“I really got off cheap,” he’d say sometimes, looking at the tombstone. He’d been talking to the tombstone since he was thirteen. He didn’t even know who he was talking to. God, his dad, his mother, or maybe to himself. Maybe he talked to it because it was just a stone. A marble stone. And maybe Derda talked to a marble stone because he was so totally alone. For three years, every morning.
He planted flowers for every season. But he stayed clear of planting anything in the grave bed. He planted a row of daisies in front of the tomb. Who knows what the family of the deceased lying under the tombstone thought when they came and saw the flowers. But Derda never even saw them once, because he’d finish cleaning in the early hours of the morning. Then he’d stay as far away from the tomb as possible, in the farthest corners of the ever-expanding cemetery. Always in the pursuit of bread. In the mornings, he’d always return and ask, “How are you?” But he had to supply the conversational material himself: “I’m fine.” Then he’d continue for himself, “I’m not bad myself. I got a bit of work yesterday. And so, you see, last night I didn’t go to bed hungry. Do you like the daisies?”
Derda had to answer for the marble stone every time. And every time he left he said, “See you tomorrow.” No one was aware that he’d formed a sort of friendship with a stone. But anyway, who was there to know about it? He was too scared to go see his dad. He thought that maybe he’d lead them to him, the men with the long robes, and they’d hurt him. But over time it became easier to be patient. He’d be patient and wait for the day when his dad got out of prison and came home. Five years had passed, five years for Derda to become a machine made for waiting. First he waited for the man in the long robe, then he waited with a yearning for his father. Waiting, he acquired the aspect of a patient stone himself. A white stone, a patient stone, a white and patient piece of marble.
“Is he always like that?”
“What?” asked Saruhan.
Derda was looking at the spread of alarm clocks set out for sale nearby. To be more precise, although he was looking at it, he was actually listening to it. Some twenty randomly set alarm clocks didn’t leave one molecule of air undisturbed by their electronic cacophony. The man at the stand sat above them reading a newspaper like he didn’t have ears. It was as if the clocks didn’t even exist in the same space-time continuum as he did.
Saruhan knew who Derda was looking at.
“Him? That guy’s crazy. A few times we practically came to blows, he’s a real wild card. The bastard must be mentally ill. He sets those clocks like some sort of maniac and then just sits there from morning till night.”
“How can you stand it?”
Saruhan laughed. He showed him the headphones dangling from his overcoat’s pocket.
“With these. I listen to music. The batteries just never fucking die. I’d pimp your mom on it. I tell you, even if I had some cash I wouldn’t go up to the guy and see how much he’s asking. He never sells anything anyway.”
The man in front of the clock stand flipped the page of his newspaper and, feeling the others’ eyes on him, nodded in Saruhan’s direction. Saruhan laughed.
“Nothing, nothing!” he said. “We were just saying how nice they sound.” Then he turned back to Derda.
“What’s Abdullah doing?”
“He said he was going over to collections. He told me to wait here. Who knows when he’ll come back.”
“Now that guy’s crazy in a totally different way. Let me tell you something, Derda. Thing is, everyone and everything is crazy. Take this job, for example. What kind of work is this, man? But what can you do? Here we are, just standing here, because we have to. We’re telling ourselves at least we’re going to make our three kuruş, right? Come rain and mud, hell or high water, we’re right back standing here.”
“Can I ask you something?” said Derda. “Why’s it illegal to sell these books?”
“Long story,” said Saruhan. “Fuck it. You want one? I’ll give you one to read.”
“No, that’s Ok. Thanks anyway, though.” He was too embarrassed to say he couldn’t read.
“Take one, man. It’s on me!”
Saruhan was leaning over the tarp spread with books. He picked up a thick book.
“Take this. It never sells anyway. No reason for you to haul it around back and forth, breaking your back. Wish I could choose the books we sold. If I could decide which books they printed, I would have made a fortune a long time ago. Anyway, they go and print the most ridiculous stuff. Ok, some of them sell well. But this? It’d be a fucking miracle if you sold one a month. And it’s as heavy as a block of gold, I mean, shove it. Look at it!”
Derda reluctantly took the book Saruhan was holding out to him. But he didn’t even dare look down at it. Because if Saruhan said something about what was written on it, it would quickly become apparent he couldn’t read. He changed the subject and asked how much it sold for. But Saruhan was rummaging around in his pockets, not paying any attention.
“Wait, I’m going to get a light from the crazy guy,” he said, and walked over to the mad clock seller.
Derda was left alone. He looked at the cover of the book in his hand and froze. He was staring at the two words in the whole world he might possibly have been able to recognize. Because for the last five years he’d been on his knees in front of the marble stone where those two very same words were engraved. Because those were the very two words that were engraved on Derda’s brain. He didn’t know them as letters, but like indentations carved into his memory. And he knew every curve of the images by heart. They had no sound to him. He had no idea how to pronounce them. And up until now he’d never wondered how to either. It didn’t even occur to him to wonder. A man only learns the names of those things people say. And no one said the name on a tombstone out loud. In any event, now those two words were there, staring back at him from the cover of the book. Staring right into Derda’s eyes.
“What happened? You going to take it?”
He couldn’t understand the question because he didn’t even hear it being asked. He raised his head and looked right into Saruhan’s eyes.
“Teach me how to read.”
The next morning, he went to the tomb, book in hand.
“Look,” he said. “I found you. What’s your name, do you know?”
He smiled. He drew his finger across the first word, saying “Oğuz …” Then he touched the second word.
“Atay … Oğuz Atay.”
After work, they’d meet at a coffeehouse near the overpass. After they’d delivered the last box to the depot, Abdullah would drop him off at the nearest bus stop on his way back home. And knowing that all the busses passing there went to the overpass, he jumped on the first one that came by. Of course, Saruhan wasn’t giving him lessons for free. They agreed to what amounted to a fifth of Derda’s salary. So Derda went to bed five nights a month hungry, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t exactly untalented at being hungry, nor was he too bad at Saruhan’s reading lessons.
“First,” Derda had said to Saruhan, “say the name of this book to me.”
“Tutunanmayanlar—The Disconnected.”
Soon, Derda started to dream about Tutunanmayanlar. Who knows what was written on those pages, he said to himself. He held one section of the book tight with his thumb and watched the other hundreds of bent pages flip through like a film strip. Sometimes he’d hold it close to his face and feel the wind from the pages. Closing his eyes and feeling that wind on his face, his dreams were filled with visions of Tutunamayanlar.
When Saruhan said, “Boy, what are you going to do with that beast of a book? You can’t even write your name yet,” Derda smiled. “Forget it,” he said.
They were set up at the coffeehouse’s lowest table, and he was trying to memorize the letters that he had, until that day, perceived as nothing more than meaningless shapes. When he’d been negotiating terms with Saruhan, he’d even had to agree to a predetermined number of teas included in the price. They’d agreed t
hat after five, Saruhan would have to pay for any additional teas out of his own pocket. But he never drank a sixth.
In the mornings, Derda would practice by reading the marble slabs in the cemetery. Once he’d learned their names, he found himself imagining the lives of the dead. Before, he’d considered tombs nothing more than stone and earth. He was also learning his numbers. He surprised himself by connecting the whole of a fifty-year life span by the single narrative thread between life and death. It was as if just at that moment, even if only for a moment, the dead were brought back to life.
In the evenings back at home, he’d read the picture books Saruhan gave him. He was practically burning with passion to start reading Tutunamayanlar, but he’d promised himself and Saruhan that he wouldn’t. Until he could read without making a mistake, he wouldn’t touch it. But Saruhan had one and only one reason to insist on the promise, though, and that was that he wanted to prevent Derda from realizing that, as a teacher, he was useless. If Derda realized Saruhan had no talent for teaching, then maybe he’d stop taking lessons.
But in the end, Saruhan’s shoddy teaching only meant that Derda had to take lessons for longer and that Saruhan earned more money. What he should have been able to do within two months, Derda learned to do in five. Of course, he considered that he was the one with a problem, and he took to considering any seven-year-old who could read as some sort of genius.
He reported his daily progress to Oğuz Atay every morning at the head of his grave and he read him chapters from children’s storybooks. Daisy season had long since passed, and violets now bloomed around the tomb.
In the evenings, he walked around reading all the street signs, feeling like he owned the world. Like he flew home on a carpet woven with letters. His mouth was thirsting for knowledge dried out by the wind.
Then, one evening, despite all desire to extend his profitable lessons, Saruhan said “Ok.” Saruhan closed the children’s book that Derda had read completely, without error, to the very last line, and he looked at his pupil.
“Well, there you go, you can read.”
And it was true. Derda could read. But that was all he could do. Saruhan, who had, despite himself, accomplished something practically impossible, had only taught Derda how to read. Derda had memorized letters and syllables, but had never once taken a pen between his fingers. Because, according to Saruhan, his fee didn’t cover that. And if he wanted to do another round of lessons to learn how to write, well, that would mean another agreement. Saruhan wanted to make more money. Saruhan’s appetite for money had been whetted over time. He’d noticed his lack of success as a teacher and also how Derda forgot how letters were written. Now the time had come to profit from it.
“And writing? Do you want to learn how to write?”
Derda smiled.
“Why would I need to know how to write? What am I going to write? Like I need to learn how to write!”
“Ah, shove it,” Saruhan said to himself. Then, “Hey, another tea over here!”
It was the first time he’d had the sixth tea. When it was all said and done, it was their last lesson.
Derda had slept like he was paralyzed. He lay on the concrete floor, his arms stretched open wide like a man crucified on an invisible cross. Every time he breathed in and breathed out, the copy of Tutunamayanlar on his chest rose and fell. He’d read a seven-hundred-page book. And now he was staring at the ceiling. It was the first novel he’d ever read in all his life. And all that he’d understood of it could fit inside one speck of dust. There was one speck of dust rattling around in his mind, but there were many more left behind in the Tutunamayanlar rising and falling on his chest. And all the weight of those specks of dust made it very hard to breathe. Even if he hadn’t understood the sentences, Derda did understand the compounding feelings he got from the book. Derda couldn’t understand Oğuz Atay’s words per se, but he sensed something even beyond what was written. And maybe he continued into the beyond, passing out of the realm of mere understanding, passing out of the realm of not understanding. The names, events, the conflicts, the speakers in the novel, everything was spinning around his head, making even the walls of the house seem like they were changing colors. Derda watched the ceiling like it was a rainbow, like he was a drunk lying out in the rain.
He saw a man pass before his closed eyes. Each time he closed his eyes. One solitary man. He came to Derda like he was one and the same with all the names in the book, like they were all him. Turgut, Selim, like everyone was contained in just one man. A man constructed from goodness. Or maybe from pieces of shattered glass. Maybe carved out of the air itself. Then he smashed into a stone of darkness. The man was broken into a thousand and one pieces. Or maybe he just dissipated. Whatever he experienced, the darkness became a stone and the man was crushed like he was built out of sand. He melted like ice; he was left behind in the book. That was everything that Derda had understood. And he was one to understand those people who are left behind. He would have called them tombstones. He believed in the book rising and falling on his chest and he closed his eyes, without even bothering to blink first.
THE TRANSPLANT
The door to the cemetery house was forced open with one swift shove of the shoulders and three men in white aprons filed in. With a gurney. They filed in and stood around Derda, who lay as if dead and stuffed. One of them leaned over him and pressed his jugular vein to make sure he was still alive. Then he reached over and picked up the book resting on Derda’s chest.
Just then, Derda’s eyes opened and he tried to shout, “What’s going on? Who are you?” But he couldn’t. He couldn’t work his vocal cords any more than he could raise a finger. Only Derda’s pupils listened to his unconscious commands. Derda couldn’t do anything but look. That, and breathe in and out. He took three breaths in and three breaths out while he watched the book being put into a box. The titanium box and the man carrying it directed themselves to the front door and the others shifted Derda onto the gurney. It was all one coordinated assault.
The gurney slid into an ambulance waiting in front of the house and Derda’s eyes watched an oxygen mask being lowered over his mouth. His eyelids started to feel heavy. Then the weight was too much to bear and his eyes closed.
When they started to feel lighter again, Derda blinked his eyes open and saw that he was being pulled out of the ambulance and put into the cargo of a plane. And then another oxygen mask lowered over his face.
The medivac was in flight for nine hours and fifteen minutes before it landed in Bangkok. After refueling, the wheels of the plane lifted off the tarmac, scraping the breast of the earth like razor blades, and in four hours they were in Manila. Throughout the trip, Derda’s eyes and Derda’s consciousness kept opening and closing.
Derda was pulled out and loaded into an ambulance just like the one in Istanbul. First the road was asphalt, then just dirt. The ambulance pressed on through the damp and the bugs. The journey was not an easy one. It ended like a dream, the gurney left on a moss-green hill behind trees that opened like two curtains at the end of the road. At the peak of the moss-green hill there was a cloud-white house with a black hole for a door. And in front of it, on the wide slope, thousands of people were lined up like an enormous snake. Each person carried something in their hand or at their side. Something …
Passing the line of people and their things, the ambulance cut its siren and slowly climbed the slope. And it came to a stop when it arrived in front of the white building. Derda was carried out of the ambulance like he was as light as a feather and then they shot him through the building’s door like he was a projectile missile. After him, the line of people and things filed in, closing off passage from the corridor.
They stopped when they came to a closed door at the end of the corridor where the line began. Before them, at the front of the line, stood a small girl. She carried a tabby cat in her arms. Clearly, it was her turn to go through the door that would soon open to receive her. One of the people pulling Derda leaned d
own to the girl’s ear and whispered “emergency.”
The small girl, with a maturity unexpected for her years, stepped to the side, and Derda’s gurney went in through the open door.
Inside the room were a surgery table and two elderly men. One was a Jivaro Indian, the other was Filipino. They were changing the white sheet on the surgery table. They spread it out and smoothed it flat with the palms of their hands and then looked up. This was the signal the men bringing Derda in had been waiting for. Without any hesitation, the elderly men dumped Derda, wearing nothing but pants, onto the surgery table like he was nothing but a lump of dough.
The Indian went up to the man carrying the titanium box and waited for him to open the lid. Seeing the book, he asked, “Isn’t there a pocket edition?”
The man carrying the box shook his head. The Indian gave an exhausted sigh and took the book in his right hand and flipped through the pages. Then, holding his left hand over the book and rubbing his fingertips together, a gilding powder rained down over the book. As the book underneath took on the color of the gilding dust, it began to shrink and narrow until Tutunamayanlar was no bigger than a fist.
The Indian took the shrunken book and showed it to the Filipino man. He nodded his head and closed his eyes. Then he plunged his scalpel-like nails on his heart-like left hand into Derda’s left rib cage. Derda screamed when they pierced his flesh. But he hadn’t felt anything. And he only thought he’d screamed. As it was, he hadn’t felt enough pain to warrant a scream, nor could he even open his mouth wide enough to scream. In his terror, he looked at the puckered face of the Filipino. The others watched the elderly man spread open the cleft, holding it open with his two hands. There wasn’t a single drop of blood, and Derda’s breath continued as normal. But there was plenty of reason for blood or shortness of breath, in fact, there was even good reason for him to die right then and there. In fact, one such reason was right in front of his nose. Derda’s eyes met Derda’s heart, just a hand’s span away.