Ziya went over to the desk and picked up the letter.
‘Give these other letters to the driver,’ said the commander, pushing them across the desk with the back of his hand. ‘Tell him to deliver them to the appropriate stations.’
Ziya picked up those letters.
The commander frowned at him sternly.
‘Why do you stink of cologne?’ he asked.
‘I have a toothache, sir,’ Ziya replied. ‘I’ve dipped it in cologne to kill the pain.’
‘That’s enough!’ said the commander, jumping to his feet as if to strike him. ‘Get out!’
Shocked by the reprimand, Ziya got out and went back to his office and, wanting to know what had made the commander so angry, he at once opened his letter. Or rather, he reached into the envelope that had already been opened and pulled out the letter, which had been folded twice. What he saw first was the photograph in the fold. It had been cut from a newspaper, and it was a picture of Midhat from the waist up, arms crossed and smiling happily. Next to his picture was an advertisement for a film called Hope, and it showed Yılmaz Güney in the role of Cabbar the Carriage Driver, staring into the lens with his family; his hands were on his eldest son’s naked shoulders, and he standing there, straight as a rod, frowning stonily at Ziya from underneath his bushy eyebrows, with a face so angry and mournful that it made a nonsense of Midhat’s smile. Then Ziya looked at the little black-eared dog who seemed to be the eighth member of the family, sitting there on the lap of his youngest son. In the first lines of the letter, Midhat confirmed that the revolutionary struggle continued, and that he had finally secured permission to open a community centre, which he’d filled with books, and a week earlier they had brought a copy of the film Hope in from Aydın and shown it for free for three nights running. He went on to detail what he called his other revolutionary acts: setting up a reading group, setting up a drama club, writing ‘Long Live Socialism’ on the face of the fountain at the entrance to the town. He went on and on, recklessly piling on the detail, as if he did not know that all soldiers’ letters were censored. In the last lines of the letter, he told Ziya how much he was looking forward to seeing him again when he got out, to which he added a string of slogans in huge letters, followed by two and sometimes three exclamation marks, each one bolder than the last.
By the time he finished the letter, Ziya was beside himself. ‘Midhat, you dolt,’ he thought. ‘How could anyone be so naïve?’ He stood up and left the office, heading to the canteen for more of Resul’s brew. But it was almost as if the commander knew where he was going, for now he called him into his office.
‘Go to the depot and get yourself a rifle,’ he said, without looking him in the face. ‘From now on, you are coming out with me on night patrol!’
‘Yes, sir!’ said Ziya.
And so it was that, so many months later, he was armed once again, and issued with a cartridge belt, and every night he set out in the passenger seat of that jeep, like Capflyer’s clerk, to patrol the impenetrable darkness. Hours after the soldiers had gone to their stations, they would leave company headquarters, and all night long they would drive up and down the road that stretched along the barbed-wire fence, trembling like a strip of gauze. As they passed, the guards would scramble to their feet, their rifles slung over their shoulders, and salute. If there was anyone asleep inside, or smoking a cigarette, or if anyone had gone over to talk to his friends in a neighbouring trench, the commander would jump down from his jeep and beat him to a pulp. Sometimes the commander and the guard would be swallowed by the night but the air still rang with kicks and punches. When the scuffle ended, the commander would always appear in exactly the same place as he had vanished. Breathing heavily through his nose, he’d get back into the jeep, stretching out in the back seat and looking disgusted, and then he would turn to the driver, Ahmet of Polatlı, and bellow, ‘Start driving, you animal! What are you staring at?’ And Ahmet of Polatlı would start driving, his face darkened with anger, but saying nothing, and off they would go again, down the road. And if there was a skirmish at any point along the section of the border for which they were responsible, or an exchange of gunfire, or a tracer flying through the sky, they would head straight out to assist those guards, of course. Taking shelter behind the jeep, they would join in the shooting and stay at that post until morning.
Some nights they would sweep the darkness with their searchlights, looking for any smugglers who might have penetrated deep into Turkish territory or any others who might be approaching the border, and sometimes they would turn off all the lights and sit there in the pitch dark, as if lying in ambush. Why they had stopped in that particular place and not elsewhere, and how long they would stay — these were things that only the commander knew, of course. And he never told Ahmet of Polatlı or Ziya. Sometimes he would issue an abrupt command to move forward without putting on the lights, and the jeep would crawl blindly through the night, crackling the dry grass beneath its wheels as it moved towards the next guardhouse. When they were within shooting range, the lights would flash on, as the jeep gathered speed, until pulling up sharply at the guardhouse gate. If the guard on duty was asleep or sitting in front of the phone, chatting with some other guard, it would all end very badly; the commander would beat him until he turned to jelly. Sometimes he’d put the gun to the guard’s temple, his eyes flashing in the night like some madman, and bellowing, ‘I could blow out your brains, you dog and son of a dog, nothing would make me happier, I swear, I could blow your brains out!’
Because Ziya was still responsible for all the work in the office, he was only able to sleep for a few hours after returning from patrol. And like so many of the guards, he was now suffering from rheumatism, and so he did what they all had to do: to reduce the pain he had to make himself sweat, so he wrapped his knees with plastic bags and tied them tightly with string. After just a few hours, he would jump out of bed and quickly get dressed. Without stopping for breakfast, he would rush to the canteen. If Resul was alone in there, he’d say, ‘Pour me a glass of that poison,’ and it was only after downing a few glasses that he was able to calm down.
Sometimes Kenan would join them, slipping into a corner to drink that liquid they called poison, looked very ashamed of himself as he pretended to be drinking tea. With each sip, he’d look out the window at the mud-brick houses and a moment arrived when he could no longer keep himself from talking about the beauties of his own village. And so it was that the Telhamut canteen was cooled by that faraway red-pine forest and its fragrant flowers. And then came the bubbling of the pure waters running down its slender brooks, and the tranquil hills, with their oak trees and their juniper bushes, and the clacking grouse in the ash-coloured undergrowth, and the sheep pens, and the footpaths carpeted with yellow leaves, and the steep cliffs that were red in some lights and grey in others, and the bugs that glistened in the sun amongst those yellowed-headed, pink-headed, purple-headed thorns. And after these would come the vineyards, and the fruit trees, the gorgeous fruit trees, and their perfume, whirling through the air like soap bubbles. And in their wake, the blue skies, each one deeper than the one before, and the grassy slopes, glistening as if they’d just been washed, and those silences, always changing colour. It was Kenan’s face, and the rise and fall of his voice, that lit up each one, if only for an instant. But then that light would go out, and Kenan would go limp, and before their eyes he would turn into a dark and trembling slip of a ghost. After rubbing his knees and giving himself a good scratch and gazing blankly at the empty shelves, this ghost would leave the canteen in silence. And Ziya would head for the office and the typewriter, to prepare more reports on the latest skirmishes.