A Useless Man (2 page)

One morning, when Ali was still asleep, she was standing over the samovar when all at once she fainted. She fell into a nearby chair. She fell, oh, she fell.

It was some time before Ali began to ask himself why his mother hadn’t come to wake him up. Only then did he realize how late it was. The windowpanes had muffled the sharp, shrill blast of the factory whistle: it came to Ali’s ears as if through a sponge. He jumped out of bed. At the door to the dining room, he stopped. He gazed at his dead mother, her hands flat on the table, as if asleep. And that was what he thought at first, that she must be asleep. Softly, he walked over to her. He took her by the shoulders. It was when he put his lips against her already cold cheeks that the first shiver went through him.

When we are confronted with death, we become great actors. Great actors, nothing more.

He threw his arms around her. He carried her to his bed. He pulled the quilt over her, tried to warm her body, which had already grown so cold. He tried to breathe life into her lifeless form. Later, giving up, he laid her out on the sofa in the corner. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t cry that day. His eyes burned and burned, but not a single tear. He looked at himself in the mirror. At the moment of his greatest sadness, could he not be granted a face other than the one he saw staring back at him? It was the face of a man who had lost no more than a night of sleep.

All of sudden, Ali longed to grow thin, go gray, all of a sudden he longed
to double over in agonizing pain as his face withered away. Then he looked again at the body. It didn’t frighten him at all.

On the contrary: her face was as tender and kind as before. Her eyes were half open; with a firm hand he closed them. He ran out into the street. He told the old woman who lived next door. The neighbors came running into the house. He headed for the factory. By the time he boarded the caique that would take him across the Golden Horn, he seemed at peace with her death.

They’d slept side by side under the same quilt, shoulder to shoulder. In death they were just as close. In the same way death had come to his gentle mother, it left; with a guest’s soft footsteps, it carried away her compassion and her warmth. She was just a little cold. We have nothing to fear, he thought. She was just a little cold. That was all.

For days, Ali paced the empty rooms of the house. He spent his evenings sitting in the darkness. He listened to the night. He thought about his mother. But he couldn’t cry.

One morning they came face to face in the front room. How bright and peaceful this empty vessel looked, sitting there on the oilskin tablecloth, flashing copper sunlight. Picking it up by the handles, Ali moved it to a place where he couldn’t see it. He collapsed into a chair. The tears came now, like silent rain. And the samovar never boiled in that house again.

From then on, Ali’s life revolved around the
salep
kettle.

In Istanbul winters are harsher along the shores of the Golden Horn; the fog is denser. As they make their way to work in the early morning, over broken pavements and frozen clods of mud, the city’s teachers and drovers and butchers and even the occasional student will often stop off for a few minutes outside the factory to lean against its great wall and sip
salep
sprinkled with cinnamon and ginger.

They cradle their glasses of
salep
, these rheumy fair-haired workers,
these teachers and drovers and butchers and impoverished students. The steam passes through their woolen gloves, to warm their grateful hands. They lean against the great wall, dreaming of rebellion and steaming like mournful copper samovars, as they sip the
salep
that will later warm their dreams.

I had no idea why we went to that village house that day, to find a meal of duck, bulgur and semolina
helva
waiting for us in the kitchen. As I stand lonely and forlorn at this hotel window, watching the trams pass below, I still cannot say what it was that prompted our quiet evening visit to this village house, where we seemed to be expected.

In the neighboring village, they had already called the evening prayers. We’d watered our horses. Ever since leaving the city, my father had been in a foul mood. Everything seemed to bother him – the cloudy skies, the dusty roads and ditches. One word from me and we would have turned around, to race back through that quiet borough at a full gallop, the street dogs barking in our wake. Once we were home, with our horses safe in their stable, my father would have gone off to the town teahouse, and I to my room. To say nothing seemed to hold more promise. I kept the frown on my face, too. When my horse stumbled – only once or twice – I could see the wind ruffling my father’s eyelashes. He didn’t even blink. Had our eyes met like this on any other day, he would have mocked me with a fixed, false smile. His own horse never stumbled. When we reached that village house,
there was a boy waiting for us. He was as delicate as lace. He took charge of our horses. Thinking that I was admiring the carnation he’d fastened to his cap, he offered it to me. Whereas I’d been looking at his eyes, which made me think of wet hay, and his face, which was the same color. Who knows, maybe he gave me the carnation because he knew he could never offer me the rest. Just then, my father turned his back. First I sniffed the carnation. Then, after I’d placed it between my cap and my ear, I saw my father looking back at me. He wasn’t smiling. But he wasn’t frowning, either. His face was without expression. He was oddly calm. I could have taken offense, it seems to me. I fixed my eyes on a male turkey. How big it looked in the half-light, with its featherless red neck. This creature must be very strong, I thought.

“Come on now, you fool,” said my father under his breath.

The boy set off slowly with the horses, leaving us to enter the house.

We were met at the door by the sharp scent of hay and a faint hint of dung. Stepping toward the churn, we got a strong whiff of ripe yoghurt. We ascended a small staircase. And there, on a wooden balcony that looked like a pulpit or the sort of stage that a preacher might use for a public address on a national holiday, we found an old woman praying. My father paused on the fifth step, and I stopped two steps behind. We had taken our shoes off at the door; walking through the house in our woolen socks, we made no noise, I now realized. When this woman finished her prayers and stood up, she would suddenly find herself face-to-face with my father. When she saw his enormous shadow looming over her in the twilight, she would, I thought, scream loud enough to bring the whole village running. Nothing like that happened. Because we were standing on her right, she saw us as soon as she rose to finish her prayer. What I noticed first were the old woman’s lips. As she stood there, blinking calmly, I looked at her eyes. Then I noticed the prominent bones in her temples. As she turned
to the other side, my heart began to race, race like the wind. If only I had been close enough to smell her headscarf. It was made of that fine white muslin. The same as my grandmother’s. The face she turned toward us now was soft and motherly. Gesturing at the door opposite with the same tenderness, she said:

“Ömer Ağa! Fatma’s waiting for you inside.”

And my father said, “Of course! And how are you? You’re looking well, Granny.”

The woman nodded; we went across to the room opposite. Here we found a young woman. She was singing a folk song to the night. When she saw us she rose with a smile.

In this room was the aroma of overripe fruit. In the light of the gas lamp, the red in the pattern of the Kocaeli kilim seemed to bubble, like some odd sort of jam.

With each new twist in this strange journey of ours, I became more curious, I was alert to every detail; but now my father turned to me and said:

“So, my son. You can go outside now. You can help Emin. And make sure the horses urinate before you put them in the stable.”

The horses had urinated and were safe in their stables. They’d been given dry hay. Emin was still at the stable door. He was stripping a branch with a penknife. I went to sit next to him. He didn’t look up. Thinking I might say something about the branch he was whittling, I noticed the anger in his hands. My eyes on the branch, I asked:

“What tree is that from?”

He didn’t answer right away. He had cut his finger. He licked the wound for some time with his pink tongue that was as sharp and pointed as a cat’s. Then he opened his cherry colored lips.

“It’s from a dogwood,” he said.

The conversation ended there. This fresh-faced child was as warm as a
summer evening at the water’s edge, and yet he seemed to regret our first moment of intimacy. A rough female voice called to us from the house. We went inside to eat roast duck, bulgur and semolina
helva
at a low wooden table. The towels were made from a thick cloth. There were wooden spoons. They had set out forks for my father and me. Not long ago, they informed us, there had been a strange and terrifying game of hide and seek with some wild boars in the cornfields, in the light of the moon. A pig had attacked a child the same age as Emin, splitting his stomach in two. The old woman told us the whole story, very slowly, naming the neighbors who owned the pasture where the incident occurred, naming the child, naming the hunters, one by one. My father wore an expression that told me he knew all these people. Emin kept looking at me. It was just us three at the table with the old woman. The young woman served us. Only when she put the pans on the table could I see the henna on her hands. We ate on the balcony where we’d found the old woman praying. After supper we went up to the top floor of the house, to a room with a stove. After he had lit this stove, Emin kneeled down on a black sheepskin rug. A moment later, he lay down on it and stretched himself out. The rug was just a little too short for him.

The old woman was half asleep on the cushions. I was lying next to her. My hand was in hers. Sleep passed through her hand into mine like a yellow sickness, closing my eyes. I could feel her submission, and her suffering, as I pried my hand free. I found a new place for myself, a bit further away from her, and closer to Emin.

All this while my father remained with the young woman on the divan. My father’s cigarette would flare up now and again, amidst unearthly wreaths of smoke. They were talking about weddings, young girls, young men. The burning logs in the stove crumbled and lit up Emin’s face. I fell asleep.

I awoke at daybreak. As we set out for the rich man’s house that my
father had first joined as a son-in-law, I could feel the steam of warm buffalo’s milk on my face even as the morning mist swirled in to chill my cheeks, and I could still feel the lips of the old woman on my forehead, and the thick fingers of my brother Emin still joined with mine.

For a very long time, I was able to preserve that moment. Then the paper yellowed like a picture postcard, and the image faded.

Moonlight shimmered across the silk factory’s long façade. Here and there I could see people hurrying alongside it. But there was nowhere I wished to go. I was making my way out, very slowly, when I heard the watchman call out to me.

“Where are you off to?”

“I’m just going for a stroll,” I said.

“Don’t you want to see the acrobat?”

I hesitated, so he went on:

“Everyone’s going. This is the first time anyone like him has ever come to Bursa.”

“I’m not interested,” I said.

He begged and groveled until I agreed to take his shift. For a while I just sat there. I smoked a cigarette. I sang an old folk song. But soon I was bored. I might as well stretch my legs, I thought. So I picked up the watchman’s studded nightstick and went off to do the rounds.

I had just passed the girls’ workshop when I heard a noise. Taking out my flashlight, I made a sweep of the room. And there, racing along the carpet of light, were two naked feet.

After I had caught the thief, I took him to the watchman’s room, to get a good look at him in the lamp’s yellow glow.