The Sea-Crossed Fisherman

by Yashar Kemal

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Zeynel asked.

  ‘Father …’ Dursun Kemal blurted out. ‘He’s killed my mum.’ He choked and burst into tears.

  Zeynel tore off into the darkness. Dursun Kemal fell after him. On they rushed, Zeynel in front, the boy following, through dark alleys, bright streets, leaping over ditches, fences, walls, into a garden with very tall trees, where the sound of voices made them sprint off, north this time into a pool of light, and away into a field. Zeynel’s foot caught in a bramble and he sprawled to the ground. A whiff of wet turf rose to his nostrils. His heart was pounding in his chest, in his neck, legs, belly, through his whole body.

  ‘Wait, Abi,’ Dursun Kemal panted. ‘Let’s stop here. There’s no one. It’s quite deserted …’

  After a while Zeynel was able to speak. ‘Why did he kill your mother?’

  ‘He killed her,’ Dursun Kemal said brokenly. ‘With a dagger. Stabbed her twenty-one times …’

  ‘But why?’ Zeynel insisted.

  ‘He killed her,’ the boy repeated. ‘He was going to kill her for years anyway. The neighbours told him you’d been to our house, and also that you were Zeynel Çelik.’

  ‘Where is he now, your father?’

  ‘At home. Crying … Crying, he says, because you’ve killed my mum … So the police are lying in wait for you. I heard them. They’re going to kill you the minute they see you, without warning. That friend of yours, he was there too, that maniac, what’s his name – the one with black eyes and thick eyebrows …’

  ‘Hüseyin Huri.’

  ‘That one. The police questioned me too. They wanted to know where I’d met you. “On the bridge,” I said, “as I was fishing.” … So don’t go anywhere near the bridge. It will be crawling with plainclothesmen. Sirkeci too … Everywhere … Ready to shoot you on sight, they’re so afraid of you.’

  The boy talked on, but Zeynel heard nothing. He saw only a room spattered with blood. Crimson blood all over the place and a dagger stabbing again and again, craunch, craunch … And he heard the woman’s screams, rending the skies.

  ‘Father dragged me to the back of the house, without the police or anyone noticing. He held the bloody dagger to my throat. “Speak,” he said,? “you saw it, didn’t you? With your own eyes you saw Zeynel Çelik kill your mother. Or didn’t you? If you didn’t, I’ll kill you …” “I saw it,” I said, I lied. The police questioned all the neighbours. All of them said you had killed her. I’m afraid. He’s going to kill me, my father …’

  Zeynel sprang up and dashed away. Dursun Kemal rushed after him. ‘Go back, go back!’ Zeynel kept shouting at the boy. ‘Don’t come after me, don’t! They’ll kill you too, along with me … Please go …’ The boy paid no heed and stuck close to his heels.

  Suddenly they emerged into a brightly lit square. As though stunned by the light they both stopped short. Zeynel looked back and met Dursun Kemal’s eyes, wide with fright. ‘Don’t … You mustn’t come with me,’ he gasped out. ‘They’ll kill you … Kill you …’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ the boy said in a moan. ‘My father’s going to kill me …’

  Zeynel produced three wads of banknotes from his pocket and thrust them into the boy’s hands. ‘Look, take this. It’s a lot of money. You can go anywhere you want with that money.’ And he was off again.

  Dursun Kemal tucked the money into the inside pocket of his jacket which he buttoned up carefully, then he scurried on after Zeynel.

  ‘Are you still there?’ Zeynel spoke in a tearful voice. ‘Look, they’re going to kill me and you too with me … Go back, you goddamn fool!’

  Dursun Kemal only stood there, five paces away, as though riveted to the ground.

  ‘Look, I’m begging you. Stop following me. If the cops see us together they’ll know at once that I’m Zeynel …’ And off he ran.

  Dursun Kemal hesitated a little, then spurted after him as fast as he could. It was pitch dark. They went trampling through a cabbage patch and came to a hothouse, a long structure in which a stove was burning and carnations bloomed. Zeynel ran round the hothouse and down to a wooden fence which he pushed down with a crash. Dursun Kemal shot through the opening and suddenly realized they were in Yildiz Park. ‘Stop, stop, Zeynel Abi!’ he called as loudly as he dared. ‘The cops … All the cops of Istanbul … They’re here! Here in this park!’

  Zeynel stopped in his tracks. ‘Where? Where?’

  ‘There! Down there in that house,’ Dursun Kemal whispered. ‘They sleep there, a thousand cops, two thousand, three thousand …’

  Zeynel ran to the gates of the park. They were closed. A hubbub broke out. They escaped up the dark slope along the wall. By what route they reached the broad, tree-lined Ortaköy Boulevard, he never knew. It was raining, a misty drizzle.

  The Beşiktaş boat landing … A brightly lit ferry … Zeynel was inside. A web of light streaked by, another boat with the dark shadow of the Bosphorus Bridge falling over it. Houses like fairy lights all along the shore … Their reflections in the water, torn apart by the boat … All eyes on him, wide, insistent … People from the four corners of the boat converging upon them …. Run, go away! Gimlet-like, the searchlight boring into the night, illuminating the curtain of misty rain … Water gushes over the deck. The boat is sinking, rising … Slipping, slipping, the three striped nylon bags gripped tightly in his left hand … A wide net of misty rain, a far-distant net, swaying vaguely behind the curtain of misty rain, a vast blue moon-net from Rize town, hung out between two huge plane trees … And behind the net three ship’s lanterns. The boat, its prow uplifted, is heading for the Black Sea. A wooded village … A rocky coast, the thundering Black Sea, the racing waves pounding the shore, madly … And the quails, tired, dead, falling in hundreds into the nets, into the water, into the light, into the dark night … All over the Black Sea, basketfuls of quails … Lured as they are crossing the sea, hastening to get to the lights with a supreme effort of their weary wings, often unable to reach land, dropping into the water …. As they strive to cross the boundless billowy remote Black Sea … Fuming embers, fires dotting the shore, star-like … The greasy odour of roasting quails floating in the wind … A yellow motor car … Charge what you like, but just drive on, brother. Thousands of headlights, thousands of cars, shrill whistles, the city lights suddenly extinguished … On the Bosphorus a boat, shimmering bright, a single boat in the pitch-black dark … And Hüseyin Huri’s eyes, huge, glinting blackly in front of the policemen … Stop! Stop there. If you come after me again I’ll shoot you. Think they won’t kill you all the more if you stay with me? Are you mad? My God, it’s full of cops everywhere I go …. The boat is gliding through the night like a ray of light, through the misty drizzle, the quails raining down upon it … Run, Dursun Kemal, they’re going to kill you!

  ‘Look, don’t come another step, Dursun Kemal!’ Zeynel whipped out his gun. ‘I’ll kill you too like …’

  Like I killed your mother. Killed her, killed her …

  He stopped a passing taxi. Dursun Kemal jumped in after him.

  The police again at Kumkapi, firing their guns … And the fumes of grilled meatballs … I’m dying of hunger, Dursun Kemal whispered. Die dammit, die, Zeynel hissed.

  ‘There! Hüseyin Huri! There … Kill him!’

  Three guns exploded simultaneously under the Ahirkapi lighthouse. Zeynel and Dursun Kemal shot away uphill towards Topkapi Palace. The door of an old wooden house was open. They barged in and a dog scurried out, barking in fright. It was quite empty inside and they sank into a corner.

  The house leaned against the walls of Topkapi Palace. In front of it was the courtyard enclosure of Haghia Sophia and the rumble of the city resounded deeply from the walls of the old basilica, as though against a craggy mountain. Suddenly, Zeynel was on his feet, running. ‘They’ll find us here. They’re bound to.’ Only when he was in front of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque did he stop. Walking over to the Egyptian Obelisk in the old hippodrome, he sat down on its railings. Dursun K
emal came and perched opposite him on the iron railings of the park. As soon as he saw him, Zeynel streaked off round the back of the mosque.

  ‘Don’t come after me. I’ll kill you. Go away!’

  ‘I’m afraid …’

  In the lumber depot they fell asleep on the piles of planks and boards. On waking and sitting up Zeynel banged his head against the zinc roof of the depot, which reverberated long and loud. The bundle of money was clamped in his hand. He had not loosened his grip even in his sleep. He gasped when he saw Dursun Kemal beside him.

  ‘Go away,’ he moaned, ‘go, don’t follow me any more. They’re going to kill me and you with me. Run, save yourself at least …’

  And taking his head in his hands he tried to think.

  16

  The sea had not yet paled when Fisher Selim set out that day. A delicate dawn-heralding breeze was softly blowing, to fill a man with joy. Fisher Selim’s heart tingled. The old familiar seagulls accompanied his boat, gliding with outstretched wings above him. Day would be dawning by the time he reached Hayirsiz Island and the sea would then become snow-white, luminous. It was not always like that before sunrise, but that’s how it would be today. Selim knew it from long experience, from the mountains opposite, the clouds, the haze over Istanbul city, the swell of the sea, its special hue, the reflection of the star-studded sky.

  Sitting at the tiller he gazed at the city trembling behind the smoky haze, its shores and hills, domes and minarets, apartments and neon lights, now vanishing, now floating into view.

  As he came to Hayirsiz Island the sea began to whiten. It stretched about him, a boundless snow-white expanse, perfectly smooth, without a wrinkle. At such moments, Fisher Selim would remain motionless, his whole being blending into the sea, the mountains, the fading night sky, never stirring until the first rays of the sun beamed up from behind Selimiye and Üsküdar, illuminating the bronze crescents of the minaret tips. Afterwards the east would turn purple, then pink, and finally in a blaze of light the sun would appear and the leaden domes and the windowpanes would flash and flare. In an instant Istanbul would be drowned in brightness. And as the city with its tall minarets was stretching and rousing itself Fisher Selim would get ready his baits and hooks, casting his first line when the sea turned gradually from white to mauve to a luminous blue, prepared to wait for the first live creature to strike the sharp, crooked, merciless steel.

  A pinkish-blue light licked the surface of the water like a breeze and died out. Today there was no bursting radiance over Istanbul. The light sprung out from over the Bosphorus, Leander’s Tower, Moda promontory and, spreading over the sea like a slow sheet of liquid, passed beneath Fisher Selim’s boat with a violent thrust, moving on towards Silivri and Tekirdag.

  Fisher Selim began reciting the magic prayer learnt from his grandmother in that very ancient Caucasian tongue, a prayer he had never really fathomed, which spoke of eagles, steep crags, noble horses. It was not a prayer he resorted to often, only when he was in a tight spot or when he wanted something very badly, and always before going to Halim Bey Veziroğlu. Today he said it very slowly as he selected the most attractive, sweet-smelling bait he could find and fixed it on his largest hook.

  There was a slow swell in the sea now, a breathing that came from deep down, and its colour was changing gradually from blue to green, a rich green that glistened like lush spring grain waving in the sun. In all these years I’ve been fishing, Selim thought, only very few times have I come across such a sea … Green grain, billowing, a crystal sea hit by the sun, breaking, reflecting, glistening, breaking again, a spangled undulation shedding its light into the sky, a riot of sparks … The rocks of Hayirsiz Island too were drowned in the sparkling green brilliance. So was Fisher Selim’s face, his hands, the fishing line, the mosques and minarets, the whole of Istanbul city, breaking, shattering, swimming behind a green haze like a dream.

  Fisher Selim concluded his prayer and let the line run gently through his fingers into the green water. This was not a hook for small or even medium-sized fish. Today he was expecting his own fish, the very large one. Today the weather, the sea were just right for the big fish. Today the sea was a bountiful field of grain, growing knee-high, rolling, flashing in the sunlight.

  Halim Bey Veziroğlu, that grasping son-of-a-bitch, may earth fill his eyes! Those dull eyes … Shrivelled like those of a dead sheep, eyes that bode no good, that carry the symptoms of some fatal disease …

  Selim’s practised hands gave the line a few gentle tugs. If he caught it today … Last time, the hook had been too small, the line not strong enough. But this time there was not a fish in the Marmara Sea that could resist his line. He would have the right amount of money then. And Halim Bey Veziroğlu must get it into his head that after this fish …

  Halim Bey Veziroğlu … Death was stamped on that sallow face. The yellow, elongated, lifeless hands, the sagging trousers, the purple lips, even the hairy ears, purple … The balding head with one or two wisps of hair combed across the bare patch … Lethargic, tired of living, yet at the mere mention of land those dead sheep’s eyes come to life, they gleam, and it is as though an entirely different man has taken his place. Each time, he takes the money, counts it, counts it again, makes a few reckonings, stares at it, then with a deep sigh, ‘Oh dear, Selim Bey, land prices have shot up again and your money’s not nearly enough. I’m terribly sorry, Selim Bey, but how can I sell you that land of mine, every inch of which is worth its weight in gold, for the paltry sum you offer? Let’s just wait a little longer. Oh, I understand how it is! Well, you can root up those trees of yours if you wish. But I’d be sorry about that, Selim Bey, very sorry. How beautifully they’ve grown! I went there yesterday and saw them, green, bursting with life. Yes, Efendi, it’s a pious deed to plant a tree, especially an olive tree. They’re so long-lived and their fruit is said to be one of the fruits of Paradise. What trouble you must have taken, how you must have toiled to raise them! And I was told – you know, I’ve just bought another piece of land – that the trees on it were also planted by you! Yes, I know your love for trees, and very proper it is. To breed a tree is as good as breeding a child. Well, then, let’s be patient, Selim Bey. I don’t say I won’t sell to you. It’s just that I don’t usually sell land. I only buy it. I like to buy land, Selim Bey. I own the best in Istanbul, all with tall grown trees, and sometimes I wonder whether you’ve planted them all. We’ll see, Selim Bey, the land won’t run away, don’t you worry, and I won’t sell to anyone else …’

  A little breeze ruffled the green surface of the water. The sunlight reached deep deep down, a welter of light billowed on the sea bed, dark green in places, flashing bright in others. Fisher Selim could see his white line all the way down.

  The hospital … Her soft breasts, slightly downy, warm against his face … The very memory was enough to drive him into the wildest ecstasy. Especially on such days, floating on a calm sea, his line deep down in wait for the big fish … Letting himself drift into a warm paradise … How many many times had he tasted this bliss … His greatest joy in life was these moments when he could summon up the memory of her flaxen hair, her blue eyes, her woman’s smell. And his worst torment was when something broke the spell and the dream receded. Yet even then, like wine whose dregs have settled, like a shimmer ing mist, the dream was enhanced by distance. Sometimes for a month or two the flaxen-haired vision eluded him and he would turn frantic. For once a man has had this dream he will be the happiest of creatures all his life. He will not see the light, nor the sea, the blue, women, fish, the smell of fish, of the sun, he will not see or smell or feel these things, he will blend into them with his whole being, smelling of sun more than the sun itself, such wild intoxication that he will never sober up in a whole lifetime. Bewitched …This was Fisher Selim, caught for ever in a spell, his back turned on reality, safe in his dream …

  ‘Who wanted this of you, Selim? Ah, Selim … Who asked for a house under a plane tree, a garden? Perhaps a shanty, a singl
e small room would have been enough for her …’

  Hadn’t Selim considered this in all those years when he was deceiving himself, waiting at the gates of Cerrahpaşa Hospital waiting, waiting, then taking to his heels as the white-capped nurses began to troop out, rushing down the street as though a savage beast was after him, jumping into the first taxi he encountered, putting out to sea as far as he could get? Of course he had, but he could not forsake that dream of paradise, that ineffable thrill. A white bed, smelling clean of soap, and she sitting beside him, naked, her breasts white and firm, the curve of her hips, his hand on her belly … She is stroking his hair, leaning over him, warm, redolent, embracing him, embracing Selim, burning … That is why Selim is always alone, solitary, on his fishing expeditions, talking to no one, unwilling to allow his dream, his sacred vision, to be spoiled, still determined to build his house there, under the plane tree at Çengelköy, to buy the land from Veziroğlu and, if not, from Zeki Bey. Yes, he will build it and, if nothing else, fill it with her warm fragrance.

  A screeching turmoil of seagulls over Hayirsiz Island roused him from his reverie. Hundreds of gulls were wheeling round and round in a large swarm above the rocks, and more and more gulls were joining them, their mad cries growing shriller and shriller.

  ‘Something’s up,’ Selim muttered. ‘A school of large fish must be after some smaller prey.’ And indeed he soon spied a glittering flurry way over there in the water, thousands of fish leaping into the air, vanishing, reappearing a little further off, sparkling in thousands, fading, then up again in a quivering scintillation on the green sea. ‘Yes, something’s up. We’ll see soon enough.’ And he kept his eyes on the fleeing, frisking shoals, alert now, for these were no small fry, but quite big fish, jumping perhaps as high as one metre out of the water.

  Abruptly, the gulls ceased their frenzied clamour and dispersed, scattering this way and that, to reassemble again in a long row stretching from the island far out into the distance. The sun was quarter-high now. The silently swaying sea had changed from green to grey, then to blue, and the brightness of its depths had died away.