The Few

by Hakan Günday

  Once Derda had figured out how to use the machine, and once he understood that there were hundreds of films stored in the telephone’s memory, Derda dove into the fantasy world contained in a screen the size of his palm. He stayed there for hours on end. When they were called out into the courtyard so that his one-person cell could be aired, he came back burning with desire to bury himself in the films again.

  Derda couldn’t believe how much the world outside and people had changed. He just couldn’t believe his eyes. And for the first time in nineteen years, the thought of the day he’d be released scared him. There had been no decision on it as of yet, but Derda was convinced he’d be released on parole. Anyway, his record since entering prison was spotless. He hadn’t killed anyone, he hadn’t fought with anyone, he hadn’t even cursed the wardens. The other prisoners considered Derda some sort of madman, and by what they’d been told about him, they decided he really was part of a very, but very, secret organization so no one bothered him. No one would touch him. No one dared fight with OĞUZ or ATAY. With such stellar behavior, he was sure to leave prison after twenty-four years. But if the world he went into after he left his cell looked like it did in those films, it would probably take him another twenty-four years to get used to it.

  One morning he came back from breakfast and started the next film in the line of the hundreds he had watched. A young woman appeared on the screen. And then a man beside her. Derda knew what sort of film this was because they were both naked. But the truth was that Derda had never watched a porno, nor had he ever touched a woman. The last naked woman he’d seen was his mother’s chopped-up corpse. Süreyya didn’t count because when she jumped up from the floor mattress in the cemetery house, Derda had turned away, turned around completely and stared at the door. For whatever reason, he’d stared into the keyhole.

  Derda paused the film and went back to the menu. He touched the place to start the next film in the lineup. Two women caressing and kissing each appeared on screen. Derda skipped that one, too, and went on to the next film.

  First he saw a girl with no hair, then he saw a man. A blond man. Then he saw other men. Derda turned away. He didn’t want to watch. He wanted to skip ahead to the next film, but his eyes had left his fingers blind and he didn’t know where his fingertips were touching. They slipped over the screen and touched the image of the girl. And he was looking straight into the eyes of the hairless girl.

  The sound was down to a whisper’s volume. At one point, the girl was obscured from vision and only the back of the man on top of her was visible. Just then Derda heard a sound. The cameraman must have heard it, too, because just then he jerked the camera to the direction the sound came from. The screaming, crying girl was in the center of the frame. Derda couldn’t believe it. He went back and rewatched the same sequence. He heard it again:

  “Gel buraya! Gel!”

  The girl was speaking Turkish. Like she was calling out to Derda to come to her. Then another man took up position between her legs. But the girl kept staring straight at Derda. She was shouting.

  First she was just cursing, but then she said this: “Why are you just standing there? Come and do something. I’m here, where are you? Huh? Where are you?”

  The consequence of a most entrenched habit, Derda called out “I’m here!” without thinking. The sound of his own voice scared him and he paused the film. He felt like that frame of the film had been filmed for no other reason than to provoke him. He looked at the frozen frame with tears in his eyes. The hairless girl’s cry was just the same as the call to action that had led him in pursuit of Oğuz Atay so long ago. He’d forgotten that cry until the beating of his heart against his rib cage reminded him. He felt its pulse in his fingertips. And one of those fingers, without ever taking his eyes off the eyes of the girl, set the image in motion again.

  There were countless more men, and Derda cried with the girl and listened to her pleas. She couldn’t bear it any longer. Then men fell over the girl one by one like a filthy rain, and Derda looked on, hopelessly. He paused the image and went back.

  He watched the girl yell, “I’m here, where are you?” countless more times and every time he answered her. “I’m here!”

  “I’m here!”

  Not one more, he never watched any other film.

  He just listened to that girl.

  That crying girl.

  That girl who beat the men on top of her with her listless fists.

  He listened to the sound of the girl’s high voice as she screamed.

  He didn’t want to, but he counted.

  Fifty-two men who went in and out between her legs.

  He closed his eyes, and pressed the cry to his ear like a seashell.

  He knew all the contractions in her voice by heart.

  He engraved the letters formed by the girl’s lips onto the walls of his mind.

  Sometimes he watched with his eyes filled with tears right up to his pupils, sometimes he spoke as he watched.

  He spoke to the girl like he was speaking to Oğuz Atay’s tombstone.

  Whatever he knew, he told her.

  Whatever he was afraid of, he listed them one by one.

  Whatever he imagined, he whispered it to her.

  Whatever he had forgotten, he remembered.

  Whatever he dreamed of, he told her.

  Then he asked the wardens for something.

  To teach him how to write.

  Because now he had something to write.

  He worked for months to learn how to write.

  And months to perfect his penmanship.

  And in the end, each letter that fell from his pen onto the page was a painting.

  And each of those paintings was a pledge.

  That’s why he wanted to learn how to write.

  Because he thought that if he wrote his pledge it could never be erased.

  Not from his life nor from his future.

  When he was forty years old and there were forty days left until his release from prison,

  As many years as from the last time he cleaned Oğuz Atay’s tomb,

  After five whole years spent looking at the girl without hair and crying, “I’m here!”

  Derda wrote a letter.

  With all the love he had.

  DERDA’S LETTER

  You asked, Where are you? Well, I’m here.

  My name is Derda. When I was sixteen years old, I committed three murders and left two people permanently disabled. Some of them were for Oğuz Atay, and some of them were for me. Or maybe because I’m crazy. Later, I realized it didn’t make much difference. Now I’m forty years old and I’ve lived for twenty-four years in a prison cell.

  You don’t know me. You couldn’t even have known that such a person existed. But I saw you. I saw how you were beaten. I also saw how you begged them. I’ve been looking at you for the last five years. Every day for five years.

  There are forty days left until I’m out. I don’t know where you are. I don’t even know if you’re alive. But in forty days, this letter and I are setting out on a journey. This letter and me, we’re going to go all over the world so we can find you and give you this letter ourselves. This journey will start without you, but will end with us together. If need be, it will be a journey to the death.

  I thought about your name a lot. None of the names I knew seemed right for you. I’ll hear it from you the day I find you. So I stopped trying to guess. For now, I just call you “my dear.” I hope that doesn’t make you mad.

  I’ve made a pledge to you. No matter where you are, I’ll find you. If you’re dead, I’ll be running right after you. If there’s no life after death, I’ll create it so I can find you.

  Because I am in love with you.

  Derda

  JOURNEY

  After his last night sleeping in prison, he woke up and opened his eyes. He looked at the ceiling. All he needed to do to start the day he’d been dreaming of for years was to sit up in bed and press his feet against the
cold concrete floor. But he didn’t do it. He waited. He eyes were watering but he never blinked. When his cheekbones got wet, Derda saw his dear’s face in a mist on the ceiling. He raised his OĞUZ hand up toward her. Like he could touch her face. Like his fingers were being tossed by ocean waves like coral, like he was caressing a ghost. When his tears reached his chin from both sides Derda whispered “I’m coming” and like a dead man coming to life, he slowly sat up on his bed.

  He stood up and wedged his hand into the split in the spring mattress and pulled out his telephone.

  “When you’re leaving they won’t search you,” the courier wardens had told him. “We’ll just say someone else was on duty. So don’t worry about anything.”

  Derda slipped on the pants and shirt that had waited a week to be worn. He put on the jacket and dropped the telephone into the inner pocket. He had never had any interest in how he looked. He didn’t comb his hair. He let his moustache grow out. Washing aside, he didn’t do anything. The wardens had brought him the suit. They chose the color, too. They chose black because they knew just how Hanif—who had paid them more than the Justice Department—looked when he wandered the streets. They believed that Hanif the Trashman’s path to immortality was in his name. Maybe they were right. Maybe all secrets are hidden inside names. But the order the wardens received was crystal clear: “Derda will not learn our name.” So he would never learn why the suit he had on was black.

  He buried his feet one by one into the black shoes in front of him. Then he pulled out the letter he’d kept hidden beneath the spring mattress. He opened his jacket and slipped the letter in next to his telephone. He took four steps and looked at his reflection in the mirror above the cell’s sink. He was forty years old but he felt stronger than ever. He put up his fists and posed like a professional boxer. He smiled, looking at OĞUZ and ATAY. Then his smile dissipated and he waited without lowering his fists. Like the statue of a professional boxer. Like a boxer who would wait in the center of the ring all alone for the chance to knock out all his opponents the world over. Like he was going to smash the wall behind the mirror, and the walls would fall and the prison would be destroyed.

  He didn’t break his pose until he heard the cell’s door being opened. He had to hear, “Come on, Derda, you’re out.”

  He was taken to the prison gate by two wardens, passing through the corridors going to the place he’d been taken from, the place he’d be delivered unto once more. The wardens stopped and looked at Derda. One of them said, “It’s all behind you now.”

  Derda smiled.

  “And it won’t happen again. It all starts now.”

  They shook hands and Derda turned to the door and took his last breath as a prisoner.

  The gate was four meters high and weighed tons. It started to slide to the right like a magical wall. As it slid open, life slipped inside. The sunshine. Derda walked toward the light and when it had opened wide enough for his two shoulders to pass through, he stepped through the gate.

  It was the first step in the journey of his life. At his second step, his way was blocked. By a man in a suit.

  “Are you Derda Bey?”

  Derda didn’t answer. He used his hand as a shield against the sunlight that dazzled his eyes and he tried to make out the man’s face. The man spoke again.

  “If you could spare me a bit of your time, I’d most appreciate it.”

  Derda grabbed the man’s wrist as the man slid his hand into his jacket. He didn’t know what that hand was going to come back out with. The man said, “I was just going to give you my card.” Derda loosened his fingers and as he took the card stretched out toward him, he heard: “Sefer Baylan, attorney at law. I have a client who would most like to meet with you.”

  Derda handed the card with the same name that he’d just heard back to the man.

  “Please, keep it.”

  Derda didn’t know what to do with the card so he let it drop to the ground. He wasn’t accustomed to being given business cards. The attorney smiled as if he hadn’t seen it.

  “Derda Bey, my car is just there. If you could come with me, I’d most appreciate it. And it really won’t last too long.”

  Derda was prepared to take any necessary action to remove obstacles on his journey to his darling. Ready to fight, to injure, even to kill. But he hadn’t been expecting an attorney. And he especially didn’t expect one to come up to him and make him an offer. He didn’t know what to say, and anyway, he never was any good at talking. He only knew he had to set off on a journey.

  “I have to go,” he said. “There’s some place I have to go.”

  “Please,” said the attorney, “first let me introduce you to my client, then I will bring you anywhere you need to go.”

  Derda didn’t want to listen anymore. He took two steps away and let the sun fall on his face. Then he heard the sentence that changed everything.

  “Derda Bey, look, it’s a matter related to Oğuz Atay and it’s very important.”

  Derda pivoted around and faced the man.

  “Where’s your car?”

  The attorney was so pleased that he’d been able to pull off this most difficult part of the task he’d been burdened with that he smiled with all his heart.

  “Yes, please, right this way.”

  The car wove through the streets where once upon a time Derda had raced down the sidewalks. When they passed under the overpass where the clock seller had arrested him, he asked, “So who is this who wants to talk to me?”

  “It would be best if my client explains, Derda Bey.”

  “How did you know what day I was going to be released?”

  “We’ve been following your case, sir. And let me say, that we were most pleased with your release on parole.”

  “Why?”

  Like anyone who doesn’t know what to say, the attorney changed the subject.

  “Once we get out of this traffic here, the rest will be easy.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “There’s not much left, Derda Bey. Please forgive me, but I forgot to ask you. Do you smoke?”

  The driver was an accomplished defense attorney. He was young and didn’t have very much experience, but he was prepared for any kind of self-sacrifice in the defense of a client. Just so he wouldn’t have to say any more than was necessary, and to answer Derda’s question before he could himself, he lit a cigarette. Sacrificing his car that had never been exposed to smoke before.

  Derda lit the cigarette the attorney handed him with the lighter that had followed it, blowing smoke into the upholstery on the ceiling and remembering Abdullah. Apo, who’d say, “Light one up!” Who knew where he was now? Who would know? When they are alone and they lit up and talked, who knew who regretted being born? Derda smiled, remembering those days.

  And Sefer, turning his head for a moment and seeing him smile, asked, “Please excuse me for asking, but how does it feel?”

  “What?” Derda asked.

  “Being reunited with freedom after twenty-four years.”

  Derda sucked half of the cigarette between his fingers down in one drag and spoke.

  “You should ask the other prisoners. I don’t have a place to go, myself. I mean, if you left me on the outside, I’d go back and stay there for another twenty-four years.”

  His answer surprised Sefer, and he remembered the first thing Derda had said to him.

  “But didn’t you say there was someplace you had to go? I thought that’s what you’d said.”

  “Yeah, there’s that,” said Derda. “Prison was hard only when I had someplace to go. Otherwise, I didn’t care.”

  While Sefer was thinking about how a person, halfway through a seventy-year-old’s life span, who’d spent twenty-four years between four walls, could not care, he turned into a wide avenue. Derda recognized the street immediately. It was the street that led to the cemetery. Nothing had changed. Of course the sidewalks, the color of the asphalt, the walls, the buildings, and the people had change
d. But one thing hadn’t changed at all, and that made all the other things not count. And that was that the street went to the cemetery. Just to the cemetery and nowhere else. So he didn’t even bother to ask, “Are we going to the cemetery?” Instead, he leaned forward to look out of the windshield to look for a sign. He looked toward the sidewalk on the left hand side. He was looking for a sign that once said NAIL. But he couldn’t find it. He didn’t see any marble workshops nor any bar. He looked at the tattoos on his fingers and thought of Isa. Thank you, he said inside. Wherever you are, thank you.

  They slowed down as they passed through the cemetery gate and Derda’s eyes searched for Yasin’s guardhouse. But his eyes came back empty because the guardhouse had been knocked down years before, and a two-story building with a glass facade had been built in its place. There was no gate with iron bars now. The cemetery was just closed at night. There was a barrier that opened automatically. There was no guard or anyone else to see Derda. He wondered how they kept the kids out. Was a barrier really enough? He didn’t know what to think. He couldn’t even have imagined that the gecekondu neighborhood of houses stuck right against the cemetery wall had been totally destroyed. When he lived in one of those houses, it had been like hell to Derda. And no one could destroy hell. At least, no person could. In any event, there was nothing left of that neighborhood or of the kids who would hop over the wall or pass under the barrier to work in the cemetery. They were all at school now. The school that somehow Derda never made it to.

  When they arrived at the square where there’d once been a fountain, the attorney stopped the car and looked at Derda.

  “After this, I think you know where to go.”

  Derda opened the door and got out of the car and watched everything that had belonged to his childhood pass before his eyes and go. In and out in one breath, everything in the cemetery passed. He was seeing the one place that in all of his twenty-four years in prison hadn’t been touched. The same tombs, the same tombstones, the same trees. Maybe a bit older. Like Derda. But that was all.