Labels and Other Stories

by Louis de Bernières

  The family arrived at Fethiye early on Tuesday morning, just as planned, having passed the night in a modest pansiyon in Göcek. It was with pleasurable anticipation in their hearts that the couple drove along Suleyman Demirel Bulvari at ten miles an hour, with, in front of them in the middle of the road, an ancient tractor being driven doggedly by a stoical old man in a flat cap. It was with even greater pleasure that they beheld that city of white awnings which constituted the bazaar, erected overnight on either side of the canal, and somehow always the same.

  The bazaar had, by a natural process of evolution, divided itself into the part that catered for the tourists and the part that catered for the locals, and it had grown extremely large. The part for the locals consisted mainly of some two hundred metres of stalls devoted to fruit and vegetables. Fat shiny aubergines were heaped up next to beans with pink pods, sweet peppers in all sorts of odd shapes and in every shade of green, okra, potatoes, spring onions, and succulent red tomatoes that actually tasted of tomatoes, and which were therefore quite unlike anything that you might find in a supermarket in Britain. Some tables specialised in olives, with a dozen different varieties heaped side by side on vast aluminium plates. There were stalls that sold white cheeses from capacious goatskins that still had the hair on them. You could buy honeycomb, chickpeas, pistachios, sun flower and melon seeds, almonds, henna, tea from the Black Sea, saffron, chicks and ducklings, tall brass spice-grinders, apple-tea, mountain tea and lemon cologne. Robert particularly loved the tool stalls, where you could buy elegant axe heads, hammers that double as chisels and nail-pullers, scythes and sickles, tack for horses and donkeys, folding clasp knives, cooking knives and heavy lengths of rusty chain. Both of them loved the tables laden with cookery implements, and could not resist the conical brass coffee pots or the double-decker teapots. In this part of the market the buyer was mainly left in peace, the prices were absurdly low, and one could drink sweet apple-tea amicably and with no obligation with the owner of each stall, until one’s stomach was bloated and gurgling with it.

  The tourist part did contain the stalls that sold bolts of cloth for the women to make their own skirts and headscarves, but otherwise it was an extraordinary bedlam. It had one very long straight section from either side of which branched many culs-de-sac of greater or lesser length. It was packed to the uttermost limit with tourists who artlessly believed that this was the authentic part of the bazaar, unaware that it was really a sort of commercial hellhole created specifically in order to take advantage of them.

  The day was insufferably hot, and the conditions under the canvas alleyways were predictably appalling. It was quite airless, there were far too many people, and the harassment from the vendors would have been enough to drive even the Buddha to distraction. At the entrance was a loud fat woman who was selling gaudy, poor quality jewellery, and unpractised Europeans who had not yet learned the art of polite but adamant refusal were sucked in by her torrents of words as she forced them to try on earrings that they didn’t want, until finally they could only escape by buying them. Susan palmed her off almost as if she were a rugby player, and the family forged ahead into that awful purgatory, whose one positive aspect might be that at least the overwhelming heat and jostle reduced Vinnie to abject submissiveness. His parents dragged him between them, and he came along miserably and sullenly, his eyes blinded by sweat.

  A boy appeared in front of them, dancing about as he demonstrated a small brass toy that was something like a cross between a yo-yo and a spinning top. ‘Very nice,’ said Robert, pushing ahead. A man on the right suddenly and very loudly played the first inane bar of ‘Happy Birthday to You’ on a small toy reed instrument that sounded somewhat like a kazoo. A man on the left imitated birdsong on a whistle that was half filled with water. A very tall blonde Scandinavian girl walked past in a state of almost complete undress, a neat cut across the back of her shorts displaying a delectable white buttock. The local men stopped what they were doing and watched her pass with expressions of delighted amazement on their faces, their lust so absolute and ingenuous that it was almost respectful. All around, and at every stall, came Turkish voices trying out the only English they knew: ‘Hallo, how are you? Look, look, excuse please, very nice, very cheap. Engleesh? Where you from? Look, look, very nice, excuse, excuse, you look. Why you not look? Apple-tea? Here, I give you apple-tea, you look, OK? Too much good things! Looking is free!’ A man selling nylon mats called out, ‘Turkish carpets, you want Turkish carpets?’ and Robert astonished him by saying in Turkish, ‘Sorry, I don’t have a house.’ ‘You speak Turkish?’ demanded the man, addressing Robert’s retreating back, as if speaking Turkish were against the local bylaws governing the conduct of foreigners. On her side of the aisle Susan fended off a persistent gentleman who purveyed counterfeit Chanel perfume, and Robert, on his side, fended off another who sold counterfeit Cartier watches.

  ‘We’ve got to find Vinnie a complete set of clothes,’ said Susan.

  ‘Well, that won’t be difficult,’ replied Robert.

  ‘I want to go home,’ moaned Vinnie, completely overwhelmed by the suffocating atmosphere and the discomfiting press of people. His parents tightened their grip on his hands.

  They found a stall manned by a jovial character dressed in a maroon cardboard fez and a gilded waistcoat covered in small mirrors that had been made in India. ‘Better than Harrods!’ he was bawling. ‘Cheaper than Tesco! Lovely jubbly! All genuine fake! No problem! Nice and cheap! I give you change next year! Everything free … tomorrow!’

  Laid out before him were passable imitations of all kinds of designer wear, with the logos of Lacoste, Reebok, Adidas or Nike shamelessly emblazoned across them. ‘Ah,’ said Robert, ‘real Turkish clothes.’

  Susan began to pick through the clothing, and the vendor descended on them like a vulture scenting a wonderfully ripe cadaver. He began to sift through the garments himself, thrusting items into Susan’s face. ‘Look, very good, very nice, very cheap!’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Susan, ‘I am going to buy a lot of things anyway.’

  The man in the fake fez endured a pang of disappointment over not having a chance to exercise his powers of pestiferation, but he soon left Susan and Robert in order to resume his wauling: ‘Better than Harrods! Lovely jubbly!’

  They bought four shirts, three pairs of trousers, seven sets of underwear, seven pairs of socks, and, from a neighbouring stall, three pairs of shoes, all at two-thirds the price originally demanded. From the stall next to that, and for the ridiculously low price of two million lira, they bought a cheerful plastic sports bag in the red and yellow colours of Galatasaray football club. Into this they put all the clothing they had bought, and then they struggled back through the crowd. Susan bought a pretty white headscarf, trimmed in blue, and then at last, back out in the sunlight, they found a refreshing breeze blowing in off the bay. ‘Thank God we’re out,’ they said, both at once.

  ‘My God, Robbie, your shirt is absolutely soaked!’ exclaimed Susan, as he mopped at his brow with a handkerchief.

  ‘It’s like a bloody greenhouse in there,’ said Robert, and Susan peered down her front.

  ‘I’ve got sweat running down between my boobs,’ she said. Vinnie spotted a blind man playing a tragic lament on the szass, and darted off in order to remove some of the hundred-thousand-lira notes that charitable passers-by had placed in his hat. Robert stopped him just in time, and, grasping his son’s hand firmly, took him to the public lavatory on the green behind the promenade. There he made him change into Turkish clothes, bundling the British ones into a carrier bag. In the meantime Susan went into the women’s and put on a long flowery skirt that would cover her legs. She then donned one of her husband’s long-sleeved shirts, buttoning it at the cuffs and collar, and tied on the headscarf. ‘You look quite the Turkish, babe,’ said Robert when they met again outside.

  They found the car in the side street where they had left it, and drove out of town. Vinnie began to create a ruck
us in the back. ‘Where are we going?’ he demanded. ‘I want to know where we’re going!’

  ‘We’re going to Oenoanda,’ said Susan over her shoulder.

  ‘Oh no,’ he cried, ‘I bet it’s a hot stony place! I don’t want to go to any more hot stony places! I hate hot stony places! I want to go home! Take me home!’

  ‘It’s an ancient ruined city,’ said Robert, in a neutral tone of voice.

  ‘It’s a hot stony place,’ whined Vinnie, adding, ‘I’ve got a headache.’ A little further on he complained, ‘I’ve got a tummy-ache,’ and his parents ignored him, as if he were a bad tune on the radio. ‘Bumhole, bumhole, bumhole,’ he chanted. ‘Mummy is a bumhole, bumhole, bumhole.’

  Oenoanda is a derelict city on the top of a high, steep mountain, and it is completely off the tourist route because there is no road up it, and the climb to the peak requires leg muscles of spring-steel. To reach it one has to drive some thirty kilometres past Kemer, through some remarkably majestic countryside, and then take a right turn on to a dirt track that leads ultimately to the tiny, ramshackle hamlet of Incealiler. The ruins boast some remarkable tombs and a very impressive theatre, but at the foot of the mountain there are no cafés where you can buy Coca-Cola and chip butties. There is Incealiler instead, which has never emerged from the nineteenth century and has never wanted to. It has resolutely remained in the middle of nowhere, the authorities have continued to be more or less ignorant of it, and it is the sort of place where the women scuttle into their houses at the mere sight of an unfamiliar man, pulling their scarves across their faces as they go. Rare visitors find themselves confronted by the head-man, the Mukhtar, who, standing alone in the middle of the street like the sheriff in an old western, assesses the visitors and judges whether or not they are worthy of hospitality. He is a tall, dignified, semi-shaven, tattilyclad but redoubtable gentleman who exudes a kind of moral force and confidence that is completely extinct in the modern European.

  Susan and Robert drew up in their car, leaving behind them a feather of beige dust that hung in the air along the track as far as the eye could see. The Mukhtar fully expected the foreigners to be the next worse thing to the devil, and was therefore thoroughly disarmed when Robert extended his hand and intoned, ‘Salaam alekum.’ The Mukhtar shook his hand and smiled, exposing dark brown, pointed stumps where once his teeth had been. ‘Alekum salaam,’ he said, adding the inevitable, ‘Cay?’

  No sooner had Robert settled in the cay-house than all the other men begin to appear, irresistibly motivated by that chronic nosiness which is so deeply engrained in the Turkish national character. They nodded their heads, saying ‘salaam alekum’ as they entered, and immediately set about discovering how many children their visitors had, where they lived, where else they had been, whether or not they liked Turkey, and how much their watches cost.

  Robert and Susan had discovered the place on their first trip to that country, when they had been more adventurous, more easily seduced by the romance of vanished civilisations and melancholy ruin, and less concerned with the well-being of hire cars in general. Last time they had not drunk tea until they had been up the mountain and back down again, but back then there had been no Vinnie. On this occasion Susan brought him to the cay-house, but modestly and fittingly declined to join the men, drinking tea on her own, and hiding under her headscarf in the shade of a fig tree. The cay-house consisted of no more than a hard mud floor beneath an open-sided shelter whose roof was constituted of bamboo fronds cut from the banks of a nearby river, but it was nonetheless the social focus for the community’s men. A couple of them produced the inevitable backgammon board, and Robert attempted to make conversation with the Mukhtar, who was determined to maintain his position as principal host and poser of questions.

  They made the usual exchanges, and then Robert reminded the Mukhtar that many years ago he had guided the young couple up the mountain in order to look at the ruins. The Mukhtar searched his memory, and smiled. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said, ‘I remember you now. Your wife screamed when she saw a snake.’ Robert was amazed at the man’s accurate recollection, and immediately felt that an intimacy had been established between them. ‘My wife is scared of snakes,’ said Robert.

  ‘Most women are,’ replied the Mukhtar, ‘and so are most men. It was the snake that removed us from paradise.’ He nodded towards Vinnie, who was biting his own fingers and looking somewhat wide-eyed with uncertainty, and said, ‘You have a very pretty child.’

  Robert’s Turkish was far from fluent, but he had picked up just about enough from tapes and from their frequent visits to Turkey. He had taken the precaution of working out in advance, with the aid of a dictionary and a textbook, exactly what it was that he had to say. His pronunciation would be ludicrous and his grammar eccentric, but he thought he would be able to make himself understood. He bided his time until the moment was correct.

  The Mukhtar stuck his cigarette squarely in the front of his mouth and seized Vinnie under the armpits. He deposited the child on his knee and draped one arm over his shoulder, using his other hand to continue his smoking and tea-drinking. Vinnie sat there tamely, rolling his eyes and pulling faces, but otherwise well behaved, and Robert took a deep breath and summoned up his courage. ‘Do you think you could look after him for a while?’ he asked.

  ‘Look after the child?’ asked the Mukhtar, furrowing his brow.

  ‘Yes.’ Robert nodded. ‘My wife and I have to go away and do … something.’

  ‘How long?’

  Robert spread his hands in a devout gesture, and said, ‘As God wills,’ adding, ‘A short time, inshallah.’

  The Mukhtar looked at Robert unblinkingly, as if assessing the state of his soul, and then, without further question, and indeed without any word at all, he got up and crossed the stony street to his house. He lifted the latch, opened the door a fraction, and called out, ‘Mehmet!’ A smiling, ragged, barefoot, grubby, shiny-haired and bright-eyed little boy of about Vinnie’s age appeared, and his father said a few words to him, motioning towards Vinnie with a loose wave of his arm. Mehmet came forward boldly and took Vinnie’s hand. He had the same unquestionable air of command as his father, and Vinnie got up as if compelled. Hand in hand the boys disappeared up the slopes of the mountain, because Mehmet wanted Vinnie to see some especially big tortoises. Vinnie kept looking behind him, over his shoulder, but Mehmet gave him no choice, and in a few moments he was gone from view, disappearing behind the clumps of oleander.

  The Mukhtar gazed after them and smiled. He had fond memories of running about on the mountain when he was a little boy, before adulthood, parenthood, authority and Islamic sobriety had imposed dignity upon him. ‘Very good,’ he said.

  ‘Very good,’ repeated Robert. He waited as long as he dared, and then drained the last few drops of his fourth cup of tea. He offered the Mukhtar a five-million-lira note, but it was waved away without consideration. He rose to his feet and shook hands with all present, repeating ‘Allaha ismarladik’ to each one, and receiving the customary ‘Gule gule’ in reply.

  With a very odd feeling rising up in his heart he trod the stones back to the car, smiled reassuringly at Susan as she strapped herself in, and opened the back door. He took out the sports bag with the clothing in it, undid the zip, and got out his wallet. He removed one hundred million lira in five-million-lira notes, and put them in with the clothes. He deposited the bag on the ground, opened the front door of the car, hesitated, got in, and started the engine.

  Two hundred metres up the road he stopped the car. He looked at his wife. ‘Well?’ he said.

  She smiled wanly, but said nothing.

  ‘This is the moment,’ he declared. ‘We have to decide now.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll be all right?’ asked Susan.

  ‘Turks always keep their promises,’ said Robert, ‘especially the rural ones.’

  ‘I feel bad about deceiving them,’ said Susan, biting her lip. ‘How long did you say?’

  ‘I said
“a short time”.’ Robert looked straight ahead, and then he said, ‘If you think about it, in the context of eternity, all times are short.’

  This Jesuitical piece of sophistry convinced neither of them, but it made no difference. Susan began to cry, and he put his arm around her. ‘You know what’s really sad?’ she asked finally. ‘What’s really sad is that I won’t even miss him.’

  ‘I won’t either,’ he said. There was a long silence between them, and then Robert said, ‘We could always try for another one.’

  Susan ignored the suggestion. ‘It is the right thing, isn’t it?’ she asked. Her eyes implored him to say that it was.

  ‘It’s his best chance,’ said Robert. ‘In fact, it’s probably his only chance. This is for him as well as for us.’

  ‘The Turks are so wonderful with children, aren’t they?’ said Susan.

  Robert put the car into gear and let out the clutch. In low gears they jolted, bumped and slid through the potholes and runnels until, half an hour later, they finally attained the main road.

  As they turned left on to the tarmac and Robert accelerated through the gears, they experienced, quite viscerally, the blessed relief of lost time and lost life returning. Susan felt youth and well-being re-establish themselves in her heart like familiar friends. When they reached the mountains they would make a cheerful little bonfire of Vinnie’s British clothes, but now they began to sing as they commenced the long but exhilarating journey to Izmir.

  STUPID GRINGO

  Jean-Louis Langevin strolled away from the Gold Museum, and reflected that Bogota was not quite as he had been led to expect. Someone in the office back home in Paris had said, ‘They call it the city of eternal spring,’ and so Jean-Louis had arrived in the expectation that cherry trees would be in blossom, daffodils would be nodding in the parks, and beautiful tropical girls would be out and about in states of partial undress. He sniffed the moist air, with its bouquet of carbon monoxide and gasoline, and was reminded that much of any spring actually consists of gentle and persistent drizzle. At any rate, this was apparently the main ingredient of the allegedly eternal spring of Santa Fé de Bogota. It had been raining in a desultory fashion for three days, ever since he had arrived, and the beautiful tropical girls were effectively concealed beneath woolly sweaters, raincoats and bright red umbrellas.