Then suddenly he was knocked over by the blast of a clarinet. Black Davut had somehow managed to creep into the room and put his instrument right next to his ear.
‘Where on earth have you been?’ cried Hacı Veli, gathering up the banknotes as fast as he could. ‘Did you bring the others with you?’
Black Davut answered with his clarinet.
‘Shut that thing up!’ cried Hacı Veli. ‘Answer like a man!’ His eyes sparkled with an affectionate anger. ‘Are they here, or aren’t they?’
Again, Black Davut answered with his clarinet.
As he did so, he looked straight into Hacı Veli’s eyes, grinning childishly, as the clarinet sparkled.
‘All right then,’ said the other. He nodded. ‘Understood.’
After that they went outside together.
Seeing the crowd in the courtyard, Hacı Veli buttoned up his jacket. Then he walked over to the musicians to shake their hands. ‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘You have brought us great joy.’ Then he took out the tips from his bulging pouch and placed them in their pockets. ‘So let’s get going,’ he said. ‘The place is yours.’ He pulled the chairs back a bit further, and then he looked down at the second clarinet and the trumpet now coming out of their cases. Right then it seemed strange to him to be talking like this to people he joked with every day over a game of cards in the coffeehouse, acting as if they were strangers who had come from afar. Truth was, they no longer resembled the people he saw every day at the coffeehouse; all resemblance disappeared the moment they picked up their instruments. They were now different people altogether. They held themselves in a new way. They looked distant. Even the lines on their faces seemed to have changed. The people now pouring into the courtyard were searching the crowd as if they recognised no one, least of all Hacı Veli, and that made him feel as if he himself were drifting away from the town and all those who lived in it. As they shook his hand, and took their tips, and offered their congratulations, each one seemed to be smiling at him from a great distance. ‘May the young ones enjoy endless bliss, and may they bring you many grandchildren.’
‘Thank you,’ said Hacı Veli to each and every one of them. ‘Thank you so much.’
Then one man raised his trumpet, and another two raised their clarinets, and a fourth his drum, whose hoop was painted blue and ringed with enormous bells. Soon the courtyard was humming with their music. As the most light-footed of the townspeople came forward, they played a beautiful Harmandalı. Then, to give the boys a chance to dance, they played the Grand Arab Zeybek, the Tavas Zeybek and the Kerimoğlu Zeybek. Opening their arms like eagles, they soared higher and higher, not just in the eyes of those watching, but in the sky of their dreams. They kept coming back to earth, though. Squatting down. Dropping to their knees. Thumping the earth. Thumping the earth to its core. And when an echo returned from that dark and distant place, these boys would soar up again, to spin round and round. Without warning, they’d stop short, to gaze out into the distance, deep in thought, before they raised their arms again, taking flight on an unseen wind. And soon they were boys no longer. They were crested eagles, soaring high in the air. They took their time, these youths, and it may well be that the musicians had planned to play the Aydın Zeybek or the Serenler Zeybek, but at this point Hacı Veli came out of his corner to whisper in their ears, reminding them that the time had come for the keşkek-pounding ceremony.
And so they all set out for the town meydan, lighting up the streets with their lively chatter as they went. In front were the two strong and finely dressed youths carrying saddlebags of wheat on their shoulders; behind them a line of seven or eight people, arm in arm, dancing the Halay. After them came the musicians, and last came a motley crowd of guests and children. Then, just as they had passed Ziya’s house, one of the dancers pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket, as fast as if he were slipping a dagger from its scabbard. At that very moment, a crowd slipped forward, skirting gracefully to the right to join the front of the dance, while the man with the handkerchief slipped to the back, to wave it with unbridled joy. The handkerchief looked almost like a bunch of pale white grapes when he waved it like that, a white glow that played for a time on the walls and the trees, swirled above the dancers’ heads, and, taking flight, it whirled its way through the echoing music. The dancers seemed to be connected to it. Suddenly they sped up, overtaking the two youths who were carrying the wheat. Then the glowing handkerchief sailed to the back of the stream of sound and colour. And so it went, floating through orange-scented cobblestone streets, spinning around the corners, until it reached the mortar stone to the left of the great plane tree.
And while the music played and the dancers’ hands waved and the moistened wheat on the mortar was pounded, cross-eyed Bekir joined the crowd with his many-coloured chewy sweets. He set up his stall, and lay out all the sweets he had prepared at home, and soon he was selling them to the children crowding around him. Then came Uncle Güllü, who always walked like he had swallowed a rolling pin. From his glass case of sparkling perfume bottles he brought out a small syringe, which he began to squirt on to the chests of young and old alike with the greatest solemnity. As usual, while thus engaged, he didn’t waste the opportunity to exaggerate the esses in ‘essence’ for all to hear. Everyone knew that his syringe was empty, but they all held down their collars for him and thanked him afterwards, with false half-smiles.
Passing anxiously through this smiling crowd, Uncle Güllü went over to Hacı Veli, but instead of squirting any scent on him, he put the syringe back in its place and swiftly lifted up his glass; pointing to the little scent bottles inside it, and in a peeved voice, he said, ‘Look how sweet these are, you didn’t take me up on my offer, sir, but how lovely it would have been if you had.’
‘It wouldn’t have been lovely in the least,’ said Hacı Veli. ‘Did you really think you were going to introduce a new custom to this old town? Where on earth do people send scent bottles as favours for a wedding?’
‘You can’t be sure that this has never happened anywhere,’ snapped Uncle Güllü, gazing sourly into the distance. ‘To tell you the truth, I would never agree to that line of reasoning. That being the case, I can’t accept your position. If you can send towels as favours, and handkerchiefs, and even soaps and matches, why can’t you send bottles of scent? It used to be done, in my view. It was even quite the fashion. And anyway, you could have been the first in our town to do it, and over the years, it would have become the custom. Your name would have been uttered with awe and envy.’
‘Your mind is working,’ said Hacı Veli, smiling softly. ‘But if you ask me, it’s always working in the same direction.’
The other man fell silent, swallowing hard as he looked down at the ground.
‘You’re mistaken,’ he said finally. ‘My mind works in all directions!’
‘Oh does it really?’ asked Hacı Veli.
‘Yes, it does,’ said Uncle Güllü, nodding vigorously. ‘It thinks ahead, it thinks back, it thinks to the left, and to the right. Or to put it another way, it thinks to the north and the south and the west and the east. In all four of these directions!’
Hacı Veli smiled. ‘If that’s the case, then it’s not working at all!’ Without waiting for the next question, he continued. ‘Because there are not just four directions. There are at least six, my most honoured sir. The fifth direction is beneath our feet, and the sixth is above us. This thing about there being only four — that’s nothing more than a tired old saying.’