The Sea-Crossed Fisherman

by Yashar Kemal

  We turned back. Flecks of light, pink, mauve, blue, green, danced on the sea and the tip of the sun appeared in a sudden blaze, accompanied by a surge of sound from the sea-depths, from the Islands, from all around us. The city lights went out and the domes and minarets floated out of the haze. The Bosphorus Bridge, a long strip of light in the distance, faded into a fragile grey line like a bow of smoke. A breeze blew in from Yakacik, ruffling the surface of the sea, and shoals of fish splattered on the water.

  Fisher Selim broke into a joyful song that made you want to stand up and dance. The words were in a tongue I had never heard before. But after a while the song grew melancholy and all the way to the Islands he sang on in this doleful vein.

  ‘Let’s stop here,’ Selim said, ‘and watch the city. See how it wakes like a huge angry monster …’

  The world of the sea, too, was coming to life with the light of day. The sun lit up the seabed with its rocks and fish and algae. Scorpion fish flashed rainbow-like. A fat dentex swam up and nosed into the weed-covered rocks. At the sight of him all the other fish darted away and he remained alone, cruising majestically in the green-tinged blue water.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘let’s cast a line. He’s as good as hooked.’

  ‘No,’ Selim said. ‘I don’t like catching a fish who’s so exposed. He’s out enjoying the fine morning, just like us.’ He laughed, pleased with the thought. ‘How could I drop my line over him now, take him off his guard? Think of him swallowing the bait, struggling for his life, screaming. Like he’s been struck by lightning … I can’t do that … I …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I can’t get married …’ Then quickly, ‘No, no, I will, I must get married.’

  Clouds were gathering fast from over Yalova. North too the sky over the Black Sea was lowering, and the west, which only a moment ago had been bright as though another sun had dawned there, became black.

  ‘We’ll be caught in the rain before we reach the shore. We’d better be going.’

  ‘I like the rain,’ I said.

  ‘Well then, you’ll be well served in a minute. We’re in for a good soaking before we get to the nets.’

  ‘All the better. We’ll be washed clean, inside and out.’

  His eyes brightened. ‘That’s true. The rain does cleanse a man inside too …’

  The sea had grown dark and choppy. We pressed on to reach the shelter of Menekşe Bay, the waves splashing into the boat, the clouds churning black above. Tall breakers foamed on the shore of Büyükada Island and over the Kumkapi breakwater. Soon the rain was driving down, hurled by the wind this way and that in sheets, lashing at the sea. The sky assumed a lurid ashy hue, while over the mosques hung a nebulous glow as though water was being squirted from all sides on to that one patch of light.

  In an instant we were both soaking wet. Water flowed down Fisher Selim’s cap, the reddish tuft of his brows, his bushy moustache, and filled even the wrinkles of his face.

  The storm died down as suddenly as it had arisen, leaving the sea calm and smooth as a mirror.

  ‘Let’s stop awhile here,’ Selim said. The rain had thinned off into a bright crystal blue, soft as velvet, and the clouds were turning from grey to pale green. Selim, his head bowed, was lost in thought. Then he looked at me. Obviously, he wanted to say something, but did not know how to begin. That was why he had stopped here, in the middle of the sea. Our eyes met. He smiled humbly.

  ‘You see this?’ he said, opening his shirt to reveal the scar of a deep wound that had shattered his left shoulder. ‘It’s a bullet wound, a dumdum bullet. Haven’t you noticed how my left shoulder always droops?’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘Well it does. And d’you know where I got this wound?’

  ‘Was it in one of the Kumkapi taverns?’

  ‘No, nothing like that.’

  ‘Well, I’m curious to know.’

  He flushed to the tips of his ears and when he spoke it was in a low murmur, as though to the bilges of the boat, to the sea, in a dream.

  ‘On Mount Ararat,’ he said. ‘I got this wound on Mount Ararat. The Kurds there were up in arms and, at the time, I was serving in the army at Erzurum.’ He lifted his head. ‘Have you ever seen Mount Ararat?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I climbed it once.’

  He stared. ‘You mean to the very top?’

  ‘Not quite. There’s a flat stretch just before you get to the summit and from there you can see three small peaks. One of them is the highest point, so they say. Well, I got to the flat spot, but I simply couldn’t scale that last hillock. They told me it was only about sixty metres to go.’

  ‘How can they measure that?’

  ‘There’s a special instrument for that. So you were on Mount Ararat?’

  ‘I fought against the Kurds. Brave people and crack shots too. I used to hold my cap out on the end of a stick and in an instant it would be pierced by half a dozen bullets. Our commanding officer was a certain Salih Pasha … An unpleasant man he was, though they say Atatürk liked him … Every time one of his soldiers was killed by the Kurds, he’d go mad with rage and order the nearest Kurdish village to be set on fire and all its men shot. He simply couldn’t understand that these illiterate peasants, who didn’t even speak Turkish, should rise up against our Atatürk. We had orders to shoot every Kurd who fell into our hands. Why, if we’d listened to him there wouldn’t have been a single Kurd left in Turkey today. But what did we soldiers do? We sometimes let the Kurds go. After all, weren’t we brothers in the same faith? By God, if the Pasha had got wind of this, he’d have had the whole army before a firing squad! Some of our soldiers got quite rich, charging one gold piece for each life they spared. The Kurds had plenty of money, plenty of gold. But I never took a mite from those Kurds I set free, for you can’t do that to a human being. Where I come from there is no price for a life … Every soldier had in his sack some gold ornaments, chains, bracelets, anklets, nose-rings, all of gold. Kurdish women wear anklets and nose-rings, you know … Then in the spring we laid waste the foothills of Mount Ararat, burning, killing, razing villages to the ground. When it was all over Salih Pasha summoned those Kurdish Beys who had collaborated with us, and made a night of it in his tent, drinking, belly-dancing and all. I was there. In those days I didn’t talk much, you know. Why, I’ve never talked so much in all my life as I’ve been talking to you.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he went on hurriedly, as though afraid the words would be taken from his mouth. ‘So we continued mopping up the last of the Kurds. Those who came down from the mountain to surrender we’d kill to a man, I mean those who had no gold … And one morning we encountered resistance on high rocky ground. There must have been fifteen of them concealed behind the rocks and shooting at us, but not to kill, obviously, or they would have finished us on the spot, for we had no cover at all. Even if they’d been firing at random, they would certainly have killed some of us, but such good marksmen were they that they aimed unerringly at a leg, an arm, a shoulder, but never to kill. Night was falling and a blizzard blowing up when I felt the burn in my shoulder and fell to the ground. I never knew how many days it was before I opened my eyes again …’

  The rain had dwindled to a stop and a dazzling sun emerged from the clouds. A wide rainbow encompassed the sky, and along it a second rainbow, and a third and a fourth … Their reflection hit the water, forming a perfect circle over land and sea. We were plunged into a deluge of brightness, lights and colours whirling all around us. Another world, another dream, a paradise of colour, filling us with joy, lifting us up into the heart of the rainbow. The air smelled warmly of salt sea and earth, a soft smell as of the rainbow itself. A honey-bee settled on a board of the boat, panting, resting its wet wings. Seagulls, gleaming white, swooped in and out of the rainbow at lightning speed with shrill mad cries.

  ‘I opened my eyes and what should I see? There I was, in a bed with clean white sheets. And beside me, leaning over
me, a nurse … With clear blue eyes … Wide blue eyes … A pure creamy face … A lovely nurse with flaxen hair falling to her shoulders … Holding my hand, looking at me … Her beautiful eyes smiling … Her hand so warm … In all the years of my life no one has ever held my hand like that, so warm … Bending over me, smelling of roses, yes, there’s no other word for it – roses! Her breath on my face, and something stirring in me, lifting me up … I am alive, a new lease of life … The days go by and I’m mending fast. Every day she holds my hand. Her eyes, blue, huge, like blossoms, there’s no other word … Her breath so sweet, smelling of roses … And I praying to God: Please, God, don’t make me get well too quickly … “What is this place?” I ask her. “Cerrahpaşa Hospital,” she says. So I’m in Istanbul! “But Cerrahpaşa’s a civilian hospital. What’s a soldier doing in a civilian hospital?” I ask. “You’re not a soldier any longer,” she says. Her voice, so soft, caressing my very heart … Gently touching my heart …’

  Along with the seagulls we drifted in and out of the rainbow. And the passing ships, too, were lifted into the rainbow, above the water. The sea, bright and sunny on one side, was still dark on the other and the ships glided high up in the air, now bright and gleaming, now grey like the clouds, the smoke curling up tremblingly from their funnels.

  ‘The day draws near. I’m going to be discharged. She sits on the side of my bed, her eyes on me, pleading, ah, pleading … Her hand holds mine, warm, so warm, burning my heart … She holds my hand to her heart, and my hand is on fire … Her hair brushes my cheek, her sweet breath … I shall die if I have to leave … And still she looks at me, her face now flushed, now pale, and she never lets go of my hand on her heart. Never have I told this to anyone. I became mute after that, speechless, silent …. “You’re quite well now/’ the doctor says. “We’re discharging you today.” And I am dying … Her white cap with the red crescent, her white uniform, her flaxen hair with the ever so slight whiff of medicines … And she is holding my hand. “Selim,” she cries, “ah, Selim, Selim, you’ve wounded me, wounded me. How can you go away and leave me like this, Seliiim?” Maybe she didn’t call after me like that, maybe she didn’t weep, maybe I imagined it all … My hand too … But no, no, no! She did hold my hand. I can still feel her warm touch. But how could I, tell me, how could I take her with me to Kumkapi? I, Selim, a down-and-out bum in Kumkapi … She should live in a palace, with soft white sheets, golden necklaces … Selim, Selim, Seliiim! How many years ago it happened, I don’t know. I still hear her, wherever I go, whatever seas I sail on. Above all in the springtime, when the sea blooms like a blue flower, when flocks of storks wheel cloud-like over the sea … And, again, on autumn days I hear her voice calling after me. Now, at this very moment, I can hear her, the first time it has ever happened when someone else is with me. “Selim, oh, Selim, accursed Selim …”’

  The rainbow was gradually melting away and the sky darkening again. A warm rain-heralding gust ruffled the surface of the water. Large raindrops began to plop down and the gulls skimmed low over the sea.

  Fisher Selim’s face was changing. He shot me such a black look that I shivered. ‘You’re the only one in all the world to know of this,’ he uttered as though flinging a knife at me. ‘You and God and me … Twenty years, more, an eternity I’ve been keeping this inside me …’

  Didn’t you ever go back to Cerrahpaşa, I wanted to ask, but I didn’t dare. He answered as though I had spoken aloud.

  ‘How could I? How could I even go near the gate of that hospital, me, Fisher Selim, a ruffian, a daredevil, rowdy, foul-mouthed, down-at-heel, stinking of fish, filthy, homeless, destitute … I said to myself that one day …’ He looked at me forlornly as he drew a dirty handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face. ‘When I have a house …’ He sighed, then rose and busied himself with the engine. ‘Let’s go, brother. That’s what you call a friend in the Chukurova, isn’t it?’

  ‘So you’ve been to the Chukurova too?’

  ‘Let me tell you. They said there were tons of money to be made in that Chukurova where you come from. So I went, and all I got was a crippling malaria fever. For three years I trembled like a dog … After that, I tried everything, but everything, to make money. I even went to America as a sailor …’

  ‘But you haven’t lost hope?’

  ‘Never! You know, that swordfish is my last hope.’

  ‘You’ll catch it …’

  ‘I will,’ he said. ‘And now to our nets. They should be full of red mullet by now.’

  6

  For three days and three nights Fisher Selim never emerged from Beyoğlu, drinking himself senseless and falling asleep wherever he was. Then he went to Yeşilköy and stayed for several nights at the kebap eating-house near the lighthouse which was run by Mad Memed from Adana. During the day he scoured the coast between Yeşilköy and Florya, but kept away from Menekşe. For hours he sat under the huge plane tree at Florya, his eyes fixed on the sea and the Islands. The halcyon weather filled him with dread. He longed for a gale, a tempestuous lodos wind, a heavy sea. If only he could once see his dolphin cleaving through the waters, arching like a bow as he leaped into the air, hurrying to reach him, bursting with joy … How could he possibly recognize his dolphin from such a long way off? Fisher Selim would take an oath on it, he would know not only his dolphin, but his dolphin’s shadow from seven days’ distance.

  So he waited, his heart in his mouth, wandering up and down the shore, working himself into a passion of anxiety. What if that fool fish had ventured near the boat of some son-of-a-bitch fisherman, what if he had got plugged with a bullet in his brain? There were times when Selim derided himself for his obsession with a mere fish. He who had never liked his fellow-men, who had turned his back on all his relatives, that he should feel for these dolphins as though they were his real family! But then … Who said that Selim did not like his own kind? He did, he did! He would give his life for a cordial handshake, for one of those too rare loving looks that make you warm and glad inside. But why were people so callous, so craven, so suspicious of each other, selfish, scheming, ready to gouge each other’s eyes out for a few pennies, caring only for their own small family, and sometimes not even for them? Why was a human being so blind to the world around him, to the sea, the clouds, the fish, the birds, the bees, the horses? Friendless, confined in ghastly darkness, hiding his face in his hands, shutting out the light? Obsessed by the curse of death, mad, hopeless, terrified … Yet the same human being is also capable, in the marrow of his bones, with all his soul, of feeling music and songs and kisses, the dawning day, the blooming flower, eyes shining with love, the white radiance of the sea before sunrise, the smell of earth and falling rain, a warm embrace, the coming together of a man and a woman as one being, melting in sensual pleasure, the shimmering softness of an animal’s fur, that ecstatic instant when you have the whole world tucked into your heart … There are many, many people like this, and there always will be, as joy, happiness, hope will always be. Since time began man’s song has been a paean of thanks to nature for the blessing of existence, for the earth and the rising sun, the glittering sea, for springtime in flower, for pain and darkness and wickedness even, for things of beauty, lost and found again, for the joy of reunion …

  Perhaps Fisher Selim could never have put these thoughts into so many words, but he could explain the secret of his relationship with the dolphin family very well. He was not ashamed of it. Why should he be? If those gloomy people who had forgotten how to sing and dance, to laugh and weep, could be like his dolphins, he would be friends with them too. With what joy the dolphin greeted him! What somersaults didn’t he turn in the air at the sight of his boat! There must be human beings like that too somewhere, but not crammed into apartment buildings, hemmed in by concrete and iron and asphalt, poisoned by the fumes of petrol. There must be humans who are not ashamed of weeping freely like a morning shower, of laughing sunnily like an almond orchard in bloom, of bestowing compassion and love, of offerin
g their heart with open hands … Oh, yes, there must be many like that in this world and if we have fallen far from them, alien now, it must be our fault …

  One morning when the sea was still white and the light of the stars fell over the clustering white clouds, Fisher Selim at last summoned enough courage to put out to sea. He steered towards Hayirsiz Island where the dolphin had so often come to meet him in the past. The sea was smooth, empty all the way to the coast of Yalova. He turned west towards Silivri, then back again to Menekşe. And suddenly, like a miracle, like a dream … The large dolphin in front, the others following … There they were, streaming up to him, tracing luminous arcs in the air as they leaped in and out of the water! And a turmoil of light, of joy, of friendship seemed to break over the whole wide sea.

  After this, his mind at rest, Selim went fishing every day, and every day the dolphin would greet him with the same unabated effusions of delight.

  Then the lodos wind erupted and for three days waves as high as minarets pounded the shore, flooding the point of the Seraglio and making it impossible for boats to put to sea. The morning of the fourth day dawned calm and bright. The sea was transparent, fish and crabs and weeds clearly visible on the bottom. Red gurnards, swimming near the surface, shot flamelike through the blue waters.

  Fisher Selim made straight for Büyükada Island. He waited and waited, but there was no sign of the dolphin. Round and round the group of islands he circled, Hayirsiz Island, Sivriada, Burgaz, Heybeli. Then he headed south towards the coast of Yalova, but there was nothing, nothing at all … After this, Fisher Selim became a ladle and the Marmara Sea a cauldron. He never stopped. He would not give up. He ran out of water, of food, of fuel. Quickly he replenished the boat and was off again, his black forebodings increasing every minute. At the end of five days he knew it was all over and he set out in search of the dead fish, scouring all the bays and beaches along the Marmara Sea. ‘Have you caught a dolphin with a family of four, a huge one, maybe three metres long, with a broken wing and a mark on his back?’ he enquired of every fisherman he came across. Some only laughed, others turned him away with rude mocking words.