The Sea-Crossed Fisherman

by Yashar Kemal

  Soon the place was teeming with every conceivable kind of goods: cheap shoes, trousers and shirts, underwear, pullovers, second-hand coats, plastic pots and plates, mugs, pails, flasks, aluminium utensils, glassware, artificial flowers, brooms, poultry in cages, baskets of eggs, barrows of melons and water-melons, small motor trucks full of lemons and oranges, tomatoes, parsley, radishes, and even rugs and carpets and sheep.

  By mid-morning a milling crowd had completely encompassed carts and trucks and booths, on which the vendors had clambered to shout their wares, many of them using loudspeakers. The hawkers were mostly women and children. One scraggy-necked little boy of ten or eleven, his eyes starting from his head, stood on top of a stall and kept up a continuous babble, while his father below was selling orlon, nylon and woollen sweaters all of them green. A yellow-haired woman on the steps of the mosque, swaying her hips like a night-club dancer, her heavy breasts swinging, was singing the praises of a new brand of nylon stockings. Her skirts were hitched up and she kept putting on a pair of stockings and stripping them off again. And pressing all around her was a tight circle of blue-jeaned goggling youths with long unkempt hair and muddy shoes and trouser-legs. On the top step an old man paced up and down, hawking some things wrapped in red paper that he held in a string bag. ‘Come, friends, come this way, this way,’ he shouted ceaselessly, beads of sweat on his brow, though what he was selling it was impossible to tell.

  An ill-dressed crowd it was. People’s bodies were misshapen, their faces drawn and sallow, their hair unwashed, their hands lifeless, their eyes hungry, resentful, sullen … A degenerate, different species it was that thronged the square, bumping into each other, stepping on one another’s feet, screaming, swearing, bargaining, a flurried mass stretching down to the shore where rowing-boats and city ferries came and went, cleaving through the garbage-strewn water.

  In all this turmoil, snake-charmers, conjurors, sword-swallowers, fire-eaters were exhibiting their prowess, and at the foot of the Spice Bazaar wall were lined up the fortune-tellers with their pigeons and rabbits trotting out of their cages to pick out a scrap of paper and put it into the hand extended to them.

  Zeynel and Dursun Kemal were at the hub of the crush, drifting wherever the crowd was the densest. If it thinned out around them they hurried into its very centre again. They felt afraid, naked and abandoned without all these people round them. Somehow it had occurred to them to buy a börek each. They were munching away with huge hungry bites and drinking fruit juice from a stand nearby.

  Over in the east above Haghia Sophia an eagle was wheeling. Its wings spread wide, it vanished into the clouds and reappeared gliding over the Bosphorus Bridge. The next instant it was over Leander’s Tower, tracing a wide circle from there to Fenerbahçe and the Ahirkapi lighthouse, and then once again it took up its position between the minarets of Haghia Sophia, hovering in the face of the north wind, its rufous wings glinting in the sunlight.

  Küçükçekmece, on market days, was like this, aswarm with a thousand and one feet, and on such a day the fortune-teller with the eagle had set up his board, large as a door, with the many holes into which were inserted the red, green, yellow, blue, purple slips of paper inscribed with fortunes. The great coppery eagle, alert, its wings tightly closed, its crooked talons knife-sharp, paced up and down the board, its hook-beaked head held high, pausing now and again to pierce the crowd with its fierce gold-ringed eyes, while its owner shouted out tales about his magic eagle and its oracular powers in a sing-song voice, beside himself, ecstatic, his hands and feet, face and hair and eyes, his whole body adding to the telling of it.

  ‘This eagle,’ he was saying, ‘this wondrous eagle is the offspring of the Phoenix that only lays one single egg in a thousand years up on fabulous Mount Kaf. For years and years it has been divining. Thousands, millions of people have heard it and not once has it gone wrong, everyone’s future has been laid bare before him like an open book. Come, folks, now’s the time for your fortune, before night closes on you!’

  He was a tiny little man, but as he talked he gained stature, his bow legs straightened and his small hairy face with the wedge-shaped slanted eyes and the high scar-marred cheekbones took on a strange beauty.

  A long line of people, men and women, young and old, had queued up while the eagle picked out the folded scraps of paper from their holes with its strong crooked beak. Up and down it went over the wide board, stopping now and then to stretch its powerful neck and spread its huge wings, glaring at the crowd with its keen yellow, white and mauve striated eyes, only to resume its coming and going ever more quickly, as though performing some age-old eagle dance.

  One after another, those who had received their scraps of paper turned away, reading and re-reading their fortune as they took themselves home, their hearts at ease, with fresh confidence in the future, as though entering a new and brighter world, grateful to the eagle if only for one night’s dreams of paradise.

  As the day drew to a close and the market-place emptied, the slant-eyed little man would take the exhausted eagle from the now empty board, set it on the ground, then heaving the board on to his back and putting his arms through its leather straps he would pick up the drooping eagle and set out, his pouch of money in his hand. Crossing the old Küçükçemece bridge he would emerge on to the London Highway and, blinking his tiny wedge-shaped eyes, would turn either left towards Istanbul or right towards Avcilar.

  A gentle drizzling rain was falling that evening. The setting sun, huge, mauve-pink, was poised poplar-high above the sea and reflected on the water, a perfectly round disc. Banks of swelling clouds, deep mauve, were whirling on the golden line of the horizon.

  The little man with the great eagle in his arms was climbing the rise of Avcilar, leaving Çekmece Lake behind, and after them went Zeynel. How old was he then? He could not remember, but for some time he had felt a fascination for the eagle and its owner and he followed them whenever he could. The great eagle had come to represent security, a kind of safeguard for him. And if he happened to have a little money his greatest treat was to have the eagle draw a lot for him.

  The little man now descended the cliff to the edge of the sea, set down the eagle, leaned his board against the cliffside and hung the money pouch on it. Then he opened the large bag slung over his shoulder and took out a dead pigeon. Squatting under a tree at the top of the cliff, Zeynel watched as the little man began plucking the pigeon, while the eagle, suddenly perking up, rubbed itself against his legs like a cat and flapped its wings. The little man flung the plucked pigeon on to the shingle and the eagle, slightly lifting its wings, wobbled over to it eagerly. At that moment a man appeared round the cliff and came striding over to the little man who was trying to kindle a fire with a few sticks and brambles. The little man leapt to his feet. Zeynel had recognized the newcomer. It was Ihsan the gangster … They began to talk. Then the talk turned into an argument. Zeynel could not catch what they said, but they were shouting and swearing angrily. Soon they had come to blows, the little man holding his own against the huge and awesome gangster, pounding at him with increasing force as the fight went on. Twice Ihsan stumbled and fell, as the little man, nimble and swift, ran round him, pummelling away and hurling stones at him. From a distance the great eagle, flapping its wings, hopping and lunging, was taking part in the fight too. Zeynel, struck dumb with fear, cowered under the tree, his teeth chattering. Suddenly, he saw a long knife glinting in Ihsan’s hand. It flashed briefly and Ihsan’s arm went up down, up down. The eagle’s owner bellowed and slumped to the ground. Ihsan stooped over him and stabbed again and again. At last he lurched over to the board, seized the money pouch, then turned back to the dead man, ransacked his pockets and stuffed some things into the money pouch. The eagle was standing there forlornly at the dead man’s feet. Ihsan dealt it a kick. The bird uttered a long cry, fluttered over to the shore and came and stood again beside the corpse. Suddenly, it rose high into the sky, then swooped down and with outstretched motionless
wings began to wheel above the body.

  The next morning at dawn some fishermen discovered the corpse on the shore. The eagle was still whirling up above and Zeynel still crouching under the tree, frozen stiff. An ambulance arrived and removed the body to the morgue near Gülhane Park. And the eagle followed the ambulance all the way. Everyone in Menekşe was talking about it, about the eagle that kept gliding a poplar’s height above the ambulance and how, as the body was carried into the morgue, it came and perched on the plane tree in front of the entrance gates. No one appeared to claim the body. It remained there in the morgue slot for quite a while and all day long the eagle was seen wheeling above the morgue and round about – Haghia Sophia, Gülhane Park, Topkapi Palace. Several times a day it swooped down upon the pigeons of Valide Mosque, snatched one up and soared off, disappearing for an hour or so, then turning up again, ceaselessly circling the sky above Haghia Sophia, now and again alighting on the ancient plane tree in the middle of the street. Finally, it was the Municipality that took the body away to be buried and with it the eagle vanished too, only to reappear a few days later in its accustomed place on the plane tree or in the skies above Haghia Sophia.

  To this day Zeynel had never told a soul that it was Ihsan who had killed the eagle’s owner …

  Way over Azapkapi Mosque a mass of seagulls swirled up and down as though caught in a whirlwind. The crowd enveloped Zeynel and Dursun Kemal like a warm blanket. They were not hungry, but still, when they saw a barrow heaped high with fresh cucumbers, they bought one each. It seemed as if the whole of Istanbul had gathered here today, all the neighbouring slum areas of Kazliçeşme, Zeytinburnu, Taşlitarla, and the denser the crowd, the better Zeynel felt.

  It was near the old enclosed fountain that his eyes lighted on the newspaper at the stand there. He stopped short, electrified, bought a paper and, dashing over to the mosque, sat down on the topmost step. Then he saw Dursun Kemal planted right beside him. ‘You go and sit over there,’ he ordered, pointing to the far end of the flight of steps. Setting the money bags down, he unfolded the paper with trembling hands and stared as though he could not believe what he saw. Splashed over a whole page was a colour photograph of Zühre Paşali, stark naked, sprawled on a bed, her full breasts, the hair of her pubis and armpits, every part of her exposed. The white sheets, her face and belly were spattered with red blood. Yes, this was Zühre Paşali herself, and her large beautiful eyes had remained wide open … Zeynel recognized the bed, the embroidered sheets, the pillow-case trimmed all round with pink roses. Under the photograph, in red characters as big as a finger, running from one side of the page to the other was the legend, ‘Cut-throat gangster Zeynel Çelik’s latest murder’, and beneath, in smaller type, blue this time, ‘The police in a state of alert … Orders to shoot on sight.’ All the blood left Zeynel’s face and the paper slipped from his nerveless hands. Dursun Kemal made a dash to retrieve it. ‘Stop,’ Zeynel shouted. ‘Don’t touch that paper.’ The boy dropped the paper at once.

  It’s shameful, Zeynel was thinking, the poor boy mustn’t see his mother like that, stark naked … Suddenly, he felt himself in a void, alone, exposed, transfixed by countless eyes. He plunged down the steps into the crowd. Dursun Kemal was at his heels.

  ‘Quick,’ Zeynel whispered to him breathlessly, ‘go and have a look around. See if there are any cops with Hüseyin Huri on the watch for me at the landing-place and round the corner of the mosque. I’ll wait for you here, near this fountain.’

  Dursun Kemal sprinted away and the first thing he saw as he rounded the mosque was a group of five policemen. He made himself scarce in the crowd and cowered under the arcade. The policemen were walking in the direction of the fruit-trading wharf. He got up and followed them. On the wharf the same policemen he had seen the other day were there again, even the one who kept scratching his bottom and the other one who spat endlessly into the sea. And from the Unkapani underpass two policemen came running towards him. Dursun Kemal turned to flee and met two jet-black eyes under thick brows, Hüseyin Huri himself, standing there looking at him maliciously. He made a dash for the entranceway of the Spice Bazaar, but there, too, a pair of glittering black eyes, exactly like Hüseyin Huri’s, were fixed on him. Dursun Kemal did not know which way to turn. Hüseyin Huri seemed to be everywhere and with him a whole lot of policemen. At the fruit-trading wharf Hüseyin Huri grabbed him by the collar. ‘It was you who killed your mother,’ he shouted, spitting into the sea. All the policemen were spitting too. ‘You! Not Zeynel! Not your father, you! You caught her whoring and so you killed her!’ Dursun Kemal shook himself free and darted up the slope leading to Süleymaniye Mosque and into smelly narrow alleys where small children were playing in the mud. Here too he came upon policemen at every turning. Finally, he made for Mahmutpaşa Street which, as usual, was thronged with shoppers and crammed with a whole array of goods, clothes, shoes, kitchen utensils, glassware, all overflowing from the shops on to the pavements. He plunged into the crowd and disappeared.

  Sitting at the foot of the fountain, his three bags of money beside him, Zeynel was reading the papers. He had bought them all and each contained the same news. Zeynel Çelik was to be killed on sight, with no warning or chance to give himself up. Every time he read this, Zeynel’s blood ran cold. One paper said that the police were on Zeynel Çelik’s track. For the past three nights the gangster had been seen prowling around the house of Zühre Paşali, his victim, a revolver in his hand, and at his heels his slain mistress’s eleven-year-old son. What could the murderer be after now? Another newspaper printed a long account of his relationship with Zühre Paşali and a whole array of photographs of her, large and small, including a wedding photograph in which Dursun Kemal’s father, sweating, his eyes bulging in a wild glare, held the bride, a plump girl all in white, as though afraid she would run away from him. That man’s a killer, Zeynel thought … Printed in all the papers was a colour photograph of a moustached Zeynel Çelik. Only in two papers were the photographs different. In one, Zeynel Çelik held a long-barrelled gun, his arm extended as though firing at something. He was wearing shiny top-boots and breeches, a sash at his waist, a red tie, and a handkerchief in his breast pocket. The man in this photograph bore no likeness at all to the moustached Zeynel Çelik and the paper carried a heart-rending account of the love affair between Zühre Paşali and Zeynel. The second paper, badly printed, not one of the colour tabloids, had a few faded photographs, one of a group of bandits lined up at the foot of some tall crags, with an arrow indicating Zeynel Çelik, a Mauser rifle in his hand and rows of cartridge belts all over him. This Zeynel had no moustache and his eyes squinted slightly. There was a long story about Zeynel’s childhood, how he grew up in a village and on reaching manhood killed the man who had murdered his father, and then eloped with the most beautiful girl in the neighbourhood, how they both fought against the gendarmes up in the mountains, how, when his sweetheart was killed, Zeynel left for the town and there met Zühre Paşali, how he took her away from her husband, how she taught this mountain outlaw the ways of the big city and made a redoubtable gangster of him and how for three days now he had been raining bullets on Zühre Paşali’s house in order to get in and retrieve his hidden booty … Other items of news were that Zeynel Çelik had been sighted in Beyoğlu the night before, but had whipped out his gun on the spot and disappeared, that he had wounded a taxi-driver, that he had intercepted the seventeen-year-old belle of Nişantaş who, recognizing him, had fainted away and had been saved from the gangster’s hands only by the arrival of the police. The inhabitants of Menekşe were living in fear. Those who had maltreated the gangster during his childhood were abandoning their homes, resolved not to return until he was captured or killed. Zeynel smiled as he read this. The cowards, he muttered, the lowdown fools …

  The police had captured three more members of Zeynel Çelik’s gang. One of them, known as the Üsküdar Monster, had described Zeynel as the bravest, the most bloodthirsty, the most elusive of the Istanbul thug
s. He knew the city down to its innermost recesses, he had a girl in every neighbourhood, he never missed a shot, he had the devil’s own charm, a mild smiling countenance, but when angered could even kill his own mother and father, and indeed his first murder had been that of his sister and her lover. It was after that he had come to Istanbul. Zühre Paşali was a close relative of his, a cousin maybe. Anyway, he had a tendency to fall in love with every pretty girl he saw. The police had therefore decided to use young girls as decoys in order to trap him.

  Zeynel Çelik was filled with admiration for one of the photographs featuring a mountain of a man with a bushy moustache and hawk-like eyes. He felt a pang of pity at the thought that he would soon be killed. He imagined the police closing in and riddling him with bullets. He saw the huge man toppling over on the lawn of Gülhane Park like a felled plane tree, bellowing, the blood gushing from him … He swore to himself never to set foot in Gülhane Park again. Suddenly he shivered. What if they took him for that other Zeynel Çelik and riddled him with bullets too? He jumped up, seized his bags and flung himself into the crowd. Then, terror-stricken, he made for the fountain again. Something was up, he was sure of it, he was surrounded, he, the real Zeynel Çelik. Crazed with fear, he floundered this way and that, his eyes bulging, his hand on his gun, expecting a shower of bullets at any minute. Just then, Dursun Kemal came running up.

  ‘Hüseyin Huri,’ he gasped. ‘The cops … They’re all over the place …’

  Zeynel dashed off to the arcade.

  ‘Wait,’ Dursun Kemal cried, rushing after him. ‘Look! There! Hüseyin Huri … The cops …’ He grabbed Zeynel’s arm and together they ran back. At the corner of the Sümerbank store, Dursun Kemal held Zeynel back again. ‘Look … There!’ They swerved into the street of the Central Post Office and struggled through the throng of street sellers hawking radios, tape-recorders, postcards, posters, stationery, shoes, walking-sticks, coloured plastic flowers, oranges, apples, bananas, and again at the end of the street Dursun Kemal glimpsed Hüseyin Huri and a group of policemen. The street opposite led to the Security Department. It was crawling with police, but there was no Hüseyin Huri, so they struck into it and emerged in front of the boat landing-place. It was full of policemen too.