When they got out of the jeep, the sergeant said, ‘Follow me,’ and led him straight into Capflyer’s office. This was at the front of a stone building that, with its high walls and crenulations, resembled a little desert fort. Capflyer was standing at the window, hands on hips, lost in thought. Slowly, very slowly, he turned around, and Ziya could see that his eyes were red, and puffy from lack of sleep. Slowly, very slowly, he returned to his desk and then he looked Ziya up and down, up and down, as if he could hardly believe he was there. And then off he went, huffing and puffing and angrily rubbing his face, as he explained how his clerk had been killed by smugglers and gave precise instructions for the report. He didn’t go into much detail, to tell the truth: all he said was that the previous night he had gone out in his jeep on night patrol as usual with his clerk, Rasim Benli, that at around three in the morning they had spotted a group of smugglers trying to cross over from Syria into Turkey, and that at the end of a skirmish lasting fifteen or twenty minutes, they had pushed them back. And also that these smugglers had left nothing behind, and that the battlefield was empty, on account of the smugglers having passed through the minefield, and he said all this through narrowed eyes, as if he was reading a book from a distance. And then, with a ballpoint pen he pulled out of his shirt pocket, he jotted down a few more details — where the skirmish had taken place, the names of the guards who had taken part, and the number of bullets used — and handed this piece of paper over to Ziya, and then, in a weary voice, he said, ‘Take this with you, my boy. Go over to that office and prepare the report at once.’
The stick-figure sergeant gave him a curt nod and led him out of Capflyer’s office, and took him quickly down the corridor to an office at the other end. There was a row of seven windows in this office — one big one, and six little ones. The walls were milky white, radiating silence, and in the middle of that silence, a tall soldier stood waiting.
‘So this is going to be our new clerk,’ said the second lieutenant. ‘You’re to tell him what needs to be done and how. So sit down and get started.’
And though the last thing he wanted to do right then was to sit in the chair of a clerk who’d just been killed, that is what he did. Putting Capflyer’s notes down on the desk, he pulled the typewriter closer to his chair and at once began to type. His student — the man the lieutenant had introduced as Cezmi — was a most nervous and absent-minded creature, and his drooping eyelids made him look as if he was already wafting through the world of dreams; knowing that his training was to last only a day, after which he would be expected to do any number of things alone, he bombarded Ziya with anxious questions at every opportunity. And every once in a while Ziya would stop typing to give him a proper answer, and every time he did so, he’d say, ‘But listen, every time you’re stuck or can’t figure something out, you can just pick up the phone and ask me.’ This would calm Cezmi down somewhat. He’d slip into the deathly silence of the corridor and return with two glasses of tea. But as soon as they’d drunk these teas and put the glasses to one side, he’d grow anxious again; standing up, he’d go over to the cupboard where they kept the dossiers, and stare at their spines. He’d pass his hands over the yellow envelopes piled up on the shelves, and rustle through the notebooks next to them, or he’d stand right next to Ziya, asking him whatever question was in his head, even if it happened to be one Ziya had already answered.
The next afternoon, after Ziya had finished the document, put it into its dossier, and taken it into Capflyer’s office to be signed, Cezmi asked him a string of questions about the monthly statements he would need to prepare on the company’s provisions, equipment and personnel. Leaning against the table, Ziya answered his questions one by one, in plain language. Then he handed the dossier over to Cezmi and in a tired voice he said, ‘As there’s nothing left for me to do, I think it’s time for me to tell the lieutenant, so that they can get me back before dark.’
Glancing at the dossier in his lap, Cezmi asked, ‘But does this report say, for instance, that the clerk was shot in the temple?’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Ziya. ‘Was the clerk shot in the temple?’
‘Yes,’ said Cezmi. ‘Somehow, in the pitch dark, those smugglers managed to hit him square in the temple.’
Ziya went cold, and for a time he didn’t speak. And neither could he see or hear what was going on around. He just sat there, ears ringing, falling through the darkness of his mind.
That same evening, they took him back in the same jeep, reaching Telhamut just as the sun sank into Syria. He was still very agitated: when he went into the room next to the guardhouse to give his oral report to the commander, his face was ashen and he could barely stand. And that was why, after looking him over, he said, with some reluctance, that Ziya was excused from night patrol this once. ‘Go and get some rest,’ he said. And then he adjusted the collar of his parka, which was hanging on the backs of his shoulders. ‘But don’t forget,’ he said. ‘From tomorrow you’re going back out on night patrol as usual, and also watering those saplings.’
‘Yes, sir!’ said Ziya.
And when the commander had dismissed him with a wave, he went straight over to the canteen, even though he was covered with dust, and it was all he could do to put one combat boot in front of the other. He found Resul at the table, entering his daily accounts into his blue notebook. He looked up when the door creaked. Seeing Ziya, he put his pencil down on the notebook, very gently, and raised his head, ready for his friend’s report.
‘That won’t take you too long, I hope,’ said Ziya, settling into the chair opposite.
‘Thanks,’ said Resul. ‘Welcome back.’
For a while Ziya stared blankly at the shelves.
Then he whispered, ‘You don’t have any poison, do you? Please, pour me a glass of that blessed liquid.’
Without a word of complaint, Resul brought out the bottle from the biscuit tin under the table and poured Ziya a glass. He did all this very slowly, and he kept stopping to stare straight into his friend’s eyes, eager for his report. Until he couldn’t bear it any longer, and gave voice to the question in his eyes. He sat back in his chair, as if to say that Ziya’s time was up. ‘I mean, really,’ he said reproachfully. ‘For two days now, people have been talking about this incident and nothing else, so are you or aren’t you going to tell me what exactly happened in this company right next to ours?’
‘I have nothing to tell you,’ Ziya said, emptying his glass in one gulp. Then he wrinkled up his face. ‘Fill this up for me again, why don’t you.’
‘Whether I fill it or not,’ said Resul, ‘that commander is going to catch us one of these days. And if he does, there’ll be hell to pay.’
‘Who cares?’
‘I say we go up to the top of the stairs, that way we can keep an eye on him.’
‘Fine, let’s go,’ said Ziya, as he emptied his second glass in one gulp.
They climbed up the internal stairs, settling down two steps from the top so that their heads and shoulders were outside. From here they could see the guardhouse, the mud-brick houses, the sand track and part of the front of their own building. The soldiers who were about to go out on guard duty were gathered around the flagpole, buckling their cartridge belts and putting on their parkas. Some were holding the bread they’d picked up on their way out of the mess hall. Then, on the sergeant’s command, they lined up and mounted their chargers, pulled out their bolt handles and, throwing their rifles over their shoulders, headed out to their trenches, like a string of weary ghosts. They had been gone for some time when the night engulfed those mud-brick houses in the dip behind the railroad tracks. The night engulfed the well then, too, and the train station, and the flagpole, and the pine saplings, and the guardhouse, and the fields around them. And that was when the commander suddenly came sailing out of his room and headed for the train tracks, his parka swinging from his shoulders. Passing through the barbed wire, he turned into a shadow, until the night that had already swallowed up those houses swallowed him up, too.