Young Turk

by Moris Farhi

I nodded.

  ‘Then serve those pigs raki. A droplet. No more. Tell them it’s from me.’

  ‘But that would be insulting ...’

  ‘That’s the idea.’

  ‘Men with stone hearts – right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. Soon as I saw them.’

  ‘Go on – move! Then get into the kitchen, too.’

  ‘I can help you ...’

  ‘You are. Do as I say!’

  I gathered everybody and pushed them into the kitchen. They stood there, huddled by the door.

  The men watched, amused.

  I poured the raki as Orhan had instructed me and served the men.

  The one calling himself Octopus stared at the drinks. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘For you.’ I pointed at Orhan. ‘From him.’

  Octopus looked at Orhan, then began laughing.

  Orhan, sipping his raki, smiled back, then gestured at me to go into the kitchen.

  I did so, reluctantly.

  Octopus stood up and poured the drinks on the floor. ‘Sense of humour – I like that.’

  The patrons, sniffing trouble, shifted about uneasily. Some half rose, ready to leave.

  Octopus addressed them. ‘Off you go, people! We have some business here. If you haven’t paid, don’t worry. Konstantin Efendi can afford it.’

  The patrons stared at each other, unable to decide.

  Orhan addressed them. ‘Good patrons, take a breather by the sea. Then come back. Say, in a quarter of an hour.’

  The patrons, mostly regulars and chummy with Orhan, left in an orderly stampede.

  Octopus turned to his companions and pointed at Orhan. ‘This must be the kabadayι we heard about ...’

  The men sniggered.

  Octopus, assuming a mocking tone, addressed Orhan. ‘Honourable sir, we’ve come to collect from the Romanian shit-face. Insurance premium. He pays up, we protect this place. We see to it that not even a toothpick is broken. With your permission, naturally ...’

  Orhan pursed his lips as if trying to think up an answer; then, shrugging his shoulders, he started pulling faces and blabbering.

  Infuriated, Octopus bellowed, ‘Hey, vomit of a syphilitic cunt! I’m talking to you!’

  Orhan gabbled and prattled even more dementedly.

  Octopus nudged one of his companions. ‘Shut the fucker!’ He turned to the others and indicated the kitchen. ‘Bring the old snot!’

  As the men moved forwards, Orhan eased himself off the stool and roared, ‘That’s far enough!’

  Surprised by the unexpected authority in his voice, the men stopped.

  Orhan waved them away. ‘Get back slowly. Collect your Octopus. And goodbye ...’

  The men, hesitating, looked at each other, then at Octopus.

  The latter screeched, ‘Cut the catamite’s balls off!’

  They launched themselves forwards.

  Then everything happened so quickly that I almost missed it.

  Orhan kicked his stool in the direction of the three men moving towards the kitchen, tripping them up. Almost at the same time, he lashed out at the fourth man, striking him on the bridge of his nose and felling him. Still in the same movement, he grabbed the empty bottles on his table and shattered them on the heads of two of the assailants he had tripped up. As the latter passed out, he seized them by their hair and smashed their faces on the head of the man he had knocked over with the stool.

  When he straightened up a moment later, he had unsheathed his knife and was pointing it at Octopus.

  Octopus stood frozen, staring incredulously at his prostrate companions.

  Orhan, drawing circles in the air with his knife, addressed Octopus. ‘I could carve my name on your chest. But that would be foolish. The police would get involved. Konstantin Efendi would have all sorts of problems.’

  Octopus hissed, ‘I’ll get you!’

  Orhan grinned. ‘Ssshhhh. I’ll shit in my pants ...’

  Some of the men, groaning, were trying to lift themselves off the floor.

  Orhan prodded them with his foot. ‘Come on, pick up your men! And out!’

  It took Octopus several minutes to drag out his companions. As they piled into the Pontiac parked by the restaurant’s entrance, he turned round and, putting thumb to teeth, mimed the ‘revenge’ sign.

  By then, we had all burst out of the kitchen and surrounded Orhan. But he was pushing us away, trying to get to a bucket of sawdust.

  Reading his mind, I grabbed the bucket and spread the sawdust thickly on the floor where the men had bled.

  And just in time, too. Because a moment later, several police from the local station burst in.

  Some patrons, who had obviously called them, followed.

  The detective in charge barked, ‘What’s going on?’

  Konstantin Efendi pushed forward. ‘Ah, Detective Dursun ...’

  ‘What’s all this commotion?’

  Konstantin Efendi stared at him innocently. ‘What commotion?’

  Detective Dursun, uttering the sigh of the long-suffering policeman, started looking around, searching, no doubt, for some evidence of trouble. ‘The commotion they could hear even in Romania, Konstantin Efendi ...’

  Konstantin Efendi put his hand to his forehead, as if suddenly remembering. ‘Oh, you mean the drunkards. Ah, yes – a noisy lot! I told them what’s what and they left.’

  Detective Dursun turned towards Orhan.

  Suddenly I noticed Orhan was trying to hide his knife in the small of his back. Realizing that if the police found the knife on him, he could be arrested for carrying a weapon, I stepped forward as if to clear the way for the detective. Then I tripped myself up and as I stumbled forward I shunted one of the policemen on to the detective. As the latter tried to keep his balance, I took the knife from Orhan and put it in my apron pocket.

  I turned to Detective Dursun, looking as contrite as I could. ‘Sorry, sir ...’

  He glared at me disdainfully.

  I backed into the kitchen, still apologizing. Keeping a distracted mien, I went to the sink and put the knife on the pile of cutlery waiting to be washed.

  Detective Dursun stopped by the upturned stool and the broken bottles. ‘What’s all this?’

  Orhan picked up the stool. ‘Someone must have knocked it over, sir.’

  ‘The broken bottles?’

  Liliana came forward, giggling. ‘Those drunks. They were playing at being Russian. Drinking, then smashing bottles ...’

  ‘They drank only two bottles?’

  Liliana turned to him indignantly. ‘I stopped them smashing others. Two bottles is two too many.’

  Detective Dursun did not look convinced. He turned to Orhan again. ‘Did you use them in a fight?’

  ‘Me, sir? No, sir!’

  ‘Kabadayι – isn’t that what they call you?’

  ‘They tease me, sir.’

  ‘Tease you?’

  ‘I’m the night-watchman ... So people poke fun ...’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Orhan, sir.’

  ‘Orhan what?’

  ‘Orhan Veli. Like the poet.’

  Detective Dursun smiled derisively. ‘Really?’

  ‘That’s why I know all his works by heart. Many others, too ...’

  ‘Trying to be funny?’

  ‘No, sir. Listen ... “The things we have done for our country, some of us died and some of us declaimed ...”1 Beautiful, isn’t it?’

  ‘Do you have a gun? A knife?’

  ‘Me, sir? Never, sir.’

  Detective Dursun turned to one of his men. ‘Search him.’

  The latter did so. Orhan co-operated fully.

  The policeman shook his head. ‘Clean, sir.’

  Detective Dursun, still dissatisfied but unable to find anything incriminating, turned to Konstantin Efendi. ‘Something happened here. I smell it. So be warned. I’ll be watching ...’

  He gathered his men and left.
>
  The patrons settled down.

  Others, who had been lingering outside, wafted in.

  Konstantin Efendi, almost in tears with relief, hugged Orhan. Then he and Liliana went round the tables, offering sparkling wine on the house.

  On his way back to his table to resume his watch, Orhan clasped me to his chest. ‘Thank you, brother ...’

  I tried to shrug, but I felt so gratified that I froze.

  Then Nermin kissed me on the cheek. ‘Dear, dear Attila ...’

  Even more flustered, I hurried into the kitchen and looked for something to do.

  The lokanta burned down in the early hours of the following Saturday. I wasn’t working there that night – Friday is my father’s night off – so I can’t say I could have prevented the fire if I’d been there. Yet I knew, all that Friday – sensed it – that something terrible was going to happen. But I thought it would happen to my father. He would be hit by a bus or suffer a heart attack. He had become a heavy drinker and there seemed nothing I – or anybody else – could do to dissuade him from killing himself.

  Those who saw the blaze said how quickly it had consumed the lokanta. The time it takes a match to burn out. Or a star to fall. Or a pan of oil to burst into flames.

  A pan of oil that caught fire was assumed to be the cause. Somebody left it on the cooker, forgot to turn off the gas – and boom! Even though Konstantin Efendi and all the staff swore that this sort of negligence could never occur. No restaurateur would close up before all the cookers were turned off and the cooking utensils washed up and stored away. That’s rule number one. Even beginners know that, let alone old hands like Konstantin Efendi.

  I knew Konstantin Efendi was right. But maybe ... So I cursed Providence for not working that night. Had I been there, I would have checked the cookers – several times. I always did.

  Moreover, had I been working that night, I might have spotted something else, maybe even what caused the fire. I might have spotted, for instance, a car driving away, the very Pontiac a courting couple claimed to have seen parked by Lovers’ Lane – the secluded footpath, not far from the restaurant. If it had been Octopus’s Pontiac, I would have known. I had memorized its number when I watched the gang pile into it after the trouncing Orhan had given them.

  At the very least, if I had been working that night, I might have seen the fire on my way home and rushed back. I might have got there in time to save Orhan and Nermin ... and the child who would have been born in a few months.

  But as they burnt to death, I was putting my father to bed and listening to his silent weeping.

  This is how they died.

  The fire started around 1:30 am, supposedly in the kitchen area.

  Liliana, being an insomniac, had not fallen asleep and noticed smoke wafting through the floorboards of her bedroom, which was just above the kitchen. She alerted her husband and the rest of the family and they all managed to get out of the place – without mishap.

  They rushed to the back, to the storeroom where Orhan, Nermin and little Çiçek slept.

  By then the storeroom, which was adjacent to the kitchen, was ablaze, burning more fiercely than the lokanta itself.

  Almost immediately, they saw Orhan emerge from the flames with Çiçek in his arms. And they saw him look back, expecting Nermin to be behind. But she wasn’t there. Then he looked around quickly, no doubt wondering whether she had come out from somewhere else. He shouted her name, desperately, several times. Then, handing Çiçek to Konstantin Efendi, he ran back into the storeroom.

  Just then, there was a series of blasts – according to Konstantin Efendi, wines, spirits, oils and paraffin exploding. Moments later, the roof collapsed. Then the walls.

  Eventually, when they had put out the blaze, the firemen found Orhan and Nermin’s remains. Incinerated beyond recognition, but still holding each other.

  Detective Dursun took charge of the investigation. He refused to consider the possibility that the fire might have been caused by something other than a pan of oil combusting. He dismissed outright the possibility of arson, perhaps perpetrated by the gang who had paid a visit to Konstantin Efendi the previous week. In the first instance, Konstantin Efendi had not reported such a visit the night he, Detective Dursun, had come to check on the disturbance. Such an allegation now might be seen as a ruse to extract more money from the insurers – particularly as, sadly, the other key witness, Orhan, could not corroborate the story. Alternatively, and more likely, Konstantin Efendi was having delusions. A common occurrence in cases of shock.

  As for the courting couple and the parked Pontiac by Lovers’ Lane, no one could take that statement seriously. For a start, like all love-smitten couples, they would have been in their own impenetrable world. More to the point, whatever they claimed to have seen – if, that is, they had seen anything – they had seen it in the middle of the night, in a place so dark that even lips eager to kiss struggled to find their partners.

  Then Detective Dursun dropped his bombshell.

  ‘Following my encounter with Orhan last week, I thought I should check up on him. He was an arrogant fellow – and arrogance always covers up hidden dirt.

  ‘Well, I amassed quite a dossier. He had several aliases. Poets’ names, all of them. He wasn’t lying when he said he loved poetry.

  ‘Crime-wise: nothing very gory. A born drifter. Some altercations – he won most of them. Resisting arrest – always put up a fight. Petty theft – invariably, food – when on the run.

  ‘Then something totally unexpected. Unusual for a drifter. A ladies’ man. Bigamist. At least two wives in different places. Maybe two others, but I don’t have all the facts on those yet.

  ‘And some children. Not surprising, I’d say. Which makes Nermin his third or fifth wife and Çiçek his seventh child. Not bad for a man in his mid-thirties.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe this, all the wives still love him. Apparently, he was very good to them. Treated them tenderly ...’

  That’s when I walked away.

  I packed the few clothes I had. And took the little money I had saved. I left a note for my father. Told him I’d go where the bus took me and find some work. I added I would miss him. And now that I wouldn’t be around to remind him of my mother, I expected him to find some happiness. I don’t know why I wrote that last bit. Grief, I suppose. I had to take it out on someone.

  Then I went back to the lokanta. Detective Dursun had left. But Konstantin Efendi and Liliana were there, sitting on the pavement by the charred remains, waiting for the loss assessors. Konstantin Efendi was holding Çiçek, so he couldn’t discharge his fury. Liliana did it for him.

  They hadn’t believed a word Dursun had said. I was glad of that. They wouldn’t have understood that the kabadayι must drift, move from place to place in order to help people. That this is part of their calling. Of course, their women aren’t happy about that, but they understand it. And accept it as Allah’s will. Which is why they continue loving their kabadayι even after they’ve gone.

  Dursun was a man with a sewer mind. The sort who shares a lamb with the wolf and laments its loss with the shepherd. His crude parting shot to Konstantin Efendi and Liliana had been that they should consider themselves lucky for being delivered from Orhan and doubly lucky for the hefty insurance they would receive. Now they could either retire or build a bigger and better place.

  Dursun was also a crook. There were already rumours that the reason he had declared the fire in the lokanta an open-and-shut case was because his palm was being greased by Octopus.

  I told Konstantin Efendi and Liliana that I was leaving. I asked whether I could take Çiçek with me. I tried to convince them that I would look after her well, give my life for her.

  We argued for the rest of the day, the whole night and the whole of the next day.

  Finally, they convinced me. I was a good lad, but still very young – only fifteen. A baby needed special care all the time. Try as I would, I would never be able to provide that.

/>   Then they made me a promise. They would not abandon her to an orphanage. They would take care of her themselves. In fact, adopt her. But, of course, they would raise her as a Muslim.

  Then one day, when I returned, there she would be. A young woman. Old enough to marry. Maybe my bride – why not?

  I am thirty-three now.

  Çiçek must be eighteen. I imagine she is still with Konstantin Efendi and Liliana.

  I often fantasize about going back. We recognize each other immediately. And join our lives as if we had not spent all these years apart.

  But I won’t go back. I made sure of that by destroying Konstantin Efendi’s new address after he sold the site of the lokanta to an elderly Armenian who had returned after many years in Canada and decided to build a new restaurant there. The Armenian is dead now, but his wife still runs the place, and I am often tempted to go and ask her for Konstantin Efendi’s address. But only tempted. As I said, I won’t go back.

  I am a kabadayι now – have been for some ten years. A good one. Orhan would be proud of me. I am emulating his life. Except I don’t set up house with women. Not because they don’t like me. I have had several proposals through matchmakers. In this respect, I am also mimicking my father. A man paralysed by too many deaths. (I heard that my father had died a few years back. Cirrhosis. Nothing had changed in his life.)

  Now and again, I visit prostitutes.

  I have come to cherish prostitutes. They understand pain. They give you the courage to go on a bit more, round another corner.

  I really wish I could go back.

  But no sense in that.

  I won’t leave orphans behind me.

  I’ll stay a kabadayι. As Orhan could see, we are a dying breed – that appeals to me. Maybe we are also a breed that wishes to die. That’s appealing, too.

  I’ll go on until someone torches my room. Or shoots me in the back. Or runs me down with a car.

  And if, in the next world, there is a place for the kabadayι, Orhan will be there. And I’ll join him.

  10: Zeki

  When a Writer Is Killed