The Sea-Crossed Fisherman

by Yashar Kemal

  He opened his eyes in a large ward of Cerrahpaşa Hospital in Istanbul, a harrowing pain in his shoulder. He moaned and she was there, with her flaxen hair and clear blue eyes, bending over him, holding his hand in a warm clasp. Three days later she had him transferred from the crowded ward into a two-bed room. She never left his side. She held his hand always, so warm, her flaxen hair caressing his face, her sweet smell enveloping him. Even now, in the middle of the sea, Selim could sense it, as fresh as long ago. He did not even know her name, not that he had forgotten it, but he had been too timid to ask and she had never told him. Or perhaps she had in those first days when he was so sick, and he had not heard, not understood. But what did her name matter? She was there in Cerrahpaşa Hospital, waiting for him, waiting till the end of time … Her flaxen hair a little wet with perspiration, her serious face … Her warm hands stroking his hair, binding his wound … Her eyes on him, adoring, her clear blue eyes like lucent pools, the sky distilled, so beautiful …

  Beneath him the deep wide sea was swelling gently. Fisher Selim had forgotten the line he had cast. He was dreaming of a mild sunny winter day on the Galata Bridge, that one time when he had come face to face with her, how they had stood there, mute, motionless, while the crowds flowed past them … The insistent hooting of boat sirens, the shrill calls of itinerant vendors, the squalling of seagulls … As though enchanted, as though tied to each other … How they had come apart, how lost one another in the crush, Selim never could tell. Why hadn’t he clasped her in his arms? Why, oh why? He never saw her again. One year, two years, maybe three, Selim had waited for her every afternoon outside Cerrahpaşa Hospital. Even on rainy, snowy winter days he never moved from the gates of the hospital. In vain … Perhaps he could have found her had he wanted to, but he was afraid, trembling, bathed in sweat. Whenever he caught sight of a fair-haired, white-capped nurse he would take to his heels, his heart tearing at his chest, and rush off to Kumkapi, jump into his boat and put out to sea, regardless of waves high as minarets. And later … Later he could not bring himself even to go near the hospital.

  Thereafter everything happened in his mind. Those flaxen tresses, he caressed them every day, every night, even out at sea, awake, asleep … those soft hands, he held them always. Warm, oh, so warm … A lifelong sunny dream … Waiting for that day, imagining how it would be … Their house should be by the seaside, under a great thick-boled plane tree, a house all of polished timber like that villa at Çengelköy on the Bosphorus, bright flowers blooming in the garden, a green lawn blending into the blue of the sea. That was the house he needed, nothing less would do …

  ‘I can’t,’ Selim would say to himself. ‘Not like this. And, anyway, won’t you wait for me? Won’t you wait if it takes a thousand years?’

  ‘I shall wait for you.’

  ‘Our house will be on the edge of the sea. Even if it costs me a million lira I’ll buy that land, and if Halim Bey Veziroğlu won’t sell I’ll kill him, I will. The land shall be mine and you, as a bride, shall enter the most beautiful house in Istanbul. My mother will come from Uzunyayla and so will all the Circassians. A magnificent Circassian wedding it’ll be … Everyone in their old native costume … Circassian horses racing … Yes, that’s how it must be, that’s how it’s going to be.’

  ‘But if we can’t … Does it matter? Is it worth waiting so long?’

  ‘It is, it is! Didn’t you say you would wait?’

  A gentle breeze stirred the line in his hand. Slowly he awoke from his dream and took a firmer grip. The line was taut. As he started to pull it in he felt how heavy it was and how the fish was struggling deep down. An expert fisherman knows the size and weight of a fish the instant it is hooked and some can also tell unerringly what kind of fish it is.

  ‘Come along, old father dentex,’ he said gleefully, wide awake now. ‘Let’s see how beautiful you are.’

  In another instant a largish dentex was splattering the smooth surface of the water. ‘I’ll build that house under the plane tree yet,’ he vowed as he unhooked the fish and threw it into a tin can. He bent down to rinse his bloodstained fingers, then cast the line again.

  There were times, and very often too, when it crossed Fisher Selim’s mind that the girl might have married, was old now, with children maybe, that she might have forgotten him. ‘She’s married, she must be,’ he would tell himself. Such was his relief then, as if a heavy load had been lifted off his back, that he sincerely believed this. But then …

  First her hand would rise out of the water, followed by the white cap with the red crescent, the flaxen hair blowing in the breeze, the large deep-blue eyes reproachful, fixed on him. ‘Foolish Selim, coward,’ she would cry. ‘You’re afraid, afraid! Here I am, right under your nose and you’re afraid even to see me. As for me, I have loved once and for ever and I shall wait. I shall wait …’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ Selim would say. ‘You’re right, Gülizar, I’m afraid. But I have no home, nothing, not a stitch on my back. How can I bring you here to this miserable stinking fishing boat? How can I touch you, Gülizar, how can I let my hand even graze your hair?’

  That’s what he would call her, Gülizar, when he was pleased with the way their conversation was going.

  He hauled in another fish, a dentex again, and his heart lifted as he felt the swell of the sea deep down with its massive weight of billions of tons. Seagulls were fluttering above. On an impulse he let down a paternoster line on the other side of the boat and in no time he brought up half a dozen scad which he threw to the gulls. Screeching, they swooped down over the water.

  The day was drawing to a close when Selim unhooked his last fish and tossed it on to the planking. It tossed and twisted, then lay shuddering between two ribs. He wound in his line and scanned the sea. There had been no sign of the big fish today, the fish he must capture and sell, so he could go to that wretched man and buy the land with the plane tree.

  Just let him say it again: ‘I won’t sell.’

  ‘What d’you mean, you won’t sell?’

  ‘I won’t, that’s all. It’s my land, isn’t it?’

  ‘So you won’t sell, eh? D’you think I’ve lived on dry weeds and rotting fish all these years and scraped and scrimped just so that in the end you should refuse me that land? Just so as to be branded a skinflint, a miser?’

  ‘But I don’t want to sell! I’m going to build a seven-storey block there with twenty-eight flats that’ll sell at more than two million each …’

  Just let him say it this time …

  ‘You won’t, eh? Look at me, my hair turning white already, the wrinkles on my brow so deep you can sink a finger into them! How did I get to be like this? For twenty-five years I didn’t eat or drink, dry bread and water was my lot. I had my eye on this land before you even bought it. For twenty-five years I’ve made that plane tree grow, caressing it with my eyes. Hey, Halim Bey Veziroğlu, you own land galore from Pendik to Izmit, from the Old Walls to Tekirdag, you own seven housing estates that bring in a goodly rent. You own commercial buildings, hotels, factories … Look, Veziroğlu, that land’s mine. You just name the price. Look Veziroğlu, we’re the same age, you’ve got children and grandchildren, all I have is a pair of blue eyes, wide, eager, watching and waiting for me … Waiting for me, flaxen-haired, no one’s ever touched her … Look Veziroğlu, you’ve got everything the world can give, but it’s you who are wanting … I’m a fisherman, I know all about the infinite variety of the sea, of its many creatures, of its moods and currents. What do you know but how to count money, to swindle and cheat and lie and amass still more money and land? Look Veziroğlu, those olive trees along the sea, it was I who planted them on that land twenty-five years ago. How could I have known you were going to buy it? Get this, Veziroğlu, nobody’s going to put a stone, a stick on that land without first taking my life. Here’s all the money I’ve saved …’ Veziroğlu counted the money quickly, then sat back in his armchair, threw back his head and laughed. ‘No, no, what you’ve got
here wouldn’t buy fifty square metres of my land …’

  A couple of years later Selim had saved some more, especially that last year when bonito sold for fifty lira the pair. He went to Veziroğlu again. But Veziroğlu laughed still more. ‘It’s a bare twenty-five square metres you could get with this money now,’ he said. Selim insisted, even pleaded with him, then stuffed the money back into his pouch and stormed out of the room. A few more years and he was back. He had caught a lot of fish, saved a lot of money. ‘Look Veziroğlu, those olive trees there, I planted them. I’ve waited this long for that land. It’s crying for a house, a bride, flaxen-haired. I’ve staked my life on it …’

  ‘Get along with you,’ Veziroğlu scoffed. ‘This money won’t buy ten square metres of my land at present-day prices …’

  ‘I’ll buy it, see if I don’t,’ Selim swore wrathfully, and he left, heaping curses upon Veziroğlu. No, he would never give up. If only he could catch the big fish, ah, then he’d go to him one last time, to that ruthless man. Let him refuse then … Just let him dare! Large yellow roses he would plant in the garden. There would be blue hydrangea blooming in the shade of the rocks, and a bed of poppies … In the little bay three fishing boats, all equipped with radar … Even in the stormiest weather he’d put out to sea and she would wait for him, her hand on her heart, dying of anxiety. Yes, her flaxen hair blowing in the fierce northeaster, she would be there as Selim’s boat left the shore to brave the raging waves …

  ‘Let him refuse this time! Just let him!’ Angrily he spat into the sea, pulled the cord to set the motor going and steered for Menekşe.

  The sun was sitting on the sea when he made land, a very pink sun, mauve-tinged, dyeing the surrounding clouds mauve-pink. From the west three planes glided through the sky like three drops of gold, blending into the pink, emerging again, leaving a golden vapourous trail in their wake.

  Three plainclothesmen were on guard in the coffee-house, working on the theory that a murderer always returns to the scene of his crime. They sat there, taking turns day and night, waiting for Zeynel. They were all three country lads and had been taken into the police force because, so they were informed, they were pure-blooded, unalloyed sons of a noble race. Convinced of this privileged condition, they nursed a strong animosity towards all Circassians, Kurds, Lazzes, and more particularly Jews, Greeks and Armenians. They felt a special hatred for Zeynel because he was a Laz. Just let them get their hands on him, they’d skin him alive, that Laz, fill his mouth with bullets … They never exchanged a word with the fishermen in the coffee-house. Casting supercilious looks at them, they sat apart in a comer, talking in whispers about how one day they would kill all the socialists and purge the noble blood of the Turkish nation. They had the strength for that. In the police force alone they numbered twenty thousand, avenging eagles every one of them, of pure and noble race, sworn enemies of those Kurds, Lazzes, Circassians, Jews and immigrants, especially the immigrants, and the Salonicians, those turncoat Jews … Yes, it was those people of impure blood who were ruining this country. But the Great Leader would soon give the word, and then … A very sound reckoning by their Great Leader and his Grey Wolves: three million people had to be killed, another five million banished, and thus Turkey would be redeemed. And then the true Turks would be brought over from Central Asia, in particular the descendants of our Kirghiz forebears.

  It was Mustafa Çelikdağ mostly, the tall fair-haired one with trousers pressed like a sword’s edge, who was talking, his mouth foaming as he did so. Before enrolling in the police force he had been a day labourer in Adana on the orange plantation of one of those self-proclaimed patriots, Türkoglu. The skin of his hands was still in shreds from the orange spikes.

  ‘Three million! Three million!’ he repeated, almost choking with excitement, his eyes bulging, the veins in his neck swelling.

  Ali Sarpoğlu was cool and mild-natured. He did not speak much. Only once he burst out as though struck by a fit of epilepsy. ‘Let me get at those leftists and you’ll see how I’ll cut their throats … One thousand, two, five, ten thousand … Very slowly, with a blunt saw …’

  Durmuş Yalinkat came from the barren Tektek Mountains of Urfa. For years he’d made a six-hour journey every day, toting water to his house on his back with never a murmur. Then his mother died. A whole week she remained in the house in the summer heat with a stunned Durmuş watching over the bloated, putrefying body, until some neighbours, alerted by the smell, took her away by force. Without his mother, Durmuş was left utterly at a loss, not even eating and drinking. In the end, the village agha managed to get him employed as a shepherd on the Ceylanpinar State Farm. Later he was conscripted for military service and then passed on into the police force, a promotion due to his pure blood … That was when he began to count up the people he would kill when the time came. First, he had a grudge against the agha who had made a mere shepherd of him. Then he dreamed of killing all the aghas in the country. The farm overseers and the tractor drivers who had looked down on him were also on his list, and even the other labourers, but the shepherds would be made policemen. He confided these ideas to a student at the crafts school who had the rank of captain in the secret organization he belonged to. This man had been arrested after killing a leftist student, but released on the spot. Very good, the captain had approved, those workers are all communists anyway, they should be wiped off the face of the earth … Yes, that’s what Durmuş Yalinkat would do. And this family name he hated, he’d soon change that. Yalinkat … Singlefold! Which low-down headman had saddled his family with a name like that, a name for paupers? To be poor was a despicable thing, all poor people were evil, all communists. They must be done away with. That’s what they had taught him on the police course. So he was waiting patiently, secure in his faith, for the day when those three million communists would be exterminated and the country purged at last.

  ‘Are you Fisher Selim?’ Durmuş Yalinkat asked sternly, when Selim entered the coffee-house. He fixed a frowning gaze on him as he had been taught on the course and as if Selim was one of the three million who had to be killed. He had learned all about Selim here in Menekşe.

  ‘Yes,’ Selim answered without looking at him.

  ‘You’re to go to the police station tomorrow to make a deposition.’

  ‘All right,’ Selim said.

  ‘And you too,’ Durmuş Yalinkat said, turning to me.

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  Just then Hasan Bey came in with his billowing mane of white hair. The policemen could not bear to look at him. How could they, when he headed the list of those they were going to kill soon, very soon? Hasan Bey, a poet who had been living for twenty years now in a shack in Menekşe, was their chief enemy, his name one of the first on the list of communists they had been given on the police course, and so they were the more astounded at seeing him here in Menekşe, loved and respected by all. How could these people speak to such a man so freely, unafraid?

  His hands trembling with excitement, Durmuş produced a notebook from his pocket and began writing down the names of the fishermen who greeted Hasan Bey.

  ‘What are you doing, Durmuş?’ Mustafa Çelikdağ asked.

  ‘I’m going to report these people to the chief of police.’

  ‘What good would that do?’ Mustafa Çelikdağ sneered. ‘It’s clear now how this man’s got away with everything all the years he’s been living here! You must put that police chief at the head of your list.’

  ‘I’m going to give this list to the Great Leader,’ Durmuş Yalinkat said, ‘so that when the time comes they shouldn’t forget these people here who dare to talk to that man. They’re all fishermen here, aren’t they, without a penny to their name, and that man’s been poisoning their minds all these years …’

  Mustafa Çelikdağ said nothing. What did it matter, let him report these miserable paupers, he thought. If they’d had any spunk, they wouldn’t have remained poor fishers all their lives anyway. Let them be killed too and the fatherl
and purged once and for all!

  ‘Tomorrow at ten o’clock!’

  ‘All right,’ I said. And I left with Selim, not even stopping for a glass of tea. We went to sit on a bench in the Municipal Park.

  ‘Did you notice the eyes of those cops?’ Selim said. ‘They’re crazy.’

  ‘Funny,’ I said. ‘I had the same impression.’

  ‘I’ve seen eyes like that before,’ Selim said. ‘They’re the eyes of a killer. I was scared. And for Hasan Bey most of all.’

  ‘I was scared too. What’s more, they’ve got the backing of the ruling party …’

  ‘You don’t say.’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘If I’d had a son,’ Selim mused, ‘these fellows would have killed him. Still, I wish I’d had children. To be childless, that’s the worst of all. That Zeynel now, these people’ll gun him down the minute they see him, the poor lad.’

  ‘But Zeynel tried to kill you too, that night.’

  ‘He wouldn’t kill me. He could have done it that night if he had really wanted to.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Because he doesn’t fear me. He’s the kind who only kills when he’s afraid. He was afraid of that Ihsan …’

  ‘But what did Ihsan do to him? Nothing.’

  ‘That’s not the point. Who knows what particular thing, what event can arouse fear in a man?’

  ‘Maybe one of Ihsan’s rival thugs or black-marketeers put Zeynel up to it …’

  ‘No, Zeynel’s not the kind to plan anything. Never mind. Let’s go fishing tomorrow, after the police station. Perhaps we’ll come upon my fish. And then …’

  ‘We’ll go straight to the Hilton, won’t we?’

  ‘Just let Veziroğlu refuse to sell me that land then!’