by Selcuk Altun
I knew that within the month Rezzan would visit my place to see I hadn’t turned it into a tip, and that she’d be touched when she heard I was following an English language course while working in the secondhand book-market. It was a clear sign of her good breeding that she never queried my story of the rich parents I’d lost in a traffic accident.
‘Where on earth, my dear, did you get the idea of wearing a brown shirt with blue jeans?’ she asked, and my heart warmed to her. We took to making monthly visits to local theatres full of swarthy humanity, and twice to the supermarket Migros. She announced when it was time to get new clothes and didn’t hesitate to choose them for me. I would be roused from sleep or a meal by that voice of hers, made both to give orders and polite requests, and sent out to find her favourite Ottoman pudding or drink. (I could never refuse or ask her to pay for her orders.) If she quarrelled with her daughter, I could be immediately summoned below. Muttering a formal prayer, I’d enter the high-ceilinged, historic house, but I didn’t dare set foot on the silk carpet in her drawing room. The five splendid Ottoman landscapes on the walls were by our famous painter, Hodja Ali Rıza. My heart broke when she spoke of the pictures I gazed at so respectfully.
‘My child, I’ve nothing more to sell but my soul.’
Looking through an album of faded photographs, I hoped to hear more of her full life, but instead I heard only complaints about how she’d always been misunderstood. She told me of her dreams, while drinking black coffee and smoking cigarettes, and gossiped about her bridge partners. She insisted she felt no sadness, except for the academic son she had abandoned in a corner of a murky hospital, and for the loss of her maternal pride.
I had to sort out my relationship with Emel and Renan, whom I had chosen to ignore. One night, after a trip to Lakeside Abant with her mother’s quartet of bridge players, the drunk Emel, glass in hand, pounded on my door shouting, ‘I’ve come to see if your tool matches your height.’ When she ignored my warning and tried to walk in, I slapped her twice. I think she ran home in tears, almost sober. I knew she wouldn’t be able to look me in the eye when we met again. As for me, the fingertips of my right hand would tingle with embarrassment.
Renan never stopped teasing me. When he wasn’t doing animal impressions, he was uttering offensive Kurdish-sounding words behind my back. One Saturday morning while heading for Zarathustra I went down to the front door, where he was exchanging racing tips with two other lazy fellows. He returned my desultory greeting by identifying your humble servant as a terrorist, and I flipped. Approaching in God’s name, I started to squeeze his big nose with my index and middle fingers. I knew he would act like a cartoon character and start cackling like a hen.
‘What do you think you’re doing, you ignorant peasant from the mountains?’
I squeezed tighter after every sentence, till he said, ‘Don’t you know that I work with the Secret Service? You don’t realize how many generals I know! Are you a pervert or what? Look, I’m begging you ...’
He was sweating profusely and snot was running down his red nose. Eventually I tossed the quivering, helpless man to the ground as he pleaded, ‘Don’t hurt me, I’ll eat your shit.’ But I hadn’t got over my rage; I landed a couple of heavy Ottoman blows on each of the young idlers as, stupefied, they watched the poor old man whose home and money they had freely abused. Then I rushed out into peaceful Şemsi Paşa Avenue, satisfied.
To make sure I was still under his thumb, Baybora would ring me once a month with a series of questions like, ‘Are you going regularly to the shooting range to practise? Are you keeping more than $20,000 in the bank?’
One day during the holy Kurban festival, fate brought us together at the Kanaat Lokanta Restaurant. I knew I was to be given notice of a second commission. A plastic file with a foreign brand name was squeezed into my hand under the table and my heart sank. If the Organization had deliberately chosen the postcard-sized photograph on the first page to annoy me, they were to be congratulated. I was nauseated by the unpleasant image of a thirty-year-old man with his thin, pointed moustache, grinning maliciously at his prey. Why does the Anatolian male insist on the moustache habit? If it is a symbol of manhood, why is it forbidden in the army and the police force? Whenever a disastrous crisis erupts in our country, there’s always someone with an ugly moustache involved.
Hamit Özay, son-in-law to Hadji Mümin Cömert, the manufacturer of cotton thread. God knows how many million dollars he blackmailed Cömert into paying. (A gambling debt and a sexual addiction had brought him into the clutches of a debt-collector’s gang.) If he couldn’t get what he wanted, he had sworn to hand over evidence of illegal sales to the Department of Finance. They say that before the noon ezan he began to drown his sorrows in the rakı he hid in his room, a mischief-maker intended for the Ramadan fast ...
I imagine Baybora intended this last sentence to have a powerful effect on me.
‘Surely it doesn’t suit our Holy Hadji not to give a receipt?’ I asked.
‘Ah, my naive warrior, it’s a speciality of the industry that includes our Holy Hadji’s business. If your rivals sell off the record and you can’t, you’ll soon sink. The main problem here is the failure of government to bring about any dynamic tax changes. I don’t know what kind of books you’re reading, but I do know that thirty per cent of our national income is unregistered.’
In practical terms, apart from his continuous bag of tricks, you couldn’t find fault with babbling Baybora on this point. When I examined the dossier drawn up with Hadji’s collaboration it was clear to me that I was to catch the louse Hamit in the act and punish him. For ten days I pursued the wastrel son-in-law. Twice a week a pimp who serviced the houses brought along a young girl or a transvestite to his bachelor flat in secluded Ataşehir, and three hours later he came back in a car and took away the poor exhausted creatures. While I was exploring the soulless modern district I finished His Excellency Ibn Battuta’s Seyahatname (Book of Travels). (Between 1325 and 1354 he had travelled through several Islamic countries but was most impressed by those under Ottoman rule, and praised Alanya above all cities.) As I was reciting the last page of his masterpiece under my breath, I remember a huge transvestite emerging from the flat and throwing himself into the waiting minibus.
As the evening traffic in front of the building eased off, I broke in with the help of a master key that fitted the main door of the apartment block. No lift, so I climbed up to the ninth floor, disgusted by the staircase that reeked of fish and meat. Not a sound from inside as I fingered the key of the flat. I was shocked that the crude curses I heard from a neighbouring household came from a woman. The flat was furnished as bleakly as a hotel room and the sitting-room walls were a shameful display of transvestite posters. For one moment, God forgive me, I thought that some of the male figures in their make-up were more attractive than the female fashion models. The pervert son-in-law had passed out in his bedroom wearing nothing but his underwear.
Even in his sleep he didn’t look innocent. I pumped a single bullet into his heart and pushed Walther III into his right hand. According to the instructions from Baybora it must look like a suicide. Otherwise yours truly would have woken the victim and given him the chance to draw his gun. On the vulgar commode I noted a book entitled Türkiye Benimle Gurur Duymasın (Turkey Should Not Be Proud of Me). ‘Now Turkey won’t even be ashamed of you,’ I said and immediately regretted this stupid remark.
With God’s help, I successfully achieved all seventeen of my ‘missions’. I never disposed of anyone as easily as the ungrateful son-in-law. Some wept and offered me bribes, some crouched at my feet or bit my hand, some spat in my face and drew a gun. I emptied my magazine into the belly of the last one. I almost faint when I recall the revolting stench of his intestines gushing out.
I counted every mission a sacred duty and was content to live a secret life of planning, spying, stalking and ambushing. I wasn’t concerned with the way of life or speech of the appointed victims before their d
eaths. Did I find the moment when the bullet met the target, or when I smelled the tantalizing aroma of the gun-barrel, as stimulating as reading?
Sami Sakallı’s friend, Cemil Nejat İlker, God bless him, thought I might starve when Zarathustra closed, and so arranged a part-time job for me with an agency that published magazines for private corporations. When I heard that I would be working as assistant editor and proofreader, I was as proud as on the day when I was promoted to sergeant.
I waited till I’d finished the last lap of the English-language course I’d been patiently attending before rummaging through my predecessor’s library. On the top shelf, among philosophy and psychology books, were some heavy documents, one of which I dropped on the floor. It was Gürsel Ergene’s private notebook. This Venetian-bound volume revealed how he had finished his schooling at St Joseph’s Lycée and gone to the US, what he suffered at university and later on. I read of his poetic anger at his disillusionment, his stubborn, shattered dreams of an honest world. And I was curious about a man who sought any excuse to hurt himself, and in particular his mother.
The following are extracts from the period that concluded with his banishment to a hospital, to be treated for his illness:
I wanted an academic career in the field of contemporary literature. I wanted to translate, to explore neglected writers and poets, to write essays and critical papers. When she failed to make her useless husband into a minister, my mother intended to make sure I would become a philosopher. Her command was absolute. I went to America to read philosophy and I was to return to Turkey when I had finished my doctorate ...
Our fashionable philosopher of the moment was Wittgenstein, the anti-philosopher. Let’s see if another such brilliant star will appear, finely balanced between genius and madness ...
Finally my mother and I came to an agreement. I would return to Istanbul when I became an associate professor, and she would allow me to marry Betsy ...
Betsy, an associate professor of social psychology, never cared for Istanbul, Üsküdar, or my mother, nor for the pittance she would earn for part-time jobs, or for the insensitivity of academics ...
After our engagement Betsy would say, ‘I’ll go to the ends of the earth with you,’ but she despised the suburban Istanbul dweller who couldn’t even carry a shopping basket in the supermarket. And, according to my mother, Betsy was happy to ignore the city’s advantages and was flirting with a married banker whom she had met on her runs in Yıldız Park. When her suggestion of returning to California was rejected, divorce became inevitable ...
My older sister was jealous of my mother’s interest in me during my childhood, and later, in her adolescence, of my academic success. Her suppressed feelings, developed over twenty-five years, revealed themselves under the influence of alcohol. If I’d had a bigger salary I’d have moved away long ago from this mouldy ruin of a city ...
On the eve of returning to Istanbul I had prepared myself for the very worst. I must have felt ashamed of my powers of imagination, which had underestimated the magnitude of ‘the worst’; hyperinflation had turned a shallow leaderless country into a tribe of nomads. From the ashes of Constantinople, the great city that ignited the Renaissance, had risen a modern village haunted by ghosts of the past. Moustachioed peasants had seized control of the government. A mob ignorant of literature or art (there is no equivalent word for ‘Philistine’ in Turkish – a great pity!) were indifferent to the rampant corruption. Academic life was strangled by a mass of insensitivities. My colleagues were bored and poor. They think that with my degree from Berkeley I’m crazy not to go abroad (or in the midst of chaos am I struggling to face a punishment I deserve?) ...
The academic faculties are divided primarily into two factions, left and right: the time is surely coming when they’ll unite to criticize me. My promotion is delayed and the article I wrote for the college magazine is irresponsibly censored. Sycophantic deans ignorant of any other language are sent abroad to symposia. Students turn up to class occasionally and instead of admiring the most serious and learned, are content with irresponsible teachers who hand everyone a pass ... !
Was this how I came to be on good terms with my older sister? We drink together. At first we run down our gadabout mother. Then comes the moment when whatever she says is quite incomprehensible. When I start on my usual sermon, ‘The superficial Turk, Turkey becoming shallow ...’, she passes out. And I pass out too as I whisper Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein in her ear ...
Yesterday morning a bright light leapt from the mirror and, spiralling to a point, settled in my brain. The pleasant ache in my head turns into a spiritual and physical drugged condition which I will certainly make my friend ...
Forty years on I’ve managed nevertheless not to ‘suffer in silence’. With my mother and my students and the contemptible faculty of deans, I fight viciously and continuously. I’m certainly on the point of making peace with my loneliness. Am I releasing my pain before the dilemma increases? First I resisted the build-up of chaos, then I discovered why I couldn’t escape from it. I’m dragged into depression, into the eye of the storm which Nietzsche and other philosophers reached. Masochistically I anticipate the arrival of the process and the last act. Waiting for my recovery, I take refuge in the aphorisms of Elias Canetti.
It was another Saturday when the holiday spirit was missing. Rezzan and I set off together in the direction of centrally located Şişli. I was curious about the son who was said to be ‘depressed’. I entered the monastery-like La Paix Hospital praying, I don’t know why. A nurse looking like a chronically ill patient showed us into a private visiting room and warned us in advance, ‘You can stay for an hour, but don’t excite the Hodja, Rezzan.’
I was just settling into the flimsy chair when the door creaked open and Gürsel Ergene entered, in his pale tracksuit inscribed with a ‘Berkeley’ logo in big letters. With a shudder I noticed that he resembled my first victim. Like a tiger just released from its cage, he looked shiftily round the room; he watched me and grinned while Rezzan paid him a string of stale compliments. He approached, dragging his slippers as he was informed that I was the well-heeled tenant who worked on a magazine and also dealt in secondhand books. Obstinately refusing to notice his mother, he watched me suspiciously, like a spoiled child who sees a panda for the first time. (I was beginning to regret the visit.) Then he said distinctly in a high-pitched voice, ‘You read my diary, so you thought you’d like to see what this nutty man was like, my tormented friend.’
‘Not at all, sir! ...’ I began to sweat.
‘Although you’re got up like Lennie in Of Mice and Men, you have the look of an executioner,’ he said, and continued to peer into my face as though he was examining coffee grounds to tell a fortune.
Did I hang my head? I felt as if a soothsayer had counted the names of all my victims in turn.
‘The executioner is as much of a misunderstood volunteer as the philosopher or the poet,’ he said, solemnly as a judge explaining his decision to acquit.
He sat before me, rocking to and fro. He was clearly pleased, behaving as though his mother wasn’t there. He could read your humble servant like a wily psychologist. When he heard my view that the bigots and pseudo-intellectuals were insulting our religion, and heard moreover my attitude to wearing a turban and to revealing garments, he said, ‘You are a pure neo-Islamist,’ and I was almost as pleased as on the day I got promoted to sergeant.
He bent conspiratorially towards my left ear and asked, ‘Would you like to hear an answer to any question in your mind now?’, and I fell into his trap.
‘I’ve always been curious, sir, about how many different languages are spoken on our planet.’
‘Almost 6,000. After 100 years – 3,000 if the oil wells don’t dry up first – eventually perhaps we’ll whisper 500 languages. Now I have a two-part question, my tormented friend: would you rather catch your wife in bed with your cousin or catch her with your cousin’s wife?’
I was beginning to pray ‘Go
d give me strength!’ and Gürsel Hodja to tremble and giggle. His mother summoned the duty nurse, who took his arm and led him away respectfully, asking, ‘Dear Hodja – shall I ask you a riddle you can’t unravel, or a puzzle you can’t answer?’
‘I’ve a bit of a headache,’ Rezzan excused herself the following Saturday, and sneaked off to play bridge, so I took her son clean underwear and a spare tracksuit.
Gürsel Hodja sensed this might be the start of a long friendship and asked, ‘I wonder if you’re going to make me better or am I going to drive you mad?’
I poured out my heart to him, telling him about everything except my victims and my connection with Mecruh. I hoped it would boost his morale. He made no comment, and I listened to sad anecdotes he had omitted from his diary. This time it broke my heart to hear how his mother, then his whole world, had wasted the life of this fragile, talented personality. I was ashamed of my own bitter complaints in the face of his. I was ashamed of the shallow system that had failed to recognize his originality.
When I left I kissed his hand respectfully. He was surprised and blushed bright red like an orator embarrassed by applause. He thrust a piece of paper into my pocket, asking me to bring him a list of books from his library next time and, as a footnote, a croissant from the Konak Cake Shop.
He began to address me as ‘Tiger’ and his mother reduced her formal visits to once a month. I noticed he was in two minds about whether he should welcome or regret our growing friendship. Rezzan was found dead in her bed on the morning of 10 November, on the same day, sixty-seven years ago, that her secret enemy, Atatürk, passed away, and I was startled to note she was being buried in a plot opposite the gravestone of my first guilt-ridden victim. It fell to me to let my Hodja know he had lost his mother. What a disturbing duty that was, by God. He tried not to laugh.
