The man would pay and quickly make his way along the rows of stalls to the water, and Kato would hurry along behind him, afraid of losing him, hiding behind cars whenever the man stopped. He’d follow him down the streets full of chandeliers and lamps and light bulbs, tires and tools and fishing gear—streets where the air smelled of burned rubber or lentil soup with red pepper—down past the ferries, rocking on the water, to an improvised tea garden—a small shack of four walls and a tin roof with a few chairs in front.
The tattooed man would shake the hand of each customer in turn. He’d order çay and go over to the wall of the little tea shack to hang up his covered cage.
Kato would order too, put the bag of apricots on the table, jiggle his feet, toss the black tea down his gullet as if it were vodka, and stare at the water, pretending he wasn’t there.
And then, a little while afterward, it would begin.
At first it would sound like a baby crying, then the cries would give way to a shrill staccato that would stop abruptly and start up again. The bird’s voice beneath the cloth would be deep and full. It would sound like a question—a question that would make Kato feel his head might burst.
He’d approach the cage to have a look, and the owner would jump to his feet and ask in a whisper what he wanted.
“Just a look,” Kato would say. “Just this once.”
The man would look at Kato, sigh and dig his thumbs into the cover, revealing another layer of cloth, and behind that yet another. He would pull the cloth open with his fingers, as if it were something indecent, and in the slit behind, Kato would see the bars of the cage.
* * *
—
That’s how I imagined it—or something like that—as I sat on the stool beside Cemal, waiting for I didn’t know what and, not for the first time, confused about what was going on. I was scared to move, scared that Cemal would say something, scared that he’d tell me I had to go. I sat there, staring at the wall above the television, imagining Kato’s life and how it would continue without me, just as I had pieced together Anton’s life—just as I had put together all the lives I didn’t know, all the lives I was entangled in, lives that went on without me.
It was dark in the room; in the light from the TV I could see Cemal’s silhouette and the ash on the floor. Random images flickered across the screen. I felt dizzy. I felt like going to the sofa and lying down, but couldn’t get up. The room was spinning—Cemal, the blue tiles, the ivy at the window, the man crying in the corner, the bottle of rakı on the table, the open newspapers, the glimmer of the television. Everything was a blur—then the light went out.
* * *
—
Night didn’t change to day; I missed the dawn. I woke up and saw Cemal sitting beside me on the sofa, his forearms resting on his knees, his hands folded, the thick black hair on his fingers almost touching the tip of my nose. His face was hanging over mine and I remember recalling that soon after I’d arrived, when I’d been lying on that same sofa, being consumed by bed bugs, Cemal had said something about a disaster that was about to hit Turkey, and I hadn’t listened. I’d let him distract me with stories of Yılmaz Güney and the woman he loved.
I thought about the word that Cemal had used back then: disaster. It was a word I’d heard the old people use a lot, but for me it was an empty shell, little more than a sound.
I stretched out my arms to Cemal, wrapped them around his neck and hung there. I felt numb. I pressed my forehead against his shoulder. My eyes were covered in a film of dust and I blinked to flush it away. I heard a clock ticking, helicopter blades, Cemal’s pulse in his throat. I smiled and for a moment I thought I’d never go anywhere else again.
* * *
—
“Anton, I’ve put çay on to boil,” said Cemal. “Let go of me and I’ll bring us some.” And he got up and went into the kitchen.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book exists thanks to:
Karin Doris Nadja Were Tucké Necati Emre Kiri Emma
Danya Shura Etya Sivan Michou Orhan Maria Ebru
Veteranyi Díaz Bachmann Bolaño Baldwin Cortázar
Louis Brodsky Preciado Eugenides and Istanbul
Thanks too to Ludwig Metzger for his documentary film Hier Himmel, which allowed me to hear the voice of Aglaja Veteranyi.
SASHA MARIANNA SALZMANN is a playwright, essayist, curator and writer in residence of the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin. They are a cofounder of the culture magazine freitext and were the artistic director of Studio Я from 2013 to 2015. They also cofounded the New Institute for Drama (NIDS), where they give workshops on political writing. Their work has been translated, performed and bestowed awards in more than twenty countries. Their first novel, Beside Myself, won the Mara Cassens Prize and the Jürgen Ponto-Stiftung Prize for best debut novel, was short-listed for the 2017 German Book Prize and has been translated into fifteen languages.
* * *
—
IMOGEN TAYLOR is based in Berlin. She is the translator of Sascha Arango, Dirk Kurbjuweit and Melanie Raabe, among others.
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