The Sea-Crossed Fisherman

by Yashar Kemal

  ‘Seven years on that mountain! It’s easy to say it!’

  ‘How could he know, poor man, when the egg would hatch?’

  ‘So he waited there a full seven years.’

  ‘There’s patience for you …’

  ‘With patience sour grapes can be turned to sweet helva.’

  ‘The dervish who waits attains his heart’s desire …’

  ‘So our little man armed himself with patience and waited on the lofty peak of Mount Kaf …’

  ‘In the winter snow and blizzards …’

  ‘Waited so that he could serve mankind.’

  ‘He’s earned every house, every mansion, every farthing of that money.’

  The shrill grating of brakes made Zeynel jump. He was in the middle of the traffic on the bridge and a 1960 Dodge had just avoided running him over. He flung himself on to the pavement against the iron parapet while the driver hurled anathemas at him. Unnerved, he hurried down the staircase to the landing below the bridge. The noisome stench of the Golden Horn assailed his nostrils, mingling with whiffs of the fresh smell of the sea. Children, old people, retired bureaucrats had cast their lines there and one and all had their eyes fixed hopefully on the dirty water which was coated with rotting tomatoes, eggplants, green peppers, onions, rubber balls, chips of wood, paper and all kinds of rubbish. His eyes went to a boy concentrating with all his being on a blue nylon fishing line he was hurriedly drawing up. When the fish popped out at last, tossing and pitching, and the boy finally held it in his hand, its blue back shimmering under the sun, an ecstatic expression suffused his face. His hands, eyes, hair, his whole body were the very picture of delight. The fish was twitching in his hand, the blue of its back rapidly fading. A few faint spasms, a couple of jerks and it was quite still. The boy could not take his eyes off it and Zeynel, too, found himself sharing his joy.

  After a while the boy unhooked the fish and threw it into a plastic basin filled with water and there the fish seemed to come alive again in spite of its torn, bleeding mouth. The boy looked gratefully at Zeynel who had shared his joy and pride. ‘Take it, it’s yours,’ he said with a bright friendly smile. ‘It looks like I’m going to catch a lot of bonito today. This is a good start, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Zeynel replied, ‘but let it stay there. A fisherman should never give away his first catch or his luck will run out. Don’t you ever forget that.’

  ‘Pity,’ the boy sighed. ‘Who knows how many more I’ll bag by this evening? You could have taken this one home and made a nice meal out of it.’

  Zeynel laid his hand gently on the boy’s shoulder. Something warm was stirring within him, a tender glow deep in his heart, bright as a polished pebble. In the green basin the fish, dead now, floated with its white belly up, doleful, alone, cut off from the world. ‘I have no home,’ Zeynel murmured sadly as he watched the boy baiting his line. ‘I’ve never had a home …’

  ‘Then why don’t you come to us this evening and let my mum make you a bonito stew? You’re not the only person without a home in this world … My mum’s a Laz from the Black Sea. Father left us. He went with another woman … But my mum cooks the best bonito stew you’ve ever tasted. You’ll eat your fingers with it, you will … Please come this evening, Abi.’

  The boy was prattling on happily. ‘And if you don’t have a home, what matter, we’ve got one. And you look as if you’re from the same part of the country as Mum …’

  ‘I’m from Rize,’ Zeynel said. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Kemal’ the boy said. ‘Dursun Kemal Alceylan.’

  ‘What a nice name!’ Zeynel exclaimed. ‘Who gave you that nice name?’

  ‘My father …’ The boy could not hide his sorrow. ‘Mum’s from Rize too. Father was sorry afterwards. He came back, but Mum wouldn’t take him in any more. There’s no one like my mum for making bonito stew, no one …’

  ‘Dursun Kemal,’ Zeynel said, ‘do you know that I’ve killed a man?’

  Dursun Kemal stared at him. Then he smiled. ‘You don’t look like … Not at all like …’ He laughed, showing a set of white pearly teeth. ‘What a joker you are, Abi! What’s your name?’

  ‘But I did kill a man,’ Zeynel said. ‘My name is Zeynel. They used to call me Little Zeynel in Menekşe …’

  The boy suddenly noticed the gun at Zeynel’s waist. His hands trembled and the fishing line he was unwinding got all tangled up. ‘With that?’ he stammered, indicating the gun with his eyes. ‘Is it true then? But … What had he done to you, this man?’ The tackle dropped from his nerveless hand and began to slide rapidly into the water. He grabbed it just in time and started winding it up again. ‘Blood,’ he mumbled stupidly. ‘Was there a lot of blood?’

  ‘The floor, the man’s face were bathed in blood …’

  ‘Run,’ the boy cried in sudden alarm. ‘Run, Abi. The police … Run! It’s full of cops around here …’ All the while his hands were working mechanically and he never noticed the end of the line until the hook came and stuck in his palm. As he pulled it away, blood spurted out.

  Zeynel blanched. Quickly, he drew out his red handkerchief and pressed it over the wound. ‘Close your fist tight,’ he said.

  The boy’s eyes were fixed on him. ‘You don’t look at all as if …,’ he whispered. ‘A man who’s killed wouldn’t simply stand here, talking to a little boy.’

  ‘What would he do?’

  ‘Run away.’

  ‘Not me.’

  Dursun Kemal’s eyes went to the milling crowd pressing under the bridge. With a wide, frantic gaze he looked round and round, but everything was just as usual. The rowing-boats alongside the quays with the fishermen frying their fish, slotting them into a half-loaf with a sprinkle of parsley and onions, and offering them to passers-by, the live fish frisking in plastic basins, their vendors hawking their wares at the top of their voices, occasionally changing the water to freshen them, the costermongers, the sellers of simits and books and newspapers, all shouting, the shoeblacks sitting at their boxes, swinging their stained hands vigorously at the foot in front of them, the shoddily attired, pomaded young spivs at their accustomed vantage-point on the Islands landing-stage where they shot lewd remarks at the full-bottomed rich island girls, the drunk swaying to and fro against the parapet like a flapping wing, the saliva trickling down his greying beard and his voice raised in an old Istanbul ditty … All as usual … As usual, Necati, the handsome policeman, a Kurd from Urfa, on his regular beat from the police station to Karaköy Avenue and from there to the coffee-house under the bridge …

  ‘No, Abi’ the boy said almost pleadingly, ‘it’s not at all as though you’d killed somebody.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you … The bridge … All these people, everything …’

  ‘But I did kill Ihsan. And what’s more I killed him every day for the past ten years. Every day … Three times a day. This is only the last time …’

  ‘Run!’ Dursun Kemal shouted suddenly. ‘Quick! Look, they’re here.’

  ‘Shh!’ Zeynel clapped a hand to the boy’s mouth. Three policeman were just passing by. ‘D’you want to betray me?’

  Dursun Kemal drew back. ‘No, Abi,’ he said. ‘Here, take this line and do some fishing until I come back. There’s a lot of bonito today …’ And off he walked towards the Valide Mosque.

  It never even crossed Zeynel’s mind as he plied the line with expert hands that the boy might be going to the Security Department to sell him out.

  Dursun Kemal passed under the Valide Mosque arcade into the Flower Bazaar and made for a large cage where hawks of every colour and size were on display. These hawks came from the mountains of Thrace, the Istranca range, and from the rocky crags of Rize province, and Dursun Kemal was in the habit of counting them every day to find out if any had been sold or new ones added to the cage. This time he counted thirty-six. So there were five new ones today … Then he went on to the rabbits. There was one that always laughed at him with its coral-
red eyes. This rabbit was a jolly, friendly little creature. Who knows, poor thing, how much jollier he’d be if only he weren’t in a cage? After the rabbits, the quails, the tiny snow-white mice, the minute iridescent fish in their aquariums, the many different flowers spread out like a garden, the potting soils, the lovebirds, best of all the lovebirds, bright blue and green and red and yellow … Dursun Kemal would watch them for hours, laughing delightedly at the way they kissed. And always the peculiar smell of the Flower Bazaar, pleasant, bitterish, intoxicating … but not everywhere, not if you turned towards the mosque and stood facing the minaret on this side … Then …

  Almost every day Dursun Kemal would pay a visit to the Flower Bazaar, inspecting the place meticulously. He knew exactly how many flowers had been sold the day before, how many birds, mice, fish … And afterwards he would enter the Spice Bazaar, sniffing the many scents – cinnamon, lime tea, sage, sumac, naphthalene, mint, hot red pepper, so pungent, so bitter, black pepper, pastirma – and walk through to the seaway entrance, arched with red stone, and there stop and watch the never-ending throng and the shadow of the minaret stretching out over them, until something would make him go and step on the very tip of the minaret’s shadow.

  He slipped into the courtyard of Rüstem Paşa Mosque which smelled of shoemakers’ leather, tinsmiths’ burning ammoniac and chestmakers’ lath, and where in the dim shadows the tiles of Rüstem Paşa glowed and glittered in a riot of colour that rose up even in the night, flitting out towards the bright city lights. In broad daylight too, many a time had Dursun Kemal seen the tiles leave their wall and glide away over Istanbul, a spangled rainbow of seven thousand colours … Many a time late at night, Dursun Kemal had witnessed these same tiles flowing silently like a gentle breeze towards the Golden Horn and dropping starlike over the gilded blue darkness. Who else but Dursun Kemal knew of the marvellous doings of these tiles? Who but him would remain huddled behind the carved wooden shutter of that window, forgetting home and mother, food and drink, returning to this corner day after day, month after month, in a dreamworld, never taking his eyes off the tiles? Who but him had seen them tint the sunbeams that filtered through the window or drown the Istanbul night in a thousand and one dazzling colours?

  But now he cast only a cursory glance into the mosque where half a dozen boys and a very old man, all wearing skullcaps, sat cross-legged, each before a Koran stand, swaying back and forth as they recited the Koran. He walked across the road to the oil-trading wharf. The red tiles of the market roof were white with seagulls. Stopping on the edge of the wharf, he looked down at the turbid brownish water, wrinkled with mud, a stagnant sea, never stirred into waves now, then at Galata Bridge, the mosques, Karaköy Square on the opposite shore, the Laz fishing scows moored to each other and almost covering the whole of the Golden Horn, the little steamboats whose funnels folded back as they passed under the bridge, loaded with vegetables and fruit … Something was escaping him. Yet, he thought, nothing has changed, nothing, everything’s just the same … Then he gave a start. There, only a few steps away, five policemen had materialized out of the blue and one of them was a sergeant. Dursun Kemal turned away quickly towards Eminönü and what should he see but another policeman advancing along the wharf. And, oh, had he been there before, that gendarme posted at the entrance to the Spice Bazaar? And those three policemen in front of the vegetable market? Dursun Kemal was thoroughly flustered. Whichever way he looked he saw policemen and he felt naked, exposed, in their midst.

  Dursun Kemal was not yet twelve. On waking up every morning the first thing he did was to run to the mirror and see if his moustache had sprouted in the night … There are a hell of a lot of cops today, he thought. I must look sharp. Another one was just coming up from Unkapani. He passed him by and turned into the narrow street that led to Mahmutpaşa, the six-pointed star badge flashing in the sun. Now the road was clear. Dursun Kemal could walk on, but … Ah, he wasn’t born yesterday! That policeman must have posted others there under the bridge. On the other wharf, one of the five policemen, the one in top-boots, rocked to and fro, his legs splayed wide, scratching his bottom. They had no intention of going away, these policemen, and anyway the place must be crawling with plainclothesmen. So what was Dursun Kemal to do, trapped here between Rüstem Paşa Mosque, the oil-trading wharf and the sea? Traffic in the street was jammed as usual and the hooting of car-horns rent the skies. What if he tried to edge his way out, unseen, through the tangle of trucks heaped high with vegetables, the oil tankers, the cars and the hamals toting their piles of vegetable and fruit cases, bent double, the sweat dribbling from their noses and black moustaches? Could he reach Adem Usta’s workshop safely? Impossible, he thought, they’re sure to nab me … Just look at them there! And that sergeant spitting into the sea all the time, it’s a wonder he’s got any spittle left. Suddenly, he trembled as though caught in an electric current. Two new policemen were approaching down Unkapani way, arguing and waving their arms, apparently absorbed in each other, but Dursun Kemal was not to be fooled, ha-ha, no, you dumbbells … Quickly, he slid through a hole in a wooden palisade and, his eye to a slit, began to observe the two policemen who disappeared under the bridge, still wrangling loudly. Breathing a sigh of relief, he cautiously emerged from his hiding-place and, never taking his eyes off the other group of police, crouched behind an old delivery truck. Ah, if only those policemen would take themselves off too … And there now! That black-hatted man with the thin moustache and sunken cheeks, a plainsclothesman if ever there was one … Dursun Kemal had seen plenty of police from his fishing-post under the bridge. He could tell one at a glance. And that fatty … Come now, he reproved himself, who’s ever heard of a fat policeman? But what about that slant-eyed, tonsured fellow with the air of a film star? Look how he scowls at you as though ready to kill … If Dursun Kemal had not thrown himself into the tinsmith’s just in time …

  The tinsmith was alarmed at the sight of this boy dropping into his shop like a wounded bird. ‘What is it, child? What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘The police,’ Dursun Kemal panted. ‘The police, uncle …’ His heart was beating as though it would break through his ribs.

  ‘What have the police to do with you, son? What have you done?’

  This brought Dursun Kemal to his senses. He stared at the kind, bearded face of the smith. ‘That’s true, what have I done that …?’ Suddenly he smiled, wiping the sweat from his brow. ‘I haven’t done anything at all! So why …?’

  He stepped out of the shop and returned to the wharf. A nauseating smell emanated from the Golden Horn. The swaying policeman was still there, scratching his bottom, spitting con stantly into the sea, and the others throwing ribald jokes at each other.

  ‘But I haven’t done anything to them …’

  One of the policemen was looking at him, he was sure of that. He had thin lips, as though slashed by a knife, and this made his mouth look like a dark pit. Yes, his eyes were fixed on him. Insistently … Dursun Kemal took to his heels. The sight of another policeman standing before the Central Bank at Unkapani made him turn back at full speed. He was hardly aware of bumping into a horse-drawn cart and a hamal, and found himself in the Vegetable Market, bathed in sweat, threading his way through mounds of tomatoes, onions, oranges, radishes, leeks, apples, crashing into empty cases, beating about as though caught in a trap. Everywhere he turned he saw a policeman. He was encircled, there was no escape. The circle was tightening about him. The fearful din of a thousand and one feet, the dust, the hamals, the horsecarts, the gunnysacks that barred his way …

  ‘Master! Master …’

  ‘What is it, Dursun Kemal?’

  ‘Nothing, Master, I just ran too fast.’

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

  Adem Usta was one of the last remaining makers of yazmas in Istanbul. He was well over seventy now, an indulgent, pleasant-faced man with a flowing snow-white beard, which he was in the habit of coiling and thrusting into his shirt to avoid staining
it when he pressed the block-print to the cloths. He had long, very long fingers, and that was the first thing you noticed about him, together with the snow-white beard. And then his eyes arrested you, beautiful, clear, light eyes, like the sunlit bed of a pool.

  ‘Here, my child,’ he said and handed Dursun Kemal a square orange kerchief. ‘Print this one.’ He pointed to the pots of paint and the wooden blocks at the foot of the wall. ‘You can choose the stamp and colours for yourself.’

  Dursun Kemal had been Adem Usta’s apprentice for some time now. They got on well together. It was the Master who had told the boy about the tiles in Rüstem Paşa Mosque and of their glowing colours and so made an addict of him.

  The boy set to work. In a short time he had decorated the orange cloth with green cranes, blue trees-of-life and right in the centre a black deer with tall antlers.

  ‘D’you like it, Master?’

  Crinkling his eyes the Master considered the cloth, then sighed with pleasure. ‘It’s beautiful, child, bless you. How well you’ve composed it. Here, there’s plenty of time till evening, why don’t you dye a few more?’ He handed him a roll of cloths. ‘Choose from among these.’

  This time Dursun Kemal selected a wide blue cloth, maybe three square metres, and spread it on the floor. Then he took his pick from the rows of wooden stamps and, dipping into the pot of orange dye, he impressed it over the blue cloth. When he lifted it, there was an orange gazelle speeding over a vast boundless desert. Kemal followed it with the imprint of a billowy white cloud. This block Adem Usta had carved long years ago in his youth and it had taken him three months to finish. On the other side of the cloth, Dursun Kemal printed a flower, a red magic flower such as had never been seen on this earth. Perhaps the gazelle was trying to reach this magic flower …

  ‘Well, Dursun Kemal, you’re a master hand now! Does a man vanish into thin air and neglect his work for days on end once he’s become so skilled?’ The Master’s voice sounded hurt.