Swords of Ice

by Latife Tekin

  SWORDS OF ICE

  Latife Tekin

  Translated from the Turkish

  by Saliha Paker and Mel Kenne

  For Latif

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Signs of Love

  The peak point where suicide may become an option

  The human treasury of highly detailed thinking

  A moment comes along when you’re far away even from yourself

  The black full moon inside the poor

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Baggy-eyed from weeping to distant laments, the ragged men congregated on the morning when snowfall let up for the first time in seventeen days and crowded into the mosque, toying with icicles they’d snapped off the eaves.

  What in this world is left that could amaze those who’d so brazened it out with fate?

  They paid such little attention to the huge igloo and seven dwarfs sculpted from snow in the courtyard of the mosque, that any faith I had in their powers of observation or expression was shaken and shattered to the core.

  But what can I say? Maybe it’s true that these men inspire no more faith than the futile spells cast from the breath of a sorcerer, but their lives hold more attraction than any mysterious, gigantic magnet.

  The souls of the poor know and understand each other as no others can. To keep the reality of dispossession weighing down on them at bay – the one certainty as sharp and absolute as death – these ‘have-nots’ have been communicating in signs, silently, for hundreds of years, murmuring on in the secret language that only they can ever learn.

  Take away the knowledge that rises out of poverty, that impudent toad they kept in their pockets, and how could they, in full awareness of the life they’ve been denied, dare to tiptoe about fearfully in the cruel world of others?

  But what would you know about any of this?

  The crowd of ragged men, who churned through the snow like a whirlwind of locusts cast onto the city, actually live at one with their belongings, in tiny homes like storehouses that contain stage sets left over from the plays they’ve put on: rusting brass bedsteads from their days as junkmen, fake metal-backed armchairs from the furniture stores they helped to construct, machine-woven rugs and runners, keepsakes from their outdoor market stalls…

  ‘Lerry sharupdiende tisika jemmy’ is what we call our belongings. Meaning, ‘border map of the land of the “have-nots”.’

  There’s a perfectly good reason why we preserve every moment of the life we’ve spent struggling to put food in our mouths, frozen deep within our odds and ends. We need to prove to ourselves that we actually live and breathe and have existed in the past. Our stage sets are a precious part of the amazing and miraculous defence system we’ve constructed to shield ourselves, body and soul, from the aggression of your world.

  No more! I’ve given enough away!

  Signs of Love

  At all stations the penniless freeze

  After leaving the mosque, the noisy crowd of ragged men buried what was left of their swords in the snow and slipped through the fog onto the asphalt road, where they saw a luminous object racing toward them as fast as a shooting star. Spellbound by its fiery arrows which were ripping through the fog, and not knowing which way to run, they watched a woman (whom in that moment of terror they imagined to be a celestial being) whizz past them with sparks shooting out of her heart.

  Actually, it wasn’t a celestial being at all but that fiery fruit, the phantom of fatal love. And hot on the tail of this apparition raced Halilhan Sunteriler, fast as a jet plane, in his car.

  Lashed by the tailwind from the car and terrified by the whooshing noise it was making, the group of ragged men split up and scattered in every direction. They shivered and shook in the biting cold.

  Halilhan Sunteriler closed in on the woman with sparks flying from her heart, cast a foggy look at the sinuous curve of her hips, stepped on the clutch softly, and veered toward the edge of the road. He was surprised to see a stream of black liquid as wide as an arm flowing down from her brow. Bathing in the stream and flapping their wings were two greenish-grey birds. All at once he hit the brakes and stood to attention.

  The woman let out a poisonous scream and vanished in the fog.

  In less than a minute, Halilhan, the ever-roving saint of love (as his friend Gogi called him), had demolished the hopes and admiration he’d inspired in the hearts of the ragged men. With an awful crash he ran into the snow-laden lime tree on the bend and flipped back onto the asphalt.

  On his early morning love-chase Halilhan had missed the curve and spun halfway around, swallowing up his own tailwind and letting the fog trick him out of the fiery fruit.

  The ragged men huddled around Halilhan as his red Volvo, with her mournful headlights that had brightened up the winding paths of his life, lifted her bonnet and like an injured bird, tried to catch her breath.

  Halilhan Sunteriler was the first of the area’s poor who had been lucky enough to transform his sense of dispossession into the substance of a car. As the feelings this instilled in him set him visibly apart from his fellow men in the neighbourhood – that distant satellite ruled over by those fused with their possessions – people started to spin a yarn of epic proportions, based on Halilhan’s car and his soft spot for women. One afternoon they heard that he’d been waiting in ambush in his car beside a holy man’s tomb that was frequented by luckless women. They laughed and joked about him that night, comparing him to a soft-hearted lawyer who would take up the case of any poor soul who came by and tapped on his window.

  Rumours flared up even more once they got wind of the accident that had befallen Halilhan in the morning fog whilst he was working himself up to speed in pursuit of romance.

  These rumours were provoked by apprenticed mechanics who could boast some professional experience. They had at once come up with a history for the Volvo, concocting lethal tales about this car that Halilhan had initially introduced to everyone as ‘a mysterious lady, a grava, who had been sold to the scrap yard in mint condition.’

  Feeling his ever-hungry heart besieged by the festive mood of the impassioned chatterers, Halilhan took an aloof and haughty air toward the gossip, saying that the rumour-mongers were ‘no better than a truck wheel’. They were only chasing after words, rolling in them miserably because they were utterly incapable of imagining the joy of driving a car or the thrill that raced through his body whenever he spied a woman from the rear and with the slightest touch on the pedal overtook her.

  The Volvo had been a gift to Halilhan from the city, with its fringe of houses that he secretly loved because to him they looked like wet matchboxes and which he gazed upon each day with feelings of profound want. He imagined the Volvo as a greeting from teknoloji, the power that let him control enormous energies with a tiny movement from his foot and guide vehicles that weighed tons with the mere touch of a wheel.

  Feeling at once proud and elated to have taken ownership of something so precious and packed with memories of a world lying beyond his reach, Halilhan whispered to his friend Gogi: some energy mass had planted in him the belief that the Volvo was destined to put them in touch with those who ran the country’s ekonomi. Halilhan knew that Gogi wasn’t interested in dreams of a bright future, but to make the right connections to those people he still needed his friend’s brain, which always operated at full throttle.

  Many years previously, his friend had lost touch with ambitions of a psychological and physical nature and made a name for himself in another field: the close study of life. A unique individual, Gogi (real name ‘Dursun Ahmet’) could spend hours scrutinising a fig, freshly split open with seeds that remained clustered and yet stil
l didn’t touch each other. He was determined to discover the architectural mystery underlying this phenomenon. He’d grasped the fourth problem concerning the shadows that things cast, and was fully aware of matters pertaining to the fifth dimension. Eight or nine years ago he’d penetrated the mystery that Halilhan now referred to as ‘enerji mass’. For the last seven months he’d been immersed in his study of black holes in space.

  It was part of Gogi’s character to always put his knowledge into practice and never miss a chance to apply what he’d learned to life. For instance, he’d turned cold toward his chosen political party when its chairman went to the States, and he’d resigned from it because he thought they might have changed him into an android over there.

  Claiming that from the day Halilhan had showed up in his Volvo his life had been ‘just like some film jenerik’, Gogi decided to dissociate himself from any partnership in his friend’s imaginary project. According to Gogi, the city’s outermost belt was like an electric fence that held at bay the type of neighbourhoods where they lived. To keep people like Halilhan from getting too close to the men in charge of the country’s ekonomi, a host of wolfish politicians stood watch there in invisible towers. The Volvo, moreover, was in no shape to cut through that belt. Her rear-end was destined for the scrap yard, her nose was out of joint, and her body, with rusty holes on every side, had virtually collapsed. After the last accident, her axles had fallen into a dreadful state, her ball joints had nearly given up the ghost, and her suspension was verging on tears. Her springs, valves, coils and fuses were doomed as well. Like some red monument to misfortune, waiting only for that last sunset when she’d shut her cat’s eyes for good and say, ‘OK, I’m done for!’ it was all she could do to drag her chassis between the houses sunk halfway in the earth. Poor Volvo!

  Halilhan was fond of Gogi’s adage, ‘Only a dead end for our hopes and lives,’ but he maintained his belief that he could give some direction to his life through the power of imajinasyon. With the money he’d earned from insulating three acid tanks, he’d replaced his car’s engine with a straight-eight that had the serial number of the old one affixed to it. He’d also had the glove compartment and upholstery redone entirely.

  The overhauling of the Volvo created a tension that bode ill for the whole neighbourhood. It was reported that the master mechanic had almost met his maker when all of a sudden the jack slipped and the gearbox narrowly missed crushing his ribcage. On top of that, during the rewiring a strong current had so shocked the electrician that he stood all a tremble for no less than half an hour.

  The curious crowd circling the car scattered at once when Halilhan pronounced the wheel balance to be in perfect, ‘virgin’ condition. The Volvo was now sufficiently sensitised to sniff out money almost effortlessly. Halilhan’s voice rang out clearly as he announced that his kalite Volvo drove like a dream, almost sailing over the asphalt.

  But soon, and quite unexpectedly, Halilhan’s face fell still and took on a strange, pasty look. He often awoke at odd hours of the night, climbed into his car whilst still wearing his pyjamas, and sat staring through the Volvo’s windshield with his green eyes, as warm and smooth as two pebbles, fixed on the stars and the night clouds.

  His poverty-stricken nature had led Halilhan into a state of a melancholy brought about by the realisation of his dream.

  The Volvo’s mirror reflected darkish rays that poured through the cracks in his soul and touched the very chemistry of a substance deprived of any sense of possession.

  Sadly, Halilhan could find nothing in himself to confirm the fact that he actually owned a car. As the sorrow on his face waned, it was replaced by the rapid breathing of pure fear.

  Life’s instruments get stripped of all their reality in a world where people have to convince themselves they’re alive. Such tools are reduced to mere echoes that the dispossessed hear resonating endlessly through this emptiness.

  The pain of poverty that quivered through Halilhan’s soul became intolerable. Desperate to become one with the car, he even thought of having a dress made for his wife Rübeysa in the same shade of red as the Volvo’s. He threw out the old green water canister that fed the Volvo each morning and bought a white one. (A man of taste, he thought the green clashed with the red.) Finally, mustering all his strength, he resolved to discover the chief source of inspiration for the Volvo’s design.

  While replacing parts on the Volvo, the mechanics had mentioned to Halilhan some weird, romantic tales about the designers of the Buick Regal, the Ford Granada and the ’59. The inspiration for the rear fins of the ’59 that could glide like an eagle had been the eyebrows of a beloved. Its tail lights and wheel arches reflected the adored one’s elegantly rounded hips and fish-shaped eyes. Who could say what powerful feelings and fantasies lay hidden in the Volvo’s creation? Hoping to uncover some documents on this subject, Halilhan started a serious study of his car’s country of origin, Sweden.

  When he learned that in this northern country the nights glowed bright with daylight, he was both astonished and envious. As far as he could tell from the photographs he found, the people here lived below a sky as marbled and magical as the one in paradise. A land disposed toward melankoli, ruled by snow, winds and rain, and with the highest rate of loneliness! This was proved by the amount of money spent on alcohol there. Halilhan couldn’t help thinking that the Volvo’s shape reflected not a feminine story but the harshness of nature. Unlike other grava head-turners, the Volvo’s structure was dictated by sharp lines. He thought that the key to the secret of its design lay on its grille, in the form of the metal rod like a broken line. To Halilhan’s mind the rod portrayed lightning, and if he wasn’t mistaken, it was most certainly a sign of atmospheric tension in that country.

  Disaster ruled over Halilhan because the pain he felt was part of his genetik inheritance. He attempted for a while, and with some pride, to console himself that his investigations had confirmed his car’s almost perfect ability to resist cold weather. But he couldn’t get rid of his nightmare that the Volvo would hurtle off into space like a rocket, turn to metallic ash and disappear. Growing angry with himself, he decided to lavish his car with decorations and accessories.

  It wasn’t long before the Volvo began to look like a limousine: the glove compartment turned into a colourful cave for retractable cables, an original garbage disposal unit, a mug-holder and a mini-vacuum cleaner (supposedly sent to Halilhan from the USA, but in fact pinched). A rubber eagle hung from the mirror, an artificial black pelt covered the rear shelf, and a removable Pioneer cassette deck was installed to top it all off.

  Once the changes had been made, all talk of how Halilhan had got the Volvo cheap because of its fatal condition and of how he had to coast along with the engine off or jump-start the vehicle began to sound dated and at last stopped altogether.

  Sceptical visitors came to check out the cost of the elektronik aksesuar, but Halilhan shooed them off, saying, ‘Why not save time by just believing your own ears?’ Then he drove quietly away. In touching solitude, far removed from compassion and understanding, he continued to snuggle into his car as if he were about to enter some magic ritual.

  As he caressed the Volvo’s mirror, thrilled over her electronic equipment and headlights, and brushed his face like a whisper along her bonnet, neighbourhood observers came up with a clever nickname for the car: ‘beads with gears’. The ragged men were touting it about that Halilhan had mistaken his Volvo for prayer beads.

  Many years before, S. Gürışık – a retired army logistics captain who wanted to teach people all about cars – had written some books that did just that. When he heard the tales being spun about Halilhan’s Volvo, which grew more highly embroidered and fantastic by the day, the ex-captain’s mind was so stirred that he set himself to write a book which would be orijinal enough to appeal to the tastes of modern life. Halilhan’s passion for his car inspired S. Gürışık to include a chapter on ‘Otomobil and Fantasy’ in his book New Driving. His first move wa
s to kindly address Halilhan in public and to point out his affection for him. On a night given over to drinking and mild debauchery, he pulled a notebook from his breast pocket and composed a poem that began, ‘The best of men with a heart of gold/who waltzes his car along the asphalt road.’ Then he stood up, turned to Halilhan, and recited it.

  ‘Sometimes life hits below zero and sometimes above,’ Halilhan replied, aptly expressing his poetic feelings and elevated spirit. Hoping to supply ammunition for the ‘fantasy’ section of S. Gürışık’s book, he rummaged through his childhood memories, starting with stories about ‘Çikko the Giant’s Boy’, ‘The Companionship of Wit and Thought’ and ‘The Battle between the Fair and the Unfair’. He thought of his life’s high points, including his wedding. He wasn’t even fourteen when he had got married. His wife Rübeysa had invented different styles of moustaches and pasted sticky black tape under his nose. For days on end they’d stayed at home, romping and sporting about. And lots of other stuff came to his mind. ‘All this will make great artillery for your book, if you can find the right way to work everything in,’ he said, and added, ‘The life story of the true otomobil lover lies hidden inside me!’ Then he listed every kind of love and affection that had ever taken root in his heart, thinking they might also develop into likely topics for writing. Finally, bowing to nature, he revealed his odd passion for squash flowers that turned their faces up to the moonlight when they blossomed each spring.

  Ah, life’s little whimsies! It so happened that a factory watchman who had sunk deep within the silence of his own sense of poverty was just then planting squash seeds in the factory yard, a world away from the story Halilhan was unravelling as fast as the wind.

  Gogi disliked self-promoting personalities with a tendency for needless excess, and confronted Halilhan, his friend, his bosom buddy, calmly, giving him a gentle shake for publicising S. Gürışık’s upcoming book as ‘a teknik wonder’. S. Gürışık, who had opened a car accessory shop not far from the driving course near the neighbourhood, was a hard drinker who hoped to find some direction in life by acting up in creative ways. He’d let it be known that he had been discharged from the army because of some injury; yet no ex-army man who had any respect for his age would ever, after a few drinks, grab a chair, set its legs on top of beer bottles, and then perform a headstand on it. ‘Such sights kill any feeling I could’ve had for him,’ declared Gogi. ‘They rot my nerves!’ Up until then, Halilhan had quietly heard him out, but when Gogi got worked-up emotionally and stepped over the line, he felt obliged to defend himself. ‘I don’t think I’m mistaken in my perspektif on people. The way I see it, Gürışık is one of our worthy elders,’ he said. In the end, out of sour necessity Halilhan was driven to give up on Gogi and exile him, however reluctantly, from his heart.