Balthasar's Odyssey Read Online Free PDF

are you going?”
    â€œTo Constantinople, God willing.”
    He stopped and put his head on one side, as if to catch the din of the distant city.
    â€œIstambul! Istambul! To those who have eyes it’s hard to say the world has nothing to show. Yet it’s the truth, believe me. If you want to know the world, all you need do is listen. What people see when they travel is never more than an illusion. Shadows chasing other shadows. The roads and the countries teach us nothing we don’t know already, nothing we can’t hear within ourselves in the peace of the night.”
    The man of religion may be right, but my mind is made up — I’m leaving! Against my better judgment, and to some extent unwillingly — but I’m leaving! I can’t bear the thought of spending the next four months, then the twelve months of the fateful year itself, sitting in my shop listening to predictions, setting down signs, listening to reproaches and endlessly mulling over my fears and regrets!
    My beliefs haven’t changed. I still execrate stupidity and superstition. I’m still sure the lamp of the world isn’t about to go out…
    But that said, how can I, who doubt everything, not doubt my own doubts?
    Today is Sunday. Idriss was buried last Monday. And we’re to set off tomorrow at dawn.
    There’ll be four of us — me, my nephews, and Hatem my clerk, who’ll see to the animals and the provisions. We’re taking ten mules, no less. Four for riding, the others to carry the baggage. That way, none of the beasts will be overloaded, and we should, God willing, be able to keep up a good pace.
    Khalil, my other clerk, who is honest but not very resourceful, will stay behind to help Pleasance look after the shop — my excellent sister Pleasance, who takes a poor view of this impromptu journey. It makes her sad and anxious to be parted like this from her two sons and her brother, but she knows it would be no use trying to oppose it. Nonetheless, this morning, when we were all caught up in the bustle of last-minute preparations, she came and asked me if it wouldn’t be better to put off our departure for a few weeks. I reminded her that we must cross Anatolia before the winter. She didn’t insist — just muttered a prayer, and began to weep silently. Habib did his best to tease her out of it, while her other son, more horrified than sympathetic, told her to hurry up and go and bathe her eyes with rose-water, because tears shed on the eve of a journey are an evil omen.
    When I’d first told Pleasance I planned to take her children with me, she hadn’t objected. But it was only natural for her maternal instincts to break out in the end. Trust Boumeh to imagine a mother’s tears could bring bad luck.
    Pages written in my house at
Gibelet on the eve of my departure.

    I’d gathered together my notebook, ink, reeds and blotting powder ready for the journey, but this same Sunday evening I’ve had to set them out on my desk again for use. A stupid incident occurred at the end of the afternoon which nearly prevented us from leaving. Something I find not only highly exasperating, but humiliating as well. I’d have preferred not to mention it, but I promised myself I’d record everything in my journal and I mean to keep to my resolve.
    The cause of all this bother is a woman called Marta, known around here, with a tinge of sarcasm, as “the widow”. A few years ago she married a fellow everyone knew to be a lout. He was from a family of louts, all of them crooks, pilferers, scoundrels, footpads, wreckers — every single one of them, old and young alike, as far back as anyone can remember! And pretty Marta, then a pert young thing, impish, wilful, mischievous but not a bad girl, fell in love with one of them. His name was Sayyaf.
    She could have had any eligible young man in the village — I’d have been more than willing myself, I