“Why did you spend three days in the station? Maybe you didn’t tell them the truth?”
“I did. I mean … I told them everything I’m telling you now.”
Mehmet looked at the judge in disbelief as he tapped out everything they had said on a typewriter. A little later I even saw him nodding approvingly. He was beaming like a happy child, thrilled by the idea of a judge committing his words to paper. His left arm was still twitching. His thick, fat lower lip kept moving, as if he were reading something and mouthing the words.
“I won’t do it again. I swear I won’t do it again. I only did it to buy my uncle’s coat. That’s what I told myself, you see. I said, ‘I can get his coat back if I sell these things, and then I’ll get out of jail.’ My uncle was hopping mad. He wouldn’t even let me in the house …”
The judge tapped it all down. “I did the job to pay for my uncle’s coat.”
Mehmet Dalgır:
“Yeah, that’s it. If I did the job, well, that’s why I did it. For my uncle’s coat … And if I get off I’ll go straight out and find a carpenter …”
Mehmet didn’t get off. Given the nature of the crime and the absence of proof, the court’s official decision was that Mehmet Dalgır would be detained in a police station cell until a date was set for determining his sentence.
When he was outside, Mehmet Dalgır asked the police officer next to him:
“What happened?”
“You’re going to jail until the court comes to a decision.”
“Do they have any positions there?”
“Sure.”
“Do they teach carpentry?”
“Of course,” the officer said.
His left arm was twitching, his lower lip, too.
Kalinikta
When I looked up, I was alone, but a moment ago people were all around me, there were geese and dogs and trees rustling the air. A stream was bubbling in my ear, as trees washed its waters, animals were embracing men and men animals. Dogs spoke and humans howled. In a yellow sky someone cried:
“You are my soul, my tree, my stream, my sea.” And the other was warm inside his human smell. There was no answer. But friendship coursed through his dark blue veins and into the sea; his hair was dark; his eyes, too, and his brow. He was brimming with dark days and dark stories; the love songs he would sing later were already on his lips.
Was the moon rising above the sun from inside our little boat? Or was it rising up from the dust, up in the sky or the trees’ red edges? I had one lip pressed down. The other moved in and out of me like the fire on its tail.
“I feel your pulse in my veins. I hear it surging through my wrists …”
Trees are flirting with the stars that shimmer like candles on their boughs. My most steadfast friends are here: sakız rakı in my glass, my tongue beating the rhythm of a stutter, a fishing rod in my hand, a hook at its end, Barba Stanco in the boat, the bow pointed toward Sivriada and all the stars in my breast. I am at the rudder. The motor is churning the sea. Churning and churning. The dogs are barking in welcome; the trees draw in the stars, then the hills, as the baying dogs usher in the morning. I drink in the smell of fish, the smell of fried mussels from a Greek house on the shore; my moustache still holds the smell of anisette.
“You are my soul,” I say.
I breathe in the smell of stars fallen into my cup; they smell of rich coffee. The arbutus flowers have crumbled. I crush French lavender in the palm of my hand. Bees land on my tongue and sting my eyes. The sun is setting and a cormorant sinks into thought, a seagull alights on a pylon in the void. The pebbles on the shore wear the water’s cloak and soldiers come out wearing all the colors of the sky. I hear footsteps on the pebbled shore: That’s Aspasya, Jasmine Aspasya, who smells of camphor, Aspasya dressed in the yellow of Easter flowers as sparks swirl around her, and a serpent; there are mirrors and fountains on her tongue.
“You are my soul,” I say, “my soul.”
Yani! Hey Yani. Black Yani. Hey! It’s the black-eyed barrel organ-maker from Beykoz I’m talking to now. The son of Panayot, my old friend, Yani! Sing Black Pepper to me in Greek, so that Aspasya might also hear. I am Ibrahim in the song — no, not Ibrahim with all his riches, I am Black Pepper.
Whose lambs are those on Friendship Pasture? Are they yours? Are they lambs? Is that lambs bleating? Sing me Black Pepper, Yani.
By now it’s evening in Omonya Square in Athens; a man sits on a coffeehouse terrace, and on the table in front of him sits an anchovy, a green olive and a glass of mastıka. It could be anyone. The smell of jellyfish wafts in from Pireaus as Socrates ambles down from the Acropolis. It’s you, Yanaki! The most steadfast of all my friends, the very last of all my friends to die. Look up at the sky as you wander the streets of Athens. The stars will guide you to the islands, the ships, the shores, to this little boat. You’ll visit all the islands of the world. You’ll row in all the little rowboats of the world, you’ll take the glimmering phosphorescence and the moonlight rippling on the water for fish and catch them with a thirty-five centimeter nylon rod. But forget about fish for a moment and think about it, Yanakimu. Leap onto the back of a star. Look over the islands. There’s only one Burgazada. That there where Leandros swam to Kaloyero, you will see one little boat. That’s me: that’s my boat. It’s just one boat in a sea of boats, in a sea of seas. In a sea of humanity, it’s just me.
Yani, it’s evening in Omonya Square. Songs float out of little boats and up into the sky as light reflects off the cars. But did you hear the neighing of a horse? Did a phaeton race across your mind, or across the windows of the coffeehouses in Omonya? Do you know that I am thinking of you as I sit on this little iron fence around this little patch of grass beneath the monument in Taksim Square. I am thinking of you, Yanaki. It’s evening now and the snow will soon stop falling. The electric signs are going out and the grass is growing dark. A melody with three guitars floats out from a tavern as they crush mavrodaphne on the streets. Don’t worry about the walk back to your hotel. So what if the metro from Athens to Pireaus hasn’t run for years? It’s a beautiful night. You can walk, while the seagulls turn and coast in the lights above Sivriada. Barba Vasili is already in his coat and fast asleep. I’m thinking of you, Yanaki. Just this moment, the Cephalonian breeze that Apasya told us about stirs the sea around Sivriada. Yanaki, the lights in Omonya Square are going out, the coffeehouse is about to close. Have that green olive. Knock back that drink. Have you heard the foghorn on the boat from Pireaus? I am on the Galata Bridge and a tanker from Holland is sounding its horn for a fugitive crossing Okmeydan. Now I am making my way down to the dock in Üsküdar. My hands are sliding along the metal rail. Why haven’t you eaten your olive? The waiter at the Ekselsiyor in Omonya Square calls out:
“Kalinihkta, Kiryos.”
And one kalinihkta from me, Panco.
In the Rain
I shouldn’t have done it. But I did. I was so impolite. It wasn’t anything really. But I still feel ashamed. This is how it happened: