Shadowless

by Hasan Ali Toptas

  I did not know that the imam would soon be blowing on it, nor did I know whose heart it was that his muttered prayers would link with mine. The old man Reşit had simply told me to cut off a lock of hair for him, no questions asked. It happened at dusk, at the courtyard gate; he was squatting on the ground, fixing me with those little eyes of his, in which tears were still drying. Since losing his daughter Güvercin, he’d been a ruined man. And in all honesty, I could not understand why he would wish to pay a visit to a little unlucky stay-at-home girl like me. I supposed he was looking to take his mind off things. I was also worried about who the man on the other end of this might be; I feared he might be blind or bedridden or crippled or hunchbacked or a widower as old as my grandfather. But he allayed my fears: he told me that my father knew and that I should trust him – the man I would fall in love with was one in a million, as handsome and presentable and golden-hearted as a young man could be . . . If he told me his name it wouldn’t happen; and anyway, it was just a bit of nonsense, this thing Reşit was going to do. It might work, it might not; either way, it was for God to decide . . . But if everything went according to plan, I would have no problem finding out who he was. I’d find him for sure: the fire inside me would lead me closer to him, day by day. Those coals smouldering in my heart might even land me on his doorstep, bleating like a lamb. The man would go through all this as well, of course . . . If he failed to breathe in the smoke from my fire, if those flames failed to engulf him, it would all come to naught; and if that proved to be the case, the one carrying the fire would perish . . . If it were me, I would go wandering like Mecnun, the crazed lover who scoured the deserts for his love until the flames consumed him . . .

  It was only yesterday, in the half-light of dusk, that old Reşit fixed his puffy little eyes on me and told me all this. And I was still Güldeben, sitting on my divan by the window and thinking of that man. After all that has happened since, Reşit will never want to tell me who it was. Even if he wanted to, he would never find the strength.

  And yet, I knew: I had fallen in love with a dead man.

  28

  They buried Ramazan that same day, following the afternoon prayers. This was the first death the barber had seen in his few months in the village, but he remained silent throughout the funeral. He walked with the others, and looked just as sad; he rushed to pick up the coffin, threw some soil on the grave, and poured a little water from the tankard being passed around. Beside him was Reşit, also silent. Eyes downcast, and Adam’s apple bobbing, he propped up Rıza, who was weak from crying. He was so deep in thought that he didn’t even notice Rıza hiccuping drunkenly at his shoulder.

  Lagging behind them was the ashen-faced, fast-withering watchman. It was almost as if he was lagging behind his own rifle. As he struggled to complete Ramazan’s last journey, he looked over and above the sea of heads in front of him, to fix his eyes on the mountains. Even if he could have found the strength, he’d not be pressing his tear-soaked lips against this coffin, to release the secret he’d held inside for so long. It was far too late for that. Ramazan had died believing a lie about his birth, and that was how he would be buried.

  Once again, the watchman prayed that it would be all over soon; this mournful walk behind the coffin, the saying of prayers and the throwing of soil, the pouring of water and the standing in silence. The imam, meanwhile, was struggling to believe that the boy who had been his guest at the break of dawn was now dead. He was walking so slowly it didn’t even look like he was moving, and every now and again he came to a full stop. With every prayer, he felt more distant – from the villagers gathered at the grave, and the village itself, lying in silence beyond the almond grove, and its houses, and what was yet to come. If Reşit had not let go of Rıza’s arm to jump, sobbing, into the grave, the imam might have drifted yet further away. But circumstances having intervened, he clutched his robes, and rushed over to rescue Reşit, whispering a few desperate words of solace into his ear as he led him through the crowd towards the cemetery gate.

  By the time they got back to the village, night had fallen. One by one, the candles were being lit. Without saying a word, the villagers gathered under the plane tree to listen to the silence of the village square. Raw with grief, they stared at the spot where Ramazan had lost his life, as again they heard a horse galloping through the afternoon. They could see the dust rising, almost. And a body, curled up into a ball, in a pool of blood and bone. As the children drifted off to sleep in their beds, their mothers and fathers drifted back to that afternoon, as the blood spilled again.

  Then the imam offered Rıza his condolences. The others followed suit. This was the most difficult part for the watchman: as his turn neared, he tried to stop himself from quaking. But to no avail; his whole body was quaking, and with a violence that was impossible to hide. At last it was Cıngıl Nuri’s turn, and then it was his; throwing his arms around Rıza, he closed his eyes and sobbed. And then it was as if the two grief-stricken men were slowly melting into each other, until all that was left was one great mouth crying out into the darkness. When he let go of Rıza, the watchman felt as if he’d been torn in two. He adjusted his rifle, which had slipped from his shoulder.

  United by darkness, the leaves on the plane tree sighed, as slowly the crowd dispersed.

  ‘I hardly have the strength to walk,’ whispered Reşit to the watchman. ‘You take Rıza home.’

  The watchman nodded.

  ‘This is their time now,’ Reşit said. ‘If I go, I’ll be even worse. I don’t know what I’d say to Hacer.’

  The watchman took Rıza by the arm and on they walked. He didn’t know what he would say to Hacer either. They’d lain together in the stable many hundreds of times over the years, but now he was afraid to see her. If he’d had a place to go, he’d have fled this village then and there, so as never to come face to face with her again. No chance of coming home years later like Cıngıl Nuri. As he led the sobbing, sighing Rıza back to Hacer, it occurred to him that such escapes were impossible. And then he was angry at Reşit, for forcing him to confront Hacer before a single day had passed.

  Reşit, meanwhile, had somehow recovered his strength. He had gone ahead, and was now marching furiously up his steps. He stopped now and again to cry, ‘Is anybody there?’ But his voice just bounced off the walls of the empty rooms. In a rage now, Reşit ran through the house, climbed up on a divan, seized the rifle from the War of Independence years, took it off the wall, and headed straight for the stairs. He had panicked for some reason, and now, for some other reason, he’d set his mind on completing a task he’d put off for far too long. But by the time he reached the top of the stairs, he’d lost his resolve. Setting down his rifle, he lay down on the floor.

  Once he’d caught his breath, he knew he had no choice but to shoot the horse. No longer could he give this beast so much as a handful of feed or a mouthful of water, no longer could he stroke its mane or slap its rump. No longer could he look it in the eye and not see Ramazan, writhing at its feet. Each and every time, this image would return to burn another hole in his heart. Each time, he would imagine Ramazan disowning that pool of blood and cracked bones, and slowly rising from underneath that horse. But never would he come closer. He would just stand there, accusing Reşit with his eyes.

  Reşit stood up. He was loading his gun as he came down the stairs. Once in the courtyard, he stopped to look around him. Those little eyes darted left and right at random. Hours later, when his wife came home, having put poor, exhausted Hacer to bed, she found him standing in the same place.

  ‘Did you see the horse?’ asked Reşit.

  She glanced first at the rifle, and then at the stable. ‘Isn’t it in there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then let it go to hell!’ she said.

  ‘Didn’t you see it on your way home?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ she said, as she climbed the stairs. ‘I wasn’t at home when it happened. I came running as soon as I heard!’

  Reşit
was still standing below her, mumbling in the centre of the yard. He fell silent when his wife came back down the stairs.

  ‘I’m going over to see my brother,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll stay there overnight.’

  ‘Then go,’ mumbled Reşit.

  But he himself went nowhere that night. He didn’t even go inside to eat or drink. He just stood there as the courtyard slowly darkened. He hoped that, sooner or later, the horse would return to the stable it had lived in for years. In fact, this was more a wish than a hope.

  But by the time a distant rooster announced the impending dawn, it was less a wish than a fantasy. And by sunrise, Reşit, still waiting at the courtyard gate, had replayed this fantasy so many times in his mind that it turned, once again, into a consoling hope.

  With that, the sleepless man took his rifle out into the street, going from door to door to ask all the villagers if they’d seen the horse. No one had seen it since it had squashed Ramazan like a grape, but no one wanted to turn Reşit away hopeless, so they all tried to conjure up a couple of words. Most shared stories of the crazed, wide-eyed horse they’d seen racing after Ramazan, trampling him as they watched. The horse they described was enough even to dishearten Reşit: a dragon, black as night, racing faster than the wind, gaining speed each time they told the story.

  Those who hadn’t been in the square when Ramazan was trampled spoke of hearing a horse galloping past Cıngıl Nuri’s house to head straight for the cliffs. For a while, they could hear the horse’s bloodcurdling echo in the thyme-scented afternoon sun. This had given way to hours of anguished whinnying. The horse was still there, in the shadows of the cliffs, possibly on a precipice, if not in a valley. Wherever it was, it was still stained with blood; it had nowhere to go but the village it could still see in the corner of its eyes. It looked almost like a human being, there in the juniper bushes, hiding out of shame in a darkness tinged with green, shedding great tears, and heaving great sighs . . .

  Some of those who had heard the horse galloping away spoke of the noise resounding through the village as it raced across the fields; some went so far as to imagine which paths it had taken. Reşit didn’t know who to believe; the confusion that had stalled him all night long now returned, as he wandered through the village. Then Rıza joined him. He had heard that his brother was looking to shoot the horse. Together they set out for the cliffs, holding rifles in one hand and revolvers in the other.

  Reşit wasn’t at all happy with this, in fact. He wanted to find the horse himself, whatever the cost, and put a bullet in its head on his own.

  29

  I was still sitting alone in the chair by the window.

  I could no longer see the cars passing by; after hours of speeding up, they had, by nightfall, lost their shape and colour. Now they were buzzing past the barber-shop window like phantom flies.

  I was, at the same time, with Güldeben at her window, fearful of having fallen in love with a corpse, so I wasn’t prepared to believe that the cars outside my own window had disappeared entirely. They might, I imagined, have melted into their surroundings. So much of what I could see from here bore a resemblance to cars, after all: the apartment blocks lining the street, for example, and their satellite dishes, the balconies, the entrances of office buildings, the people pouring out on to the pavement, and – most of all – the ones venturing on to the pedestrian crossings . . . Now that everything out there had mingled with everything else, it was clear that even the cars were no longer just cars: look into their windows and you saw the city reflected and deflected. My eyes resting on a car window, I would suddenly be presented with an apartment façade, for example – or a distant window, shimmering all the colours of the rainbow, but I could not be sure if I was in front of it or behind. The window was probably covered in dust, the windowsill blackened over time by exhaust fumes, but the occasional shaft of evening light still found its way in. And when it did, the city in the window ceased to exist. And every building it had ever reflected went smashing into every other, until they were one with the families inside them. Watching all this from the barber-shop window, I was frightened, of course: I was sitting in a city that was melting before my eyes. I had just one branch left to cling to, and its name was terror.

  After the city had rebuilt itself, only to collapse again, and then rebuild itself, a hundred times over, I noticed someone standing at that window. He was very tall, and because he was standing at the far edge, he might have been mistaken for a curtain. He might have been there from the time I first came in for a shave, but if he had the eyes of an executioner, they were too far away to see. Nevertheless, I was sure of it, because this man in the apartment on the third floor of the building across from me was gazing so far into the distance that he seemed to have left behind his body. I was shaken myself, of course, as I still did not know if I was inside that window or outside it. With this in mind, I lowered my eyes.

  Maybe the window I could see was not the same on both sides; a view could change, depending on where you were standing, and how you felt. And there was no clear rule about whether you should look out or in: if your eyes permitted, you could do both at once. No doubt this man had found himself in this same situation; whatever he saw when he gazed out of that window he also saw himself, as far away, and as close, as in a dream . . . It could well be that he had met with this surprise before I had. For somehow, it must be true, but who would want to believe that the person he had come face to face with was himself?

  Which was all well and good, but what of the person on the other side of the window? Did he genuinely believe he had gone beyond himself?

  30

  At midnight there was a knock on the door. The barber, who had been sleeping on his sofa all evening, first mistook it for a dream, so he turned over and buried his face in his pillow. He was just drifting off to sleep when there was another sharp knock. The barber rose drowsily, felt around for a match, lit a candle, and fished under the sofa for his slippers. Gazing at the rose-print curtains that separated the front of the shop from the back, he wondered who could be knocking on his door at this time of night. As he padded across the floor, he heard a sound, but it wasn’t his slippers squeaking; it was something outside. Through bleary eyes, he looked out of the window. The shadow at the door looked back.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked the barber.

  The shadow wheeled around to vanish into the darkness. The barber took his candle closer to the window, trying to work out who it could be, but all he could see in the glass was a barber leaning forward to peer through the window. This unsettled him; without thinking, he began buttoning up his shirt. Then he put on his shoes, and began to march, as if setting off on a long journey, though the shop was only a few paces across. He had not felt like this since his first days in the village, when he was still longing for that city he’d left so far behind, and he tried to remember how it had been for him, in that other barber shop, on that busy street. In bits and pieces it returned to him, though he couldn’t quite conjure it back to life. All he could see was a vast sea of apartments, crashing against the horizon; the cars flying off the streets to crash through windows. This was just a dream, he told himself: a dust-ball of memory and disintegrating hope. All the same, it fired up his desire to be elsewhere, so off he went towards the city of his dreams. Hour after hour, he walked . . .

  Until his energy was spent. Hearing a rooster crowing at the other end of the village, he sat down on the divan, and told himself how tired he was. But there was no one there to hear his words. How dark the shop was, and how quiet. It seemed larger than ever. So did the silence, and the barber’s sense of it.

  The barber lit a cigarette, taking a deep drag as he looked around him. Then he wondered how many others there were in the world, sitting just as he was. How absurd, he thought, to worry about something like this, yet he couldn’t help thinking of the thousands of others who were sitting just like he was, deep in thought. In his mind’s eye, he watched those thousands of others in thousan
ds of other rooms, all striking the same pose. These thousands of bodies, he told himself, were the bridges that would lead them to the future. Each one its own strange creation with no other concern but to walk the same paths; unknowingly repeating the same repetitions, the same gestures, the same smiles, the same gait, and the same way of sitting, fired up by the same spirit of adventure while they all walked in place.

  The barber took another pull on his cigarette. His eyelids drooped as he thought about those thousands of others, sitting just as he was, at that same moment.

  There were thousands of watchmen, no doubt. They’d have walked far from their villages, to stop off at cabins like the one where Fatma of the Mirrors and Soldier Hamdi settled their scores, and now they were sitting there, striking exactly the same pose as the barber. He felt as tired as them, too: since the day Ramazan was buried, he’d hardly slept. He’d had no choice in the matter, actually: wherever he looked, he saw a flying black mane. The horse might have gone, but its ghost still haunted their streets; it would gallop in from the night, tail waving, and stop right in front of him, almost as if to mock him, or it did a few laps and vanished. A few days after the bloody scene in the village square, the watchman began to imagine walking through the night, and suddenly catching sight of the horse – wandering the streets, wandering the fields. Indeed, he had prepared himself for that very eventuality; first he would stop dead in his tracks for a few moments, just to give the horse a chance. Then he would approach it on tiptoes to stroke its nose. Finally he would place the barrel of the gun under its chin, and fire. The horse would rear up when the bullet hit its brain, of course, but then would fall to the ground, spurting blood that the night would hide from view. It might wave its tail a while, or kick its legs, or try to get up, but before long it would be curling up to die. And that would be that – the watchman would leave it for the vultures that circled the cliffs. As the beggar-birds gorged, he would pray for Ramazan’s soul . . .