Reckless

by Hasan Ali Toptas

  Kenan and Ziya exchanged glances.

  ‘No,’ said Ziya. ‘I can honestly say it hasn’t.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Kenan mumbled.

  Cevriye Hanım looked at each in turn and smiled, nodding wisely, over and over, as if she was pulling them out of a very deep sleep.

  A silence fell over them for a time.

  Then, in a hoarse voice, Besim excused himself. Gently leaving his napkin at the side of his plate, he rose from the table. As he watched the boy walk towards the house, Ziya again thought he was looking at the son they had killed in his mother’s belly. Reaching the door, the boy stopped in the shade of the canopy and glanced over his shoulder. And that was when Ziya noticed how much he looked like the silhouette of the young man he had seen wreathed in smoke in Binnaz Hanım’s sitting room, and a shiver went through him.

  ‘Health to your hands,’ he then said, turning to Cevriye Hanım in surprise. ‘Your gözlemes were delicious.’

  ‘I’m glad you enjoyed them,’ said Cevriye Hanım.

  As she spoke, she too looked over at the door Besim had just passed through.

  ‘Kenan may already have told you,’ she said then. ‘This village has just one old rickety grocery store, my boy. And nothing inside it is worth much. It doesn’t even sell bread, as a matter of fact. Everyone in this village makes their own, that’s why. And so, if you’re going to say, “I’m not used to it, I can’t eat yufka,” then that would mean you’d have to buy your bread from town. But getting there and back, that’s yet another matter. There’s no regular service between town and this village, that’s one thing. When the schools open, there is a clapped-out minibus that huffs and puffs its way over there arriving here at the crack of dawn, but grown-ups aren’t allowed on it. There’s nowhere to sit or stand in it anyway, the poor children have to huddle together like matchsticks packed inside all together. There’s so little room that all their arms and legs and heads and shoulders get all mixed up. If one of those children wanted to scratch themselves, they probably wouldn’t be able to find their own bodies. And with all that swaying back and forth, they’d be as bruised as ripe pears by the time they got to town. How they manage to teach them anything in that state I cannot say. And who it was who thought up this evil business of bussing children to schools, I cannot say either. A child’s school should be at the other end of the street he plays in, wouldn’t you say? That would allow a child to remember his school days warmly. And then, seeing as a child can always run away from school if he has a mind to do so – even if he never does, even if he always holds his pencil in the same hand, from time to time he has to see how it feels to hold it in the other, or else he’ll have trouble breathing, and while he’s having trouble breathing, he’ll be looking at all those letters on the page. Won’t he? So tell me, what’s the point of it – piling those children into a metal box, and dumping them in one big lump into a concrete box. And there they stay, all day long, and when those poor children look out of that school’s windows, they see strange streets that carry no memories. Not a single sly whisper, to call them back . . . But never mind. As I already said. You can’t count on that minibus to get you into town and back. Once a week the Ovaköy minibus stops out there on the main road, and it picks up anyone going in for the town market, and it drops them off again around the time of the evening call to prayer. So that’s the only way you can get into town, once a week. But how you’d keep your bread from going stale and mouldy in the course of that week I cannot say. What I say is that we make you yufka once a month. It’s more supple, and all you have to do is moisten a few sheets before you eat and they’re fresh as fresh.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Ziya. ‘I still haven’t worked out how to manage things. If you want to know the truth, I don’t really want to go into town once a week. No, I don’t want that at all. But I think we’ll be able to work something out, in time.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Cevriye Hanım, ‘but do keep my offer in mind. It won’t be any trouble for us, just a few more sheets. My daughter and I could sit down for an hour or two and make you all the yufka you need for a whole month.’

  There followed a short silence.

  Then Ziya stood up. After thanking Cevriye Hanım and kissing her hand, he headed for the gate. ‘Why don’t I come with you?’ said Kenan, and off the two went, walking in silence in the afternoon sun, accompanied by what might have been the faint clatter of dishes, or slippers shuffling, or childish laughter floating over the brick courtyard walls. And with these sounds came the fug of manure, rotting fruit and wet laundry. Halfway down the lane, they met a hunchbacked old man groaning under the weight of the plastic vats he was carrying from the fountain back to his donkey. As he passed them, he suddenly stopped to adjust his cap, as if ashamed to have been caught unawares; solemnly lifting his hand as high as his visor, he wished them a good day.

  Ziya was still wondering what this good thing was he had done for Kenan in the army. He wanted to ask, if only Kenan would give him the chance.

  ‘And now we have these plastic bottles,’ said Kenan, waving in annoyance at the donkey behind them. ‘I’m not sure if you know this, but in the old days we used wooden barrels that smelled of resin, and in each and every one of them, you could hear a whole forest rustling.’

  ‘I know,’ Ziya said.

  ‘When I was a child,’ said Kenan, leaving no time for Ziya to say any more, ‘there was a bath next to this fountain we’ll be coming to. Whitewashed walls on three sides, and open to the sky. They’d put these great blackened cauldrons into the oven and the water they boiled in them was laced with ash, and that’s what people bathed in, that’s what people used to wash their clothes. And the women beating their laundry with sticks, they’d grit their teeth, but you could still hear that strange sound they always made. Hink. Hink. Hink. And whenever they made that sound, there’d be these drops of water flying off their sticks, and as they flew through the air, each one drew its own sparkling semicircle. And with all that water flying around, the women’s fronts would get wet, too, and then, of course, you’d have all those wet breasts swinging, right in front of all those boys who were fast turning into men. And every time those breasts swung, those hungry eyes swung with them. And then, when all the laundry was spread out on the hedges and the undergrowth, it would be the children’s turn, and because bath time scared them, they would always kick up a fuss, or scatter like little goats or throw a tantrum, but whatever they tried, in the end it wouldn’t be enough, because their mothers would take them by the arms, strip them down, and pop them into the cauldron. And then they’d go to work on them, saying, what’s all this nonsense, you infidel spawn? And with each word, they would soften those children up. And then they’d beat the dirt out of them, with those sticks of theirs, and those bars of soap. They’d beat those little heads and backs till all the dirt was gone. And the sooty water would make those children’s faces shine like mirrors. And the very moment their mothers let go of them, they were off, chasing after the sparrows flying up out of the dung heaps, or racing after a pedlar, if a pedlar happened to be passing through, and making an enormous ruckus. But it wasn’t just pedlars with their donkeys and their big straw baskets; there were also the dyers, some days, with the yarn they’d taken from all those spinning wheels and looms and dyed white, or green, or purple, or yellow, and the tinsmiths, lugging their sacks of pots and pans from door to door, and the circumcisers that gave the children such nightmares, and the leech sellers, with their hissing bottles. The village would always somehow know when these pedlars were coming, and when they didn’t, people would invent a sad story to explain it, in all innocence, of course, and then, for months, they would tell that story left, right and centre, as if it were really true. And then, at shearing time, the sheep and the goats in the pens behind some of those houses would lie down in the shadows cast by those stories, and the whirr of the shears would seep into those stories, stroke by stroke, like little scraps of yarn. And maybe something seeped out o
f them into those mountains over there, just behind the village. Because in those days, many of the villagers would still pack up all their belongings and take their horses and donkeys and move up to the meadows for the summer; they’d leave behind the oaks and junipers you and I saw yesterday, and on they’d go, up those thyme-scented slopes, on and on they’d go, under the swooping shadows of hawks and eagles, on and on, through the forest of the red pines, until they reached the clearing where, every summer, they set up their black tents. And the shepherds and the goatherds would take their flocks into the surrounding meadows, and how strange they looked, too, circling around and around, with those shining muskets slung from their shoulders. Floating through the rustlings of the forest you could hear bells ringing, bells the size of fists; and the milk vats, ringing with their echoes. As for the rest of us – we did the milking, we made yoghurt and we made cream, we tied cheese up into sacks, but it was almost as if all that was an excuse, almost as if what we were really doing was giving our souls some air, to spend a few months with the wind and the stars and nature’s bounty. And that was why there were times when we were at one, utterly at one, with the flowers of the meadow, when even the birds seemed to chirp inside us, when the wolves and the jackals no longer called out to us from the depths of the darkness that swallowed up the pines, but from the depths of our own souls. And it would be with lighter hearts that we men and women, young and old, would walk single file down the mountain at the summer’s end. And the flocks would tumble slowly down the same slopes in a cloud of bleats and dust, and soon they would be back in their old pens, and the shepherds would go back to taking them out every morning and returning them at dusk. In those days, the village didn’t just have goats and sheep – we also had lots of cattle. They took up a lot of room in those pens, with their big eyes and their heavy breathing. And every morning they’d be taken out and given to a cowherd, but at the end of the day their owners wouldn’t come out again to pick them up. That’s because the cows could find their own way back to their owners. And the amazing thing is, not a single one ever put a foot wrong, not even once. By the time I finished primary school, people had stopped going up to the meadows, sadly. Our herds had shrunk in size by then – no one had more than a few sheep or goats, and some people converted the pens at the edge of their land into houses for the young ones, and instead of the old earthen roofs, more and more people started using tiles. In spite of all these changes, there was still a pile of manure in a corner of each courtyard, and leather patches for cracked wooden vats, and oxcarts, and candles, and threshing sledges, and prods, and spinning wheels, and chicken coops that always had foxes stalking them, and the spiced tarhana soup they ate for breakfast every day. And by now a lot of people had bought transistor radios, and so floating their way amongst all this we could hear Müzeyyen Senar, and Nuri Sesigüzel, and Ahmet Sezgin, and Nezahat Bayram, sending out their little clouds of heart-wrenching sorrow. I used to say they looked like decaying saddles these radios, I remember. They used to pack them so carefully in cotton-print sacks and take them with them to their fields and gardens. And then they’re holding it next to their ears, saying: Oh, I hope it’s not a bad winter, and then they’re out there with the oxen and the donkeys, and braying just as loud. Sometimes it was because a neighbour wanted his share, and sometimes it was to make a division. Look, we’ve come to the end of the road.’

  They were standing in front of the fountain.

  Ziya looked in silence at the water rushing from the groove, and the mossy concrete trough, and the willows bordering the fountain.

  ‘You can drink this water, can’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course you can,’ said Kenan. ‘And it doesn’t taste at all bad, by the way. Look, do you see those crumbling walls back there? Those are the remains of the bath house I was telling you about.’

  ‘But listen,’ said Ziya. ‘I’ve been wanting to ask you what that good thing was your mother mentioned just a while ago, but you haven’t given me a chance to ask.’

  ‘I know,’ Kenan replied as they walked towards the shade beneath the willows. ‘I could tell.’

  ‘What could you tell?’

  ‘That you were going to ask that question.’

  They stood on the grass in the shade of the willows, face to face.

  ‘So that explains it,’ said Ziya. ‘That’s why you used those plastic vats as an excuse to go back to the past, to talk about whatever came into your head.’

  Kenan said nothing.

  ‘All right, then,’ said Ziya. ‘So tell me. What was this good deed I did for you in the army?’

  ‘You must remember,’ said Kenan, looking down in shame. ‘Please don’t make me tell you, please. I saw the shame in your face, when my mother brought it up; it didn’t pass me by. If you ask me, it’s a good time for me to introduce you to the village. Let’s go to the coffeehouse and drink some tea, say hello to a few people, give them a chance to welcome you. It would look a bit strange, wouldn’t it, to avoid them for too long, to stay so long out of sight.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Ziya. ‘It wouldn’t be right, to stay out of sight.’

  Leaving the fountain and the cool shade of the willows, they walked together to the village meydan.

  ‘Let’s go to the Coffeehouse of Mirrors,’ said Kenan. ‘That’s the first one we’ll pass, that’s why. Another time we can go to the Plane Tree Coffeehouse. They function like scales, almost. Sit down in one, and the other rises. Go to the other place, and the first one rises. That’s why we all try to keep things balanced, with some of us in one, and some in the other.’

  ‘All right, then. Let’s do that,’ said Ziya.

  After they had walked a little further, and rounded a large turpentine tree to enter the village meydan, Kenan pointed out the grocery store on their left. It was a brick structure attached to a two-storey house. Its windows were painted blue, as was its door, and nailed to either side of the entrance were nets filled with brightly coloured plastic balls. Standing across the street was a group of boys exchanging sly glances.

  Then one of them took a step forward. Staring through the door and into the darkness beyond, and in a husky voice, he yelled: ‘Boys! Tell me what that lazy grocer does?’

  Clapping their hands, they answered as a chorus. ‘The lazy grocer weighs his balls!’ they shouted. ‘The lazy grocer weighs his balls!’

  Rising to his feet, and rushing to the door, Ramazan the Grocer cried out, ‘One step closer, and I’ll smash your face in!’ He stood there glaring at the boys. But when he saw Kenan and Ziya, he was as ashamed as if he had been the one to be shouting about lazy grocers who weighed their balls – as ashamed as if he had actually been inside, weighing them.

  And then, in a dreary voice still coloured by that shame, he turned to Ziya and said, ‘Welcome to our village.’

  Without waiting for an answer, he turned to Kenan and, waving at the children who had escaped his grasp, he cried, ‘They’re crazy, those boys. Crazy! If it keeps on like this, I’ll wring their necks one day, I swear!’

  Kenan and Ziya both smiled at him.

  They reached the Coffeehouse of Mirrors, with its trellis and its oilcloth-covered tables. Husam the waiter was standing by the door. Settling themselves at a table in the shade, they asked him to bring them two glasses of strong tea. Ziya was worried that everyone was going to pounce on him and braced himself for a rush of questions, but that was not what happened. The villagers who stood up to come over to him one by one simply smiled and said welcome and returned to their seats, and whether they’d been drinking tea beforehand, or talking, or playing cards, they just picked up where they’d left off.

  Just then, Kâzım the Bellows Man rushed into the village meydan. Walking straight over to their table, he reached out to wrap both his hands around Ziya’s, and there he remained, bowing and scraping and smiling broadly and shaking Ziya’s hand as if they’d been friends for forty years. And as he did so, he said, ‘I’ve been whiling my time aw
ay at the Plane Tree all afternoon, and God be my witness, I didn’t see you until just now. I hope you will excuse me!’ His eyes swept across the coffeehouse, like a child who has just been called to the front of the class to recite a poem; after greeting everyone there, he sat down at their table without waiting for an invitation. And at that moment, the atmosphere changed. Everyone perked up, as if Kâzım had come to make an important announcement. Slowly, very slowly, they put down their cards, and stopped speaking, and turned their creaking chairs in his direction. They watched him in silence, with bulging eyes. Oppressed and greatly annoyed by this attention, Ziya gave evasive answers to the intrusive questions Kâzım now asked him without preamble. And then, thinking that this man might give up asking questions if he paid him no attention, Ziya let his eyes travel over the other men in the coffeehouse. And so, for a while, he looked at their shoulders, their feet, and the hands sitting on their knees; then he looked at the chins they had cupped with their hands, and their wrinkled foreheads, and the suppressed curiosity playing in their eyes. Then, for a time, he looked at their prayer beads, and their tea glasses, and the smoke rising from their cigarettes. He looked at the raggedy old man who was sitting by himself in the sun, scratching the earth with his staff. Sensing Ziya’s eyes on him, the old man turned around abruptly to stare at him from behind his beard. Then he stretched out one of his feet and erased whatever it was he had been writing, passed a quick hand over his face, lowered his head into his chest, and fell asleep. Or rather, he fell silent, while a sleep as old as the ages drew him under.