Hasan Toptas - Reckless

‘I hope so,’ Ziya said. Then he said, ‘He sounds very strange, this uncle of yours.’

They passed in front of the Plane Tree Coffeehouse. When he looked inside, Ziya could see Hulki Dede. He was as dishevelled as ever, and sitting apart from the other villagers. He had propped his left elbow on his knee, while he sketched on the ground with his staff. As he did so, his head bobbed happily. Then he straightened up. His eyes seemed fogged with sleep. He stared into the distance and then suddenly he raised his arm. He waved at Ziya. And he did so with such deep affection that it almost seemed to taper his fingers, because Ziya could feel how warm they were. And he could feel them reaching out to touch his heart. So then Ziya slowed down, just a little, to wave back. Then he speeded up again, but as they walked through the village, he saw Hulki Dede’s waving hand a few more times. It seemed almost to be hanging there, just before his eyes. Or echoing through the village. He saw it for the first time on a crumbling courtyard wall. After that he saw it on the side of a horse cart loaded down with hay. And after that he saw it in the meydan in the ears of a donkey whose back was covered in sores.

And outside the Coffeehouse of Mirrors, they ran into Numan. Or to put it more accurately, Numan was inside, playing cards with his friends, and when he caught sight of Ziya and Kenan, he threw his cards down on the table, and stood up, and swaggered outside, like a tough guy looking for a fight, and planted himself at the side of the road. But he said nothing. He just looked at Ziya and Kenan, spinning his yellow prayer beads in furious circles. Kenan had pulled way back, and when he walked past Numan, he fixed his eyes on the grocery store just up the road. Seeing him do this, Ziya pretended not to see Numan either, to avoid a scene, but this unsettled him.

When they reached Uncle Cevval’s door, the white sheepdog was still dozing at the foot of the wall opposite. When it heard their footsteps, it raised its head to gaze at Kenan with glassy eyes, but neither Kenan nor Ziya noticed as they stepped inside. The walls were white and smelled of damp. Leaning across the copper tray he held in his hands, Kenan cried, ‘Uncle, I’m here. I’m here, Uncle!’ Cevval called back from what seemed to be a distance, but it wasn’t clear what he was saying: it was as if the walls themselves had swallowed up his weak little voice. And soon there was nothing left but a cool and half-lit carpet-covered room. Then suddenly this room was jolted from its silence. And there was Uncle Cevval, in his knitted long johns. He was as pale as his walls, almost. But his skin was riddled with blue veins that looked as if they might be empty inside. They moved whenever Uncle Cevval moved, and when they moved, they sometimes disappeared, these veins.

‘Uncle,’ said Kenan. ‘Look. This is my friend from the army. His name is Ziya.’

Uncle Cevval turned to look at Ziya. He looked at him with empty eyes that seemed somehow full. He seemed to want something without quite knowing what it was. But his voice told Ziya that he had turned his back on the world. ‘Welcome, my child,’ he said softly.

Ziya thanked him, and leaned over to kiss his hand.

They set out his food that day on a worn black and white cloth that they spread over the divan, but they weren’t able to get him outside. Uncle Cevval got angry at Kenan just for suggesting it. He stuck out his chin as he protested, glaring as if he was about to hit Kenan with the back of his hand. And so they had to leave him there, alone with his walls.

When they had passed again through the damp hallway and were standing outside the house, Ziya told Kenan about the shadow he’d seen on the mountaintop. He stopped to point at it. ‘I hadn’t noticed it earlier. What is it?’ he asked. Kenan looked for a long time at the place Ziya had pointed out above his right shoulder, but he couldn’t see anything.

‘I don’t see anything different,’ he said. ‘They’re still the same mountains.’

‘But it’s there, can’t you see it? That shadow up there, the one that looks like the edge of a roof or a pile of earth. Can’t you see it?’

Kenan narrowed his eyes to look up at the mountains again.

The sheepdog looked up with him.

‘I really don’t see any sort of shadow up there,’ said Kenan. ‘There’s no new ridge. Maybe what you’re seeing is just in your imagination.’

‘Never mind,’ Ziya mumbled.

They headed for the fountain, picking their way down the narrow stone lane that ran beneath Uncle Cevval’s house, keeping in the shadow of the almond trees as squirrels screamed in the branches above. And as they walked, Ziya’s thoughts went from Nefise to the nameless shadow he had seen on the mountaintop, and then back to Uncle Cevval. After filling up his plastic bottle at the fountain, they headed back to the meydan , and they were just level with a nettle tree when Kâzım the Bellows Man appeared some way down the road.

‘Kenan, my boy,’ he cried. ‘You’re walking around like a dog bit your feet! Make some time so we can sit down and talk!’

‘Fine. Let’s talk,’ said Kenan.

Ziya left them there and carried on down the road with his water bottle passing through the boys rushing towards the grocery store. As he approached the Plane Tree Coffeehouse, Hulki Dede slowly raised his head, almost as if he knew he was there. Then he jumped up and hobbled over with his staff to grab Ziya by the arm. In a gentle voice, he said, ‘Weren’t you and I going to have a chinwag?’

‘Yes, why don’t we?’ said Ziya, struggling to smile. ‘Shall we find a table in the coffeehouse?’

‘Fuck the coffeehouse,’ said Hulki Dede. ‘What’s the point of sitting in there with all those people. They’ll just want to know what we’re talking about now and try to listen in. It’s not cold out and it’s not hot. It’s in the bald in between. If you like, we can take a stroll.’

‘I don’t want to have to lug this thing around, though.’ Ziya pointed at his water bottle. ‘Let’s go back to my house. I can invite you in for a glass of tea.’

‘Let’s do that then,’ said Hulki Dede.

They made their way out of the village, walking very slowly, chatting about this and that. When they turned left at the sheep pens to climb up the hill, Hulki Dede suddenly ran out of energy. He stopped talking, pausing every five or six steps to lean on his staff and wipe his brow with a brown-and-white-striped handkerchief, until he set off up the hill again, open-mouthed and breathing noisily. As he passed through the gap in the hedge, he apologised with some embarrassment. ‘Please excuse me. This is what old age looks like,’ he said softly.

They settled down on the bench outside the barn after that, and reached for their cigarettes. Hulki Dede pressed his chin into his chest and let out his smoke with such care and attention that he almost seemed to be trying to store it inside his jacket.

‘Numan came up here with his brother today, to ask you to act as their ambassador,’ he said. ‘That’s what happened, isn’t it?’

‘You’ve really surprised me,’ Ziya replied. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it would spread that fast.’

‘There’s nothing to be surprised about, my son,’ said Hulki Dede, raising his head to look up at the mountains. ‘Yazıköy is just a dot on the map. The moment something happens, everyone hears about it. But they always pretend they’ve heard nothing. And also, the thing we call the world stretches only a few pastures across. Those great distances beyond us, stretching hundreds and thousands of kilometres in all directions, well, they’re all here, too, on this little piece of land.’

‘Do you think that even Kenan knows about Numan coming up here with his brother?’