A Thousand Year Old Hometown
It is believed that weasels bear the souls of children who die before being christened.
Encyclopaedia of Secrets and Superstitions.
Cora Linn Daniels & C.M. Stevans (2003)
In Greek culture, “A weasel seen about the house, just as on the road, is significant of evil.”
Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals, John Cuthbert Lawson (2012)
Chapter 1: Roots – 15th Century
Theophanes Kantakouzenos, or Theo as he was called by kith and kin, came into the world in Constantinople on the 1430th anniversary of the death of Our Lord. Thanks to his father, Andronikos, who was in charge of the Greek Emperor’s library, Theo was taught by the most erudite teachers of the Empire and learnt Latin and Classical Greek at an early age.
As soon as he had completed his education, he began to work with his father. The state of the library, which, in its day, had had row upon row of thousands of manuscripts, was a veritable reflection of the depths to which the empire had sunk. Most of those beautiful manuscripts had been sold either to Arabian merchants to pay off the state’s ever-increasing debts or had been plundered by officials struggling to make ends meet. But still, Constantinople, entirely surrounded by the Turks, reminded him of an oasis in the desert: the last remaining stronghold of a civilisation fighting to exist amidst the savage sands.
Alas, as history has shown time and again, every civilisation is born, grows and perishes. And it was evident that the time had now come for the Roman civilisation, moulded and leavened with wolf’s milk by two boys, also to be destroyed.
When the Turks besieged Constantinople, Theo, like every citizen, had helped to the best of his ability the soldiers defending the city.
He laboured heart and soul with his fellow townsmen caring not what he did or how difficult the task. His hands, which had never before held anything but a quill, became calloused from carrying rubble, and his palms bled.
The noise from the besieging cannons was indescribably loud. One of them, in particular, was far more deafening than the others and had a very distinct, earsplitting sound. "Shahi" was the name of that monstrous weapon and, when fired, its blast started with an eardrum-rupturing boom, shifted into a chest-vibrating thunder, and, before disappearing entirely, transformed into a deep rumble, giving everybody in Constantinople a throbbing headache. When Shahi's stone projectiles hit the ancient walls of the city, milk in the buckets spilt, pregnant women miscarried, cats fell from the roofs, roosters went mute, birds dropped dead, porcupines shed their spines, and bells in the church towers cracked.
At the end of three months baptised with blood and sweat, the thick, sturdy city walls could no longer withstand the force of the Turkish cannons. Faced with the terrible sight of the Turks beginning to pour through the crumbling walls, Theo too, like many other people, took refuge in the church of Hagia Sophia. It was widely believed that all Istanbul could fit beneath the dome of Hagia Sophia, a wonder of the world. That day it was seen that this had been a very optimistic estimate. In the packed church, priests and women with children were clinging to each other, wailing and looking to each other for help. Those men who were still armed and able were waiting tensely for the last battle of defence to be fought in the church.
That day, the interior of Hagia Sophia was bursting at the seams. Those waiting for the Turks to be extirpated from the pearl of Christianity by a final miracle from Jesus, others gazing incredulously around and those who couldn’t contain their anger were each like a grain of sand in this massive crowd.
Priests were making whoever came their way kneel and pray to the Virgin Mary for salvation. Theo did as everybody else was doing and was on his knees, but he was saying his own prayer and not really listening to what the priest said.
“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Rather than letting me fall prisoner to those heathen Turks, gather me to the bosom of Jesus or have mercy and take my soul from here. We seek refuge in you from persecution.”
Towards the evening there was a commotion outside the church. The bells began to ring crazily. They could hear the Turks, shouting in their crude language, on the other side of the bronze doors, and everybody rushed to carry whatever he or she could to fortify the gates. The priests closed the doors, and heavy bolts were slid across. Despite the priests whose praying voices now resembled a sound close to a death shriek, Theo could still hear the battering rams pummelling the door and the hue and cry in Turkish. It must have been from trepidation that his head began to spin. Theo could stand no longer and sat down. So this was it. It was his fate to see the end of the great Roman Empire which for centuries had spread its branches like an enormous sycamore. Rather than fall prisoner, he thought to himself, I’ll fall on the swords of these heathens.
His dizziness increased. The sounds around him now seemed to come from far away. The colours he saw merged, black had become white and white, black. Suddenly the world around him began to grow rapidly. The church and people grew enormous in front of his eyes. The Bible he was holding became huge and could be carried no longer. After that, he heard the sound of the church door splintering. The last thing he remembered was the four horsemen entering the church and the nuns being dragged along the ground.
***
It must have been from the shock of his physical change that he had only a nebulous recollection of the few weeks following the raid on the church. In the meantime, Theo vaguely remembered seeing several nightmares. In these bad dreams, he seemed to be running away from huge animals and giant people. Sometimes dying of thirst, he was trying to save his life from fires and soldiers out for blood.
When he began to regain consciousness, and his soul got used to his new body, the truth started gradually to sink in. The Virgin Mary or some other kind saint had accepted the prayer Theo had said in the church and had granted his life by breathing his soul into a weasel.
He spent his first year as a weasel solely in prayer. Theo constantly begged God to wake him up from the nightmare, and he confessed to Him wailing that if the bad dream dragged on, he was afraid he would kill himself despite knowing it was an unforgivable sin. He wasted the following year weeping for the fallen empire and asking God for the Turks to be driven out of Constantinople forthwith. And most of the third year was spent cursing his fate.
How long did a weasel live? Five years, if it didn’t fall prey to a dog or cat? Perhaps ten years? Well, so he hadn’t much time left anyway, death was nigh. However, even if the form changes, the soul still continues to pursue thrills. Even if the new body was that of a weasel, at heart he was still Theo, the son of Andronikos, who had an unslakable thirst for learning. He decided to satisfy his appetite for knowledge in what remained of his life. He set to work by learning the language of the new owners of the city where he had been born and raised.
Yes, this was his city, called different names by different tribes — Lygos, Byzantium, Miklagard, Tsargard, Kustantiniyyah, Kostandina, Kushtandina Rabati, Bolis, Carigard and now, Istanbul. Regardless of whatever the other tribes called the city straddling two continents, the place where his ancestors were born, lived, and died was the thousand-year hometown to Theo.
Sure, Turks were warlike; they worshipped their horses and were technically advanced and enthusiastic about making pyramids from the heads of their fallen enemies. As he got to know them, he realised that they were in fact not savage barbarians. To the contrary, he saw how much their customs resembled his own. In one of the tunnels which riddled Constantinople under the ground, and which perhaps had seen no one for centuries, he made a home for himself.
After ten years, fifteen and then twenty years passed. The way things were going he didn’t seem likely to die. He began to think that he would live as long as a human and the Virgin Mary had granted him his life.
One cold winter’s day, because of his absentmindedness, he was caught by the cat of a bakery he visited from time to time and from which he stole bread. The cat got its teeth into Theo’s little body, and after savagely shaking the weasel - which had already snapped at the first bite - a few times, it left it on the ground in disgust. Theo lay buried in snow, with all his bones smashed to smithereens. He had no feeling from the waist down. So, Theo thought, this is it. He closed his eyes and began to wait for the sweet death that would come and embrace him with the cold. The next day when the weasel awoke, all his broken bones had set, and his body had healed completely. Far from any part of his body being frozen, Theo didn’t feel even the slightest malaise from the cold. The flabbergasted weasel put it all down to some divine attribute or a curse on him.
At the end of his endeavours which lasted years, he was able to write using his tiny hands. Following the lessons in a primary school from its attic, he mastered the Turkish alphabet.
The first fifty years he went to the church and the following fifty years to the synagogue and the next fifty years to the mosque. At one stage, he also listened to the German Lutheran priests who came to Constantinople. Finally, he decided to go to wherever free food was being distributed that day.
He saw powerful earthquakes, plague epidemics and great fires. Most of these he managed skilfully to wriggle out of. And the ones he was caught up in did not harm Theo at all. In one of the fires of Great Kostantiniyye (this was now the name of the city where he had been born and raised), he could not escape when he was caught in the flames of the house he had entered to steal a bologna sausage, and Theo too was burnt. The following day he awoke amidst the ashes as though nothing had happened. He took the sausages that, now cooked, were even tastier and returned to his home in the underground tunnels.
His dealings with other people were naturally limited. After a few attempts, he concluded that this was, in fact, to his own benefit. People were not very tolerant of a talking weasel trying to approach them. Their first reactions were to be afraid, and they reflected their fears on the weasel in the most violent way. He decided not to socialise unless really necessary and if pressed, to continue his communication from behind a veil of mystery.
Nevertheless, Theo was no ordinary weasel nor was he a complete recluse. He had discovered the ways to benefit from the fruits of civilisation. For this, he needed first to find either a family or a person in distress.
Nothing could really be done in secret, hidden from Theo who could listen to and view everyone’s private lives from the attics and from inside the walls. This was why he had no problem in ascertaining the houses beset by troubles. When Theo found such a household, he would immediately write a polite letter saying that he had learned of the owner’s distress from a mutual friend whose name he could not disclose. Theo told them that he was extremely saddened by the situation and if they wished, in return for a reasonable price, he could help the troubled person.
If the person, distraught with his tribulations, should write his answer in a letter and hang it on the branch of Theo’s designated tree or throw it into a bottomless well, the weasel which he had spent much time in training would fetch the letter and bring it to him personally. To attempt to catch the weasel was a fruitless effort. Inasmuch as it was impossibly difficult to capture this extremely nimble creature and, because it was specially trained, the weasel would drink and eat only from its owner’s hand.
If the poor wretch’s answer was yes, by hook or by crook Theo would find a remedy for their troubles, either by entering houses, listening to people, doing a little pilfering, or chasing the ghosts.
The fees he asked for were various. Daily newspapers hung on the branch of a tree every day for a year, a book, a few rings of bologna sausage and all sorts of other things. His customers would, of course, be at first surprised at these demands, but because the whole thing had developed mysteriously anyway, and because these needy peoples’ problems were solved at once, they agreed to pay his fees without delving into them too much.
Almost five hundred years passed.
During this time Theo had written and published fifty-five books, thirty of which were in Turkish and twenty-five in Greek. Recently, his articles regularly appeared in two Turkish newspapers and in one Greek. He would send his writing by the usual Delphic methods, and as long as the books were sold, the publishers did not complain.
He wrote about everything in his books… Five hundred years, easier said than done, is a long time to be occupied with just one topic. More than twenty books were about tales and legends. Two books were about Greek monsters in particular. He had singled out one book for the subject, what women do when men are not at home, and this was one of his bestsellers. Amongst his others, there were also books penned on magic, spying and sex. As a weasel, he had been able to easily observe people’s bedrooms for a few hundred years.
For centuries Theo had solved the problems of dozens of people, he had witnessed events which mortal eyes seldom see and overheard sounds which mortal ears very rarely hear.
So what is written here is the story of the extraordinary events that happened to this extraordinary weasel, which had survived in Istanbul for five hundred years.