‘All right, then,’ Hacı Veli mumbled.
After giving the piles of meat a good long look, he returned to the chairs lined along the wall. Waving fretfully in their direction, he said, ‘These have been waiting all morning for the musicians. What’s kept them so long?’
His son had come down from the roof, and now he stood there at the bottom of the ladder, dressed in his best and looking down at his father.
‘Take that ladder away,’ said Hacı Veli. ‘Don’t let it stay there. God protect us! Just think if some children got it into their heads to climb up there and lost their footing.’
The son picked up the ladder and disappeared into the house. ‘We’ve sent out the right favours with the right invitations, I hope?’ Hacı Veli called after him, leaning in his direction as he did so. ‘I hope we haven’t sent handkerchiefs to the houses that were supposed to get towels, or soaps to the houses that were supposed to get handkerchiefs, or matches to the houses that were supposed to get soaps, eh?’
‘Don’t worry,’ said the son, coming back out of the house. ‘We took great care. Nothing got mixed up.’
‘Fine,’ mumbled Hacı Veli.
Then suddenly he remembered the tips, and thinking it would be discourteous to take out all that money and count it in front of so many people, he rushed back towards the house. His wife was just coming out with a tray of boiled vine leaves.
‘What a commotion!’ cried Hacı Veli when he saw her. ‘I completely forgot to do the tips!’
As she passed, his wife gave him a gentle smile.
Once inside, Hacı Veli sat down on the side of the sofa, took out his wallet of dark brown leather with flowers decorating the edges, and set about arranging the tips that he would soon be handing out left, right and centre. First he set aside the money for the musicians who were late arriving. He did so with some annoyance, crushing the notes under his thumb. Then he put aside the money for the cook who would, when the time came to feed the guests, stand in front of the pots and play games with him, saying This ladle just won’t budge, sir. Oh dear, I wonder what we should do? Then he put money aside for the men bringing the ram from the girl’s house, and after that for the men bringing in the baklava on that huge engraved tray. Who else did he have to tip, who else, and for what exactly? As he racked his brain, he remembered the person who was going to pound the meat and the wheat for the keşkek, and the person who was going to bring in the bride, whose carriage would take the turn too fast and graze the gate on the way into the courtyard where the wedding would be celebrated. The bride can’t get down here, he would say, this gate is too tight. Honestly. It just won’t let me in. Then he remembered his visit to the girl’s house for the dowry, and the child who would just sit there cross-legged on that trunk. As he put aside some more money, he could already hear that spoiled little voice. I’m not budging unless I get my tip in advance, by God, not even for the president! After doing all this he spent some time gazing in annoyance at the banknotes on the sofa, as these scenes played out in his mind.
Then suddenly he was knocked over by the blast of a clarinet. Black Davut had somehow managed to creep into the room and put his instrument right next to his ear.
‘Where on earth have you been?’ cried Hacı Veli, gathering up the banknotes as fast as he could. ‘Did you bring the others with you?’
Black Davut answered with his clarinet.
‘Shut that thing up!’ cried Hacı Veli. ‘Answer like a man!’ His eyes sparkled with an affectionate anger. ‘Are they here, or aren’t they?’
Again, Black Davut answered with his clarinet.
As he did so, he looked straight into Hacı Veli’s eyes, grinning childishly, as the clarinet sparkled.
‘All right then,’ said the other. He nodded. ‘Understood.’
After that they went outside together.
Seeing the crowd in the courtyard, Hacı Veli buttoned up his jacket. Then he walked over to the musicians to shake their hands. ‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘You have brought us great joy.’ Then he took out the tips from his bulging pouch and placed them in their pockets. ‘So let’s get going,’ he said. ‘The place is yours.’ He pulled the chairs back a bit further, and then he looked down at the second clarinet and the trumpet now coming out of their cases. Right then it seemed strange to him to be talking like this to people he joked with every day over a game of cards in the coffeehouse, acting as if they were strangers who had come from afar. Truth was, they no longer resembled the people he saw every day at the coffeehouse; all resemblance disappeared the moment they picked up their instruments. They were now different people altogether. They held themselves in a new way. They looked distant. Even the lines on their faces seemed to have changed. The people now pouring into the courtyard were searching the crowd as if they recognised no one, least of all Hacı Veli, and that made him feel as if he himself were drifting away from the town and all those who lived in it. As they shook his hand, and took their tips, and offered their congratulations, each one seemed to be smiling at him from a great distance. ‘May the young ones enjoy endless bliss, and may they bring you many grandchildren.’
‘Thank you,’ said Hacı Veli to each and every one of them. ‘Thank you so much.’
Then one man raised his trumpet, and another two raised their clarinets, and a fourth his drum, whose hoop was painted blue and ringed with enormous bells. Soon the courtyard was humming with their music. As the most light-footed of the townspeople came forward, they played a beautiful Harmandalı. Then, to give the boys a chance to dance, they played the Grand Arab Zeybek, the Tavas Zeybek and the Kerimoğlu Zeybek. Opening their arms like eagles, they soared higher and higher, not just in the eyes of those watching, but in the sky of their dreams. They kept coming back to earth, though. Squatting down. Dropping to their knees. Thumping the earth. Thumping the earth to its core. And when an echo returned from that dark and distant place, these boys would soar up again, to spin round and round. Without warning, they’d stop short, to gaze out into the distance, deep in thought, before they raised their arms again, taking flight on an unseen wind. And soon they were boys no longer. They were crested eagles, soaring high in the air. They took their time, these youths, and it may well be that the musicians had planned to play the Aydın Zeybek or the Serenler Zeybek, but at this point Hacı Veli came out of his corner to whisper in their ears, reminding them that the time had come for the keşkek-pounding ceremony.
And so they all set out for the town meydan, lighting up the streets with their lively chatter as they went. In front were the two strong and finely dressed youths carrying saddlebags of wheat on their shoulders; behind them a line of seven or eight people, arm in arm, dancing the Halay. After them came the musicians, and last came a motley crowd of guests and children. Then, just as they had passed Ziya’s house, one of the dancers pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket, as fast as if he were slipping a dagger from its scabbard. At that very moment, a crowd slipped forward, skirting gracefully to the right to join the front of the dance, while the man with the handkerchief slipped to the back, to wave it with unbridled joy. The handkerchief looked almost like a bunch of pale white grapes when he waved it like that, a white glow that played for a time on the walls and the trees, swirled above the dancers’ heads, and, taking flight, it whirled its way through the echoing music. The dancers seemed to be connected to it. Suddenly they sped up, overtaking the two youths who were carrying the wheat. Then the glowing handkerchief sailed to the back of the stream of sound and colour. And so it went, floating through orange-scented cobblestone streets, spinning around the corners, until it reached the mortar stone to the left of the great plane tree.
And while the music played and the dancers’ hands waved and the moistened wheat on the mortar was pounded, cross-eyed Bekir joined the crowd with his many-coloured chewy sweets. He set up his stall, and lay out all the sweets he had prepared at home, and soon he was selling them to the children crowding around him. Then came Uncle Güllü, who alway
s walked like he had swallowed a rolling pin. From his glass case of sparkling perfume bottles he brought out a small syringe, which he began to squirt on to the chests of young and old alike with the greatest solemnity. As usual, while thus engaged, he didn’t waste the opportunity to exaggerate the esses in ‘essence’ for all to hear. Everyone knew that his syringe was empty, but they all held down their collars for him and thanked him afterwards, with false half-smiles.
Passing anxiously through this smiling crowd, Uncle Güllü went over to Hacı Veli, but instead of squirting any scent on him, he put the syringe back in its place and swiftly lifted up his glass; pointing to the little scent bottles inside it, and in a peeved voice, he said, ‘Look how sweet these are, you didn’t take me up on my offer, sir, but how lovely it would have been if you had.’
‘It wouldn’t have been lovely in the least,’ said Hacı Veli. ‘Did you really think you were going to introduce a new custom to this old town? Where on earth do people send scent bottles as favours for a wedding?’
‘You can’t be sure that this has never happened anywhere,’ snapped Uncle Güllü, gazing sourly into the distance. ‘To tell you the truth, I would never agree to that line of reasoning. That being the case, I can’t accept your position. If you can send towels as favours, and handkerchiefs, and even soaps and matches, why can’t you send bottles of scent? It used to be done, in my view. It was even quite the fashion. And anyway, you could have been the first in our town to do it, and over the years, it would have become the custom. Your name would have been uttered with awe and envy.’
‘Your mind is working,’ said Hacı Veli, smiling softly. ‘But if you ask me, it’s always working in the same direction.’
The other man fell silent, swallowing hard as he looked down at the ground.
‘You’re mistaken,’ he said finally. ‘My mind works in all directions!’
‘Oh does it really?’ asked Hacı Veli.
‘Yes, it does,’ said Uncle Güllü, nodding vigorously. ‘It thinks ahead, it thinks back, it thinks to the left, and to the right. Or to put it another way, it thinks to the north and the south and the west and the east. In all four of these directions!’
Hacı Veli smiled. ‘If that’s the case, then it’s not working at all!’ Without waiting for the next question, he continued. ‘Because there are not just four directions. There are at least six, my most honoured sir. The fifth direction is beneath our feet, and the sixth is above us. This thing about there being only four – that’s nothing more than a tired old saying.’
Uncle Güllü sank his neck into his shoulders. ‘Hah!’
And off he went into the crowd to stand next to cross-eyed Bekir, who was, he thought, the only one who understood him. And there he stayed until the wheat was pounded, calling out from time to time in a sour voice that struggled for its old sparkle. Essence! Essence!
And then the growing crowd began to make its way back to the wedding house, rounding the same corners to flow down the same lanes in the same high spirits, with two saddlebags full of keşkek.
At the back of the crowd came cross-eyed Bekir and Uncle Güllü, talking all the way. Setting up their stalls under the almond tree, they continued to sell their scents and their chewy sweets. There wasn’t too much demand for the scents. Every once in a while a few panting youths would come over to point at the bottles, asking, is this scent oleaster? Is that one lilac, is that other one rose or the one behind it hyacinth? Surprised by the prices being asked, they would cast a doubtful look over their shoulders and back away. And that was why Uncle Güllü kept looking over at cross-eyed Bekir’s colourful sweets. With his eyes still fixed on them, he would mumble, Essence! Essence! Not so much to the people in the courtyard but to the guests who lived only in his dreams.
The musicians were back in those chairs by now, playing one tune after another. But whenever they tired they took a break. And whenever they took a break, they would chain-smoke with such ferocity you’d think they’d just been rescued from a famine. Between tokes, they exchanged stories about all manner of things, each more astounding than the last. These were things they had witnessed themselves while playing at weddings in neighbouring towns and villages. Some were about normal journeys going suddenly wrong, ending with deaths so horrifying as to pierce all their hearts. Others showed how avaricious people could be, and cruel, and bloodthirsty. Some were about vicious knife fights started by drunks wandering around like lost souls, while others had former lovers coming face to face with grooms while in the act of kidnapping their veiled brides. Sometimes these stories didn’t end there; sometimes, once the shock had worn off, the grooms armed themselves with guns and set off with a group of kindred spirits to save their brides. As they set off, they would salvage their pride from the wreckage to the extent that they could turn to the musicians and announce that the wedding would soon continue from where it had left off, and command them to stay where they were, no matter what.
While the musicians were telling their stories, they gathered a crowd. Some stood, some sat at their feet, mouths agape, some looked over their shoulders with bulging eyes and there were even those who lined up shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, before the musicians’ chairs. The stories lit up little flames inside them all, and from each flame came a little lick of smoke. Sometimes the stories made them laugh, and sometimes all anyone could say was, ‘Oh, what a terrible shame,’ and sometimes, of course, they were left half told; because whenever new guests arrived, the musicians would pick up their instruments and rush to the gate to welcome them with a tune, and accompany them inside with such delicacy and decorum that they might have been made of china, and after the musicians had escorted them inside, they would turn back to the crowd to celebrate the new arrivals with yet another tune. Or else, at the most exciting point in the story, they would catch sight of a distinguished guest leaving the wedding, and jump to their feet to accompany that guest to the gate. Each time it was the fattest of them, Black Davut, who was most tired out and sweaty from running. Yet now and again he would still pull out a handkerchief to give his clarinet a better shine.
No one was sure quite how many guests had come and gone, of course, but by now Hacı Veli’s single-storey mud-brick house was buzzing like a beehive.
This continued without interruption through a second day, during which Black Davut carried on perspiring and giving his clarinet quick polishes.
Late in the morning of the third day, after the musicians had played a few tunes, they led a crowd all the way to the other side of the town, to the home of some of Hacı Veli’s kinsfolk, to fetch the best man, who, like the groom, had colourful scarves pinned to his shoulders. The musicians piped both men up and down the streets of the town, slowly winding their way back to the house. Then suddenly the music stopped, for the time had come for the ritual collection. Two middle-aged men laid out an embroidered rug from Çataloba – never used, and still smelling of mothballs. The groom and his best man stepped on it timidly, and there they stood, staring at their feet. By now there were more people filing in through the gate. The women of the town made one line and the men another, going all the way up to Hacı Veli’s house with their gifts under their arms. They came inside and deposited on the rug the shirts and pots and trays and kettles that they had brought as gifts. They draped the floral prints and fine fabrics over the men’s shoulders. The banknotes they pinned to their collars, and they did the same with the gold pieces they had brought with them, dangling from red ribbons. No one stayed to see what everyone else had brought; it was expressly to avoid seeing any of it that they turned their eyes away so quickly. Before long they had so many prints and fabrics wrapped around their necks that they looked as if they were poking their heads through the rack at a clothes store.
After everyone had left their presents, and all those presents had been taken inside in the silk bags that a number of far-sighted women had left for them, Ebecik the Midwife appeared carrying a zinc pot, and as soon as the townspeople saw her, th
ey opened up a long and winding corridor for her. Bent over double, she walked down this corridor with slow little steps, a shivering cloud bound for other realms. Reaching the groom and his best man, she crouched down. Dipping her finger into the pot, she dabbed a little henna on the tips of their shoes. And as she did so, she said, ‘May good fortune shine on you, my handsome boy, may God give you health and harmony.’ As soon as she had drawn back, the groom strode to the sherbet bowl sitting at the edge of the rug, and launched it into the air with an almighty kick that would stay in their memories. And off it flew over the heads of the crowd, glinting as the children cheered. It landed on the other side of the wall, and in no time a group of boys was kicking it down the street. And thus the collection ceremony ended. The rug was lifted up, and the instruments came back to life, filling the yard and making it tremble. The drum beat more deeply and with more lust this time. Each lithe note from the clarinets wriggled from the players’ grasp, while the trumpet sent cloud after cloud of golden sound wafting across the town. And all along the way, the snare drum beat out a cheerful rhythm as it swayed this way and that.
In the late afternoon, the town imam tapped his finger three times against the microphone, as he always did before the call to prayer, and the music stopped. And in the courtyard, even the aroma of food and grass wafted through the air more slowly, the noise died down to some degree, and everyone waited for the call to prayer to finish. When the imam turned off the microphone with that strange sizzle and pop, the musicians struck up again, as a teeming crowd of men and women followed a packed and decrepit car to take the bride from her home. And suddenly there was no one in Hacı Veli’s once-packed courtyard, and because there was no longer need for the cooking pots, these were taken away, too. After they had been dealt with, one of the cooks, an old woman, turned to the others and said, ‘Don’t just stand there, we have to clean this place up before the bride gets here’ – as if the bride might take one look at the state of the courtyard and say, ‘I can’t live in such disorder,’ and turn around to go back home. They gathered up the clothes and cups and glasses that were scattered across the courtyard. To keep the ashes from spreading when the guests returned, they got a few boys to shovel up the ashes in the corners and carry them to the back of the house, then they spread water over those corners and swept them with brooms. And then, when they were done, they washed their hands and straightened up their clothes, and there they waited, light with excitement, for the wedding party to arrive.
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