By the time he got up to put on his trousers, he was no longer the great and fearsome Azrael. Once again, he was the watchman, flashing his bright white teeth.
‘Come again.’
‘You’re trying to say I won’t?’
‘Come more often.’
‘I will, but first we need to get rid of this curse.’
‘What curse?’
‘What curse! Are you blind? Everyone in this village keeps going missing.’
Hacer said nothing. She felt around for the rifle and when she found it, she gave it to the watchman.
‘Have you ever heard of Soldier Hamdi?’
‘I’ve heard the name. Wasn’t he the scoundrel with the nine wives?’
‘Exactly! Where are his children, eh? And where, for that matter, are all those courtyards, bursting with all the children he squired?’
‘How should I know?’ said Hacer crossly. ‘They are where they are!’
‘But I’m serious,’ said the watchman. ‘So listen . . . They must have been born under our noses, and they must live under our noses, but now, with all these disappearances, we can’t even see them.’
When they reached the stable door, the watchman paused to think. He was about to ask Hacer a question: ‘What if we can’t see any of this because we don’t exist either?’ But a warm goodbye kiss stemmed his words.
‘Come again,’ said Hacer.
He said nothing. Quietly, very quietly, he crept across the courtyard. Heart on fire, he strode off without thinking where he was going. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a shadow came to block his way. There it stood, glaring down at him with imperious impatience. Hoping to slip by unnoticed, the watchman moved towards the wall. But now, with a great leap, the shadow did the same.
‘Why does the snooow faaallll?’
‘Get the hell away from me!’ the watchman cried.
Cennet’s son went wheeling off – first in a zigzag, and then in a circle, and then jumping from one side of the road to the other, faster and faster, a bit of silver here and a bit of silver there, flashing like a drop of mercury, cackling horribly all the while.
And the watchman just stood there, not knowing what to do. He felt angry. He felt cornered. But at the same time he knew there was no moving forward.
Slowly, very slowly, he raised his rifle, to take aim at the laughter.
21
The man who had been sleeping in the chair now opened his eyes and looked blearily into the mirror. It was clear he had forgotten where he was. When he saw the lather on his face, he seemed shocked.
I didn’t know for sure what time he woke up. When I noticed him looking into the mirror, he still seemed deep in sleep. His face, his form – they seemed so far away. With every laboured breath, that distance seemed to increase. Perhaps he had mistaken the reflection in the mirror for the real world. Perhaps he had been trying to find a foothold in the receding silence. I cannot say how long this lasted. But when he emerged once more through sleep’s fine curtain – when his eyes found mine in the mirror – the shop itself seemed to shudder. In some strange way, everyone and everything slipped out of place. As the light glinted off the pair of scissors on the counter, I saw them click shut. The bristles left their brushes to fly up into the air, while the powder boxes rattled.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it ended. But the silence had been broken. The traffic in the streets began to hum again, the people on the pavements began to move. And the man in the chair began to talk.
‘When are you going to shave me?’
He’d turned to look at me. I was, of course, surprised. Too surprised to speak.
‘As you know,’ I said, after a long pause, ‘I’m not the barber.’
He screwed up his face. I could see he did not believe me. And I could tell, from the fire in his eyes, that he was not a little angry.
‘Don’t joke about,’ he said now. ‘I’ve got things to do. I’ve got to get back on my motorbike and go.’
‘I’m not joking. I’m not the barber. I’m just a customer who came to this shop after you. But I suppose you know that already. I think you’re the one having a laugh.’
‘But how could that be?’ he cried in astonishment. ‘What are you implying – that I dropped off for a few moments, and lost my mind?’
‘It wasn’t a few moments. You’ve been sleeping for at least an hour. Maybe even an hour and a half.’
At this, he fell silent. Leaning back into his chair, he watched me through half-open eyes. He was trying to look fierce, but I could tell my words had shaken him.
‘Why don’t we try to go back to the beginning?’ I suggested finally. ‘Why don’t you tell me how you came to be here today, and what happened next? It might help us shine some light on all this.’
He was so lost in thought now that I wondered if he might have drifted off to sleep again. ‘I came here by motorbike,’ he murmured. ‘I wanted a shave before I set off for the village. Half an hour ago, when I came through that door, you were trimming the moustache of a little man whose hair had grown into his beard. I said hello, of course . . . Then I waited for a while in that chair where you’re sitting now. Then the little man jumped up and left . . . I don’t even think he paid. In fact, as he was leaving, he muttered something about a skeleton outside. I came and sat in the chair in his place, but I must have drifted off a little . . .’
‘And the apprentice?’
‘What apprentice?’
‘Was there no apprentice in the shop? I mean, a little boy with flapping ears who danced around the chair with little clipped steps while the barber was shaving the customers?’
‘No,’ he said, carefully, ‘I didn’t see an apprentice.’ Again he fell silent. I watched him try and make sense of his surroundings, as with every new breath his fear grew.
There was no need for me to ask if he could remember me coming into the shop after him.
‘You must have been dreaming,’ I announced. ‘You must have had a dream while you were asleep.’
He flinched, as if I’d insulted him.
‘Look, let me explain,’ I continued. ‘For one thing, what you’ve said doesn’t fit. You claim that all this happened half an hour ago, but you’ve been asleep for at least an hour, or maybe even an hour and a half. You think I’m the barber, and his apprentice, too. This is ridiculous. As everything we dream about always is. My guess is that some real memories found their way into your dreams, and then you forgot you were dreaming. It happens to us all.’
He searched my face, as if to find something he’d lost. And I was sure I had not convinced him. It occurred to me then that perhaps he had no choice but to be silent, to lean back into his seat and await the barber’s return. In this I was mistaken, for now he asked, ‘What do you think? What if everything you and I have said just now happened in a dream?’
22
The muhtar was sitting at his desk, shakily smoking a cigarette as he inspected the bloodstains on the skirting board. So long as they were there, Cennet’s son would be there in the office with them. The muhtar could almost see – almost feel – the boy’s eyes on him. Darting glances, lighter than silk, but how they weighed on him, how they pinned him down. Beads of sweat were forming on his forehead, and on his hands, as he tightened his grip on his chair. And this might have been why he did not hear the knock on the door. Or rather, he heard unseen hands hitting against an unseen door, flailing in the darkness, trying, without hope, to force open the lock.
A second knock, followed by an angry kick, and the door swung open.
‘Give me my son!’ cried Cennet.
Picking up his amber prayer beads, the muhtar gave her a wan look.
‘Why don’t you tell me? Where is he?’
‘You know full well where he is! He hasn’t been home for three days. What have you done with him?’
The rest the muhtar could make no sense of, so he sat back in his chair and let the words wash over him. It was clear from her mouth that the woman w
as speaking. From time to time she stopped to point at the wall, or the door, or to ask a question. After each question she would look straight into the muhtar’s eyes, awaiting his answer. When no answer came, she would revert to the waving and the shouting. The muhtar wanted to think that he saw what she saw, but as he saw it all without hearing what she said, he couldn’t be entirely sure. Cennet’s son had already absented himself from his own existence. If, as this woman was saying, even that absence had gone missing, then the situation was very grave indeed. The way things were going, he would be waking up one morning to find that the entire village had gone missing. Maybe it had already done so, and no one had noticed. Maybe no one had noticed because no one in the village saw anything strange in someone vanishing . . . In which case, Cennet could have vanished into thin air just by living in their midst, by fading away like they all did, as their faces and voices grew pale and faint, and their scent floated away. Each breath they took was shallower than the last, but still no one noticed. Not even when their nearest and dearest disappeared did they notice! And if that was the case, then there was nothing they could do to remedy the situation. It was far too late, the muhtar told himself. There was no way out . . . If only they had paid more attention at the outset, they might have found a way to keep the entire village from absenting itself. But now it had gone too far and everything that had made the village what it once had been – the women and children, the animals, courtyards, trees, and earthen rooftops, the sounds and smells and smiles and aches – had vanished into a giant void where one absence sat nestled inside another, without ever realising that they were no longer there . . .
Shouting and screaming and waving her arms, Cennet advanced on the desk. She didn’t seem to mind whether he understood what she was saying or not. Then suddenly she fell silent. At that moment, she looked tired enough to fall on the floor in a heap. A minute later, she turned on her heel. And once she had left the muhtar’s office, it was as if she had never been there.
The muhtar stayed put. There was no point in moving. He would not have known what to do, or what to say, or how to behave. He knew only that a great despair had settled on the village, with every new misfortune only adding to it. That said, when Cennet’s son had gone mad, the villagers had been so busy trying to explain his strange behaviour that they’d pretty much forgotten about Güvercin. It was true that Reşit still came to his office once every two days to ask if there was any news of his daughter, only to bow his head and shed a few tears. More than a few, in fact. Usually it was so bad that Rıza had to come over to take him home; he’d have fallen from his chair by then. He’d have to be carried like a snivelling sack across the village square, damning every living soul, right until the moment he reached his bed. Passing through the courtyard gate, he would leave behind him a trail of rakı-flavoured obscenities. With time, the villagers tired of his antics, but still no one had the heart to say so. It was the opinion of the white-bearded old men resting at the foot of the wall that Rıza should simply put a bullet through the forehead of whoever kidnapped his niece and put an end to it, knowing that, in any case, Reşit would eventually calm down.
Without warning, the muhtar jumped up, as if it had at last come to him what he should do. Leaving his office, he walked straight to the barber shop. All the villagers sitting under the plane tree seemed to be watching him; a few passing horsemen slowed down, just a bit, as did a dilapidated ox-cart. And this was why the muhtar decided that when he reached the barber shop he would wheel around to give them a meaningful look. But when he saw the boy at the door, he stopped dead in his tracks.
‘Who are you?’ he asked in a deathly tone.
‘The apprentice,’ replied the boy.
The barber emerged from behind a curtain to watch.
‘I didn’t know you’d taken on an apprentice,’ said the muhtar. ‘Whose son is this?’
As the barber walked towards him, he seemed not to believe his eyes.
‘The boy’s not new,’ he said. ‘He’s been here a long time.’
‘How long is that?’
‘Goodness, it must be four or five months by now. You must have seen him.’
‘But he wasn’t here the other times I came?’
‘He was,’ said the barber.
He said this with such conviction that the muhtar lost his nerve. He did not dare ask again whose son this apprentice was. Instead he fell clumsily into one of the chairs in front of the mirror. Once settled, he leant back to contemplate his reflection, but when he locked eyes with the apprentice, he looked away.
‘If he was here,’ he murmured, ‘then he must have been here.’
Best, he thought, not to ask whose boy this was. Best to change the subject, he thought, as he tugged at a drawer.
‘Cut my hair very short,’ said the muhtar. ‘And shave off my beard, but make it clean.’
Nodding, the barber took up his scissors and began cutting. Fixing his eyes on his master’s hands, the apprentice began to dance around the chair with tiny clipped steps.
‘Planning any travel anytime soon?’ asked the barber. The muhtar, already half asleep, looked up.
‘Travel where?’ he asked.
‘Into the city,’ said the barber.
He left it at that. There was no need to ask why he might wish to go into the city. For the rest of his shave, he said nothing; it was enough, he thought, to glare into the mirror. When the towel around his neck was removed, he leant forward to examine his face. Then he turned to look at the back of his neck. He gave it a few strokes. Then he moistened his fingers and set about fixing his eyebrows. The barber had never seen him so neatly turned-out before, and perhaps that was why he looked him over with such interest as he handed him his cap. But the muhtar paid him no attention: he was still arranging his cap. You’d think he was off to a wedding.
Without another word, he went back through the village square. But not in his usual way: he seemed to be sleepwalking. The villagers sitting under the plane tree whispered amongst themselves as they took a good long look. Rıza was with them, or rather, some way off from the others, drinking Turkish coffee. But the muhtar saw none of this. He was walking into parts unknown. His mind raced ahead, his body loped behind. To the white-bearded men at the foot of the wall, it was clear that – however high he held up his head – the mind inside was in shreds.
He walked the length and breadth of the village that day, leaving no street unvisited, no courtyard untouched, no corner unturned, or fountain untested. Wherever the villagers went, they found him. Some, who had only ever seen him on a few occasions, now found themselves greeting him in several different places, several times an hour. The barber thought he must have somehow managed to multiply himself. Considering the grim countenance of each and every one of the many hundreds of muhtars now roaming the streets, they would surely multiply even further. Not all of the muhtars were the same, either; one would have a faint smile as he greeted the villagers he passed, another would pass them without a word.
As the evening sank into darkness, one of the silent muhtars planted himself outside Reşit’s courtyard gate. Sucking in his breath, he glared and stared. Then he tiptoed forward a few paces. He could have taken this moment to scour the courtyard for any clues he might have missed a few months earlier, but the very thought struck him as absurd. Nothing in the yard had changed; that much was clear from the stale scent at the doorstep, the length of the shadows and the width of the walls. All that could be said was that if Güvercin had left a trace here, it was now far off in the past.
Just then a horse whinnied in the stable to his right, its eyes flashing like silver pebbles. The muhtar jumped. For a moment he thought it might be Cennet’s son, playing his second disappearing trick. As he neared the stable door, he tried to banish the thought. After all that had happened, Cennet’s son would be staying well away from Reşit’s house. Pushing open the door, he peered through the horse’s ripe breath, passing his eyes over the straw-strewn floor, the bags of pin
econes piled against the wall, and the feedbags hanging from the rafters. Every few moments, the horse would prick its ears to look up at the sky, but nothing else moved.
Now Reşit was racing down the stairs in his bright-white underclothes, to stand before the muhtar. Or rather, to stoop, because his back was as bent as the rafters. After a silence that seemed to last hours, the two men set out together for the cherry orchard. They might have been puppets, played by the same hands, for they turned their heads in synchrony. If one stopped without warning, the other stopped too; if one jumped, so did the other. Stopping in the dark night to savour the scent of cherries, the muhtar began to whisper. Reşit hung his head, straining to understand his words.
At this same moment, another of the muhtars was back in his office, sitting at his desk. He was gazing again at the candlelit bloodstains on the skirting board, and waiting for the watchman, who had gone off to fetch him a horse. As quiet as he looked now, this muhtar had been busy preparing the horse that the watchman was now bringing over. His wife had come with him to the stable, and slipped some food into the saddlebag. She had then settled herself at the door, to fix him with a mournful look. She was waiting for an explanation, but the muhtar paid no heed to her silent pleas; he was righting the stirrups, tugging at the horse’s mane and adjusting the saddle.