the karkadann and set it at last seeing my son as it never had before—I don’t imagine he or Niloufar or I will ever know. Heydari says it actually made that same odd puzzled sound before it charged, just as though it didn’t know yet why it was being made to do this. Though I don’t suppose that’s true for a minute, and it wouldn’t make any bloody difference if it were. It bloody charged.

  Coming at him, absolutely silent, it looked twice as huge as it had just a moment before, for all that he had grown so used to the immensity of it in the cave. He shrieked, fell over backward, and rolled some way down the slope, stopping himself by grabbing at clumps of grass and stones. When he stumbled to his feet, the karkadann filled his entire horizon, poised at the cave mouth, staring down at him. It did not move for what he tells me is still the longest moment of his life. Once he said that it would almost have been worth dying on that horn like an elephant to know what was going through the beast’s mind. I tried to hit him, but he ducked out of range.

  He could see the great leg muscles gathering and swelling like thunderheads as the karkadann set itself, and he thought—or he says he thought—of his family, and how sad his mother would be, and how furious I would be, and wished he were safely home with us all. That’s as may be; but I’ve always suspected he’d have been thinking of little Niloufar, and wishing he had had time and sense enough to make it up with her. I hope he was.
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  In a vague kind of way, he wondered where the ringdove had gotten to. It had flown up the moment the karkadann charged him, and he could not see it anywhere. A pity, for if there was anything in the world that soothed that devil-gotten creature at all, it was the song of the dove. The strange thing was that he could have sworn he still heard it somewhere. Perched in some tree, like enough, waiting patiently for the slaughter to be over, the same as always. Ringdoves aren’t smart birds, but they aren’t fools either.

  Then the karkadann came for him.

  He says he never heard the bellow. He says what he’ll remember to his last day is—of all things—the sound of the stones of the hillside surging backward under the karkadann’s clawed hoofs. That, and the ringdove, suddenly sounding almost in his right ear . . . and another sound that he knew he knew, but it shouldn’t be there, it mustn’t be there . . .

  It was Niloufar. It was Niloufar, singing her perfect imitation of the ringdove’s song—and it was Niloufar riding my big Mojtaba straight at the karkadann! Now, as I think I’ve made abundantly clear to you, there is no elephant in the world who will challenge a karkadann . . . except, perhaps, one who has lost his mother to such beasts, and who sees his adoptive mother in the same danger. Mojtaba trumpeted—Niloufar swears it sounded more like a roar thananything else—laid his big ears back flat, curled his trunk out of harm’s way, and charged.

  As nearly as I could ever make out from their two accounts, that double impossibility—a ringdove singing sweetly where there wasn’t a ringdove, and an elephant half its size attacking head-on, with death in his red eyes—the karkadann must have been thrown off guard, unable either to halt or commit to a full rush, and too bewildered to do more than brace itself for Mojtaba’s onslaught. Mad with vengeance or not, the elephant knew enough to strike at an angle that made the broken fang useless as a weapon, and he crashed into the karkadann with his full weight and power, knocking the beast off its feet for—doubtless—the first time in its life. Mojtaba’s tusks—five feet long, both of them, if they’re an inch—drove into its side, wrenched free, drove again . . .