A Useless Man (18 page)

I tied him up tight, hand and foot. I sat him down in the corner. His eyes were flashing. He was shaking, rocking with rage. His face was yellow. But I was certain it wasn’t fear that did that. It was fury, pure fury. There was no point, though, in making him angry. But that wasn’t because I feared he might do something. Or pounce on me, if I untied him. That rage would dissolve the moment I set him free. What about me, though? I wasn’t about to give up on him. I liked seeing him cornered, with nowhere to go.

“What’s it to you, anyway? What’s it to you?” He was screaming.

“What’s it to
me
?” I raged. “You’re asking what this means to
me
? Look around you. Every house and garden in this city is in danger. No one can sleep easy …”

I knew I was exaggerating, but I kept going.

“Come on now, it’s not as bad as all that,” he managed to say.

I hit right back at him.

“You say it’s not so bad, but just by saying that, you’re admitting how bad you really are,” I said. Of course, it doesn’t look so bad to you. Just think of the other side of the coin for a minute: a coal man’s summer,
an iceman’s winter. Skiing down a summer slope, swimming in a winter sea.…” My imagination ran out.

“So look,” I said instead. “You have no right. That’s why tying you up is – ”

“Set me free!” he screamed. “Set me free!”

“Do you repent?” I asked.

I knew he couldn’t. He didn’t have it in him to pretend. He calmed down:

“You’re exaggerating, sir,” he said.

For a while neither of us spoke. He saw now that I was not going to waver. He began to plead with me. He was sorry. May God make me an Arab if I ever do this again!

I pretended to think it over. Then I gave him my most poisonous smile:

“You think I’m going to fall for that?” I said. “You don’t mean a word you say. You’re a liar. A chicken ass! Don’t think you can hide from me! You don’t feel any remorse – you can’t.”

I stopped. I glared down at him.

“Don’t you know lying is wrong?” I said.

“Yes, you’re right. It’s wrong,” he said. “But you’re being too hard on me. You know as well as I do this is something you can’t promise not to do again.”

“A sinner repents,” I said.

“What do I know about sin?” he replied.

“You’re evil,” I said. “Pure evil.”

“Huh! Now you’re talking. Tell me what makes this evil.”

I gave a few examples. He wasn’t convinced. He was determined to prove to me there was nothing evil in this.

“Evil,” he said. “You keep calling it evil. But when will you understand that you’re just masking real evil, and with all these excuses you’re only setting it up,” he said. Then he went on, “In the past I felt like you didn’t
know what you were doing and I knew you had a pure heart. But here’s what I can see: you’re masking the really big evil here, masking it with these little, innocent evils,” he said, and so the preaching began.

I shut him up.

My exact words were: “Shut up, dog. Shut up and tell me exactly what you think the really big evil is.”

“The really big evil is injustice.”

“And we who feel wronged …”

“Look who’s so high and mighty! But you have a soft spot for pickpockets and thieves. Even murderers are better than me in your eyes. You fear them. When they’ve paid their dues, when they’re back on the streets and walk back into the coffeehouse, you stand up to greet them. Oh, I’ve seen plenty of that with my own eyes – mayors and rich men and bigwigs, standing up like that in coffeehouses, for murderers …”

“Stop spouting nonsense,” I said. “Take a good long look at yourself instead.”

“I’m not doing anyone any harm,” he said. “If I knew I was doing harm …”

“With this sort of thing, there’s no difference between knowing and not knowing,” I said.

But now he was past listening:

“By inventing all these small evils, you’ve turned the great evil, the real powerhouse evil into
desperation
. But in my world everything is unjust, everywhere we turn, there’s evil, a great powerhouse of evil. And now you’re attacking my desperation, my only hope, my only source of pleasure, my only joy, my only …”

“Your only sin.”

“Yes, my only harmless, innocent sin.”

“I tied you up tight, didn’t I?”

With that I untied him.

“So go,” I said. “Go do what you want. May God help you!”

He was gone in a flash. He was practically flying. You’d think that Chance itself was waiting breathlessly at the door. What were the odds of his avoiding instant death? One in ten, I thought. One in ten.

To cut down those odds, I ran out the back way. I didn’t go to every last place he might visit, I just went to a few. Here and there I was able to reduce his chances to one in a hundred.

“A word to the wise,” I said. “I’ve let him loose, he’s outside again, he’ll be here any minute.”

“If he wants to come, let him come,” they said.

“What do you mean, let him come? How can you say that? After all those fine words about honor and dignity? He’s a menace to society!”

“You’re a real piece of work,” they said.

They weren’t taking me seriously, I could see that. Really, they weren’t equipped to take it any other way. So I played it differently, to make it worth their while to stop him.

“Of course he can come if he wants to,” I said. “The point is to torment him, keep him from taking any pleasure from it.”

“He has money, so why shouldn’t we take it from him?” they said.

“As if!” I said. “As if the pleasure he gets can be measured in money!”

“Pleasure?”

I was taken aback when they said that. But that’s the way it is … He and I were the only ones who understood why the pleasure they gave him was more valuable than money. Or was I just like him, without knowing? By causing him pain, was I only torturing myself? I didn’t want to think about that for too long and swatted the thought away, like a fly. Instead I thought about what a great pleasure it brought me, to do him harm.

“No,” I said. “That’s just how it looks to you. For me, and for him, money has no value, next to the beautiful things you’ll give him.”

“So what are you asking here? What do you want us to do?” they asked.

“If you listen to me,” I said, “you can have your money, and still deny him his pleasure.”

“How?” they asked.

“How? It’s easy. He’ll come in. Come over. The things he’s after are innocent enough: friendship, safety, intimacy, a bit of conversation … And you make as if you have all that to offer. The thing he wants more than anything, though – no doubt about it – he’ll save that for last. But because you already know, you can look like you might know, or might not. And he’ll think he has the trump card in his hand all this time, and just when he’s about to play it, he’ll see that he has no trump card, that the card in his hand is blank, while you hold a double trump in your hand. But you will have made every humanly possible sacrifice. There’s no harm in that.”

“What’s the point of all this?”

“The point of it is to get him to hate everything around him – you, himself, the world, money, the street, everything on earth – the moment he sees it, the moment he tastes it.”

“And then?”

“And then it’s over the rainbow … And then you …”

“All right. All right! You’ve said enough. We’ll do what you want,” they said.

He came home that evening, of his own accord. He threw himself into the same corner where I’d had him tied up earlier. He stretched out his legs, hid his head in his hands.

I caressed his graying hair, almost pulling on it.

“What went wrong? What put you into such a miserable state?”

“If only you had kept me in,” he said. “If only you had kept me right here, bound hand and foot.”

“What happened to you, darling? Come on now. Tell me what happened.”

What didn’t he tell me, the poor fool. They had taken my theoretical
example literally, and put it into practice so well that even I was frightened by the pleasure I took from it.

“So what are you going to do now?” I said.

“You’ve got what you wanted. From here on in, there’s no need to tie me up. From now on, I’m just sitting here. I’m going nowhere. No more chasing after pleasure. No more of that for me!”

“So. At last you’ve come to your senses. Good for you!” I said that but I knew full well that before morning, before the next false dawn broke, the city would be calling to him, the streets with its bright and flashing lights. By morning he would be long gone from that corner he’d curled up in, so wretched and so sore. He’d be back on the street.

Until the day I found him in that same corner, staring up at me, wide-eyed and dead.

I could say that everything I know about this man I have on good authority, but please, don’t take my word for it. There is, I think, no need to dwell on the rumors. Let me just confirm that he has a flat stomach and very long legs, with a head of golden hair, and shifty eyes. Let me also make it clear that I have no wish to imply that gossip is a wicked pastime, bringing us no joy. At the end of the day, it can enhance a reputation. We could, if we wished, imagine this man in an old-style photograph – a figure set against a background of shimmering fog. For we are not afraid.

So there he was, sitting on the low wall overlooking that vacant lot and the sea. And there, at his feet, was his dog, resting on its haunches, its front legs stretched out straight, still as a statue but for its cold, wet nose … Every now and then it looked up at its master and whimpered, as if to say,
let’s go
 …

The man lit a cigarette and said:

“Sit. Stay still!”

The dog stretched out its front legs and put its nose between them. It closed its eyes. A gentle breeze rustled through its yellow fur, and the man’s wiry hair.

There was white mixed in with the gold. Beneath each line on his face were untold stories. Unrequited loves. Bitter heartaches. Lost looks. Lost books. Years wasted on drink and inner turmoil. Had I all the time in the world, there’s no telling what I could have found there. And what if I said that those crow’s feet around those blue eyes of his were not from laughing but from squinting at the sun? You’d just have to take my word for it! That said, I’m sure he utters those exact words whenever he happens to catch a glimpse of his reflection. I’m sure it’s what he tells his dog. But if you asked me how I can dare to make such a claim, when not a single neighbor has ever heard him utter these words, I would urge you to forget about neighbors and think instead about postmen – a nosy postman who can’t get this man out of his mind. And so there he is, in the middle of nowhere, passing the time of day with a man who has just offered him a cigarette, and saying:

“Aha! Oho! You mean that man who talks to his dog? Well, let me just tell you. The other day I took him a letter. The front door was ajar. I could hear all kinds of strange noises inside. Of course I pricked up my ears! I said to myself, ‘Now, there’s no one else inside but the man and his dog. Oh my God! What sort of dark business is this? Who could this man be talking to?’ So I peer inside to take a look. And wouldn’t you know it? He’s in there talking with his dog. A Rumeli Turk, chattering away with his dog – in Greek …”

The man who has given him the cigarette says:

“Good God, what was he saying? Or don’t you know Greek?”

“My good sir! How could I not? This is a Greek village. I’ve been the postman here for fifteen years. Of course I know Greek. Except … Forgive me, my good sir. But my throat’s a little dry. You wouldn’t mind stepping across there and fetching me a lemon soda? The good gentleman will be well aware that it’s no easy business traipsing all over town. Let me confirm
that officially, my good sir. There are evenings when I pull off my shoes to find my feet aren’t the ones I left with in the morning. They’re twice the original size … Twice at least! Oh dear! All the same … Ah, what a pig! This soda’s ice cold! It’s not always like that … So where was I? Oh, so I peered inside and listened: ‘You,’ he said, ‘you think I’m old, don’t you?’ And then he says, ‘No, of course you don’t. I know you and you know me. So let me ask you … Do I ever tire of stomping over these hills and dales? You could try and tell me I’d had my fair share of laughter. You could point at all those wrinkles around my eyes … and around my lips … But you wouldn’t, my fine friend. Would you? I can’t say I never laughed, because I have. But I have never
truly
laughed. Not from the bottom of my heart. Whenever that urge comes to me, I recall something my mother liked to say: ‘Laugh from the bottom of your heart and you shall weep as many tears.’ I simply can’t laugh the way I want to. You know how people smile when they meet someone they know. Well, that’s the best I’ve ever managed, in my happiest moments. If I hold back my smiles when I greet people, it’s because I’m afraid they might lead me to cry. But I’m rambling, dear friend! All I meant to say was that those crow’s feet aren’t from tears or laughter. They’re from that sun up there … Up there in the sky. You know how I wander about all day under the sun. Now look closely right here. There are more wrinkles around my left eye, aren’t there? That’s because the squint in that eye is stronger. Because the eye itself is more sensitive to light. It’s been that way since the day I was born. The other eye’s fine, thank God. So I can get by. Otherwise I’d have to wear a monocle. Imagine that, my friend. A one-eyed dandy!”