‘No, I didn’t,’ Ziya said.
‘Well, you are,’ said Binnaz Hanım. ‘And maybe that is why I felt like telling you these things. The truth is, I’ve always known you were a class apart. I have such a clear memory of leaning out of this very window and seeing you next to that removal van, and thinking, this tenant is something special. I’m not saying this to flatter you – it’s actually what I said. The moment I set eyes on you, I had what I can only call a strange foreboding, the likes of which I’d never felt. Please believe me when I say that, even now, I couldn’t tell you where it came from. Of course, I could see at once that you were not a humble soul, which, sadly, many of my tenants are. And tall you may be, but on that day you gave the impression of being level with the earth. I could also see you had a diplomatic side to you, and a merciful side, too, but none of this particularly affected me. It was something else. Something altogether different. How can I put it? The sun was shining, not a cloud in the sky, but it seemed to me that you were standing in a shadow, and this shadow kept fluttering, the way a threadbare vest on a clothes line might flutter in a breeze, and the longer I watched you, the more I felt this same shadow weighing down on me. I feel it even now, you know. Sitting here across from you right now, I can see that same shadow. Of course – this goes without saying – I do not have the faintest idea what might be casting it. I could not even say if that shadow has a meaning in this mortal world of ours. What I do know is this: as I’ve already said, you are a class apart. And please believe me when I say that not once over these past seventeen years – not even once – have I wavered in this belief. Though I’ll confess that, from time to time, I’ve wondered if the other tenants were sent here for no other reason than to make you look like you hadn’t sprung from nowhere. Or at least to make sure you didn’t attract too much attention. I know that sounds ridiculous, but what can I do, Ziya Bey? All I can say is I’ve given all this a great deal of thought. I certainly have. When I put it into words, it sounds utterly absurd. But, I mean, where exactly were the other tenants sent from? What I mean to ask, dear sir, is: who sent them? Am I to believe that there’s a depot out there somewhere, filled to the rafters with tenants, waiting for the clerk to dispatch them? Don’t even say it. I know. Absurd! But now listen to this: maybe what’s bothering me is that this could be the last time we see each other. Maybe that’s why I opened my big mouth. When the end is nigh, we let our nerves get the better of us. I’ve seen people yawn wide enough for someone to shove a fist down their throats. Or they swallow their lips, like a nightingale that has swallowed a mulberry. Or their jaws get going. Which is what happens to me. Once your jaws get going, of course, it’s like a volcano exploding. It all comes out. You try to explain the whole world in one sentence. But when have you known anyone to talk in a straight line? The idea that anyone could broach a subject and stick to it is as crazy an idea as I have ever heard. God created a world that was boundless and endless and that’s how I still see it. There are things I can never know and never will know. Things I’ve never seen and am destined never to see. If we insist on saying everything there is to say about every individual subject before moving on, we’re simply overlooking the endless, boundless chaos inside our heads. That said, I have no idea how we got here. Such things are best left unsaid. I’m out of my depth. It’s none of my business, anyway. At the end of the day, I’m just the landlady. You may well ask why I even brought this up. As if I had a clue, Ziya Bey! Honestly, I don’t have the faintest. You say one word and before you know it, you’ve fallen in love with your own voice. You become a child again. A spoiled little child. On the subject of which, shall we get her to bring in another two coffees?’
‘No,’ said Ziya, as a new wave of anxiety passed across his face. ‘Thanks, but I really need to go.’
‘I’m guessing you’re late for something.’ As Binnaz Hanım spoke, she gestured at the maid, who was fast approaching him.
The moment her mistress had opened her mouth, she’d come rushing. And now she was standing before him with the coffee tray, making a polite curtsy.
‘Yes,’ Binnaz Hanım continued. ‘Sometimes people spoil themselves. But did you know, Ziya Bey, that up until this moment, no one in the world has ever spoiled me? Every now and again, I try and convince myself that someone somewhere must have spoiled me when I was a child. And believe you me, I’ve pecked so hard at my memories, you’d think I was a starving chicken, hunting for one last morsel of food. Nothing. Not even a hint. It’s never long, though, before I remember my mother’s silence. I can see her even now, you know – floating around in the backwaters of my mind with her plastic washtub. She only ever opened her mouth to scold me. If I hadn’t done something to merit a scolding, she kept her mouth shut. She used looks in place of words. She had green eyes that reminded me of unripe grapes. She would move them like this – very, very slowly – or else bounce them about, like a pair of marbles. If she did that, they would lose their sparkle almost instantly and begin to steam up, of course. And that’s how she would be for the rest of the day, solemn, steamy-eyed, and silent. Was she silent to protect us from her anger, or to shield herself from the possibility of attack? I couldn’t tell you. What I do know is that every time I came close to Mother, I felt like I was teetering over a deep, dark cliff. That’s how I felt, Ziya Bey. In real life such things never happened, but whenever I drew close to that poor mother of mine, I genuinely felt like I was teetering over a deep, dark cliff. Such a look she would give me. But then turn back to her chores. This weary shadow that was my mother would dive back into her mountains of dishes and dirty laundry. Only the dewy, shaking clothes pegs would remain in her wake. A glimmer of that red plastic washtub. A rattle of pots and pans. May she rest in peace, that’s all I can say. Except that never in a million years would it have occurred to this woman to spoil her children. Neither did my father have much time for these things, Ziya Bey. As much as I longed for it to be otherwise, I only saw him a few times a month. Every morning, that bastard would be out of bed, and out the door, crack of dawn, even before the crows ate their shit. “Time is money!” he would say. He wouldn’t be back until late at night, long after our fleas had started jumping. Coming or going, he carried with him the alcoholic stink of the meyhane. Every night he came home, I’d wake up in the morning with the same wall of fumes in my room. Sometimes he’d just stand at the foot of my bed, leaning over as if to kiss me, his shoulders trembling, his outstretched arms, too. He would sit at the edge of the bed, and while I held my breath, I would also hold his stare. I would stare into this cloud that stank of onions, and meat, and cigarettes, and beans, and vinegar and rakı, until it turned back into something more like my father again. Until it was a solid mass again, and put its feet back on the floor. Then I’d go to the bathroom to wash my face, race into the kitchen to make breakfast, race back into my room to prepare my schoolbag, and all the while, he stayed by my side. Except when I went to the toilet, of course. Then he would wait outside the door, as kind and patient as any father could be. Sometimes, when we were traipsing around like this, he would stagger, just a little, but I didn’t care: that’s how happy I was to have him there with me. Because even through that quivering wall of meyhane stink I could feel my father’s warmth, and when I felt that warmth, believe me, I would come alive again, then and there. When I felt my father’s warmth flowing through me, I just couldn’t bear to leave him. I’d forget about school and all that. I’d do just about anything to put off leaving. And – let me tell you – I could be extraordinarily inventive when it came to that. When no one was looking, I’d pull a button off my uniform, and then I’d take my time looking for a needle and thread, and even more time to sew it back on. Or I’d run around pretending to be all upset, and saying, “Oh no! I’ve forgotten to do my homework!” And then I would open up my notebook, and I’d huff and I’d puff, scribbling down page after page of whatever came into my head. Of course, my poor mother had no idea why I did all this, and because she had no
idea, she’d just stand there behind the kitchen stove. Or she’d poke her head round the door or the washing basket and stun me with that peculiar, wide-eyed stare and say, “Come on now, you’ll be late for school!” That’s the long and the short of it – wherever we come from, it’s our father who creates us, Ziya Bey, and there aren’t any others that can replace him. A whiff of his scent, a glimpse of his pale shadow, a hint of his trembling form, or even just a sign of his absence and someone like me can make him into a father again. There are other ways to come alive, to be sure. Others have been known to do so by succumbing to a warm embrace, or burning in the passion of a stolen glance. They can be born again in the spirit of a book, or brought to life by a single touch. Or by any number of brilliant or moronic acts that might have slipped my mind. Those with little souls that are easily sated can come to life just by sitting in the corner munching on sunflower seeds. Wild souls can come to life by venturing beyond the shadows to break and spill everything they touch. Or they may come to life without doing much at all. At the end of the day, a father cannot be measured by the same stick we could use on all those others. A father is a different prospect altogether. We are talking about something very old here. Something as old as the birds. As old as the clouds above us. As old as the stones at our feet. I came to understand all this much better, you know, after my father died. Though he didn’t just die. What I should have said – and let me say it now, even if it grinds my teeth to dust – what I should have said is: he was murdered. This angelic man who had to work so hard to keep his family housed and fed – he was cut down in the most barbaric way imaginable, in the middle of the afternoon, for just a few dirty coins. They attacked him together and before anyone could blink, they had stabbed him to death. If you want to ask me who dealt the killing blow, I can tell you now. It was Matkap the Drill! His real name was Macit Karakas¸, and he was the nastiest, most pitiful cretin imaginable. He was one of my father’s business partners. If you got up right now and tried to imitate a turkey, Ziya Bey, you would go some way to capturing the way this cretin walked, with a black raincoat that went down to his heels. But he was not the sort who could sit down in one place for long. You might think, from the way I’ve described him, that he cut an impressive figure, but you would be wrong, Ziya Bey. In fact he was a tiny thing, about the size of a chickpea. But what God took from him in size, he gave him in voice. Whenever he spoke, it made the ground beneath your feet creak and sway so badly you’d have thought it was an earthquake. And all the sounds around him would seem to bow to him, and the silences too. Whatever was nearby, and whatever it was, it, too, would tremble at the sound of that booming voice, until there seemed to be hundreds of Matkaps, all shouting at once. And of course this was frightening. Like it or not, you ended up wondering if something terrible was about to happen. But anyway, I’ve probably said enough. There’s just one more thing you should know. This man was a complete and utter brute. Wherever you took him, he’d pick a fight. He’d always find some pretext, no matter what. If he couldn’t, he’d just sit there, stiff as a board, searching the room for any excuse to start something. Surrounding this piece of filth were a number of men with faces like pine planks. But they were fleet of foot, Ziya Bey. They swaggered about in black cloaks that never touched their sides, using their huge hands and elbows to open the way for Matkap – as if anyone would dare to block it. They knocked people over even when they weren’t in his path. And oh, how clumsy they were, how monumentally clumsy. Frowning and glowering and growling through their moustaches. If anyone would be so bold as to object to all this pushing and shoving, they would round on him at once, and by the time they were done, it wasn’t a pretty sight, let me tell you! But Matkap never looked. He’d just avert his eyes. Puff up his chest and march on like a victorious general, swishing his raincoat from side to side. He had no interest in men whose faces had been smashed like cheap china. Or men who’d been sent flying against the wall with a single punch. Or the poor creatures who curled up like woodlice when his associates kicked them across the floor. For this was a man so merciless that the word alone does not come close to describing him. He was, in short, a complete and utter tyrant. A tyrant among tyrants, until he saw a child. What can I say? In the space of a moment, he ceased to be Matkap. A blink of the eye, and he became a gentle and benevolent dervish. When a child crossed his path, he never looked away. He stared at them so hard, you’d think he was trying to see inside them – into their souls. Their futures. He’d stare at them, speechless. And then he’d let out the strangest sound – a sound which seemed to belong to someone else. And that was it. He’d begin to cry. I don’t know what he saw in children to make him cry. Was it their beauty? Their little quince hairs? The way they sneezed into their hands? Their tiny little bodies? The men who looked like pine planks, meanwhile – they’d have seen this coming. They’d have reached inside their pockets for the handkerchiefs he’d soon need. Sometimes, they’d even try to get there before he did, sobbing and bawling, bending and twisting, wailing and throwing themselves about. And all the while, there was Matkap in the middle, crying his heart out. There is only one word for it: surreal. The pine planks might have seen themselves as humouring their patron, though in fact they were turning him into some sort of caricature. Their false tears served only to make Matkap’s tears look just as false. But there was always that moment when Matkap’s tears could genuinely touch you. All of a sudden, you’d feel a slow, warm drip of goodwill. Do you know, Ziya Bey, I think I’ve calmed down now. Yes, when I relive that scene, I feel very sad. I’m going to have a cigarette if you don’t mind. Would you like one?’
‘Yes, I would,’ Ziya replied.
As she reached out to take a cigarette, Binnaz Hanım allowed herself a faint smile.
‘So that’s how it is,’ she said with a tired sigh. ‘He might have killed my father, but when I remember that microbe’s tears, it still makes me sad. Sometimes I wonder if you need to have some evil in you, to have any chance of being seen as good. Who am I to say, but in this world of ours, bad people do have a way of outshining the good, Ziya Bey. As I said just a moment ago, Matkap had only to see a child to turn into an extravagantly good man. Maybe, without knowing it, he was able to tap into their inner goodness somehow. Maybe when he reached out to touch a child’s cheek, he was actually touching the light in that child’s soul. I can’t say for sure, of course. I never studied any of that God stuff, my mind just can’t take it in. I can’t believe there’s a needlepoint’s worth of light in him anyway; he’s all darkness, a stinking barn filled to the last square millimetre with long-tailed, fire-breathing devils. All else aside, this was already clear from the fact that he murdered my father . . . Yes, he killed my father! Without even blinking! In the space of a moment, I saw my world come crashing down – bang! – and then, before my eyes, it remade itself, from top to bottom. Just like that. And that, Ziya Bey, is when it happened: his weight joined with mine. As he vanished, I increased in volume, and then – presto! – the woman you see before you was reborn. It’s not just my weight that changed that day. It was everything: my arms, my legs, my face, my eyes. I was chilled to the bone, and what’s more, I couldn’t stop trembling, and I had no idea what to do. And then, every time I thought that thought – “I don’t know what to do” – my father’s face would appear before me, and there he’d stand – my father. My father, stinking like a meyhane, and watching over me. He could see how distraught I was. I’m here, he’d say. Just the faintest hint of a smile: I’m here. In those days, of course, there was no price to be paid for too many tears, and nothing could stop me from retreating into a corner to cry the night away. In one sense, I was calling out for my father, whose face I could see so clearly in my dreams. I knew he wasn’t coming back, but I still cried out for him. At the time, my mother was doing the same, using all her strength to beat her chest, and so were my brothers and sisters, my white-haired grandmother and the relatives who came to us from all over the city. We cried and we cried. W
e begged my father to come back. And oh, the day they brought the coffin to the house. That sorry coffin, draped in green. As we gathered around it, our grief knew no bounds . . . And that’s God’s own truth. So I shall ask you to pay no attention to what I said a moment ago, about being so sad. I am, to all intents and purposes, Matkap’s most formidable foe. If I ever get my hands on him, mark my words: I’ll strangle him in a heartbeat. I’ve only seen him a few times since, but I was too young to kill him – I didn’t even have pimples then. The first time I saw him was three days after the funeral, when he came to the house, to pay his condolences. Swishing that coat of his. Did that murderer feel no shame? Standing in front of our door that day, you could still hear us wailing: three days after the funeral, our cries of grief still hung over us: black and trembling, a wailing cloud. And now here he was, stepping out of that cloud, without his men, and showing such remorse. Matkap. When my poor mother opened the door, she was so shocked and angry she didn’t know what to do. Then she pulled herself together, gathered all her strength, and hissing like a yellow snake she said, “Go. Away.” Just those two words. “Go. Away.” We ran to her side, taking her by the arms, lest she crumble in a heap, and that leather-faced goon they called Matkap just buried his head in his shoulders, and off he went, back into the wailing cloud, and it wasn’t long before we could see no more of him or his black raincoat. But still we stood there, staring into that cloud until our tears returned. It was worst for my mother. It was as if she had lost my father all over again, and the second time was far, far worse than the first. Day after day, she sat in her corner, head bowed, eyes downcast, her hands hanging limply at her side. A week later, she suddenly remembered my father’s coat. Furious, she jumped to her feet. In a tearful voice, she told me to go straight to the meyhane to bring it back. That was how, like it or not, I had my second encounter with this Macit Karakas¸, this man we knew as Matkap. And so I threw on my cardigan and off I went to the meyhane, and I cannot begin to tell you how scared I was. I’m not sure what scared me more – seeing Matkap, or seeing the place where my father had been killed, or touching his jacket – but I was quaking. With every step and every street, my terror grew, until there I was, at the meyhane door. Matkap had pinned the blame for the murder on one of his men, and given the other partner in the business a little money to get lost. He’d then had the meyhane’s indigo-blue walls painted pink, and changed the neon signs, and the tables, not to mention the tablecloths and pictures, and as if this wasn’t enough, he’d put up a bead curtain that clicked and clattered at the slightest touch. To supervise all this he’d parked himself next to the cash register. Or at least, that where he was sitting, snug as an inkpot, when I pushed open the bat-wing doors. Sitting there with his hands clasped, staring stupidly into the middle distance. Was he startled at the sight of me? He didn’t move a muscle, but something was up. For all I know, the very force of my gaze pulled him right out of his seat, only to set him right back down again. He looked up for a moment. Bored his eyes straight into me. Then he opened a drawer. Began to rummage through it. Made a good show of being frantically busy. A businessman, with important business to attend to. And while he continued with this charade, I stared down at the concrete floor, wondering where it was my father had fallen, after being stabbed. A jowly grey-haired middle-aged waiter worked his way over to me, very slowly. Standing right in front of me, he asked me what I wanted. He knew who I was, of course. He’d seen me before. He was at pains to look pained. As if to say, “Oh, my poor, poor girl, from the bottom of my heart, I grieve for you.” And oh, how old that made him seem. You know how it is with old men sometimes. How they’ll try and turn their decaying bodies into featherbeds of compassion. You know the type. Old man. Heart on sleeve. A little breeze wafts by or the door slams and he dissolves into tears. With every passing day his body sinks deeper into inertia. The world revolving around him seems to do the same. Each minute rolls by slower than the last. If life were a reel of film, he’d have time to pore over each and every frame. And when life is unfurling that slowly, a single frame can really strike the heart. You know what I mean? But who does know? It might be the slow pace of life itself that drives old men like this mad. Maybe the rest of the charade is subterfuge. A sad attempt to dignify all those tears they’ve shed. When they cry, every last pore in their eyes opens up, and with all that light coming in, there is no hiding from the mountain peaks of memory. It may well be those mountain peaks that upset them: I just don’t know. In any event, this middle-aged waiter I was telling you about. With that silly look on his face, he might as well have been one of those old men. Just say boo and he’ll cry. I’m not joking. Tears welling in his eyes. Eyelashes twitching. Cheekbones clenched. I told him what I wanted, my voice trembling, and off he went, rushing to a wooden closet behind the counter and retrieving my father’s jacket. With a deftness that took me by surprise, he folded it up and placed it in my arms. I was in such a state, Ziya Bey. I couldn’t stop shaking. And shivering. You would have thought I had a fever. I threw Matkap a furious glance, as if to say: “What of the man who should be wearing this coat?” Which was, of course, a wasted effort. The scoundrel was still bent down, fiddling with the drawers. And so I left, without saying a word. I rushed out into the street. Dived into the crowd. Broke into a run. I began to feel better once I’d escaped from the meyhane, but even so, I dreaded going home. What I mean to say is, I began to imagine the scene that might await me there. I ran through the possibilities, each more frightening than the last. I had no idea what my mother would do when I walked in. Would she freeze at the sight of me, never to move again? Or would she let out a high-pitched scream, hold the jacket to her breast, bury her face in it, taking in the smell – bury her face in it, over and over, only to launch into a tirade of fury, a string of curses that had no meaning, beyond being all against Macit Karakas¸? Or would she take the jacket off to her corner, and bow her head and return to her dark chasm, refusing food and drink for days to come? There was no way of knowing. It could be none of the above, but it was not knowing that unnerved me, and my heart raced faster with every step I took. Honestly, Ziya Bey. Walking home with that jacket in my arms was difficult beyond words. Even now, all these years later, that same fear comes back to haunt me. It’s like someone has driven a giant nail through my heart. And nothing I can do will dislodge it. And when I go down into the city, when I walk through those same streets, sometimes I can see myself, as I was on that day. What I mean is, when I’m least expecting it, I see before me a very young girl, whose face is pale as pale. Sometimes she slips out from behind a bus, and sometimes around a corner. Sometimes the crowds drift apart like clouds and there she is. A girl whose slender legs are trembling with fear, and I share that fear. Because I’m not taking home a jacket. I’m taking home my father’s absence. And that’s why my burden feels so heavy, and why it pains me so. And yet I’ve taken it with me, wherever I’ve gone, wherever I rest my weary head – can you ever lose sight of a person? And for a long time I’ve wondered if it’s his echoes I’m seeing. I’ll be walking down a street, and suddenly it’s like everyone I see is someone I met many years ago. Then I remember that some of these people are dead and buried, and naturally that sends a chill down my spine. Soon I’m so scared my eyes are popping out, and that is when the young girl slips back into the crowd. Tossing her hair, she slips back into the pandemonium of the streets. Time buttons itself up. I can no longer see into the past. I know, Ziya Bey, I know. You must think I’ve said quite enough. And if I am right about that, there wouldn’t be anyone on heaven or earth who’d disagree with you. Even I couldn’t tell you what’s making me talk like this. Let’s have another cigarette – what do you say?’
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