The Black Book (13 page)

When the dearly departed and I first met (to begin the paragraph, as I did the first, with words he often used himself), he was a veteran columnist of seventy and I thirty. On my way to see a friend in Bakırköy, I was about to step into the commuter train at the Sirkeci Station, and who should I see! There he was, seated at a table in one of the platform eateries, drinking
rakı
with two other legendary columnists of my childhood and youth. What surprised me was not running into the three septuagenarians who inhabited the Mount Kaf of my literary imagination among the mortal multitudes and the rumpus in the Sirkeci train station, but seeing them seated together at all, at the same table drinking like the three musketeers at Dumas
père
’s tavern, when all through their literary lives these three pen wielders had laid into each other with bitter insults. During their literary careers of a half century when they wore out two sultans, one caliph, and three presidents, these three belligerent penmen had accused each other (at times rightfully) of many things: of atheism, Young Turkism, francophilism, nationalism, Masonism, Kemalism, republicanism, of treason, of royalism, Westernism, mysticism, plagiarism, Nazism, Judaism, Arabism, Armenianism, of homosexuality, of being turncoats, of religious canonism, of Communism, Americanism, and, in keeping with the fashionable topic of the times, existentialism. (At the time, one of them had claimed that “the existentialist of all time” had been Ibn Arabi who’d not only been imitated seven centuries later but also been robbed blind by the Western World.) I studied the three penmen carefully for a while; then heeding an inner compulsion, I walked over to their table, introduced myself, and paid all three compliments that I made sure were equally distributed.

Now, I want my readers to understand: I was excited, passionate, young, creative, bright, successful, but I vacillated unresolved between narcissism and self-confidence, shifted back and forth between good intentions and opportunism. Despite my youthful excitement as a dewy-eyed columnist, had I not been so sure that I was better read than all three of them, that I received more letters from the readers, that I was a better writer, of course, and that they were painfully aware of at least the first two of these facts, I wouldn’t have had the guts to approach the three great masters of my trade.

That’s why I joyfully interpreted their turning up their noses at me as a sign of victory. Had I not been a young and successful columnist but an ordinary reader gushing with admiration, naturally they’d have treated me much better. First, they wouldn’t ask me to sit down, so I waited. Then, when they did let me sit, they sent me to the kitchen as if I were the waiter; so I waited on them. They wanted to check out a certain weekly, so I ran to the newspaper kiosk and got it for them. I peeled his orange for one, retrieved the other’s napkin before he could stoop for it, and I responded, cringing as they wanted me to, no sir, unfortunately I didn’t have much French but in the evenings, with the aid of a dictionary, I worked on deciphering
Les Fleurs du mal.
My ignorance had rendered my victory over them even less tolerable, but my excessive self-effacement seemed to lighten my transgression.

Years later, when I myself pulled the same act on younger journalists, I’d come to understand that, although they appeared to be completely uninterested in me and only addressed each other, the three masters were actually making sure I was getting properly influenced. Silent and respectful, I listened to them spout off. Concerning the German atomic scientist who’d hit the headlines the last few days, what were the actual forces behind his conversion to Islam? When the Honorable Ahmet Mithat, the father of Turkish columnists, cornered Elastic Sait, who’d bested him in the battle of words, in a dark alley one night and gave him a thorough beating, had he stipulated that Sait renounce the polemics in which they were engaged? Was Bergson a mystic, or a materialist? Where was the proof that hidden mysteriously within the world there was a “second creation”? Who were the poets getting themselves chewed out in the last verses of the twenty-sixth sura of the Koran for professing beliefs and deeds they neither believed in nor performed? In the same vein, was André Gide a real homosexual, or like the Arabian poet Abu Nuwas, did he date girls but pretend to like boys, aware that the predilection would bring him notoriety? In the first paragraph of
Kéreban le têtu
where Jules Verne describes Tophane Square and the Fountain of Mahmut the First, did he screw up because he’d extrapolated the scene from a particular engraving by Melling, or because he’d lifted the whole thing out of Lamartine’s
Voyage en Orient?
Had Rumi included the account of the woman who dies fornicating with a donkey in the fifth volume of his
Mathnawi
for the story or for the lesson?

Seeing how their eyes shot glances at me and their white eyebrows posed questions as they debated the last subject cautiously and courteously, I too tossed in my two cents’ worth: The story was included there for the story, as are all stories, but an effort had been made to cover it under the gauzy veil of a lesson. “Son,” said the one whose funeral I attended yesterday, “do you pen your columns to instruct, or to entertain?” In an effort to prove that I had already had definite ideas on any given subject, I went for the first thing that popped into my head: “To entertain.” They didn’t go for it. “You’re young and new at your métier,” they said; “allow us to give you some free advice.” I shot to my feet all stirred up. “Sirs!” I said, “I want to take down all your advice!” and, sprinting up to the cash register, I got the host to give me a sheaf of paper. I wish to share with you, my readers, the advice I received.

I know that among my readers some are impatient to hear the long-forgotten names of the three masters; they probably expect that I will whisper, at least, the names in their ears, but seeing how I’ve avoided giving away the three penmen up to this point, I am not about to do it now. Not so much to make sure the threesome sleep peacefully in their graves, but to weed out the readers who don’t deserve this bit of information from those who do. For this end, I will refer to each deceased writer by one of the three pseudonyms that three Ottoman sultans signed under their poems. Those who can figure out which pseudonym belongs to which sultan, provided they also reason through the parallels between the names of the poet-sultans and the names of my masters, can perhaps decipher the puzzle that isn’t all that consequential. But the real enigma is hidden in the game of vanity-chess the three masters played, building the mystery on the moves they called advice. Given that I’m still not clear about the beauty of the mystery, like some unfortunate incompetents who interpret the grand masters’ moves through the aid of newspaper columns on chess I too have inserted my abject interpretations and pitiful thoughts parenthetically within the pieces of advice from my masters.

A: Adli.
On that winter day, he wore a cream-colored suit made of English wool (in our country all costly material gets dubbed “English”) and a dark tie. Tall, well-groomed, combed white mustache. Carries a cane. Looks like an English gentleman who doesn’t have money, though it is not for me to say whether, if one doesn’t have money, one can still be an English gentleman.

B: Bahti.
His tie is loose and awry like his face. He has on an old jacket, stained and unpressed. Looped through one buttonhole of his vest, the chain of the pocket watch he wears in his vest pocket is visible. Broad in the beam and slovenly. The ubiquitous cigarette in his hand which he passionately calls “my only friend” and which, betraying his unrequited love, will kill him of a heart attack.

C: Cemali.
Short, cantankerous. Even though he tries to be neat and clean, he still can’t change the look of his retired teacher’s clothes. The faded jacket of mail carriers, the pants, the thick rubber-soled shoes from the state’s Sümerbank shops. Thick lenses, terribly myopic, “violently” ugly.

Here are the masters’ nuggets of advice and my unworthy interpolations:

1. C:
Writing merely for entertainment leaves the columnist without a compass in the wild blue yonder.

2. B:
The columnist being neither Aesop nor Rumi, the lesson emerges out of the story; the story won’t emerge out of the lesson.

3. C:
Don’t aim for the intelligence of the reader, aim for your own.

4. A:
Your compass is the lesson. (An obvious reference to C’s 1.)

5. C:
Without digging into the mystery of our graveyards and history, you can neither talk about “us” or the East.

6. B:
On the subject of East ’n West, the key is hidden in a saying by Arif the Beard: “You poor slobs who look Westward as your ship sails East!” (Arif the Beard was one of the heroes in B’s columns, modeled after an actual person.)

7. A, B, C:
Get hold of proverbs, sayings, anecdotes for yourself, and jokes, lines of poetry, adages, poetry anthologies.

8. C:
You won’t be scratching around for the maxim with which to crown your piece; instead, you will be looking for an appropriate topic to wear the crowning maxim you’ve already chosen.

9. A:
Don’t even sit down before you’ve got your first sentence.

10. C:
You’ve got to have some kind of sincere belief.

11. A:
Even if you don’t have some kind of a sincere belief, make sure the reader believes that your beliefs are sincere.

12. B:
The reader is a child who wants to go to the carnival.

13. C:
The reader never forgives the writer who blasphemes against Muhammad; besides, God will strike him with paralysis. (Sensing that 11 is persiflage directed against him, he’s insinuating that the slight paralysis in the corner of A’s mouth is a result of the piece A’s written on Muhammad’s conjugal and business affairs.)

14. A:
Dote on dwarves; the reader does. (He’s responding to C’s 13 by making an innuendo about C’s lack of stature.)

15. B:
The mysterious home for dwarves in Üsküdar, for example, is a fine topic.

16. C:
Wrestling is also a fine topic but only when it’s done, or written about, for the sport. (Figuring 15 is an insult aimed at himself, he’s referring to B’s interest in wrestling and his serials on wrestling which have given rise to talk that he’s a pederast.)

17. A:
The reader has the IQ of a twelve-year-old, he’s married, has four children, and can’t make ends meet.

18. C:
The reader bites the hand that feeds him, like the cat.

19. B:
The cat, being an intelligent animal, does not bite the hand that feeds him; he only knows not to trust writers who fancy dogs.

20. A:
Don’t make observations on cats and dogs, concern yourself with the problems of your homeland.

21. B:
Make sure you know the addresses of consulates. (Innuendo about the rumor that, during the Second World War, C was in the pay of the German Consulate, and A of the British.)

22. B:
Get embroiled in polemics, but only if you know how to hurt a guy.

23. A:
Get embroiled in polemics, but only if you can get your boss to back you up.

24. C:
Get embroiled in polemics, but only if you have a greatcoat to take along. (Allusion to B’s famous line explaining why he avoided the War of Independence and remained in occupied Istanbul: “I can’t take Ankara winters.”)

25. B:
Answer reader mail; if nobody’s writing, then go ahead and answer the letters you’ve faked yourself.

26. C:
Our teacher and master is Scheherazade; remember, you merely tack ten- or fifteen-page stories in between events that constitute “life.”

27. B:
Read a little, but read with love; you’ll appear better read than those who read like a tomcat eating a grindstone.

28. C:
Be pushy, get to know important people so that you’ll have some reminiscences to write about when they kick the bucket.

29. A:
Don’t begin an obituary piece with “dearly departed” only to end up insulting the dead.

30. A, B, C:
Do everything in your power to avoid the following sentences:
a)
The dearly departed was alive only yesterday.
b)
Our profession is fraught with ingratitude: what we write today is forgotten tomorrow.
c)
Did you happen to hear such and such a program on the radio last night?
d)
How time flies!
e)
Had the dearly departed been alive today, what would he have said about this crying shame?
f)
They don’t do that in Europe.
g)
Bread cost only this many
kuruş
this many years ago.
h)
Then the event also reminded me of such and such.

31. C:
“Then” is a word that belongs only to those who don’t know the writer’s art.

32. B:
Whatever smacks of art in a column does not belong in the column; whatever it is that’s in the column, it is not art.

33. C:
Don’t adulate the intelligence of anyone who rapes poetry to satisfy his lust for art. (Tweaking B’s poetic aspirations.)

34. A:
Write easy; you’ll get read easily.

35. C:
Write hard; you’ll get read easily.

36. B:
If you write hard, you’ll get ulcers.

37. A:
If you get ulcers, you’ll become an artist. (Seeing how one of them spoke affably to another for the first time, they all chortled at this point; they laughed together.)

38. B:
Get old quick.

39. C:
Yes, get old as fast as you can. How else will you be able to write a good autumnal piece?

40. A:
The three big themes are, of course, death, love, and music.