by Yashar Kemal
Zeynel gave him a grateful look. He had taken a liking to this fair-haired smiling-faced young man, who was just about his own age and size.
‘You can keep it on, if you like. I’ll make a parcel of your other clothes. You’ll be needing some shoes too, won’t you?’
Zeynel nodded.
‘Look, there’s the Goya store just across the street. They make the best, the most solid shoes in all Istanbul. Give my name to the salesman. Tell him Kaya sent you.’
‘All right,’ Zeynel said, and added softly: ‘Thanks, brother …’ He paid his bill, picked up the parcel containing his old clothes, the pockets of which he had carefully emptied in the cubicle, and went over to Goya’s and from there to another shop where he bought underclothes and socks. The new shoes were beautiful brown ones, but the smell from his socks had made him want to sink to the middle of the earth. He had forgotten about that or he would never have gone in without washing his feet. When the salesman had asked him to take his shoes off, he had broken into a cold sweat and bought the first pair he tried on without taking them off again, without even knowing how he paid for them or how he left the shop.
And now he was rooted before the window of a toyshop, unable to tear himself away, oblivious of the jostling stream of people about him, a strange look in his eyes, smiling, muttering to himself, leaning down to look closer at a toy, stepping up to the door of the shop to peep in, then springing back and standing outside the window again. Suddenly, he shot into the shop, so fast that the salesgirls took fright.
‘That one,’ Zeynel said, pointing into the shop window. ‘That one too … And that one …’
A salesgirl, recovering from the shock, took the toys out of the window. One was a pink elephant sitting in a wooden cart, its front legs held out stiffly. The second a monkey clinging to a tree and the third a long-necked, long-legged spotted giraffe.
‘Pack them in a box,’ Zeynel ordered, producing a five-hundred-lira note. The girl indicated the cash register. His hands trembling, Zeynel took the change, collected his parcels and rushed off, away from the crowded street, down the stairs that led through the Technical University Park to Dolmabahçe pier. There, by the waterside, he took his shoes off. Even in the open, his feet stank to high heaven. He flung his old torn socks as far out into the sea as he could, then washed his feet and dried them with tissue paper from one of the parcels of toys. The new socks smelled good and fresh from the factory. This evening he would go to a hamam and get himself scoured clean, not to the small dirty one he’d been to once, but to the large famous Cağaloglu Hamam. With beating heart he took the elephant out of its box. There was nobody about. Trembling, he took hold of the string and drew the cart from the iron railings of Dolmabahçe Palace to the wall of the mosque opposite. Glancing again to right and left to make sure he was quite alone, he ran back, the cart with the large pink elephant rattling behind him. Soon he forgot everything. Ever more quickly he ran up and down the pier, pausing now and then to laugh at his elephant, to caress it, to feel its white pointed teeth, to talk to it.
Tired at last, he stopped to catch his breath, and what should he see … A whole crowd there on the pier, people in cars, on foot, all looking at him, laughing … For just a moment he stood there, riveted. Then, snatching up his boxes and parcels, he dashed off along the avenue lined with plane trees behind Dolmabahçe Palace and did not stop until he came to Beşiktaş Square.
A noisy group of children were playing football, and a few younger ones, boys and girls, sat on a low wall, watching the game. Zeynel scrutinized their faces, one by one, their shoes and attire, but none seemed to take his fancy. The children, for their part, stared wide-eyed at this strange man with a toy elephant slung over his shoulder.
Zeynel turned away and walked up the hill towards Yildiz. Everywhere, in even the tiniest open space, there were children playing football. Zeynel took stock of them all. Finally, he came to a tumbledown wooden house, its time-blackened boards mouldering and coming loose, its windows fixed with plastic sheets instead of glass and an ancient marble slab, worn hollow, on the threshold. In front of it were two small children, a boy of ten and a girl of nine. The boy’s trousers were patched, sagging at the knees, and he was wearing a pair of cheap rubber shoes. His scraggy neck hardly supported a wobbly head on which the hair stood out like spines. The girl wore a peasant dress and the same cheap rubber shoes as the boy. Her long hair was braided into two thick pigtails. Both of them had long curling eyelashes and huge wondering eyes. The instant he saw them, Zeynel’s heart fluttered with joy. He stood there a while, overflowing with a strange mixture of love and pity.
‘Come here, children,’ he said softly, his voice so warm, so full of love it sounded alien to him. As the children hesitated, he walked up to them. ‘Here,’ he said, smiling at the boy, ‘take this elephant. It’s a toy for boys.’ Then he removed the monkey from its box and held it out to the girl. ‘And this is a girl’s toy.’ The giraffe he set down on the marble slab by the door. ‘And this one is for both of you. You can play with it each day in turn. Or you can both play with it together if you like …’
The children stared at him, dumbfounded. The girl’s eyes were growing wider and wider, wavering between fear and joy. A lump rose to Zeynel’s throat and his eyes filled with tears. ‘Go ahead, play,’ was all he could say before rushing off down the slope and out into the avenue.
There he hailed a passing taxi. ‘To Cağaloglu,’ he said, and added: ‘To the historic Cağaloglu Hamam …’
When he emerged from the hamam he felt light as a bird. At first he had been at a loss what to do with his gun and ammunition. Then he had wrapped them up in his soiled smelly underclothes and placed them beside his shoes.
The street outside was jammed with cars, horse-drawn carts, trucks, buses, hardly moving at all, desperately tooting their horns in unison from time to time, then falling silent again. He crossed over at a leisurely pace, walked past Haghia Sophia and down along the Topkapi Palace walls to the Ahirkapi lighthouse. Quickly he sprinted across the highway, for here the traffic flowed fast, and sat down on a flight of steps that led to the sea. On the opposite shore were the imposing old structures of Selimiye Barracks and Haydarpaşa Lycée and over them a very white cloud hovered against a bright-blue sky. Zeynel took his gun and bullets from the bundle of dirty underclothes and replaced them at his waist and in his pockets. Then, screwing up his face in disgust, he hurled the bundle of stinking linen as far out as he could into the water. It fell with a plop like a stone and a flock of seagulls flashed up into the air.
From here, the new Bosphorus Bridge was just a finespun line, hardly visible, a rope strung out as a make-believe bridge. A very long copper-coloured freighter was passing underneath and everywhere the small city-line ferries scurried this way and that in a whirl.
Suddenly Zeynel froze and his mouth went dry. Five policemen were reflected in the sea in front of him, etched on the very bottom of the still stagnant water. He tried to move, to get up, but he was unable to stir a limb, as if he had been turned to stone. There, right above him, the policemen stood talking for a while, then they went away, but Zeynel still remained frozen to the stone steps. It was already dark when he came to himself. He rose, stretching himself until his bones cracked. From the restaurant under the Ahirkapi lighthouse came the odour of fish being broiled over a coal fire and all of a sudden he felt a gnawing hunger. He walked into the restaurant and stopped abruptly. The five policemen were sitting there at a table, drinking raki. He hesitated, but there was no help for it. He must go in now. Besides, he didn’t look at all like that handlebar-moustached Zeynel Çelik … He sat down at a table only a little way off. The policemen did not give him a glance. They were busy talking about Zeynel Çelik.
‘What will you have, sir?’ a waiter asked him.
‘Grilled bonito,’ Zeynel said, his voice shaking.
‘And to drink?’
‘Beer …’ Zeynel’s throat was dry. ‘Bring me some min
eral water too. And also Albanian-style liver, a carrot salad, toast, and …’ All these he had seen in Fevzi’s Restaurant at Menekşe, but there was another thing he could not remember, something the customers always ordered … ‘Cacik!’ he said triumphantly, forgetting all about the policemen for a moment.
‘Very good, sir.’
In its corner of the ceiling the spider spread its web wider and wider, then, gathering itself into a ball, moved away from the centre of the web and quickly slid down a tenuous thread, stopping in the middle of the room. Zeynel heard Lame Hasan’s hoarse coughing voice.
‘Zeynel! Zeynel, are you awake?’
‘Yes, uncle, what is it?’
‘Quick, get up, get dressed.’
Zeynel started up at once. ‘What is it, uncle?’ he said again to the old man who had entered the room.
‘The cops are all over the place, searching for you, Hüseyin Huri at their head …’
‘The son-of-a-bitch!’ Zeynel hissed. Quickly, he got into his clothes, took the gun from under the pillow and stuck it into his waistband. ‘I’ll never give myself up. I’ll fight them.’
‘They’ll kill you, my lad. You’re only one. There are twenty-five of them out there, all with steel vests too.’
Zeynel stopped and stood despondently in the middle of the room. The spider swayed gently on its thread near his bead.
‘Get out!’ Lame Hasan cried. ‘Fast. They’ll be searching here too. Get out by the back door and try to reach the station. Mix with people, get into a train and go as far from here as it goes. Only don’t stand there dawdling.’
Suddenly, Zeynel ran to the back door, opened it carefully and slipped out, cat-like.
13
Years ago, when the weir still stood in Menekşe Bay, it was the custom at the close of winter and in the early spring, and during the first days of autumn as well, to light fires all along the beach. Homing fishing boats, spying the smoke from afar, would steer into the bay as close to the shore as possible, and cast some dozen or more fish on to the sands, according to the kind and size of their catch. Especially in the spring, at the time of the bonito run, when the boats were full to the brim, the fish really rained down on Menekşe beach. Swiftly, with well-whetted knives, they would be cleaned, washed and salted, then laid upon the piles of glowing embers. Soon a mouth-watering odour of fat, sizzling bonito would fill the whole bay. The poor folk, the children, the loners and the sick would be waiting, each with a large loaf of bread sliced through the middle. The crisp, sea-smelling fish would be boned and inserted into the loaves and devoured in large hungry mouthfuls, the grease trickling down chins and fingers.
So it used to be on spring evenings, all along Menekşe shore, heaps of glowing, starlike embers and the heavy fumes of sizzling, burning oil. The whole village would be replete and children’s faces wreathed in smiles.
As a child Zeynel never could afford a loaf of bread and no one thought of giving him one except Kadir Agha. The old man would watch out for the boy, then fetch the loaf he had kept for him in his boat, select the choicest fish, shake it by the tail, removing the spine at one go, press the fish into the bread and hold it out to Zeynel, who would snatch it and run off to one of the empty beach cabins to savour his fish slowly, all by himself. And Kadir Agha would watch from a distance, smiling proudly.
Kadir Agha hailed from Rumania. He had come to Menekşe many long years ago, when no one yet had settled here, when those slopes there were covered with bushes under which nestled clusters of fragrant wild violets that had given the village its name. A wide, swampy reed-bed stretched right into the bay and in front of where the factory now stands the rushes were so thick and tall a tiger could not have penetrated them. After Kadir Agha, the sand-dealer Sait Bey came to settle in Menekşe and then, in no time, the place was full of people. How and when they came, Kadir Agha doesn’t remember at all. Lame Hasan, for instance, who caught the most beautiful red mullet here, exactly twenty-six centimetres each, exactly! If the mullet was shorter by only a millimetre – Lame Hasan had the measure marked out on the side of his boat – he would cast it back into the sea, saying, ‘You’ve still some time to grow, laddie,’ or if it was longer, ‘You’re a little past your prime, chum, just go on laying eggs and breeding plenty of young mullet …’ Those red mullet that were the right size he would put into his fish tank in which he changed the water every fifteen minutes, and watch them swim around, entranced. Lame Hasan would not dream of selling his catch to any Tom, Dick or Harry. He had his own select clients, old aristocrats who lived in Florya, Yeşilköy and Bakirköy, gourmets who could appreciate what he brought them, not like those new real-estate millionaires who would bargain half an hour for one single fish. Why had Lame Hasan quit fishing and taken to just raking up flotsam and jetsam these last years? Because those gourmets who appreciated his red mullet at their real value do not exist any more in Istanbul, because they are dead now, or impoverished, because nowadays people are incapable of truly savouring fish.
As for Kadir Agha, never in all the fifty years since he had come from Rumania had he seen the inside of a house, or even of a hut or a tent. Summer and winter he slept in his boat. Perhaps he had been born in a boat and most probably he would die in one. It was Kadir Agha who pioneered fishing in Menekşe. He was not finicky like Lame Hasan about what he caught and sold. Any kind of fish and fishing was good enough for him. He would dispose of his catch wherever he could and then hurry up to Beyoğlu, to the Flower Market, for a bout of drinking with his fellow-fishermen, after which he would pay a visit to his lady friend in that notorious Abanoz Street. His greatest feat whenever he came into town was to clamber up the parapet of Galata Bridge and stand there, drunk as he was, without losing his balance, without even swaying, to pee into the water.
‘There’s a good sun today,’ Lame Hasan commented. ‘Just the right weather for fish.’
‘No more fishing for me,’ Kadir Agha declared. ‘My eyes aren’t as good as they were.’
‘With me, it’s my ears,’ shouted Lame Hasan.
‘So it is, so it is …’
‘Besides,’ Lame Hasan went on, ‘there’s no fish left to speak of in the Marmara Sea.’
‘Ah, they’ve bled the sea dry,’ Kadir Agha mourned. ‘They’ve sinned against the sea.’
‘It’s because they killed the dolphins, the criminals. The fish were angry then and took themselves off. To Greece, to Russia … Even Fisher Selim – he was only a boy at the time, well, a lad anyway – he swore he’d never go fishing again after the dolphin carnage, but he didn’t keep his word. So the fish went away, angry with us, with the sea. Angry … Gone …’
‘Serve us right,’ Kadir Agha growled.
‘They scorn us now, the fish of the sea,’ said Lame Hasan. ‘It’s the worst thing that could happen, to be scorned by the fish of the sea …’
‘Let them go,’ Kadir Agha said. ‘Let them never come back.’
‘And what about that Zeynel lad?’
‘He did well. Everyone here in Menekşe treated him a thousand times worse than they treated the fish. Not me … I always gave him fish to eat. Everyone else cheated him out of his deck-hand’s due, he was beaten and spurned by all. Many a cold winter’s night he could not find even an old hulk to sleep in and I took him into my own boat. We’d squeeze in somehow.’
‘I gave him a lot of fish too,’ Lame Hasan said.
‘Be quiet, you heathen!’ Kadir Agha shouted. ‘You wouldn’t give anyone even the trimmings of your little fingernail, let alone a fish … Hah, all your fish were for the fine gentlemen of Yeşilköy, your red mullet …’
For the fraction of a second when a fish emerged from the water, struggling madly at the end of his hook, Lame Hasan would hold it up in the sun, gazing adoringly at the flashing, glittering lump of red. ‘Who knows what bastard’s going to eat you this evening, my beauty?’ he would mutter to himself as he unhooked the fish and measured it, and if it was not exactly the size he wanted his face w
ould brighten. Gently he would touch his index finger to the fish and slide it back into the sea. The truth of the matter was that Lame Hasan would have liked to do this with every single fish he caught. It made his heart bleed to think of his lovely red mullet being eaten by those rich raki-swilling bastards, may they eat poison …
‘No’ he said to Kadir Agha, ‘you’ve forgotten. I gave that orphan child many, many red mullet … But the papers are writing very bad things about him.’ His round wrinkled face grimaced bitterly and his lips shrank inwards still more.
‘Very bad,’ Kadir Agha said. ‘They say he intends to set fire to Menekşe and kill everyone.’
‘Let him!’ Lame Hasan flared. ‘Who was ever kind to him here? Even that Aslan who’s supposed to be a relative of his … One winter he stripped the boy naked, doused him with water and whipped him without mercy. I saw it with my own eyes.’
‘And Kurdish Resul? Three years he had Zeynel toiling as his deck-hand, then gave him the sack without paying him one kurush.’
‘And Ali? Bald Ali from Eskişehir? Who knows what he did to Zeynel that the lad should tremble at the mere sight of him? No, he’ll burn this place all right, he will!’
At this moment, young Taner, the fisherman, came into the coffee-house with the day’s papers.
‘This way, Taner,’ Kadir Agha called out to him. ‘Let’s see what those papers have to say today. Sit down here and read it all out to us.’
‘Right away, uncle! It’s for you I got the papers, all of them.’
‘Well, go ahead, then, read,’ Lame Hasan urged him. ‘Let’s see what our lad’s been at again … I mean that gangster,’ he added quickly with a furtive glance around him. Lame Hasan had been living in fear for days now. He thought everyone must know how Zeynel had slept in his house that night. Yes, they knew it, but they were a sly, underhand people, these fishermen. They were keeping mum, so as to blab to the cops when Zeynel was arrested, to tell them it was Lame Hasan who, without a thought for the authorities, had hidden a gangster, a murderer in his house, and for five days too …