by Hakan Günday
It was barely a week since I’d arrived at the reservoir, and I felt more chewed up than ever. I’d gone outside only twice, for a few bottles, a few loaves of bread, and some candles. The first time was uneventful, but I regretted my second time going to Kandalı. Just as I stood in front of the pharmacy, someone butted in between me and the display window. One of the kids once herded by Ender. He recognized me. Though I pretended not to recognize him.
In any case my lie fell short and he launched into a story beginning with, “Have you heard?” The protagonist was Ender and he died at the end! In it, he joined the military before his time and took his last step onto a landmine while walking in the Süphan plains. I hadn’t been able to say a word and turned to run back to my cave, leaving the kid standing there.
“I’m screwed!” I kept saying as I paced around inside. I was sure that kid would go around telling everyone that I was back in Kandalı. Then they’d all come flocking to see me. To talk to me, to touch me! I couldn’t have that. No one could!
Days and nights passed with me cowering in a corner of the reservoir, shaking. Crammed between two walls, I waited for all of Kandalı to come together and march at me. They would come and tear me apart! It was only a matter of time! I did not sleep. I kept raising the lid to listen in on any footsteps. As much as leaving the reservoir was out of the question, I knew that as long as I stayed there, I was no different than a rat in a cage. The place I picked to hide from the world was the best place to be caught by the world! They’d find me as surely as if they’d put me there themselves, and bury me with those same hands! All of Kandalı’s people would besiege me and puncture my skin with their stares. The only thing I could do in defense against all this was to hold my breath. To cut off all contact with the living. But that was no use either. In reality I was so fearful that I couldn’t return within and go underneath my skin. I tried over and over. Perhaps for hours on end. Nothing happened. I could neither beat inside my heart nor go with the flow of my blood. And I started to weep. In a corner of the reservoir, shrunk into a tiny ball, I couldn’t do any more than weep. Then I brought my palms to my face to wipe away my tears and in raising my head saw him:
My past, standing some way off in the darkness. He stood in front of me like some malformed animal, staring. He had hooves. Just like those of the calf whose birth I’d observed. Standing up straight on very slim, black-haired legs, he was dripping with clear slime resembling a placenta. His body was of earth. And I could see the hands, noses, and teeth of dozens of bodies engorged inside that earth. The only thing he lacked was a face. There was only a pair of red dots in the place his eyes should be, glowing in the dark. Exactly like the dots on the digital screen I’d seen in that bank in Ankara! He had no mouth or nose, though every time he exhaled a cloud of mist appeared underneath his red eyes. The beat of his decomposing heart was heard intermittently, like the clock I’d set to lag. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I screamed “No!” from my enclosure between the two walls.
“No! You are not my past! My past is nothing like this! It’s nowhere near as horrific! You don’t fool me! Do you understand? Because I know what I’ve been through! I haven’t gone that insane yet! Not that insane! I remember everything! In fact I’m the only one who remembers! You want to hear it too? Huh? But it’s the last time! I won’t tell it again. You know why? Because I’ll believe in whatever I choose to tell! Not you or anyone else! I’ll only believe in the story I tell! Do you understand me?”
And I rose and marched at the monster purporting to be my past. I didn’t stop. I walked right through him and started to trumpet my tale. It was clear where I would begin:
“If my father weren’t a killer, I wouldn’t have been born …”
It was hours, maybe days, in the darkness until I finished recounting my own story to myself. I talked until I collapsed. Until I got back on my feet. I lost my voice but still wouldn’t quit. I relayed every single thing I knew about my past. And now, it was all over … all that was left was the future.
I left the reservoir and headed to the shed to open its door. I warmed in my lungs the icy breath I drew in through my mouth before exhaling through my nose. I spoke.
“You’re going to do whatever you want to! You worry people might show up here. Okay! You don’t feel as safe as you should. All right! What we’re going to do, then, is make sure no one can ever set foot in here! Remember those books you read as a child? Remember the fortresses in those tales? With moats around them? That right there is what we need. We don’t have an alligator to toss in, but that’s all right! We can make do with a moat!”
I had to find a shovel. I turned into the road leading to town and walked. I was searching for a construction site. Kandalı, however, had vowed to never change. That meant having to walk for hours to find a construction anywhere around it. Finally, near the town’s other entrance, I came across an active construction site. I didn’t hesitate for a second. I simply walked on and entered the area. Judging by the sign at the entrance, a prison was being built. Just what Kandalı needs, I thought. A prison. Construction actually happened to be my area of expertise. I could seek out the architect to make a few suggestions but I was in a hurry. That’s why I hurried on. The workers passed by on either side of me and no one asked me any questions. My clothes were so filthy that possibly I’d become invisible. In the end, after circling once around the future prison with currently only two stories rising, I found what I was looking for. There was even a pickaxe next to the shovel. I took both and walked to the exit. As I passed through the gate, I heard a voice:
“Where’re you taking that to?”
I could’ve stopped. But I didn’t. I happened to have some experience in these matters. Years before, Yadigar had also stopped his car next to me and asked me a bunch of questions. Then he’d hauled me off and stuck me into that hole. I didn’t want to go through that again. I kept on walking. But the voice was intent on following:
“Look here! Guy, I’m talking to you!”
At this I stopped and turned. There was a distance of about fifty meters between the man and me. I shouted:
“We have a funeral! I’ll bring it back after we bury our deceased!”
Naturally he didn’t know what to say. This was the chance I was hoping for. I turned and walked. When I heard his voice again, it was unintelligible. He might have been offering his condolences, he might have been cursing. It didn’t make any difference.
I felt a heaviness descend on me as I passed through the shopping street and immediately understood why: everyone was staring at me. Especially at my clothes and hair. Who knows how long it had been since I bathed? They must be wondering where I’d come crawling out of. They must either be asking one another, “Who the hell is this guy?” or complaining about the state of the world, “Is this place infested by bums lately! What an eyesore!” I didn’t pay attention to any of it. I just walked on. At some point, walking past the pharmacy, I slowed down. I quickly sped up again, though, as I couldn’t perform a robbery with a shovel or a pickaxe. I left Kandalı behind, entered Dust Street, and stopped.
I looked around and pictured a circle encompassing the shed. But right after, I thought I would have to enlarge its circumference to include the house too. There might not have been anything left there to loot, but I knew firsthand that children were always intrigued by wreckage. More importantly, whores who had been driven out from all over the area showed up in Kandalı every spring and went seeking a place they could sell their goods on the go. I was sure that they must have been using the circumference of the house or the shed itself. I’d seen drink bottles and used condoms strewn around. It appeared that I’d have to include the house in the circle for immaculate isolation. The moat that would protect me from the people of the world would, therefore, go across the very spot I was standing, where Dust Street merged with the garden of the house. Digging the moat would take months but I didn’t care. What were a few months in comparison to my decades of nausea?
I threw down the shovel and raised the pickaxe over my head, landing the first blow … at the fifth, I was reminded of the pit I’d dug to bury the weakling in, and picked up speed to forget. I crashed through the soil and the more I did, the less I was aware of anything else besides it. The weakling vanished and so did my aches …
I bulldozed through three meters of the four-meter width of Dust Street. My moat had to be two meters wide, same as its depth. Later I would pave the bottom and find some water to fill it up with. I thought that stealing a fire truck would be suitable for that task, before remembering that I was incapable of even robbing a pharmacy.
“That’s OK!” I said. “I’ll get the water somehow. I’ll even get a tarp. I can pave the inside with that instead of stones. But now you must get some rest. Go home, lie down … You are hungry though, aren’t you? Just follow me!”
The day I’d paced in front of the restaurants because I couldn’t decide what the world’s most beautiful girl would prefer to eat was still vivid in my mind. I even remembered which restaurant it was that a waiter stood in the doorway saying, “Come have some soup.” … I ran straight up to it and went inside. I saw that waiter right away. Before I could get a word out, he lunged at me, saying, “Get out! Get out! Get out! Out! Go on!” I recoiled so his reaching hand wouldn’t touch me and left the restaurant. The waiter remained standing in the doorway, still staring me in the eye.
“What?” he said. “What do you want?”
“I’m hungry!”
“Got any money?”
“No!”
“Then get walking!” he said. “Get out of here!”
First I looked into his eyes. Then I turned, crossed the street, and sat on the opposite pavement. The waiter, whose pity was apparently reserved for children, still stood in the doorway of the restaurant and stared at me. There was no soil underneath my hands. I would have eaten that. But there was sawdust. So I scooped up the sawdust on the pavement with my hands and, staring at the waiter, stuffed them in my mouth. At that he disappeared inside as though something sucked him in. Since the show was over, I spit the sawdust out.
Two minutes later I was sitting on the pavement with half a loaf of bread in one hand and a spoon in the other, eating soup. My life would definitely straighten out if I could just hold out a bit longer. I could sense that I wasn’t far from becoming the idiot of Kandalı. As far as I could tell, Kandalı had an open position for town idiot. That office could be mine if I tried hard enough. After all, providing food for town idiots was somewhat like feeding pigeons in the city. Besides, the folk of Kandalı owed me! They owed me something around the amount they had promised to raise among themselves some time back to support my education! For now, though, soup would suffice … As I dwelled on all this, I heard two women talking as they walked past. One asked the other:
“Isn’t that Ahad’s boy?”
I was unfortunately too well known to evade correct recognition! The other woman’s reply was another question:
“Who on earth is Ahad?”
To that question, I replied as I looked up at the waiter who had come back to collect the empty bowl:
“More!”
I had another bowl of soup. I handed the empty bowl back to the waiter and swatted my pants. As the sawdust stuck to them fell away, I paid absolutely no attention to the stares. There was a moat between us. Even the thought of it was enough!
Now it was time to collect some things Kandalı folk would be unable to give me, even if I was an idiot. Sticking my hands in my pockets, I started walking along the pavement. To two children whom I suspected of trailing me, I turned and said, “Mind that you don’t fall!” Indeed, if they took another step, they would fall into the moat that surrounded me and drown. This was lost on the kids, however, blind as they were. Though they did stop following me.
I walked a little farther and entered the jeweler’s. I sold my mother’s necklace and bought a carton of cigarettes. In this way the smoke of my mother’s guardian spirit traveled through me.
Then I walked some more and entered the pharmacy. I asked for Band-Aids. My hands were blistered from grappling with the shovel and pickaxe. “Anything else?” asked the pharmacist. It was on the tip of my tongue as my searching gaze roamed over the glass cabinets behind him, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
Then I walked some more and fell over … I got up and walked some more. Then I fell over again. I got up once more, walked. Fell down again. That was how I finished off what remained of the money. Stumbling on, vodka bottle in hand … my mother’s guardian spirit had only held up to this point: tobacco, medication, and intoxication. But they definitely proved more useful than her!
Then I walked some more and entered the graveyard. I looked for Cuma’s grave even though I knew I wouldn’t find it. I even implored him to speak to me even though I knew he wouldn’t. Ultimately nothing else happened than night. So I went to the reservoir and shut myself in. Or the other way around. I shut the reservoir into myself.
It was the second day of my construction of the moat. I struggled to dig through Dust Street. Done with the pickaxe, I now had to shovel out the soil I’d razed. But my hands shook. Possibly due to fatigue, or maybe the cold … I could barely hold on to the shovel. Still, this was no time to quit. After all, I could rest forever once the moat was finished.
Wiping the sweat off my brow with the back of my hand, I looked up at the sky, but there was no beauty to be seen. And so I took a deep breath and plunged the shovel into the earth. Bracing my knees to carry the weight, I hoisted up a thick layer of soil and tossed it over the side of the pit I was in. I’m going to need a wheelbarrow, I thought.
Then when I looked down to plunge the shovel into the earth again, I glimpsed a bottle at my feet, half-buried with its lid on. I bent down. It suddenly occurred to me that this could be a trap. I stood up straight immediately and looked around. It could be that someone from Kandalı had come and buried this bottle here while I was in the reservoir. If that was the case, they must be nearby watching me. In fact, there might be something underneath the bottle that could do me harm! I thought of Ender. About the landmine he stepped on! Now this, this could be my landmine! Perhaps Ender himself had put it there years ago! I’d pull out the bottle and blow up! I don’t know why, but dying right then seemed very reasonable. Possibly because I’d looked up at the sky earlier and saw nothing that was beautiful …
I grabbed the bottle by the neck and pulled. Expecting to be blown to pieces, I found myself just standing there with the bottle in my hand. I noticed that there was a piece of paper inside. I held it up to the sunlight. On it were lines of some kind. If all this was taking place near the sea, the bottle and the paper inside would be from the victim of a shipwreck. Like in the books … but I was on land. Where no survivor ever had a chance … I tried unsuccessfully to unscrew the lid and take the paper out. Consequently, I climbed out of the moat, threw down the bottle, and smashed it with the shovel. I recognized Ahad’s handwriting as soon as I’d pulled the piece of paper free of the shards:
My God … I just can’t forget. Forgive me. Even if you don’t, make sure someone finds this paper. I beg you.
That was all. I didn’t know what to think. Ahad’s drunkenness was no secret, but I’d never heard him beg God for forgiveness. I turned the paper over. On the back of it was a plan. Ahad had roughly sketched out the plot and marked a spot on Dust Street as X. Next to it he’d written tree. I laughed. He must’ve been really drunk when he drew this plan. Only the two of us would know which tree that was. In between the sycamores lining Dust Street on both sides was a single olive tree. We used to ignore the sycamores and refer to just the one as tree.
Ahad must’ve written it out of habit. No one else could’ve made any sense out of this plan but I, unfortunately, could. In fact, I was the only person in the world who could make anything out of looking at this picture … but there was one thing I couldn’t figure out. To take a piece of paper and wri
te such things, to put it into a bottle and bury it … it wasn’t like Ahad at all.
“No way!” I said. “There’s no way!”
I thought maybe I was imagining it. It really didn’t seem possible. Ahad, standing here, digging into the soil with his hands, and then burying this bottle! There was absolutely no way! After all—then an image flashed in my mind! The image of Ahad, years ago, when I rose early and left the house to get food for the world’s most beautiful girl, passed out on the chair … sitting right in the spot I was standing now, appearing to have watched the dirt road all night long. I closed my eyes and tried to visualize it down to the last detail. I was looking for something, but I didn’t find it. There was no bottle to be found in that picture. He’d passed out and there was no bottle around him. Because the bottle he’d imbibed till morning to then toss the paper into was no other than this one! It was the bottle I’d smashed with the shovel just now! It lay in the dirt in three pieces … the note and the plan really did belong to Ahad! And I really had never known my father.
I had to make a decision at this point. I could either let Ahad back into my life or crumple up and throw away the note. Which was for the best? It didn’t take me long to make up my mind. After all, I’d spent my childhood with two pirates named Dordor and Harmin!
Peering at the piece of paper in my hand, I walked until I was in line with the olive tree. The cross on the plan was quite close to the tree. The edge of the dirt road. I was standing over the spot Ahad had marked. I looked around. There was nothing that seemed out of the ordinary. Whatever it was that had my father begging for forgiveness appeared to be right underneath me. Whatever it was he couldn’t forget was below the ground …