“No thanks necessary, abi.”
Zeberjet let the bill fall on the pavement as the cab started to roll. He reclined and pressed both hands to his stomach, a hum in his ears. Why were they going so slow? The driver’s evenly spaced, soft clucks of encouragement, with accompanying snaps of the whip, had no effect on the horses’ peaceful trotting. Zeberjet leaned forward, hands on the seat, and moaned quietly.
“The lights are all off,” said the driver as Zeberjet stepped down. He half-crawled up the three marble steps and dug the key out from under the chestnuts and pack of cigarettes. His hand shook unlocking the door, and once inside it was an effort to drop the bar in place. As he made his way toward the room the dark lobby rocked, once left, once right. He spread his arms and slid down the wall to his knees. Now he was able to crawl to the room, haul himself up, and collapse onto the bed.
(Standing one on each side the two young towel-seeking villagers tie him down, tossing the end of the line back and forth to each other and cinching it ‘defile the towel will you’ says the fair one climbing up to sit on his stomach yelling as he bounces on him ass bouncing on him
I’ll call the gendarme
hear that he’ll call the gendarme
I heard
go ahead call them
bouncing on his stomach with a leer the boy begins undressing off with jacket shirt pants shorts naked he’s Fatihli the door pops open in walks the R.O. in uniform and shouting what’s the idea Fatihli leaps down to stand at attention
Sir!
disgraceful this who are you
Serdar son of Ahmet sir
Corporal Halil take him away the brig five days on bread and water
yes sir right away sir
as Corporal Halil shoves Fatihli out the R.O. comes to sit on Zeberjet’s stomach you’re very strong he says
I’m spent
won’t hear of it tell me how she’s doing
I just don’t know how’s yours doing
she was so attached to me but lately insists on seeing her village
somewhere in Africa?
I think so
you’re awfully heavy please get off my
you and I have to run are you
no I can’t run I’m held here the dead the manor house
with the R.O. gone he strains to snap the cord that binds him the cat dives at his face buzzing like a wasp)
He sat bolt upright, covering his face with both hands. Getting off the bed, using its edge to guide him in the dark, he worked his way to the sink. He retched, but nothing would come. With his left middle finger he poked the back of his soft palate. This brought a certain nausea so he repeated the step, and retching violently threw up. His stomach felt better. After washing his face and hands he sat down on the bed to undress. Feet unwashed, he crawled shakily under the quilt.
(At FELONIES two gendarmes with bayonets at the ready flank him as he walks through the wide-open door an old man at the entrance [his daughter is in there says a voice] sits sorting files the females pass the males are turned away chief of three magistrates the Retired Officer smiles as his manacles are removed and outside the wooden dock in the Attorney’s chair the Dentist says A-OK as four identically dressed black-mustached peasants rise come shake his hand to give their blessing then the Judge roars take your seats today we hear the defense Attorney stands extracting papers from his satchel and reads out honored gentlemen of the bench consider a scrap of fire which seen in endless space one light-day off is like a spark shot up from chestnut-roasting coals some downtown corner slowly round the spark turns this pile of dirt squirming with aimless motion its creatures sure that kill or killed or safe still asking questions they die the judge pounds you have built your case it seems as to the right to kill here such discussion is banned each act must fit a legal slot the Attorney rummages new sheaf stuffing the first back reads honored gentlemen of the bench when on Wednesday night October thirtieth the accused in whose defense I plead given that he has submitted himself to your judgments and who I remind you is first and foremost a male did enter the room of said heavily slumberous woman as he has almost nightly now for ten whole years barring the lapse of two weeks and having undressed her partly-sleeping form did proceed with normal intent to pardon my language mount her the Judge raises a hand your defense I see concerns the woman’s demise that is correct your honor but says the Presiding Retired Officer it’s the cat not the woman he’s on trial for and winks back goes the Attorney’s sheaf of papers he pulls out one more beginning it is of benefit to weigh all choices each alternative beforehand stop cries a voice from the rear it’s his uncle tall and slim in white linen his mother and father there too you don’t belong here cries his uncle commotion sweeps the courtroom out with him shouts the Prosecutor as gendarmes and spectators and the men at the entrance start milling about a near riot and the Judge’s voice rings clear be set for November Twenty-eighth)
SUNDAY MORNING
Feverish in face and body, dream- and nightmare-ridden, twitching sharply each time the cat—distant—darted with blurry wasp-drone at his face; fasting, spent, while his feet and head expanded and on occasional trips to the john he would gulp down volumes of water, he lay in bed for a great stretch of time which he realized had been just two days (slowly putting on his clothes the morning after a dream—again a dream—had woken him in the night and, easier now, he had quietly said “All right then, November twenty-eighth”; going to the mirror where he shaved by repeated efforts of will what he thought to be a five-days’ growth, then pocketing his watch—it had stopped at twelve past nine while the alarm on the safe showed eight of twelve—he had stepped out under a cool, rain-soaked sky and went to the news-stand at the station) when he bought a paper dated November 7. When certain details (such as November 28th) took on significance, or if finality were sought (as when he submitted his mustache, which each time he looked through the course of an entire day the mirror had shown to be still there, to an expert), then the corroboration and witness of others were required. The large station clock had read seventeen past eleven. Setting and winding his watch, he had gone to a nearby restaurant for a meal. “…and I’m neither dead nor alive.” It was a snatch of the loud, generally garbled song a deep male voice was singing one door away on a cafe radio. He finished his rice and got up to pay. The cook, handing back his change, asked, “Been in the hospital?”
To return he took the street behind the station, coming suddenly upon the tin arrow—nailed to the corner pine tree by or by order of his father—which, as it was years since any business had taken him further down this street than the barber shop, he had forgotten. Some paint had worn off the arrow and it hung loose, pointing toward the ground. High up out of reach, though. He turned away and walked on, down the lefthand sidewalk to avoid the barber’s seeing him, to the hotel and then to bed.
He lay in bed now, newly awake. Rain was falling in the dark. He had slept more easily since choosing among alternatives. Since deciding. The weight he had carried the week before was gone, it no longer pressed on his heart and skull the moment he woke up. Not that the thought didn’t occur to him, when the heavy passing of some vehicle shook the manor house and made him think of the two outbreaks of fire, and the Fire, and the numerous earthquakes which this old building had seen, that someday it might finally cave in and then they would find the body. Of course there would be a little time, even if he survived the collapse, to see that no one got him. He felt embarrassed, ashamed actually, before all those people who thought of themselves as innocent, who failed to realize that only crime—some kind of crime—could keep you alive on earth. For two days he had been walking to noon meals with his head down, avoiding eye contact with the cook when he paid. In the evening he would brew tea in the pantry, before dark so that no light could attract a visitor, and have bread, sausage and cheese there before undressing early and getting to bed. He spent most of the day in bed, too. Yesterday he had ignored the bell when it rang shortly after noon. Going to
the lobby before supper he had found a notice under the door. They regretted to inform him that unless payment was made by the end of the month his water and power would be cut off. The button outside was connected to two bells, one of them in the attic. These wires he tore out, and went upstairs to stand in front of her room. He sniffed the air. Nothing. Going down he stopped on the third-floor landing to open one window. Clouds were gathering on the mountain. As a boy he used to come to the window toward evening during the month of Ramadan, watching for the cannon-flash that signaled the end of a day’s fasting. The table would be already laid upstairs, and at the tiny wink of light from the mountainside he would shout “Wham!” four or five seconds before the actual report, and race up the brief flight of steps to find his mother and father spitting out pits (hers a date, his an olive) into their hands. “Thanks to my boy,” his mother would say, “we break the fast before anybody.” She never ate olives. Even the day after the Fire, gnawed by emptiness because what food they had secured in fleeing went to hungry children along the way, she had turned down the olives given them by a friend of Rüstem Bey’s. What she had eaten—but only with insistent prodding—was some of the börek, which was Semra Hanim’s privilege because she was nursing her ten-month-old baby. One of the horses led up the mountain by the coachman had carried two heavy wool rugs along with woolen blankets and a saddlebag holding their provisions and their gold, bracelets, earrings and pearls. Semra Hanim rode the other horse, with her six-year-old daughter behind and her son, the baby, on her lap. She could ride like a man, having learned as a child from her father on a ranch—her grandfather’s—in the Torbali country. Two days, and then during Liberation—to keep looters away from the manor house Rüstem Bey and the coachman had ridden down on horseback, the others making the long descent to the smoking town on foot—the boy had been in his mother’s arms, howling if anyone tried to take him. Faruk. They had named three sons after the brother who hanged himself. At four months the first Faruk had died, at two and a half months the second. The third had lived.
Rolling to his right, he listened as the sound of water in the drainpipe and running off the shed and stable roof tiles steadily slackened. A small weak triangle of light shone on the curtain in the upper righthand corner. It could be a far-off street lamp, or someone tending an invalid. He rested his arms on the quilt. The room was reasonably warm. He’d had the stove going for a while before turning in. Getting up on one elbow in the dark he reached for a cigarette and match from the bedside table. He lit the cigarette and held the match-flame to his watch. Five twenty. Putting the copper ashtray on the quilt he lay back down. “And I’m neither dead nor alive.” Eighteen days to go. His grandfather (Hashim Bey) had held out for five days after they locked him in that third-story room. “Such a great big man, and he dwindled away. There wasn’t a sound or whisper to be heard from him. It was me that emptied his pot and took meals in. He barely touched the food. Staring up at the ceiling as if he didn’t hear me. That morning I went in and his pot was empty. He asked who I was. ‘Saïdé, uncle.’ ‘Call Nureddin.’ ‘Nureddin’s been dead for years, uncle. Why don’t I call my other brother Rüstem?’ He looked away and said, ‘My birds should go to Blond Ali.’ The quilt had slid from the bed and I settled it back on him. His arms shook, his head tossed, the eyes were bulging. When I ran out in the hall and screamed Rüstem came tearing upstairs and through the door. He sank down with his face buried in the quilt.” The Blond Ali of Hashim Bey’s last words was unknown to them. They made inquiries all around but no one could help. Perhaps it was some boyhood friend, a fellow breeder of pigeons. Nureddin, son by his first wife, Hafsa Hanim, had been the eldest child.
He stubbed out his cigarette and put the ashtray back. The rain had stopped. That faint triangle of light was still on the curtain. “Wake up the light,” his father used to say. He could never stand the dark. Not much of a talker on the subject of family. Perhaps he cringed from the memory of their sudden death by earthquake. Zeberjet’s mother, on the other hand, would always bring the conversation round to her ancestors, relating at great length what she had seen or heard tell of. By her account Hafsa Hanim was one of the Mevlevi line, sister to Abdulkerim Çelebi, who in those years was the elder of the town’s Mevlevi Lodge. She had been only twenty-eight years old, mother of two, at the time she surprised her husband with a servant girl and moved into a third-floor room overlooking the street. The family had panicked. Her in-laws (her brother’s wife; Hashim Bey’s sister) came pleading, and Hashim Bey’s mother tried to reason with her. “He’s a man, after all. If you only knew what I’ve had to put up with.” But she was unbending. “I couldn’t look him in the face. I’d be ashamed to. He can remarry.” The gossip had spread. Some claimed she had divorced him, in a time when law and custom gave men alone the right to dissolve a marriage. For several days Hashim Bey even forgot about his birds. Then one night he went up and knocked, calling for her to let him in. When there was no response he put his weight to the door and broke it open. There were the children in bed crying and Hafsa Hanim at the window with the lattice raised. “One step and I jump,” is all she said. Hashim Bey had turned and left, never going to that floor again. Hafsa Hanim had stayed on at the manor house, not wanting to raise her children fatherless, and settled permanently on the third floor. She would cover her head whenever necessity brought her down. Hashim Bey took a second wife the next year and the two women got along famously. She called Nebilé Hanim “daughter,” though only ten years her senior. “My first memories are of Aunt Hafsa. You know my mother’s lying-in ended with her death, and I needed a wet-nurse. Aunt Nebilé was suckling brother Rüstem but that was all the milk she had, so they sent for Aunt Lütfiyé, who had a three-month-old baby daughter. Aunt Hafsa took me in upstairs. She rocked my cradle and changed me and looked after me when I was sick. Even her own daughter wasn’t trusted to hold me, though she was eight years old, big sister Meserret. A carefree tomboy if ever there was one. She’d come at night to rub our faces with soot, plant needles in the wicker chairs, dump water out the attic window on people below, and slide down the banisters. There were finally six children in the household, all sizes. Brother Nureddin, the eldest, kept aloof, usually in his room reading. We always wanted Auntie around, she told such good stories. Bright peace be upon them, both my two aunts treated me like their own child. Presents or clothes, I always got what the other girls did. As she combed my hair in the mornings Aunt Hafsa used to kiss the nape of my neck and say what beautiful hair I had, her little orphan girl. But when sister Meserret ran off with the caretaker’s son Auntie gave up. In the space of a few days her face became drawn and wrinkled. She always wore a scarf. Sometimes I’d massage her neck and temples for her. She ate opium and her speech started to ramble. Toward the end the same woman who had once smeared pepper on her daughter’s lips for bad language—Meserret had fallen and said, ‘Ouch, my butt’—took to babbling out all that she and her husband used to do in bed. Unrepeatable stories.” Hashim Bey had dismissed the caretaker and disowned Meserret but Nebilé Hanim begged and pleaded—even though it was only her step-daughter—and got them a dowry plus four acres of vineyard. They set up housekeeping in a small dwelling near Azmakaltı. There had been no children. Years later her husband was net-fishing in the river when his foot got tangled in some willow roots and he drowned. Though invited back to the manor house Meserret Hanim had declined. She looked after the vineyard herself, riding out donkey-back on summer days while she smoked a hand-rolled cigarette. She used to laugh telling how men would greet her in the fields thinking she was one of them. It was late one summer afternoon coming home atop Düldül with dry grass in the saddlebags, a loose spark from her cigarette must have got in. The grass caught, and as she tried to bat the flames out barehanded they spread to her clothing. That’s when she jumped, running on fire behind the donkey until she fell. Two men winnowing wheat not far off rushed up, but by the time they put her out she was charred all over. She died that night.
The bed trembled. This was the second time since he woke up that a vehicle had gone by. He turned his head to look at the curtain. No triangle. It was dark out, the street lamps wouldn’t be off yet. Perhaps the patient had fallen asleep. Or died. ‘And I’m neither dead nor alive.’ Eighteen days. With eighteen days left great-uncle Nureddin had come out from his stone cell in the Halveti monastery. “My forty days are up,” he had said. Hair and beard, cut at the beginning of his novitiate seclusion, had grown back. His face was waxen and the shirt drooped on his emaciated body. Twice a day he would leave the cell, head bowed, to visit the outhouse, and coming back take a hunk of bread and a few olives from the tray by his door. The Shaykh had told him, “We make it twenty-two days, my son.” “You’re wrong. It’s been forty.” When the other dervishes laughed the Shaykh lifted a hand. “That’s true. We may have miscounted.” Nureddin had swayed then and crumpled in a heap. After laying him in one of the chambers they sent for his father. The doctor Hashim Bey brought along diagnosed simple exhaustion and promised a quick recovery. At one point Nureddin opened his eyes to smile. “Everything’s so right, Father.” He died the next morning. Twenty-eight years of age. That old fellow in the park was mistaken. The rumor about Doctor Stavro’s wife involved Nureddin, not Rüstem Bey. The boy never told anyone, but word had it that they used to meet in the house of a peddler woman, a door-to-door seller of underclothes and linens. When Stavro’s wife died (poisoned, so it was thought, by her husband) it may have been Nureddin’s abrupt entry into monastic life that prompted the rumors. Or merely the peddler woman’s sly boast of “They knew the house.” The uncle, Abdulkerim Çelebi, had offered to make him a scribe at the Lodge, but Nureddin preferred to join those novitiates who saw to the general chores. Two of them, whichever two, but they had to be beardless, were assigned to sweep up the Abdulkerim Çelebi’s room, to make his bed, bring his meals, and pour the water for his ablutions. But Nureddin never did quite fit in at the Lodge, and before two months were out he had left to seek out the Halveti Shaykh Ismaïl Dede, caring little about his uncle’s disappointment or the charge of apostate that some leveled against him. “They’re all soft and lazy,” he had said, after kissing the Shaykh’s hand. “All they do is eat, drink, and talk the time away.” That very noon, following a brief ritual, he had withdrawn into the stone cell to begin forty days of solitude.
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