The Few

by Hakan Günday

  On the fourth day, there was no work. Israfil had said, “There’s no going out to work today, everything’s too mixed up out there.”

  Later, when he’d asked Süleyman, he’d said, “Look, son, you think we’re the only ones out there doing this kind of work? There’s a ton of rabid vagabond hounds frothing at the mouths out there.”

  There was a whole day ahead of him waiting to be filled. Then Derda remembered his old friend Isa who he hadn’t seen in a long time. Not that he really wanted to go anywhere near the cemetery neighborhood. But not because he was afraid of his dad. He’d entirely erased him from his mind. Or that’s what Derda thought anyway. His mind had pushed it as far as it could into his skin. And maybe on top of that, he’d stomped on it. In the end, he’d forgotten. There was another reason he didn’t want to get anywhere near the cemetery. He was embarrassed. Because of Oğuz Atay. Who knew for how many days now his tomb hadn’t been cleaned? Who knew how much the dust of death had wrapped around it from all sides? And what about the violets? Who knew what had happened to them. Were any still standing? Had they all wilted?

  And so, changing buses twice and walking clear across three main avenues, he made it to the marble cutter’s shop and found Isa inside a cloud of marble dust. He looks like a baker, he thought, with his face all white.

  “Derda! Where have you been, man? I said to myself, I said did that bastard die or is he still around?”

  They hugged each other. The marble dust got all over Derda.

  “Sorry about that,” said Isa. He started brushing the dust off his bare arms hanging out of his T-shirt. As he brushed the dust away the color of his skin took on darker shades. His left arm especially seemed dark. As the whiteness dispersed, tattoos on his arm came into focus. Tattoos made by his own sleight of hand. With sewing needles.

  “What’s that?” said Derda. He grabbed Isa’s left arm and looked at it. With difficulty, he read it: “‘I have no power over the dawning day, nor can anyone understand it.’ What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Fuck it,” said Isa, looking at his tattoos. “I was out of my head, I just wrote it, that’s all.”

  Then at once he looked up.

  “You can read?”

  “Yes,” said Derda.

  “Good for you, man. Now you can get your primary school diploma.”

  “Nah,” said Derda. “What am I going to do with that? Anyway, I’m still holding out for university.”

  They laughed. Then Derda took Isa’s arm again and looked at his tattoos.

  “Did it hurt?”

  “It must have hurt, but like I said, I was out of my head.”

  That much was obvious from the way the letters slid and curved. They got smaller as they went from his elbow to his wrist. Like it had been done by some simpleton sign painters. Just like Derda the night he’d discovered Oğuz Atay’s signature, Isa hadn’t calculated the empty spaces correctly. The space got narrower and narrower, and to be able to squeeze in all he wanted to write he’d had to make his letters smaller and smaller.

  “How’d you do it?” Derda asked.

  “With a needle,” said Isa. “Just a normal needle.”

  “How’d you do the color?”

  “You know those oil paints? For the astroturf pitch? I used them. You use black, and it becomes like this blue color. Anyway, tell me what you’ve been up to. Remzi told me some. I saw him the other day. You’re working for some pirated book thing?”

  “Pirate?”

  “That’s what they call it.”

  “No way!”

  “Derda, you ass, you haven’t changed a bit. You still don’t have a fucking clue. You don’t even know the name of what you do. Anyway, hang on.”

  Isa yelled into the workshop.

  “Master, I’ll be right back!”

  There was nothing but a cloud of dust in the direction where he yelled. And behind that, two men with masks. They were working at a block of marble with saws. One of the men inside the cloud raised his free hand.

  Isa said to Derda, “Come on, move it. Let’s go have a couple glasses of something.”

  Isa slipped a leather jacket on over his shirt. Then they left the workshop, walking without talking. Whenever they looked at each other they started to laugh. A hundred steps later, Isa said, “Here.” Derda stopped and looked up.

  “Isn’t this a hardware store?”

  “That guy died, man,” said Isa. “His son turned it into a bar. Come on.”

  And so this was the way that Derda returned to the hardware store where years before he’d stolen the ax from their spot in front of the display window to chop up his mother. But now there weren’t any drawers of nails or metal buckets to be found. In their places were four little tables, each swaying on its pedestal, with two stools set across from each other. The hardware store owner’s drunken son jumped out of nowhere.

  “My, my, my, Isa, you’re an early bird today.”

  “So it goes, Mahmut. Look, here’s an old friend of mine. From when we were kids.”

  As it was, he was still a kid. They both were. Derda took Mahmut’s outstretched hand and gave him a nod. They sat at the stools around the fourth table. Mahmut got two beers from the rickety bar near the entrance and took two steps to their table and set them down in front of them. Then he slapped his forehead with the palm of his head.

  “Ah, shit, I didn’t even ask what you wanted to drink.”

  Isa smiled.

  “Don’t kill yourself over it. Beer’s just the thing.”

  Then he looked at Derda.

  “Beer’s all right, right?”

  “Sure,” Derda said.

  Mahmut walked away and took up his perch on the stool behind the bar. He reached under the counter and brought out a glass of vodka. Three glasses raised high in the hardware store-cum-bar called NAIL. Mahmut called it that in memory of his father. And in memory of his father he drank. Just like he did every time. Even if he didn’t say anything about it.

  “Come on, so tell me,” said Isa. “What the hell are you doing over there? You just up and left us.”

  “Man, it’s not like that,” said Derda. “What do you mean I left you? My dad just showed up out of nowhere. We got into each other pretty fast. Then I just left and slammed the door behind me. Thank god Remzi had helped me get some work, otherwise I’d really be down and out right now. I’m staying there, too, now. What are you up to?”

  “What can I do? I mean, shove it. I’m working like a donkey. Then I come here and drink like a donkey.”

  At first, they’d had to stop themselves from talking to glug down their beers. Now they drank because they had nothing left to talk about. Which one of them could have said something, anyway? Was Derda going to talk about Oğuz Atay? Or was Isa going to pick up his story where he’d left off? That time when Derda told him to fuck it? The story about the treasure hunters he’d started when he was ten and had never been able to finish. In any event, it was because of that story that he’d started to talk to marble. And it was because of that story that he’d carved into his own skin. And he’d filled every hole he pierced into his skin with tombstone paint. All because of that story. But why did it matter now anyway? Didn’t everyone have a story like that? Something they’d started and never finished. Because no one ever listened to it. But why bother telling it when you could just flush it away. When you could just flush it down the toilet. A toilet brimming with alcohol.

  The second beers came without them even asking, even before they’d finished the first ones. The third ones came that way, too. Before they’d even emptied the second ones. At one point, Isa went to the workshop to talk to the master. To say, “forgive me for today.” To bargain with a “tomorrow I’ll stay until late.” He was smiling when he came back.

  “It’s okay, the master didn’t say anything.”

  They smiled. And three glasses were raised once again at NAIL. During those minutes when the hours fall into night, the door swung open seven times a
nd closed seven times. Seven more marble cutters came in. And among them, Isa’s master. He sat far from his apprentice. So he wouldn’t have to see his face anymore. He was sick of it all. Most of all he was sick of home. Of his wife at home. As he sat far from the faces he was sick of seeing. And he got drunk enough to be able to stand the face he was sick of looking at.

  Then Isa called out, “To marble!” and raised his glass high. And then, because every man at NAIL had no thought in his head except the thought to drink, they could care less they were toasting a stone and they laughed and drained their glasses. Some guys hit the bottom of the empty glass and yelled “Mahmut!” But he was at least as drunk as his customers. He yelled, “I’m coming,” and took one step, but discovered one foot was missing from beneath him and crashed to the floor. Everyone laughed. Two marble cutters pulled him up. Over the course of four beers, Derda and Isa had run out of talk and just looked around NAIL, chuckling. One was listening to whoever was talking. The reminiscences of a marble cutter. One to the stories of a tombstone in its most exhausting days of mourning.

  Then, one by one, the stools were left empty. Only Mahmut and the two boys were left. And only then did Derda begin to speak.

  “There’s this guy called Oğuz Atay …”

  “Yeah, who’s that, man?” said Isa. “Your relative or something?”

  “No, man …”

  So many liters of beer had left Derda’s throat squeezed for air, and he gasped like he was out of breath. He was trying to explain it to him, but it wasn’t working.

  “No, that’s not it. The man …”

  “What?” said Isa. “What man? Your boss?”

  Derda almost died laughing.

  “What do you mean, boss?” he said. “Look, what did I say. Oğuz!”

  Then he started tapping on the fingers on his left hand with his right pointer finger, spelling out “O Ğ U Z” as he knocked each one. All of a sudden, he stopped and sat completely still.

  “Yeah, we got it, Oğuz,” said Isa.

  Derda was staring at his fingers like he’d never seen them before. Like he was trying to figure something out. Then he looked up at Isa.

  “It works, man!” he said.

  “What are you yelling about, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Man, it works!”

  “What works, come on.”

  “Now look,” Derda said, and then using his left pointer finger he started from his right pinkie finger, tapping one finger after the other. At the same he yelled, “Look, look. O Ğ U Z.” Then he went over the fingers on his left hand with his right pointer finger, crying “A T A Y!” Isa didn’t understand anything.

  “Boy, are you out of your head? What are you talking about?

  “You have a needle, man, a needle?” Derda was yelling.

  “What do you mean a needle?”

  “For a tattoo, man!”

  “Fuck that, man, you’re drunk,” said Isa.

  Just then Mahmut came staggering up with two more beers. He plunked the brimming beer glasses on the table, then the owner of NAIL bar said, slurring his words, “One more drink never screwed anyone.”

  The high-pitched sound of an oud was coming out of the one speaker that hadn’t blown out of an old, beat-up cassette player whose make and model had long since rubbed off. The cassette was just as old as the player itself, and its sound encircled the three bare bulbs hanging down from the ceiling and mixed with the dust of the workshop. Then the voice of Münir Nurettin Selçuk rose over the oud. It rode over the oud like it was flying. “I have no power over the dawning day …” it said. Isa had first heard the song playing from his master’s tape. It was like the first two lines had been written for him; he believed they were meant for him, and he carved them into his arm himself. He couldn’t have heard of either the poet Cahit Sıktı Tarancı, nor the composer Münir Nurettin Selçuk who set the poem to music. “Cassette tape” he would have known, and that was all he needed to believe. “Master, leave the tape, I want to listen to it tonight.” And now he was playing it again. But this time, he was having Derda listen to it.

  “Man, that hurts!”

  “Of course it’s going to hurt,” said Isa.

  Meanwhile, Isa was holding two needles gingerly pinched between his fingertips, heating them over the flame of the stove. Then he dipped the points of the needles into black paint mixed up on a plastic plate, and swiveling around on his stool, he took Derda’s outstretched left hand. He started to pierce Derda’s pointer finger as fast as a sewing machine, with two needles bound together with a rubber band. As the painted points of the two needles pierced the skin, the black mixed with blood. Every so often Isa wiped Derda’s finger with a filthy rag. Otherwise he couldn’t see where he was going. When he wiped the finger the letter “A” jumped out like a beacon.

  Isa’s forehead was sweating out all the beer he had drunk. But Derda couldn’t be bothered to notice; he was looking intensely at what Isa had done on his right fist. There was a letter on each finger on his fist. And his fist said OĞUZ.

  “That’s all done,” said Isa. Wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, he said, “But it won’t work this way. Make your hand into a fist, make your skin good and tight.”

  First Derda looked at the bleeding letter A, then he made a fist and dropped his hand onto the table between him and Isa. Next was the letter T. Isa’s back and neck ached from leaning over and trying to focus his two crooked, drunk eyes. He stretched out then hunched back over the table. He started to pierce into the middle finger of the fist before him with the painted needles. Again and again.

  “Ok, now you can’t wash your hands for at least three days,” said Isa. At the same time he was holding Derda’s fist, admiring his work.

  “Eventually it’ll scab over. But be patient, don’t pick at it. If you do, it’ll make it come off. Just leave it alone, or it won’t set.”

  “Thanks, Isa,” said Derda. “I’ll never forget this favor, what you’ve done for me.”

  “Fuck that, man, what favor? Just show up every now and then and buy me a beer, that’d be enough.”

  Derda returned to the warehouse with the morning ezan. They slipped in side by side. But as soon as he went in, he met eyes with Süleyman. Still drinking. Sitting at his vodka table.

  “Israfil came. He asked for you.”

  Derda’s bright idea had been to hide his drunkenness by not speaking, but he was forced to break his silence.

  “What did he want?”

  “He said you shouldn’t be out at night, that you should stay where you’re staying.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re going to smash this place up. That’s what he said.”

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think? Some thug, goes by the name Hanif the Trashman.”

  Derda couldn’t hold himself back and he laughed.

  “I don’t get it, is the guy a trashman or a thug?”

  “Yeah, keep laughing,” said Süleyman. “But where are you going to be when these guys are up against the door?”

  Derda tried to act serious but he couldn’t quite pull it off. He was still smiling when he said it, but still he managed to ask, “What do they want?”

  Süleyman rolled his glass back down his gullet. Derda folded up boxes and set up his bed.

  “This,” said Süleyman.

  Derda turned around and looked at the man, his eyes as blood-red as the base of a terra-cotta pot.

  “This?”

  “Yeah, this,” Süleyman said, gesturing to all the books. And to all the machines. “Everything. Boy, there’s a lot of money in this business. And when there’s a lot of money, there’s a lot of problems. Get it?”

  Süleyman fell silent. He bent his head down, like he was tracking some thing with his eyes. To be more precise, four things. Four fingers. Four letters. He couldn’t quite see them from where he was sitting, so he asked.

  “What’s that?”

  Derda raised his right hand and first
looked at his tattoos himself. He looked at them like it was the first time he was seeing them. Then he turned his eyes toward Süleyman.

  “This? Yeah, these are letters, it’s nothing.”

  “Let’s see!” said Süleyman. “Let’s just see what you got written there.”

  “It says Oğuz.” Then he raised his left fist and showed it to him. “And this one says Atay.”

  Süleyman laughed. “What an ass. What kind of man are you? And Israfil was going to give you a gun! Son, you’d take off all our heads!”

  Derda stood facing him, still trying to make his sagging face look stern.

  “Come on, lay down, get some sleep. They’ll be here soon.”

  During his two hours of sleep, Derda punched everything that tried to get in his way with an OĞUZ and an ATAY. Deep in the dreams of a moment.

  “What’s up, you cold?” Israfil asked. He was looking at the black gloves with the fingertips cut off that Derda had on.

  “No,” Derda answered. “It’s just that my hands get sweaty and the boxes slip, so I put these on.”

  But he’d really put the gloves on because he was being drowned in all the attention and questions about his tattoos. He’d bought them from the street bazaar they set up near the warehouse on Sundays.

  “Well, okay,” said Israfil. “Now come with me.”

  “But Brother Abdullah will be here soon,” said Derda.