Balthasar's Odyssey Read Online Free PDF Page B

don’t deny it! Her father happened to be my barber, and a friend of mine. When I went to his place in the morning for a shave and caught a glimpse of her, I’d come away humming a tune. There was something in her voice, her walk, the way she fluttered her eye-lashes — something no man with blood in his veins could resist. Her father had noticed how attracted I was, and had given me to understand that he’d be delighted, even flattered, at such a connection. But the lass had fallen for the other fellow, and one morning we heard she’d let him carry her off and a renegade priest had married them. The barber died of grief a few months later, leaving his only daughter a house, an orchard, and more than 200 gold sultanins.
    Marta’s husband, who’d never worked in his life, then decided to go into trade in a big way and charter a boat. He persuaded his wife to let him have all her father’s savings, down to the last penny, and off he went to Tripoli. He has never been seen again since.
    At first the story went that he’d made a fortune with a cargo of spices, and built a whole fleet of ships for himself, and planned to come and show off sailing past Gibelet. People said Marta spent all her days by the sea with the girls she knew, proudly waiting for him. But in vain — no ships, no fortune and no husband ever turned up. After a while, other less splendid rumours began to circulate. He’d been drowned in a shipwreck. He’d turned pirate, been captured by the Turks and hanged. But some said he’d got a hideout on the coast near Smyrna, and by now had a wife and children. This mortified his wife, who’d never got pregnant during their brief life together and was reputed to be barren.
    For the unfortunate Marta — alone for six years already, neither married nor free, without resources, without brothers or sisters, without children, spied on by all her louts of in-laws lest she think of sullying the honour of her vagabond of a husband — every day was agony. So she started to maintain, with a persistence bordering on madness, that she’d heard from a reliable source that Sayyaf was dead, so she really was a widow. But when she dressed in black, the family of the alleged departed attacked her mercilessly, accusing her of bringing the absent Sayyaf bad luck. After being the victim of several blows, the marks of which anyone could see on her face and hands, “the widow” resigned herself to wearing colours again.
    But she did not admit defeat. In recent weeks, it was said, she’d told some of her girlfriends that she planned to go to Constantinople to check with the authorities whether her husband was really dead, and that she wouldn’t come back without a firman from the Sultan proving that she was a widow and free to begin a new life.
    And it seems she carried out her threat. This Sunday morning she didn’t attend mass. It was said she’d left Gibelet during the night, taking her clothes and jewels with her. Rumours at once arose, implicating me. This is annoying and insulting, and above all — do I have to swear it on the Gospel? — it is simply untrue, absolutely and entirely untrue. I haven’t exchanged a single word with Marta for years — since her father’s funeral, I think. At the most I’ve greeted her in the street from time to time, furtively raising my hand to my hat. That’s all. For me, on the day I heard she’d married that rascal, it was all over.
    But hearsay now has it that I’ve made a secret arrangement to take her with me to Constantinople. And as I couldn’t do so openly before the whole village, I’m supposed to have told her to go ahead in advance and wait for me to pick her up at an appointed place. It’s even said that it’s because of her that I’ve never re-married, which has nothing to do with the truth, as I may one day have the opportunity to explain.
    Untrue