The Few

  The Indian took the heart from the Filipino man’s hand and placed the book in the man’s empty palm in its place. The Filipino man raised his head and closed his eyes, looking only with the tips of his fingers. He spread the cleft in Derda’s skin open like he was pulling a curtain open, and with his free hand he buried the book into Derda’s flesh. All that had been connected to his heart before, all his veins and valves squeezed around the pages, covered over the book completely. When the man took his hands away from the cleft, Tutunamayanlar pumped blood and Derda was returned to life. The Indian watched his lungs fill with his first breath, and, pressing the pedal to open the garbage bin under the surgery table, he tossed Derda’s heart into the trash. Because the piece of flesh was of no use.

  THE BUILDING

  The white building situated ninety kilometers to the north of Manila was neither a temple nor some palace of miracles. It was just a white building. A big building with one narrow room and a long corridor. It looked like a skyscraper without windows. A monument the width of an apartment building with only one room inside.

  It was in 1985 when the building appeared out of nowhere, when the Philippines was turned upside down by an earthquake. People from all around the world crowded together to get a look at the building, trying to understand what they were looking at. But no one, not a scientist nor anyone else, could come up with a feasible explanation for its existence. It didn’t even have a door. In time, the boredom of not knowing made interest wane and the hordes that had once surrounded the building ceased to come.

  One summer morning three years later, the already aged Filipino man came to the front of the building and, perching himself against his outstretched palm and leaning against the building, he began to wait. To those who asked, he answered, “I’m waiting for someone. But who that is, I do not know.” And claiming that he had performed bloodless surgery with his bare hands, he became known as nothing more than one of the country’s thousands of forgers and crooks. He waited for two years, never once taking his hand away from the wall, and without aging a day.

  Later, on another summer morning, an Indian at least as old as the Filipino man, with a skull shrunken to the size of a fist hanging off his belt, came to the building. He came from the Andes. As protection against the revenge of the souls of those he’d killed, he shrunk their heads and carried them on his person. He was an Indian who lived deep in the green Amazon, an Indian of the Jivaro tribe.

  It must have been that he already knew what he was going to do, because there wasn’t any hesitation when he came within four meters of the Filipino man’s hand, his palm against the building. At just the spot where he pressed with his two hands, the wall broke in and disappeared inside the building, the piece sliding to the right. And such it was that the building’s door was opened, just like the mouth of an enormous cave, never to be closed again. The two old men stepped into the corridor that appeared before them, and when they arrived in the room at the end, the building whispered their purpose into their ears.

  “Wait!” it said. “Wait here. They will come to you.”

  “Who?” asked the Filipino man.

  “He who has found his life’s meaning. Those who have found the thing to which they will dedicate their lives. They will come. You will take out their heart and put that thing in its place. And then you’ll throw the heart away.”

  “But,” protested the Indian, “how can someone live without a heart?”

  “You’ll see!” said the building.

  “And what if no one comes?” asked the Filipino man. “Who would be so dedicated to something they’d be willing to forgo their own hearts?”

  “That, too, you will see!” said the building.

  “But what about those who never find their life’s meaning?” asked the Indian. “What will happen to them?”

  “As for them, they will rot whilst they still live, and so will that piece of flesh in their chests. And they will continue, but they will not be truly alive.”

  The Filipino man had the last question: “But why now? Who knows how many people have dedicated their lives to something before now. Why has this happened now of all times?”

  The building spoke for the last time: “Because a boy named DERDA has been born!”

  “Who?” the Indian was going to ask, but it was as if an invisible lasso had caught him, and he was dragged outside the building.

  THE FIRST

  The elderly Indian ran down the slope and followed the dirt path disappearing into the forest. Slipping through the walls of trees, he arrived at a village to find people crowded around a motionless child lying on the ground, struggling to draw breath. Two ends of a piece of paper stuck out from the top and bottom of his clenched fist. The Indian, requesting the assistance of the onlookers, carried the child to the narrow room in the white building. The Filipino man pried the child’s fist open and took the paper. Then, tearing his heart out, he put the paper in the empty cavity in his chest. The first thing in the white building to be inserted in the place of the first ripped-out heart was one American dollar bill. It was the crumpled tip the child had gotten from a tourist a few hours before. The moment the Filipino child had seen the banknote in the palm of his hand was the moment he found the meaning of his life: MONEY.

  The villagers who had come to watch saw that the child was healed, and two elderly among them dropped to their knees, prostrating themselves before the miracle child. And then the Indian told them that whoever had dedicated their earthly lives to something would become known to themselves, one by one. In time, they’d teach others the way, and thus the so-called FINDERS would form an army of thousands.

  All over the world, the millions of people who had found the meaning of their lives were transported to the white building where their hearts were ripped out and thrown into the trash.

  Some time later, the World Health Organization made an offer to store the hearts to use for critical transplants. But the building answered in no uncertain terms: throw away the hearts!

  THE LAST

  Derda’s eyes and mind opened again when he came back to his cemetery house. The three men with the white aprons left him just where they’d found him, then left the house, closing the door behind them. His hand searched for the book on his chest but there was nothing there. He scrambled to his feet and went over the house with his eyes and his fingers. But somehow he couldn’t find Tutunamayanlar anywhere. Then all at once he stopped, and he started laughing, a strange hiccupping laughter. Why do I need it? he thought. If I lost it, what’s the worst that could happen? Anyway, I already read it.

  From that day on Derda never searched for Tutunamayanlar again. And he never ever thought of the white building, which he remembered in fragments as if from a dream. In any event, on the very day Derda had been born, that building sprung up in the very spot where Derda had found it. And in any event, after Derda had gone in and come back out again, that building was swallowed anew by the moss-green hill. It sank back into the place where it had risen from years before with a slow deliberation, slow enough to give the two elderly men and the hundreds waiting in the corridor chance enough to escape. People waiting in the corridor had time to pour out of the black hole of a door and save themselves and the meaning of their lives. But the two elderly men were content to stay in the room, looking at each other with a smile. As it was, their work had reached its end, and the time had finally come for them to rest in death. The respite of death. They both understood. That knew that the last heart they’d torn out was Derda’s: Derda, whose name they had heard years before. There was only one thing they didn’t understand. And the Indian asked: “What was that book?”

  The Philippine smiled. Then he spoke.

  “I don’t know, but it must be such a book …” He swallowed and continued. “Such a book that, on account of it, millions of people found their life’s meaning in it.”

  “Did he ever write anything else?”

  “Yeah, probably. We don’t have anything else
, but they’d be at a bookstore,” said Saruhan.

  Then he told him how to get to a bookstore near the overpass. Derda set off running. He had to be back before Abdullah came. It was the very first time he’d gone in a bookstore. A woman popped out in front of him.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m looking for Oğuz Atay’s—”

  Before he could finish his sentence, the woman turned around, and with Derda following in her wake, she walked deep into the store. They stopped in front of a shelf and she pulled out Tutunamayanlar.

  “I have that one,” said Derda. How could the woman have known that he meant he had it inside him?

  “Alright, then,” said the woman, handing him Waiting for Fear and his published journals.

  “That’s all we have.”

  Taking his crinkled, crumpled money out of his pocket and practically tossing it at the cashier, he paid for his books and left. Running, he just made it in time to catch Abdullah’s van pulling up to the sidewalk. Abdullah gave Derda such a look at every red light all the way to the depot that Derda learned how much Abdullah hated having a reader at his side. You can’t talk to someone who’s reading.

  That night, Derda finished Waiting for Fear by the light of the only light bulb in the house. That night, Derda finally heard the voice of the stone he’d spoken to for three years. The last sentence in the last story in the book, “Railway Servicemen—A Dream,” was this: “I am here, dear reader, where are you?”

  “I’m here!” cried Derda.

  Then he left his house and slipped through the hole in the wall and ran through the darkness straight to Oğuz Atay’s grave. He dropped next to the tombstone, whispering, “I’m here.”

  “Look, here I am. I’m here. Next to you. I was always here by your side. Always. Look, now I’m here …”

  Derda was crying. He didn’t know why he was crying, but he was crying. Maybe because he’d been alone for so many years. Maybe because the man himself had looked at people, saying, I am here, where are you? Maybe because he could only cry when he was alone. Maybe because he could only cry when he was at Oğuz Atay’s side. Derda was crying. And at the same time, he caressed the violets growing around Oğuz Atay’s tomb. He cried even more, because he didn’t know why he was crying.

  Between his sobs he whispered, “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here …”

  He couldn’t have been able to explain what the stories in Waiting for Fear were about, even if he’d wanted to. He couldn’t have listed the names or the themes. He didn’t have enough words at his command, or sufficient capacity of thought in his intellect that those words could carry. But, just as he said, he’d be there until death. Or maybe even beyond death. There. Forever. In the sky or on some other invisible stratum, side by side, in secret, set in stone in a peacefulness beyond goodness and beyond names. In a place reached by feeling, on the other side of not-knowing. A place where musical instruments whose names he couldn’t know played classical music he was hearing for the first time, and the light fragmented the sprinkling drops raining from his eyes into a prism of seven colors. In a place that neither ignorance nor knowledge would be able to explain. Wherever Oğuz Atay is, it’s there. When he couldn’t hold on any longer and fell, it’s there he fell. Maybe he didn’t fall, maybe just that moment was exempted from gravitational pull. Not a place you grab hold of to get to, but a place you fly to.

  That night, Derda slept between two graves, caressing the violets.

  Derda was reading Oğuz Atay’s Journal.

  “These days I feel a hopelessness …”

  Derda felt miserable.

  “It doesn’t matter what happens, all I want is to be shown a little respect …”

  And he felt frustrated. “Of course!” said Derda. “Of course he has to be shown respect.”

  “Progressive, regressive, every sort of movement holds a monopoly over a small half-enlightened gang, so that over the years they don’t feel the need to renew their reality for today, to not lose their place, now they play games like a greedy merchant trying to stay in business …”

  Derda didn’t understand who he was talking about, but he got even angrier.

  “They are like rotting gums, like a tooth that’s fallen out …”

  “Yes!” said Derda to himself.

  “The world is contrived …”

  And again Derda yelled, “Yes!”

  “If only there were a tomb or two on this street, if only every day on our way to work we could greet death …”

  He laughed. He felt he had an understanding with Oğuz Atay; he believed there was an invisible bond between them.

  “Why don’t they understand my writing, why isn’t there anyone around me …”

  He was angry again. “I don’t understand either. But look, I’m here at your side,” he said.

  “Every country has its fools—I mean, among the people in every country who understand literature. They scramble after foreign books. They don’t even know I exist. And I, apparently, am waiting for a crowd of fully formed readers to emerge out of these men. How idiotic …”

  And Derda’s spirits were dashed once again.

  “I suppose that here, I feel like I’ve been left on the outside …”

  And Derda, from deep inside himself, said, “Me, too.”

  “I’m afraid that in the end, I’ll give in, too; that would be even more tragic …”

  Derda was crying. He had to wipe his tears off the pages at the end of Oğuz Atay’s Journal that had photographs of the author at each stage of life, drying them again after each drop. He felt like Oğuz Atay was so close to him, and he couldn’t have felt the unhappiness any more deeply.

  He believed that Oğuz Atay was as lonely and unhappy as he was himself. It must have taken him half an hour to subtract 1934 from 1977. When he got the result—forty-three—he thought “so young.” He glared at all the tombstones of the dead in the cemetery who had lived beyond forty-three with a strange animosity. Maybe, he said to himself. Maybe, some of these people were the fools Oğuz Atay talked about. He calculated the age of one resting in peace and yelled, “The jerk lived for seventy years!” Then he did some more calculating. “That’s twenty-seven years longer.” He raised his head and looked toward the sky. There, whomever he might see, he understood. Another of Derda’s dreams had been dashed. For the nth time.

  Inside his dark house, he stacked three books one on top of another and made himself a headrest. Lying down on his back and staring at the gray ceiling, he told himself, “More. I have to learn more. Everything. I have to learn everything about him.”

  Why did he die at forty-three? In his Journal he talked about an illness. About the hospitals he went to. About surgery he’d had. He couldn’t have died like Derda’s mother did. There was no way. Oğuz Atay had to have closed his eyes for the last time in a different way. Maybe he died by looking at people too much. Looking through to the other side of other people’s eyes. But how could he be sure? Who could he ask? Saruhan, of course.

  “Say you want to learn about a writer’s life, what do you do?”

  “Well, there are biographies,” said Saruhan.

  “Where?”

  “Where do you think? At a bookstore.”

  “This biography thing is a book?”

  “Derda, for the love of God, get out of my face. I’m already going crazy because of those insane clocks.”

  Derda went back to the same bookstore, just five steps from the foot of the overpass. The same woman popped out in front of him. This time she was smiling. After all, now Derda was a good customer.

  “How may I help you?”

  “Just … one second …” he said as he pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. Not paper exactly, but a palm-sized corner of a box top. Saruhan had written on it. He showed it to the woman.

  “Biography. All right, but whose?”

  Derda said it as if it were his own name: “Oğuz Atay.”

  “Let me see,” said the woman. She s
lid in front of the computer at the cash register. She typed something then looked up at Derda.

  “Yes, we have one left.”

  She walked past Derda, scanning the shelves. Running the fingers of her right hand down the spines of the books, she found one and pulled it out. Then she handed it to Derda who had followed her to the shelf. Derda realized thick books were expensive. And he knew that the money in his pocket wasn’t enough. He asked like he was a small child.

  “What if I read it then bring it back?”

  The woman laughed. “Do you really think that sort of thing is allowed?” she said.

  Then she yelled, “Hey, where are you going? Stop!”

  Derda was four long steps away from the bookstore and cutting through the crowd. He started to run. He knew that the woman herself wouldn’t be able to catch him but still he didn’t dare slow down. Saruhan was the only one who saw Derda escape up the stairs like a huge cat. At the time, he was propped against the edge of the guardrail, smoking. He watched him get lost in the crowd, slipping through without knocking into people, running with a childlike agility. Then Saruhan saw the woman come out of the bookstore and look around anxiously.

  “That boy is crazy,” he whispered to himself. He turned around and looked at the clock seller. He was pulling them out of a box, setting them one by one, then putting them on display on his tarp on the ground.

  “Oh, God,” said Saruhan, shaking his head. It didn’t escape the man’s attention.

  “What do you want? You got a problem?”

  “No, nothing, no. I just said I hope you have good sales today.”

  Saruhan put the headphones dangling out of his coat pocket in his ears and cut off the sounds of life with a bit of Slayer. With a knife from the “Raining Blood” line.

  Derda was just about to walk through the cemetery gates when he heard a voice.

  “Where you going?”

  A young security guard in a navy blue suit was standing in the door of Yasin’s guardhouse.

  “What do you mean where you going?”