Reckless

by Hasan Ali Toptas

  ‘I won’t,’ said Ziya.

  As he said these words, he looked out over the grapevine in the direction of the village, as if he was searching for the fountain.

  ‘Let me clear these things away,’ said Kenan, springing to his feet, and before Ziya could say, ‘Stop, what’s the rush?’ he had filled up a tray and was rushing towards the kitchen. Ziya jumped up, too, but all that was left for him was a glass salt cellar in the corner and a few slices of bread.

  ‘I have to go now,’ said Kenan. ‘I hope you don’t mind me already leaving you alone for a few hours on your first day. I have to run some errands.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Ziya.

  Kenan left, rushing through the vineyard and down the dirt road that led across the plain, his dark, slight form growing thinner and thinner until it melted into the sunlight like a cloud.

  After he had lost sight of Kenan, there was a moment when Ziya had no idea what to do. In spite of himself, he turned back to look at the hills and their lower reaches and the green and waving forest, and the cliffs rising above them. The silence just then was deafening; now and then the sound of a sheep bell wafted in from the plain, but even this seemed no more than a gorgeous ornament hanging from the collar of this great silence. Just then a donkey brayed in the village, and as that sound shimmered through the air, it lit up – lit up only to vanish just as suddenly. And when it vanished, Ziya went inside, opened up his cases, and took out his wrinkled clothes, which he put on to hangers and hung up in the blue fabric wardrobe in the corner.

  Kenan had reached the other edge of the village by then, still in a great hurry. At last he came to a stop outside the house at the end of the street. Opening the door, he quickly slipped inside. At the sound of the door, a white sheepdog dozing by the wall on the other side of the street lifted its head to fix its glowing glassy eyes on Kenan’s back, but did not bark. All it did was to open its mouth as wide as it could, to lick its chops with an enormous tongue. Then it gently lowered its head to rest on its forelegs again, and narrowed its gaze, as if preparing an ambush. For the next hour, its eyes never left the door. Even when flies landed on the sides of its mouth, it did not move. Now and again a silent torpor would contrive to close its eyes, but this never lasted long: soon enough, the dog’s eyes would jerk open again and it would reassume its old pose. It did not seem to be waiting for the door so much as the sound of Kenan’s feet. Though it could have been looking far, far away, towards some other point in time.

  Just then a group of children aged between twelve and thirteen appeared at the top of the street. Boys and girls together, laughing and joking as they approached the dog. Some of these children were holding marbles. Others were holding bunches of grapes, and yet others were carrying sticks of various lengths, sticks that could be used to play skittles. When they saw the dog by the wall, the girls slowed right down; they retreated into a huddle still eyeing the dog, leaving the boys out in front. One of them was a dark-skinned boy who frowned and waved his stick as if to throw it. The dog made no sound. Without so much as moving its head, it fixed its blank gaze on the boy. In the face of this indifference, the boy picked up a rock the size of a pear and went one step closer. Shouting Shoo! Shoo! he threw the rock with all his strength. This made the dog angry. The first barks were halting but then it got up and began to chase after the children. Faced with its bared teeth and ferocious barking, the children turned on their heels and ran screaming in the direction from which they’d come. Reaching the top of the road, they vanished.

  Once they were gone, the dog ambled slowly back to its station and took up its old position as calmly as if nothing had happened. Resting its head on its forelegs, it narrowed its gaze, fixing its eyes on the door. Revived by all that running, its eyes now shone more brightly than before. So brightly, in fact, that they were as good as mirrors, reflecting back the door’s every detail: the whorls in the wood, the mildew on the clay, the holes in the moulding. When Kenan came outside again, he raced down the street without even noticing the dog was there.

  Passing through the village meydan, he was noticed by one of the men sitting outside the Coffeehouse of Mirrors.

  This man, whose name was Kâzım the Bellows Man, jumped to his feet. Stepping out from the shade of the trees, he cupped his hands around his mouth and with great excitement cried, ‘What’s the news? Has your friend arrived?’

  ‘He’s arrived,’ Kenan replied.

  ‘That’s good, then. All the best!’

  Sliding back into his chair, and lowering his cap, bringing its visor right over his eyebrows, he watched Kenan walk on. In a voice only he could hear, he mumbled, ‘I hope my business goes just as fast.’

  And though he was already nine or ten paces away, Kenan looked back over his shoulder, as he had heard these words. Then he sped up again. Huffing and puffing, he left the village, racing towards the sheep pens, turning off the dirt road to stride up the slope, and from there, wet with sweat, through the vineyards, until at last he reached the barn.

  He found Ziya sitting on the wooden bench outside the house, smoking a cigarette. He looked calm and at peace, as if he had just escaped from beneath a heavy burden.

  ‘Have you finished your business?’ he asked, when he saw Kenan approaching.

  ‘I have,’ Kenan replied.

  Sitting down, he, too, lit a cigarette; puckering his lips, he sent little puffs of smoke sailing into the greenery of the forest opposite.

  When he had emptied his mouth of smoke, he said, ‘If you like, I can take you into the village today. What would you say to that?’

  ‘Let’s do that later on,’ Ziya replied. ‘Why don’t we take a walk in the forest now, if you have the time.’

  ‘Shame on you,’ said Kenan. ‘Of course I have time!’

  And so they stood up and set out through the vineyard, wending their way amid the furrows of earth, and walking down the hill, leaving behind the poplars and the sheep pens on the right to cross the dirt road, and walk on slowly, side by side, towards the forest. Just ahead, beyond the scrub, they heard the sudden echo of a clacking grouse. Ziya stopped in his tracks when he heard that, as fast as if another step might send him crashing into that clacking, and as if, the moment he crashed into it, he might die. Soundlessly, eyes shut, he stood there waiting in the grass. Kenan had stopped, too. Mystified, he turned his head, gazing in awe at his friend. Ziya opened his eyes and together they moved on. Pink and purple and yellow thorns attacked their ankles as they strode through knee-high grass, over big stones and small stones, across little fields thick with juniper bushes and fragrant with thyme, until at last they reached the oak trees. They’d been walking for forty-five or fifty minutes by then, and so, to catch their breath, they found a patch of shade to rest in; by now, they could no longer see the dirt road below. They couldn’t see the sheep pens on the side of the road, either. All they could see were a few rooftops in the village and, here and there, the uppermost branches of a poplar, pulsing sunlight. And even these seemed to sink into the depths beyond the juniper bushes, as indistinct as distant memories.

  ‘Honestly,’ said Ziya, as he took out a cigarette. ‘It’s everything you said it was, when we were in the army. It’s truly enchanted. Even the sky seems closer. Close enough to touch!’

  Kenan raised his face to the sky. For a moment he stared into its depths, smiling faintly.

  ‘Do you know what?’ he said, lighting a cigarette and inhaling deeply. ‘I noticed right away, when we met last night, but the truth is, I couldn’t find the courage to ask you, not in the state you were in. And all morning, I’ve been wondering if I should ask or not.’

  ‘Are you worried about the scars on my face?’

  ‘Yes. How did you get them?’

  Ziya swallowed hard, looking up to gaze over the gently swaying juniper bushes, and far, far into the distance.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, still looking. ‘If I were you, I’d be wondering, too.’

  Then he fell
silent, and for a time, neither of them spoke.

  ‘These scars,’ he finally said. ‘These scars come from a terrible incident that turned my life upside down sixteen years ago. There was, in one of the city’s busiest avenues, a bookshop that my wife Kader and I loved very much. We visited it once a month, without fail. It was at the entrance of a bustling multi-storey shopping centre, this bookshop, and it was huge, and so well organised, and we could always find whatever book or journal we were after. It had a mezzanine that served as a cafeteria, this bookshop. It had wicker chairs with red cushions, and customers could relax there with a tea or a coffee and a little music. We loved all that, but we also loved Cemalettin Bey, the owner. You know the kind of person I mean: they don’t even need to speak for you to breathe more easily, and open your mind a little – well, Cemalettin Bey was someone like that. Also, this man had this amazing sense of space, and that was why, the moment you walked in, you felt right at home. He knew if you needed him, he could tell just from the way you moved, or didn’t move. And then, bam, he’d be right next to you . . . If you were not quite sure what you wanted, it was right under your nose – even if he was many kilometres away, he knew . . . So anyway, this is where my wife and I were headed sixteen years ago, on that hot summer’s day, to look at a few new books, but also just to pass the time. And we had just joined the crowd pushing its way up the stairs when suddenly my watchstrap snapped. Thinking it made sense to buy a new one, seeing as I had my watch with me, I left Kader at the bookshop and made my way to the watchmaker at the other end of the same floor. You know how cramped those little shops are, with only room for one: there’s always someone sitting behind a glass counter, and when you walk in, he raises his head and looks you over, almost like you were a watch. Unless, of course, he is holding a watch he has just opened up, in which case he is too concerned with its innards to look up at all, and as you stand there on your side of the counter, waiting, it’s almost like being caught between several different time currents, each flowing in its own direction. And all around you there are clocks ticking away, each in its own fashion, and as you stand there, that’s what surrounds you, the pandemonium of clocks. And so that’s how it was that day when I went into that shop. I had to wait, because the man sitting behind the counter had put on his glasses to repair a shoddy-looking watch with an instrument as fine as a horse’s hair. He was totally indifferent to my presence – as if the watch he was repairing would determine the moment he’d look up at me. And just in case he had reached the most difficult moment of the job, I kept quiet, of course; but I also leaned over slightly, to see if I could find a watchstrap I liked in the display beneath the glass counter. Actually this was something of a lost cause because I didn’t know anything about leather and in the end I was just going to decide on one of the expensive ones, hoping it was good. And who knows, maybe I was, without even knowing it, pretending to be busy so as not to distract the watchmaker . . . Acting like I needed to look at these watchstraps anyway, so fine with me if he carried on working . . . There is, as you know, a dark little room at the back of our minds in which we learn things by rote, and when the right conditions present themselves, we say or perform the things we learn in that room without even knowing . . . What I’m trying to say is that this is what prompted me to behave in this way. But anyway, after I’d been standing there waiting for quite some time, this sallow-faced man behind the counter slowly raised his head to look at me, and while he was doing that, a huge explosion ripped through the building. All I saw before we were plunged into darkness were flying, smashing, terrifying shards of glass. When I opened my eyes, I was in hospital, in a room painted almond green with a ceiling covered with water stains. There were bandages on my arms and legs and around my head. Voices floated in to me from the corridors and the other rooms and the far corners of the building, and every once in a while I could hear people running. All this from the bed I was lying in. It would have been better if I’d heard nothing, though, because there was no one with me, and the sound of those voices made my own empty room seem emptier. The longer I lay there, the emptier I felt inside, and I kept thinking about Kader and wondering where she was, wondering why she wasn’t with me, looking into my eyes, and holding my hand. I found out the next day, of course. It seems that the centre of the explosion was in that bookshop we liked so much – that was where the terrorists had planted their plastic explosives. In due course the morgue returned what was left of my wife’s body, and I failed to find the courage to look at it, not even once. In all honesty, I did want to look at it. I wanted to see her face, and touch her, one last time, but in the end I didn’t. No, I didn’t, I am sad to say. Even though I wanted to . . . Was I scared of seeing body parts that had been salvaged, piece by piece, from the wreckage? At the time, I just couldn’t say. There were arms and legs lying all over the place, so maybe I was frightened that they’d matched them with the wrong bodies. Because something like that did occur to me that day. When you had ignorant, thick-skinned officials running roughshod over evidence and all too often destroying it with their own hands, this sort of thing could happen quite easily. But even if they exercised the greatest caution, it could still happen, simply because of the magnitude of the damage, and the chaos it had caused. It’s terrifying just to imagine it. Just think: your loved one’s arm in one cemetery, and her leg in another . . . In the end there were fifteen people wounded that day, and five killed. Or to be more accurate, that’s what the records said – three women and two men, five people in all. When really it was six people who died. Because Kader was five months pregnant, so I did not just lose my wife that day. I also lost my child. Without ever having held it in my arms. Without ever having kissed its forehead . . .’

  ‘I’m so sorry. So very, very sorry,’ Kenan mumbled helplessly.

  Ziya’s eyes were brimming with tears.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, as he reached for the pack next to his knees and pulled out another cigarette.

  For a few minutes, neither spoke.

  Meanwhile, the leaves of the oak tree in whose shade they were sitting began to rustle. As each new rustle flew through the air like an imaginary leaf, a tortoise came out from underneath the wild liquorice just in front of them; it took a few steps forward, crunching the grass underfoot, stuck out its head, looked around timidly, and then quickly backed away, to hide amongst the branches.

  ‘Do you know what?’ Ziya said, as he blew out his smoke. ‘If I’d had a son, he’d be sixteen years old now.’

  ‘Which means he’d be the same age as my nephew Besim.’

  ‘So it goes,’ continued Ziya, in a faint little voice. ‘It’s almost as if this thing we call life sent me off into that corner, with a watchstrap as a pretext. Or else, that watchmaker did it, by making me wait. Sometimes I wonder, I really do, if life put that man there, just for this purpose, if it did something to his body to slow him down and then put him in that shop to work, for fifty or sixty years, just so that it could delay me, and keep me far from the explosion. If I know anything, it’s this: if that sallow-faced man behind the counter had been a little faster, there is no doubt that I would have finished my errand and returned to the bookshop at the entrance to the shopping centre, and died there, with my wife and my son. Do you know what? For many years I felt the deepest shame at not having died with them. There were even times when I was ashamed to be living the years they never could. I felt so ashamed, and was in such pain, that a time arrived when I hated life itself. I’d lose my temper, badly. There were times when the winds of fury sent me flying into a meyhane, times when I came to think of the others at my table as my closest friends, and went off to houses I’d never been to, with people I didn’t know, to bend to the will of anyone who happened to be near me, but those days passed and I put all that behind me, soon enough. Those soap bubbles of laughter, that clanging music, those fumes and those dim lights, and all the other props people use to get close to one another – I was spending too much time with people who had given u
p on life, I decided. I was wasting my pain. The truth is I told none of them what had happened; they hadn’t the least idea of the hell I’d been through, but still, when I sat drinking in their company, the atmosphere seeped into my private hell: the smoke they exhaled would billow across the room and settle inside me. And the endless insipid conversations, they were one long stretched-out moan. The jokes that weren’t jokes, because they lacked even the slightest sparkle of wit. The kisses that meant nothing, beyond flesh touching flesh. The fights. And everywhere – lining the walls, lounging on the sofas, sitting on the floor, lurking in the bathrooms, even, and in places even worse than that – all those people, holding glasses. What can I say? I was wasting my pain, spending so much time in places like this, and that’s why it didn’t last long. I had my wobble, but it was soon over. One way of looking at it was that I left the life I’d known, went as far from it as I could, but then I came back again. And pulled myself together. I found refuge, with the help of that eraser of memories we call time. Or rather, I came to understand that the only way forward was to bury myself in my grief, and accept what had happened.’

  ‘It’s hard. Honestly, so hard. May God give you patience,’ mumbled Kenan.

  They fell silent for a spell. Leaning forward, they listened to the oak leaves, rising and falling with the breeze. Then, between each rise and fall, there came the deep rustlings of the forest. And between those, there was silence, as soft as cotton wool. And between these were the moans from which that silence came, as thick as the slopes and pastures and cliffs that surrounded them.