The Sea-Crossed Fisherman

by Yashar Kemal

  ‘Selim, come back! You’ll die!’

  Selim pressed on, the water now reaching his chest.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ Emin Efendi shouted to the young men standing around. ‘Get him out. His wound’s getting wet. He’ll never recover.’

  ‘Maybe he wants to die,’ said Ibo Efendi. ‘Leave him alone.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Emin Efendi yelled. ‘He’s not in his right mind, that’s all.’

  A few young men threw off their clothes and plunged into the sea after Fisher Selim. Seizing him by the arms, they hauled him to the shore. He was swaying on his feet. Emin Efendi took his arm and led him gently past the Seagull Casino, under the railway bridge and up to the shanty-house.

  ‘Has anybody got the key to this house?’ he called to the crowd that had accompanied them and was thronging outside the garden hedge, oblivious of the driving rain, completely bemused by what was taking place.

  ‘I have,’ Fatma Woman said. She came forward and unlocked the door. They went in, followed by a few others.

  ‘You light a fire, Fatma Woman,’ Emin Efendi said. ‘Here, in the grate. Don’t look this way. I’m going to undress this man and put him to bed.’

  He stripped Selim naked and dried him with an old towel he found lying about. Then he dressed the still bleeding wound and made him get into some underclothes.

  ‘I must get a doctor,’ he said. ‘Make him drink some tea, Fatma Woman, until I come back.’ He was a thin, dried-up little man.

  The crowd outside assailed him, consumed with curiosity.

  ‘He was taken into the operating theatre as soon as we got there,’ Emin Efendi explained. ‘The bullet had tom through him and the operation lasted a very long time. Then the doctors came out and said, “Well, Emin, you’ve no need to worry, your patient’s out of danger.” And then in the morning, I heard a loud hubbub coming from Selim’s ward. As I was going to see what was up, Selim came dashing down the corridor. I grabbed his arm. He gave me such an extraordinary look, a mad, wild, blazing look, and flung me against the wall. The orderlies gave chase. No one could stop him. He knocked them all down, rushed out into the garden, and jumped over the wall, just like that, at one go! He was bleeding so much … Nobody could tell me what had happened, nobody knew. Like a wild, wounded horse he bolted out of the hospital, Fisher Selim …’

  ‘You go and get a doctor,’ Fatma Woman called from the doorstep. ‘And take a taxi. I’ll pay for it.’

  ‘I’m going, I’m going,’ Emin Efendi said hastily.

  The crowd had not yet dispersed when a taxi stopped before the shanty-house and Doctor Orhan Suna, a familiar figure to Menekşe folk, emerged holding his large bag, followed by Emin Efendi.

  Fisher Selim’s convalescence was long and difficult. And all through it Fatma Woman and indeed the whole of Menekşe nursed him with care and love. Strange how they had changed towards him, these people who, when he was in good health, had lost no chance to spread malicious gossip about him. Now, they all joined together to help him recover. The choicest fish, the earliest fruit and vegetables, the freshest yoghurt, the richest honey and cream were for him. Doctor Orhan Suna visited him every afternoon, cleaning and bandaging his wound with his own hands. And Fatma Woman heated up water and bathed and scrubbed him as though he were a little child.

  When Fisher Selim got up from his bed at last, he was as thin as a rake. Not once did he even look at his villa on the hillside. It was the neighbours who now watched over it. Sülü Yürek, a gardener employed by the Parks Department of the Municipality, tended the garden, planting it with the loveliest flowers from the town parks, so that it became perhaps the most beautiful garden in Istanbul. It was as though the villa and the garden were no longer Selim’s but the common property of all of Menekşe. People were very proud of it, though they would have been happier still if Fisher Selim had overcome his obstinacy and moved into it.

  Silent, abstracted, he would drift into the coffee-house, then, without a word to anyone, wander off along the Florya beaches to Yeşilköy or Çekmece, returning to shut himself up in his shanty-house, not to be seen for days, until one morning he would reappear in the coffee-house, his eyes dull, downcast, his face pale and weary.

  On rainy days he seemed to revive. He would walk along the shore in the rain, his face lifted to the sky like a bird, and when he entered the coffee-house, his clothes dripping, people could discern a vague smile on his lips.

  The first sign of recovery was when he went down to his boat early one morning and busied himself with his nets. All through his illness, the other fishermen had taken good care of the boat, giving it a new coat of paint, polishing the sun-bleached boards and cleaning and oiling the engine.

  Towards evening, as the sun was going down, he put out to sea. When he returned after having sailed a mile or so, his face was smiling.

  The change in Fisher Selim after this was incredible. Suddenly, he was talking to people, visiting their homes, helping the needy, spending money like water. There were no bounds to his prodigality. And every evening he assembled some young people, fishermen, deck-hands, factory workers, labourers and took them all to Beyoğlu. There they drank and made merry, returning in the small hours of the morning to continue their carousing around a lighted fire on the shore. Sometimes their revels would take place out at sea. And so Menekşe began to relive those generous, bountiful times of long ago. Once again piles of embers glowed on the shore and the appetizing fumes of grilling fish filled the air. Once again the little children could sandwich a fish in a huge loaf and devour it with the grease running from the comers of their mouth. The whole of Menekşe from seven to seventy rejoiced with Fisher Selim. Every day was a festive occasion, a time for happiness, for laughing, for dancing the lezginka to the tune of the accordion-players Fisher Selim used to bring over from the Flower Market in Beyoğlu.

  And that was not all. One day, Selim bought for Laz Mustafa, who had nine children and could never make ends meet, a brand-new boat seven metres long, and a three-hundred -fathom fishing net too. When Laz Mustafa heard this, he rushed to the seashore and there, whirling round and round, running this way and that, beside himself with joy, he finally knelt on the ground and began to kiss the sea and the earth in turn, again and again.

  There was no end to Fisher Selim’s bounty. He gave dowries to young girls and wedding-money to young men. He presented Fatma Woman with a knitting machine. He had Kadir Agha’s boat repainted and a new bunk put in, for Kadir Agha had not slept anywhere else in the past forty years. He had people’s tumbledown shanties repaired. Menekşe had never seen such affluence before. Fisher Selim was making everyone’s wish come true. And with such exuberance, such a store of love as they had not had from their closest kin.

  ‘What a lot of money he’s spending!’

  ‘There’s no end to it.’

  ‘For years and years he scrimped and saved …’

  ‘Never spending a mite …’

  ‘And now he’s meting it out.’

  ‘And so generously too!’

  ‘That big house of his, standing there …’

  ‘Ever since he’s come out of hospital, he’s never looked at it once!’

  ‘He’s got something against that house.’

  ‘That palace …’

  ‘It’s because of the mermaid.’

  ‘The mermaid who left him for the seven seas …’

  ‘But she’ll come back …’

  ‘Fisher Selim will take her from the sea, her golden hair streaming down her back, and bring her home. He’ll lead her through the flowers and hand her the golden key. “Open the door, mermaid,” he’ll say …’

  ‘“Open the door, mermaid! Mermaid, open the door …”’

  ‘It’s when she left him and vanished beyond the seven seas that he …’

  ‘Emin Efendi knows what happened at the hospital, but he won’t tell.’

  ‘Close as a clam, he is.’

  ‘Why did he run away from that hospit
al?’

  ‘And in pouring rain too!’

  ‘Bleeding …’

  ‘Why did he run into the sea?’

  ‘After whom?’

  ‘Who shot him out at sea?’

  ‘Why did he weep so much all through his illness?’

  ‘Who was it he kept raving about?’

  ‘Repeating, “It wasn’t her, it wasn’t her …” Who was he talking about?’

  ‘Who was she?’

  ‘He was waiting for someone, Fisher Selim.’

  ‘Forty years he waited.’

  ‘He lived only for her.’

  ‘She never came.’

  ‘Forty years he waited, on tenterhooks every day, and she didn’t come!’

  ‘So, then …’

  One day, maybe six months, maybe a year later, Fisher Selim’s storm blew over as suddenly as it had begun. The feasts and revels by the sea came to an end, the endless merry-making, the shouting and laughter that had echoed through Menekşe day and night. It was as though such a man had never even passed through Menekşe. The place seemed empty, desolate. Autumn leaves drifted over the dusty asphalt road along the sea. Only a few battered old cars were to be seen now. The press of cars trying to get through on the jam-packed asphalt, the itinerant vendors, the stands of fruit and vegetables, the melons and water-melons piled high all over the place, the crowds of bathers swimming or sunning themselves on the beaches and roads – they had all gone, vanished together with Fisher Selim.

  The shanty-house was deserted. Not once did anyone see its door opening or anyone going in. But at the big house the gardener, Sülü Yürek, continued to tend the garden. It was the apple of his eye, growing lovelier, more splendid as time went by, the flowers proliferating, blooming with a different colour, another fragrance, every day of the year. Sülü Yürek had given so much time to this garden that he quite forgot his other job, which he lost, and his old-age pension as well. But he did not care, he was so proud of what he was doing. All the gardeners in Istanbul were helping him. Whenever Sülü Yürek spotted a new flower in a park or a garden, the very next day it would be blooming in all its glory in Fisher Selim’s garden. And the Menekşe folk would line up along the wall and gaze in wonder at this magical sight. It was like a miracle bestowed on them, a source of gladness. And the lovely villa too … Fisher Selim? Maybe such a man, the lover of the golden-haired mermaid, had passed through the place and gone no one knew where. Maybe such a man had never even come to Menekşe …

  Months later, Fisher Selim reappeared in Menekşe. He was unsteady on his legs and even more gaunt than before. His sleeves were rolled up and the reddish hair on his arms had turned white. He hesitated on the threshold of the coffee-house, then went in and ordered some tea, as though he had never been away and had only just come in from the sea. So much so that everyone was surprised when Ibo Efendi struck his cane three times on the floor and said with a smile, ‘Welcome back, Fisher Selim.’

  He was like a man who has nothing more to do with this world. Withdrawn, wrapped in thought, he wandered along the sands, always alone, unseeing, sometimes even stepping into the water up to his knees, then with the same sluggish gait returning to the shore. He never once took a look at his new house, nor even at his boat, moored at the mouth of the little stream. When he entered his shanty-house, he would lie prostrate on the bed, motionless, his body numb, bereft of life, deaf to every outside sound, sunk in a whirling void, a dream …

  A copper glow irradiated the sea deep deep down. The fish, crabs, lobsters had all taken on a copper hue. Coppery waves rippled over a blue sea. The sun, rose-purple, had stopped, suspended on the horizon. Rose-purple clouds floated about it, staining the water purple. And under the water a rose-purple orb hung over the sparkling, coppery seabed, yet still encompassed half the sky. Aeroplanes glided like golden bullets through the sun, flashing rose-purple in and out of the clouds …

  The square in front of the University was awash with blood. A bomb exploded in the crowd and all hell broke loose. Dust and smoke swirled about the moil of shrieking people and shots rang out. A few policemen bestirred themselves. Ambulances rushed up. Aeroplanes swooped in and out of the pools of blood in a steely purplish glow. Steel-purple rays of sunlight struck the pools of blood and more bombs exploded. A young girl was spinning round and round, one eye hanging from its socket. Seven dead, many wounded … So many … In Ankara, a baby shot dead in its mother’s arms … The woman running through the streets, steeped in her dead baby’s blood, screaming, rushing through the crowds, then laying her child on the pavement, rocking to and fro, wailing her lament …

  Emerging from his house as though sleepwalking he would wend his way to Çekmece and eat something in a restaurant without even knowing he was eating. Then his feet would take him to the Florya plain, away from the coast, and from there he would gaze at the far-stretching Marmara Sea which seemed strange to him now, as did the trees, the birds, people, everything … His was a vegetable existence now. All his ties with the living were severed, all his senses deadened. Only one wondering thought linked him to the world. Those large concrete apartment buildings that were being erected among the yellow patches of thistles and the ancient hollow mastic trees, on this plain which since time immemorial had been the haunt of myriads of tiny migrant birds … What would happen to the birds, where would they land when they returned this autumn? With wide eyes, he stared at the workers in the half-finished buildings, crawling about like ants, then at the aeroplanes roaring overhead. Bewildered, he read the papers, not understanding anything, then stumbled into bed again, only half-awake, slipping into the night, groping a bottomless void.

  From a Murat car, machine-guns were levelled, vomiting fire. People fell screaming around him, steeped in blood. A youth lunged at him, eyes bulging, quivering. His hands were at his throat like a vice, he was struggling, twisting, squirming, he could not shake himself free. Sweating, he dashed out into the night, down to the edge of the sea and into the water, then crouched under the green light of a street lamp, wet through, panting.

  The whole city – its people, its trees and waters and fish, its cars and minarets and birds, everything – was rushing in confusion, trampling over each other, frantic, in search of some refuge, pouring over the filthy noisome asphalt between Florya and Menekşe, which always stinks of rotting refuse and seaweed and sewage, thronging Süleymaniye Mosque, overflowing into its courtyard, all waiting in one common trembling dread for the bombs that were to be thrown, the bullets raining fire … Buses went past, packed tight with people, their eyes wild. Deafening howls accompanied the crackle of gunfire, the blast of bombs. A whole city, running madly, the old and the young, in a desperate rush for safety. And emptiness suddenly …. Not a single human being about, no cars, no buses, no trains …. Only stray cats and dogs prowling around the dustbins … Dogs roving through the empty streets, with up-curled tails … Cats trembling on the walls and roofs, with arched backs and bristling fur … Empty, too, the seas and skies, not the smallest skiff to be seen, not one aeroplane, not even a bird in the sky … And without warning they appear, the black-clad men, holding automatic rifles, their faces callous, their hands bloody, their three-cornered eyes hard. They come, snarling through their long canine teeth. And more black-clad men troop into Eminönü Square, carrying heavy sacks which they empty in front of the Valide Mosque, piles and piles of books … They douse them with cans of petrol and set fire to them. Tall flames shoot up as high as the minarets of the mosque, and the black-clad men whirl in and out of the flames, uttering wild shouts, while the black, burnt pages of the books swirl through the air, over the sea, sticking to the empty walls and the sky. And the black-clad men, angry, foaming, start firing at the roving dogs, the stray cats. And soon the fire-blackened streets are strewn with dead cats and dogs, and shrivelled pages of books come drifting down into their streaming blood …

  The black-clad men have moved away. And now, thousands of fishing lines hung down into the sea, sparkli
ng with millions of tiny pinpoints of light. The purple sun sat there, at the bottom of the sea, in a coppery glow. All around the flashing fishing lines swarms of fish surged to and fro, hooked by the thousands, darting off, only to encounter fresh lines let down from above and to be hooked in their turn. Fisher Selim, at the bottom of the sea, broke out in a sweat. He lifted his head and came face to face with Halim Bey Veziroğlu. Blood-steeped dolphins and black-clad men shooting at them, punching black holes into their heads, blood spurting from the black holes … Some of the dolphins leaped high into the air with baby-like squeals and fell back into the water. Others spun round and round like millstones, arching, tracing wheeling circles in the red-foaming sea. And the black-clad men kept firing away at the dolphins and at the jam-packed buses along the streets. A rumbling tumult rose from the city, a loud clamour … Cries of children being butchered rang through the bottom of the sea.

  The surface of the water was strewn with rinds of melons and water-melons, with dead dogs and cats, dead bodies, dead fish, battered cars, charred books, a putrefying mass no boat could force a passage through. And Fisher Selim was fleeing, panting. Rasping sounds issued from his strangled throat. The strong hand of his pursuer grabbed his arm.

  ‘Stop, Fisher Selim! Stop!’

  ‘Who are you?’ Fisher Selim shouted.

  The purple sun, spreading over sky and sea, rested on the sea-bottom and the millions of fish-hooks hung glittering, waiting for the fish huddled in a corner of the sea, mountains of fish piled on top of each other, eyes bulging with fear, millions of steel-purple fish eyes fixed on the blinding flash of the purple fishhooks …

  ‘Stop, Selim! Halim Bey Veziroğlu’s been looking for you for days now. He needs you badly. And me too … And lots more fishermen, old experienced ones from the Bosphorus, from the Marmara, from the Black Sea … Stop, Selim, stop! “I’ll give him anything he wants,” Halim Bey Veziroğlu said. He’s had fishing experts, skippers, brought over from Europe. “But it’s Fisher Selim I need,” he says. Stop, Fisher Selim, stop!’