A Useless Man (26 page)

“My mind’s not all there.”

“Well then, just tell me what happened.”

“Around eight I went into a garden in Vefa. I went up one, two, three steps, then I slipped through a half-open door of the house. The clothes were there on a shelf. I took everything, and I hid them in the Şehzade Mosque.”

“What did you take?”

“A coat, a silk shirt, a little pillow, two felt hats, a cap, a pair of shoes, and two woolen undershirts, which I put on right away. They took them from me though, at the police station. They took everything I had. But I haven’t said what happened the day before that. What happened was, an
eskici
passed by.
Give me your old clothes! Give me your old clothes!
That’s what he kept saying, but when I did, they pounced on us, took us both off to the station. And they kept me in for three days. The other bastard got away, but not with the clothes. They returned them to their rightful owners, even the woolen undershirt. It’s not on me now. You can see that, can’t you?”

“Why did you spend three days in the station? Maybe you didn’t tell them the truth?”

“I did. I mean … I told them everything I’m telling you now.”

Mehmet looked at the judge in disbelief as he tapped out everything they had said on a typewriter. A little later I even saw him nodding approvingly. He was beaming like a happy child, thrilled by the idea of a judge committing his words to paper. His left arm was still twitching. His thick, fat lower lip kept moving, as if he were reading something and mouthing the words.

“I won’t do it again. I swear I won’t do it again. I only did it to buy my uncle’s coat. That’s what I told myself, you see. I said, ‘I can get his coat back if I sell these things, and then I’ll get out of jail.’ My uncle was hopping mad. He wouldn’t even let me in the house …”

The judge tapped it all down. “I did the job to pay for my uncle’s coat.”

Mehmet Dalgır:

“Yeah, that’s it. If I did the job, well, that’s why I did it. For my uncle’s coat … And if I get off I’ll go straight out and find a carpenter …”

Mehmet didn’t get off. Given the nature of the crime and the absence of proof, the court’s official decision was that Mehmet Dalgır would be detained in a police station cell until a date was set for determining his sentence.

When he was outside, Mehmet Dalgır asked the police officer next to him:

“What happened?”

“You’re going to jail until the court comes to a decision.”

“Do they have any positions there?”

“Sure.”

“Do they teach carpentry?”

“Of course,” the officer said.

His left arm was twitching, his lower lip, too.

When I looked up, I was alone, but a moment ago people were all around me, there were geese and dogs and trees rustling the air. A stream was bubbling in my ear, as trees washed its waters, animals were embracing men and men animals. Dogs spoke and humans howled. In a yellow sky someone cried:

“You are my soul, my tree, my stream, my sea.” And the other was warm inside his human smell. There was no answer. But friendship coursed through his dark blue veins and into the sea; his hair was dark; his eyes, too, and his brow. He was brimming with dark days and dark stories; the love songs he would sing later were already on his lips.

Was the moon rising above the sun from inside our little boat? Or was it rising up from the dust, up in the sky or the trees’ red edges? I had one lip pressed down. The other moved in and out of me like the fire on its tail.

“I feel your pulse in my veins. I hear it surging through my wrists …”

Trees are flirting with the stars that shimmer like candles on their boughs. My most steadfast friends are here: sakız rakı in my glass, my tongue beating the rhythm of a stutter, a fishing rod in my hand, a hook
at its end, Barba Stanco in the boat, the bow pointed toward Sivriada and all the stars in my breast. I am at the rudder. The motor is churning the sea. Churning and churning. The dogs are barking in welcome; the trees draw in the stars, then the hills, as the baying dogs usher in the morning. I drink in the smell of fish, the smell of fried mussels from a Greek house on the shore; my moustache still holds the smell of anisette.

“You are my soul,” I say.

I breathe in the smell of stars fallen into my cup; they smell of rich coffee. The arbutus flowers have crumbled. I crush French lavender in the palm of my hand. Bees land on my tongue and sting my eyes. The sun is setting and a cormorant sinks into thought, a seagull alights on a pylon in the void. The pebbles on the shore wear the water’s cloak and soldiers come out wearing all the colors of the sky. I hear footsteps on the pebbled shore: That’s Aspasya, Jasmine Aspasya, who smells of camphor, Aspasya dressed in the yellow of Easter flowers as sparks swirl around her, and a serpent; there are mirrors and fountains on her tongue.

“You are my soul,” I say, “my soul.”

Yani! Hey Yani. Black Yani. Hey! It’s the black-eyed barrel organ-maker from Beykoz I’m talking to now. The son of Panayot, my old friend, Yani! Sing
Black Pepper
to me in Greek, so that Aspasya might also hear. I am Ibrahim in the song – no, not Ibrahim with all his riches, I am Black Pepper.

Whose lambs are those on Friendship Pasture? Are they yours? Are they lambs? Is that lambs bleating? Sing me
Black Pepper
, Yani.

By now it’s evening in Omonya Square in Athens; a man sits on a coffeehouse terrace, and on the table in front of him sits an anchovy, a green olive and a glass of mastıka. It could be anyone. The smell of jellyfish wafts in from Pireaus as Socrates ambles down from the Acropolis. It’s you, Yanaki!
The most steadfast of all my friends, the very last of all my friends to die. Look up at the sky as you wander the streets of Athens. The stars will guide you to the islands, the ships, the shores, to this little boat. You’ll visit all the islands of the world. You’ll row in all the little rowboats of the world, you’ll take the glimmering phosphorescence and the moonlight rippling on the water for fish and catch them with a thirty-five centimeter nylon rod. But forget about fish for a moment and think about it, Yanakimu. Leap onto the back of a star. Look over the islands. There’s only one Burgazada. That there where Leandros swam to Kaloyero, you will see one little boat. That’s me: that’s my boat. It’s just one boat in a sea of boats, in a sea of seas. In a sea of humanity, it’s just me.

Yani, it’s evening in Omonya Square. Songs float out of little boats and up into the sky as light reflects off the cars. But did you hear the neighing of a horse? Did a phaeton race across your mind, or across the windows of the coffeehouses in Omonya? Do you know that I am thinking of you as I sit on this little iron fence around this little patch of grass beneath the monument in Taksim Square. I am thinking of you, Yanaki. It’s evening now and the snow will soon stop falling. The electric signs are going out and the grass is growing dark. A melody with three guitars floats out from a tavern as they crush
mavrodaphne
on the streets. Don’t worry about the walk back to your hotel. So what if the metro from Athens to Pireaus hasn’t run for years? It’s a beautiful night. You can walk, while the seagulls turn and coast in the lights above Sivriada. Barba Vasili is already in his coat and fast asleep. I’m thinking of you, Yanaki. Just this moment, the Cephalonian breeze that Apasya told us about stirs the sea around Sivriada. Yanaki, the lights in Omonya Square are going out, the coffeehouse is about to close. Have that green olive. Knock back that drink. Have you heard the foghorn on the boat from Pireaus? I am on the Galata Bridge and a tanker
from Holland is sounding its horn for a fugitive crossing Okmeydan. Now I am making my way down to the dock in Üsküdar. My hands are sliding along the metal rail. Why haven’t you eaten your olive? The waiter at the Ekselsiyor in Omonya Square calls out:

“
Kalinihkta
, Kiryos.”

And one
kalinihkta
from me, Panco.

I shouldn’t have done it. But I did. I was so impolite. It wasn’t anything really. But I still feel ashamed. This is how it happened:

I had drunk four or five glasses of beer. The rain outside was beyond belief. People were huddling under the eaves. But then it stopped raining quite so fiercely; the streams, rivers, and estuaries on the windowpane were gone and the muddy water running down from the top of the street was calmer and more solemn. People in a rush to get home leapt out onto the street. I suppose some of them even enjoyed being out in the rain. I suppose I must have been one of them. I was wearing a waterproof jacket. Water seeped through all the same. But never mind! I was drunk on five beers and bursting with goodwill, and I threw myself out onto the street to face the rain. I said to myself, why wait at this tram stop right in front of me. I’ll walk up to the next one. The raindrops falling upon me were large and crystal clear. I could just imagine them falling on dirt roads and meadows far away. The air was rich with the smell of earth and ozone. Steam swirled up off the backs of animals. I could see villagers and barefoot, bald-headed children walking along a dirt road. A young girl suddenly
leapt out from under a mulberry tree, her mouth still wet with rain. A young man behind her was holding her back.

“It’s clearing, it’s clearing, the clouds are breaking.”

The young girl:

“We’re already late …”

A thin river coursed down the tramway rails. The things we think of when we’re drunk: how fast a piece of garbage was freewheeling down that river in the rails. Safe travels!

A drunk is a delightful fool.

I have always noticed how people are most hauntingly beautiful in thunderstorms and in the snow. You know how the farsighted blink their eyes when they try to make out people no one else would even see. They are beautiful as they struggle to see each other in the rain, and I am the object of their myopic attention …

I remembered a line from
The Idiot
, which I had recently read.
C’est la beauté qui sauvera le monde
.

Perhaps it’s the rain that makes a person beautiful in our eyes. Perhaps it’s the rain that makes us fall in love. This strange line from
The Idiot
has been knocking about in my head for days. Beauty will save the world. True in so many ways …

Love, violence, literature, indignity, vulgarity, elegance, good and evil, none of it will save the world. Every day we take another step toward pain and sorrow. The insight of a fool: “Beauty will save the world.”

And so the role of literature on this earth: It is that thing seeking beauty. Women wear make-up to look beautiful. That man over there sports a moustache to look handsome. Will that kid keep the same face until he’s fifty? He won’t, but it’ll evolve until he’s a hundred. People in good health look so beautiful, even when their faces are disfigured. But the beauty of the sick only lasts three or four days.

But what’s the point in proving that idea from
The Idiot
? Let’s just say
it’s true. Because a gloriously beautiful girl just hurried past. And then I did something I had never done before in my life. I picked up the pace. Rain was falling over her blond hair. For a moment I saw a glimmer on her hair. Then the light disappeared.

It was as if the rain was seeping into a strange and fragrant sponge. And if only I could have been one of those old poets just then. If only I could have said I was the comb in her hair, and the kohl around her eyes, and a slave to a lock of hair … but having said all this, allow me one last confession: I write bad poems.
The Rain in Your Hair
.

Then she stopped to buy a French magazine at a tobacconist’s. I felt the need to speak French. I find it intolerable to even think of two Turks, or any two citizens of the Turkish Republic, speaking French together, especially in a place like Beyoğlu. Sometimes I even find it revolting and rude. Nevertheless, I began in French:

“Don’t turn around. I only want to talk to you. Don’t turn around and look at me. Think of a man who has had a few glasses of beer. He wants to say something to a complete stranger, someone he has suddenly found incredibly beautiful. Keep this in mind as you listen. If you turn around you’ll be disappointed. You’ll say I’m a fool. You’ll take one look at my dirty raincoat and this miserable hat and you’ll mock me. But imagine my face without turning around. Indeed, you might even put me in a suit made by the tailor of your choice. Then maybe I’ll look like one of those characters in the movies, and there’s no harm in that – I find them beautiful from time to time.”