A Useless Man (8 page)

We were in geometry class, going over and over which factor went with
which variable, and I just couldn’t factor in any of it! I was stuck, and I turned to my friend.

There was something quick and bright about his sun-tanned face. I nudged him with my shoulder almost as if by accident. He turned and smiled at me. His eyes narrowed in on the angle on the blackboard.

“So it’s like this,” he said, “the outer angle of this triangle is equal to the two combined angles in this triangle because …” and he stopped.

He didn’t want to make me feel bad, forcing his knowledge of geometry on me, and he said:

“I’ll explain it later. Let’s see what time it is.”

His thick, long fingers plucked his watch out from his vest pocket with an uncanny ease. He cast his sad eyes over the face of his watch. They were fixed there for some time. Clearly he was still trying to work out the equation.

I was restless. The teacher was now looking at both of us. Then suddenly my friend turned to look at me. His eyes were swimming with anguish.

“I suppose I forgot to set it. It’s not running.”

He tried winding it. But the hairspring kept slipping. Crestfallen, he said:

“The hairspring’s broken.”

I didn’t think anything of it, and for the first time I actually paid attention in geometry class. It was fun.

We had religion after geometry. The teacher had a way of speaking that bored us to death. He was an old man with a voice that was even older, and his passion for the subject had long since disappeared. But religion was a class where we could relax, because we never listened to that dull and mind-numbing voice. His examples were no good and the comparisons he concocted either had little or nothing to do with the topic.

Soon everyone was asking my friend for the time, whispering from near
and far. Hearing them, he said, “The hairspring’s broken.” In the back row there was a student we didn’t know very well. He was probably repeating the year. Or maybe he was our age, but he looked like an old man. The way he talked and the way he smoked reminded us of those strange men we saw in the neighborhood coffee houses; he was from the streets. He gave off those dark desires. When he called out from the back, his voice was rough, even unbridled. Or maybe he was trying to bring the poor teacher back to life:

“Damn, Celil! How many minutes left, for the love of God …”

My friend blushed bright red. I could see sorrow in his face, but also rage and loathing. He turned around and stared at the brute in the back without saying a word. I’m sure the brute would have beaten him to a pulp if the teacher had been the sort of man who would let a brute beat a boy who wouldn’t hurt a fly. But the teacher was not that sort of man. With a kindly smile on his sallow face, he said:

“Celil,
efendi
, my son, could you have a look at your watch? I would also like to know how much longer I must wait until I can leave.”

Ashamed, Celil stood up:

“Sir, the hairspring on my watch is broken.”

Silence from the back. And then a shout:

“Boooo … The hairspring’s broken … Go, hairspring Celil, go … Hairspring! Hairspring!”

Then there were cries from the back and the front:

“Hairspring! Hairspring!”

I never imagined that the nickname would stick, and neither did my friends. But even before he left the classroom, Celil himself seemed to know.

Within days, no one even remembered what his real name was. Even I wasn’t sure what to call my sad-eyed friend: Celil or Hairspring.

I couldn’t call him Celil because everyone else in the class called him Hairspring. And for the same reason, I couldn’t call him Hairspring.

When they called him by that name, he would lower his head and do his best to ignore them; but on the second or third time, he’d turn to face them, calmly, furiously. But he wouldn’t say a word.

It was the last class of the day. My friend stood up to help a friend with his work. On his desk there was a clean copy of a letter he’d been scribbling out since the beginning of class. Though I knew it was a tasteless thing to do, I read the letter out of the corner of my eye, as if my friend had never left.

Dearest Father
,

I received your letter dated the 8th of this month. I can’t tell you how happy I was to hear from you. The weather here has been excellent. Though yesterday clouds covered the sky, and it rained buckets. The Nilüfer plain was so beautiful in the rain. The entire plain stretches out in front of my window. In the mornings it’s covered in mist, and it reminds me of the sea, and I think of Gemlik
(that’s where Celil was from)
and I long to see you. I’m studying hard like you told me to. But father, if I may, I need to ask a favor of you. You know the watch you gave me on our journey to school. It’s broken. You know the metal piece inside … what’s it called, that curly steel bit inside? Well, that’s broken. If someone is going that way next week I’ll give them the watch. The school is full of clocks. I don’t even need a watch. You can have it repaired and use it yourself. Love to you and mother and waiting for good news from you, my father
.

Your son
,

  
Celil

I’ve been feeling odd lately. I prefer to keep myself to myself, and I don’t want anyone knocking on my door, not even mailmen, the nicest men in the world. But I’m happy enough with my neighborhood. What if I told you I hadn’t left it in seven years? Or that none of my friends know where I am? For seven years now, I haven’t strayed beyond these four streets, except to walk down to Karaköy at the end of each quarter, to collect the rent from our store.

There are three parallel streets, and one that cuts across, and then there is my street, cut off from all the others and so short and narrow you might not even consider it a street. I have named the other streets One, Two, Three, and Four, in order of importance. But my street doesn’t have a number. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

A milkman lives on the ground floor of my building, and there are two carpenters across the street. I’d never been to a carpenter before. I’d always wondered how they got by. The ones on my street never stop working. They remind me of the gulf between me and other people: in forty years I haven’t once needed a carpenter, that’s just the way it is. It always surprises
me when an Istanbullu actually goes to a carpenter. But who knows how many carpenters are doing business in this city of ours?

Once out of bed, I head straight for the café. It’s a clean and tidy place with seven or eight tables, with customers who come and go without so much as a word, unless they retire to the corner to play King or Bezique or chess. The owner is a French-Jewish lady. The nicest woman in the world.

“Bonjour Madame,” I say the moment I step inside.

“Bonjour Monsieur. Comment allez-vous?” she says.

I give all the right answers. But she knows better. She gives me what I think are honeyed words in French. I only understand a few. When I need to, I throw in the odd
oui
, and then a few
nons
to balance out the
ouis
. We get on really well. She tucks a French magazine under my arm and I sit down to look at the pictures. I jot down a few new words to look up in the dictionary when I get home, and when I read the magazine the next morning I say,
Goodness, who would have thought it?

The madame: “Un cappuccino?”

Me: “Of course.”

Then I throw down a
c’est ça
to keep it going in French. The lady is really pleased. She starts explaining how to make a cappuccino, in German.

And I listen.

Toward eleven I climb up the little street to the tramway line, turn left, and in just five steps I’m in front of a bookstore where I buy a few more illustrated French magazines. Stepping out with the magazines under my arm, I hurry back to my street. Ah! Such relief once I’m there. The people here are different, nothing like the ones near the tramway line. They scare me.

These days I’m hardly ever hungry, but there’s a man who makes tripe soup in our neighborhood. He’s an honest man and he makes good soup, and his place isn’t anything like those filthy tripe soup restaurants in other
parts of the city. His soup’s as white as snow and he serves it in antique bowls.

“You like it seasoned, Mansur Bey?”

“Yes Bayram, I would,” I say.

Maybe he’s called Bayram or maybe Muharrem, but for me every man who sells tripe soup is called Bayram.

“Should I throw in a little vinegar and garlic, Mansur Bey?”

“Not today. It upset my stomach the other day, gave me gas. Have your waiter go fetch a lemon. Give it a quick squeeze of lemon instead.”

“But we’ve saved the other half of the lemon we got for you the other day.”

“Really?”

I was as happy as a child to hear about that half lemon. And Bayram was like a child, happy that I was happy and happy that he’d set the half lemon aside for me.

“Should I squeeze out the full half lemon, Mansur Bey?”

“Squeeze it dry, Bayram! Let’s have it extra sour.”

After finishing my extra sour soup, I go back up to my little apartment. With my French dictionary beside me, I fall asleep before I have even started translating the captions in the French magazine I bought earlier that day. I wake up at exactly four-thirty. Then I go out for a stroll. I leave my building, turn right, cross Street Number One and hurry along the sidewalk left of the tramway line before I dive into Street Number Two, which is parallel to Street Number One.

It’s a narrow, seedy street. Caked with mud. There’s a bar on the right, then a real estate agent, then a restaurant. I always get the feeling they serve forbidden fruit with their food. The same sad women go there every night with the same strange men; they could be eating frogs, or mice, or crows, or cats, or dogs, or even humans. I’m at the head of my street now.
I’m just passing by. I turn to my right to say hello to the woman who sells dried fruit on the street. “Hello, sir,” she says. She has the most exquisite eyes. I hesitate before I turn right … Why?

I’ll explain. Now this happened on one of my evening strolls. When most people go out for a stroll, they will pause now and again, if not to look into someone’s eyes or a shop window, then just to take in their surroundings. Such things are beyond me. As I approach the street in question I begin to walk faster, eyes glued to the ground – all this to give the impression that it angers me to have to walk through it all. Why? Well let me explain.

The truth, sir, is that a true devil of a little Jewish girl lives in a house on that street, with a face that older ladies would describe as all in place (though she does have a spot in one eye, but what’s the harm in that?) and gargantuan breasts that undulate in dark olive waves beneath her low-cut dress and hands plump enough to set a hazelnut on top. She sits at a window with winged shutters, absently sewing. But sometimes she lingers at the front door for hours, looking up and down the street, striking up conversations with every man who wanders by. Her full and strong legs keep her firmly on the ground, but olive-skinned Jews are the most beautiful of them all, and, oh, if only I could kiss those legs, just once.

Now, one day when I found myself ambling down that infamous street, the Jewish girl was at her door and the carpenter was standing at his door, which was just opposite. As I made to pass between them, the carpenter stepped out into the street, planting himself square in front of me.

“I’ve had enough from you – do you hear? You come by here one more time, I’ll sock you in the eye.”

From that day on I was tormented by the desire to walk down that street again. Oh the palpitations I suffered struggling to stifle that desire on my next few evening strolls. I knew the carpenter’s threats weren’t empty – he
would come straight out and punch me in the eye! Oh what difficult days those were. For years I forced my heart to shut down from the moment I sensed the first flutter. For days my heart wouldn’t allow so much as an extra beat. I’d check it: always sixty-three, always sixty-three, though sometimes it might drop to sixty-two. “It should settle into its normal rhythm when you’re walking,” a doctor friend of mine told me. But I couldn’t just stop in the middle of the street and take my pulse! But I could sit down and relax and order a coffee and, throwing a glance left and right to see if anyone happened to be looking, I could discreetly pull out my watch to check: sixty-three. Even if a woman looked me in the eye, even if the price of oranges jumped from five
kuruş
to twenty-five, I refused to be moved. If they were selling for five, I’d eat them; if the price had gone up to twenty-five then it was goodbye to oranges. So back in the days when Street Number Three was a no-go area, like the rest of Istanbul, my evening strolls weren’t so pleasant. I was trapped inside two streets. But I was never bored. In fact it was a quiet neighborhood, quiet but also vibrant. How could a Levantine-Jewish neighborhood not be vibrant? The Jews especially. What wonderful, warm, vibrant people. The neighborhood Jews weren’t from the rich cut of society, and I’d no business with the rich anyway. When the local orange seller – that’s Saloman – got more than forty
kuruş
out of me, he was the loveliest man in the world. When his oranges were too expensive and I didn’t buy them, he didn’t throw me dirty looks when I walked away or grumble when I offered him an impossible price. But just the opposite – he knew that I had every right.