9781784379858 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Glagoslav Publications
Published: 2016-07-22T00:00:00+00:00

11

At the first premonition of dawn, Aypi’s ghost floated down from above and into the winding, dishevelled streets. As the sun rose in the sky to the height of a spear, the village, as it always did, came to life. Like sturgeon in shallow water, people went back and forth leaving wakes behind them.

Mered Badaly, smoking his after-breakfast pipe, was walking along the street when Aypi flew up to him and rasped in his ear:

“Men are dishonourable cowards! They play a crooked game and repress their wives!”

Mered Badaly started and peered around, then cleaned his ear out with his thumb. She wanted to speak and be heard, so she cried mockingly into the old fellow’s ear, “Woman: the head! Man: the feet!”

He stopped short and looked around again. “What in the world?” he said to himself. “If a man lives long enough, wretch that he is, he’ll see every sort of thing. If a voice speaks in your ears, how can you answer?”

The voice came again in his ear: “Man fears woman!”

Mered Badaly looked up into the sky, in case that was the source of the voice.

“A woman’s ruin is her husband!”

Mered Badaly wondered who the speaker could be that was joking with him like this. Was it someone hiding behind one of the houses?

He leapt over to peek behind a nearby hut, but it was completely quiet. He continued on his way, puzzled. There weren’t many up early as him, so it was remarkable that someone would bother him at this hour. “But who knows,” he said to himself. “’Every herd has its culls,’ and a village has every sort of person. We may be small, but there’s no shortage of examples in town. We even have our round-heeled women, just like the big city. It seemed like the voice came from the sky, didn’t it?”

“Hey!” he shouted, to no avail. “Speak up! Isn’t that Toti-Naz’s voice? No,” he reassured himself, “I haven’t heard yet that whores can fly, not living ones anyway; the dead ones are another story.” The old man’s thoughts made him apprehensive. “Black bird, black bird, knock on wood! I take it back!” he chanted.

After seeing how useless that woman’s husband was, Mered Badaly wasn’t inclined to blame Toti-Naz too much, and considered the fault to be her spouse’s. There was no way to wash a dirty woman’s face, but if she was dirty, the husband must have been unworthy of her respect. God give patience to the wife of a feeble man! A weak man will send a headstrong woman to run after everyone, even if she wouldn’t have strayed of her own accord. Pirim’s wife though, had no interest in labour, whether hard or skilled – just street walking. The woman had caught the thirst for money and would go to the city any time she could, then return like a snake in a new skin. People knew she wasn’t

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