Reckless

by Hasan Ali Toptas

  ‘Don’t say that,’ said Ziya in a distant voice. ‘This business has nothing to do with conscience.’

  Cabbar turned his head and glanced at Numan.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Ziya. ‘I understand your position. But I really wouldn’t want to get involved in this. If this is the girl’s wish, and if she really has no feelings for him, what right do I have to tell her she has to love him? I don’t think it would do any good for me to raise this matter with Kenan or his mother: what exactly would I say? Tell her to tell her daughter that she should start loving Numan? It’s just not done . . .’

  Numan suddenly leaned forward. ‘You have nothing to say but no, Ziya Bey.’

  Cabbar grabbed his brother’s head and pushed it back. As he did so, he muttered, ‘You be quiet!’ through gritted teeth. ‘Mind your manners, and stay in your seat!’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Ziya said. ‘Why did Numan get so angry? Was I wrong in what I said?’

  Cabbar dug his huge hands into his pockets, and came out with a packet of cigarettes. He lit himself one. And then, to dissipate the tension, he said, ‘He’s young, that’s all it is. He says the first thing that comes into his head! You’re older. You can find it in yourself to excuse him. If you ask me, Ziya Bey, the best thing would be for you to think this ambassador business over. This is not the sort of thing anyone should agree to in a flash.’

  ‘My answer won’t change,’ Ziya replied. ‘There’s nothing I need to think over. And furthermore, I don’t think of marriage as a sacred business either. From the first day to the last, it’s a life you lead together, in this world. So how can you say it’s sacred?’

  ‘It’s divine,’ said Cabbar, frowning as he puffed out a great cloud of smoke. ‘But you, I see, are a man of the world!’

  Ziya said nothing.

  Cabbar and Numan got up then. Muttering their goodbyes, they headed towards the vineyard. Just as he was about to go through the hedges, Cabbar wheeled around suddenly and in a plaintive voice he said, ‘Give it some thought, Ziya Bey. I implore you. Give it a little thought and then give us your final decision.’

  ‘There’s nothing to think about,’ Ziya said again. ‘I’ve made up my mind.’

  Cabbar looked down, as if to say, ‘So that’s it, then?’ He was about to set off when he wheeled around again. Putting more warmth into his voice, he said, ‘I’m curious. What were you looking at when we walked in?’

  ‘I was looking at the mountains,’ Ziya said. ‘I saw something I’d never seen before.’

  Seeing this as another way in, or another way to buy time, Cabbar went back to Ziya’s side. Looking out at the mountains, he said, ‘So where’s this thing you saw?’

  Ziya pointed at it, but Cabbar could see nothing there. Then Numan came over, steeped in resentment. But he wouldn’t say if he’d seen something, or nothing. Then he went back through the vineyard gate, clomping angrily over the clods of earth.

  And that day, Ziya watched them go. He watched until they were down the hill and back on the dirt road. Then he quickly got himself ready. Picking up an empty plastic water bottle, he walked straight into the village, past clucking chickens and sheep pens, and the donkeys braying in their shadows, and nodding at two old men as he passed them. Arriving at Kenan’s house, he stood uncertainly at the courtyard gate before gently pushing it open. Nefise, who was sitting beneath the mulberry tree, looked up. Ziya was startled at the sight of her. He could no longer move. It was all he could do to cast down his eyes. This was because there was something in the way this girl was sitting that reminded him of that bird he’d shot and killed forty-two years earlier. It was as if that bird had been here all along, changing shape – first a shadow, then a leaf, and then a blur the size of a hand, and now it had turned into Nefise. And there it was, this coy and barefaced reverie. Strangely serene, as if it existed outside time. Time seemed not to touch it, even as it flowed in great waves in the shape of a village.

  ‘Welcome,’ said Nefise, pulling herself together. ‘Do come in.’

  At first Ziya could not speak. When he looked at Nefise, he felt the same peace of mind he’d felt forty-two years earlier, when he set eyes on that bird. But with it came fear.

  ‘Do come in,’ Nefise said again.

  ‘So you . . .’ Ziya stammered. ‘So you must be Nefise. I’m Kenan’s friend.’

  Nefise was standing now. She seemed to be looking at him from near and from afar. And so serene. Blindingly serene.

  ‘Yes, I guessed as much,’ she said, smiling gently. ‘Do come in. Make yourself at home.’

  Ziya was so agitated, he didn’t know what to do. His heart was pounding. It seemed to him that Nefise was pretending not to notice, so as not to add to his embarrassment. She kept shrinking into the shadows that played on her cheeks, her eyes, her brow. Just then Kenan came through the door carrying a little copper tray draped in muslin. Seeing Ziya, he smiled and rushed over to greet him.

  ‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘Have you introduced yourselves? This is my sister Nefise.’

  ‘Yes, we’ve just introduced ourselves,’ Ziya said.

  There followed a short silence.

  ‘I was on my way to the fountain,’ Ziya said, struggling to hide his agitation. ‘I thought I’d drop by.’

  ‘I’m glad you did,’ said Kenan with a smile. ‘Our door is always open.’

  Ziya gave Nefise a sidelong look and then turned back to Kenan. ‘Do you know what?’ he said. ‘Yesterday I took a long walk up into the mountains and while I was walking, I went through all my memories of the army, but I still couldn’t remember what this good thing was I did for you.’

  Blushing, Kenan stared down at the tray in his hand. And then, to change the subject, he said, ‘Please don’t be offended. But I have to go see my Uncle Cevval right now. If you like, we could go together, and I could introduce you.’

  ‘Do you really think he would agree to it?’ said Nefise.

  Ziya did not know what to make of that.

  ‘He won’t see anyone but me,’ Kenan said. ‘Why don’t you come with me? I’ll explain along the way.’

  They left the courtyard and headed for the other end of the village.

  ‘Uncle Cevval’s a bit temperamental,’ Kenan began. ‘It’s been six years now since he’s been outside. And the worst thing about it is that he has no wife or children to look after him. My aunt gave herself back to the earth some time ago. They had a flighty daughter with big ideas; she married someone from the town and moved with him to Istanbul. Six years ago he took a dislike to my mother and shut himself inside his house. Why he took a dislike to her, nobody knows but him, of course. If you ask him, he doesn’t answer. He just looks at you shocked, as if it should be obvious. For a while, his friends would come to visit occasionally, in groups of three or four, and they’d try to convince him to come out again. And my uncle would sit there staring at the patterns in the rug, looking very annoyed, and saying nothing. But when they pressed too hard, he stopped listening. He accused them of being frauds. He started shouting at them, saying, “What’s out there for me, anyway, aside from shit?” He even accused them of turning his house into a hotel. “You gather up all the village gossip you can find and you bring it here,” he said. “Stop bugging me. Fuck you all. Now fuck off.” And then he threw all his friends out. The only thing he didn’t do to those poor things was beat them up. So they began to keep their distance, saying what can the man do, he’s sick and tired of life. They stopped visiting, stopped coming to the neighbourhood, even. And so it was that my uncle’s life shrank to forty-five or fifty square metres. As he got older, he became more frail, and if it weren’t for me, it would be very hard, there’s no way he could survive on his own. I take him every meal, without fail. I feed him his food, and I give him his water. And then there’s his laundry, and his bath. It’s all very difficult, and as for that daughter of his, not once has it crossed her mind to ask how her father’s health is, or what he’s up to. So anyw
ay, that’s how it is with my uncle. Maybe he’ll come out to the courtyard in your honour. Do you think?’

  ‘I hope so,’ Ziya said. Then he said, ‘He sounds very strange, this uncle of yours.’

  They passed in front of the Plane Tree Coffeehouse. When he looked inside, Ziya could see Hulki Dede. He was as dishevelled as ever, and sitting apart from the other villagers. He had propped his left elbow on his knee, while he sketched on the ground with his staff. As he did so, his head bobbed happily. Then he straightened up. His eyes seemed fogged with sleep. He stared into the distance and then suddenly he raised his arm. He waved at Ziya. And he did so with such deep affection that it almost seemed to taper his fingers, because Ziya could feel how warm they were. And he could feel them reaching out to touch his heart. So then Ziya slowed down, just a little, to wave back. Then he speeded up again, but as they walked through the village, he saw Hulki Dede’s waving hand a few more times. It seemed almost to be hanging there, just before his eyes. Or echoing through the village. He saw it for the first time on a crumbling courtyard wall. After that he saw it on the side of a horse cart loaded down with hay. And after that he saw it in the meydan in the ears of a donkey whose back was covered in sores.

  And outside the Coffeehouse of Mirrors, they ran into Numan. Or to put it more accurately, Numan was inside, playing cards with his friends, and when he caught sight of Ziya and Kenan, he threw his cards down on the table, and stood up, and swaggered outside, like a tough guy looking for a fight, and planted himself at the side of the road. But he said nothing. He just looked at Ziya and Kenan, spinning his yellow prayer beads in furious circles. Kenan had pulled way back, and when he walked past Numan, he fixed his eyes on the grocery store just up the road. Seeing him do this, Ziya pretended not to see Numan either, to avoid a scene, but this unsettled him.

  When they reached Uncle Cevval’s door, the white sheepdog was still dozing at the foot of the wall opposite. When it heard their footsteps, it raised its head to gaze at Kenan with glassy eyes, but neither Kenan nor Ziya noticed as they stepped inside. The walls were white and smelled of damp. Leaning across the copper tray he held in his hands, Kenan cried, ‘Uncle, I’m here. I’m here, Uncle!’ Cevval called back from what seemed to be a distance, but it wasn’t clear what he was saying: it was as if the walls themselves had swallowed up his weak little voice. And soon there was nothing left but a cool and half-lit carpet-covered room. Then suddenly this room was jolted from its silence. And there was Uncle Cevval, in his knitted long johns. He was as pale as his walls, almost. But his skin was riddled with blue veins that looked as if they might be empty inside. They moved whenever Uncle Cevval moved, and when they moved, they sometimes disappeared, these veins.

  ‘Uncle,’ said Kenan. ‘Look. This is my friend from the army. His name is Ziya.’

  Uncle Cevval turned to look at Ziya. He looked at him with empty eyes that seemed somehow full. He seemed to want something without quite knowing what it was. But his voice told Ziya that he had turned his back on the world. ‘Welcome, my child,’ he said softly.

  Ziya thanked him, and leaned over to kiss his hand.

  They set out his food that day on a worn black and white cloth that they spread over the divan, but they weren’t able to get him outside. Uncle Cevval got angry at Kenan just for suggesting it. He stuck out his chin as he protested, glaring as if he was about to hit Kenan with the back of his hand. And so they had to leave him there, alone with his walls.

  When they had passed again through the damp hallway and were standing outside the house, Ziya told Kenan about the shadow he’d seen on the mountaintop. He stopped to point at it. ‘I hadn’t noticed it earlier. What is it?’ he asked. Kenan looked for a long time at the place Ziya had pointed out above his right shoulder, but he couldn’t see anything.

  ‘I don’t see anything different,’ he said. ‘They’re still the same mountains.’

  ‘But it’s there, can’t you see it? That shadow up there, the one that looks like the edge of a roof or a pile of earth. Can’t you see it?’

  Kenan narrowed his eyes to look up at the mountains again.

  The sheepdog looked up with him.

  ‘I really don’t see any sort of shadow up there,’ said Kenan. ‘There’s no new ridge. Maybe what you’re seeing is just in your imagination.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Ziya mumbled.

  They headed for the fountain, picking their way down the narrow stone lane that ran beneath Uncle Cevval’s house, keeping in the shadow of the almond trees as squirrels screamed in the branches above. And as they walked, Ziya’s thoughts went from Nefise to the nameless shadow he had seen on the mountaintop, and then back to Uncle Cevval. After filling up his plastic bottle at the fountain, they headed back to the meydan, and they were just level with a nettle tree when Kâzım the Bellows Man appeared some way down the road.

  ‘Kenan, my boy,’ he cried. ‘You’re walking around like a dog bit your feet! Make some time so we can sit down and talk!’

  ‘Fine. Let’s talk,’ said Kenan.

  Ziya left them there and carried on down the road with his water bottle passing through the boys rushing towards the grocery store. As he approached the Plane Tree Coffeehouse, Hulki Dede slowly raised his head, almost as if he knew he was there. Then he jumped up and hobbled over with his staff to grab Ziya by the arm. In a gentle voice, he said, ‘Weren’t you and I going to have a chinwag?’

  ‘Yes, why don’t we?’ said Ziya, struggling to smile. ‘Shall we find a table in the coffeehouse?’

  ‘Fuck the coffeehouse,’ said Hulki Dede. ‘What’s the point of sitting in there with all those people. They’ll just want to know what we’re talking about now and try to listen in. It’s not cold out and it’s not hot. It’s in the bald in between. If you like, we can take a stroll.’

  ‘I don’t want to have to lug this thing around, though.’ Ziya pointed at his water bottle. ‘Let’s go back to my house. I can invite you in for a glass of tea.’

  ‘Let’s do that then,’ said Hulki Dede.

  They made their way out of the village, walking very slowly, chatting about this and that. When they turned left at the sheep pens to climb up the hill, Hulki Dede suddenly ran out of energy. He stopped talking, pausing every five or six steps to lean on his staff and wipe his brow with a brown-and-white-striped handkerchief, until he set off up the hill again, open-mouthed and breathing noisily. As he passed through the gap in the hedge, he apologised with some embarrassment. ‘Please excuse me. This is what old age looks like,’ he said softly.

  They settled down on the bench outside the barn after that, and reached for their cigarettes. Hulki Dede pressed his chin into his chest and let out his smoke with such care and attention that he almost seemed to be trying to store it inside his jacket.

  ‘Numan came up here with his brother today, to ask you to act as their ambassador,’ he said. ‘That’s what happened, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’ve really surprised me,’ Ziya replied. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it would spread that fast.’

  ‘There’s nothing to be surprised about, my son,’ said Hulki Dede, raising his head to look up at the mountains. ‘Yazıköy is just a dot on the map. The moment something happens, everyone hears about it. But they always pretend they’ve heard nothing. And also, the thing we call the world stretches only a few pastures across. Those great distances beyond us, stretching hundreds and thousands of kilometres in all directions, well, they’re all here, too, on this little piece of land.’

  ‘Do you think that even Kenan knows about Numan coming up here with his brother?’

  ‘How could he not know?’ Hulki Dede said. ‘Even the village chickens have heard about it.’

  For a time they fell silent. They listened to the dead leaves rustling in the vineyard. Then Ziya sprang to his feet to put the teapot on the stove. When he returned, he pointed out the shadow on the mountaintop, thinking that he must know what it was, after looking at this view for so many long years. Hulki
Dede lifted one hand to his beard while he studied the mountains through fluttering eyelashes, but he could see nothing where Ziya was pointing.

  ‘Tell me, my son,’ he said. ‘Why did you decide to leave the city and come here?’

  ‘For all sorts of reasons,’ Ziya replied. ‘When we were in the army, Kenan seized every opportunity to talk about how beautiful this village was. He made it sound like heaven. I promised many times to come and visit, but somehow I never managed to keep my word. I kept putting it off, and making silly excuses, and before I knew it, thirty years had passed. In the meantime, I’d become sick and tired of city life. To make a long story short, I was longing for a beautiful, quiet place like this, a place where I could listen to nature, and myself.’

  Hulki Dede stroked his beard and nodded. But when he spoke he did not address Ziya so much as that distant place that rustled with the echoes of those leaves. ‘Do you know what?’ he said. ‘Nature says nothing to us. And that’s why we listen to it.’

  Shocked by these words, Ziya turned to stare at Hulki Dede. For a moment he doubted his very existence, but he didn’t say so, of course. He just looked at him in silence, swallowing hard. And – almost as if he had seen that doubt passing through Ziya’s mind – Hulki Dede now spoke to him in a voice that did seem to be of this world. ‘Let’s look at it like this, my son. Is there anything about this village you find strange?’