‘I’m so sorry. So very, very sorry,’ Kenan mumbled helplessly.
Ziya’s eyes were brimming with tears.
‘Thanks,’ he said, as he reached for the pack next to his knees and pulled out another cigarette.
For a few minutes, neither spoke.
Meanwhile, the leaves of the oak tree in whose shade they were sitting began to rustle. As each new rustle flew through the air like an imaginary leaf, a tortoise came out from underneath the wild liquorice just in front of them; it took a few steps forward, crunching the grass underfoot, stuck out its head, looked around timidly, and then quickly backed away, to hide amongst the branches.
‘Do you know what?’ Ziya said, as he blew out his smoke. ‘If I’d had a son, he’d be sixteen years old now.’
‘Which means he’d be the same age as my nephew Besim.’
‘So it goes,’ continued Ziya, in a faint little voice. ‘It’s almost as if this thing we call life sent me off into that corner, with a watchstrap as a pretext. Or else, that watchmaker did it, by making me wait. Sometimes I wonder, I really do, if life put that man there, just for this purpose, if it did something to his body to slow him down and then put him in that shop to work, for fifty or sixty years, just so that it could delay me, and keep me far from the explosion. If I know anything, it’s this: if that sallow-faced man behind the counter had been a little faster, there is no doubt that I would have finished my errand and returned to the bookshop at the entrance to the shopping centre, and died there, with my wife and my son. Do you know what? For many years I felt the deepest shame at not having died with them. There were even times when I was ashamed to be living the years they never could. I felt so ashamed, and was in such pain, that a time arrived when I hated life itself. I’d lose my temper, badly. There were times when the winds of fury sent me flying into a meyhane, times when I came to think of the others at my table as my closest friends, and went off to houses I’d never been to, with people I didn’t know, to bend to the will of anyone who happened to be near me, but those days passed and I put all that behind me, soon enough. Those soap bubbles of laughter, that clanging music, those fumes and those dim lights, and all the other props people use to get close to one another — I was spending too much time with people who had given up on life, I decided. I was wasting my pain. The truth is I told none of them what had happened; they hadn’t the least idea of the hell I’d been through, but still, when I sat drinking in their company, the atmosphere seeped into my private helclass="underline" the smoke they exhaled would billow across the room and settle inside me. And the endless insipid conversations, they were one long stretched-out moan. The jokes that weren’t jokes, because they lacked even the slightest sparkle of wit. The kisses that meant nothing, beyond flesh touching flesh. The fights. And everywhere — lining the walls, lounging on the sofas, sitting on the floor, lurking in the bathrooms, even, and in places even worse than that — all those people, holding glasses. What can I say? I was wasting my pain, spending so much time in places like this, and that’s why it didn’t last long. I had my wobble, but it was soon over. One way of looking at it was that I left the life I’d known, went as far from it as I could, but then I came back again. And pulled myself together. I found refuge, with the help of that eraser of memories we call time. Or rather, I came to understand that the only way forward was to bury myself in my grief, and accept what had happened.’
‘It’s hard. Honestly, so hard. May God give you patience,’ mumbled Kenan.
They fell silent for a spell. Leaning forward, they listened to the oak leaves, rising and falling with the breeze. Then, between each rise and fall, there came the deep rustlings of the forest. And between those, there was silence, as soft as cotton wool. And between these were the moans from which that silence came, as thick as the slopes and pastures and cliffs that surrounded them.
‘So that’s why I have those lines on my face,’ said Ziya, and then he added, ‘And what happened to you, my friend? I seem to remember you were engaged when we knew each other. Do you have any children?’
‘Yes, I was engaged,’ replied Kenan. ‘And when I got back to the village, I quickly sold off a few pastures of marshy land and got married, with all the pipes and drums, but sadly the marriage didn’t last long; we divorced after four years, because we had no children, and my wife somehow decided that this must be my fault. During those four years, there wasn’t a doctor in the area we hadn’t asked for help, of course, or a hoca whose hand we hadn’t kissed, or a tree we hadn’t tied a rag around, or a saint we hadn’t entreated. We sold everything we owned around this time. All our money went on votive offerings, and doctors, and hocas. And all that time, of course, we were trying out all the treatments recommended by various famous people, just to see if they would work. . Then one day, my wife asked for a divorce, and so we did. We parted that very day, in the ugliest way imaginable. To tell you the truth, my wife did something outrageous; having packed up her things to return to her village, she ran around town as if she were holding a doctor’s report and accused me of being impotent. “You’re an impotent louse! That’s what you are — an impotent louse!” She was still in our courtyard when she started shouting, as loud as she could. That uncle of hers with the goitre — he was waiting outside in his car, and when she got in, I thought it would end there. But no. She kept going. She rolled down the window and stuck out her head and until they reached the edge of the village, she kept shouting, as if I had chased after her, as if I was still there. “You’re impotent! An impotent louse!” But I was dumbstruck, I couldn’t speak, let alone move. I just stood there, gaping. And for a time, everyone else in the village stood there, too, in their doorways, at their windows, pressed against the walls. But once the car was gone, and the clouds of dust had settled, they turned around and looked at each other. And that became my nickname. Impotent. And it wasn’t long before the whispers had gone beyond our streets to the towns and villages around us. I couldn’t look anyone in the eye. Even knowing that the charge was false, I bowed my head like a guilty man. A few years later, I decided I should find a good woman to take as my wife, but no one would have me. I searched and searched, but I found no one, and that was when I came to understand just what an evil thing my wife had done to me, with just a few words. All she’d had to do was shout a few words on her way out, and she’d destroyed my future. Do you know what? It’s something I just haven’t managed to fathom, how after four years of two people putting their heads on the same pillow, one of them could do such a thing to the other. How there is no memory left of the first day they set eyes on each other on this earth, no memory of kisses or caresses. When I think about such things, it still makes me angry. What a strange word that is, anger. For months and months, I held this huge grudge against her. Then one day it occurred to me that if I shouted out the same sorts of words as my wife had done, I would destroy her future, too. And then I thought, the poor woman, what could she have done, maybe this was why she was in such a hurry. And then, I don’t know how this happened exactly, but suddenly I felt some compassion for her. My resentment went, and my anger, too. It was as if I understood her a little. Yes, I understood her, just a little. Hazy as it was, I had some understanding of what was lying underneath those words of hers. And sometimes, when I come up to this forest to chop wood, I look at the trees around me, and the cliffs, and the grass, and the tortoises rustling through the undergrowth, and the snakes sliding into view only to vanish a moment later, and all the insects, and all the birds, and almost always, I think, what a shame it is that my wife and I could not enjoy these things together. Anyway, after that various relatives and village elders got together to find me a new wife, only to return from every house they visited empty-handed. My name had gone before me, and unless I produced a certificate proving I wasn’t impotent, there was nothing I could do. To make a long story short, as one year followed another, and I got older and older, the whole thing began to seem too complicated and I gave up on the idea of marrying, and accepted my fate. What else could I do? I told myself that this was the fate our Lord had written for me. So there’s no family, and no children; just my mother, my sister, and my nephew and me, living together in one house, and doing the best we can.’