Free Birds Without Wings by Louis De Bernières Page B

a dream. As she told her friend later:
    “It was so strange, Ayse, there she was, such a familiar shape, with her shoulders a little bent, and the grey hair poking out in wisps from the sides of her scarf, and that afflicted look in her eyes that she always had, and yet I felt nothing but peace. I said, ‘Mother, is that you?’ and she sat on the edge of the divan and said, ‘Who else?’ and I said, ‘Mother, it’s been so long, what are you doing?’ and she said, ‘The earth is weighing on my chest. Show me some light, so that I can breathe.’ And I lay there thinking, and I said, ‘Mother, it’s been only three years, and you know what people have been saying.’ My mother says, ‘Well, I am innocent, and everyone can see it if you do as I ask. My bones need wine.’ And I say, ‘But Mother …’ And she sighs and says, ‘Even my child suspects me,’ and I say, ‘No, no, no,’ and my mother says, ‘Just think, afterwards you can give up mourning,’ and I say, ‘I will always mourn. Your death burns me every day. Look, I am burned all over.’ And I hold out my arms to her. She sighs again and says, ‘If you do as I ask, the burning will be healed by water.’ And so finally I say, ‘I will do as you ask,’ and she stands up and says, ‘When you have done it, I would like to know. Send me a message.’ And I say, ‘Yes, Mother, I will,’ and I tell myself, ‘Polyxeni, you’ve got to remember this when you wake up,’ and then I go back to sleep, and in the morning when the azan wakes me up, I do remember it, and that’s why I’m telling you about it.”
    Ayse put her hand on Polyxeni’s cheek, and pressed her own headagainst that of her friend. “Well,” she said at last, “I suppose it’s not for me to say, really. We don’t do what you people do. Our dead don’t like to be molested. But in my opinion, for what it’s worth, which probably isn’t much, you ought to do what your mother asks.”
    “I am going to do it on the day after the next psychosavato, which is only next week, but there’s plenty of time to get the food ready and tell Father Kristoforos.”
    Ayse pursed her lips and thought for a moment. “Do you really think it’s wise to do it so soon? I mean, I’m no one to have an opinion, if you ask me, but you know what everyone’s been saying. Ever since someone started that rumour about your mother, may she rest in paradise, everyone’s been saying that perhaps she made the poison that killed a lot of other people who didn’t die of poison at all. This is a filthy town for gossip. I keep things to myself, you know me, but there’s many who don’t.”
    “My mother didn’t know how to make any poison,” protested Polyxeni. “Why should she make poison to kill the family of Rustem Bey? They died of the plague that comes back from Mecca every year like a curse! She has asked me to prove her innocent, and so I will.”
    “I wish you good success,” said Ayse, with a mote of scepticism in her voice, “but I still think you should wait the full five years. And how will you send your mother a message? Can you go to her in a dream?”
    “I don’t know if dead people have dreams,” replied Polyxeni, knitting her brow in perplexity, “and if they do, how can you be sure of getting into one?”
    “She might come into one of yours, and then you can take advantage of the opportunity.”
    “It might be a long time, though.”
    “I know how you can do it,” said Ayse suddenly, tapping the side of her nose with a forefinger, in benign appreciation of her own genius.
    Accordingly, Polyxeni left her friend’s house by the back door, pulled on her slippers, blinked in the sunlight, which by now was growing pointed and fierce, throwing knife-edged shadows upon the pastel walls of the houses, and made her path through the alleyways down towards the meydan. She passed Iskander throwing his pots and perspiring in his little shelter, she passed the streethawkers whose cries