Silent House (23 page)

“You’re a really good bullshitter!” he said. “Tell me at least why you’re waiting for that girl.”

“I was going to give her something,” I said. “I have something of hers.”

“What?”

I took it out and showed him the comb.

“It’s just a cheap comb,” he said. “Those people don’t use combs like that. Let me see it!”

I handed it to him, so he could have a look at the quality and shut his yap, but, goddamn him, he started to bend it back and forth.

“So, what, are you in love with this girl?”

“No,” I said. “Be careful, you’ll break it.”

“Ha! You’re all red! So that means you’re in love with this society girl.”

“Stop bending it like that!” I said. “You’re going to break it.”

“Why?” he said and suddenly put the comb in his pocket and walked away. I ran after him.

“Okay, Serdar,” I said. “Joke’s finished.” He didn’t reply. “Knock it off, and give me that comb!”

He still didn’t answer, but I kept at it. Just as we walked through the crowd at the entrance to the beach, he raised his voice, “You didn’t give me anything, my friend! Now let me be! Have you no shame?”

Everyone was looking. I didn’t say anything. I let him go on a little ways ahead and just followed him from a distance in silence. When there was no one around, I ran up and grabbed him by the arm and twisted it. He started to struggle but wouldn’t submit, so I bent his arm straight upward, so he could really feel the pain.

“Aggh, you animal!” he shouted, dropping his tool kit. “Fine, I’ll give it to you!”

He took the comb from his pocket and threw it on the ground.

“You don’t understand anything. Retard Fox.”

I felt like giving him one across the face, but what was the use? I turned around and walked to the beach. He cursed me from behind, then started shouting that I was in love with a society girl. I don’t know if anybody passing by heard him, but I was embarrassed.

When I got back to the beach, Nilgün was gone. I was getting really upset, when I saw: No, look, her bag is still there. I took the comb out of my pocket and waited for her to come out of the water.

When she comes out, I’ll go over, I think you dropped this comb,
Nilgün, I’ll say, I found it on the road and brought it, don’t you want it, or isn’t it yours? She’ll take it and thank me. It’s nothing, I’ll say, you don’t even have to say thank you, you’re thanking me now, but yesterday on the road you couldn’t even bother saying hello, I’ll say. She’ll apologize. There’s no need to apologize either, I’ll say, I know you’re a good person, I saw with my own eyes how you prayed with your grandmother in the cemetery. That’s what I’ll say, and when she asks what else I’ve been doing, I’ll say that I got left behind in English and mathematics. Are you going to the university, if you know those subjects, well, maybe you could teach me, I’ll say. Of course, she’ll say. Come over to our house. In this way, maybe I’ll get to visit her house, and nobody who sees how we sit and study at the same table would think of saying that these are people from two different worlds … Then I saw her in the crowd; she had come out of the water and was drying off. My feet wanted to race off! When she put on her yellow dress and took her bag and started to walk straight toward the gate, I left the beach and walked quickly to the shop. A little later I turned and looked around; I saw that Nilgün was coming behind me to the shop. Good. Going into the shop,

“Give me a Coca-Cola!” I said.

“Coming right up!” said the owner.

You’d have thought he did it just so Nilgün would find me hanging around the shop, but instead of just getting my Coke, the owner went over and started adding up the purchases of an old woman who was already there. When he finally got rid of the old woman, he opened my bottle and gave it to me together with a funny look. I grabbed the bottle went over to a corner of the shop and waited. Come on in, I’m just hanging around drinking from this bottle, what a surprise, I’ll say, running into you here, hey, would you like to teach me English? I waited and waited, and when you came in, Nilgün, I didn’t see you because I was lost in thought, looking at the bottle in my hand, and that’s why I still haven’t said hi to you. Fine, so you still haven’t seen me, or you have seen me and you still are holding back on saying hello? I’m not looking anyway.

“Do you have a comb?” she said.

“What kind of comb?” said the shopkeeper.

Blood rushed to my face.

“Any comb,” she said. “I’ve lost mine.”

“I only have these!” said the shopkeeper. “Will they do?”

“Let me see!” you said.

Then there was a silence, and when I couldn’t stand it anymore I turned and looked at you. I saw your face from the side: you’re so beautiful! Your skin is like a child’s skin, your nose is small, too.

“Fine!” you said. “I’ll take one!”

But the shopkeeper didn’t answer; at that point the old lady who had gone came back. So you were left waiting and looking around, and I got scared: maybe you would think that I was pretending I did not see you, so I spoke first.

“Hello.”

You said, “Hello,” to me, too.

But I got a flash of disappointment inside, because when you saw me your face didn’t look happy but sort of annoyed; I saw that and I said, that meant you didn’t like me, that meant I bored you. So I just stayed there like that, with the Coca-Cola in my hand. We were stuck standing there in the shop, like two complete strangers.

Then, She’s right, I thought, she’s right not even to want to make eye contact with me, because we belong to different worlds! Still I was surprised, surprised that a person couldn’t even be bothered to say hello first, that they would look at you with such hostility for no reason at all: everything was money in this world, what a sewer, such nastiness! Damn it! I thought, I’ll go study mathematics, okay, Dad, I’ll go and sit down and study mathematics, and get my high school diploma, then throw it at your feet!

Nilgün bought a red comb, and I suddenly felt like I was going to cry, but I was even more surprised when she said:

“Oh, and a newspaper,
Cumhuriyet
, please!”

Amazing. I stared stupidly as she took the newspaper and went
out the door without a care in the world, like some little kid who’d never even heard about evil and sin, and I suddenly ran after her.

“So you’re reading a Communist newspaper!” I said.

“Excuse me?” said Nilgün, for a second looking at me not with hostility, more like she was just trying to understand something, and then when she’d understood it, she turned and went off without saying anything.

But I thought, I’m not going to let it go. She ought to explain herself, and I have some things to tell her, too. I was just about to go off after her, when I realized I still had that stupid Coca-Cola bottle in my hand. Goddamn it! I went back and paid for it, and I said to myself, Better wait for the change so he doesn’t think something’s up, and so I waited like an idiot, and the bastard took forever, maybe on purpose so I would lose you.

By the time I came out of the shop and looked, Nilgün was gone, must have even turned the corner. If I’d run after her I would have caught up, but I wasn’t running, just walking fast, because people were looking, the stupid crowd going to the beach, going to the market, eating ice cream. I walked quickly up the hill, I went down, ran a few steps, then walked, then ran again when no one was looking, but when I turned the corner I saw that even if I kept running as fast as I could from there on, I couldn’t catch up. So I walked as far as her gate and looked between the iron bars: she had gone into the house from the garden.

I sat down under the chestnut tree across the street to think for a while. It was terrifying to think about the Communists and the different disguises they could assume to trick some people. Then I got up, stuck my hands in my pockets, and was about to head back but: I still had the green comb in my pocket! I took it out and looked at it, I should break it, I said, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. There was a garbage can where the sidewalk started. And so, Nilgün, I tossed that green comb of yours into the bin. And I walked on without looking back. All the way to the shop. Because I’d thought of something.

Okay, how about a little chat, Mr. Shopkeeper. Didn’t we tell you not to sell that newspaper? What do think your punishment should be, tell me! Maybe he’ll have the courage to confess and say, I’m a Communist, that girl is a Communist, too, I sell that newspaper because I believe in it! Suddenly I felt very sorry for Nilgün because she was such a nice girl when she was little. By the time I went into the shop I was in a really bad mood.

“You again?” said the shopkeeper. “What do you want?”

I waited awhile because there were other customers. But the shopkeeper asked again, and the customers were looking at me.

“Me?” I said. “I want, uhh … I need a comb.”

“Fine,” he said. “You’re the son of Ismail the lottery-ticket vendor, aren’t you?” He pulled out the box of combs to show.

“That girl who was just here bought a red one. It’s nice,” he said.

“What girl?” I said. “I just want any old comb.”

“Fine, fine,” he said. “Just you pick whatever color you like.”

“How much are you selling them for?”

He went to serve the other customers and left me in peace to look over the combs in the box one by one. I decided on a red one exactly the same color as yours, Nilgün. It was twenty-five liras. I left the shop thinking, Now we have the same color combs. Then I walked and walked until I came to the place where the sidewalk ended. The garbage can was still there, nobody was looking, and so I stuck my arm inside and pulled out the green comb, which you’d have never known had been sitting in a garbage can. Now there are two combs in my pocket, Nilgün, one actually yours, one the same as one that’s yours! It felt good just to think about it. Then I thought that if one of these guys saw what I had done, if any of them had seen, they would both pity and mock me for being such an idiot. But I’m not going to keep from doing what I want just because those stupid morons might laugh at me! I’m a free man. And if I want I’ll walk around in the streets thinking of you.

I
t was nearly five o’clock. The sun had long since dipped toward the windows of the musty basement room. In a little while I’d collect my bag and go continue my search for the plague out in the open air. But I was a bit disoriented. Just a moment ago, it seemed that I was doing fine merely ambling through the documents with no particular purpose. Now I was beginning to suspect this odd success I’d been enjoying … A moment ago, history was a nebulous aggregate of millions of unrelated droplets that somehow managed to coalesce in my head. Perhaps, I mused, if I open my notebook and quickly read what I have been writing, I can recapture that feeling!

And so I read the results of an extraordinary inventory undertaken in six villages in the environs of Çayirova, Eskisehir, and Tuzla, these being among the fiefs of Minister Ismail Pasha and under the judges of Gebze; I read that Hizir lodged a complaint against Ibrahim, Abdulkadir, and their sons for burning down his home and pillaging his possessions; I read orders issued for the construction of a pier on the shore of Eskisehir; I read that a village worth seventeen
akçe
in the vicinity of Gebze, one formerly belonging
to Cavalryman Ali but taken from him when he failed to participate in a campaign and given to Habib, was now to be given to someone else still, because it had been determined that this Habib also had failed to take part in the campaign; I read that the servant Isa, having absconded with thirty thousand
akçe
, a saddle, a horse, two swords, and a shield belonging to his employer, Ahmed, took refuge with someone named Ramazan, and Ahmed lodged a complaint against the man under Ramazan’s protection; a certain Sinan had died and a conflict over the estate resulted in one of his heirs, Çelebioglu Osman, demanding from the court a full inventory of the deceased’s possessions; I read the detailed testimony of Mustafa, Yakup, and Hudaverdi to the effect that a stolen horse seized from some thieves upon their arrest and placed in the brigadier’s stable was in fact the horse that had earlier been stolen from Suleyman, the son of Gebzeli Dursun; and with that I felt my former euphoria returning: the last quarter of the sixteenth century was once again coming to life in my head, its multiplicity of events lodged there in the folds of my brain without any links of causality among them. Over lunch the image had occurred to me of an infinite worm galaxy stretching across empty space where there was no gravity, all the events of that quarter century like so many worms squirming in the void but unable to touch one another. I imagined my head as a large walnut, and if one cracked it, he would see the worms hiding among the folds of my brain!