The Sea-Crossed Fisherman

by Yashar Kemal

  Whenever this incident came to his mind, he would be deeply troubled. What if his fair love, like the Greek girl, grew tired of waiting? What if she said, ‘Damn your land and damn your mansion, Selim, I’m an old woman and those plane trees you’ve planted have reached up to the skies by now’? What if she just went away like the other one? No, this one would never do that, he’d tell himself every time. She’s too much in love with me. This year, yes, this year, this very spring I’ll build that house … Just have a little more patience, my rose, my beauty … Look, my love, how Master Haydar’s ready to start the minute I give the word. And Leon, the best bricklayer in Istanbul … And the glazier Cemal from Sivas? ‘I’ll fit all your windows with crystal, Selim,’ he tells me. The masons, the craftsmen, they’re only waiting for me to say go and then they’ll build me a mansion in a mere couple of months. Just let me save some more money, only a little more …

  Then one day news reached Fisher Selim that made him fly to Çengelköy. The owner of the land, that white-haired patrician, had died and all his estate had been bought up by Halim Bey Veziroğlu! Selim went straight to him.

  ‘That plot of land there with the plane trees, it’s mine,’ he said. ‘See, I’ve planted seven olive trees there.’

  Taken by surprise at first, Halim Bey Veziroğlu had some papers brought to him and consulted them with meticulous care. Then he turned to Selim, who had remained standing. ‘We have no record of your owning land anywhere around here. That place you’re speaking of is ours. There never had been any dispute over it. Isn’t there some mistake?’

  ‘No mistake,’ Fisher Selim replied. ‘That land’s mine. Seven olive trees I’ve planted on it. You can go and see for yourself. And how they’ve grown too!’

  ‘But you can’t take possession of land by just planting trees! Have you got the title deeds? Have you effected any payments at all?’

  ‘I’m going to build a mansion there.’

  ‘A mansion?’ Halim Bey Veziroğlu collected himself. ‘So it’s a mansion you have in mind? Won’t you take a seat, sir?’ And as Selim perched gingerly on the edge of the leather armchair: ‘May I ask what your business is, sir?’

  ‘I’m a fisherman.’

  ‘A skipper?’

  ‘A fisherman.’

  ‘Oh … Where?’

  ‘In Menekşe.’

  ‘But there must be some mistake.’

  ‘No mistake at all. I was going to buy the land from that old man. I’d been looking for such a place for years. It’s just right for her, just right …’

  ‘I see,’ Halim Bey Veziroğlu said. ‘Well, there’s no harm done. We’ll see what we can do for you, sir. Will you have a cigarette?’ And he held out a chased-gold case. Fisher Selim took a cigarette and lit it from the flame of Halim Bey’s massive gold lighter. ‘Don’t worry yourself, Skipper. The land’s yours whenever you want to buy it.’

  And with that assurance Fisher Selim left Veziroğlu’s office, his heart at rest.

  The sea undulated gently beneath us. We must have been on one of Selim’s most prolific seamarks for, as soon as our baited hook was down, the line tautened and we kept pulling in fish after fish. Here and there the blue of the sea turned to purple and to green. Little white clouds were scudding swiftly on towards Istanbul, casting their shadows over the water. Fisher Selim was deep in thought, his nostrils flaring like a horse’s after a fast gallop.

  Suddenly, he fixed his steel-blue gaze on me. ‘This spring,’ he said, ‘I’m going to buy that land, and if he doesn’t sell it to me I’ll kill him.’

  ‘Killing the man won’t get you the land,’ I remarked.

  Selim was irritated. ‘I know that,’ he said. ‘But Veziroğlu has to believe I’ll kill him. Then he’ll sell.’

  ‘He might, indeed.’

  He shook his head. ‘Ah, but he’s a sharp one, that Veziroğlu. Wouldn’t he know that I could never kill a man?’

  ‘He would …’

  ‘What can I do then?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Seems to me that in the end I’ll have no choice but to kill the man.’

  ‘God forbid! What kind of talk is that? We can find other places just as good, if not better, provided we have the money. What about trying right here in Menekşe?’

  He looked at me hopefully. ‘With a view of the sea? And with plane trees? Large enough for me to plant some olive trees?’

  ‘There’s one already planted with olives …’

  ‘You mean Zeki Bey’s?’ He was delighted.

  ‘Of course. Or part of it, at least.’

  ‘That part with the clump of plane trees.’

  ‘Zeki Bey would willingly sell to you.’

  The sun had sunk over the horizon, a glowing purplish pink globe, drowning sea and sky in a purple radiance. Now and again an aeroplane would shoot through this purple glow, a golden starlike droplet, leaving a long pink scintillating trail in its wake.

  ‘Are you game?’ Fisher Selim said, laughing.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘For what?’

  ‘I cast out some nets this morning before you came, for goatfish. Want to help me draw them in?’

  ‘Of course.’

  It did not take long to reach the nets and we set to work at once. The nets were teeming with fish, frisking, dancing, leaping back into the water.

  ‘We did well not to put this off. Fish shouldn’t die in a net.’

  ‘But they’re dropping back into the water.’

  ‘Never mind. There’ll still be more than enough for us.’

  Fisher Selim was silent as we started back for Menekşe. Above us a group of seagulls, wings outspread, were racing us to the shore. A snow-white steamer, all its lights ablaze, was gliding on towards Çanakkale.

  ‘It has to be the coming spring … Under those plane trees … White it shall be, my mansion, and bright like that.’ Selim pointed to the ship. ‘Like the first day … Yes, the very first day, that’s how it’ll be.’ I didn’t ask what first day. ‘I’m getting on,’ he continued. ‘If I don’t do it this spring … You can’t expect a girl to …’ He sighed. ‘Five years or six at the most … Next spring …’

  ‘Why not now?’

  ‘The land … Now … Will you come with me to Veziroğlu? Then we’ll try Zeki Bey.’

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  I had always wondered but never asked Selim whether this boat was the one that had belonged to Hristo. It looked so new and the engine ran like clockwork. If I had asked, he might have answered confidently, with pride even: ‘Of course it’s Hristo’s. See how I’ve cared for it all these years? Like the apple of my eye, so that if Hristo were to come back one day and ask, “Where’s my boat?”, “Here, Hristo, I’d say, take your boat. Like the apple of my eye I’ve looked after it …”’ Why hadn’t Selim sold this boat and built the house he longed for so much? Even now it would bring in a goodly sum. But Selim would never do that, not if it was Hristo’s boat. He would never betray a trust. So, for years, Fisher Selim had been waiting for Hristo. He was not dead, Selim was sure of it. He was alive, in Athens. He would return one day, yielding to his yearning for Istanbul. Selim knew those Istanbul Greeks. They so missed the city that they always came back here to die. And so would Hristo one day.

  ‘There’s an abundance of fish this year.’

  ‘It’s going to be a good year for fishermen.’

  ‘Come the spring …’

  15

  Hüseyin Huri, that bastard, lost to all sense of comradeship, was leading the police search for Zeynel. A gun at his waist, a police cap on his head, he went prowling through the town just like a foraging dog, sniffing at the foot of walls, bushes and trees, under bridges, in empty fishing boats and railway wagons, in hollows of the old city walls, in burnt-down palaces and ruined houses, abandoned mosques, forgotten Byzantine churches, underground cisterns, crumbling aqueducts, unfrequented woods on the Bosphorus hills, city-line boats, in short, all the haunts of vagrant city waifs. He kne
w every one of Zeynel’s habitual resorts and it was he who had tipped the police off about Lame Hasan’s house. But for Lame Hasan’s quickness, it would have been all up with Zeynel. Yes, it was that bastard, that treacherous snake, Hüseyin Huri … How Zeynel regretted not having killed him!

  Every morning Zeynel bought the newspapers and read word for word the account of Zeynel Çelik’s adventures, thrilled to the core, admiring the handsome, broad-shouldered man in the photographs, the wavy hair, the hawk nose, forgetting that this was not Zeynel Çelik at all, then suddenly freezing at the realization that the gangster they were talking about was he himself, the Zeynel Çelik who had killed that husband and wife in Bebek, who had led a gang of twenty-one men all armed with automatic weapons, who had held the police in check at the Harem landing-stage for exactly four and a half hours and only escaped when troop reinforcements arrived, who with his men had raped four young girls in Çemberlitaş, who had a sweetheart in Beşiktaş … That’s what they said, a very beautiful woman of noble stock, the daughter of pashas. Zühre Paşali was her name. Her son had told the police that Zeynel was so madly in love he’d be sure to come for her before skipping across the border to Greece or Bulgaria. Two other mistresses Zeynel had, one in Aksaray, the other in Menekşe, and the police had the houses of all three watched day and night, particularly Zühre Paşali’s. The police had also been given important information about Zeynel by Hüseyin Huri and by those of the gang who had been captured. And also by the son of his sweetheart who went by the name of Durmuş Ali Alkaplan. Yes, the police would soon get hold of that bloodthirsty gangster who was also involved in the smuggling of arms and narcotics …

  Who was this Zeynel Çelik? Who was the man in the photographs? Could there be two Zeynel Çeliks operating in Istanbul? The woman in Beşiktaş, that was true, the bank robbery, that was true too. And trussing up the police … But Durmuş Alkaplan, that was wrong, it wasn’t the boy’s name … What about the couple murdered in Bebek? That must be the work of the other Zeynel Çelik, as must be the clash with the police at the Harem landing-stage. And what about the policemen reported wounded in the fight at Ayvansaray? They had indeed given him chase that night among the Laz scows docked for caulking. Hüseyin Huri had been at their head like the police-dog he was, but all Zeynel had done was to lie low between the boats, while they shouted and fired at each other in the dark, until he could slip away to hide in the lumber depot behind the Cibali cigarette factory, the one place Hüseyin Huri did not know about. It was the girl, Mido, who had shown it to him one night. There he had slept peacefully all through the day among the pleasant smells of pine and cedar and beech, just as if he were up in the high mountains, and as soon as darkness fell he had slipped out, cat-like, through the heaped lumber and made straight for the Lale tripe restaurant in Beyoğlu.

  Strange. While he, Zeynel, did nothing but stroll around the city, unmolested, that other Zeynel Çelik was hard at it, killing, robbing, raping, smuggling, visiting his mistresses, making the whole of Istanbul tremble.

  Suddenly, his eyes fell on a headline in one of the tabloid newspapers. ‘Gangster’s hoard uncovered.’ Without stopping to read the rest, he started up and hailed a taxi. ‘Quick, quick, to Yedikule, near the bus terminal,’ he said. Luckily the road was free of traffic and they were soon there. His hands in his pockets, whistling nonchalantly, Zeynel joined the motley crowd milling around the bright-coloured buses. The terminal was drowned in a cold, dizzying radiance. Coloured neon signs flickered above the bus line offices. The noise of engines, of many voices, of hawking vendors, all merged in a booming resonance. Somewhere near the entrance six policemen stood in a group and one of them was watching him covertly. Without changing his stance, Zeynel walked on, still whistling, past the six men and into the Edirne bus office. He emerged a little later with the same unconcerned air and made his way to the gates. Once outside he broke into a run and came to the wall of the cemetery, at the back of which was the Golden Gate, the largest in the old Byzantine ramparts. A sea of tombstones, long, short, slanting, tumbledown, inscribed or bare, stretched from here to the gate. Suddenly, he caught sight of the policemen again. They were crouching behind a cart. He did not stop, but kept to the road leading to the sea. At the railway workshops, he turned in towards the carpet-cleaning plant, and retracing his steps along the wall of Yedikule Castle dungeon he came again to the cemetery wall. The policemen were still there and inside, under the vault canopied by the fig tree, something stirred and a brass button glinted briefly.

  ‘God!’ Zeynel said. ‘Oh God, my money’s gone …’ No one but Hüseyin Huri knew of that crypt beneath the vault in the old walls. Of course, he must have blabbed to the police about this, their most secret hideout. Why, oh, why had he been such a fool as to put all his money in that hole? Hüseyin Huri was a sharp one, he could ferret out the devil himself from his lair. Hadn’t he already combed through all their other hideouts? And where would the gangster Zeynel Çelik keep his two and a half million but in one of his secret caches? He didn’t have a father who had safe-deposit boxes, did he?

  Worried, bitterly dispirited, he made his way down to the shingle on the shore. Ah, you blockhead, you stupid Laz, he reproached himself, ah, you crazy idiot, to go and hide your money just where Hüseyin Huri would be sure to find it! When you could very well have entrusted it to Lame Hasan. But no, no … At the sight of so much money Lame Hasan would have had a fit, especially when he learnt it was the loot from the bank. And what about Fisher Selim? Why, he’d accept the money and then sit upon it. Entrust Fisher Selim with money! He would at once buy land with it and plant a few trees, yes, as much land as that money could buy. Some said he had quite a pile put by, that he had killed the Greek, Hristo, and taken all his money and his boat too …

  Zeynel had robbed a bank, all right, but who would know it was him? Wouldn’t everyone attribute this to the other Zeynel, even the murder of Ihsan? A good thing the fellow’s name was Zeynel. But for him, it would have been all up with this Zeynel. What about the folks in Menekşe? Would they go to the police when that other Zeynel was caught and say, ‘That’s not the one who shot Ihsan, who robbed the bank’? No, no, they’d be much too scared. If that Zeynel was to be feared, so was this one. Hadn’t he killed Ihsan in full view of all of Menekşe? Just let anyone try to denounce him!

  Hüseyin Huri …? He stopped short on the shingle. If the money wasn’t there, the first thing he’d do was to kill him. Killing Ihsan had been easy. Just a cry and he’d dropped from the chair and died. With Hüseyin Huri he would make a real killing of it, ripping out his bowels, slashing his throat … And as for the money, he would just go and rob another bank. Weren’t there bank robberies every day in Istanbul? Suddenly, he shivered. Could he ever even go near a bank again? The very sound of the word made his blood run cold.

  He turned back and ran all the way to the Golden Gate. The cart was still there, but the policemen had gone. He flew over the wall and in an instant he was at the entrance to the vault. Something made him start. Like lightning he whipped out his gun.

  ‘Throw down your guns or I shoot,’ he hissed.

  Three voices rose from the deepest corner of the crypt. ‘We surrender, Zeynel Abi …’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘Don’t you recognize me, Zeynel Abi?’

  With his left hand Zeynel drew out of his pocket the tiny torch he had bought that morning and shone it in the direction of the voice. There, in the corner, three little boys were huddling on top of each other, their eyes blinking with fright.

  Zeynel was relieved. ‘For a moment I thought it was the police,’ he exclaimed.

  The oldest of the boys stepped forward. ‘D’you know why we’ve come?’ he said. ‘Hüseyin Huri’s squealed on you.’

  The two other boys drew nearer.

  ‘He’s told the cops about all your secret places …’

  ‘And, what’s more, he’s set all the boys after you.’

  ‘The cops have giv
en them money … Sweets …’

  ‘They don’t beat us up any more when we sleep at the railway station.’

  ‘They’ve promised to give a thousand lira to the one who finds out where you are. And a new suit and shoes too …’

  ‘What about you, Rifat?’

  ‘Well …’ Rifat hesitated.

  ‘Me too,’ Ali blurted out.

  ‘Me too …,’ Celal murmured.

  ‘And which of you would get the thousand lira?’ Zeynel asked.

  ‘Me,’ Rifat said.

  ‘Why you?’

  ‘My grandmother’s sick,’ Rifat said. ‘Bedridden. There’s no money at all for the doctor, for medicines. I was going to give it to her.’ His clothes reeked of urine.

  ‘Where are the cops?’

  ‘They’ve gone now. Four of them were guarding the gates, two were under that fig tree and seven more in that big tomb out there.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘They gave us some money …’

  ‘What am I to do now? If I leave you here, you’ll be with the police in a moment.’

  ‘No, Abi, I swear to God that …’

  ‘No, Abi, may my two eyes fall out if …’

  ‘No, Abi, would we ever squeal on you?’

  ‘Listen. I’m going to take you into the cemetery and tie you up there. I’ll give you a lot of money, much more than the police, if you do as I tell you. All right?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes!’ the boys cried joyfully.

  ‘You’ll say I took you prisoner. I’ll have to gag you, though. Have you got handkerchiefs?’

  ‘Yes, we have. Gag us, Abi. Tie us up too.’

  ‘We need some rope though.’

  They pointed to their trousers, which were held up by cords instead of belts.

  ‘All right then, let’s go. No trying to escape, mind, or I’ll shoot you down.’