Reckless

by Hasan Ali Toptas

  Before long, the wedding party arrived.

  At the front was that same dilapidated car, decorated here and there with red ribbons. There were balloons of all colours tied to the door handles. Billowing behind the wing mirrors were two silk banners with writing on them. At the gate the car manoeuvred a little backwards and forwards, and when it failed to make it through, Hacı Veli gestured a little from the front seat, and they rushed to open both sides of the gate as far back as they went. And then the car swung slightly to one side, almost as if it knew what it was carrying, and now, at last, it made it through the narrow wooden opening. It drove up to the house in first gear, blowing its horn, followed by a stream of townspeople. Hacı Veli and the groom stepped out of the car, leaving the bride with her sisters and brothers. Her father stood to one side, beaming and saying nothing, while the groom and the best man went to the back of the house and, amid great excitement, clambered up on to the roof. The groom stationed himself beside the flagpole, and from there he gazed down at the people below, and the streets, the trees, the houses, and the gardens beyond them. You would have thought he was about to leave this world for another dimension, and was bidding everyone and everything in it farewell. The best man watched with him, narrowing his eyes as he joined his hands behind his head. Then he handed the groom a bulging purse. The groom took it in his palm first, as if to weigh it, and then he turned it upside down and threw it off the roof. The children who had been waiting below went tumbling after the silver coins as they clattered across the yard. In their struggle to get the most coins, some fell to their knees, others jumped across the yard like frogs, some crept as furtively as cats.

  Then the groom climbed down, buttoned up his jacket, and respectfully opened the car door. As he and his veiled bride walked towards the door, arm in arm, the crowd applauded them.

  A fearless boy raised his arm and in a voice everyone could hear, he called, ‘Shall we fall in love?’

  The bride and groom stopped walking.

  The clapping stopped, and with one voice, the crowd called back to the boy, ‘Let’s fall in love!’

  With his hand still in the air, and in a voice that was even louder, the boy cried:

  The harvest lies before us like a carpet

  And here you see us, mad with joy.

  Uncle, we have brought the bride

  This mountain rose.

  The crowd began to clap again, and the bride and groom began walking again. They had gone just a few steps when another hand went up in the crowd, and a middle-aged man going white at the temples shouted out loud enough to burst the veins in his neck, ‘Shall we fall in love?’

  While the bride and groom stood still, the crowd again called back with one voice: ‘Let’s fall in love!’

  Keeping his hands raised like the boy before him, the man called out:

  Before us stands a great door,

  Inside all manner of grain.

  May he who would part these lovers

  Be sent crawling far away.

  The bride and groom moved again towards the door, as the crowd applauded. Then someone else in the crowd called out: ‘Shall we fall in love?’ Some spoke of dipping their thumbs in henna, and the first night, and heads resting on bosoms; others spoke of fresh lambs, and embroidered pillows, and prosperity; yet others spoke of water flowing like ribbons, and cypress trees, and plenty, but Ziya could no longer bear this much happiness and jubilation, and for a moment he thought he might cry. After that, he climbed over the wall, taking with him the thoughts still in his mind; the applause grew softer as he walked along the cobblestone streets towards the edge of town. In actual fact, he wasn’t walking at that point. It felt more as if the town was slipping beneath his feet like a carpet, a bright embroidered carpet scattering warmth and noise in its wake, and suddenly Ziya found himself back where he had conjured up his dream. Back on the edge of that bed. He was still sitting there, leaning into the night. And now, very slowly, he stood up, and for the next few moments he walked just the same way he had walked in his dream, feeling his way across the room towards the window. Falling on to the sofa, he looked outside.

  It was still pitch dark; all that could be seen was a gauzy patch of white, fluttering in the distance. And because nothing else could be seen, it was the patch of white that brought that distance into being, and once it came into being, it mixed in with the darkness and the silence that reigned over it, and once it had done so, it lost all shape, and the more it dissipated, the more strangely and heavily it loomed over the horizon. Which he could not quite see. Which he could only imagine. But it seemed to him as if it was pressing down and down on that patch of white and slowly crushing it. It grew thinner, and thinner still, until suddenly it vanished, and at that exact moment, the night began to fade. Little by little, the sky grew lighter. When he looked out at the hills in the distance, he could just about see the rocks, and the ledges, peeping through the mist. And here and there he could almost see a tree rising above the skyline. When the sky got a little brighter, he could see the plain at the foot of the hills, and the dirt road winding through it, the sheep pens to the right, the line of poplars, a few houses facing in the opposite direction, and the trees in these houses’ gardens. A giant postcard, Ziya thought. A giant postcard, seen through frosted glass. To view it more closely, Ziya leaned over the sofa, and craned his neck. With reverence, he saw how gently the dirt road cast off the night. He saw how the cliffs shimmered with a serenity that seemed, as it echoed, to caress every hill and field, as the land itself became some sort of giant creature, slowly rising. He saw how the frosted undergrowth began to rustle with whispers, and how each rock, each blackberry bush, each heartless thorn came back into being, and each tree back into light. He saw how the air was thick with hisses and pops that blinked like little lanterns, jingled like little bells. And as he saw all this, he thought, what a beautiful place this is. Just imagine, a place where you can hear sound and silence, all at the same time.

  With this, he stood up. Curious to see more of the place where he’d been living, he ambled slowly through the house. The walls were painted white, and there was one medium-sized room, and a narrow kitchen looking out over the side yard. Beyond it was a small, dark section with a concrete floor that could, he thought, be either a bathroom or a pantry. How different from the view he had just seen. How disappointing. For a time Ziya just stood there, staring, and asking himself if he could ever get used to such a place. But then he thought: is there anything on earth that a person can’t get used to? He threw on his clothes, as quickly as he could, and stepped out of the house to do a bit of exploring, get a bit of fresh air. Once outside, he spied a wooden bench just to the left of the door. It had cushions. He settled himself down on one of them.

  The sun was just rising over the hills, and there, on the dirt road, he could see Kenan walking towards him. Walking towards him, bringing with him the sparkle of every moment he had passed through to get this far, and the strange green quiver of every leaf in the vineyard.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, still catching his breath. ‘You’ve woken up early. Maşallah! I thought you would sleep until noon, at least.’

  ‘Good morning,’ said Ziya, rising to his feet. ‘But why did you think I’d sleep so late?’

  ‘Don’t you remember? You were in pretty bad shape when you got here last night. You were drunk out of your mind. It was pitch dark when you got here. Your friend Ethem and I – we only just managed to get you from the car to the house. It was so hard to hold you up that the three of us went zigzagging through the vineyard.’

  ‘I remember that, but only vaguely,’ said Ziya, examining his forehead with his fingertips, as if he were trying to read the lines the night might have left there. ‘I’m sorry – before leaving the city, I had too much to drink.’

  They sat down together on the cushions.

  ‘Or was it that your city friends threw you a goodbye party?’

  ‘No,’ said Ziya, smiling faintly. ‘There
wasn’t any party. Just two friends, having a drink. The same friend who brought me here. I don’t remember, but I probably introduced you to him last night.’

  ‘Yes, you did,’ said Kenan, and then he added, ‘I wanted him to stay over but sadly he refused. As soon as we had brought you in, he left.’

  ‘Don’t worry. He loves driving at night. He’ll have made it back to the city, no problem.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ said Kenan.

  There followed a short silence, while they both watched the hills beyond rising above the plain, the cliffs behind them sparkling in the sun and the pine forests shivering in the mist, sending up little white clouds that looked like smoke signals.

  ‘So this is how I made my entrance?’ Ziya asked drowsily. ‘I arrived in Kenan Eli, drunk out of my mind?’

  Kenan smiled faintly.

  ‘Do you know what, though?’ Ziya said, still sounding very drowsy. ‘Even if you set out for Kenan Eli sober, you’d be drunk by the time you got here.’

  ‘Except that Kenan Eli is not the name of this village,’ said Kenan. ‘This is Yazıköy. As you know.’

  ‘Of course I know,’ said Ziya.

  Again they fell silent. Every time they paused, after all, the view swept in to capture their attention, and take it as far as the eye could see, and deeper, ever deeper, until, for just a moment, it became a shimmering veil of shadow, light and rainbow, only to return to itself with the speed of light. But for that same moment, Ziya’s face would brighten, as if caught by a distant torch. Not just his face. It was his entire being. It was his soul.

  So it was after the view had swept in and out again like this that Ziya turned slowly to look Kenan in the eyes.

  ‘What a beautiful place this is. I can never thank you enough.’

  Kenan smiled sweetly and opened his arms. ‘There’s no need to thank me,’ he said.

  There was another short silence.

  Then Kenan asked, ‘Why did you wake up so early? You must have been so tired, after that trip. I wish you’d managed to sleep until noon. Did you wake up because you didn’t know where you were?’

  ‘Don’t even ask,’ said Ziya, and he made such a grimace, you would have thought he’d just been stabbed in the stomach. ‘I had the most bizarre dream. That’s why I woke up so early. And this dream of mine, it wasn’t just normally bizarre. It was off the scale. I still haven’t managed to shake it off. Certain parts have stayed with me.’

  ‘Dreams are like that, though.’

  ‘This was something else, Kenan. This was beyond strange.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘In my dream, I was going to return my key to a woman who was supposed to be my landlady but things kept happening to me, things I could never have imagined. For one thing, this woman who was supposed to be my landlady just talked and talked and talked, there was no shutting her up. She was telling her life story, of course. And a few other people’s life stories, for good measure, plus the history of the entire city . . . and in the middle of all that, she would make these bizarre pronouncements – as if someone else was speaking through her. Whereas in real dreams, as you know, there’s hardly any speaking at all. Which is why, please believe me, this dream I had doesn’t really seem like a dream to me.’

  ‘Are you sure you aren’t exaggerating? That’s what it seems like to me. If it isn’t a dream, then what is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was just bizarre. Beyond bizarre. For example, when I was leaving that apartment, I heard paper rustling, and because the landlady was following me out, I asked her about it, and she said it was probably her maid, going through the dossiers. But when I reached the lift, the girl who was supposed to be her maid walked out of it, carrying a handbag.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘What this means is that the maid was outside the apartment when I heard that paper rustling. The landlady was following me to the door, as I just said. And also. There was no one else in the apartment at that moment. So where did all that rustling come from? No, this was something other than a dream, I assure you.’

  ‘I think you’re exaggerating. And anyway, things like that happen in dreams all the time. Like once, I met myself as an old man. My older self hobbled right up to our door and rang the bell. I opened the door, and there he was, with his white hair and his long beard and his humpback, but in spite of all this, I recognised him instantly. He was wearing a dervish coat, which was white, with a silver collar that glinted like sunlight. And when he walked, he dragged his right leg slightly. I can’t be sure about that, but that’s how it looked to me as we walked together out of town and into the orchards. We sat down at the foot of a good-sized walnut tree and stayed there for a long time talking. And while we talked, a white bird came bursting out of his coat. It flew round and round, just above our heads. I had this dream many years ago, but I can still see my older self, with wrinkled hands, a lined forehead and that long, long beard. I have no idea if I’m going to look like that when I’m older. To tell the truth, it still worries me, even now . . . But to go back to your dream, let’s just say that it’s something like mine. Let’s agree for a moment that the things you saw were not things you saw in a dream. If they were real, you would have to have gone back to the city in the middle of the night to return the key again. But you didn’t do that. Did you?’

  ‘Of course not. No way I could have done that. Not even if I’d wanted to.’

  ‘And that’s just it. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. If you didn’t go back there in the middle of the night, then it was a dream.’

  Ziya raised his head to look out at the hills again, and the steep cliffs rising above them, and the pine forest, rustling green. Looking deep into the forest, he saw its noises changing colour. He felt its scent against his cheek as he breathed in its silence.

  ‘I can’t be sure,’ he said. ‘Maybe this is a dream, too. I just can’t be sure.’

  3

  Peace

  That first day Kenan wanted to take Ziya into the village. He spent a long time trying to convince him. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘My mother made all this food. They’re expecting us.’ But Ziya wouldn’t budge. He’d not even unpacked, he said. He needed some time to catch his breath. And how much could they have prepared, anyway, when he’d only been invited the day before? And so it was that, for the first time in many years, the two friends ate breakfast together at the table they’d set up next to the wooden bench. As they ate, birdsong pecked away at the cheese plate’s faded purple borders, while the flowers and the grass and the pine trees puffed out clouds of scent that hovered in the air, glistening like olives. Each time this vision came to him, Ziya would put his tea glass on the table, which seemed now to be as great and wide as nature itself, and then he’d bend over, and lift it up again. Having finished eating and poured themselves more tea, they both lit up cigarettes, and looked out over the hills and the cliffs rising above them. Or rather, Ziya looked out over the hills, leaving Kenan with no choice but to do the same.

  ‘Did the money I sent cover all the expenses?’ Ziya asked, as his eyes travelled over the cliffs.

  ‘It did,’ said Kenan. ‘It was a hundred and fifty lira too much, in fact. More than I knew how to spend.’

  Reaching into his pocket, he gave Ziya the money he hadn’t spent.

  ‘This barn had an earthen roof once,’ he said quietly. ‘It leaked in the summer rains, and in the winter snows. That’s why I had it replaced when we did it up. I hired good men from town to do us a proper tiled roof. The storeroom was a good size, so I divided it into two. One part became the kitchen, and the other the bathroom . . . Then we redid the walls, inside and out. We replastered them, and then we covered the bathroom’s earthen floor with pine as fresh and fragrant as the day it was cut. And then – well the doors and the windows had never been painted, and to tell the truth, there wasn’t much left to them. All you had to do was touch them, and they’d crumble. So that was why we pulled them out and put in new ones. And then
, as God is my witness, I spent a bit of the money you sent on furnishings. Two sofas, one table, a refrigerator, an electric stove, an oven, a gas cylinder, a bed, a few pots and pans, blankets, a quilt, and a few other odds and ends . . . You must have seen all this when you woke up.’

  ‘I did,’ said Ziya. ‘And I saw all the food and drink you brought, too. Thank you. For going to all this effort for me, for taking so much time off work. Honestly. No matter how much I thanked you, it would never be enough.’

  ‘Nonsense. I just wish I could have done more,’ said Kenan, with shame in his voice. ‘Of course, as time goes on, if you decide there are things you don’t like, we can change them at once. Certainly there will be some things missing. So, for example, I bought an electric stove, because you said you could handle it, but if it rains more than two drops, or there’s a flash of lightning in the far distance, or even if the smallest cloud decides to hang a little bit lower, the electricity begins to fizzle and pop and you can never know how long it will be before it fizzles out altogether, that’s something only God knows, and that’s why I need to get you a wood stove, too. And before winter sets in, we need to stack up your woodpile. Right now there’s electricity, we asked the people in the nearest house and they let us run it from there, but I’m sorry to say that so far we haven’t been able to sort out the water. It was never going to happen, anyway. As you know, none of these houses out here have water. And that is why you’ll have to get it from the village fountain, like everyone else. My nephew Besim can help you with this, so please don’t worry. Don’t worry at all.’