“I had not gone four steps before I heard my name shouted. But it did not come from my stranger. It was in front of me: My grandfather had come into the woods to find me before dark. I had no sooner seen this than a cloud of smoke shrouded the old grey wolf and the crack of a pistol shattered the air like a wall of icicles crashing from the roof in an early thaw.”
XLI
Ghazanfer continued, “‘Grandfather! Grandfather!’ I shouted. ‘Don’t shoot. He is my friend.’
“But it was already too late to speak. My friend had been knocked to the ground by the shot and his horse behind him reared and screamed in fear.
“‘Your friend? You little fool!’ Grandfather shouted back at me. ‘The man’s a Turk. A Turkish spy.’
“‘No, no. He’s Hungarian. He was born—’
“‘It doesn’t matter where he was born. That horse, those trappings, that turban, that scimitar. He’s a God-cursed janissary. And a dead one, thank God.’
“No, the stranger was not dead. He moved, struggled to rise from the snow stained with his own blood. My grandfather saw the movement, too, and began to reload his gun.
“‘Get out of the way, boy, and let me finish him off.’
“I didn’t move except to shift my weight from foot to foot and finger the ax handle nervously. Grandfather raised the pistol to sight, found me still in the way, and scowled. But then he thought of something that made him smile as he lowered the gun again.
“‘All right, boy,’ he said. ‘This is your time to prove yourself a man. You finish him off. Yes, you. With that famous ax of yours. Go on. One quick blow between the brows and you’ll be a man. Easiest thing in the world.’
“I turned from him and faced the stranger. I brought the ax automatically to my shoulder. It would look good from behind. But under this cover I bade my friend, ‘Run!’ with voiceless lips.
“When I actually caught the horse’s reins to steady it while my friend mounted, his wounded arm useless to help him, the pretense was over.
“‘Get out of the way, you damned little coward!’ my grandfather cried.
“But, ‘Ride, ride!’ I shouted to my friend and did not move from between them until the trees folded in on him and he was out of range.
“The abuse I received was first verbal but then very, very physical. It was so severe that I more than once wished my grandfather had not been so cautious of my life earlier, but put me quickly out of my misery with a bullet through the head. Nevertheless, when at last I was allowed to crawl off to my loft without supper, I did not mind as much as before. There was the stranger’s good venison in my belly and I was no longer alone with only a wooden picture for a friend. Besides that, I felt for the first time in my life I had won a victory from the old wolf. And I had won it not by being meaner and stronger than he, but by mercy and friendship. It was just as the very effeminate Jesus had said.”
“Was the stranger a janissary?” I interrupted Ghazanfer’s tale for the first time since he’d begun.
“Of course,” he replied. “I know of no other man who could ride four hours through the snow with a wound like that in his arm and come alive to his garrison.”
“So he survived?”
“Yes.”
“But you’d told him all about your family’s anti-Turkish activities?”
“I had indeed.”
“And he returned your favor to him by not telling his superiors what he had learned?”
“No, he told them. Two weeks later our village was raided and all my uncles and grandfather were killed.”
“That must have been a hard lesson for a boy to learn: that people are generally ungrateful, even to those who save their lives.”
“No, I cannot say he did not return the favor. For when the sword, drunk with killing and carried on by its own momentum, was just above my head, he called out and stayed it.
“‘Stop, sir. That’s the boy. Spare him.’ Of course I couldn’t understand Turkish at the time, but I’m sure they were words something like that.
“My friend spoke to his superiors and then to me, describing how I should be taken to Constantinople and trained in the Enclosed School to become a janissary—just like he had been. I felt as if St. George himself had delivered me from my awful family. I did not say no.
“But then, that night, after other likely boys were rounded up and the prettiest girls spared their virginity for a better price on the slave block, the soldiers celebrated their victory with general violation.”
“It is the way of war,” I said. “Every army does it.”
“Yes,” Ghazanfer Agha agreed. “But I had never imagined that men and women come together in that way before, and it was a rude, violent, ugly awakening.
“My mother was among them. I heard her screams over the crusted snow. They were as pitiful as if she had been a helpless child, not one whose hot hand and sharp scorn I had felt so, so many times. I had to plug my fingers in my ears and still could not escape it.
“They stopped short after a while and I thought ‘Peace at last.’
“But I was wrong.
“My friend came and quietly told me that she was dead. She had plunged a sword into her own belly rather than have to accept another man that night, bury all her men in the morning, and then live with herself afterwards. My friend came to tell me I might say a few words of devotion over her if I wanted to. I had no words to say to the bloodied, mangled corpse. But
