A Useless Man (16 page)

I myself can recall a number of times when I have faltered while trying to find the right person to ask for directions. After which I lost patience and went straight over to the man closest to me. Some didn’t show me the way even if they knew, while others were so delighted to have the chance to offer me a cigarette that they couldn’t stop smiling. How wonderful it is, not to know how to thank a man who has shown fellowship at the moment you least expected it; first you say,
merci beaucoup
, then, thanks so much, then, I can’t thank you enough; then you translate the French: you explain to the man that it means “thank you very much.”

But I know this, too: if a stranger asks you a question, if he’s picked you out of twenty people, he’s already made a number of calculations. These are calculations of a psychological nature.

And then, if he’s mixed in some hollow, inscrutable theories about physiognomy … This reminds me of the professor who did all that research on the science of the face. How carefully he studied his faces. And what outlandish things the poor doctor read into them. Oh, that intense gaze, that wrinkled face, those evenly aligned strands of dark hair that framed the beauty of a face. But he got them all wrong. There was nothing in that wise and intense gaze, bar stupidity, nothing in that lined face but the idiotic fancies of a young girl. Beneath that broad forehead framed by that mane of black hair, there was nothing but lost memories of an empty life.

Most of us cannot make heads or tails of psychology or face-reading; rather, we proceed as amateurs, knowing nothing about these sciences, lighting our cigarettes, inquiring after ferries, asking for directions, or whatever else we need to know. Our habits take over – we lose all sense of shame. So why is it that they’ll pick me out of a crowd of young men? Is it because yours truly is a good man? I doubt it … They don’t choose me because I’m a good person. They choose me because I seem to be just the right man to ask. Does that mean I have a compelling face? What a
fine thing that would be! There must be another reason. Are we shabbily dressed? Are our boots unpolished? Did they catch a foolish glint in our eyes? Forbearance in our manner? A kink in our nose? Something slack about our cheeks? Or is the knot in our tie a touch too shiny? It has to be something. It could just be that I have something of the vagabond in me. If you saw a man jumping out of a car and dashing for the ferry – would you even think of asking him a question? If you saw a gentleman frowning as he drew deeply from his cigarette outside a restaurant he had evidently just left, would you even think of asking him for a light? If you saw a traveler dripping with elegance, would you ask him directions? Could you ever find the courage to approach a man wearing polished boots, to ask him why the crowd?

Things being as they are, I rarely get angry when people ask me for directions, or if they come to me for a light. And when I am coming to see you, my love, and someone asks for directions, I even take the time to have my boots shined.

I hate it, though, when an immaculately dressed city type asks me for a light. If you want to know why, it’s because he couldn’t find the courage to ask all those other men, and so this man … Though when you think about it, this has nothing to do with courage. He was embarrassed by all those others, but not by me. Truth is, this sort of thing annoys me. Because even if it isn’t rude, it’s a bit strange. You can’t ask just anyone. Why am I the one they choose? Here’s my answer: I like it when a villager asks for directions without thinking about it first, or making any calculations – without knowing the first thing about psychology or physiognomy. Let them come to me with their questions. They aren’t seething with secret thoughts or clever schemes. And how could these poor creatures ever dare approach that fat man oozing with pride, his every pore scrubbed clean? I’m just someone who happens to be there – a man like any other.

My love! I shouldn’t prattle on like this, when I have a story to tell. But what am I to do? Am I not to look for a man to light my cigarette with his if I have no matches? Do you expect me to give up smoking? I can’t even give up writing these damn stories. I just sit there, idling, cigarette in hand, as if looking for someone. Hemmed in by so many important, conceited, grave-faced men, I hardly know where to begin.

Listen. This just occurred to me. It’s good to be asked for a light. It’s neither good nor bad to be asked for directions, or to look like the right person to be asked. It’s strange, isn’t it? If you look around you, my love, you’ll see that – male or female – we all have our excesses. One person might be overly arrogant, and another overly jealous; for every overdressed person, there is another who is dressed in rags; for every smart aleck there is a snob. This one over here is too dirty, and that one over there is too clean. There’s no middle ground, my dearest. And neither do I wish to choose, or be chosen. It’s probably best just to vote! There’s a sin in that, too. It’s best, my friend, to carry matches and know where you’re going, and never go out without knowing which way you are going. What right do we have, my love, to prejudge every man we meet?

Time for my story. I was waiting for the ferry. No, I wasn’t actually waiting for the ferry. I was waiting to miss the ferry home. I said that wrong. I was waiting to miss the ferry so as not to go home. The very thought of going back to my silent, empty village – it was more than I could bear. Better to stay in Istanbul, drinking away the hours, and thinking of you … But sadly the ferry was still waiting at the pier. I stayed in my seat. I stayed in my seat, waiting for it to leave. At last it pulled away. And I relaxed. I lit a cigarette. I had a match.

Sitting just across from me, there was a youngish man, in his hand a piece of paper. He kept looking at it. The passenger lounge emptied, and then it filled up again. At last the man looked up from the paper in his hand.
He looked around. I could see what he was after. He had no idea what it said on this piece of paper. Someone had to explain it to him.

I moved my eyes away from him. I fixed them on something else. On the eyes of a woman who wasn’t looking at me. And this was when it began to get on my nerves, knowing that of all the people in this lounge and for reasons I would never understand, I would be the one he chose. And for a moment I considered why he probably chose me – I was an important man who could understand what was written on this piece of paper. And why would I lie? As soon as this idea came to me – no, I didn’t decide I was an important person, but what if I said that the idea of being chosen suddenly appealed to me? I threw a quick glance in his direction. Though by then he’d already chosen me. And here, if you like, you can imagine that I’ve said that to win your favor …

The man came over to me. He held out the piece of paper.

“For the love of God” he said. “Could you take a look at this for me?”

I looked, but I couldn’t quite understand it. I read through it again, and then again. I felt a pain in my heart. The same pain you feel in the summer, if you’re very thirsty, and you’ve gulped down a glass of cold water too fast – a heaviness, that’s what I felt inside me. I looked up at the man.

“I’m just on my way to work,” he said. “I’ve found a very good job. If only you knew, sir, how long I’ve gone without work. But now I’ve found a job. I’m engaged, too. They examined me, and I’m in perfect health. At the very end, they did a blood test. They say they had to. How is my blood – is it as good as the rest of me?”

He was smiling, but on his forehead I could see the shadow of a doubt. I remembered the professor. And I wondered if I too had turned into a physiognomist. No. Here was someone who had, at long last, found a job. He was holding a piece of paper, and it was covered with suspicious marks … No! This was a man whose worries had found their way into his eyes
and the middle of his forehead. He had been given three blood tests. And each time the result had four plusses: ++++.
*

“Have you been ill at all, my friend?”

“No, not at all,” he said.

His face went taut. His eyes drained of color.

“I really don’t know much about these things. I can’t really understand it,” I said.

“There’s nothing wrong. Do you think?”

“Probably not,” I said. “I’m not a doctor. I can’t really make sense of it.”

“Should I take this paper with me?” he asked. “I mean, to the office where I’ll be working?”

I said nothing. I examined his face carefully. My gaze was not so much careful as needlessly – stupidly – pitying …

I had that pitying look from you, once … I asked you how to get somewhere: how to find happiness, to be precise. Do you remember?

What my eyes said to that man, I cannot know … Once again we examined the paper. I didn’t tell him to take it into his new job with him, but neither did I tell him not to. He wants to look, and I am looking into his eyes. The man’s gone deathly pale.

I left. I had my shoes shined. I ran home. I shaved. I put on a new tie. I assumed an arrogant air, so that no one else would dare approach me for the rest of the day. And that was the day, my love, when I took my raincoat to the cleaners.

It’s early in the morning, in a little copse of pines. The bees are humming, the mosquitoes buzzing, the birds trilling. It’s dark in here, dark as sunglasses, except for the dappled sunlight filtering down through the trees. And just over there, lapping up against the shore, a little patch of sea. It’s just a shade darker than the sky … And now I am thinking of the villagers who live there. Once upon a time I discovered from books that if I learned to love people, and to delight in nature and in the world by traveling this long road, I would, the books said, learn to love life itself. But I no longer love people by the book. And neither do I have time for the four holy texts or the great tomes of science. It’s fables I learn from, and stories. Poetry and fiction – those are my sciences. But if you wanted to know how I learned to loathe the servant who leaps upon his master to whisk away his luggage the moment he steps off the boat, or how I came to understand that the man who springs out of bed at six-thirty every morning to battle the elements isn’t actually working – well, these were things I taught myself. But should that man choose to linger in bed one morning – well, he can spend the rest of the day trying to fool people for all I care. What
difference does it make? His thick wad of banknotes don’t add up to a single coin in my eyes, not a single coin.

I know which people to respect these days. I know which ones to love. Then there are those who’ve been on my mind for days now (but let’s not say that he “occupied” my thoughts).

In the village they call him Mustafa the Blind. One of his eyes is skewed to the left. On the right side of this eye there’s a dark red lump of flesh where the white of his eye meets the lid. Was he born like that? Did something get caught in his eye when he was a child? This weak eye is shinier than the other, and darker, too. There’s more life in it. More wit. It makes me think of a hunchback. How strange. People dismiss hunchbacks as ugly, when in fact they’re charming and warm-hearted, every last one of them. They make the dearest friends. Oh, how much I adore them!

So there you have it. Mustafa the Blind. On one side of his face, an eye with the soul of a hunchback, beckoning and rejoicing, while the eye on the other side of his face is plain and old. It puts on airs. It cowers with shame. But there is never any light in it.

Mustafa the Blind tends gardens. He takes daily jobs: he plasters cisterns, fixes roofs, digs wells, that kind of work.

Few people live on the southern side of our village. It’s really no more than a great tangle of briar, wild oak, arbutus, and shrubs that think they’re trees. The unruly patch belongs to the Fino Church. A wild-eyed and unshaven giant of a priest makes a great show of claiming the land as his. He could, I imagine, have rented it out for some pittance, but he never got around to it. In the meantime a forestry administrator has registered the land as a protected site. So there it sits inside that copse of pines, a tangle of weeds, shrubs, and branches too wiry to burn. Saved by the Forest Code.

And Mustafa the Blind. I don’t know how he did it. But somehow he managed to tame a part of it – the part that went down to the sea. He paid
a price, of course. Do you know how he paid? With the nails on his fingers. That’s how. Dig under that tangle of briars and all you’ll find is stone … Nothing but stone. All the way down to the sea. And meanwhile, there was Mustafa, who had no choice but to spend his days working elsewhere.

But in the evenings he would retrieve his shovel from the brambles and dig and hack and weed until the sun came up the next day. He dug out one stone after another. For one winter and one summer he battled the arbutus, laurel, wild oak, and brambles, the roots and thorns and weeds, and the meddling forestry administrator. I don’t think there’s any other man in the village who would engage in such a savage struggle for just three furrows of land.