The Lamppost Diary

by Agop J. Hacikyan

  Properties were sold below their market value. Major businesses were transferred for a pittance to a new class of Turkish businessmen, and in return the buyers offered to keep the original owners on to run their newly acquired businesses for them. Personal effects, furniture and merchandise of all kinds were heaped outside, in front of the shops, houses and apartment buildings for anyone to bid on.

  Rumour had it that a friendly chain-smoking tobacco merchant from one of the Black Sea provinces bought a Westinghouse refrigerator to ship to his village where they had no electricity. He paid no heed to people who tried to point this out to him. He told them that he would use it as a wardrobe instead. Fridges for clothes; radios, pianos, chandeliers to embellish rooms; and Christians and Jews for digging roads!

  The situation went from bad to worse. There were twenty-four hours left before the last day of grace. The number of auctions multiplied and things were sold off at rock-bottom prices. Larger and larger crowds cluttered the prosperous neighbourhoods of the city. Bloodsuckers, extortionists, jackals and sharks, even some conscientious people, made their miserly offers and the auctioneers didn’t strain themselves to obtain higher bids. Everything changed hands within a split second. People were convinced that the majority of the purchasers were government officials pretending to be private buyers. It made no difference. There was no way the public could pay their debts in such a short time.

  *

  Tomas knew of no one other than Anya’s father and his own who had been able to pay their taxes in full. Papa had sold his Studebaker agency and his taxis to raise the necessary funds. Thanks to Vehbi Bey he was in an enviable situation compared to most. He was left with a couple of taxis, after transferring one to Vehbi Bey’s name in return for his benevolent assistance. And Mr Novotni had been able to sell his supper club to a wealthy man from the French Consulate and had himself become a junior partner and employee who now ran the place for the new owner.

  The minority quarters had totally changed. An enormous number of fathers, husbands, brothers, and uncles had been dispatched to labour camps. Left behind were the women, children, cripples, those who had succeeded in paying their taxes by selling everything, and others who had gone into hiding, taking a colossal risk. Many committed suicide; others died of heart attacks or suffered from nervous breakdowns. Almost every house exuded poverty. In some neighbourhoods charitable groups organized by community-minded Turks distributed food baskets. Other foodstuffs and clothing came from anonymous donors. People said that Mustafa Akan, a retired colonel known for his relentless support of charities, played a major role in launching the humanitarian movement. He was well-known among the minorities of the city as an exemplary individual. Originally from the province of Antalya, he had that tender quality typical of people from the Mediterranean region. For him, denying help was not a crime but a sin. Tomas was plunged into a bizarre silence. He discussed the situation only with Anya and his close friends. He was always embarrassed to find that, compared to his friends Bebo, Aram and Haig, he had little to complain about. Now, when Tomas looked at his father, he noticed the crow’s feet around his eyes and the sagging lids.

  *

  There were assaults on government officials. Tomas and his cronies followed these events closely. What they wished to achieve, others were carrying out already: ‘Two youths arrested on charges of stabbing ... Fourteen-year-old males to be arraigned ... Attack on an official in the tax collector’s bureau being probed ... Two more youngsters arrested for beating Necil Erol Turgutlu, 61, a bailiff from the revenue department ...’ According to the press, the youngsters in question were members of the city’s minorities.

  After watching Zorro, one of their favourite films, at least three or four times, Tomas, Bebo, Haig and Aram pledged to become dauntless fighters against injustice – ergo, the legislators of the Wealth Tax.

  *

  School finished at four o’clock each day. They met in the basement café of the neighbourhood theatre to discuss the greatest reprisal ever to be undertaken. It was a small, dingy hall with an ugly ceramic floor, velvet-upholstered benches and walls covered with vintage film posters. The café was deserted at that hour on weekdays; not even the beer-bellied Orhan, the kindly waiter, was around.

  On their way to the theatre the gang of four experienced a peculiar premonition: something bad was going to happen. For Tomas it was inevitable, the mission was going to fail. Bebo, on the other hand, felt himself no longer unified but separated into a thousand parts, like his fractured thoughts. Aram and Haig felt like the weather, which was unsettled.

  ‘I can’t kill anyone,’ Haig said.

  ‘I understand,’ Bebo sounded upset.

  ‘It’s a cardinal sin,’ Tomas agreed.

  ‘Bullshit!’ Aram protested.

  ‘So you wouldn’t hesitate to kill?’ Tomas barked.

  Aram didn’t respond.

  ‘Tell us, Aram, would you or wouldn’t you?’ It was Tomas again.

  Aram had hoped that the idea of vengeance would inspire him to any extreme.

  ‘No, I couldn’t do it.’

  ‘Then what?’ Bebo asked.

  ‘Yes, what can we do?’ asked Haig quietly.

  They paused for a long minute, poised in their seats like huge frogs peering at each other through wide, nervous blinking eyes.

  ‘Torch the taxation building!’ said Tomas suddenly.

  His proposal was stunning! Ingenious! To be recorded in the annals of Armenian revolutionaries. It would make them instant celebrities. To light up the sky with flames of revenge, igniting multiple acts of retaliation! Hatred would glow alongside the shimmering of flames. The minorities would applaud and eulogize the gang of four for ever.

  Suddenly the ceramic floor cracked and Tomas watched a column of smoke rise in yellow spirals up the wall, burning the posters. Death-laden stories of the deportation flashed through his mind.

  Their frantic exultation didn’t last long. The truth began to dawn on every one of them. They were intelligent enough to realize that every evil act had legal consequences.

  ‘No, it can’t be done,’ Aram interrupted.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Bebo, even though he knew he was right.

  ‘Too dangerous,’ Haig said, and asked Aram for a cigarette.

  Aram handed him the pack. Haig took the last one, saying again, ‘Too dangerous.’

  Tomas couldn’t let them down. He had to find an alternative as prodigious as the one he’d just proposed. His eyes twinkled.

  ‘We’ll blow up his car!’

  ‘Whose car?’ asked the other three in unison.

  ‘Vehbi Bey’s. He’s the man in charge of taxes.’

  This idea was nearly as brilliant as the first. Explosion! Eruption! Detonation! Instead of conflagration, combustion!

  ‘Still too dangerous,’ Bebo said.

  ‘We should think it over,’ Haig hastened to add.

  They agreed to adjourn the meeting and headed home.

  *

  Tomas hurried to his room and threw himself onto the bed. It wasn’t so much the danger that bothered or humiliated him, but the possibility that he might not be able to see the thing through; he had to figure out how to minimize the risks. His friends were as inexperienced as he was. There must be a way to accomplish it without jeopardizing their lives.

  It was altogether contrary to Tomas’s character to think of violence, but he felt an irresistible desire to go out and destroy things.

  There was no one at home. The room was warm and half-dark. January always spent its daylight before five o’clock. The wheels of a solitary horse-drawn carriage rattled on the cobblestones. His mind was pacing in his skull. He wished he was an innocent boy again, but it was too late. For a moment he imagined Vehbi Bey counting his envelopes before leaving his office every day. Then he visualized their intended explosion killing the four of them instead. It reverberated in his ears. His heart leaped in his chest, tangling his insides into knots. He jumped out of bed and r
an to the mirror and looked at his face carefully, opening his eyes as wide as possible. Nothing unusual, except for the pupils, which seemed enormous. As for the rest of his face, he hated it. It was mean. He inspected it again. Disheartened, he started grimacing, as if choking, screaming with no sound, sticking out his tongue, spitting at his image in the mirror. That was enough. He wiped off the spit with his hand and threw himself onto the bed again, face down.

  There was no turning back. He felt more certain, more feral than before, and more matter-of-fact. For hours he lay on his bed, as still as death, and let his imagination assign some kind of an existence to Vehbi Bey, whom he had never met.

  *

  As soon as the school bell rang the four friends disappeared like smoke through a perforated stovepipe. They would meet in an hour’s time at the vacant lot next to Aram’s apartment building where boys played football every afternoon after school.

  Tomas spotted Aram’s freckled, ruddy face first. Aram was the oldest and the skinniest of the four. Haig, the foxy Speedy Hellcat, the star of the school, was talking with Bebo. His charismatic good looks and genteel talk could wipe out all the mischief he was concocting. Bebo saw Tomas approaching and waved at him. This quiet, docile youngster, the scholar of the class, was a tough nut to crack. People who saw him for the first time thought he was the product of some kind of witchcraft rather than the creation of a plumber father and a hard-working mother. Ever since Tomas’s proposal of setting fire to the taxation building he had turned into a radical pyromaniac.

  The football crowd hadn’t arrived yet. Tempted, and at the same time visibly anxious not to show it, Bebo announced, ‘It’s a dangerous mission. I studied it up: it’s risky ... very risky. Easier to set fire to the man’s house.’

  ‘Damn it, Bebo, we get it!’ Aram blasted. ‘So tell us: why is it so risky?’

  ‘There are different methods,’ Bebo mumbled. ‘One is time-controlled car bombing. That’s mostly what they use in Europe. I saw it on the newsreel last week. The other is TNT, tri-trinitro ... toluene ...’ He had difficulty pronouncing it. ‘Then, of course, there are good old grenades and Molotov cocktails.’ He peered at his friends expectantly, waiting for appreciative comments.

  There was an ominous stillness.

  One by one the three of them bawled:

  ‘Shut up, Bebo!’

  ‘You’re out of your mind!’

  ‘Where do you expect us to get your Zolotovs, Molotovs, radios, radars?’

  ‘From the herbalist, Uncle Jojo,’ Tomas suggested soberly.

  They burst into rowdy laughter. Bebo had no choice but to join in. They guffawed until they realized that the operation they were planning was going nowhere.

  ‘We don’t need any equipment,’ Tomas interjected, ‘just matches, a bottle of naphtha and a long wick, the kind used in kerosene lamps.’

  ‘And?’ Aram asked.

  Tomas perked up. ‘We buy a couple of metres of cotton wick and soak it in gas or naphtha, place one end of it in the gas tank, leave the rest hanging out and light it. It takes at least twenty seconds for the flame to reach the tank ... enough time for us to get the hell out of there. Then boom! Goodbye Vehbi Bey’s De Soto!’

  They looked at each other, waiting for somebody to encourage the proposed plan, but no one moved or said anything. In fact, they were thinking about how they could best get out of such a ridiculous, perilous venture. These things sounded so much easier and more heroic in the news.

  The football players began to show up. A boy tossed the ball up in front of him and gave it a resounding kick, all the way to where the four terrorists were discussing their strategy.

  ‘It’s time we got out of here,’ Bebo suggested.

  ‘We haven’t decided a thing yet,’ Aram objected.

  ‘The football players shouldn’t see us together,’ Bebo insisted.

  They agreed and scattered to go home.

  *

  A week later the Turkish press reported the following:

  There has been an abortive attempt to blow up the car of the taxation bureau official Vehbi Bey, parked in an isolated vacant lot. There are no clues as to the identity of the perpetrator, except for the letter Z slashed in red on the hood of the 1941 De Soto. The police have classified the crime as a random act of willful vandalism ...

  One of the evening papers had this to say: ‘Sadly, vandalism, unsuccessful car bombings and killings are being committed in broad daylight by hate-filled insurgents who act under the banner of Zorro.’

  *

  From that moment on Tomas thought of himself and his friends as good Samaritans, latter-day Zorros, contending with the enemies of justice, defending the pueblo de Istanbul. Every morning he read the papers spread out on the breakfast table. He would never forget how they had crept along Mimoza Street to the lot where Vehbi Bey parked his car. Mimoza was a cul-de-sac on which there were only two apartment buildings, both recently built, so the area was practically deserted during the day. The lot was behind a carburetor repair shop that had been shut since the owner’s death a year or so earlier and so was completely isolated from the street and the public eye. The 1941 De Soto custom four-door sedan was there, stretched out like a lion on its four paws. Its large chrome bumper, ‘waterfall’ grill and stainless steel trim shone as bright as platinum. Vehbi Bey used it on weekends only, mainly for family outings.

  Pale with fear, hair dishevelled, eyes twitching, heads throbbing, a troubled but stubborn expression on their faces, the boys suddenly looked a lot older. They didn’t talk. They knew exactly what to do. Like professional actors, they had studied their roles and memorized their parts. They only needed a make-up artist to put some colour on their cheeks. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. They doused the car generously with emulsion paint, then engraved their Zs more speedily than Zorro himself. Aram lost no time in removing the gas cap, and Tomas pushed the long naphtha-soaked wick into the gas tank. His throat was dry. No sooner were Bebo and Haig ready to light the wick than they heard the voice of an enraged passer-by who was dashing towards them with a gun. How they had run from the storm of bullets! And how they had hopped onto a speeding tram!

  The truth was there was no passer-by, no gun, no bullets, not even a stray dog. Just a plume of smoke drifting up to the sky, flecked with gold by the midday sun, simply a will-o’-the-wisp – a sudden panic.

  12

  It was a few months before the end of the war. The terrifying din of air-raid sirens woke Tomas up. Heart pounding, eyes heavy with sleep, he jumped out of bed. Then, thinking that it might have been just a nightmare, and that it would play itself out if he lay still, he went back to bed. But the sirens persisted and the clamour in the street gradually intensified. He heard his mother’s panicked voice. By the time his father burst into his room, Tomas was already up.

  ‘Quick, son. Put something on. We’re going to the shelter.’

  Mama was still in her nightgown.

  ‘Go, get ready fast.’

  After calling down Jesus in Armenian and Allah in Turkish, she hurried back to her bedroom.

  The neighbours in the building and the rest of the people on the street moved like a line of ants towards the shelter. But it was far. Nobody would reach there alive. It wasn’t long before wailing pierced the sky. It was coming from everywhere, from beyond the night.

  People calling to one another, voices all merged into one. ‘Aleki!’ ‘Margo!’ ‘Mama!’ ‘Grandpa!’ ‘Aunt Sophie!’ Some of them were clutching their most valuable possessions, as well as old photo albums and diaries.

  Tomas nervously watched the crazed mass. He tried not to show signs of panic. ‘A German air raid,’ some said, imagining that they heard the planes in the sky. They looked up at the dark sky: at any moment it could rain fire and death upon them. Bombs had fallen on Athens only the night before. The mass swelled, becoming a substantial target for enemy planes. In truth, no one knew anything. The government had done its best to remain on good terms with Ge
rmany, but it seemed their policy had failed. The entire neighbourhood was out in the street. There were no lights; people walked with camouflaged torches. A muffled rumble rose up from the crowd, ‘Come on, don’t be afraid, there must be a mistake.’ Here and there was the sound of fearful whispers, as if people were afraid of being overheard by the enemy planes.

  The buildings, shops and lampposts cast dark, disfigured shadows. The cobbled street seemed to absorb even the faintest glimmers from the torches. Badly blacked-out windows emitted flickers of light which quickly expired. Drops of rain fell, some of them wheeling around and gliding up across the starless sky to escape the raid. There was a gust of wind, as if to hasten people towards their refuge.

  As people approached the shelter – the basement of an abandoned, time-worn furniture shop – a young man emerged and announced there was no more room, as though announcing that seats for the next show were sold out. The crowd surged on anyway.

  It was the first air raid since the beginning of the war. The population wasn’t used to such alarms. Some didn’t even know where the shelter was. Many shouted at friends and relatives who were near the entrance to save room for them. After long protests and squabbles, those who couldn’t get in decided to rush back home.