by Latife Tekin
Then rain began to pour from on high through the innocent air. Rain was only truly welcome during those times when the ekonomik conditions allowed it to be. At least that’s how Halilhan weighed out the human community’s relationship to nature, after taking into account his own character and point of view. Normally he was a man who could watch rain fall and feel as happy and romantic as he would losing himself in the eyes of his lover. He felt enough love in his heart to lay the clouds on his lap and cuddle them fondly, and the warmth he felt for nature knew no bounds. But after his disappointment with Teknojen, he heard in the sound of the rain, even if it was still only a light patter, the footsteps of his executioner. So what secret lay behind this kompleks and caused him to brand as merciless and cruel those tiny drops of water? There was nothing simple about a human being. People might look as much alike as honeycombs, but brewing inside them were secret storms that were always ready to burst out. A wind in our souls, blowing independent of our minds and logic, generated what we call psikoloji. The way a person behaved was bound very tightly to material things. If you saw something on the street, you might set up that very same thing in your mind, whether you wanted it or not. Desire was a magnetic wave of absolute certainty. You could never rule over it. In fact, money had never really ruled their life. They got on with their lives by ignoring money totally. That was the reality of their condition. Of course, a person could still dream of a beautiful place for himself, elevate it in his mind to heavenly heights, and, having sworn to reach it, he could even pretend to die for it. Then he’d naturally end up doing things that even a seventh-rate bit-part actor wouldn’t stoop to. If he was now saying, ‘I’ve had it up to here with this rain,’ that was rooted in material things. He’d already seen a preview of the coming winter. The day-after-day soirée of the film called ‘Their hopes blown to bits,’ had drained away all of life’s pleasure. The raindarkened weather burst into his veins like a drug and left him without any desire to act. He could only think of what the world had done to them as an insult. Obsessed with the idea of paying like-with-like, he made up his mind straightaway. Let them throw him some business. He’d reject it outright.
To hell with it all! He’d screw old ‘Granny’ Market on the grava called Volvo and shoot off on an airplane. Such fine swearing as this rose out of pure hatred. Unfortunately, though, it couldn’t be put into pratik. The law forbade that.
Moments of self-reckoning…in psikoloji this was a weighty event. And at the root of it lay sorrow. It’s a well-known fact that depressed people will from time to time let loose all the anger they feel toward the world. Human beings, creatures who are aware of their weaknesses, can normally make good use of an inborn talent they have for wiping out decisions they’ve made or words they’ve spoken in moments of self-reckoning. Just as they have the power to forget about last night’s dream once they sprinkle water on their faces and step out onto the street, so they can persist in denying any words they’ve uttered during those moments when they might have had heart-to-hearts with themselves. And this can go on repeatedly, for as long as they live…
An asphalting job that would bring in a few million…! Late that night, with the market’s ‘granny’ in mind, Halilhan wrote out a business proposal and got the job a week later, bam! just like that.
Because at the root of any reckoning lies sorrow. Human beings have no memory of the future, and they can’t essentially understand a life whose meaning lies hidden beneath a curtain of fog. They can’t predict what fate awaits them, lacking the ability to conceive of it even as a small pool of water, while they keep their past alive and devote oceans to it.
To Halilhan’s mind, thanks to this weakness in human nature, good intentions, compassion and pity became possible in the world. Our common spirit was battered and branded cruelly by the nightmare of ignorance. As a result, people spent their lives as if they were imprisoned in a triangle of fear. Faced with their own helplessness, they filled themselves with mercy and so were able to weep. In short, the act of living was a balancing act. A special talent for lying had been carved into our bones to help us ward off our helplessness. In this case, those molecules we call DNA were operating independently. When you found yourself lacking, missing something somehow, you could find a way to trick yourself into becoming complete. Essentially, all the things people do, as well as their dreams and fantasies, were rooted entirely in the meaningless. And so it was that in Halilhan’s entire life there was no story – in fact nothing at all – that could in any way be explained.
For example, why had his luck, which he’d thought had died, been reborn today? The answer to that question remained shrouded in darkness. How could a letter with just a few lines have led him straight to a big pay-off and allowed him, with a single stroke, to cut off the heads of his rivals and run off with the banner of victory? An impossible question! Any sensible person looking for a proper explanation would be driven crazy by these sudden, unknowable phenomena.
True, Halilhan paled at the joy he felt. Maybe at just that moment a steam of ecstasy was hissing out of a leak in his brain into his soul. He couldn’t say. But he felt no doubts about the enormous power of his intelligence. He’d get perfectly organised and pull off the job easily. Signals pointing in that direction were being fired off by the atomik core in his blood.
Maybe this was a bit off the point, but he wondered what made his brothers and Gogi so worshipful of him and so powerless in terms of breaking away from his orbit? He was obviously one of those fellows who possessed the courage to get ahead by bending the world to fit his requirements, and this led him to find his own place among the stars.
He ended up getting the whole job done by municipal workers!
Out on the road with his Volvo, he stopped the municipal truck that was loaded down with asphalt. ‘Where’re you heading with that load?’ he inquired. The men pointed, ‘Thataway.’ Valentino-style, he hopped out of the Volvo and strode over to the truck. ‘Brother,’ he said, ‘why don’t you just dump ten truck-loads over there, at my place, and I’ll lay some hard cash on you.’ ‘But how, brother?’ they exclaimed, ‘How can we do that?’ and started bargaining. After reaching an agreement, they led Halilhan to the overseer of the asphalting work. Without beating around the bush, Halilhan stepped up to the chief: ‘Time’s money, just get it done!’ The bargaining didn’t take long. In two minutes flat they’d nailed down the protokol.
Workers with a steamroller, truck and brooms moved in, and in two days the job was done.
He’d truly conquered the summit with his current business taktiks. He’d signed the contract with no idea of how to manage the deal, lacking even enough cash to buy the material. But the moment he spotted the municipal truck, inspiration struck like a lightning bolt and lit up his brain. And after that, his intelligence started ticking along demonically.
Those men who’d snapped up the job had a healthy respect for the money, but no doubt they’d also felt goodwill towards him. Nonetheless, after Halilhan copped the city’s asphalt for himself, he had come up with a sweet way to play them for suckers as simple and enchanting as a word game. ‘How can you earn so much money in just two days?’ he asked, then left them, feeling ridiculous, with half the amount promised. Rubbing the specks from his eyes (after napping in the truck the whole time), he hopped into the Volvo and zoomed off from the spot where he’d twisted off the money’s ear without even breaking into a sweat.
He suffered no pangs of conscience whatsoever from the double-edged blow he’d just dealt out. All he’d really done was impose a fine for the bad rap life had given him. In the form of a cheque, to boot! The joy of having pinched all that money spread through his soul.
But when he took hold of the wheel and skipped over the trees, it was Gogi that he longed for most. His body felt too small for him as he was gripped by what might be called ‘a thrill built for two’. While his joy at this crucial moment made him look horrible, the only rose that budded in his heart was the face of his dear friend
.
‘Our life this winter will be like a song,’ he shouted as they hugged each other. Their bodies became one. No words could express the pride they felt in the power of their unity.
A moment comes along when you’re far away even from yourself
‘Brothers, you may not believe this, but I swear to you that before long I’ll be turning into an istasyon. I’m absolutely sure of it. You’ll watch the money come screeching to a stop at my feet like a locomotive. I mean, come on now, please, quit looking at my plans for the future as some kind of fantasy. I’m as level-headed as I’m smart, as lucky as I’m level-headed, and my timing’s as good as my luck. In a nutshell, I’m your true-blue big brother. Now, isn’t that right? I know exactly where the weight of family duty falls on my back. Believe me or not, please, just give me your love. There are times I feel lonely even in a crowd. Such a pity! I must’ve been born all wrong. Don’t leave me now. You can be sure I won’t be sucked in by all the confusion that comes with money. Let’s just keep on watching the trees grow, the sun rise and night fall! Let’s look how deep the sea is and the love that fills them all. Come on! The way I see it, even a seaweed’s life is full of love. You’ve got to be able to see that too. Even pieces of seaweed stick up for one another, brothers. Don’t they? Huh?’
Hazmi had pulled back instead of joining in with them and to relish the day they’d struck the mother lode. He’d made his counter-move from a distance by sending word with Mesut: ‘We’re all free to live our own life. As for me, I’m blind to your money!’
Oh, nine-heeled envy! Halilhan was quick with his retort to Hazmi. He knew he was in the right. He hadn’t expected to be blindsided by such a terrible blow from his brother. How he’d wasted his heart and worn out his brain to revive Teknojen – all of which meant nothing to Hazmi, who’d always been a coward when it came to money. He’d got that way because he knew he could never bond with money, and the minute he laid a finger on it he’d have a fit of depression. ‘The world’s full of people who forget who they are once they catch sight of the money.’ In Halilhan’s opinion, it was to this family of fools that Hazmi belonged.
Halilhan was primed to read his own meaning into Hazmi’s retort, but all the same he felt forsaken. Just when he’d most expected the molecules of brotherly solidarity to fuse… Instead here he was, still reeling from the crushing blow of betrayal. ‘I’m ruthless, I rip off the rich, but my brothers…never!’ By not showing up on this night when they were splashing out to celebrate the windfall, Hazmi had wounded Halilhan deeply, saddling him with guilt. Well-oiled by alcohol, Halilhan got all worked up and quickly grew pathetic as he pleaded with Mesut and Gogi, trying to show them he was an honest man. ‘Let’s give each other love, let’s live by love’s rule,’ he said again and again before hatred engulfed him. ‘I swear, guys, sometimes I long for those old days of duelling, but then I think, where will hating my brother get me?’ And he shook his head as if to say, ‘No way! Such feelings are useless!’ Drunk as he was, he held in his fury, refusing to give it full rein no matter how much, deep down, he’d have liked to. Ever since he’d opened his eyes to the world, he’d known something vitally important. ‘Envy may appear like a butterfly, crowned with beauty, but I’ll never let it come near me or let myself stoop to it. My brother’s character isn’t like mine, and that makes me sad, because I know he’s scheming to be my rival on the market. That’s what’s really killing me!’
No way! Hazmi’s behaviour had nothing to do with rivalry or jealousy. He was just the sort of man who, having once made up his mind, wouldn’t go back on his word. After announcing to Mesut his decision to quit, he’d warmed up to the idea more and more. Even as a simple option, shifting gears and making a ‘U-turn’ just because his big brother had struck it rich didn’t suit him morally.
Gogi only revelled in the joy of money superficially. The girl hadn’t answered his letter. This problem so absorbed his mind and powers of reasoning that he wasn’t able to console Halilhan in his agony. He’d never laid his hands on so much money himself. In fact, up until the time of his deepening friendship with Halilhan, even the thought of money had seemed harmful to him. It was in poverty that he’d taken in the breath of life and formed certain judgments about his poor nation, having cast his ‘third eye’ on it. Halilhan and he were in high spirits while on the trail of the money, but their pleasure only sprang from fantasising about it. This was how they experienced money. Gogi could understand the anguish that was now strangling Halilhan. Yet even if he’d been able to shake off his romantic troubles and comfort his friend, his chances of doing so at this moment were nil. Therein lay the disaster. Gogi knew very well that agonised look on Halilhan’s face. His friend was suffering from the chill of money’s touch and the sudden break from the life he’d been living.
Living in the world of others while knowing fully well that life had been denied them had cast a magic spell on them that broke the instant they touched money. Since Halilhan had been brave enough to do just that, he was bound to feel, within the skip of a second, the fear rising in his blood. The warm memory of that impudent knowledge of poverty he carried around in his pocket would surely turn into a heart-gnawing vengefulness.
No windows open out from the world of the ‘have-nots’!
For hundreds of years this world has been perceived through the eyes of traitors like Halilhan.
Halilhan got rough with Gogi, who had unexpectedly recoiled and distanced himself. Hinting at the letter Gogi never received from the girl, Halilhan humiliated him quietly, saying, ‘You’d even fall for a ladies’ two-piece suit in a shop window! Stop being so huffy, let’s hit the asphalt to find a woman!’ Gogi, who’d been swimming about sadly in a sea of mixed feelings the whole evening, turned pale as a lemon. Now the sense of elevation they so enthusiastically shared evaporated and dissolved into thin air.
Mesut felt strange as he sat absorbed by a sheer, invisible curtain that swayed softly as Halilhan and Gogi puffed it back and forth between them.
With mixed farewells, they parted.
A filthy envy overwhelmed Halilhan as he watched Gogi walk away, leaning on Mesut. He stood as still as a statue, looking on and clutching the torn blue jacket he’d worn that evening because it had helped him catch sight of the money.
With the day’s first light the bad omens radiating from the money also cast their depressive spell over the women. Of course, they’d all three been pleased to have money pouring in. What broke their peace of mind was their lack of confidence in their husbands’ characters. Every time the men managed to lay their hands on some money, they threw away all semblances of brotherly love and started hurting one another. Rübeysa really got scared when, before going out, Halilhan announced, ‘What you need is twenty-two new gold armbands. I promise to get them for you.’ Hoping to sidestep a lightning bolt from the blue, Rübeysa quickly sent her son to call Aynina and Turcan over for a meeting. She began with a word of precaution: ‘Who knows, my dears? You might get wind of something going around, come over and strip the beds and mess up my house looking for gold.’ Catching the ball in mid-air, Aynina shot back, ‘How many times have we raided your house and stripped your beds?’ Rübeysa gently wormed her way out. Would she have dared to open her mouth if she’d had any faith at all in her husband’s promises? If only he were the kind of person who would keep his promises and buy her the jewellery, then all three of them could get together and very nicely divide up the armbands among themselves. But such thoughts were castles in the air…! Their job now was to put their heads together and figure out what sort of trap lay hidden in the promise of these armbands. Turcan, considering that her husband Hazmi was taking off on his own, thought it best to steer clear of the subject. It might be this or it might be that, she fudged, sidestepping any real speculation. Rübeysa held back from commenting too, since it was her husband who was the subject of their talk. In any case, whatever they might think meant nothing compared to the suggestion that Aynina was about to make.
Aynina wasted no time in tuning in to the voice in her head to get a grip on her brother-in-law’s scheming. Halilhan seemed to be trying to nudge them into a quarrel that had been primed to break out over money. Any hope they had of sidestepping his trap lay in their ability to unite and call up wiles worthy of the Devil himself. At all costs, they had to keep from getting mixed up in the quarrel themselves. It would be a big mistake to just go along with Halilhan’s will and start being nasty to each other. Having fully agreed on the mental shortcomings of their husbands, they decided to meet more often to keep watch over the brothers’ movements.
Such a pity that this plan of tracking their husbands’ movements could only lead to disappointment. They hadn’t taken into account how fast Halilhan and the Volvo would take off, leaving them in a cloud of dust. Therefore, this meeting of minds can only be seen as a futile front of resistance, a meaningless chat!
At that very moment, Halilhan was racing in fifth gear towards Jülide, his heart filled with tremors of the past. Whether or not he admitted it, he was clearly driven onward by some command that thrilled him. The feeling that had so quickly drawn them to each other had only faded because they couldn’t experience the togetherness they’d dreamed of. If only time wasn’t hiding behind its back the poison that killed love!
All the same, they were bound to feel shaken up when they stood facing each other once more, eye to eye. No matter how harsh life’s twists and turns, logic played no role in acts of the heart. As a jest of goodwill, Halilhan had bought Jülide a bunch of red roses.
A certain disillusionment can be predicted in such situations, but Halilhan had never imagined he’d have to behold a tragedy. The face of the woman who opened the door was beyond imagination. This couldn’t be – it was truly unrecognisable. Poor Jülide! Her teeth had turned black and stuck out just like the ramparts of a fortress. She looked unspeakably old and horribly ugly. Bizarre… Halilhan dared not even glance sideways at her smile. Making a great effort, he tried to search her face for the colour, the light, the spark of his mother’s eyes, but no, there was nothing!
