“Did you sleep well?” one would ask.
And the other would say, “I sure did.”
If one of them smiled, the other would fall asleep right away. If he didn’t, he was already asleep.
It was a white, moonlit night. Light puffs of smoke were rising from the ferries docked along the pier. They made a man yearn to set out on a long journey. Now and then a ferry would approach the pier and behind it a second ferry, lit by a second light, to send a flurry of passengers up and down the gangplank.
Suddenly, the laborer said:
“Why don’t we go with them?”
The other said:
“Let’s go, then.”
They slept in the same room. One was from Sivas. The other from Izmir. One worked at the pier, tying up the ferries as they docked. The other worked in a mill. The room they shared cost them four lira a month but they never once spent an evening in. They hardly ever saw each other. One finished work at nine. The other would come back at twelve and go straight to sleep. The room was pitch black. Hardly any daylight came in through the grilled window that looked out onto a grimy, musty courtyard. One man’s bed was on the right-hand side of the room, and the other man’s bed was on the left. Because he had no quilt, the laborer slept in his clothes. The other slept in his shirt and shorts.
One had to be back on his ship by six in the morning. The other started work after noon. If ever they both woke up at six, the sailor, whose boss was a Greek, would say:
“And a fine kalimera morning to you, my son.”
Not knowing that kalimera was Greek for good morning, and thinking his boss had said karamela, the laborer would respond with his own bit of nonsense: “One caramel for me, and one caramel for you!” And together they would laugh.
One day they fired the sailor. A falling out with a harbor official. This was all he told his friend:
“He called me a son of a donkey, and I smashed his jaw.”
His friend said:
“I wish you hadn’t done that.”
These words so upset the man that he went for three days without eating, and without asking his friend for help. The other thought he must be living on his savings, so he didn’t ask him how he was. Then the sailor found work in the Paşabahçe glass factory. He was going to board there, too, and so he bid his friend farewell. They embraced each other. That last evening, they went out again to the bridge.
“We never made it over to Üsküdar to see my aunt,” the sailor said.
“No, we didn’t, did we?” said the man from Sivas. “But maybe we’ll still get there one day, my dear friend!”
How beautiful the moon looked in the sky above. It could tear a man up just to think about how strange it must be, up there on the moon. If only we were there, just the two of us, they thought, if only it was just the two of us, safe inside that moon … But neither man spoke. Neither man could find the words. Just then, they heard a motor launch puttering across the smooth waters. And behind it, barges. Again, carrying wheat. The laborer gazed down at the wheat-laden barges passing just beneath them. But this time he had no desire to jump in.
Nightwork
Ömer lunged at the woman with a curse that was swallowed up by the northwest wind, the same wind that had earlier ripped the bandana from his head. But it still made the youngest boy in the tavern jump. Next to him was a man of about forty-five, who said:
“Sit down, my child.”
The youth looked up fearfully. This man did not want to kidnap him: he wanted his soul.
The drinking had begun well before nightfall. The trams had long since put on their lights, but as always Ömer still kept the lights turned off in the tavern. It was easier to talk and drink in this half darkness.
Eventually, the lights came on, timidly and one by one, but almost of their own accord, without the flick of a single switch. With each five-watt bulb taking five or ten minutes to light up, it was an hour before they were flickering in the darkness, casting light on Ömer’s foul temper.
Once the lights were on, the tavern took on its usual appearance. It was, Ömer thought, noisier than hell. There were gangsters, laborers, fishermen, and Greeks and Armenians of uncertain trades; they talked about everything, though their lips were sealed. In this tavern even the innocent could hear thieves and pickpockets plotting their business without fear or loathing. In the tavern’s mirrors, they could look into the eyes of those turned away from the crowd, who were curled up, and unable to walk, and in those eyes you could see memories of an incident, an assault, a murder.
The woman whom Ömer had just cursed was rubbing her crimson cheek.
“Ömer Ağa, what came over you just now? I never meant to offend you. You took it the wrong way.”
“I know exactly what you meant. And I can handle my own business.”
Now Karabet the fiddler stepped inside. This was a man the gangsters respected. In their eyes he was an artist. Large or small, they all looked up to him. In his face, his clothes, and his manner, there were still the traces of the many years he’d spent in prison as a young man, and it was manifest in the music he played for them.
“Stand a little to the side, at least,” Ömer told him.
Karabet might have seen this as an insult. Had Ömer pressed one of the gangsters like this, they would’ve been all over him. The fiddler moved to the side but made it clear that he was ready to draw his blade. Ömer pointed at the singer with the reddened cheek.
“Don’t poke your finger into men’s business ever again, do you hear?”
It was a woman sitting just behind who answered on the singer’s behalf: she had bright eyes, crooked teeth, and bleached blond hair; she was old and Greek, but still as sociable as a cat.
“Don’t worry, Ömer,” she said, pressing one hand to her cheek, as if in pain, “Don’t you worry one little bit. Zehra here is never ever going to poke her finger into men’s business again.”
She played it for laughs, and she did such a good job of it that even the solemn-faced Karabet cracked a smile. As she sank into her chair, Zehra muttered, “Whore!” between her teeth. Even Ömer laughed as he came down the steps from the musicians’ stage. The tavern, which had fallen silent, now filled with laughter, as if on cue. The stink of rancid olive oil and anise wafted back into the room and soon it was as if nothing had happened. The gangsters drifted back to their intimate conversations, heroic tales, and love stories, pouring out their hearts. Except for two strangers gazing absently out the far window. One of them called over the waiter to ask, “What happened?”
As if sharing a secret, the waiter bent over and whispered into the man’s ear. This man then whispered the news to his friend, as lightly as if he were cooling their meze with his breath.
“That woman … apparently she pointed at that young man over there, and said that Ömer must have turned him the other way.”
The two men looked cautiously at Ömer’s table. He was staring into his meze, lost in thought, while the hard-faced forty-five-year-old man next to him offered him consoling words, with calming gestures. Next to this man was a youth who looked to be about twenty. His cheeks were pink and plump, his skin white. When he smiled he looked ugly, there was a gold tooth that every now and then shimmered in the back of his mouth. His eyes were dull and without luster. His hair was soft. His shoulders were narrow, his manner rough, but for all his swaggering, there was something of a woman in him.
By the time Ömer left the tavern with the forty-five-year-old man, it was very late. They wandered drunkenly through the damp November streets, hearing no one.