“Mother! Someone’s at the door.”
“Well go and open it. Grandpa must be back from the coffeehouse.”
“I’m scared.”
“What’s there to be scared of?”
“There are two men out there.”
“Don’t be silly. Well then it must be Grandpa and Uncle Hasan.”
The door opened, and a girl with blond hair and speckled blue eyes stared vacantly at Bayram’s face. Then her luminous blue eyes were on me, looking me over. And she slammed the door shut.
“There are thieves at the door, Mom! Thieves, I swear to God, thieves!”
Then a woman was standing before us; her brow was pure white, her eyes were jet black and wide open in surprise, and she held her headscarf over her mouth. First she simply stood there, staring, then she pulled the headscarf away from her mouth, stepped back and said:
“Come in, gentlemen.”
We went in. There was a stairwell just beyond the door. We hadn’t gone up ten steps before we were at another door. We opened it. We were in a room with an iron stove, and a strong scent of children and linden flowers. We sat down on the divan as a low, round wooden table was set in the middle of the room and a round copper tray, sparkling with red streaks of light, was placed on top; pickles, cheese, jam and six hardboiled eggs sat on the tray. We sat around the table, and without saying a word we ate. While we ate a little boy opened the door, peered in, and then disappeared. The little girl attended to us while we ate and when we finished, the older girl returned, with her hair pulled back and her headscarf tied tightly around her forehead. She moved in and out of the room in silence, collecting the empty dishes from the tray. Then she opened the lid of a large chest, laid out blankets for two beds and left the room. Later she came with coffee. We went to bed without exchanging words. It was like we were angry with each other: frowning, we avoided each other’s eyes.
When I awoke in the morning, Bayram was by the window smoking a cigarette. I sat down on the divan beside him and looked at the garden below, stretching out before us in the mist. On one side there was something like a greenhouse, covered in glass and wicker. I opened the window and breathed in the sweet scent of violets. The weather was warm, almost balmy. Soon the mist slowly rose and I could see the entire orchard: cabbages, flowers, parsley and lettuce all rearing up like horses. In the distance among the flowers there were other gardens, other warped, crooked buildings. The same vegetables, the same animals, the same bent and solitary structures filled the surrounding landscape, and everywhere the scent of violets. A swirling stream ran across the road. Did we cross it when we came to the house the night before? I couldn’t remember getting my feet wet.
An old man came up behind us.
“Dad!” Bayram cried.
It was the first word uttered since the night before.
The old man turned to me and said, “Welcome home, my son.”
Then an old woman brought us milk and said to the old man:
“Are you going to the market? Should I get the cart ready?”
The man looked at Bayram.
“Yes, I’m going, Mother!” Bayram said.
The old woman wiped away a tear waiting to run down her wrinkled cheek. It seemed that no one else was touched by Bayram’s return.
Cabbages, leeks, red radishes, and spinach were loaded onto the carriage, and we piled in. Bayram’s little girl turned up with a bursting bouquet of violets and gave them to me, and a woman with a face as yellow as a quince came running to the carriage with an armful of celery root. She threw them all into the carriage, lifting only her eyes to glance at Bayram. I looked at Bayram, but he didn’t seem to notice. She watched the carriage until it disappeared from view. Bayram didn’t stand until we had turned the corner. Then he cracked his whip over the white workhorse, turned, and snapped it back toward the woman who had been watching him disappear. We had turned the corner so we couldn’t see the woman racing back home.
I could smell the violets, oh, and that wonderfully pungent scent of the celery root! I wasn’t sure where we were going and didn’t ask.
When we got to the market we jumped out of the carriage and the middlemen swarmed around Bayram.
“Back from military service? We thought you’d died, my man Bayram!” they cried.
“I’ll be off then, Bayram,” I said.
“Stop by some time.”
I wandered along so many streets, down and up and then back down again until I ended up in Ortaköy.
I haven’t been back to the valley of violets in nearly a year. I always said I was going but then I could never find it. But last year, one cold day in February, I found myself with a few friends in that same cabbage patch near Mecidiyeköy. The landscape before us opened onto a valley whose depth and mystery drew us toward it. I knew just where I was when I felt the soft earth under my feet, and over the soft earth we ran down into the valley. And the valley was so warm, so warm, and steeped in the scent of violet. We walked along the bank of the stream and saw Bayram hoeing a lettuce patch with a pick, his wife bent over the earth, collecting what I think was mallow. She turned to look at us. Bayram didn’t remember me at first so I had to introduce myself to him.
As we traveled back up into the hills of Arnavutköy, passing along the edge of the garden, we could still smell the violets. We left a warm day in May to find February waiting for us like a whip.
The Story of a Külhanbeyi
The street was deserted. Where else would a raw cucumber like him get it on with his girl? The bar’s a little further on. You can see the agency light reflected in its iron grill.
In the old days this was an Ottoman han, but now they rent by the room. It’s more a prison than a han. There’s this office next door. But no, that’s the agency. You can buy a ticket to America there. But the main attraction is just opposite: the state factory. They make booze there. Man! Do they ever! Sometimes you just want to bang on that metal grate and scream, “Damn it, man! Can’t you give me just one little taste?”
Ömer keeps an eye on people who go into the han and don’t come out. Every day he listens to that horrible mash of languages pouring out through the agency’s back window. It’s bracing stuff. Even the curly blonde gets a little scared, though she should be used to it by now.
But now she is soothed by the harmonies of the suma factory: the beds, the slippers, and the strops; she can even hear the trembling whispers of desire – she likes them.
Ömer is sitting on a truck, inside a wreath of cigarette smoke. He is waiting for someone to leave but his slow and heavy gestures betray no anxiety. Though his shoulders are hunched, he keeps one a little higher, just in case. The shabby ends of his long pants dangle over the edge of the truck – it looks like he has no legs. A few people go into the han. A few go out. He listens to their footsteps crossing the long courtyard. He thinks of taking off, but then he stretches. Stretches and stretches until he feels as long as that dark and dusty courtyard. He can almost feel the footsteps in his chest. Now comes the worst of it: the ruthless, godless desires that come on with the drink. Hours go by and no one comes out.
The han has five floors, with a great courtyard in the middle. There are sunflower seeds and cucumber skins and paper wrappers scattered over the stone steps. But no matter how drunk a man gets, he always knows when it’s a cherry pit jammed in the sole of his tattered shoe. That’s just how it is. It’s the season, my friend. The cherry season. Surely the han boys wouldn’t be eating strawberries at this time of year! And what the hell’s a strawberry seed, anyway?
Now, if I were Ömer, I’d check out that dark elevator that’s been sitting idle there for years. When he gets to the second floor, he regrets not looking in. But it’s too late to go back.
Not a single beam of light slips out onto the torn and dusty linoleum floor. That’s good – it means everyone’s asleep. Why not light a cigarette? His match hits the floor, leaving a little scratch in the dust. Like the wick of a dynamite stick, almost. O
h mother of God! What’s become of us? he asks himself. This place gives him the creeps. Why in the world would anyone want to be here?
He tries every room on the third floor. A woman peers out through the sack that’s been taped over the broken glass. Calling back into the room, she says:
“Careful, Hüsnü, there’s a guard downstairs.”
She stands erect and silent; Hüsnü must be doing the same. Isn’t that why she stays there, eyeing the corridor?
“Hüsnü,” she says. “Give me a cigarette.”
He is three steps behind her. He hands her a cigarette. Then the matches. He waits. She takes them.
The woman says:
“Hüsnü, I’m leaving tomorrow. That’s why I called you here. Did Hatice tell you?”
He comes three steps closer. With one stroke, he pushes the door open. As the darkness in the room collides with the darkness outside, she cries:
“Come to the pier tomorrow morning and we can talk there. If you don’t come, I’ll leave my clothes at the gazino.”
She has stepped outside now, with Hüsnü. But Ömer doesn’t understand a thing she’s saying. Who is Hüsnü? Which Hüsnü? Which clothes, at which gazino?
The second room is locked. The man in the third room groans:
“Who’s that? Who the hell’s out there? You’ve got the wrong room, my friend.”
The handle on the next door turns. A blinding shaft of light pins him to the doorsill. Man! This light is slicing right into his brain like a bullet.
There is a bed on the floor and an overturned strawberry basket in the corner. A plateful of onions, cucumbers, and bits of tomato, and a bottle of water beside it. Is it water? Two people are in the bed. One has graying hair. He can’t see the other. Just a bit of leg peeping out from the covers. Smooth and slender. Olive-skinned. He imagines long black hair. Good, he can’t see it!
What a powerful bulb! How many watts? A hundred? That hulking, graying man has pushed the tiny olive-skinned leg into a corner. That little bump under the covers is snoring. No – not snoring. Whistling. Wheezing, like the strops in a rakı plant. How beautiful is that? There’s nothing revolting about it. Doesn’t rakı make that sound when it passes through the alembic, and those zinc tubes? Something between a whistle and a snore? But no, it turned out not to be that little creature snoring under the yellow blanket: it is just a puppy, snatched from its pack. None of this is arousing. Well, just one thing: the protruding shoulder under the blanket. If he were not already slipping through the door and into darkness, he’d be pulling back that blanket. Kissing that shoulder. Facing the music! Maybe a matter for the switchblade. He turns to look but lets the idea go.
In the corridor he bumps into three young baker’s boys. He doesn’t argue with them because he has other things on his mind: rocky shoulder under the yellow blanket. The whiff of dust.
The boys retreat into their room. He hears the clink of coins … Simit sellers always slap down their coins when they count them. There’s no other way to count the money made from simits. It’s one thing to wet your thumb and index finger and flick through a wad of paper cash. But slapping down coins is what it sounds like: a slap. And then another. And another.
He joins his hands. Laces his fingers. Hits his knee. Slap. Slap. Slap! Then he looks up. Our Külhanbey is acting like a little child. What if someone sees? What is the difference between darkness and childhood? But he has no time for this. He is in love. He’s broke. He leaps up the steps in fours, and now he reaches his floor.
“Hey, you in there!” he cries. “It’s me. Wake up, you bastards!”
Doors open and close. Then silence. A woman appears from behind one of the doors. He stares. She goes back inside. Then an old woman opens another door. Ömer looks at her. She says:
“Come on, Ömer, get inside.”
“You go, mother, just relax.”
“You’ll get cold, Ömer.”
Oh, the way she speaks, a booming voice, like a man. What a woman! The mother of a Külhanbey!
“Mind your own business.”
His mother stiffens. She closes the door.
Ömer turns toward the other door. On the other side of this door is the person he is waiting to see leave the han. He walks over and sits down. He puts his head on the mat. He drops off.
“Ömer, Ömer, get up!”
He stays silent as the tenant shakes him and sweeps him away, dragging him down the stairs. Now they are standing in front of the truck. She says:
“You have anything to say, Ömer?”
“Nah, what would I have to say, nothing!”
She presses two pale twenty-five notes into his hand. She has come into some cash, then. Ömer looks down at the money.
“Whore’s money, man. Screw it,” and he spits on the ground.
The streets of Galata are waking up to the smell of rakı.
The Little Coffeehouse
I came often in the summer to sit in the garden of this little coffeehouse, and so no one thought it strange when I walked in that evening through swirls of snow and an angry northwest wind. The coffeehouse was in a quiet and secluded neighborhood. The bare branches of the willow trees that made the garden so charming in the warm months were now coated with snow, as was the vine from which three or four dry leaves still dangled, and I was so entranced by the scene I had just glimpsed that I reached over to the misty window and rubbed a patch clear, and there it was again, that bright white glow rising from every root, and the air tinged with violet. Night fell so quickly that the violet was gone before the lights came on inside. As the proprietor set the loveliest of his tulip tea glasses on my table, he said, “It’s beautiful here in the winter, too, isn’t it?”
He gestured at the snow that had settled over his blue chrysanthemums. “If I knew the old men weren’t going to grumble, I’d leave the lights off longer, but then, who knows, they might start snoring.”
The lights in the coffeehouse had snuffed out the snowlight. I looked around me. There could not have been more than seven or eight others in the coffeehouse. The flames were licking the little lid of the stove whose right-hand side would soon, I knew, be molten red. Next to me were some men playing backgammon. For a while I watched them. And occasionally I would wipe a patch of the window clear, and press my forehead against the glass to gaze at the scene outside.
Leaving home that afternoon, I had been struck by the sudden silence, and by the great snowflakes falling into it: taken by the urge to walk, I turned away from the avenues that were certain to be crowded, and where I might run into friends; wishing for a place less frequented, where the snow might be left to accumulate untouched, I had boarded a tram and come here. But along the way the weather had worsened, the northwest wind had grown fiercer and the large, wet snowflakes had begun to mix with hail.
I turned to the proprietor.
“Do you have today’s paper?” I asked.
He pressed a newspaper into my hand. Though my thoughts now turned to the day’s rumors, I continued to dip in and out of the conversations around me. These were the usual desultory discussions about how hard it was to make a living. Now and again a door would fly open, sending in a great gust of wind, and a man would blow on his hands as he crossed over to the stove. Once he had warmed himself, he would find a perch somewhere, or lose himself to a daydream, or join two men who had been perfectly content playing backgammon by themselves, and, despite their protests, become their unwanted third.
A number of grave-faced middle-aged men joined the old men on the long divan. I was a long way away from them. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could see they were at peace. For the longest time they sat there in silence. And then a moment arrived when I realized that no one had come into the coffeehouse for quite some time. The proprietor’s little clock was facing the other way so I couldn’t read it. More time passed. More people left. At last the proprietor turned his clock around for me. It was half past ten. I was feeling so drowsy that I couldn’t summo
n the energy to get up and go. Sensing that I would be on my way soon, the proprietor said:
“If you live nearby, there’s no hurry. We’re open till one. Do you really think you could find a better place than this?”
“Oh, all right,” I said. “Make me another tea. With a slice of lemon.”
Just then a man came inside. He was blanketed in snow. Even his eyebrows and eyelashes were white. He walked over to the stove. Swept off the snow. Collapsed into a chair. He was young, this man, very young. The snow melted to reveal a round, white face.
All conversation stopped. The backgammon players in the corner slammed the wooden box shut and left. The silence grew deeper.
I examined the young man. He was sitting in a chair, staring straight ahead. The old men sat still and solemn on their sofa. In their eyes I could see a touch of malice. The proprietor was sitting in front of his stove, his head between his hands. It is a terrible thing to sit in a public space in silence. Ten minutes passed and still the fearsome silence continued.
The young man kept throwing his left leg over his right, and then his right leg over his left. He couldn’t seem to make himself comfortable in that chair of his. From the waist up, he looked like a student at an exam. A student shifting in his chair and then looking up, to make sure the examiners hadn’t seen his crossed legs beneath the table. One of his shoes was a scrap of old tire covered with red patches; he had tied it to his foot with a piece of string. On the other foot was an old gym shoe that gaped open like a fish, with its sole swinging.
The silence continued. I kept hoping for someone to say:
A Useless Man Page 8