by Hakan Günday
Copyright © 2011 by Hakan Günday / Kalem Agency
English-language translation copyright © 2018 by Alexander Dawe
First English-language edition
Originally published in Turkey as Az in 2011 by Doğan Kitap
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Names: Gunday, Hakan, 1976- author.
Title: The few : a novel / Hakan Gunday.
Other titles: Az. English
Description: First English-language edition. | New York : Arcade Publishing, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017046188 (print) | LCCN 2017047754 (ebook) | ISBN 9781628727104 (ebook) | ISBN 9781628727098 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Youth--Turkey--Social conditions--Fiction.
Classification: LCC PL248.G766 (ebook) | LCC PL248.G766 A9313 2018 (print) | DDC 894/.3534--dc23
Jacket design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt
Cover illustration: iStockphoto
Printed in the United States of America
For Nevzat Çelik
We are not many, certainly
We are not on the side of the many
We will never be on the side of the many …
—Nevzat Çelik, İtirazın İki Şartı
(Two Requirements of Protest)
DERD
She was six years old and she was going to die that way. She was shaking but she was too scared to stop looking at the bug. A ceiling as vast as a field of sunflowers but all she saw was the bug. A bug the size of a sunflower seed. Its sharp legs were covered with hair and its antennae were as thin as eyelashes. Its body was so still it could have been a photograph of an insect and in the thick darkness it could have been a jet-black stain on the gray concrete. Black, the color of the girl’s eyes, bleary with fear.
She pulled the blanket up to her chin and held it tight in her sweaty fists. Any second the insect could fall on her face. She was on the top bunk of a ladderless bunk bed. The ceiling was less than half a meter above her. If she fell asleep her mouth would slip open and the insect would drop and slip through her teeth. Or first it would drop onto her blanket and crawl over her face and go up one of her nostrils and nibble away at whatever it could find. She quickly rolled over and peered over the bed trying to guess how far off the ground she was. But it wasn’t long enough to figure it out. She couldn’t make out the floor, so she turned back to the ceiling to watch the bug.
Of course it wasn’t the first time she’d seen an insect. She’d seen them on the walls at home, and on the walls in other people’s homes, too. She’d never set foot in any house without at least one bug on the wall. Her father told her they came up from the stream. She’d seen big insects that came up from the stream too. They crawled up onto the ceiling but they were too heavy and fell onto the stove. There were also little bugs—lice—that made them cut her hair off. She’d seen bugs that scurried away, disappearing into the walls, and others that waited patiently to be killed under the sacks of beets. She’d even seen a rat. And once, a wolf. A wolf a hundred times bigger than the bug with black eyes. But she wasn’t afraid of any of them. She never trembled or cried. But she hadn’t been alone. Although she wasn’t alone now either. There were thirty-five other kids in the dormitory. But they didn’t count. She didn’t know any of their names and it was too late to find out now. They were all asleep. She listened to their sleep. She could hear their breath get blocked in their stuffy noses. Kids wheezing in their sleep as they tossed and turned, kids flipping their pillows over as they tried to find a cool spot, kids scratching one foot with the heel of the other. No one was worried about the bug.
She had to move. She had to get down off the top bunk before the bug fell on her. But how? Why wasn’t there a ladder? The kid sleeping on the bottom bunk had pushed her up but she told her she’d have to do it herself next time. She sounded angry.
She pulled the blanket over her face. But the wool had become scratchy over the years and it scratched her cheek like thorns, and anyway, she knew it was a mistake to cover her head. Now she couldn’t see the bug. But it was still there. Just because you couldn’t see it didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Why hide where you couldn’t watch the enemy? It was much more dangerous. The bug could do anything and nobody would know. There was no surveillance.
Her face was dripping with sweat. The chicken pox rash on her temples started to itch. Her heart was pounding and her breath couldn’t keep up. She had to get away. She had to get away from that bug. She felt so alone. She had to find a way out, a way to get down. There had to be a way. Some way down. And then she decided. She chose the easy way out, the quick fix, the whatever happens happens. She threw off the blanket and she pushed herself into the void. She jumped into the emptiness.
When her forehead hit the floor it made the sound of a single clap. No one heard her neck break. When she hit the concrete her heart, beating like a hummingbird’s wings, stopped cold. She was six years old. And the crack in the ceiling, in the darkness, in her fear, that resembled a black bug was only a year older. It had been transforming into an insect every night for seven years. Once the corridor light was turned on and the ward’s door swung open it was nothing but a crack in the ceiling again.
Derdâ’s eyes opened at the sound of the clap and she saw the girl lying on the floor, her neck snapped back. Though it was dark and she couldn’t make out the face she knew who it was. A few hours ago she’d looked her in the eye and told her she had to sleep on the top bunk. She’d helped her clamber up and then told her she’d cut her tongue out if she complained. She’d said it loud enough for everyone to hear. Now the girl was lying on the floor right in front of her. She must have fallen. Or did she jump?
She took her hand out from under her pillow and nudged the girl’s arm. No reaction. She poked her shoulder. She looked up and scanned the ward from between the bunk bed’s iron bars to see if anyone else was awake. Not one head had popped up; relieved, she slowly got out of bed and kneeled next to the girl. She took her by the shoulders and turned her over; she was as light as a cat. Her little face was covered in blood. Derdâ lifted her head and looked around. Sure that no one was awake, she started to cry, biting her lower lip to muffle the sound. She sobbed in silence so no one would wake up.
The little girl was from Yatırca. Yatırca, infamous for its state-funded militia and its informants. Yatırca, as the children called it, the village of spies; Yatırca, those sons of bitches. It was forbidden to help anyone from Yatırca. Not even if they were dead. Derdâ didn’t tell the teacher on duty or do anything that night. She only cried. Slowly she moved away from the girl’s body and quietly slipped back into bed. She herself was from Yatırca and it had taken four years to make the other kids at school forget it.
The blanket hung down from the top bunk, a big triangle whose tip touched the floor. In the darkness Derdâ imagined the blanket was a sail and the bed
was a boat. A sailboat that traveled by night. She had seen something like it once in a picture book. A book where colorful boats with white sails sailed over a deep blue sea. Little girls in yellow raincoats stood on deck, smiling as they sailed toward the horizon. A book where all the girls were happy. But it was just a book, some stupid book. Probably the dumbest book in the world, a bunch of crock. Those girls didn’t really exist. If they did, the book would be full of their happy photographs, not those phony watercolors.
“Lord, let me die in my dreams,” she whispered.
She was about to correct herself, and say “in my sleep,” but the boat of her bed sank into sleep. She was eleven years old. Ten and one.
“The dirty little Yatırca girl’s dead!”
Derdâ woke up wishing she had died in her sleep. She kept listening.
“She fell and split her head open! And that idiot Derdâ’s still asleep! Wake up! Get up!”
She knew that voice. It was Nazenin. Her father died six years ago. He was shot during an attack on a police station. The whole town demanded his dead body back, but their protest was forced to disband when Special Forces tanks rolled into town. So the organization took the matter of retrieving the corpse into their own hands. After nightfall they launched a rocket. But the terrible irony was that the rocket didn’t hit its target—the regional gendarme headquarters—but the building right next to it: Nazenin’s house. A slight error in calculation and two walls of their own dead man’s home were brought down and a sleeping baby was blown to pieces. In the end nobody could reclaim the body. There wasn’t even one to be reclaimed because it was buried into a pit near the police station and nature refused to give it back. The regional head of the organization apologized profusely to Nazenin’s family, but in the end they only paid half the promised blood money. People in the town paid the other half in the time-old currencies of honor and esteem. A loan from Ziraat Bank helped them rebuild the two walls, and later two more rooms were added to the house using the compensation money the family received as victims of an act of terror. Nazenin, the oldest daughter of the household, received her share of prominence and was selected resident supervisor in her ward of the regional boarding school. And the whole town agreed that it was lucky the baby was a girl and there would be no blood feud.
Derdâ opened her eyes when Nazenin shook her.
“The girl from Yatırca fell off the bed last night. Wake up, Miss Yeşim is calling you.”
She couldn’t speak so she just nodded her head. She sat up and set her feet on the floor but quickly pulled them away. She lifted her head and looked at Nazenin towering above her and heard just what she expected to hear.
“Clean that up!”
There was blood on the bottom of her feet.
“Didn’t I tell you that girl was to sleep on the bottom bunk?”
Yeşim was posted to the regional boarding school five months before. When she first saw the enormous school building she recoiled in fear, and when she had learned there were only four teachers responsible for four hundred and thirty students she had trouble convincing her feet to move forward. But what could she do? She had to wait another five years to be reappointed to another school.
“I’m talking to you. Do you hear me?”
If only she worked at a school where she could say, “I’m going to speak to your parents!” But here if she called in the students’ legal guardians, they came toting AK-47s and asked her if she had any problems with their protection, “dear miss teacher,” with every implication that they could stop “looking after her” whenever they wanted. There were no lazy, naughty, bad students in this school. The parents considered the teachers agents of the state who brainwashed their children. They’d even claim teachers came and snatched their babies out of their arms. The children whose fathers were martyred taking arms against government forces were then subjected to torture, being taught social sciences, mathematics, and Turkish. Homework and written exams were forms of abuse. Why should a girl who at fourteen years old was beyond marriageable age associate with male teachers? They should be home married to men of that age. And these schools flaunted their religious beliefs. But what else could you do with them? The organization couldn’t always watch over you. If you were abandoned there was nowhere to run but the state. Children found playing with rabid dogs in front of houses made out of dung were thrown into Yeşim’s arms. And she received them with open arms. And then with no shame whatsoever she grabbed you by the shoulders and shook you.
“Derdâ, answer me! Do you understand what you’ve done?”
But was there a Derdâ who could answer? Was there anything left? What part of her was eleven years old? Her legs, her nails, her sunken cheeks? What part of her was still a child? The strands of hair that escaped from her braids like wisps of steam, the cracked soles of her feet that would never heal?
“All right, Derdâ. It’s all right. Go to the dining hall and have breakfast. And wash your hands and face.”
Twenty-six-year-old Yeşim was as much a teacher as Derdâ was a child. She released her grip from Derdâ’s frail shoulders. In a final attempt she grabbed her chin and lifted her face. Maybe if she could look her in the eye … a house cat and a street cat staring each other down, barely a hand’s distance apart. Yeşim gave up. Derdâ’s sealed lips won.
“We’ll talk later.”
Yeşim watched the little girl disappear out the door as she opened the top drawer of her desk and took out a pack of cigarettes. She pulled out a cigarette and a lighter. She lit the cigarette and the smoke poured out of her mouth and covered her face. Her eyes welled up. At the first drag she considered running away. She thought of stepping out of the building, passing through the garden, walking out of the iron gates, and running to the village; then from town she’d catch a minibus and get the fuck out of here. A few more drags and she’d returned. She stubbed the cigarette out in a glass ashtray. But it didn’t go out; smoke kept rising from the crushed butt. She tried again. Then again, her fingertips turning black. Ash got stuck under her nails. But the cigarette was still smoking. She didn’t look at it anymore. She closed her eyes and just sat, waiting. Whatever, it didn’t matter what happened anymore. Earthquake, fire, avalanche, any disaster. A pen with a divine tip to write a full stop to everything. She waited. And then it happened.
The rickety door to her office opened without a knock. It was Nezih, the assistant director. He poked his head into the room and looked through his glasses at the young teacher slumped in her seat, her eyes closed, and this during office hours.
“Miss Yeşim, are you sleeping?”
Her eyes blinked opened.
“The girl’s family can’t come. The village road is blocked. For the time being the body will be stored in the meat refrigerator in the kitchen, until the gendarme comes. Ok, enough now, go down to the dining hall. The children shouldn’t be left unsupervised.”
This was unlike any of the disasters she’d been contemplating, but a dead child kept in the meat refrigerator was grisly enough to be disastrous. Whatever she had in her chest contracted. Her stomach and abdomen turned hard as stone. Her body felt heavy, like she had swallowed a stone. She didn’t stand up but she just knew Nezih would insist. And he did.
“Yeşim Hanım, we don’t have the time to wait for you. Let’s go.”
Smoke was still wafting up out of the ashtray. She watched the rising smoke disperse. She thought, So this is how people lose themselves. And then she stopped thinking. She picked up the glass ashtray and hurled it at Nezih. It smashed into the door and Nezih retreated into the corridor. Yeşim grabbed a heavy stapler and hurled it at him. Then a penholder, a notepad, a 500-page book. And then the exam sheets were fluttering around the room like wild birds, crashing into each other before they fell. Nezih called to her from behind the door.
“Yeşim Hanım! Yeşim! Hey!”
But Yeşim wasn’t listening. Her eyes halted on the desk set, a gift from her mother. A fountain pen, a ballpoint pen, and a
letter opener. She held the letter opener high and plunged it down into her stomach. There would be no more problems if she died. But unfortunately, she survived.
On the day a student died and a teacher tried to kill herself, the school was trying to make its guest in camouflage feel welcome. The gendarmes were telling jokes but the students weren’t laughing. The captain pretended to listen to the headmaster. Nezih rubbed his temples but he didn’t have a headache. Derdâ chewed her food but she couldn’t swallow. Yeşim lay on the infirmary’s only cot wanting to die, but still very much alive.
Decisions were made, orders were given. The gendarme would take Yeşim and the child’s body to town where they would receive professional attention. It was an unusual situation. The school’s center of gravity had shifted as the children were left unsupervised.
Like a boat rocked by a sudden wave it swayed to the left and to the right, but Derdâ was the only one in the schoolyard who felt nauseated. The others kept their balance, but Derdâ fell like she was falling into the sea. She didn’t drown, but they rolled her facedown so she wouldn’t swallow her tongue. It didn’t seem like she’d collapsed, it seemed like she’d just lain down.
When she came to she smelled Yeşim. She lifted her head to look for her teacher. But the infirmary was empty. She was lying on the cot where Yeşim had been. She couldn’t hold her head up for very long. She rubbed her head into the pillow, crushing her hair into the pillow, but there wasn’t a sound. Even if there was, Derdâ wouldn’t have heard through her tears.
In one day she had caused both a death and a suicide. She squeezed her eyes shut but still she saw Yeşim and the girl from Yatırca. Maybe Derdâ didn’t have an extra kidney, but she had double the consciences and the extra pains that came with them. She might not go down in medical history as the first person to have a double conscience, but still it was all too much for her little body. She felt like she would never be able to get out of bed.