Hasan Toptas - Reckless

‘Dear, dear, dear,’ sighed Nurgül Hanım. ‘What a terrible shame to lose all those children.’

Crouching down and leaning back against the wall, Ebecik the Midwife looked out over the rooftops. She stared at the sky, going deeper and deeper still, into the past she seemed to see there.

When she spoke again, she was almost delirious. ‘Those poor children,’ she said. ‘It was the hour of their death. We are every one of us mere mortals. Whatever shall be, shall be, my beauty. Such is the will of God. . But there’s something I forgot to mention just now. Those horsemen of ours who went to see the village did not themselves witness any of this. They heard the story from the villagers, same as I just told you. What I mean to say is that all our men did was sit down with their hands on their knees and their heads bowed and listen to the story. And then, without suffering the slightest injury, they offered their condolences to those poor ravaged villagers and galloped on home. Having gawped at the scene of the disaster, there was nothing more these men could do, and I know whereof I speak. Maybe you won’t believe me, but these men we’re talking about were the very laziest men in our town. You know the type. I’m talking about the sort of men you’ll see lounging against the wall, or the porch steps, or the door, like a pile of old clothes — lazy isn’t a good enough word for them. Hard to believe, but they were all like this, every last one of them. So lazy they didn’t even bother to greet you when you passed them, and no one had the faintest idea how they fed themselves, or who looked after them. The only thing they knew how to do, these men, was to sit there sleeping in the sun, shoot withering looks and snore. How they managed to spring to life the moment they heard about the disaster, how they found people to loan them horses at such short notice, how they shed all those lazy ways of theirs and got it into their minds to go all the way to that village — well I for one can’t tell you. All I know is this. After they returned from that village, these men began to change, little by little. They had a spring to their step now. There was life in their eyes. You could almost think that the things they’d seen in that village had put an end to their laziness — popped it, like a needle popping a balloon. Soon they were walking the length and width of the town, telling the story of the whirlwind to any child who crossed their path. But now their voices didn’t shake any more, like they’d done that first day. Now there were times when they spoke like a great river sparkling in the sun, or a breeze passing over a planted field. They would stop as suddenly as if they were teetering over a cliff. They would sigh tragically, but only to offer cause for hope. The story itself had changed by now. It was no longer the same whirlwind we’d heard about that first day. With each new detail, this story of theirs stretched just a bit more. The more it stretched, the more it changed in shape and appearance, until it had lost all its bearings. Soon it was riddled with logical errors and made no sense at all. You could almost say that they’d fiddled with it so much by then that it stopped being a story. By now it had as many holes in it as an old lace rag. Would you believe it — these men kept on with it regardless. They threw themselves into it, heart and soul. They gave this story of theirs everything they had. From the way they now set themselves up as the experts on whirlwinds, you’d think they had spent their whole lives with their elbows propped on a school desk. They put on such airs that soon it became their job to stand by the haystacks brandishing pitchforks, predicting when a wind might rise, and where it might come from, and how strong it might be. And there they stood, pricking their ears, and suddenly going silent, to listen even more deeply; with bated breath they’d sniff the air, to see if it told them of a whirlwind on the way. If ever the wind seemed to be going around in circles, or even if it so much as lifted up a few papers and leaves, their lips would curl and they’d hem and they’d haw and exchange knowing looks. Then they would insist that there was a whirlwind out there, somewhere far away, and that it had caused great damage, and that this little wind that was raising up a few leaves and papers had somehow broken off from it to come as far as here. Before long they had convinced themselves that however you looked at it, this little wind was the harbinger of the great whirlwind that would strike some unknown place at an unknown point in the future. So, whenever they gathered together, they’d rejoice as if they’d made a great scientific discovery and at the same time lament the great damage that whirlwind would cause. There was even a day when one of these men burst into tears while watching a cloud of dust sail towards us. Dear God, he said, it’s the whirlwind. It’s the whirlwind. Dear God! I saw this with my own two eyes. I swear, he went pale as pale, and the tears he shed were as big as acorns. It wasn’t long before he realised he had cried for nothing. That cloud of dust on the horizon came as far as the edge of town and stopped beneath a massive plane tree. Out popped a postman on his yellow motorcycle. In the end, these men embroidered their story so much they killed it. Never mind, they’ve all gone to their graves now, and it wouldn’t be right to dwell on them too long. It’s not right to speak ill of the dead, as you well know. The silence of the dead is deeper and greater than anything we say on earth. The dead are judged, to be sure. So let us leave these men be. They’re dead and buried, with their sins and their good deeds. . As you can see, the little girl who stood in that crowd waiting for the horsemen to return is now a humpbacked, white-haired woman. And do you know, while I was waiting in that crowd for two long days all those years ago, I got so very hungry, and when I told someone in that crowd, I no longer remember who, that person gave me some meat wrapped in bread. I say meat wrapped in bread and that reminds me, what have you made for supper tonight, my beauty? Have you already made it?’

‘I have,’ said Nurgül Hanım. ‘If you want the truth, a few hours ago I had no idea what to make. I kept changing my mind, but then I decided to make stewed haricot beans. With pilaf, pickles and semolina pudding.’

‘That sounds good,’ said Ebecik the Midwife, fiddling with her prayer beads, ‘very good indeed, but I’m surprised, because you can’t make stewed haricot beans just like that, you know, you have to decide the day before. You don’t need to do much: you just bring it to a boil and let it sit in its own water. The next day you need to throw that water away, most definitely. There’s nothing on this earth that does more harm. It gives you gas, it darkens the beans, and it keeps us from enjoying the sight of those beans sparkling. As God is my witness, what you need to do is to wash those beans after getting rid of that water, and then cover them with water — three fingers above the beans — and then cook them over a low flame, but at this point you must pay close attention to the rhythm of the boil. As you know, every dish has its own rhythm when it boils. So, for instance, when you’re cooking bulgur, it sounds like this: lady’s thigh bone, lady’s thigh bone, lady’s thigh bone. But when you’re cooking dolmas, or pilaf wrapped in grape leaves, it should sound like this: beggar’s dick, beggar’s dick, beggar’s dick. If you don’t keep adjusting the flame, you might produce different sounds altogether, and no good can come from that. So you need to pay close attention to those haricot beans when you’re boiling them. They should just bubble as softly as whispers, never more than that, and that way they won’t go to pieces. They’ll just lie there, playing dead. They won’t stick to each other, they’ll just lie there, each one sparkling like these beads of mine, each one saying, “Here I am!” After all this, of course, you need to cook your finely chopped onions with green peppers in oil, and tomato purée, and pepper purée, too. None of this putting green peppers to swim about the sauce like the sultan’s caïques. You should chop them so that they are no more than twice the length of the beans. At the end of the day, this is a dish that requires a great deal of care. For example, it’s a good idea to throw in two or three cloves of garlic; it brings a certain extra something to the palate. In any event, someone somewhere might be longing for this dish made just this way, so in my view, it’s best to leave it there.’