The Sea-Crossed Fisherman

by Yashar Kemal

  10

  ‘Have you trussed them up tightly?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Hüseyin Huri stammered.

  ‘So, Hüseyin,’ Zeynel said, ‘you were going to turn me in, eh?’

  ‘Won’t they catch you anyway?’

  ‘Never! See these guns here? I’ll fight the cops to the last bullet. I won’t die before killing them all. As for you …’ He bore down on Hüseyin Huri, who backed away. ‘Don’t run, you dog. Answer me. Is it normal among the likes of us to set a trap for a comrade?’

  ‘No, but …’

  ‘Then haven’t I got the right to kill you?’

  ‘But I was only going to have you arrested to save you from the gallows.’

  ‘Isn’t death better than prison for me when I’ve no home, no family, nothing?’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ said Hüseyin Huri. ‘I was locked up many times and I survived, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, but they raped you in there.’

  ‘You’re too old to be raped,’ Hüseyin Huri said.

  ‘I’d die of hunger.’

  ‘No one who’s killed a notorious thug like Ihsan goes hungry in prison. Why, your fame’s spread to all the prisons of the town by now. And anyway, there’ll be an amnesty soon …’

  ‘Who d’you think you’re fooling, you whoreson? We had an amnesty only the other day!’

  ‘There’ll be another one soon. No murderer stays locked up more than five years now. Come on, Zeynel, give yourself up …’

  Dursun Kemal stood on tip-toe to reach Zeynel’s ear. ‘Let’s tie him up too. He’s sure to free those cops the minute we’re gone.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Zeynel said. ‘Lie down!’ he shouted to Hüseyin Huri. ‘Quick!’

  He trussed him up, then checked the other policemen, found the ropes loose and tightened them with strong fisherman’s knots. ‘Let them stay here and freeze till morning,’ he laughed. ‘By then we’ll be way off in Ankara. Take these guns, put them into their holsters and tie them to your belt. The cartridges too …’

  In no time Dursun Kemal had collected all the guns. ‘Look, Abi, I’m just like a policeman now!’ he cried.

  The policemen were pleading and threatening in turn. ‘I’ll make mincemeat of you,’ their chief yelled. ‘You bastard Laz, untie me at once. I’ll show you what a Turkish policeman can do!’

  ‘Zeynel brother, set us free, we shan’t do anything to you …’

  ‘Look, Zeynel, if you untie me I’ll help you get out of the country.’

  ‘Look, Zeynel, I swear I won’t let them beat you up at the police station. Word of honour.’

  ‘D’you think you’ll get away with this, you whoreson?’

  ‘I’ll skin you alive the minute I get my hands on you!’

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Zeynel. ‘These people are making me mad. I’ll shoot them all if I stay here another moment.’ He strode up to the policemen. ‘Shut up!’ he raved at the top of his voice, stamping his foot. ‘Be quiet! Don’t force me to bloody my hands …’

  ‘Abi,’ Dursun Kemal appealed to him, ‘may I take one of these policemen’s caps?’

  ‘Yes, but hurry up.’

  Dursun Kemal began trying on one cap after the other. ‘Not one of them fits,’ he said at last, crestfallen.

  ‘Never mind,’ Zeynel said. ‘I’ll find a cop with a narrow head for you and then you can have his cap.’

  They crossed the Gülhane Park bridge at a run and came to Eminönü where they hid behind the tarpaulin curtain hanging over the door of the Valide Mosque.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ Zeynel exclaimed. ‘My good friend Hüseyin Huri! It was touch and go. A good thing you thought of tying him up too. If we hadn’t …’

  ‘He’d have set those cops free at once.’

  ‘And we’ve got three guns too, a good haul. Where shall we go now?’

  ‘You said Ankara on purpose, didn’t you?’ Dursun Kemal asked.

  ‘Of course! To put them on a false track.’

  ‘Hurray!’ Dursun Kemal cried. ‘Let them hunt for us in Ankara now.’

  ‘We must hide these guns somewhere.’

  ‘I know the very place,’ Dursun Kemal said. ‘In the mosque, behind the mimber. There’s a cache there. You just have to draw out a tile. I know it because I went to a Koran course here for three years.’

  ‘But the door?’

  ‘The imam used to hide the key in a crack here … Here it is!’

  ‘Good for you, Dursun! Why, with the two of us working together, all the police in the world won’t get the better of us, God willing.’

  ‘God willing,’ Dursun Kemal said proudly, as he inserted the heavy key into the lock. The door snapped open and they crept in. The cache was under a window behind the mimber. They lifted the tile, thrust in the guns and closed the hole up again. ‘Quick,’ Dursun Kemal whispered fearfully. ‘There may be someone inside.’

  Zeynel held his hand as they made for the door. With difficulty Dursun Kemal locked it again and put the key back in its hiding-place. ‘Let’s get away from here,’ he said in a trembling voice.

  Lifting the heavy tarpaulin curtain they emerged on the seaward steps of the mosque. The sea was choppy, Eminönü Square deserted. Only the lights of landing-place number two were shining. At this time of the night Eminönü was like an abandoned camping site, strewn with garbage and invaded by foraging stray dogs. They came in droves from Gülhane way, snarling at each other, dogs of every description, degenerate wolfhounds, hunting dogs, shepherds, emaciated greyhounds, mongrelized lapdogs … The fetid smell of the Golden Horn floated over the square, warm and nauseating.

  As they were walking past landing-place number four, Dursun Kemal grasped Zeynel’s arm. ‘Look,’ he said, his voice choking with fear. ‘Over there! They’re coming this way.’ He pointed at the arcade of the mosque, then at the gate of the Spice Bazaar ‘Look Abi, look!’ Policemen were emerging out of the darkness like cockroaches. Zeynel and Dursun withdrew into the shelter of Galata Bridge. Some street pedlars were asleep there, curled up at the feet of their handcarts. A bunch of street waifs, their heads resting on each other’s bodies, huddled together, also fast asleep. There they would remain until some nightwatchman chased them away.

  Out of nowhere policemen appeared in ones and twos under the bridge, holding their guns at the ready.

  ‘Abi, they’re going to kill us … Look, they’ve drawn their guns!’

  Zeynel seized the boy’s hand and rushed up the steps on to the bridge. On they ran, past the Kadiköy landing-stage and into a side street where the street lamps gave out less light than a barn lantern. But at Necatibey Avenue their way was blocked by another lot of policemen and they turned back. The whole area was crawling with policemen.

  Shrill police whistles … Blaring ships’ sirens …The massive old Galata Tower with its circle of crude green lights at the top, reflected in the Golden Horn, warped and broken … The Golden Horn, a noisome, nauseating dark well, yellow, red, mauve, the many crude colours of the neon signs stirred by its swell … The Golden Horn, that deep well surrounded by huge ugly buildings and sooty factories, spewing rust from their chimneys and roofs and walls, staining the water with sulphur-yellow rust, a filthy sewer filled with empty cans and rubbish and horse carcasses, dead dogs and gulls and wild boars and thousands of cats, stinking … A viscid, turbid mass, opaque, teeming with maggots … A strange musty creature, the Golden Horn, a relic from another age, battered, agonizing, rotting away, yet still restless … Lengthening, undulating, weaving into each other, the neon lights danced over this dark fathomless well. Seagulls whose stock went back to old Byzantium, weathered seagulls, wing to wing in the darkness, glided in and out of the multi-coloured neon lights, screeching, their cries mingling with the police whistles.

  They managed to reach the sheds of the Karaköy fish market. It was dark and full of cats. Their feet brushed against mounds of soft warm fur. On they pressed through narrow alleys, the whistling growing louder, ne
arer. They took refuge in one of the boats moored to the quay. Seagulls fluttered frantically over their heads and the police began to close in on them again. They fled, jumping from one deck to another, all along the fishing boats that were strung out in close formation right up to the middle of the Golden Horn. At their heels the police, in their ears a thundering roar … In a hull smelling of tar a brawny, bushy-bearded man grabbed Zeynel by the neck, lifting him up like a rabbit. ‘What’s this in the middle of the night, you scapegraces?’ he said. ‘Where d’you think you’re going?’

  Then they slept, the neon lights sweeping over them, staining them yellow, green, red, blue. The ring of bulbs at the top of the Beyazit fire tower glowed a bright blue far up in the sky, higher than any minaret.

  Zeynel’s nose, his mouth, his hands were bleeding and he was pounding away at something with his fists. Dogs were dragging a carcass along the street that led from the timber mill to the Central Bank. On, past an old ramshackle wooden house leaning precariously against a concrete wall … A woman emerged from the house, heavy-breasted, dressed in black, with large languid eyes and wide hips billowing way behind her. Zeynel went up to her, his mouth still bleeding. And all around the police, closing in again …

  Menekşe … Day was dawning over the sea, a pure white satiny sea, smelling sweet and fresh. Özkan straightened up in the boat he had been sleeping in. He rubbed his eyes, drank a draught of water from a bottle. He reeked of fish even more strongly than Fisher Selim. His whole body, his clothes, bedding, even the rusty engine of his boat were impregnated with the smell. Fish scales and skins were stuck to his hair, eyelashes and clothes. It was as though he had lived for years in a fish stack.

  ‘Özkan, Özkan … It’s me, Zeynel, and this is Dursun Kemal, my friend. I’ve just trussed up half a dozen cops and left them lying at the point of the Seraglio …’

  ‘Run!’ Özkan cried. ‘Get out of here quick. The place is full of cops, lying in wait for you. Run!’ All in a dither, his eyes white with fear, his face glassy, white as chalk … ‘Run, Zeynel, run!’

  Cocks began to crow, dogs barked, police whistles blared, bullets whizzed, cleaving through the darkness. The smell of powder was everywhere. On the steps of Menekşe railway station three policemen were waiting.

  ‘Help, Fisher Selim, save me …’ And as he said it he froze, arms, legs, mouth locked tight, teeth clamped to breaking, a stiff mass steeped in blood. The policemen were running up, their guns drawn.

  ‘That way,’ said Fisher Selim, pointing to the crooked little station building. ‘They’ve gone that way.’ And the policemen took up their old positions on the steps of Menekşe station.

  Zeynel and Dursun Kemal were locked together, but Zühre Paşali, Dursun’s mother, spreading that maddening woman’s odour around her, approached and tried to pull them apart. In front of Azapkapi Mosque the Golden Horn stinks of rotten flesh … Zühre Paşali is sheltering them under her large breasts … Zeynel breathes in that moist, acrid, misty odour, his limbs slowly loosening. Masses of seagulls are fluttering over the closely moored boats that hide the sea, most of them serving as dwellings, with children emerging from the boats as from antholes, playing and jumping from one boat to another, the largest boat serving as a football field. On and on Zeynel and Dursun Kemal sprinted along the moored boats …

  ‘Stop,’ Zeynel said. They stopped, they ran, they sprang into a bus going to Beşiktaş.

  ‘Mum, Mum! Listen to what we’ve done! Eleven cops … We took their guns. Everyone’s afraid of Zeynel, all the cops … We went to Menekşe too and we saw Fisher Selim!’

  ‘Shh! Are you crazy, both of you? Don’t let the neighbours hear you. Besides, they know all about Zeynel. This place was crawling with police. They’ve gone away now, but they’ll come back. They’ll kill you, you crazy fools. Run, Zeynel. Go away …’

  That misty female smell was spreading again like smoke through the house. Zeynel heard nothing, saw nothing. The smell was enveloping him, powerful, binding …

  ‘Dursun, you stay here by the door,’ he said. ‘Don’t stir a step. If the cops come, give a cough and I’ll escape through the window.’

  Trembling, he seized her hand. It burned him. He let go and, hanging on to the old wooden banisters, dragged himself up the stairs, faint, beside himself. She followed and began to undress him with quivering hands. Naked, yellow, his ribs standing out, he stood there, hunched, his penis erect, bonelike, pointed. She threw off her clothes and drew him over her on the bed. Zeynel was paralysed, trembling, unable to do anything. ‘Not like that, not there,’ she moaned. ‘No, no, here … No, wait, here …’ With a cry Zeynel found himself locked into the woman, almost unconscious, lost in her moist flesh, her breasts, the feel of her body moving under him. He was regaining consciousness, breathing in the odour of their mixed sweat, when the whistles sounded. Dursun Kemal was coughing loudly, insistently, Zühre Paçali was up and dressed in an instant and Zeynel too, quickly, in the darkness. She jumped out of the back window, he followed, and holding hands they slipped away, a loud uproar in their wake, whistles blaring, cocks crowing, dogs barking, women screaming, a tumult that resounded down to the Bosphorus. They raced through an abandoned mulberry orchard and the pebbly courtyard of a school. Zühre Paşali was leading him somewhere. They slid under an arch, only just avoiding a volley of shots. Swiftly she pulled him down and they rolled over to the door of an apartment building.

  ‘You must go away. Leave me,’ Zeynel whispered. ‘The police will kill you too.’

  ‘I can’t leave you like this. Is it the first time, tell me, is it? The first time you’ve been with a woman?’

  ‘Yes,’ Zeynel said humbly, ‘the first …’

  ‘How can I leave you? You’re only a child, a child! The police will kill you.’

  They crept down to the basement of the building. It was like the bottom of a deep well here. The place smelled of mouldy bread and urine. They heard the tramp of police boots above them, thump thump thump, and held each other close. Zeynel was breathing in that heady odour again, drowning all other smells. Of their own accord, his hands were on her breasts, between her legs, caressing. Abruptly, she jumped up. ‘Come,’ she said, ‘we must get out of here.’

  Outside, it was raining. The street lamps were extinguished, the darkness complete. From Zühre Paşali’s quarter of Beşiktaş came the faint murmur of voices. They ran down a slope, tumbling in the mud, climbed over a wall into a vegetable garden and their feet sank into soft warm soil planted with cabbages, radishes and lettuces and also with fragrant marigolds. There was a well there, its white stone distinct even in the pitch darkness. Somehow the rain had not touched this garden. Suddenly, they made out shadows advancing towards them from a corner of the garden. They fled, breathless, and it began to rain again. In front of them was an imposing iron gate. ‘Here,’ Zühre whispered. She heaved herself at the gate and it broke open. ‘This is the Ihlamur Palace,’ she said. They walked in and came to a small pavilion that smelled of dry grass. Zeynel flung himself upon her and tore off her clothes. They rolled on to the dusty floor.

  When did they get out of the pavilion, what happened to Zühre Paşali, when did she leave him? He had no idea. He was in Beyoğlu in the first half-light of day, his penis still erect, wandering past uncollected dustbins, assailed by foraging dogs and cats, past ageing whores and huge-moustached sleepy garbage collectors with horse-drawn carts, through the warm fumes of milk and baking bread issuing from basements, his hands in his pockets, a feeling of ineffable well-being inside him, his body fresh and light as air, Zühre’s odour in every pore of his skin, dreaming …

  He spotted a small boy who looked like Dursun Kemal and approached him. The boy’s eyes widened and he took to his heels. Zeynel was surprised. What had come over the child, what could have frightened him so? He walked on towards Tünel, looking into people’s eyes, and one and all avoided his gaze and shrank from him. From the gates of the Underground a sleepy silent crowd emerged. Never h
ad Zeynel seen a crowd so silent, so hushed. He looked at the sky. It was overcast. A warm rain-heralding wind, smelling of gasoline, licked his face. Leaning against the wall of the Swedish Consulate, he scraped the dried mud off his clothes, then strolled back to the Hachette bookstore and paused in front of the window to contemplate his long, slim figure reflected over the many-coloured books in the window. He could not see himself clearly enough, so he passed on to another, darker window. Stroking his moustache, he decided it was just like Fisher Selim’s. He was as tall as Fisher Selim too, or just about …

  At Galatasaray he stopped short before a large bank and stood staring as though mesmerized. Passers-by were jostling him, stepping on his feet, pushing him this way and that, but he paid no attention. Rousing himself from his trance he ran to the Underground, bought a token and got on the train. He was soon out in Perşembe Market. There he bought a good-sized nylon bag, then searched through the market until he found a rusty iron ball that looked just like a bomb. He shoved it into the bag and quickly turned back towards Beyoğlu. Unseeing, oblivious of all around him, bumping into people, he planted himself again in front of the bank, unable to take his eyes off the cashier’s desk. The entire façade of the bank was made of glass. With a superhuman effort he darted across the street and shot into the bank, making straight for the cashier’s desk.

  ‘Hands up!’ he cried. ‘Hands up, all of you!’ He opened the bag and rolled the iron ball towards the entrance. ‘This is a bomb,’ he announced as he drew his gun. ‘I want you to put all the money you have into this bag. If you leave a single kurush in the cashbox I’ll touch off that bomb as I leave. It’s powerful enough to blow up the whole of Beyoğlu.’

  Several bank employees lost no time in stuffing thick wads of money into the bag.

  ‘That’s all,’ a young man with long hair said at last. ‘There’s not another kurush left …’ His face was ashen.

  Zeynel was pale as a sheet too, in a worse state than the bank employees. He heaved the bag on to his back and went to the door, his finger on the trigger of his gun. A crowd had been gathering outside. Panic-stricken, he fired. The crowd backed away hastily, scrambling over each other, and Zeynel, still firing, crossed the street and dashed down the Boğazkesen slope. It was raining again and the day had grown dark. Some people were after him, a policeman, two watchmen … He turned, aimed his gun at the policeman’s belly and shot him down. The others threw themselves to the ground. Swerving into a narrow alley, he darted into a carpenter’s workshop where a young boy, who looked to be about sixteen, was working. At the sight of him the boy screamed. Zeynel swooped upon him like an eagle. ‘Be quiet,’ he hissed, ‘or I’ll pump you full of lead.’ The apprentice shut up at once. ‘Don’t you make a sound! I’ve just robbed a bank. I’ll give you some money too.’ On the spur of the moment he picked up a coil of rope that was lying around and bound the boy’s hands. ‘Is there another room here?’