Suddenly, the woman came to her senses, but when she heard that the imam did not want to wash her husband’s body, she fainted again, as though the muhtar had died a second time. The imam was still out in the courtyard at this point; in a wan, ingratiating voice he was trying to explain to those around him that he could never wash the body of a suicide, as religion did not permit it. In his opinion, the muhtar was now in hell; however much good he had done in this world, he had condemned himself to this fate after taking his own life.
By noon, the muhtar was in his coffin. Fitting his great body into that narrow container was no mean feat. It seemed as though he could hear everything around him, and was still fighting for his life: perhaps he didn’t really want to leave the village he had run for all these years. And his tongue – it hung down like a bulrush, reaching almost as far as his belly, refusing to go back into his mouth. Every time they tried, it would shoot out again like a purple snake. In the end they had to give up, and so it was that the muhtar entered the earth sticking his tongue out at those he was leaving behind.
Over the next few days, the village struggled to make sense of this. Theories abounded. Some said that he was sticking his tongue out at the imam, for refusing to wash his body or perform funeral rites. Others thought this claim ridiculous, and not in keeping with the muhtar they had known. He wasn’t that silly – dead or not, he still knew how to behave. Even, indeed, if he had decided to stick out his tongue, there would have been a reason. It could well be that this reason would remain a mystery . . . That said, the reason, if it existed, must have something to do with what had happened during his trip into the city.
The watchman was of the same mind. Having locked Cennet’s son inside the muhtar’s office, he’d forgotten all about him, as he spiralled through the village like a dervish, trying to divine the muhtar’s secret. He suspected that the muhtar had returned around the time when Reşit was rushing about madly, trying to kill the horse. Maybe he had come back by night, creeping in without a horse while the village reeled with the echoes of snapping bones. He imagined him slipping into his office like a cat. He wouldn’t have lit a candle: he wouldn’t even have touched the folds of the curtains, so as not to advertise his return. He would have lit a cigarette, and then another, to stop his curiosity dragging him to the window. But then, that night, before looping the rope around his neck, he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself going over to the window to look out on to the village . . . Something deep inside him would have dragged him to it . . . And there, at the window, he would have contemplated the sorrows that had brought him to the brink of death.
The watchman could not begin to imagine what those sorrows could be. Maybe, he thought later, the muhtar had been insulted during his time in the city. Perhaps the doors of the State had slammed in his face, one by one. If that was what had happened, his confidence would have cracked like dried soil, and his beliefs snapped like corn stalks. And perhaps no one in that city had so much as noticed him. Perhaps they had made him wait days on their doorsteps; refusing to listen to a thing he said, failing to understand a thing they heard . . . Then, one day, they might have tired of him standing in their way. They might have taken him inside; forced him down long corridors into a room as big as the village. ‘Güvercin the Dove, you say?’ they might have said. ‘Isn’t that a bird?’ ‘No, no,’ the muhtar would have replied. ‘Güvercin is the most beautiful girl in the village.’ ‘Hmmmm,’ the men might have said. ‘Stay there and we’ll show you what that girl’s place is in the eyes of the State!’ They might have chosen this moment to take down enormous books from enormous shelves, and files covered in dust, to rifle through their pages, one by one. When they saw that it would take months and months to find Güvercin, they could have called other functionaries. And soon there would have been hundreds of sharp-faced men poking their bright eyes into those books and those files caked in dust, and cursing the muhtar under their breath, and throwing him dour looks from time to time, and then returning to their task, if only because it took less effort. Finally they would have located Güvercin, of course. A group of them would have rushed in, clutching files. ‘Look,’ they’d have said, ‘here!’ And the muhtar would have looked; but all he would have seen was a tiny mark that was nothing more than Güvercin’s absence. Less than a dot, even: more like an empty hole the size of a louse’s eye on a page that contained too many squiggles to count. Fearing now that the empty space itself might disappear, the muhtar would have collected himself as best he could. While scanning those huge shelves, he would have tried to understand how much space he himself occupied in the eyes of the State. ‘So tell me,’ he would have said then, in a voice thick with surprise. ‘Tell me – is this the extent of the space taken by the most beautiful girl in the village, in the eyes of the State?’ The men would have knitted their brows. ‘Beauty makes no difference here,’ they would have said. ‘Whoever told you the State was a man who cared about looks?’
‘How true,’ the muhtar would have said. ‘Whoever said the State was a man?’ Then they would have taken him by his arms, to drag him gasping to the door, and tossed him outside like a worn old sack . . .
Sometimes the watchman wondered if he was making it all up. Maybe what had happened was nothing like this at all . . . So instead he imagined the muhtar on a weary horse, sweating in the shadow of those enormous, arched, brass-ringed iron gates . . . and struggling for breath. He would have taken it all out of his saddlebags – all the trust placed in the gates of the State by the village, the road by the mill, the thyme-scented cliffs, other villages he had passed, the mountains he had crossed, the lost valleys in their shadow, the flocks grazing in the highlands, the white-cloaked shepherds and their pipes that made the mountains and rocks sigh with heartbreak – and mixed it together on the spot. The State, using the eyes of men, towered over them like a giant. Having surveyed the muhtar’s magnificent display, it would have done no more than ruffle its moustache with a mocking smile that would reverberate like a curse on seven generations of Cennet’s son’s forefathers. The muhtar would not have known what to do next. For he would have come without his prayer beads, to end up face to face with the State. Unable to puff on a cigarette, either, he would have found himself in slow retreat from the State’s wounding mockery. Until, without warning, the State would have surrounded him with men so thickset that a single squeezed pimple would have yielded a bucket of blood. It would have been clear from their expressions that these men found him stupid and resented every minute of their time he had wasted. Hence their fury; hence their haste. ‘You!’ they would have cried. ‘You! You must not know how far down a lost girl is in the State’s priorities, because if you did, you would never leave a village flying the flag of this State without a muhtar for this long. What kind of muhtar are you?’ The muhtar would have just looked at them, of course . . . He would have had nothing to say. But rather than telling him to fuck off, the men would have remained planted before him, stubbornly silent. He would have gone pale. He would have mounted his horse and in deepest sorrow spurred it on. The horse would have been even more dejected than its burden. It would have plodded off down the road, as the brass rings on the mighty gates of the State shone in the sun, and the State’s arches rose to the clouds. It would have been a long time before he escaped its shadows, shadows so heavy they seemed etched on the soil. The muhtar would have plodded on, head bowed . . . never knowing where he was bound; knowing only that it would be a place where he could die. Of course, he would have known that he could die anywhere, and yet he would have searched for a good place, so that his death would become one with the fine scenery around it.
‘That means,’ the watchman said, ‘that he had a good reason to put the key in his pocket. He wanted his body to lie there for a while; he didn’t want it to be found yet.’
‘Unless,’ he thought a while later, ‘he was the one who kidnapped Güvercin?’
39
I found an open coffeehouse, but it looked nothing li
ke the one in my daydream. It was a dark, narrow place crammed between a shop selling mineral oils and a fusty grocery store whose window was piled high with cigarette packets.
At first I thought it must be closed, but just as I was turning away, I spotted the waiter, bent over his blue-framed stove. What waters he was swimming through I could not say, but every time he dipped below the surface, he came bursting back up. Nevertheless, he turned around when I opened the door, watching me cross the room, even counting my steps, until I’d settled at a table, as if I, too, were in his dream.
I lit up a cigarette, already imagining the tea that he’d soon be pouring from the steaming pot to bring to my table. They smelled of wet dust, these tables, but they seemed to lack substance, as if – were it not for the overturned ashtrays weighing them down – they might have floated through the door, to wander the night streets.
‘Tea?’ asked the waiter. I nodded.
Rising drowsily, he wandered over to the radio. He played with the dial for a while, flipping from station to station. At long last he reached some decision, though he didn’t seem overly pleased by it. As he plunked my glass of tea on the table, there was something about the sour look he gave me that told me it was part of a ritual he had played out many thousands of times.
He returned to his stove. When I saw him drift off again, I decided this would be my only tea. Because I could never bring myself to call on such a man, not even if this place were full to bursting with waiters racing back and forth. If it were up to me, I’d hem and haw instead – prattle on about how waiters never learned, and the customer was always right. I’d try, nonetheless, to catch their attention, but whenever I raised my hand, they’d all vanish.
Even if they weren’t really there, they wouldn’t see me. They’d pass by me as if I didn’t exist.
40
Reşit laid his rifle across his knees and sat in front of the yard gate. The earthly world could not contain his grief. His heart was eaten through with anger. He felt too tired to move, but now and again he just about managed to lift up his head, to watch Rıza pacing the courtyard.
Rıza was not angry so much as at his wits’ end; he would stop to growl something at Reşit, but his words were never clear, and he would soon go back to his pacing. After many days of this, he was making giant steps, and with each of those steps, the courtyard seemed to shrink. The moment arrived when it could no longer contain him; from time to time he would burst into the street to race down to the village square, faster and more menacing than an overflowing river. Here he would bang on the walls of the muhtar’s office. For what was the point of fawning at the stable door, fretting like a turtledove? The time had come to storm the muhtar’s office and shoot Cennet’s son!
But Reşit, as always, was putting off the moment. He had seen with his own eyes that his daughter was pregnant, but he was unable to act. Action itself seemed to make him uncomfortable: even his own trembling disgusted him, and that was why he stayed sitting in the same place for days on end. He slept like a bird, and ate like one, too. If something near him moved, he’d cock his head to look at it, just like a bird did; his eyes pleaded for silence, silence without end. He wondered if he had lived through all this before – in the distant past, perhaps. So far, though, he had not managed to predict a thing. But neither had he been surprised, or startled, or shocked, by anything he’d seen. Such emotions seemed beyond him. But the moment he saw or heard something, it called to mind a half-forgotten dream. One by one, familiar details would command his attention. They might be blurry at first, but with time they became clearer. So that now, as far as Reşit was concerned, the only blur remaining was Güvercin’s pregnancy. This could explain why he had shut her in the stable, vowing not to let her out until she identified the father!
His wife would come running out of the house. Falling to her knees, she would beg Rıza to talk her husband down, but Rıza would pay her no attention. She’d grovel around her husband’s brother like a dog, for all to see, stomping around the courtyard before dragging him inside. They would fight like this several times a day, and there were other times when they raised their voices so high the whole village could hear them. The women would peer over their courtyard walls to listen in silence. Of course, they ducked whenever Rıza raised his voice, leaving behind them a row of worried ghost faces. The children were more forthright, however. They would sit in a row on the wall, like statues almost, and watch for hours, never blinking once. They might not have understood what was going on, and yet they waited there patiently, just to hear Rıza swearing. They must also have heard that Güvercin was shut in the stable, and that would have got them curious, thought of course there was no hope of taking a look for themselves. The stable door was Reşit, the walls Reşit, and the roof Reşit. There was no getting past him. No one, that is, except for the watchman.
He came by every other day, and whenever he did, Reşit would move slightly to one side, as if to let him through. At first he wasn’t so accommodating, of course. Eyeing the gaggle of women behind him, he’d press his back against the stable door, rifle at the ready, impervious to their pleas. He wouldn’t talk to anyone else, either. He’d just stand there grinding his teeth while the women insisted that Güvercin, being pregnant, needed their attention. The little lamb might be in pain, they’d say; she could be on the verge of death, they’d wail. Show some mercy! What the mother suffers, the child suffers in turn! In response, he’d only grind his teeth some more. Until finally, the women gave up and went home, or went in to see Güvercin’s mother. With time, though, things got easier. The watchman would nudge open the stable door to enter into darkness so thick you could bounce a stone against it. The windows, which looked out on to the cherry orchard, were no larger than cows’ eyes, casting a thin light on the manger and nothing else. The watchman would linger at the door, unnerved by the strong smell of horse, which took his mind to the horse that had killed Ramazan: it could be here. As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he’d begin to see posts and feedbags and piles of straw on the floor. He advanced, very slowly, lest he startle Güvercin.
‘Listen to me, my girl,’ he said in a confident voice. ‘You have no reason to fear. Tell me everything that happened to you from the start . . . Tell me so we can find a solution to this problem . . . Look, it is growing in your tummy.’
Güvercin was silent.
‘Who kidnapped you?’
Silence.
‘Tell me, was it Cennet’s son?’
No response.
‘If you tell me who it was, I’ll get them to marry you. I’ll persuade your father, I promise!’
The girl was silent. And eventually the watchman asked her the question that had been eating away at him for a very long time.
‘Or else,’ he whispered, ‘was it the muhtar who kidnapped you? Look, he’s dead now. He hanged himself . . . There’s no need to be afraid. Come on now, tell me.’
The girl said nothing. It was the same with her father, and her mother, and Hacer and Rıza: with each and every one of them, she remained stubbornly, and unfathomably, silent. Emerging from the stable, the watchman would frown. Speaking loud enough to be heard in the darkness, he would ask Reşit how to get the girl to speak. But Reşit was no better; he would answer with a shrug of his shoulders, before staring at a fixed point on the ground for hours on end.
‘Shall we marry her off to Cennet’s son?’ asked the watchman.
‘With that madman?’ came Rıza’s voice from the other end of the yard. ‘Are we going to marry Güvercin off to that madman? Not in this world!’
‘And why not?’
‘What, should the girl get into bed with his snakes? And anyway, doesn’t the holy law forbid getting engaged to a madman?’
At that, the watchman would fall silent. He’d plant himself in front of Rıza and stare at him wordlessly before leaving the yard. The barber would watch him come back past his shop at all hours of the day. He’d carry on watching until the barrel of his rif
le vanished behind a wall. He’d catch himself smiling, but when he did, he’d turn his back on the village square and return to his shop. A wave of fatigue would come over him, as every aspect of his being – his gaze, his sense of touch, his smile and his silence – began to wane. Or unravel. Or shrink, even, as bit by bit, the flesh was torn from bone. And perhaps that was why he drew what strength he could from everything he passed: if he happened to see an earthenware jug, for example, he’d carry it in his mind for a while more. When words left his mouth, he would let them wander around like floating mines for a few days before recalling them to his ears. Or he’d delve under the veil of time to pluck a dream from the darkness, to let it play out before his eyes once again.
All this made the barber wonder if he ought to leave the village. He’d been thinking about it more and more these days – thinking back to the time he took his suitcase and came here, and wondering why. He imagined a city, and in the city a street, and in the street a shop, and in the shop he imagined a barber.
The barber must be all alone by now, as he stood by the window, looking out through narrowed eyes.
41
By the time I finished my tea, the coffeehouse had filled with drowsy men. I had no recollection of the door opening. I couldn’t for the life of me recall seeing them come in. But here they were, sitting all around me, each with his empty glass of tea. Some were lost in thought; some were dozing with their chins on their chests. Others were resting their heads on their hands, and looking blankly at nothing in particular. Written on each face was a tale of the same burdens, the same thoughts, or even maybe, without their even knowing it, the same hearts. A few were now resting their heads on the tables, to sleep in earnest. ‘Who can know why they’re so tired?’ I thought. ‘Who could say whose weariness weighs them down?’ And then, in my obstinacy, I again tried to remember when I’d seen them coming in.
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