The Sea-Crossed Fisherman

by Yashar Kemal

  ‘Why, my poor child, what can your Uncle Hasan do?’

  Zeynel was trembling. ‘Don’t let me be killed. Hide me from the police,’ was all he could say.

  Lame Hasan, his face sombre, his head bent, seemed not to be listening to him any more. Then, after a while, he looked up. ‘Listen, Zeynel,’ he said, ‘go to Fisher Selim tonight. If anyone can save you, he will.’

  ‘But he’ll give me up to the police, that one, he’ll kill me,’ Zeynel cried in dismay.

  ‘Now, listen to me, my child,’ Lame Hasan said very gently. ‘Tonight you go to Menekşe, but be very very careful, don’t let anyone see you. Go straight to Fisher Selim. Tell him I sent you and that he’s to take you in his boat to Limnos Island, to our Vasili. He’s a fisherman from Samatya, but he had to get out of the country. Tell Fisher Selim I want this of him. If he refuses, then come back to me. If he won’t …’

  ‘He won’t, he won’t! He’ll denounce me to the police. He’ll kill me. He’s got a gun. He’ll fire a hundred bullets into my eyes. He’ll …’

  ‘Shut up!’ Lame Hasan remonstrated. ‘Selim wouldn’t kill anyone. Tell him …Vasili … Why, I remember how we used to go fishing with Vasili way over to Limnos Island! Such red seabream we caught there! Each one weighed three okas. Red, so red … Yes, you go straight to Selim and he’ll take you to Vasili. Vasili, don’t forget the name. Vasili, the fisherman from Samatya. He was my friend, better than a brother to me …’

  ‘They’re going to kill me! Save me! Fisher Selim too …’

  ‘Shut up, you dog, shut up!’ Lame Hasan thundered. ‘What kind of way is that to talk about Fisher Selim? Shut up, you dog …’

  20

  All the cars of Istanbul had switched on their headlamps and were packed close in a wide circle. Lined up too were some panzers and in front of them policemen, their guns held ready, were advancing, wary, angry, deliberate. The city-line ferries all trained their searchlights over the square. Boat sirens, car horns were blaring away. The circle was closing in on Zeynel. More than anything his heart bled for Dursun Kemal. The poor child would be killed with him. Try as he might, Zeynel had not been able to shake him off.

  Red, yellow, green, purple, the neon lights rain down on the square, on Zeynel. Dazzled, shielding his eyes, he wheels this way and that, but everywhere, barring his way, are the police, the cars, a dense wall of light. Frantic, his tongue hanging out, trying to find some dark hole to creep into, a crowd to get lost in, the glaring searchlights on him, whirling in a flood of light, a blind man, arms outstretched, groping, running, foundering.

  ‘Come, Dursun Kemal,’ Zeynel says. ‘Through here.’ And stealthily they emerge on to the trading-wharves. The ground is strewn with leaves of cabbages, leeks, cauliflowers, with orange peel and rotten tangerines. Fruit-cases stacked high like a parapet, shops, old-fashioned steelyards, platform scales, mounds and mounds of vegetables and fruit … A pile of apples high as a poplar, and the hamals in their dirty neckerchiefs, scrambling to the top, emptying their loads, the apples rolling down the sides of the pile … The pervasive smell of apples, of fresh celery, of pungent myrtle fruit …

  Dursun Kemal was asleep under the electric bulb, peaceful, innocent, his lips pouting …

  Zeynel took stock of the warehouse. All the hamals were asleep, leaning against their packsaddles, smelling strongly of sweat. Even in their sleep they were sweating, these hamals who all day long carried loads weighing tons. The splash of oars came from the darkness of the Golden Horn.

  Zeynel knelt down beside Dursun Kemal and gazed at him. The vague thought flitted through his mind that this boy was the only human being he loved and a warm sensation, beyond love, beyond friendship, beyond affection, pleasant, different, deeper, swept over him. Dursun Kemal’s thin, wistful face seemed longer in the crude electric light. He had no one left in the whole wide world but Zeynel, and Zeynel had no one but him. For days he had stuck by Zeynel, braving death and the police. Perhaps Zeynel did not exactly think all this as he knelt there gazing at Dursun Kemal’s beautiful sunburnt face, fear-ridden even in sleep, perhaps he did not think at all, perhaps, moved by a deep warm tenderness he had never felt before, he only sensed it.

  Tentatively he reached out to stroke Dursun Kemal’s hair. ‘Your father has killed your mother,’ he murmured. ‘He’d kill you too. Don’t go back to him. You won’t, I know. That father of yours is a monster …’

  The colour photograph in that tabloid of Zühre Paşali lying stark naked rose before his eyes, her lacerated breasts red with blood, her belly, her whole body mangled, her shapely hips still beautiful. The heady remembered odour of her came to his nostrils, shaking him to the core.

  He sighed, still gently caressing the boy’s hair. Here he was, forced to go, to leave him. What would become of the child? Opening one of his bags, he took some wads of money and tucked them into Dursun Kemal’s pocket. He’s a smart chap, he thought, he’ll pull through. Bending down he kissed Dursun Kemal on the forehead and pressed his warm hand. His heart aching, he turned away and walked out of the warehouse. At the fruit-trading wharf he stopped, unable to take another step. How could he leave Dursun Kemal behind? But wouldn’t Fisher Selim say, ‘Haven’t I got enough on my hands without you bringing me this little bastard too? To hell with you both …’? And how would Dursun Kemal fare in those foreign lands? A terrible dread took hold of Zeynel. He could not do without Dursun Kemal, just as he was sure that the boy couldn’t do without him. They had depended on each other all this time, each a comfort to the other. He ran back. Dursun Kemal was still asleep. ‘Dursun Kemal,’ he whispered, then stopped. No, it was no good, Fisher Selim would never take him anywhere with this boy. Quickly he ran out, but stopped again on the wharf, fear engulfing him like a rising flood. His shadow fell over the darkly gleaming waters of the Golden Horn. Seagulls were fluttering in the night sky, swooping up and down over the water, and suddenly behind them Zeynel saw the shadows of three men. They were coming towards him, walking, running, their shadows lengthening and shortening, bending and straightening, bumping into the swarming gulls and cleaving through them. They came to a stop at Zeynel’s side and surrounded him and the seagulls enveloped them all in a smothering mass. Then the pressure lifted. Zeynel was alone. There was no sound in the night but the flapping of gulls’ wings. Only for a moment, then once more the shadowy forms of men and birds were upon him, thrusting him against a hard wall of light. Again and again they disappeared and returned to hedge him in. He was struggling desperately to free himself when the shrill siren of a boat sounded from Galata Bridge.

  ‘There he is, there! Zeynel Çelik, the gangster!’ came a cry from the boat. ‘Catch him, catch him! It’s him, the gangster, the bloodthirsty murderer, the bank robber …’ All the passengers in the boat were screaming at him. With one leap Zeynel broke through the barrier of seagulls, scattered the shadows of the men and dashed away. At Unkapani he found a taxi. The driver was asleep. He woke him up.

  ‘To Menekşe,’ he said.

  He stopped the car near Florya railway station and went under the bridge to the Menekşe road. The throb of an engine came from the sea. Shivering, he walked through the dark and found his way to Fisher Selim’s house, but as soon as he entered the tiny garden a great fear gripped him. He wanted to turn and run. Stealthily, like a cat, he circled the house, then stopped in front of the door, unable to make up his mind what to do. Seagulls were darting in and out of the lighted lamps of the railway station. He heard the humming of the night and the pat-a-pat of passing motorboats. One after another low-flying aeroplanes, their lights casting long beams over the sea, roared down to Yeşilköy Airport. Confused dream-like forms flashed through his mind. All the cars of the city, headlamps glaring, were bearing down upon him. Seagulls dashed in and out of bright-coloured neon lights. Long shadows holding machine-guns were pursuing him, at their head Hüseyin Huri and Dursun Kemal, their bodies stretching high as poplars. They were pressing him against a wall, throwing oil
y lassoes to catch him. Trains, ships, aeroplanes were hooting. Fierce gory buffaloes, smashing all the shop windows of Beyoğlu with their huge branched horns, were lunging at him. The crash of breaking glass resounded in the night. Splinters of glass rained over Taksim Square and policemen were shooting down galloping buffaloes in flames.

  He sank on to the threshold of the house beside the climbing morning glory and fell fast asleep against the door.

  When the door opened he fell to one side, then straightened up against the wall and went on sleeping. Fisher Selim ran back inside and switched on the light. At the sight of Zeynel huddled there and of the three large bags filled to bursting, he stopped short, utterly nonplussed. There was nothing he could do. He could not turn him over to the police, still less hide him in his house. The Menekşe folk would make short work of him when they heard of it. Fearfully he turned off the light and bent over Zeynel.

  ‘Zeynel, my child,’ he whispered. There was only a slight grunt from Zeynel. Suddenly, Fisher Selim recalled how Zeynel had set fire to his house. ‘Get up, damn you,’ he hissed and dealt him a sound kick. ‘Get up, you dog!’

  Zeynel, clinging to the wall, got to his feet, then slumped down again, as though bereft of life.

  Fisher Selim’s heart melted. How could he have kicked this poor boy …? He knelt down beside him. But what if one of the neighbours had noticed? Then, the police would be here any minute. They would kill the boy on the spot. It would not suit the police, or the newspapers either, to have him caught alive. Why, if Zeynel were to go to the Security Department to give himself up, they would still shoot him and throw his body on to some empty plot and then pretend to have killed him after a long gun battle. Newspapermen would be summoned to the scene in the morning and would write fanciful accounts of how this fabulous gangster had been liquidated at last.

  ‘Zeynel, Zeynel,’ he whispered, shaking him. ‘Look, the police are coming, lots of police …’ He shook him more strongly. ‘Have you gone mad, son? Wake up.’

  Zeynel stirred. ‘Police?’ he murmured.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Fisher Selim urged him. ‘The coffee-house is full of them. What are you doing here, in Menekşe? Get up, go away.’

  ‘They … Kill me …,’ Zeynel mumbled and dropped off again.

  ‘Damn it,’ Fisher Selim cursed. Yet he shrank from shaking Zeynel too roughly. He was really sorry for him now. Was it this poor devil who had committed all those murders, robbed so many banks? He simply could not believe it, and if he had not seen with his own eyes Zeynel shooting Ihsan dead he wouldn’t have believed that either.

  He took fright again. If Zeynel was killed here, in his house, Fisher Selim would be the talk of Menekşe for years. He would be forever pointed at as the one who had informed against a slip of a boy. The very thought was enough to throw him into a dither.

  He seized Zeynel and heaved him up. ‘Wake up, child, the police … are all over the place …’

  ‘The police?’ At this, Zeynel grabbed his bags and bolted for the railway station, only to stop dead under the streetlamp, blinking at the station as though trying to identify it. Suddenly, he raced back to Selim’s house, barging in through the open door. There was a loud crash inside and he shot out, whirled round and round Selim, then rushed in again. Selim quickly barred his way out.

  ‘Stop, Zeynel,’ he said. ‘Stop!’

  ‘Let me go,’ Zeynel shouted. ‘They’re going to kill me. The police have found me. They’re killing me!’

  ‘Shh!’ Fisher Selim held him in his strong grip and pushed him in. ‘They’ll hear you.’ He switched on the light. Zeynel’s eyes were starting from their sockets, his face tense, his lips purple.

  Fisher Selim forced a smile and spoke gently to calm him down. ‘Sit down, Zeynel, my child. You’ve only just woken up. Let me make you some tea. You’ll feel better. Don’t worry about the police for the moment.’

  He made Zeynel sit at the table and, lighting his stove, quickly brewed some lime tea for him. Zeynel drank it up, his eyes still rolling with fear. Slowly he began to relax and, after he had drunk a few more glasses of the tea, Selim ventured to speak again.

  ‘Well, Zeynel Çelik, tell me now, how are things with you?’

  As though activated by a spring, Zeynel flung himself at Selim and clasped his hands. ‘Save me!’ he cried. ‘They’re everywhere …. The police … Killing me. Save me.’ He was kissing Selim’s hands again and again. ‘Uncle Hasan said … He said you were the only one who could save me. He said you must take me to Vasili. Vasili from Samatya … Look, I’ve got a lot of money. Three bags full … They’ll kill me. Shoot to kill. The police … Uncle Hasan …’

  ‘Stop,’ Selim said. ‘Wait a minute. Lame Hasan’s as crazy as you are. What do we know of Vasili these days? How long is it since I last saw him? Perhaps fifteen years. Who knows, he may be dead now …’

  ‘He’s alive!’ Zeynel shouted. ‘And with all this money …’

  ‘I can’t do it,’ Selim said. ‘How can I take you to the Greek Islands? Why, if nowhere else, you’d be caught as soon as we started to cross Çanakkale Strait.’

  ‘We can sail by night.’

  ‘It’s even more dangerous then.’

  ‘Vasili …’

  Zeynel would not be put off. Fisher Selim lost his temper, he swore and shouted, then quietened down and pleaded, saying his boat was too old, it would never weather the rough waters of the Aegean, he had enemies in Greece, they would have him arrested … He talked himself hoarse, but the other was not even listening. ‘Save me, they’re killing me,’ he kept repeating. ‘Save me …’

  Seeing it would soon be daylight, Selim gave up. He jumped to his feet. ‘Look here, Zeynel that’s enough! I’m going fishing. There’s nothing I can do for you. The police are after me too, because of you.’ He dragged Zeynel out and locked the door. ‘You mustn’t stay here another minute. This house is being watched. Don’t you set foot here again, nor in Menekşe either.’

  Swiftly, he walked away down to the shore, stepped into his boat, started up the motor and set off at full speed, not stopping until he reached Hayirsiz Island. He had fled from Zeynel as from a savage beast, but now he began to feel pity again. He’s cornered, the lad, he thought. It’s all up with him. Who knows, he may even now be lying there, killed … And what about those bags he never lets go of? They must be full of looted money.

  He had cast his line into the water, but he did not at all feel like fishing today. A notion had taken hold of his mind, something he was ashamed even to admit to himself, yet was unable to escape, a pleasant happy thought that made his head whirl.

  A large white passenger liner, all its lights ablaze, was gliding past like a great seagull, shedding its brightness over the pale dawn sea. Radiant pink clouds floated over the islands, silver-edged on one side, blueing on the other.

  Selim caught a few fish, but they were not good enough for him and he threw them to the gulls. At every fish, the flock of gulls swooped down over the sea all in a ball and this diverted Selim. He went on with this game. All the fish, big or small, that he caught now were for the gulls. Sometimes, one of the birds, swifter than the others, would snatch up the fish in the air and dart away, arrow-like, towards the islands. More and more gulls came swarming down over the boat and Selim kept casting his paternoster line, pulling up as many as half a dozen scad at one go, which he tossed as high as he could into the air and then stood watching while the gulls, in a flurry of wings, scuffled ravenously over a single fish.

  Selim remained until sunset in the midst of a throng of gulls so thick that Hayirsiz Island was hidden from view. As the lights went on in Istanbul and on the Islands, Fisher Selim started the motor and, cleaving through the wall of gulls, set out through the night, accompanied by a great flurry of wings.

  He did not want to go back. There was an ache in his heart, a gloomy foreboding. What if he found that they had killed the poor lad? Then he smiled to himself. Zeynel Çelik, the gangster …


  It was midnight when he sailed into Menekşe River. The lights in the coffee-house were still burning. Everything seemed quite calm and there was no one about. He moored his boat to the jetty and went straight to the coffee-house. There were several people there and in a corner the three policemen were playing cards. There was no sign of anything out of the ordinary. A wave of relief swept over Fisher Selim. He ran up the slope and into his small garden where some of the trees had been left half-blackened by the fire. Then he stopped dead, his relief giving place to rage at the sight of the huddled shadow on the threshold.

  ‘Are you still here? Go away! At once! Or I’ll turn you over to the police this minute.’ Selim was jabbering with fury. ‘How dare you … You burn down my house. You come to kill me. And now … Go away, get out! Now, this minute!’

  ‘They’ll kill me,’ Zeynel moaned.

  ‘Indeed they will! So you’d better scram.’

  ‘I can’t. They’re looking for me everywhere. All over Istanbul. Vasili …’

  ‘Vasili, Vasili!’ Waving his arms, Selim rushed away. But at the railway station he stopped and came back. ‘Look here, Zeynel, tell your fucking Lame Hasan that Vasili’s dead. Dead! I know it for sure, understand?’

  There was no reaction at all from Zeynel.

  All through the night, Fisher Selim, sweating from all his pores, shuttled back and forth between his house and Menekşe Station, pleading and threatening, all to no avail. Zeynel remained huddled up there on the threshold, mute and motionless as a stone.

  The night was beginning to pale. ‘I’m going,’ Selim said, in a towering rage now. ‘And I won’t be coming back here. So, do as you like.’

  He went down to the pier, sick and aching all over, boarded his boat and put out to sea. Refuelling at Yeşilköy, he steered for the Bosphorus. He was going to Rumelikavak, to see his old friend Skipper Tiny Hasan, and stay with him a few days. It was a long time since he’d seen him and it would be good to sit under the age-old plane trees of Rumelikavak again with the mussel-sellers busily prising open mounds of mussel shells, their hands all cut and running with blood.