Shadowless

by Hasan Ali Toptas

  Sometimes, when elsewhere in the village they were gathering together around steaming bowls of soup, or lighting lamps one by one to bring life to the darkness, while the whitebeards at the foot of the wall headed home for bed, tapping their canes, the old women would come to Reşit. When he was still a snot-nosed child, these scrawny and toothless old biddies had always been ready with a stuffed flatbread for him, or glasses of water. They’d patted his head, wiped the sleep from his eyes with their headscarves, performed little rituals to protect him from the evil eye, and now they showed an alarming intuition in choosing the hours of the night when he was at his weakest. Reşit cried blood while listening to them. He questioned himself, and looked inside his heart, and gritted his teeth, but not for a second did he let on. He looked at these women as blankly as the walls to either side, and the door behind him. And so, when the women said, ‘Let’s take this girl out of the stable and put her to bed,’ they were talking to a door. When they advised him not to intervene in these matters until the baby was safely born, they were talking to a wall. They got no response, of course, and many hours later, when the imam launched into his last call to prayer, they would lose hope and return home. And after their footsteps rang in the streets, they would echo in Reşit’s mind until, at long last, they were lost in the darkness inside him.

  Then he, too, would settle into that darkness, as he sat there smoking, and listening to the dogs barking at the other end of the village. Much later, as the night grew thicker, swallowing up the birds in their sleep, muffling the barking dogs, swamping the villagers, drowning the plains, and passing over the cliffs to spread further still, Reşit looked across the snow-covered rooftops and noticed a dark stain . . . The stain kept twitching, and jumping from roof to roof. It seemed as lithe as a black cat, but as it came closer, it burst through its silhouette. Suddenly, a pair of silver pebbles shone out from the stain, and in their light that stain took the form of a horse. Reşit rose slowly and walked towards it, watching it intently as his feet creaked and cracked through the snow. He wanted to make absolutely certain it was what he thought it was before he aimed his rifle and fired . . . He looked for the wild winds in its mane, the smell of blood on its hooves and the bones crunching in its ears. But the horse refused to oblige: it stood lively on the snow, flicking its ears and breathing fire. It was still far away, or else he himself was far away. Try as he might, he couldn’t judge the distance.

  Yet on one night like this, as it crashed through a cloud of darkness and snow, the horse laughed at him; just like Cennet’s son, he laughed at Reşit, and then he laughed some more. This laughter achieved what the old women had not, for all their nocturnal visits. It sent Reşit into a fury, and the next day he locked the stable tight and went off to find the horse again. Rifle in hand, he vanished into the mountains.

  And once he was off wandering from cliff to mountain peak, the old women swarmed to the stable door. For days on end, they couldn’t find a key to fit the lock, though they could see Güvercin through the gaps in the wood. As soon as she heard their voices, she came up towards them, standing among the cowpats, her face speaking her longing for a woman’s warmth.

  The women first asked her whether her pains had begun or not. Güvercin sobbed in response. Taking this to be a yes, the women exchanged looks, not knowing what to do next. For days, they waited in silence beneath the ice-covered eaves. They passed bowl after bowl of food through the window that was the size of a cow’s eye, and that looked out on to the cherry orchard, just as her mother had done in secret, every night . . . They would rush back to their houses, in fact, and return with bowl after bowl of molasses, pickles and yoghurt. There were many different types of molasses, some made from sesames, and others made from poppies, and pickles made from unripe melons, and peppers, and tomatoes and carrots, and with one voice they told Güvercin that everything would be fine: ‘For now, just eat . . .’ But more than the food that came through the window she needed those who brought it; she struggled to distinguish their faces, their breathing, their voices, so that she could recognise each and every one. She could make out Hacer, for example, and her mother, and Cıngıl Nuri’s wife, and the muhtar’s wife, too, and though she couldn’t see them, that sad, long-haired girl could recognise them all, and for a moment, she was happy.

  But whatever they did, she would not tell them who had made her pregnant.

  ‘I won’t say,’ she said once in response to her mother’s whispers. ‘I’d rather die . . .’

  It was at the afternoon call to prayer, maybe; and her mother, left outside with her suspicions, was aghast at hearing these words . . . When she collected herself, she resorted to other questions, to work out when the birth would be.

  Meanwhile Reşit was in the mountains, listening to the echo of a bullet he had just shot at the cliffs.

  ‘Damn it,’ he said, between clenched teeth. He put his rifle back on his shoulder and walked back to the village. A day in these mountains, and the snow had blinded him. Over and over, he had thought he’d seen the horse and aimed his rifle, but just as he was about to shoot what was no more than the ghost of a horse, he came to his senses and trudged on, shaking his head in despair.

  ‘What was that shooting noise?’ asked the watchman, standing before him in the village square.

  Reşit bridled.

  ‘I shot it.’

  ‘You saw the horse?’ asked the watchman.

  ‘No,’ said Reşit. ‘For a few days there’s been a bear wandering near the village. I shot at it.’

  ‘Did you get it?’

  ‘Not this time, but maybe the next!’

  Together they walked through the evening darkness. The watchman was silent; since the muhtar’s death, he’d been subdued. He rarely got upset, and he rarely got sad. He thought deeply before speaking. He’d let his moustache grow until his upper lip had vanished underneath it.

  They stopped under the plane tree.

  ‘The time has come for us all to search for that horse together,’ said the watchman. ‘I will let everyone know tonight. Don’t set out alone tomorrow, wait for us!’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Reşit.

  ‘Make sure you don’t forget,’ added Cıngıl Nuri.

  Reşit hadn’t seen him. He turned to find him right behind the watchman, wearing rubber boots.

  ‘Let’s all find that killer together,’ said Rıza, from inside Cıngıl Nuri.

  Reşit almost gasped.

  ‘Let’s find him,’ he said to Rıza, or Nuri (he didn’t know which).

  ‘I’ll come too,’ said the barber.

  But Reşit couldn’t see him; he was turning in the snow, trying to find the barber in Rıza’s face, in Nuri. He could hear his voice, which meant he must be in there somewhere. Maybe he had come with his apprentice.

  ‘Why are you wandering around like that?’ asked his wife.

  Reşit stopped in the middle of the courtyard; he looked around blankly, trying to figure out where he was: he saw the stable door beneath the icicles, and the chicken coop, submerged in darkness, and the cart, and on the other side the wooden staircase leading up to the house, and his wife.

  ‘You’ll kill that girl soon,’ said his wife, when their eyes met. ‘Your daughter’s in labour!’

  Reşit seemed not to hear. Looking away angrily, he crossed the courtyard to race up the stairs.

  ‘Just so that you know – the girl will give birth sometime today!’

  He had planned to pause on the top step and curse his wife, but he didn’t stop. He pushed through the door and dropped his rifle. Longing to lose himself in the half-light, he gave himself over to the scent of chickpeas, and of thyme, sorrow and despair. As he plunged deeper into the darkness, he kept his silence with him, and his past.

  His wife, when she called up to him, seemed very far away. ‘Can’t you hear me, husband?’

  Then Güvercin’s screams rose up through the air, flapping like a pair of disembodied wings . . .

  45


  The day broke when it broke, yet in some godforsaken street I was still looking for the road that led to the barber’s shop. I was exhausted – after many hours of walking down these dark streets, I was only now coming to recognise them, and I was beginning to stumble. Despite my urgent need to arrive at my destination as soon as humanly possible, I was slowing down, and sweating like a horse. I had, somehow, become Cennet’s son. I was stepping outside the muhtar’s office, to pass through a village square that looked like a city. Soon, no doubt, I would emerge from beneath the rustling plane tree with my pack of imaginary children. Turning right at the grinding-stone, I would dance past the whitebeards at the foot of the wall, who would rouse themselves to watch me head for our courtyard gate.

  And the moment she saw me, Cennet would say, ‘Heavens. What is this?’ as though I’d never died. ‘Heavens, what is this . . .’ And then she’d get up, stand right in front of me, trying to get a good look through eyes swollen from crying. And she’d murmur, ‘What type of dream is this?’ A shadow would pass across her face, a shadow resembling a dead snake on a stick, and in its wake, my coffin, passing through the streets, and screams, floating, and shoulders, hunching. Clutching my coffin, a row of hands, and beneath them, the villagers, trudging, trailing grief, and silence . . . Cennet would see herself in that crowd; maybe for a while she would watch herself looking at my coffin . . . If I were Cennet’s son, I wouldn’t leave her like that for too long. I would open up my arms and run straight into hers.

  But instead I stopped: I had turned from the village square into a bright and bustling avenue. For a time, I watched the honking cars flow past, as the shutters rolled up, amid bursts of happy song. I listened to the simit and salep sellers hawking their wares.

  I gave up trying to find the barber shop. I crossed the road, and plodded down the pavement, thinking I had no choice but to go home.

  46

  The villagers assembled at the foot of the plane tree in the early hours of the morning, without quite knowing what they were there for. They shuffled about drowsily, glancing at each other from time to time, adjusting the cartridge boxes at their waists, and listening to the snow crunch beneath their feet. Then finally they set off down the road to the mill, leaving behind the smoke curling from the chimneys of the village, the blackened rooftops and the white-bearded old men peering out from the windows of the coffeehouse.

  Leading them was the watchman, who was wearing his soldier’s cloak. Now and again he would turn, steam billowing from his mouth as he issued instructions to those behind him. ‘Everyone spread out as far as they can,’ he could be saying. ‘If we all spread out we’ll be able to search a larger area.’ Unless he was warning them to be careful, telling them not to go haywire when they’d spotted the horse, not to get in such a panic that they shot themselves! It could be that he was swearing at the horse, launching a jeremiad against the last seven generations of horses from its stable. It was clear he was in a rage: the clouds of steam were coming fast and furiously, and the skirts of his cloak were shaking up a storm.

  Then they split up and spread out slowly in all directions until they were out of each other’s range. Each trudged through the snow for many hours, driven by a vision of a horse. Each smoked one cigarette after another, each began to shiver from the cold, each narrowed his eyes to scan the horizon. Around noon, they came together again, to march across the plain and up into the mountains, like an army in retreat. Exhausted, they passed the house where Soldier Hamdi and Fatma of the Mirrors had settled their accounts, forming an enormous arc to climb the cliffs. On they went, across unknown hills, beset by wild and wayward clouds that dampened their hopes, and a fierce wind that scraped the ice off the ground and dashed it to pieces.

  ‘This was where I saw the bear,’ said Reşit.

  The watchman turned around to squint at the juniper grove that Reşit was pointing to.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be hibernating?’ asked the barber. Reşit shrugged. He was listening to the cliffs as though he could still hear the bullet he had lobbed at the bear the day before. Then a speckled partridge flew up in front of them, and dived back into the bushes. Everyone jumped . . . And then went still, as if to conjure up the flapping wings that had now swooped away. Afterwards they joined forces and went rushing down into the juniper grove. In their haste, they loosened a few clumps of snow from branches above them; so forlorn was their fall that the juniper bushes could not help but sigh; their sigh shook the other branches, until all through the deep green grove, there were snowflakes swirling. As the last light faded, a darkness inside the darkness stirred. No, it didn’t just stir – it let out a weird moan as it moved towards the villagers.

  Before anyone could make sense of this apparition, let alone be shocked by it, the barber had aimed his rifle and fired.

  ‘That’s the bear!’ shouted Reşit. ‘That’s the bear that’s been wandering around here the last few days!’

  The villagers, restored to safety, peered curiously at the bear.

  ‘Let’s take this bastard to the village,’ said the watchman.

  As he fell to his knees to tie its back legs, he looked up at the barber.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘It turns out you’re a real marksman.’

  The barber blushed, and forced a smile.

  Then they returned to the village, dragging the bear and a convoy of ragged clouds all the way to the muhtar’s office, and leaving behind them a long, winding trail of blood on the snow. The watchman again led the way. He’d draped the rope over his shoulder and tied it around his wrist, but the going through the snow was slow. The villagers trudged behind the bear with their rifles and handguns. The barber, who had still not quite found his place in the village, despite all the years he had lived there, walked alone behind all the others. Indeed, he almost seemed to be breaking off from them altogether: though every step took him closer to the village, he seemed to be further away. And when the whitebeards, hearing the villagers return, left the warm tin stove to huddle wide-eyed around the coffeehouse window, they, too, seemed to notice; they exchanged looks, whispered, ‘What’s happened to that one?’ Then they saw the bear and their spirits lifted, for they thought it must be the horse. Then the children descended noisily upon the village square, chased by a few of their mothers, and soon there was such a crowd that the old men could see neither bear nor barber.

  The watchman was still dragging the bear, which seemed even heavier now, with all those children’s eyes on it. When at last it was lying outside the muhtar’s office, he tied the rope tight around the flagpole.

  ‘Isn’t it dead?’ asked one of the children.

  ‘Of course it is, son,’ said the watchman. ‘It died the moment the bullet hit it!’

  ‘Soooo . . . then why are you tying it up?’

  The watchman stopped in his tracks. He looked at the bear, and he thought about Cennet’s son. But by now the old men had come out of the coffeehouse. Passing through the huddle of children, they came up to the bear, beards quivering.

  ‘Who shot it?’ one asked.

  ‘The barber,’ said the watchman.

  The old men turned their heads in unison, searching for the barber, but they couldn’t find him. In any event, they didn’t have the chance. For now a boy came careening out from behind the plane tree, shouting at the top of his lungs. A roar went through the crowd.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ asked the watchman.

  ‘Güvercin’s given birth!’ cried the shoemaker.

  At first Reşit couldn’t quite understand. He seemed almost to be asleep with his eyes open. Then suddenly he pushed through the crowd, sprinting past the plane tree in a single breath. For a moment he feared for his daughter’s health. Then he banished the thought, though it chased him like a dirty cloud, down one winding street to the next.

  At last, Reşit rushed in through his gate. The courtyard was packed with women, who parted when they saw him to pave his way to the stable door.

  ‘She gave birth all by
herself,’ said one.

  He took the key from his pocket.

  ‘She bellowed like a cow,’ said another. ‘Thank God they both survived!’

  With shaking hands, he turned the lock.

  ‘If you’d heard her screams, you wouldn’t have been able to stand it, you’d have died yourself!’

  Reşit stopped, then gently pushed open the door. The women poured in after him, and when they saw what was before them, they screamed louder than the night.

  47

  As I walked towards my building, I looked up at my window on the third floor. As always, one pane was open. ‘That’s good,’ I thought, as I dragged myself up the stairs. ‘In spite of everything, I must still be writing . . .’

  I stopped on the second-floor landing, to catch my breath. A procession of anxious faces passed me by, and footsteps, clattering off to work. Drowsy women rushed past, and children clutching hot loaves of bread, but not a single one seemed to see me standing there, and not one so much as wished me a good morning. I was nothing in their eyes, my face no more than a distant reminder of a hundred others. And how many thousands of times had they seen someone like me, catching his breath on a second-floor landing? When I reached the third floor and pushed open my door, I still felt the same way. As I took off my shoes and padded into my study, I savoured the comfort of being a nobody.

  First I opened the curtains. Then I pushed the typewriter to one side and tidied up the piles of paper. When all that was done, I picked up my glass of tea, and sat down to wait. I didn’t know what I was waiting for, in fact; I kept peering down at the street but still I couldn’t figure out who or what I was expecting. Or maybe I just couldn’t remember.