Hasan Toptas - Reckless

Once, when the commander had gone on a rampage and cut off their electricity, the women brought a hollow-cheeked man with them to company headquarters. He was furious, this man; his Adam’s apple kept bobbing, and he kept grinding his teeth, until there were sparks flying from his eyes, almost. Later on, when he went up to the commander’s door, he could hold himself back no longer. In a trumpeting voice that shocked everyone, he said, ‘The milk we keep in our refrigerators will go off, you know! Can’t you take pity on the children? Why don’t you just admit it — what you’ve done is unjust!’

That’s what this man bellowed. The commander was furious, of course, to be addressed in this tone of voice, and every vein in his neck bulged. Then he turned to the women waiting outside the door and waved them away like so many mosquitoes, saying, ‘Go away now. Go away.’ And off they went, looking over their shoulders as they crossed over to their houses to wait next to the well at the back. And that was when the commander fell upon this man, hollering, ‘I spit on your fate, you dog and son of a dog!’ and punching him smack in the face. Shocked by this turn of events, the little man just stood there, red-faced and staring blankly. On the commander’s orders, the cook from the guard station and one of the drivers then tied this man to the flagpole, stripping him from the waist up. Then the commander picked up his cartridge belt and went up to him, and laid into him, pelting him with a string of unspeakable curses as he beat him to a pulp. The man’s eyes opened wide each time the cartridge belt landed; they swayed and they clouded, they churned and they shook, until tears were shooting out of them into two straight lines, but the commander kept on going. Every time he hit the man, the women at the well would shake, too, moaning uyyy, uyyy, tiny little moans that called to mind a saz playing in the wind. At last the commander hollered, ‘Untie this dog,’ and threw his cartridge belt on the ground. He hurried off to his jeep and off he went in a cloud of dust back to Ceylanpınar.

Having watched all this from his office window, Ziya now stood up and went down to the canteen that had opened the previous month. It had less to offer than a village grocery shop, this canteen: cologne, envelopes, paper, ballpoint pens, razors, shaving cream, a few brands of cigarettes and biscuits, and that was it. When Ziya walked in, he found the manager, Resul of Lüleburgaz, standing at the window, watching them pick up the man they had untied from the flagpole and carry him over to the mud-brick houses.

‘Those poor people,’ he said, when he saw Ziya coming in. ‘And what a shame that there’s nowhere to go, to put in a complaint about this commander!’

‘Such a shame,’ said Ziya, and he took a deep breath.

Lowering himself into the chair behind the table, Resul fixed his eyes on the train tracks, while he let his thoughts wander.

‘I was just thinking,’ he said then. ‘If one of those people got on the train to go and make a complaint against this commander, they’d never be able to show their face here again. They’d have to take their whole family with them, even. If they didn’t. . I swear there’d be hell to pay from that commander, he’d kill them all and toss their bodies into the minefield. And then he’d say they’d been shot while crossing over the border, and get away with it!’

Ziya sat down across from him.

‘Would he really do that?’ he asked softly.

‘He would, I swear,’ said Resul, nodding. ‘When the engineers at the State Battery Farm drink rakı , he hands them weapons, this man, and sends them off to be ambushed. And off they go to dig in, on their little drunken pattering feet. If they end up getting shot in a skirmish, then all this commander has to do to make them look like smugglers is pick them up and throw them into the minefield. He’s not about to say he gave these civilians weapons and set them up to be ambushed. Is he?’

‘I just don’t know,’ Ziya mumbled.

Then he turned his head to look out at the mud-brick houses. One of the women at the well was tending to the man, who still seemed to be unconscious. She was cleaning his eyes and face with water. Another woman in a white headscarf was standing next to the well, with her hand on the crank. As the sun beat down on her, she remained perfectly still.

‘Can I offer you anything? Would you like something to drink?’ Resul asked suddenly.

‘Could I have some tea?’ Ziya asked.

Resul reached under the table and took out a bottle, poured some of its cloudy white liquid into a glass and pushed it slowly across the table. ‘Go on, give it a try.’

Ziya raised it to his lips without giving it much thought, but as soon as he tasted it, his face changed. Smacking his lips, he took another sip.

‘It’s my own creation,’ said Resul, smiling faintly. ‘Cologne, lemon powder, and water. What do you think?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Ziya, and he took another sip.

‘If you don’t like it, there’s a bar just over there, down that street,’ said Resul. ‘You can go there and find any drink you want.’

Ziya pretended not to have heard Resul’s teasing words. He carried on drinking, as he looked out at the mud-brick houses.

‘These commanders are all the same,’ Resul said then. ‘There’s a commander in the next company over, for example. He loves watching soldiers’ caps fly off! That’s his nickname, even. Capflyer. He knows all about it, and he loves it. He hasn’t been past here for some time, so you can expect him any time. He’s sure to be coming by soon, no question about it, you’ll see. If you hear a roaring laugh suddenly, and a gun going off, be warned. Capflyer is back. He never travels solo. He always has his clerk sitting up front with him in his jeep, and following close behind is always one of those little trucks. And in the back, he’ll have his detail of bodyguards, huge grinning dimwits with lolling tongues, and they all have their fingers on the trigger. If you want to live, my advice is to hide the moment you see him coming. Because if anyone’s so foolish as to walk past him, and it happens to take his fancy, he’ll immediately pick up his gun, and order that man to stop fifteen metres away from him, and order him to raise the visor on his cap. And then, as you may have guessed by now, he’ll pick up his gun and with a single shot, he’ll send that cap flying, right up into the air. . and then, to top it all off, he has to celebrate, he has to split his sides laughing that maddening laugh of his. If that was all he did, then fine! But no, he also has to start swinging his gun around, and shooting off in all directions, without even looking through the barrel. He’s not much to look at — he’s stocky, and he has a fat ass and a head like a basket, but in spite of all that, he’s surprisingly quick off the mark, this Capflyer. Fast as a flea, you might say! I said this already, but just make sure you don’t catch his eye. Just hide as fast as you can. That’s what everyone does, anyway, along the seventy- or eighty-mile stretch between his headquarters and Ceylanpınar. Most especially the guards in the watchtower — they won’t even poke up their heads. Because they’re already seven or eight metres high, and that means they don’t even need to raise their visors: if the fancy takes him, Capflyer pulls his gun from its holster and sends their caps flying from the top of a moving jeep! A few months ago, they took two heads at Seyrantepe. You heard about that, didn’t you?’

‘Heads? What heads?’ said Ziya.

‘You know, those two smugglers they killed. Didn’t you hear this?’

Ziya gaped at him.

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ said Resul. ‘Here on the border, whenever they kill any smugglers, that’s what they call it. Taking heads. And whenever they take any heads, a few commanders will get together to celebrate with a bit of rakı . I’m not sure if it’s a tradition, but it’s what they do every time. And it’s the commander who can claim the head who hosts the party, of course. When they got together to celebrate the two heads from Seyrantepe, Capflyer came, too.’