The Sea-Crossed Fisherman

by Yashar Kemal

  ‘You, Duran! You heathen, didn’t you try to rape the boy that time you took him with you fishing? An innocent harmless child fresh out of the Rize Mountains! And you a fellow-countryman of his too! The boy bit your hands and legs and fought till you had to give up. And you came to the coffee-house and told everyone about it, your mouth watering! D’you think the lad will let you live on after that?’

  ‘You, Temel! A relative of his! Didn’t you throw the mite of a boy out of your house into the mud when he was sick and almost dying? If it hadn’t been for Fatma Abla he’d have been dead now. All you can hope for is that he’ll let you choose your own death!’

  ‘As for you, Süleyman …’

  ‘I never did anything bad to him! Why, I gave him bread once when he was hungry …’

  ‘What about the time only a few years ago when we had that exceptional run of bluefish in the Bosphorus? Didn’t you take him out in the snow and a raging northeaster, didn’t you step on his hand with your hobnailed boot, breaking the bones? It’s you he should have killed, not Ihsan! Bless Fatma Abla, she took the poor boy to a bonesetter and he saved his hand. Think Zeynel Çelik’ll spare you?’

  ‘But it wasn’t my fault! How could I know his hand was there? It wasn’t on purpose …’

  ‘Shame on you, Süleyman! I was there. You got mad at the boy because he wasn’t pulling in the net quickly enough, so you stamped the heel of your boot down on his hand. He very nearly fell out of the boat from the pain. He could have drowned …’

  ‘Well, I gave him some money …’

  ‘You didn’t give him one kurush!’

  ‘And what about you, Fahri Bey? What are you going to do? Wasn’t it you who had Zeynel taken to the police station, accusing him of stealing your fishnets? Wasn’t it you had them beat him up there a full forty-eight hours?’

  ‘God, what shall I do now? He’ll kill me, Zeynel, he’ll skin me alive …’

  ‘Run, Fahri Bey, get out of here, go to Switzerland.’

  ‘Well, my friends, I for one never did anything to him. Now tell me, did I? Once, on a Bairam day he came to kiss my hand, so I gave him twenty-five kurush. He’ll remember that, Zeynel will. He wouldn’t forget, now, would he?’

  ‘No, no, he never forgets anything.’

  ‘There’s not another one like him.’

  ‘And to think that we treated him so meanly …’

  ‘The famous Zeynel Çelik, growing up destitute, sleeping winter and summer in whatever broken-down boat he could find! When we all had warm homes, he … In the cold …’

  ‘One morning I came to open up the coffee-house and what should I see! Zeynel, crouched against the door, numb with cold. I took him in and brewed some tea. Yes, it’s true, piping-hot tea I gave him. Zeynel would never forget that! He’s got a heart, he has. His teeth were clamped fast and he couldn’t open his mouth. So I took him on my lap and rubbed him all over and when his limbs relaxed I held the tea to his lips and made him drink it. Thirty-six hot glasses of tea he drank that day, Zeynel, and I never took one kurush from him …’

  ‘What a tale! You wouldn’t give a free glass of tea to your own father, not even if he were at his last breath! Liar!’

  ‘It’s you who’s a liar, dog, and all your brood too! When I think of all the teas you’ve drunk here for nothing …’

  ‘Wait! Stop! Don’t quarrel. Zeynel may be here this very night with his gang of thirty-six men. You can remind him then of how many teas you gave him and how you saved him from freezing to death!’

  ‘He’ll burn this whole neighbourhood, that’s for sure …’

  ‘But Fatma Abla? He likes her …’

  ‘He liked Fisher Selim too, but that didn’t prevent him from setting fire to his house, did it?’

  ‘Well, Fisher Selim shouldn’t have spit in his face!’

  ‘They say that Zeynel invaded the Security Department the other day with his thirty-six men and had all the cops lined up in front of him. No more forcing bribes out of the poor and needy, he said. And with one voice the cops all swore they wouldn’t ever again. Neeever! No more firing on poor shanty-houses, pulling them down, killing the inhabitants … And again the cops pledged their oath. Nee-ever … Zeynel made them swear to many many things. Never open fire on strikers, he said, they’re your brothers. And the cops vowed they wouldn’t. Neee-ever … Very well, Zeynel said, then I won’t kill you this time. I’ll spare you for your families, for your children … Thank you, Zeynel brother, the cops said. What’s more, he said, from now on you must stop chasing me, because you’ll never catch me anyway, and if you don’t keep your promises I’m going to plant forty kilos of dynamite under the Sansarayan Han and blow you all to kingdom come. So keep that in mind, he said, and went away … Elusive Zeynel, they call me, he said, remember that!’

  ‘They’ll never catch him.’

  ‘Even as a boy, it was clear how he would turn out.’

  ‘Once, I locked him up in the beach toilet and two minutes later there he was, outside!’

  ‘Once he’d pilfered a tray of fish from me, so I trussed him up, the pig’s ball – you know, his ankles bound and thrust through his arms, also bound. No, no, it was Osman my deck-hand who did it. No one can extricate himself from that knot when I do it – I mean when Osman does it … Then I took him to Kumkapi, plumped him down in Agop’s fishing boat and returned to the coffee-house here. And what should I see: Zeynel there before me, large as life! “Sorry, Zeynel,” I said. “Forgive me …”’

  ‘All the policemen in the world will never be able to catch him.’

  ‘Yes, but what are we going to do?’

  ‘We must go to Fatma Abla. Only Fatma Abla can soften him, if anyone …’

  ‘Once he’d been arrested, but I can’t remember why.’

  ‘Never! Not even once …’

  ‘But yes, you know nothing about it.’

  ‘Well, anyway, what happened then?’

  ‘They clapped double handcuffs on his wrists. And on his ankles too …’

  ‘And then? And then?’

  ‘They locked him up in the deepest dungeon with an iron door. But it was Zeynel Çelik they had to deal with, a real lion! When the policemen looked in after a while, the cell was quite bare, save for the shattered pieces of the handcuffs on the floor.’

  ‘No, no, they can never lock him up.’

  ‘They say he’s been giving away the money from the bank hold-ups to those people whose shanty-houses have been pulled down.’

  ‘Good for the lad! He always had a kind heart. You could do anything with him, he was so meek … And look at him now! Those awesome photos in the papers, those eyes flashing like lightning …’

  ‘He wouldn’t do anything to us …’

  ‘After all the years he’s been eating our bread …’

  ‘You see if he wouldn’t! He’ll come …’

  ‘If not tonight …’

  ‘Why, man, you made him spit blood all these years! Blood!’

  ‘Well, we didn’t kill him, did we?’

  ‘It was no more and no less than what every other working lad has to bear.’

  ‘If every one of them were to start burning houses …’

  ‘But Zeynel’s different. He’ll do it all right.’

  Zeynel had become the embodiment of all their sins. In their minds he was a mixture of all things: smuggler, saint, madman, gangster, good, bad, generous, cruel, courageous, timorous …

  Not only in Menekşe, but in all the coffee-houses of Istanbul, Zeynel’s adventures, his past life were commented upon and fresh details added, varying according to the temper and character of the talker. And all these new elements of the Zeynel Çelik legend somehow got into the newspapers and into the police reports and were read again, magnified a hundredfold, all over the town. Already itinerant story-tellers had taken up the legend. With just a cursory look at the newspapers of the day and at the photographs of Zeynel, they were off, relating with enthusiasm the exploits of the gangst
er.

  How this wondrous, fearful adventure would end nobody knew, nobody wanted to know.

  12

  The crumbling whitewash of a wall was the first thing he saw on waking. Then the spider dangling on a tenuous thread and creeping to its web in a corner of the ceiling. Strange, Zeynel thought, that it should make its own thread and use it to go wherever it wants. He could not for the life of him recollect where he was. His aching head fell back on the pillow.

  Suddenly he remembered the night before. He had been drinking in Yani’s tavern. A hundred lira he’d tipped the waiter and indulged in all sorts of tomfoolery, drawing his gun and shouting: ‘I’m Zeynel Çelik! Zeynel Çelik, they call me!’ And Yani, the wise old tavern-keeper, had taken him by the arm, saying, ‘Everyone’s Zeynel Çelik these days,’ and had led him off to the railway station to prevent him from making any more trouble.

  ‘I am Zeynel!’ Zeynel was yelling. ‘Zeynel Çelik! Is there anyone who dares to look askance at me? It’s me who killed Ihsan, me who robbed the bank, trussed up all those cops, me me me!’

  ‘All right, son,’ Yani had said soothingly, removing the gun from his hand and shoving it back into his belt. ‘You’re whoever you say, the greatest thug in Istanbul. You’re Zeynel Çelik …’

  ‘But I am Zeynel Çelik. Don’t you believe me?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I believe you.’

  ‘Then why don’t you turn me over to the police?’

  ‘Because the police will break every bone in your body if they take you for Zeynel Çelik. That’s why, my little lion,’ Yani had said and left him there, sitting on a bench at the station.

  Dimly Zeynel recalled getting into a train and out again at Florya, wandering through the woods, tumbling into the mud, being caught in a flood of neon lights, yellow, green, white, purple, floundering this way and that, dazzled, frightened, desperate, yet still yelling like a madman: ‘I, I, I am Zeynel Çelik, you bastards! Why won’t you believe me?’ Buttonholing whoever he came across. ‘Why are you laughing at me?’

  ‘Zeynel Çelik’s a giant of a man – you could hew three of the likes of you out of him!’

  ‘I am Zeynel Çelik, I, I!’ He pounded his chest. ‘It was I killed Ihsan. Everyone in Menekşe saw me.’

  ‘Pish! That’s a tall one!’

  ‘Those policemen … It was I …’

  ‘Pish!’

  ‘And the bank too … Look, look at this! This is what you call money …’

  ‘Pish!’

  ‘But I am, I am Zeynel Çelik …’

  ‘You, Zeynel Çelik? Ha-ha!’

  ‘Everyone calls himself Zeynel Çelik these days, son, or takes himself for Zeynel Çelik. Why, there must be dozens shouting in every quarter of the town that they are Zeynel Çelik …’

  ‘But it is me, I swear it!’

  ‘You poor lad! Don’t you ever read the newspapers? Zeynel Çelik trussed up fifteen cops, single-handed. He’s not an ordinary person. That bank now, single-handed! And Zühre Paşali … Single-handed! He’s a man who’s got the whole of Istanbul in a tremble. You can’t be Zeynel Çelik, lad, nor can anyone else we know.’

  ‘I am Zeynel Çelik, I tell you.’

  ‘Oh come off it! Stop pulling my leg.’

  ‘Look, those photographs, they’re not the real Zeynel Çelik …’

  ‘Piss off, will you?’

  The thundering of the sea sounded in his ears. His clothes, the revolver, the bullets in his pocket were all wet, as though he had plunged into the sea. The police were at his heels, Hüseyin Huri leading the chase. Those neon lights forming a circle, so blindingly bright, was it the Golden Horn? He fell right into the centre of the neon circle, into its darkest core. The police were firing away. Trapped, breathless, he tried to escape, but only banged his head against the wall of neon lights. ‘Here, here …’ Hüseyin Huri’s voice and the footsteps drawing nearer … Beyond the glare, pitch-black darkness and the crackle of gunfire. Again Hüseyin Huri’s voice. ‘Here, he’s here! I swear I saw him. Perhaps he’s jumped into the sea. He can stay under the water as long as he wants to and swim like a seabird.’ Zeynel was scrambling up the wall of light, slipping, trying again … Then he was in the courtyard of a mosque. The scent of jasmine drifted to his nostrils. In the darkness he broke off a sprig from a bush. It was an elder. The white flower of the elder is delicate, not to be touched even lightly or it will darken and fade … Zeynel crouched behind the tomb of some holy man, the sprig of elder he was afraid to spoil in one hand, the gun held ready in the other, trembling in all his limbs, determined to shoot down the policemen if they so much as stepped through the gate. The neon lights were far away now, but his eyes still ached as though they had been burnt. The darkness flowed over him, heavy, stonelike. He was still panting, a loud raucous rattle. My breath will give me away, my breath … Son-of-a-bitch Hüseyin Huri! To do this to me, your best friend … But I’ll get even with you, I will!

  The footsteps went past the mosque. They had not heard his loud breathing, they had not even looked in. Zeynel broke into a sweat. The sweat streamed from his pores as though it would never stop. He heard it fall from his hair, drip drip, over the marble slab of the tomb.

  When at last he ventured out into the street, an icy wind was blowing. His sweat dried in an instant and he shivered. Quickly he sprinted off downhill towards Ayvansaray, where large Laz fishing scows lay in the dry docks. Once there, he felt more secure. Three men were sitting at the foot of a lamppost, bent over some work they were doing. Zeynel lifted his hand to his nose to smell the elder flower, but it was empty, only the scent still lingered on his fingers. It vexed him to think he must have crushed it as he ran.

  One of the men in the pool of light sprang to his feet. ‘Who’s that?’ he cried.

  Zeynel did not move. ‘Only a fisherman,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, we thought it was the police.’

  ‘Yes, there are a lot of cops around here …’

  ‘You look as though you are from the Black Sea too …’

  ‘I am.’

  The man spoke with an even more pronounced Black Sea brogue than Zeynel. ‘Are you looking for some place to sleep, lad? Or is it the cops you want to avoid? Here, get into this boat. You can hide in one of the cabins and get some sleep. Nobody’ll find you there in a dozen years.’

  ‘But the cops …’

  ‘Don’t worry, they’re only after the gangster Zeynel Çelik.’

  Without another word Zeynel climbed into the dilapidated old hulk and drew the ladder up behind him. The smell of tar and pinewood mingled here with that nauseating Golden Horn stench.

  He was roused at dawn by the blaring of boat sirens and the clangour of hammering that shook the boat, the air, the whole of the Golden Horn, boom boom boom … He was dead tired. His body ached as though all his bones were being tom apart. The noise of hammering, the barking of dogs, the shouts of the caulkers, nothing could stir him out of his torpor.

  When he woke up at last the din at Ayvansaray was deafening. Thoroughly bewildered at first, memory returned and he took fright. The pit-like centre of the neon lights, the miry nauseating Golden Horn … There was an islet, a morass, lately formed right opposite Eyup … Should he go and hide there? In that small hut in the middle of the islet? Could he swim through this swamp-like water? Wouldn’t the bog drag him down? Hüseyin Huri’s voice, the pale, elongated faces of the policemen, all wet through, water dripping from their capes … Three times lightning flashed over Süleymaniye Mosque. One bolt forked into four streaks, flooding the mosque with light, only for an instant, the wet dome growing larger, rising higher in the sky, gleaming darkly. Only for a fraction of a second … A dog came sniffing around his feet, then started away with a yelp.

  Zeynel let the ladder down the side of the boat. The place was crammed with vessels ready for caulking and the fumes of burning paint, sharp, scorching the throat, drowned even the foul carrion stench of the Golden Horn. He threaded his way between the hulks and the hawk
-nosed men, steeped in grease, their faces black with soot, and emerged on the muddy street. Nobody paid any attention to him. At Hasköy he got into a dolmuş, then changed to another one going to Beyoğlu. Stroking his moustache, he fretted at how sparse it was. It would surely grow thick soon, but it would never be black like the one in the newspaper photographs …

  In Beyoğlu he stepped into one of the large ready-to-wear stores and stood looking about him, a little diffident, though not half as shy as when he had entered the Konyali Restaurant.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’ A young man about his own age, with a long, pointed, yellow moustache, was at his side. Zeynel smiled. Ah, if only this young man knew who he was! How frightened he would be!

  ‘We’ve got some suits here just your size. If you’d care to look.’ The young man led him to a counter and produced three different suits. Zeynel looked at them, then at the young man.

  ‘You don’t like them?’

  Zeynel shook his head. The other drew out some more suits, but none seemed to please his client. Suddenly, he had a brainwave. ‘D’you like mine?’ he asked. ‘We’ve got one exactly like it. Let’s see now, are we the same height?’ He came to stand beside Zeynel. ‘Straighten up, please. Don’t stoop, hold back your shoulders. Yes, by Jove, the very same size! I’ll get it right away. Identical cut, identical pattern …’ He ran off to another department and was soon back with a suit just like his own. ‘Here we are, this one’ll fit you like a glove, it will.’ He opened a door into a tiny cubicle lined with mirrors. ‘This way, this way, you can try it on in here.’ Almost pushing Zeynel in, he shut the door on him. Inside, Zeynel felt more confident. He took off his clothes, but when it came to the shoes a fetid odour filled the cubicle. I must buy some socks, Zeynel thought, and underclothes and … He put on his shoes before opening the door.

  ‘Like a glove!’ the fair-haired salesman exclaimed, turning him this way and that. ‘As if it had been made to measure … And you look so well in it too.’