A Useless Man (15 page)

Of all the seasons, spring is the one that a man over forty cannot face without some sadness. Where has she gone, that girl whose hands went suddenly pale? That wind that turned her pale? That fast-beating heart? They’re right, the ones who divide life itself into seasons. We each have our spring, our summer, our autumn and winter. For us, spring comes much later than it does for animals. A horse has its springtime when it’s one. Well, all right, maybe two. A lamb can become a ram at six months. But a child can’t really understand springtime before the age of twenty. Any taste of it before then is a false spring. That’s the sort of story I’m writing here: it’s about one of those false springs.

Exactly thirty years ago, I was twelve years old and living in an Anatolian city. My father was a civil servant. We’d arrived in this city in late summer. We’d struggled through a bad winter – snowdrifts as high as a man. Then one day, spring came. The snow melted. The snow melted, but it wasn’t the sun’s doing. It was the rain’s. In Anatolian cities, spring begins with an afternoon deluge. In the mornings the sky is a bright blue, and the sun looks as cold as if it’s sparkling on snow. Toward eleven, a black cloud rolls in – it could be from the east, or the west, or the north. Ten minutes later, it begins to pour – pour like water from a glass. And that’s it, for the rest of the day. Great lashes of rain, one after the other. Through my window I could see a dark green pasture, known in the vicinity as “Black Meadow.” I would never have felt the urge to burst out of the house screaming like a madman if not for that play of colors on the meadow that, like the sea, soaked up every pigment of the sky.

I had been in poor health all winter. Every time I went out into the cold, my head would spin. Then there was this strange, oppressive stretch of rain and black clouds, with three gloomy days for every bright one, but there was also spring, filling the air with the aroma of earth and meadow, people and barns, and all I wanted to do was shout and cry and then lie still.

One morning I was gazing at the ceiling. The clouds hadn’t rolled in yet. The sky was still sparkling. I lay on my mattress, wondering how long it would be before the rain came. Just then a bright bird flew through my room. I sat up in bed. It flew past again. Then, on the wall to my right, I saw a band of light flicker and disappear. Then it vanished. I rubbed my eyes. When I looked again I could see a bright circle, shaking and trembling. It seemed to be trying to pin itself to the wall. This was light reflecting off a mirror – it could be nothing else.

I jumped out of bed to look out the window. Our upper garden looked out onto the garden of the house beneath us. The light on my wall must
have come from a mirror somewhere over there. She was sitting on a wicker mat among the peach blossoms. Behind her she had placed a chair. She must have been sixteen or seventeen. I did not leave the window. When the light from her mirror touched my eyes, I didn’t shield them with my hands. I looked straight in front of me, eyes unblinking.

The next day I, too, had a mirror in my hands. When the light from my mirror hit her eyes, she’d avert them, smiling faintly. This game never lasted longer than half an hour. She would race back into her house with rain dripping from her hair, and I would return to my bed. The next day would bring another beautiful morning, and it would always be her mirror that arrived first, racing across my room to hover trembling on the wall, as if looking for a hook to hang from. And again I would look straight into her mirror light, my eyes unblinking; as she shielded her beautiful eyes, we would together gaze at mine. Then the clouds would roll in, with the afternoon deluge. Nothing else interested me, and that is why I paid no attention to the horse carriage that stopped outside our house one morning. Only my mother caught me playing with my mirror. She had an odd expression on her face as she took in the garden, the girl, the light from the mirror, and the mirror in my hands.

“Come on now,” she said. “Get dressed.”

We got into the carriage. Behind us, they’d tied on two trunks to carry our belongings. My father had a new posting. Off we went. As we passed through a forest, the sun came bursting through the clouds, lighting up the new leaves on the trees, and then disappeared. And, with a pang, I remembered the mirror light that I would never see again. I burst into tears. My father asked:

“What’s wrong with this one?”

I buried my head in my mother’s scarf. I have no idea what she conveyed to my father, if not with her hands, then with her eyes, but neither said a
thing. Somehow knowing that no one had the courage to stop me, I cried my heart out.

And now, whenever a light happens to pass across my window in the springtime, I remember that day with the sweet sadness we all share at that time of year, with a restless beating heart. Thirty years have passed since that day. Never once have I flashed a mirror in anyone’s face, and never once has anyone flashed a mirror into mine. But if a light happened to pass through my room on a spring day, as fast as a swallow, I don’t know what would become of me.

We were five rowboats at Hell’s Point. A beautiful January evening. A southern wind. Splashes of red rippling over the sea. Long, vast, dying waves the color of strong linden tea. The boats rocking heavily in the sea, fishing poles in suspense, silent souls …

Does a creature lurk beneath us, woven from the darkest of the seven colors, drifting through the hushed and twisted caverns thirty-eight fathoms deep? How can it be, that Sinağrit Baba has left the hunt so soon? He’s the king of the deeps, lavishing kindness and magnificence on all he leaves in his wake. His jacket, noble but cruel with its shimmering rainbow scales. He is rushing back to his palace; it’s made of gold, emerald, coral, and mother-of-pearl, all twinkling in the dark blue.

Sinağrit Baba hasn’t said a word in his life, he’s never married and he’s always lived alone. How many tragedies has he watched from his cavern’s emerald window? How many fishing lines has he dragged into the sea?

But tonight he will choose a line and put an end to his long life. He will end his long life while every scale on his jacket is still sparkling, and long before mayonnaise is smeared over his flesh. Though there is still
time before he is devoured by that pale and sticky creature, the wretched stingray, he knows he should surrender now to that intelligent creature from the strange world above, to be feted at a sumptuous feast served with white wine.

Sinağrit Baba sniffs one of the lines. It belongs to the fisherman Hristo. He’s a flawed man. Greedy and always calculating. Yes, he’s poor, but he’s not proud. Sinağrit Baba favors poor men with some pride. He drifts to the next line and sniffs. Hasan’s line. Forget him. Forget his temper, too. Underneath it, he’s a coward, and Sinağrit Baba favors the brave. He tries another line. Fisherman Yakup is a good man about town, charming, loveable, and sometimes crude. But he has a jealous streak. Sinağrit Baba doesn’t favor jealous men. Forget him, too. The next line belongs to a stingy man. Whereas Sinağrit Baba favors generosity. Nevertheless he tries the bait and, tearing off half a Spanish mackerel, he flattens the hook entirely and swallows the bait whole before its stingy owner yanks up his line.

“Holy mother, Nikoli,” he says. “He’s completely flattened the hook.”

With Nikoli’s bait in his belly, Sinağrit Baba tries to find a flaw in Nikoli. Surely he’s flawed. First of all, he’s a drunk. And he’s immoral and self-centered. But he’s also generous and brave. He’s hardly a coward. He’s poor. He’s proud. Sinağrit Baba favors the poor and the proud, but not Nikoli’s brand of pride. Sinağrit is after something just a bit different: a pride that’s timely and true; but no, that’s not quite it either, it’s something you sense in the way a fisherman holds his rod, something about him that goes down to the very roots of his hair, the best of humankind. Sinağrit Baba can’t flatten a fishhook borne by a proud hand, or sever his line, or make away with his barrel swivel.

He sniffs all five of the rowboats, and he isn’t pleased.

Sinağrit Baba hovers beside the corner of his cavern, watching the sea
palace sparkle, lit by the mercury bait and the hooks shimmering soft as moonlight in the deep blue sea. More lines drop down and soon fifteen mercury lamps are swinging softly in the center of the land of Sinağrit and Çüpra … One after the other red bream dart out from their hollows and attack the lamps, foolishly snagging themselves on the hooks. Pulled up to the surface, their eyes wide as they turn and look down, unsure if they should give in and see the world above them or struggle back down into theirs. Their eyes grow wider still as they look down at Sinağrit Baba, as if to say, “save us from this horrible fate.” Sinağrit Baba takes a moment’s pause. He only has to swim over to the shimmering line and bite through it, nothing more. But he stays still and decides not to save them. He knows it would be an easy thing to do, but he knows something else, too: that reason can’t fix these things, that it makes no difference if you are animal, vegetable or human being, if you live in the water, on land or in the air. His good deed would only have a real and lasting effect when all the other fish in the sea understand that severing the shimmering line meant saving all the others. The Mighty Sinağrit might bite through the line, but then who would save him when his own time came? Who would ever think of biting the line for him?

A brightly shimmering hook falls into the sea. Hopeful, the Mighty Sinağrit swims toward it and sniffs. The owner’s vaguely familiar. Nibbling a little on the bait, he thinks for a moment that this is the very man he is looking for. Then suddenly he’s caught. Tumbling into the boat, the Mighty Sinağrit stares up at the fisherman with wide and joyful eyes. Again and again, he looks up through his luminous, red-rimmed black eyes. Then he flaps his body up and down on the bottom of the boat like a furious young girl pounding her foot on the floor. Maybe he sees something in the man we can’t see: that this man has failed the test. Yes, he has led a brave and generous life. And he lives as a proud man, something the Mighty Sinağrit
thinks is good. But somehow now he knows that this man is a wretched dog; he sees what no one else can see. This man who just fished him out of the sea has never put his courage, his bravery, his pride to the test over the years; he’s been that lucky. But who is he? What is he? Sinağrit Baba doesn’t know. But he’s understood that, despite having lived a generous, proud, and courageous life, this man has failed the test. And might never have been tested at all, he might end his days like that. Sinağrit Baba has never encountered anything like it. Just before he dies, he looks up at the man again. From his forehead alone, he knows the man to be the most dishonorable of all dishonorable men, the most cowardly of all cowards. But he will die a brave and honorable and generous man. He has been so fortunate throughout life that he never once considered his duplicity. Would Sinağrit Baba have surrendered willingly to him if he had? So he flails desperately about in the boat again, his mouth fixed in a silent scream. Then it closes. It was with regret and a swell of defeat that the Mighty Sinağrit gives his dying breath in that rowboat, watching humanity fail the test.

You want to light up but you don’t have a match. Where will you go for a light? You need directions. Who to ask? You see a crowd gathering. You wonder what’s going on. Who will you turn to? A man like me. And while I do like being the one people are more likely to turn to when they’ve lost their way, or need a match, there are times when I don’t. But I can’t say I have never assumed an arrogant air to discourage the poor souls who walk over to me with a question, or who look at me as if they might spring one on me … but who knows, I was so very low that day. So many times I’ve had to ask myself why I’ve acted that way when I usually disliked being the one picked out of the crowd. It also annoys me when young boys ask me to light their cigarettes. They stand there, some distance away, sizing me up. And then the strange way they come up to me. There have been times when I’ve let them down. And it was on those occasions that I came to understand what a terrible thing it is, to be wrong about someone. There is not a soul on earth who can bear it. I’ve seen quite a few of them give up on the idea of asking me for a light. Some people make sure never to risk losing hope.