A Useless Man Read online

  Quietly Ahmet walked over to the bed and sat down next to her. He pressed his head into his trembling hands … He couldn’t think. He could hear the rain pelting down, and the crowd outside growing louder, but everything else was spinning around inside him. The wheel was unraveling. He was falling down a well. The problem wasn’t in his head, he thought. It was everywhere else. If only the dogs could stop barking, if only the rain would stop pelting down like this for just a moment, then he could think. Bright bolts of lightning cast the room in a blue light. Until now, he had thought himself locked in a room alone somehow, but now he saw the large frightened eyes of the woman sitting across from him. He began to wonder if that blue light came from inside this ghostly creature and her white muslin şalvar. Was it the chestnut thorns that were making his hands ache? Or was it that he’d eaten so much that evening? Was that why he felt so much pain and heaviness in his stomach? His sight was blurred, his mind fogged, his sweat cold. Seized by a malarial seizure, he curled himself up into a tiny ball.

  Toward morning, he woke to find the woman curled up at the other end of the mattress, still dressed in her muslins, or almost.

  Though the rain had lessened, it was still pouring down on the half-lit square. The dogs were still barking. The cattle were passing, their wet bells ringing in the mist. They were followed by gloomy shepherds, surrounded by goats and cowering under their sacks.

  Gülsüm was awake now, too. She looked pale. She was trying to smile. The morning light from the window cast a mist over the hanging fruit. Ahmet was thirsty. He seized a bunch of grapes. With a second bunch of grapes in his hands, he approached the pale girl on the bed and popped two grapes into her mouth. How bright she looked in the half-lit room as, saying nothing, he pressed his thick, wet lips against her neck.

  The sun rose, flickering in the mirror and their eyes. They opened the curtains.

  The Barges

  The crowds had gone. They were the last two men on the bridge. One was dressed like a laborer, and the other – who looked to be about the same age – like a sailor. They were sitting side by side, smoking in silence as they looked across the water in the direction of Üsküdar.

  Üsküdar is best seen from a distance, and now, as it slept, its dark shores lit here and there by red lights, it looked so distant, and beautiful, as to be forever out of reach.

  The sailor turned to his companion. “I have an aunt in Üsküdar,” he said. “We could go over and visit her one day.”

  “Maybe. We’ll see.”

  Sinking back into silence, they watched a motor launch pass beneath the bridge. The barges trailing behind it were carrying full loads, tied down with tarpaulin. They must have been carrying some sort of grain – wheat, or barley, or corn. They had that softness.

  As the laborer watched the last barge slip under the bridge, he looked at the load that he had decided must be wheat, and for a moment was tempted to jump into that softness. He tried to hold the words back. But couldn’t.

  “I wish I’d jumped right in,” he said.

  “Just like in the movies, eh?”

  The laborer didn’t answer. He didn’t answer, but he smiled.

  It was a winter night in the middle of Ramadan. Turning together to look at the old city, they looked at the lights strung up between the minarets.

  “I love those lights,” the sailor said.

  And the laborer said, “So do I.”

  On weekends one of these men would take himself off to Galata. The other to Şehzedebaşı … On very rare occasions, they would come together to the bridge to watch the night. They whiled away the night watching the lights of Üsküdar and the great ships of Galata, the smaller vessels tied to the piers, and the motor launches pulling barges that were sometimes empty, sometimes full. They knew from these evenings that they could count on one another; just by exchanging four or five sentences, they knew they were good friends.

  Each time the laborer came here and saw a barge loaded down with wheat, he had to fight the urge to climb over the railings and drop himself into it. Sometimes he would say this to his friend, and his friend would say:

  “Just like in the movies, eh?”

  Then they would go home, or, if they had this conversation early enough, they would suddenly remember a movie house in Yüksekkaldırım, and so they’d go there and sit together in the front row.

  No matter what film was showing, it left them happy and smiling. They didn’t say a word on the way home. And that night one of them would dream of kissing his Galata friend like the tough guy in the film. Meanwhile, the other dreamed of taking his friend to the darkest street of Şehzedebaşı and burying his nose in the palms of his hands and kissing them. These dreams would rob them both of sleep and make wrecks of them.

  “Did you sleep well?” one would ask.

  And the other would say, “I sure did.”

  If one of them smiled, the other would fall asleep right away. If he didn’t, he was already asleep.

  It was a white, moonlit night. Light puffs of smoke were rising from the ferries docked along the pier. They made a man yearn to set out on a long journey. Now and then a ferry would approach the pier and behind it a second ferry, lit by a second light, to send a flurry of passengers up and down the gangplank.

  Suddenly, the laborer said:

  “Why don’t we go with them?”

  The other said:

  “Let’s go, then.”

  They slept in the same room. One was from Sivas. The other from Izmir. One worked at the pier, tying up the ferries as they docked. The other worked in a mill. The room they shared cost them four lira a month but they never once spent an evening in. They hardly ever saw each other. One finished work at nine. The other would come back at twelve and go straight to sleep. The room was pitch black. Hardly any daylight came in through the grilled window that looked out onto a grimy, musty courtyard. One man’s bed was on the right-hand side of the room, and the other man’s bed was on the left. Because he had no quilt, the laborer slept in his clothes. The other slept in his shirt and shorts.

  One had to be back on his ship by six in the morning. The other started work after noon. If ever they both woke up at six, the sailor, whose boss was a Greek, would say:

  “And a fine kalimera morning to you, my son.”

  Not knowing that kalimera was Greek for good morning, and thinking his boss had said karamela, the laborer would respond with his own bit of nonsense: “One caramel for me, and one caramel for you!” And together they would laugh.

  One day they fired the sailor. A falling out with a harbor official. This was all he told his friend:

  “He called me a son of a donkey, and I smashed his jaw.”

  His friend said:

  “I wish you hadn’t done that.”

  These words so upset the man that he went for three days without eating, and without asking his friend for help. The other thought he must be living on his savings, so he didn’t ask him how he was. Then the sailor found work in the Paşabahçe glass factory. He was going to board there, too, and so he bid his friend farewell. They embraced each other. That last evening, they went out again to the bridge.

  “We never made it over to Üsküdar to see my aunt,” the sailor said.

  “No, we didn’t, did we?” said the man from Sivas. “But maybe we’ll still get there one day, my dear friend!”

  How beautiful the moon looked in the sky above. It could tear a man up just to think about how strange it must be, up there on the moon. If only we were there, just the two of us, they thought, if only it was just the two of us, safe inside that moon … But neither man spoke. Neither man could find the words. Just then, they heard a motor launch puttering across the smooth waters. And behind it, barges. Again, carrying wheat. The laborer gazed down at the wheat-laden barges passing just beneath them. But this time he had no desire to jump in.

  Nightwork

  Ömer lunged at the woman with a curse that was swallowed up by the northwest wind, the same w
ind that had earlier ripped the bandana from his head. But it still made the youngest boy in the tavern jump. Next to him was a man of about forty-five, who said:

  “Sit down, my child.”

  The youth looked up fearfully. This man did not want to kidnap him: he wanted his soul.

  The drinking had begun well before nightfall. The trams had long since put on their lights, but as always Ömer still kept the lights turned off in the tavern. It was easier to talk and drink in this half darkness.

  Eventually, the lights came on, timidly and one by one, but almost of their own accord, without the flick of a single switch. With each five-watt bulb taking five or ten minutes to light up, it was an hour before they were flickering in the darkness, casting light on Ömer’s foul temper.

  Once the lights were on, the tavern took on its usual appearance. It was, Ömer thought, noisier than hell. There were gangsters, laborers, fishermen, and Greeks and Armenians of uncertain trades; they talked about everything, though their lips were sealed. In this tavern even the innocent could hear thieves and pickpockets plotting their business without fear or loathing. In the tavern’s mirrors, they could look into the eyes of those turned away from the crowd, who were curled up, and unable to walk, and in those eyes you could see memories of an incident, an assault, a murder.

  The woman whom Ömer had just cursed was rubbing her crimson cheek.

  “Ömer Ağa, what came over you just now? I never meant to offend you. You took it the wrong way.”

  “I know exactly what you meant. And I can handle my own business.”

  Now Karabet the fiddler stepped inside. This was a man the gangsters respected. In their eyes he was an artist. Large or small, they all looked up to him. In his face, his clothes, and his manner, there were still the traces of the many years he’d spent in prison as a young man, and it was manifest in the music he played for them.

  “Stand a little to the side, at least,” Ömer told him.

  Karabet might have seen this as an insult. Had Ömer pressed one of the gangsters like this, they would’ve been all over him. The fiddler moved to the side but made it clear that he was ready to draw his blade. Ömer pointed at the singer with the reddened cheek.

  “Don’t poke your finger into men’s business ever again, do you hear?”

  It was a woman sitting just behind who answered on the singer’s behalf: she had bright eyes, crooked teeth, and bleached blond hair; she was old and Greek, but still as sociable as a cat.

  “Don’t worry, Ömer,” she said, pressing one hand to her cheek, as if in pain, “Don’t you worry one little bit. Zehra here is never ever going to poke her finger into men’s business again.”

  She played it for laughs, and she did such a good job of it that even the solemn-faced Karabet cracked a smile. As she sank into her chair, Zehra muttered, “Whore!” between her teeth. Even Ömer laughed as he came down the steps from the musicians’ stage. The tavern, which had fallen silent, now filled with laughter, as if on cue. The stink of rancid olive oil and anise wafted back into the room and soon it was as if nothing had happened. The gangsters drifted back to their intimate conversations, heroic tales, and love stories, pouring out their hearts. Except for two strangers gazing absently out the far window. One of them called over the waiter to ask, “What happened?”

  As if sharing a secret, the waiter bent over and whispered into the man’s ear. This man then whispered the news to his friend, as lightly as if he were cooling their meze with his breath.

  “That woman … apparently she pointed at that young man over there, and said that Ömer must have turned him the other way.”

  The two men looked cautiously at Ömer’s table. He was staring into his meze, lost in thought, while the hard-faced forty-five-year-old man next to him offered him consoling words, with calming gestures. Next to this man was a youth who looked to be about twenty. His cheeks were pink and plump, his skin white. When he smiled he looked ugly, there was a gold tooth that every now and then shimmered in the back of his mouth. His eyes were dull and without luster. His hair was soft. His shoulders were narrow, his manner rough, but for all his swaggering, there was something of a woman in him.

  By the time Ömer left the tavern with the forty-five-year-old man, it was very late. They wandered drunkenly through the damp November streets, hearing no one.

  Turning to his companion, Ömer said, “Get rid of this one. He’s a worthless piece of shit. A coward.”

  The forty-five-year-old man turned to the youth who was three paces behind them, shoulders hunched.

  “Go home, my boy, and get some sleep.”

  The boy vanished with the wind, saying nothing. The men continued in silence until they reached the shore. Here there were boatmen, still waiting for customers despite the late hour, but when they saw these two they made no offers. After jumping across several rowboats, the men reached out for a guard rail. They pulled up a cover, and warm air hit their faces. In the pitch dark below, they could hear snoring; as they made their way in, the embers of cigarettes lit up a few faces. They stopped short in front of one of them, as if they were surprised to see him, and knelt down before him. This man was tall, tall as a corpse. His face was white and in the light of his glowing cigarette it was like a painting made of broken glass. He sucked in on his cigarette and then stubbed it out.

  “Idris. Hey, Idris!”

  Yawning on his bed, the man looked around. His voice was soft and calm.

  “Who are you? Why are you here?”

  “Get up, Idris. It’s me … Ömer.”

  “Who’s that next to you?”

  “Who do you think? It’s Mavro.”

  “Oh, Mavro, is it? What’s up?”

  “What do you think? We have work to do.”

  “What work?”

  “Nightwork, you fool!”

  The tall man searched for his shoes. The damp of the night came through the open hole that they now slowly climbed through. After jumping again from rowboat to rowboat, they reached the muddy shore. Here Ömer asked for the time.

  Someone said, “It’s half past eleven.”

  They began to walk. Everything was shut, and all they could hear were the whistles of the night watchmen and the indistinct rustlings of night, and ghostly footsteps.

  They arrived at an all-night coffeehouse. From the outside it looked as if it were lit by a gas lamp, but there was just the one twenty-five watt light bulb, and the people inside could barely see each other. But once inside, the overwhelming stench of misery needed no illumination.

  “Ali! Hello!”

  In a Persian accent, someone said, “Ömer Ağa! How good to see you!”

  “Fine, then. Three teas for us, if it’s fresh. Where is the simit seller?”

  “He’ll be back any minute. My tea is freshly brewed.”

  Two tiny naked creatures were asleep on the sofa. Even in the darkness, you could see that they weren’t covered, and though the coffeehouse was warm, they were shivering. Ömer stepped over to these creatures; in the darkness he could only see their noses, which were as small as watermelon seeds.

  “So what are these, Ali?”

  Ali went to Ömer’s side, his face stricken.

  “Street children, the poor things. We had to take them in. What else could we do?”

  Ömer turned around to look Ali straight in the eye. Then with his giant hands he tugged the rug off the wall.

  “So that you don’t pity them free of charge,” he said. “Throw this rag over them. Can’t you see they’re going to freeze?”

  Once covered with the rug, the little boys burrowed into it without waking. Turning around to hug each other, they sank into the deep sleep of childhood.

  In front of the stove was an opium addict who made his living selling fish off the end of the bridge. He was silent, lost in his dreams. Fish, huge fish, each one as big as a monster, seaweed that made their lures sparkle beneath the green sea, a caique laden with harbor prawns, mermaids, whelks as big as gian
ts …

  Next to him was a dark-eyed child of fourteen or fifteen. His curly hair was blacker than black. He wasn’t sleeping, he was staring at the embers of his cigarette. Ömer went over to sit next to him. The others sank into chairs and were soon half asleep.

  Then there was a little incident, so small that it disturbed neither the silence in the coffeehouse nor the sleeping opium addict. Springing to his feet, in his hand the switchblade he’d taken from the palms of another, Ömer cried, in a voice as calm as it was assured:

  “We were just joking, Karayel! We were just joking!”

  The child sitting next to him took in a breath, as deep as the sea. He spoke like the wind.

  “I can’t take jokes like that, Brother Ömer. For jokes like that, I’ve thrown seven knives. And seven knives have come back.”

  In his strange Black Sea accent, the swarthy boy kept talking about his lowly, coarse, deceitful deed. Ömer looked at him with a surprised smile.

  “It was a joke. A joke! Karayel. Don’t I know you? Ali, go make us another four teas. And go find the simit seller and bring him back.”

  Ömer had a hard time persuading the boy that it was all a joke. But now they were four people, sitting together in a huddle. Four people speaking in whispers too low for anyone else to hear. Until Mavro raised his voice to say to the one next to him:

  “So there you have it. Just the boy we were looking for. He’ll know what he’s doing, too. All he has to do is give us one quick whistle.”

  Then there was more whispering, again loud enough to hear. When Ali came back from looking for the simit seller, he found them on their feet. Biting into their warm simits as they stepped into the street, they vanished into the night.

  Who Cares?