Sait Abasiyanik - A Useless Man

“My good sir, this man has never once treated another man to a coffee. But please, let’s step into this gazino here and have a cup of coffee together. Oh, the things I could tell you about him … You could never imagine …”

“Some other time, some other time!”

I couldn’t be less interested. It’s Yani Efendi I want to know about now. I’ve just become friends with his son.

But five days on, he’s beginning to wear on me. He does have his charms, if only he’d stop talking! Now I can talk as much as any man about films and dances and poker games and women’s legs. But with this one, it’s the same every night! There’s no harm in it, I know. But one evening he takes it upon himself to mimic a matinee idol, a certain John Payne. Now I might enjoy speaking to the man himself, were I in America, but what business does this John Payne have, talking to me in Istanbul? That was our final conversation. These days, when we see each other, we just exchange a few laughs. In a few days, we won’t even do that … Meanwhile I’ve more or less given up on the idea of writing about the life of Yani Efendi. I’ve gone back to the man and his dog. Good that I took a long break from him. His shyness must have got the better of him that first time. But this time he even offered me a cigarette. And then, just for my sake, he scolded his dog:

“I was really beginning to worry about you. Where have you been, my friend? You just disappeared.”

“Just a little cold, but it kept me in bed for the week, beyefendi !”

“You’re feeling better now, I hope?”

Then he told me how he once caught a cold that simply wouldn’t go away. But even so, he couldn’t keep himself out of the sea, and so he’d spent the entire summer sniffling. Here was this man, who’d told his own dog he never laughed. But today he couldn’t stop! It seemed to me the dog was flashing him a funny look: no doubt the result of a long chat with the postman!

I suppose it’s time I told you more about the postman. As I’ve already said, I found few failings in him, beyond his habit of ferreting out other people’s secrets — tidbits about their little failings and predilections, the sorts of things that should never go beyond four walls.

Is the postman a good man or is he not? What do I care, either way? All that matters is that I can’t help liking him, even though he gets on my nerves. He has this infuriating habit of planting himself three paces behind me, and staying put. No chance of talking to anyone else after that. There is little I have to say to the world that I can’t say loud and clear, but when I see this postman sitting there, drinking in my every word, I can’t help myself. I fly into a rage. I forget whatever it was I wanted to say. Whatever it was, I just wanted to say it slowly. And then I remind myself: “The bastard can take two words out of a sentence and add twenty new ones, and come up with a whole story, so watch out!”

This is, in fact, what happened: We have a mutual friend named Ahmet. He rents a room for the summer season from Mademoiselle Katina. The other night he went for a swim. Two friends of his were speaking about it just a couple of feet away from the postman:

“You know Ahmet from Katina’s house, well he went for a swim in the sea last night despite all that wind. He told us to come in too but …”

From this the postman extracted three things exactly: “Katina, Ahmet, last night …” And this is what he said to his barber:

“Now hello there, barber! How about helping me get rid of this rubble? But listen to what I have to tell you. You know Ahmet, who stays in one of those houses on the hill? Last night he took off in a rowboat with none other than Katinaki, the daughter of the famous chocolatier. They rowed all the way over to Heybeliada. Then they hopped into a phaeton and it was off to Çamlimanı! I watched them from that promontory. First I saw them rowing across the channel. Then, a little later, I watched them make their way along the lengthy shore road in a lit carriage. I swear I saw that phaeton with my own two eyes. The driver was waiting for them in Abbaspaşa. Oh! How sweet it must have been, Barba. You’ll remember it rained yesterday. You know how sweet it smells in that pine forest after it rains! But who will ever know the scent of lavender in Katinaki’s hair? Oh lord! Barba, it’s enough to drive a man mad! As for this Ahmet Efendi, he’s not bad looking himself, is he? What eyes he has! Thin as a whip, too! Let’s hope he wasn’t too hard on that delicate Katinaki!”

So that was the story that the postman spun. I can only admire his knack for making a story out of nothing because serious writers like me can only dream of it.

Let me say what I think is underneath it all:

On the surface, it might look as if he is divulging great secrets in exchange for small favors — a tea here and a soda there. A shave, a small glass of rakı, a bunch of grapes … But if you ask me, these trifles are not what keep him serving up secrets. I figured this out when I noticed that if he could find no one else to confide in, he would go to Zafiri, who is a quiet soul and hates gossip and cannot afford a coffee for himself, let alone anyone else, and can barely speak Turkish. Or he’ll go and sit with Zeynel Efendi, the retired ticket salesman, who is as quiet as Zafiri and just as disdainful of gossip.

The postman hungers after secrets because he longs to grasp the world he can see only in his imagination.

And there are times, many times, when I think he goes too far. First he strings up the dirty laundry, and then comes the laundry that he’s soiled himself. The innocent truth is never enough for him. Never — but then what are we to do? He’s the one who has to pay the price. It’s a risky business, building a house of lies, even if it sits on a foundation of facts … I’d end up forgetting what the postman’s said about whom, and soon I’d even forget what he’s said, and at that point, I’d move on. As we all do, eventually. Some days, we believe what people tell us, and the next day, we don’t.

I do not hide the fact that I am a writer. It’s nothing to be ashamed of! But I don’t like to announce it. Now if I choose to sit and write in the corner of a gazino every morning, that is why. In the old days I would go and write under a pine tree. Now I have my own table! And they bring me a coffee. Girls stroll past. I can write whatever I wish …

What I am trying to say is that the postman has proved very helpful!

“He sits under the pines and writes letters … Who knows who he’s writing to … or what he’s saying?”

But oh, the things he has inferred from stories I have written and then torn up! It shames me just to think of them. Once I nearly got into a fight over it. They all descended on me, saying, “This brute has the gall to write about our lives! Who does the bastard think he is?”

I have gone on far too long about the postman. Let’s just accept him as he is. Let’s leave it to the others to decide if he is good or bad. But let’s not smear him, since he has proven useful.

He caught up with me one morning, when I was going out for a swim:

“Look,” he said, “the man with the dog! He is sending letters to his newspaper.”

I looked and saw that it was indeed an envelope addressed to an assistant editor named X at a paper named Y.

Without looking up, I cried:

“Indeed it is!”

Then our eyes met. Something strange passed between us.

Turning my eyes back to the envelope, I said:

“Well it is indeed. Perhaps it’s a complaint. Or a letter to the editor.”

Again, our eyes met. There isn’t a judge on this earth who could say who was the offender and who the accomplice, or who was provoking whom.