What hardship! During the war he had to rent out his home for the summer. His wife would stare up at the ceiling for hours, marveling at how her husband could live up there without ever making a sound. One day he was driven almost insane by the sound of people dancing the Hasapiko. Another day the tenants were astounded to see a knife from a hole in the ceiling plunge into a chunk of cheese sitting on the dinner table, only to float back up to the attic, right before their very eyes. Once they learned how it got up there, and why, and that the author of this act had done so while perfectly sane, they began to have him down for dinner every night.
He was a crafty little fellow.
And then there’s barber Hilmi, with his sparkling eyes and his shiny bald pate — if he starts on his sensational tales from his youth, just watch out. He’ll leave you rolling on the floor. Oh, the tricks this handsome barber played on his lovers. Always a happy ending, but so many twists and turns along the way. He has such a light touch. How gracefully he weaves in the guile and the subterfuge, how much sweeter life was then, and how playful.
Who else? There’s Pandeli Efendi the milkman. He used to keep an old pistol hanging in his shop. People who came in after six were members of the club. The Firing Club. Blasts of all kinds were fair game.
Now this may seem a little unsavory, but the truth is if a member didn’t fire one off from the mouth (or some other orifice) the exact moment he stepped in through the door, he was out of the game. But if he did, Pandeli Efendi would push aside the heavy, old veteran cooks and gardeners and greengrocers and put him at the head of the table. Nobody ever laughed. But it was there in our eyes, unless, of course, the shot had overwhelmed us. And slowly it would fade and the discussion would turn to the news of the day and the foolishness of those who make money only to squirrel it away. Having passed a motion to the effect that people like this are never satisfied until they die, the meeting would adjourn.
Why won’t I go into town then? I’m a member of the club. I could listen to a world of stories for the price of a haircut. I’d split my sides laughing. Or I could swing by Iskanvi Efendi’s coffeehouse.
“So, Iskanavi Efendi,” I’d say. “What happened when the old woman saw that piece of cheese floating up to the ceiling?”
“She made a cross on her chest and said ‘Panaya mou.’ Then, ‘Viresi’ and ‘Calliope’ and ‘Ti pzagma, tinatnoyni.’ ”
“But why the hell did you expose yourself like that?”
“I got tired of it all, brother. I wanted them to know that I was up there. I made so much noise up there at night, but neither the husband nor the wife ever got up. They were dead to the world. But sometimes they would get up and call to my wife. ‘Viresi,’ they’d say. ‘Calliope! Pondika! It sounds like there’s a rat as big as a man up there!’ And I was worried that they’d talk about it and the whole thing would get out of hand. So that was my way of telling them that there weren’t rats in the attic.”
So there you go. The town is haram, it’s sinful. I can imagine it now, all those little twenty-five watt bulbs glowing, and all the flies. I want to explain why — why I can’t go downtown. But what use would that be? Who’d care?
I put on my hat and my fisherman’s jacket and I wrapped a scarf around my head like I had a toothache. I went out and walked past the coffeehouse. He was there, he was there.
I came back home. I got into bed and turned off the light. I thought for a while. I thought about killing anyone who said I couldn’t go into town, no matter who it was. It was the first time I’d ever had a thought like that.
I got dressed again and went back out. I went straight to the coffeehouse. I walked to the far end and sat down. His face went bright yellow when he saw me. His lips were trembling. In the coffeehouse mirror I saw the white, jaundiced face of a man. I flinched — it was me. I got out of there fast.
“Iskanavi,” I said, “I’ll have a coffee. Now about that attic story …”
He was broke and in a bad mood.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” he said. “Your salt is dry. But mine — δεν εíναι, no.”
I could finish the story like that. It would be one of my classic endings. It could be, but no. I don’t go into town, I don’t go into that bright white coffeehouse. I don’t sit down opposite someone who doesn’t want to see me, and I don’t say a word to the proprietor.
I’m at home, in my room. I can’t go into town. I have a fever of thirty-nine degrees. I’m cold and trembling. Sometimes I’m on fire. My mother rubs vinegar on my temples. No more reading, she says. It’s time to sleep. She turns off the light and leaves. I listen to the sounds around me. The dogs on Spoon Island are still barking. The wind is pounding the windowpanes, rattling the doors. I switch on the light …
Well that would be another kind of ending, but this isn’t it either. No, this isn’t the one either. I can’t go into town, and that’s that.
The Boy on the Tünel
Nothing is too much for these people.
Lately I’ve been spending my nights in a very strange neighborhood. There’s this black haze that rises from the sea around nine o’clock. It spreads and spreads, until it has enveloped us all. As the neighborhood sleeps, a cool breeze wafts through it, seeking human company, but settling down with the stray dogs and the lonely cats in the dark, quiet streets. Until the new day dawns, that’s all there is.
Once there was a Greek entrepreneur who ran two dynamos on diesel. This was the only source of electricity; a yellow, morbid courant continu that turned us all into ghostly and indecipherable blurs. Now the municipality and the entrepreneur have had a disagreement and the lights are out. Who knows where these dark streets might take you after half past eight?
As for the residents — those who are fond of their wives stay at home all night, smoking at their windowsills, planning the next day’s arguments.
In the distance you only see the torches made of rags dipped in any gasoline they could lay their hands on. The flames slash through the darkness. Staring out over this haunted landscape, they catch glimpses of the houses along the coast. They track the lights and the sounds; they drift off into a trance that is not quite sleep; they see the crabs.
I spoke about these long, dark nights with a Turkish lady who went to a private lycée (a lady, no less, who speaks both English and French!) and she said:
“Even the people there are too dark!”
Thick mustachioed Greek fishermen, scrawny bare-legged children, Kurdish porters whose windpipes are bursting from their throats, ninety-year-old Greek women, the postman and the delivery boy at the corner shop. They can all count themselves among those people, and so can you and I.
So there I was, conversing with this woman. Someone else was standing a little further on. The greengrocer was in his corner, and the delivery boy was halfway up the hill, beautiful and forlorn.
I didn’t disagree with her. What would be the point! She is on casual terms with the head of the neighborhood. She gives men ideas, and women advice.
I went into Istanbul that day. And I am writing this description of a boy on the Tünel for the boy on the Tünel, not for this woman — I have long since given up on her.