But as it happened, no one saw the horse in the days that followed. Morning and night, Reşit wandered across mountains and valleys. Some nights, to go further afield, he lingered with the goatherds in the upper pastures, but he couldn’t find a thing. For a few days, Rıza followed close behind with his revolver, and then grew tired, saying his heart was still aching, almost making it clear that this was a barb aimed at Reşit for going off on his own to search for the horse. But there was more to it than an unspoken reproach, for the pain of losing Ramazan had made him even fonder of rakı. From morning until night he kept the shop open, and kept drinking.
Even though he knew all this, the watchman never went to see Hacer again after Ramazan died: whenever he found himself approaching Rıza’s house in the dark of night, he wheeled around and went a different way. Their days in the stable were over; the time had come to forget.
The watchman lit a cigarette, narrowing his eyes as he took a deep drag, striking just the same pose as the barber. Then he broke that pose, to pick up his rifle and walk in the direction of the cemetery. Without thinking, he jumped over piles of stones that came up to his knees, and discarded bits of mattresses, and wads of wool, abandoned kites, scrapped tin stoves and bones of unknown animals. He wove his way between the graves. Each mound resembled a child sleeping under a blanket of soil. It was just before daybreak when he collapsed to cry in silence on Ramazan’s grave. He could not say what had brought him here, or what he had hoped to achieve. Dropping his rifle on the ground, he went to knock on the grave, as though the decomposing Ramazan might still be breathing, and preparing to leap from the earth. Much, much later, a moment arrived when the smell of death brought him the promise of sleep; had Reşit’s horse arrived at that moment, he would not have found the strength to stand up. A quick glance to either side. Then he lay down next to Ramazan and closed his eyes.
He fell into such a deep sleep that it was almost noon when he awoke, covered in clammy sweat. He felt as light as a bird now and as he made his way towards the cemetery gate, it did not feel as if he were walking over soil fed by the dead. He might have been a bird walking across clouds. He wondered if he was still asleep, if it was only in his dreams that he’d awoken, as he neared the village’s first houses. He was passed by creaking carts on their way to the mill, and their weary oxen, and horse carriages, and ghostly donkeys, and rakish foals with eyes that danced like boats on a turbulent lake, and in the far distance men, women and children, but he didn’t see a single one. They were all behind the curtain that protects dreams from the real world. Then suddenly everything was a lot nearer. The muhtar’s office came into view; holding his snake in one hand, Cennet’s son was pummelling its door with the other.
‘No one’s there,’ he shouted. Cennet’s son turned to look at him.
‘There is,’ he said, narrowing his eyes.
‘Don’t punch the door for nothing,’ said the watchman. ‘The muhtar locked it when he went into the city, and he took the key with him!’
Shaking his head, Cennet’s son walked away.
‘I suppose you’re right,’ he murmured. ‘Or so I suppose. But you know what, Mr Watchman . . . I think someone’s in there, believe it or not . . . But even if there’s no one, think of this. This village square has started to smell!’
The watchman glanced at the snake on the boy’s arm before attempting a smile. In this he failed, for now he pressed his lips, as if he had just smelt something bad as well. He traced out little circles, as his nose took him to the source.
Then Reşit appeared at the end of the road. The watchman sat down, placing his rifle across his lap, and watched with bleary eyes as Reşit approached. It was, he thought, like watching an actor walk on to the stage, for he was the spectator: the others appeared to pay him no attention.
‘Can you smell something strange?’ asked the watchman. Reşit looked around him, with narrowed eyes.
‘It’s odd,’ he said, stepping out of character. ‘It seems there is a smell, but what is it?’
Cennet’s son was on the ground, flapping his legs, trying to coax the snake to slide off them. But he, too, had been watching this strange play from the wings, in secret.
‘Reşit,’ he shouted. ‘Psst . . . Reşit!’
Red-faced, Reşit wheeled around to look, as fast as if to keep a second Reşit from running away.
‘I didn’t kidnap your daughter,’ said Cennet’s son. Silence, until he cried out, ‘Neither did my snake. Thought I’d let you know!’
Reşit walked off, leaving Cennet’s son behind him, along with the watchman, the muhtar’s office, the village square and the strange smell. Without thinking where he was going, or why, he went wandering through the streets, passing courtyard gates, and sacks of chickpeas, and ox-carts, and horses, carts and the children . . . As he walked, he wept. He wept until his insides had shrunk to the size of a baby’s hand. With each painful step, his rifle grew heavier. But still Reşit walked on, through narrow streets where Güvercin and Ramazan were both present in their absence. And so he went, in pursuit of a phantom horse. Reaching the edge of the village, he walked on to the cabin where Fatma of the Mirrors and Soldier Hamdi had settled their scores. But as everyone knows, every cabin has an orchard, and every orchard a mulberry tree and every mulberry tree birds. Even the walls and the doors of this house had been repaired. There were curtains now, too. And printed on those curtains were flowers and branches that fluttered and swayed in the breeze passing between them. Reşit stumbled forward through the vines, until he stopped to catch his breath and look in wonderment at all the changes, as proud as if he had made them with his own hands. Then he spotted something moving behind the window, or rather he felt it, sensed it . . . Leaning on the courtyard wall he craned his neck to see more. An impossibly beautiful girl was sitting on the divan, looking through the mulberry trees, gazing down at the village, with its wooden minaret. Deep in thought she was, deeper than the ocean . . . She was as beautiful, he thought, as Fatma of the Mirrors . . . She, too, looked weary, as though sentenced to wait here without ever lifting a finger.
‘Look over here,’ said Reşit.
The girl awoke from her beauty and stood up.
She, a verdant cypress, leant towards the window. Peering through the bright luxuriance of fresh green leaves, she caught sight of Reşit. For a time, neither moved. They just looked at each other. Then, seized by a sudden thirst, Reşit forgot how tired he was.
‘A little water,’ he said.
He waited beside the floral curtains where their eyes had danced. Then he heard the door creaking, and footsteps, and a few bees buzzing, and the dogs of the village barking in the distance. Thinking that every sound he heard was obscured by the next, he tried to burrow underneath them all. He dropped down against the courtyard wall, pressed his ear against the door, and took a deep breath.
‘What’s your name?’ he said to the girl when she came outside.
‘Güldeben,’ said the girl. ‘Don’t you recognise me, Reşit?’
Reşit looked at her blankly.
‘To those we have lost,’ he mumbled as he gave her back the glass.
The girl giggled, then dashed back into the yard and out of sight. But her long raven hair tossed in Reşit’s memory like a horse’s mane.
‘If only,’ said Reşit to himself, ‘if only . . .’
31
The sun had set and the streetlights were glowing in the half-light of evening. The hum of traffic filtered in from outside, with the clatter of closing shutters. As one after the other came rolling down, it seemed as if the entire city was closing. And perhaps this was why, as the night encroached, I kept an anxious eye on the world outside the door.
In the distance I could hear street vendors hoarsely hawking their wares; the aroma of grilled meatballs and sheep intestines swirled over the tops of dilapidated cars passing beneath electricity poles. Now and again a shadow would slip down the pavement across the way, carrying packages or nylon bags in its han
ds; on the balconies hanging over the street, I could see blinking lights. And then I saw a shadow with a sparkling stick across its shoulder which, as it darted fearfully through the traffic, kept changing size. It came running towards the shop.
‘I was worried that the shop would be closed by now,’ it said, out of breath. ‘But I was wrong. Thank goodness it’s still open.’
It fixed its little eyes on the door, trying to see in.
‘Has the barber left?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where is he, then?’
‘If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me,’ I said gravely. His eyes lit up in anticipation.
‘Go on then. Tell me.’
‘This morning he sent his apprentice off to get razor blades.’
‘And?’
‘His apprentice never came back. We waited a long time, but he never turned up.’
‘And?’
‘The barber lost patience and went out to look for him. But he hasn’t come back either.’
He was angry. I could tell from the way he now stared at me, through narrowed, twitching eyes.
But when he spoke, there was fear in his voice. ‘You mean he’s lost?’
‘I don’t know,’ I replied.
Then we fell silent, retreating into the loneliness we now shared, as the aroma of grilled meat drifted between us.
‘I have to go,’ said the shadow. ‘If the barber returns, tell him I called.’
‘Who should I say called?’ I asked. But the shadow had already crossed the road and was fast disappearing.
‘Say Reşit called,’ it said. ‘We’re from the same village. He’ll understand!’
32
The barber was the last person to hear the watchman speak.
A few weeks earlier, during a mid-afternoon shave, the barber had said, ‘You seem troubled,’ as though he could see into the watchman’s soul; as he peeled off the towel around his neck, he’d also mentioned how long the muhtar had been gone. The barber went on to say that he saw no reason for worry, for there was sure to be a good reason. Most probably the muhtar had been detained by business. He’d turn up at the moment people least expected him.
These words weren’t very reassuring, of course, and the watchman gazed deep into the mirror for some time, before leaving the barber’s shop in silence.
From that day on, he spoke to no one. He blew around the streets like a dry leaf. He wandered the fields while they were being planted. He lay down in the wheat for hours on end, gazing up at the sky. He was a bird among birds then, a cloud among clouds, wandering the endless blue without a thought crossing his mind – not for years. Not for aeons. Others saw him fall to his knees beside the orchard, to watch the ants all day. But he greeted no one. Nor would he acknowledge anyone who greeted him.
He sometimes walked out to the mill; he’d climb on to a willow branch and perch there like a bird, staring at the pale road that wound up to the cliffs. If he saw a shadow the size of a bird in the far distance, he’d rejoice, of course. His eyes would light up, as he thought it must be the muhtar coming home. But soon the distant shadows turned into wood-bearing donkeys, flicking their tails and pricking up their ears as they neared the village. A few flies followed, and the woodcutters with their shining axes . . . Yet the watchman stayed in the willow tree, oblivious even of the midges. And there he remained, for days on end, staring mournfully at the road. Haunted though he was by a thousand doubts, he stayed in his perch, waiting for the muhtar to come home.
Then one day, looking as miserable as a soldier in the cloak the muhtar had given him many years earlier, he walked up to the cliffs past the cabin where Fatma of the Mirrors had once lived; and from there he continued onwards under the angry noontime sun, to find lost valleys, perhaps, or lost villages, and lost cities. A few days later, when he came trailing back with the goatherds, he was still empty-handed. His face was empty, too, like his mouth, his eyes, and his heart. He wafted from street to street like an empty sack, blown from one wall to the next. He seemed to be shrinking as he went: leaving crumbs of himself on the roads and plains and cliffs and nights he left in his wake.
But still, inside that crumbling watchman, there were hundreds of other watchmen, each very different from the next. One watchman found the energy to search for the muhtar from time to time. One decided to talk again to the barber and tell him everything. One wanted to gather up his things and leave the village. One had a good, long cry. One stood puzzled inside the strange smell in the village square, wondering what to do. One even allowed himself to dream of Hacer from time to time, even though he knew this was wrong. The watchman couldn’t decide which of these fellows he liked most or which ones he had been most often. Until, one day, when he thought he’d follow the one who wanted to go and tell the barber everything. Sometimes he set out to do just that, with that other watchman taking the lead, while he dawdled at the rear, passing beneath the plane tree, moving in silence towards the candle flickering in the barber-shop window. Everything around them kept quiet as they walked; kept in place, perhaps, by the night’s dark clutches. Even the dogs seemed to drift into a deep sleep, and the chickens even deeper, while the birds, the children, the white-bearded old men, the doors and the windows went deeper still . . .
The watchman taking the lead walked quickly and purposefully until passing the plane tree. But then he started turning around to look doubtfully at the watchman behind him. How pleased he was when he saw that this more timid watchman was keeping pace; joy radiated from his eyes, lighting up the ground as he again pressed forward. The timid watchman followed in his glowing footsteps until they neared the barber’s door. The bold watchman was close enough now to touch the window when something – a bark, perhaps, or a hacking cough – shattered the silence. Both watchmen turned around in fright, to rush off home – the real watchman first, and his homunculus fast behind.
Another watchman, who was not quite sure which one he was, darted through the courtyard gate and into the house without seeing his wife, who was at her wits’ end after hours of waiting for him at the window. His wife couldn’t understand him; she couldn’t figure out why he would sit out in the courtyard night after night, never moving except to light a match, and no matter how she tried, she couldn’t get a word out of him. Perhaps the watchman wasn’t even himself any more; maybe he’d turned into a jar of lost secrets, cast into a well of silence. At his wife’s desperate pleading, a few villagers came over to coax the watchman back to speech, but to no avail. The watchman would yank his cap down to his eyebrows and stare at them darkly for many long hours, before turning away to gaze into the distance. No matter where he was – at the coffeehouse, in the village square, standing at his courtyard gate or leaning against a wall – it was the mountains that tugged at him . . . But his sadness gradually faded. With time he abandoned his perch in the willow tree and stopped watching the road. Instead, he returned to his post outside the muhtar’s office.
Now he went there every day, to stand with his back to the flagpole and his empty eyes on the village square. He was still wearing his soldier’s cloak, and sometimes he would lie down on it, cuddling his rifle like a sleeping baby. He lay there in the dead of night, and the heat of the noonday sun, watching the flag flap above him, searching in silence for the absent muhtar. Sometimes he thought he saw him in the distance, racing towards the village on horseback, and when that happened, the watchman would rush shouting into the village square. No one could understand the sounds he made, though everyone spent a long time trying to decipher them. A few people went further still; Rıza in his shop, the proprietor of the coffeehouse, and a little further down, the shoemaker – they all had their ears to the wall. But the watchman stayed all day outside the muhtar’s office, and no one could be sure when he was going to shout. Sometimes the sun would set without their hearing a single cry. Sometimes the watchman would spend the whole day asleep, curled up like a mangy dog whose owner had at last returned.
One day, a few cau
tious villagers went over to sit with him. They didn’t say a word, since they knew he wouldn’t talk. Instead, without forethought, they just sat down next to him and, leaning back against the wall of the muhtar’s office, they looked out at the village square. After which the white-bearded old men resting at the foot of the other wall got up as well, clicking their walking sticks as they too took their places on either side of the watchman. Next came a few youths with wispy moustaches. Soon everyone was waiting for the muhtar to come home. They were as still as if they were outside a house that had just suffered a death. They gazed emptily at the village square, seeing nothing but sadness.
The old men noticed the strange smell. Still seated, they began to search for its source. Soon they were back on their knees, forming a distinct group again, stroking their beards and conferring, searching the village square with eyes that kept vanishing into their wrinkles. Once again, they were holding a secret court. The others listened anxiously as they argued and argued about the source of the strange smell that was fast taking over the village.
Finally, the watchman could not stand it any more. He picked up his cloak and left, in such a fury that they thought he might never return.
33
This night now descending on us – it seemed to have come from another world. It had erased not just the village, but sound itself. All that was left was a bottomless abyss, and darkness without end.
And yet, though it made no difference if my eyes were open or closed, I was gripped by a strange compulsion to make some sense of my surroundings. I couldn’t see a thing, or even so much as a blurry hint of a thing, but wherever I looked, I seemed to lurch in that direction, until I flinched. For a time, I tried looking around in all directions, in the hope of finding some balance. And that may be why I started trying to go deeper into the darkness. Though the leg I’d been sitting on for all this while had gone to sleep, I got back on my feet. I shuffled forward, holding out my arms to keep myself from bumping into anything. In fact, I was wrong to think my hands alone could guide me; for now I bumped into a wall, and though I tried to measure it with my hands, the way a blind man might, I was still left guessing. This might be a wall I was touching, but it seemed to have no corners: I could walk along it for months, I thought, or run for weeks, without ever finding where it ended. Or perhaps that was simply what I longed to do at that moment – to walk along that wall without a thought for where it might end – to walk just for the pleasure of walking.
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