‘How about you?’
Cennet’s son looked up blankly. ‘Why would I marry her? I wasn’t the one who kidnapped her!’
‘Shut up, you scoundrel,’ shouted the watchman. ‘Don’t lie to us!’
‘I didn’t,’ insisted Cennet’s son. ‘I was on the mountains looking for my snake’s aunt . . . I looked around and saw Güvercin crying in a grove of juniper bushes, so I brought her back.’
‘Tell the truth or I’ll pull the trigger!’
‘I am telling the truth! She was there, in the juniper bushes! She was crying . . . Shedding huge tears, there in the darkness . . . Wasn’t it the right thing to sling her on my back and bring her in? Should I have left her there?’
Perplexed, the watchman glanced up at the road from the mill, but not to look for the muhtar, for even if he had come galloping in on his horse, he could not have seen him. The night was thick and black as tar. And yet, once he had sent Reşit off and returned to his steps, his thoughts went back to the muhtar. It made him angry to think how he had simply locked the office door and taken the key with him. If he hadn’t, the watchman could just open the door and lock Cennet’s son inside now, and go home without having to worry about Rıza. As it was, he would be stuck here all night, shivering in the cold like a dog.
‘How I wish you’d come back,’ he murmured. His eyelids dropped as he slumped down against the door.
And then it seemed as if the muhtar had returned long ago, and was inside, chain-smoking at his desk and telling the watchman how to save Cennet’s son from Rıza’s wrath. ‘We all live in several places,’ he kept saying, in a voice that, with every word, lessened the watchman’s despair. ‘And that,’ the muhtar continued, ‘means that we are well placed to keep Cennet’s son out of Rıza’s sight. This much is clear: we must act before we have a new disaster on our hands.’ The watchman propped his elbows on the desk, looking into the muhtar’s eyes. ‘Maybe Rıza needs to be locked up somewhere,’ said the muhtar, forgetting Cennet’s son outside tied to the flagpole. The watchman wondered if he was getting forgetful, if this was why he had only just returned from the city. The muhtar must be tired. He was bumping up and down on his chair, as if he were still riding a horse, and his eyes danced with mountains, plains, highlands and green valleys cushioned in darkness . . .
The watchman’s eyes shot open. So that was it – the muhtar was inside! He was more certain of this than if he’d seen him in the flesh. He couldn’t help placing an ear to the door to try to listen in. He heard breathing so deep it resembled the noise from a pair of old bellows. The muhtar was inside! He pressed his ear against the door and closed his eyes tight. It sounded like the muhtar was angry, as if his face, like his breathing, was black with rage. If he was shouting, he was shouting nonsense. If he was walking, he was pacing the room, his hands clenched behind his back – raging, no doubt, at how useless the watchman had been at handling things in his absence. Why hadn’t he assembled the villagers and sent them off at once to hunt the horse that had trampled that fine young man? Why hadn’t he investigated that smell in the village square? ‘Or if these feats were beyond you,’ he imagined the muhtar saying, ‘you could at least have brought Cennet’s son back to his senses, and rescued your conscience into the bargain.’ The watchman stood up, as if to leave the muhtar’s office. Grabbing his rifle, he marched towards the flagpole.
‘You’re going to be out of my hands soon, you dog,’ he shouted, loud enough to be heard inside the muhtar’s office. ‘I’m going to shoot you before Rıza does!’
Cennet’s son said nothing.
‘Do you hear me?’ continued the watchman. ‘If you don’t marry Güvercin to set things straight, I’m going to shoot you before Rıza does!’
Once again, Cennet’s son chose not to reply. He didn’t even look up as the watchman approached. He just lay there.
The watchman leant over to look at him. His eyes were closed. In their place only eyelashes. He looked as peaceful as a baby.
‘How amazing,’ he said to himself. ‘He’s fast asleep . . .’
35
Late into the night, I decided that it would be foolish to stay in the barber’s shop any longer, so I rose from my chair. My leg had fallen asleep, but like Musa Dede I felt my way across the room so as not to bump into anything. Knowing that I’d not be able to lock the door behind me, I decided I should leave the light on, so I now tried to locate the switch.
I needed to get something to eat before I went home. I imagined myself squeezing a lemon over a bowl of tripe soup, or downing a few glasses of tea. I was insanely hungry, and if I couldn’t find any soup or tea, I’d pick the sesame seeds off a simit and wolf it down. Maybe I’d find a lovely little early-morning coffeehouse, with tables covered in chequered oilcloth, and flowerbeds, and a tiny pond, and a tinier fountain. Sitting down in the cool night, I would drink one warm glass of tea after the other, savouring each mouthful as the stars sparkled overhead. Then I would light up a cigarette. Other men would join me, crossing the garden like somnambulists, each to his own table, to sleep sitting up.
After groping the walls for some time, I found the light switch. I hesitated before switching on the light; I had a feeling that when it came on I might find myself somewhere completely different. In the end, I flicked the switch and gave the shop a full inspection. Everything was in its place: I need not worry that the barber would find anything missing. I thought I might come back to the shop one last time after my tea, or my soup, just to check.
At the same time, I felt guilty about abandoning my post – though my job now was not to protect the shop as much as myself. Of course, this is something I went through every month, whenever I went for a shave . . . I would hang on for hours, saying I was looking after the shop, when really I was standing next to myself, acting as my own guard . . .
No doubt I’d be back in a few hours to take a look, not at the shop, but at myself . . .
36
The next morning, the villagers forgot about their fields and workshops and crowded under the plane tree instead. Viewed from the muhtar’s office, they formed a faint and blurry line: they seemed to be wavering, or even – strangely – waving, from a very great distance. Along the line, there were a number of beards, a few scattered hats, flying headscarves, hanging arms and sunken shoulders. There were eyes as well. Most of all, there were eyes . . . The blurry line became a single dark mass, keeping their limbs still and speaking only with their eyes as they closed in on the muhtar’s office.
The watchman could not understand how they could close that distance without moving. For a moment, he wondered whether the rifle resting on his lap would be enough to stop the surge. During the night he had gone over to Cennet’s son, who had come as close to him as the rope would allow, begging for help with those huge, frightened eyes. It was clear he’d sensed danger. He’d waited on his knees in silence, making himself small. The watchman had released his legs, and moved back, ready to strike, fearless as a general.
The grim-faced villagers were now ten or fifteen paces from the muhtar’s office. Then, with a sudden jolt, they stopped . . . It was as though the watchman was keeping them at bay with his eyes alone; they couldn’t pass. All their eyes were fixed on Cennet’s son, there at the foot of the flagpole. In dozens – no, hundreds – of eyes, Cennet’s son slowly lifted his head to face them, petrified. They shared his fear: he could see it reflected in their eyes . . . Or maybe he saw nothing in those eyes. Maybe they saw nothing in his. All they saw was fear; Cennet’s son, with his hands tied, was engulfed in terror without end . . .
There was also that smell – that all-encompassing, endlessly echoing smell. And there was the watchman, stranded in its epicentre. He was loath to stay put. He still hadn’t decided what to do. If he could stall the crowd just a little bit longer, then everything, he thought, would turn out all right. Maybe in that time he’d hear a horse galloping in, bringing the muhtar from afar; seeing that the villagers had taken leave of their se
nses, he’d intervene then and there. He’d do what he had done on the night Cennet’s son was beaten: he’d give them a hard look and ask what they wanted. The villagers would say nothing, of course, and they would disperse in silence and go back to their homes. But at this precise moment, they were all moving towards him: the men and the women, the whitebeards and the foal-eyed children. Nothing about them said they had in mind to turn around and leave. On the contrary, they seemed to have taken another few paces without the watchman noticing, as they continued their surreptitious advance.
‘No one move!’ he shouted. ‘I’ll shoot, sparing no one!’
The crowd stepped back in fear. For a moment the watchman didn’t recognise himself. When he shouted, it seemed as if the muhtar were shouting through him.
‘Did you know Güvercin was pregnant?’ asked a woman from the back of the crowd.
‘I didn’t,’ said the watchman.
‘You know now. Our girl is pregnant!’
Alarmed, the watchman jumped, without seeming to move. Or he ran, without using his limbs. He switched his rifle from one hand to the other. A wave of fatigue passed through him. He started sweating. Keeping still, and without changing his expression, he glared at Cennet’s son. ‘How inconvenient,’ he thought, ‘to be stuck here, within easy reach of anyone.’ When Rıza found out that his niece was pregnant, he’d be running up there, waving his pistol, and this time no one would stop him: everyone would think him entirely within his rights. And perhaps, when a weeping Rıza shot Cennet’s son in front of the whole village, he would somehow, at the same time, be shooting the horse that killed Ramazan as well . . . And then he would return in silence to his shop, and slip behind the counter, to drown himself in rakı.
Still trying to keep the crowd in his sights, the watchman glanced over at the muhtar’s office. Once again he blamed the muhtar for having locked the door and pocketed the key when he set off to the city – just the memory of that moment stoked his rage. He had no choice now but to break the lock and shove Cennet’s son inside. But while he did this, he needed someone else to keep the villagers at bay: given half a chance, they’d be all over him. Any of the young men below might launch the attack. If one did so much as to toss a tiny pebble – well, that alone would suffice: the others would pile in after him. The crowd would surge forward like a pack of slavering dogs . . . Leaving Cennet’s son with no chance of escape. Before he found a way to undo the rope, they would tear him apart.
As his doubts grew, the watchman looked out over the crowd; they were no longer moving, not even to flick off the flies. They seemed to be holding their breath, as if they were in a dream they could hardly believe was fast approaching its climax. Or perhaps they, too, had lost their minds: for when he looked into their silent faces, he could almost see Cennet’s son. The watchman didn’t like this at all. Somehow he would have to have his gun barrel pointed at them while he was breaking the lock. He considered untying Cennet’s son and giving him the rifle, but he soon dismissed the thought. To co-operate with a madman would be lunacy.
‘The best thing would be to get one of the villagers to help me,’ he thought. ‘But who?’
He inspected them one by one, searching for a pair of calm and reassuring eyes. Then he spotted the barber. He was standing near the children, looking on serenely.
‘Come over here,’ said the watchman. ‘Break this lock!’
The barber hesitated, as all eyes turned on him.
‘Don’t waste time. Get a rock and break this lock!’
The barber’s executioner eyes sparkled as he moved through the mass of children, flying headscarves, shivering beards, and hats, and hands, and feet. Soon he had left their fear and anger far behind. Having found a stone the size of a fist, he strode to the door. He fell smartly to his knees and started banging the lock, as if he’d known a long time that this duty would fall to him. With every blow the glint in his eyes burned brighter. When at last the lock went crashing to the ground, the crowd began to rumble like a cloud.
The watchman untied Cennet’s son and led him carefully from the flagpole to the door. The villagers moved forward several paces, as though tied to the other end of the rope.
‘No one make a move,’ yelled the watchman. He stood on the doorstep, reeling Cennet’s son in like a dead fish on a hook. When he’d pulled his charge as far as the door, the watchman pushed at it with his elbow. The door creaked open, releasing a strong scent of rotting meat . . . All those advancing towards the muhtar’s office stopped at that moment: the old, the young, the children, and even the fresh breeze blowing from the plane tree, the swallow song piercing through it, and the music of the heavens. Dropping his rope, the watchman looked at Cennet’s son in shock; for inside the muhtar’s office was the muhtar.
37
Leaving the barber shop, I walked towards the early-morning coffeehouse I had imagined but never seen.
The brightly lit street I’d been watching since morning was now quiet as a dead snake; before me I saw many hundreds of shuttered shops, and windows with drawn curtains, and balconies bathed in darkness. It felt like this street had been lost for hundreds of years, having shed the usual noises of a city for a moment’s reflection on its past. It might still be bound to that city; it ached for release.
In the middle of an unknown road, I came to a halt. ‘I’ve just walked down an avenue from a lost city,’ I thought. ‘What, then, to make of the barber shop?’ Recalling its strange customers, and the apprentice, sent off to buy razor blades, never to return, and the barber who had himself gone off, never to return, I concluded that they must all be connected in some way to this avenue. I wondered if I had been the sole witness of a great harnessing of recollections, in this barber shop in the avenue of a lost city: while I was watching the apprentice’s movements, talking with the barber, arguing with the foam-faced man about his dream and looking at the picture of the dove above the mirror, I had, without knowing, been wandering amongst the fragments of its memory. It no longer surprised me that everyone who’d left the shop had got lost, or that the shop now stood empty, but even so, I wondered if they expected it to be empty when they returned. It could be that the avenue itself was not here in this world, but lost in its past, with all that I had witnessed in the barber’s shop today belonging to the realm of memory. The barber I had seen today – the man I believed to have shaved me once a month for as long as I could remember – was now wandering with his apprentice through the shop’s history. But the customers, the brushes, the scissors, the cologne bottles, the water-heater and the mirror – they must all be the same . . . Given the argument he’d had with me over what was real and what he’d seen in a dream, it was possible that the man with the soap-lathered face had not entered the shop with the others. Each and every customer could be from another day, or another time. But in the memory of the avenue, they were all remembered together, lined up in a row to be shaved one by one.
Stopping at a corner, I asked myself, ‘Why not?’ But then, as I continued on my way, I was again plagued by questions. Soon I was turning into another dark street, which led me, in time, to another avenue.
In the distance I could see a rickety old rubbish truck, chugging from bin to bin, followed by a handful of workmen. I had almost caught up with them when, without warning, they disappeared. This did not surprise me. For the rubbish trucks wandering through the night had always looked to me like ghost ships. I often followed their movements from the third floor of my apartment on Karadüş Caddesi, the street of dark dreams: I would set down my pen and watch for hours as they puttered from one street to the next. They seemed almost to sail through the darkness.
Reaching the spot where the truck had disappeared, I couldn’t help but notice that it stank like the village square: just to walk through it, I had to cover up my nose. And I wondered if I, too, might disappear tonight, just as that rubbish truck had.
Unless I had already disappeared, a long time ago.
38
The
barber released the muhtar from the noose.
Seeing his elongated neck, and his lolling tongue, and staring eyes, the watchman had collapsed in the doorway. And there he had lain, silent, still, and unseeing, until a few of the villagers had gathered forces to carry him out to the flagpole.
Meanwhile, the barber, Cıngıl Nuri and Reşit were looking down at the muhtar, who was lying at their feet. No one could say how long he had been there in his office. Judging by his tongue, his swollen body, and the grazes on his neck, he must have been hanging there for some time. But apart from the barber, no one was thinking at all right then. The others were pushing their way in, to stare in silence, like the villagers now swarming around the doors and windows . . . They all seemed to have forgotten how angry they were at Cennet’s son. Though he had chosen to sit down next to the door, his wrists still bound, no one saw him.
As the villagers lifted the muhtar on to a carpet and carried him off, the watchman remembered to put Cennet’s son in the muhtar’s office and padlock the door. He didn’t know if this was necessary, or even if it was really what he was doing. He might have been a sleepwalker, his body bending, and his arms and legs moving, as if answering a higher power. And when the task was done, the watchman saw himself rushing headlong across the village square, peering over courtyard walls as he went. When he arrived at the muhtar’s house, he found the rest of the village already assembled there. They had filled the courtyard to bursting, while others looked on from the rooftops. Even the dogs had arrived, threading through the crowd, panting as they absorbed the silence. There was no silence, though, at the heart of that crowd. From those standing around the reeking body came a low hum, in response to the wails of anguish coming from the house. The muhtar’s wife was inside; although they had told her not to look at her husband, she had insisted. On seeing that he’d become a purple, worm-riddled lump of meat, she’d fainted. They were pouring jugs of water on her now, opening her clenched mouth with the handle of a wooden spoon, crushing garlic under her nose and slapping her wet cheeks.