A Useless Man Read online

  “The fool. What’s he waiting for?”

  “Don’t torture the poor kid. He’s a good boy.”

  “I know better than anyone else that he’s a good boy. I’m doing it on purpose, I only treat him like this because I love him. He’d do anything for the experience. What’s he doing?”

  “I just woke up. I told him to get some sleep. He’s sleeping now.”

  “He never went to sleep? What a fool!”

  We go over to see Odisya. Yakup looks him over carefully. As carefully as if he were dreaming his beautiful dreams. He leans over and caresses Odisya’s hair:

  “Let him sleep then. Let’s go and have a look.”

  In the shed on the hill, it’s the same as before. The boy in the girl’s lap is trying to kiss her hands. When he turns his head in our direction, we take a step back. Her head is still, bowed. She is looking down at the boy. When the young boy turns again we duck. A shadow seems to fall over Yakup’s face, which until then was strange, smiling and swirling with desire.

  “He’s my age.”

  “Who?’

  “The guy in her lap.”

  For a moment we stand there upright, our eyes fastened on the scene. Then we step back. Yakup speaks, lost in thought:

  “He’s just my age, man!”

  I don’t say a word.

  Winter drove our dreams into the rain, the snow, the cold, and the dark; some of us were at school, some of us were apprentices at corner shops, some of us were trudging through fog-covered fields of spinach, some of us were like Yakup, at the head of a boat, the sail billowing against a lodos or a poyraz …

  From winter to summer a person can change beyond recognition. Most people grow fatter, and paler; some take on alarming new shapes … It seems to me that children never change over the summer, only over the winter do they grow.

  We almost never saw each other that winter. By spring Odisya had grown tall, and in his face I could see the sinuous traces of a trickster. He was still singing but he had lost that crystal clear voice. That voice that had once drawn me into a warmer, sunnier world now sounded like the voice of a village trickster, a throaty, snaky, swaggering voice that sang of wine and greed and lies and gossip and lust and sleepless nights. It was as if he had thrown off the warm and open face that had once held me captive and discarded it like an old shirt; the face I saw now was the one I feared. It was the face of his uncle Manoli, the face he wore that week he spent trying to sell a lobster. Once I remember marvelling at how one face could evoke a world of sun and warmth, while another face, even a face that bore a close resemblance, could only convey the cold of the world we lived in. Back then I think I drew a line between a person’s face and his character. That is not to say I thought beauty and good character went hand in hand. A wicked soul performs its sorcery best when it can hide behind a beautiful face. What I am trying to say is this: the facial gestures, even color and subtle movements that bespeak morality, are only there when the face is as true as the soul shining through it. The traits are then quite charming. And if the soul remains true, your friend will be pure, and easy to love, and almost too sweet to be true. But how wonderfully beautiful was the look on Odisya’s face when he was exploring the real world back then: his nose crumpled up at a new scent and his mouth hung half open as he listened, trying to make sense of his discoveries. But today the same movements of his face are easily likened to his uncle Manoli and his impertinence, his jealousy and his deceit.

  The fourth time I saw him, my regret knew no bounds. Oh, why did I do that? I couldn’t stop asking myself. Why ever had I kissed that boy? How could I have ever loved that face?

  Yakup had changed, too. Completely. Now he had as thick a neck as that boy we’d seen with that girl in the stable on Spoon Island. Somehow the barber had changed the color of his dark hair. He still hadn’t shaved his moustache. And the barber had trimmed it into the oddest-looking thing. Despite all the unfortunate changes in his outward appearance, you could still see the old Yakup. When I looked into his face, I could still see traces of the adventures we’d shared. No, they were more than just traces. But not a word about Spoon Island. Now all he wanted to talk about were his adventures with a young girl:

  “Eftehia’s legs were as desperate to burn as yellow church candles, her crisp white teeth were as white as fresh walnuts, and her hands asked to be kissed.”

  Yakup met Eftehia in the autumn, when those arbutus berries I told you about were at their ripest. The bushes with blooming red flowers. Together they collected berries. Eftehia always took the ripest, plumpest berries. And then she was drunk, like all the other island women who said the berries made you drunk. She brought a ripe berry to her lips, took a bite and said to Yakup, “Now you eat the other half.” Then they lay down as the scent of honey wafted over them from the bushes’ red flowers.

  Eftehia’s face was the face of an ordinary Greek girl. Full of fire, nothing more. She wasn’t very beautiful, and she wasn’t ugly either. But when she was in the sea in her dark blue bathing suit, the sight of her little breasts, and the rounded, cruel curves of her lustrous, powerful legs could make a boy double over and drive his hands into the earth, and tear up the grass with his teeth … how beautifully she swam. When the island’s summer houses filled up with dashing young men who dressed in sparkling whites, Eftehia quietly moved on from Yakup, who dressed in thick grays and had holes in his trousers. Odisya, meanwhile, had befriended the new boys, and with the money he’d saved up over the winter, he bought himself a pair of white pants and a short-sleeved silk shirt, and after begging a thousand different ways with the dashing youths he managed to get himself a sailor’s cap. When he strolled out onto the square in his new get-up, his powerful, well-proportioned body could make a young girl’s heart flutter and her thoughts race – at least from afar. Yakup and I would exchange only quick hellos before he went off to join the new boys, and the girls would introduce him. They would play cards in the gazino and because he won more than he lost, he always had money in his pocket.

  That summer we only went over to Spoon Island once. And that was with Odisya and his crew. Four Greek boys. With a fake smile he told them about the things we had done together the year before, but without affection. He made it sound foolish. I could see from the pained smile on Yakup’s face that he, too, now thought it foolish, and that he found it distasteful to even speak about it.

  Odisya’s friends split their sides laughing.

  With their Greek tangos, they chased all our Robinsons off our desert island along with the air of Robinson; they were rowdy enough to reduce the Portuguese pirate to tears. I kept thinking of how I had kissed Odisya. I kept peeling the skin off my lips.

  The Hairspring

  “How many minutes left?”

  Clearly confused, he said:

  “Till what?”

  I looked at him, surprised.

  “Till we get out of here, my dear,” I said.

  “Oh …”

  Then he pulled a good-sized silver watch out of his pocket. Prying his eyes away from the blackboard, he looked down at it. He seemed calm, and a little afraid:

  “Seventeen minutes …”

  The spring afternoon came into the classroom in waves; flies were mating on the broad classroom windows, paying the botany teacher no heed. He was talking to us about seeds. They seemed to float in the thick, white light around us.

  A sharp poke from behind. I spun around to hear someone say:

  “How much time left? Ask him.”

  “You ask him. I already did.”

  The voice behind me:

  “You beast.”

  I turned to the pensive boy beside me and said:

  “Celil, efendi, my good man, I was wondering if you could tell me how much time is left?”

  My friend was about to ask me again, “how many minutes until what?” But looking into my eyes he made the connection and pulled out his good-sized watch. With great reluctance, he said:

  “Two min
utes.”

  Every class went like this. Because he was the only one with a watch. Over the course of every lesson, he would take his timepiece out of his vest pocket. And then, in that deep, hoarse voice of his, he’d say:

  “Ten minutes … Five minutes, twenty minutes, time’s up …”

  Lessons back then lasted fifty minutes. Once, I heard him calling out to the back: “Forty-five minutes!” There was shame in his voice that day, and exasperation.

  But he was as punctilious about this duty as he was about his studies. Only during long breaks do I remember him looking at his watch without an audience. Though sometimes, as a lesson drew to a close, his thin and beautiful face would pale as his weary eyes went heavy with sleep. He would look down at his watch then, too.

  After that first time, I never had to ask him again; he would just tell me.

  One by one my hopes of going up to the next class were dashed. My heart was bitter and sad. In geometry class, where I didn’t understand a thing, I never asked him for the time and neither did any of the others. Even the lazy students applied themselves. There was no time to ask for the time. I was pretty much the only one who dozed off. I could almost feel the steam rising up from my melting brain.

  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

  A Useless Man

  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. Co
mment 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.