Hasan Toptas - Reckless

‘How could he not know?’ Hulki Dede said. ‘Even the village chickens have heard about it.’

For a time they fell silent. They listened to the dead leaves rustling in the vineyard. Then Ziya sprang to his feet to put the teapot on the stove. When he returned, he pointed out the shadow on the mountaintop, thinking that he must know what it was, after looking at this view for so many long years. Hulki Dede lifted one hand to his beard while he studied the mountains through fluttering eyelashes, but he could see nothing where Ziya was pointing.

‘Tell me, my son,’ he said. ‘Why did you decide to leave the city and come here?’

‘For all sorts of reasons,’ Ziya replied. ‘When we were in the army, Kenan seized every opportunity to talk about how beautiful this village was. He made it sound like heaven. I promised many times to come and visit, but somehow I never managed to keep my word. I kept putting it off, and making silly excuses, and before I knew it, thirty years had passed. In the meantime, I’d become sick and tired of city life. To make a long story short, I was longing for a beautiful, quiet place like this, a place where I could listen to nature, and myself.’

Hulki Dede stroked his beard and nodded. But when he spoke he did not address Ziya so much as that distant place that rustled with the echoes of those leaves. ‘Do you know what?’ he said. ‘Nature says nothing to us. And that’s why we listen to it.’

Shocked by these words, Ziya turned to stare at Hulki Dede. For a moment he doubted his very existence, but he didn’t say so, of course. He just looked at him in silence, swallowing hard. And — almost as if he had seen that doubt passing through Ziya’s mind — Hulki Dede now spoke to him in a voice that did seem to be of this world. ‘Let’s look at it like this, my son. Is there anything about this village you find strange?’

‘No, there isn’t,’ Ziya said, struggling to hide his confusion.

‘Think about it,’ Hulki Dede said. ‘Because there is something strange about it.’

‘You really want me to say it?’

‘I really do, my son. I really do!’

‘The truth is, there are two strange things about this village. One is Uncle Cevval, and the other is. .’

‘The other is. .?’

‘The other is you.’

Hulki Dede smiled, and as he did so, he looked Ziya up and down, as if seeing him for the first time.

‘As you know,’ he said finally. ‘In little places like this, when people get bored, they’ll see shit on the ground and use it as an excuse for an argument. If they can’t find a solid excuse then they’ll say, why did you let your chicken come into my courtyard? Or: your donkey brays every time it passes my house, you must be making it do that on purpose. They gain one kind of power from quarrelling, and yet another from making peace. But they have no idea that this is why they do either. But when they’re as tired as worms, they go out looking for a new excuse to argue with their neighbours. And the moment the quarrel starts, they’re bursting with life again. Their spirits soar, and everything they do, or don’t do, takes on new meaning. They feel themselves transformed. Not just the ones who start the quarrel, but the ones they accuse, as well. You know all this. What I mean to say is that Cevval’s quarrel has gone on much longer than it should have done. Over the years, it’s gone from bad to worse. What I think is, he’s angry with the world, and he’s blaming his sister. She’s as stubborn as a goat and sadly he is, too. . And then you say I am the other strange thing in this village? Then perhaps this village thought it could convince you more easily if it threw in a few people who weren’t convincing at all. And isn’t that always the case? On the edge of every belief, there are always a number of doubts, and they have to be there, to give that belief its shape. Without a shape, what worth would it have?’

Ziya said nothing.

Hulki Dede pulled down on his shirt with his little freckled hands and began to cackle. He began to rock, too, and swing his feet. Ziya had no idea what to make of this. First he stared at Hulki Dede’s feet, and then at his own feet. Then suddenly Hulki Dede stopped. Taking a deep breath, he turned to look up at the darkening mountains.

‘Don’t you look at me,’ he said. ‘This is what I’m like. I come and I go. What I mean is, I can say mad things. . So Numan came up here with his brother today, did he? Now that sounds ominous, if you ask me. Numan is a fine boy, one of the finest and bravest in our village, but he can’t stop pining for Nefise, somehow. Or rather, he hasn’t settled accounts with the monster inside him. But settling accounts with this monster doesn’t mean killing it, of course. Don’t get me wrong. I would never want him to kill it. He who kills the monster inside him turns to dust. But when he was listening to that monster living deep inside him, Numan could have said, we’re just human, for God’s sake! We also long for loss, my friend! So let’s stay where we are. He could have said all that, but he didn’t. And so now the wretched boy confuses the monster’s breath for his own. Like a fool, he’s walking up and down singing songs for Nefise. Who knows? Maybe, without knowing, he got a taste for loss. Maybe that’s why he keeps spinning this out. . But we’ve been talking so much, you forgot about the tea, didn’t you, my son?’

Ziya ran inside and came back with the tea.

While they drank their tea, Hulki Dede said nothing. But from time to time he gave Ziya a sidelong glance. Then he said, ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll be on my way now.’ He rose from the bench, straightened himself out, and tugged a few times at his shirt. Propping his staff under his arm, he headed towards the gap in the hedge and into the vineyard’s whispering half-light. But when he got there, he didn’t go through it. It was almost as if he had emptied himself of all the things he had to say and become lighter. Because now, with an agility not to be expected in a man his age, he leapt right over the hedge. And as he did so, there was a moment when his shirt spread out like a fan. After sitting there stunned for a few moments, Ziya began to wonder why he’d not seen Hulki Dede pull himself up again on the other side of the hedge, and, fearful that he might have broken something or still be lying there, he ran over to check, but there was no one there. And neither could he hear footsteps on the darkening plain below. It was as if Hulki Dede had jumped higher than he’d needed, and vanished from the face of the earth.

He searched for a while longer that evening, and then, giving up, Ziya turned back. He cleared the table and took the tray inside. He’d had enough of people for the time being, so for a few days he went into the village only when he needed water, hurrying down to the fountain before the morning call to prayer and filling his plastic bottles in semi-darkness before hurrying away again.

One day Kenan came up and forced him to go with him to a wedding. It took place behind the Plane Tree Coffeehouse, this wedding, in the brick-walled courtyard of a house whose doors and windows were painted electric blue. By the time they arrived, almost everyone in the village was there already. On the front porch was a monstrous black four-legged contraption, flanked on each side by speakers that were even bigger and blacker. Some of the hymns blasting out of them were sung by a chorus, and others by a man with fire in his soul. Standing in front of all this was a young man in a black suit and pointy shoes. He worked for the wedding agency in town, and there were four others mingling with the crowd, all dressed the same. They were serving cakes and drinks to the guests, and looking as if they could not wait for the wedding to be over. As they picked up their plastic cups and flimsy paper-thin cake plates, the guests looked much the same. Nowhere in this gathering could Ziya see any sign of elation. As they listened to the songs blasting from those speakers — prepare yourself, my friend, the Angel Azrael is nigh, dear God, take me in , or the earth was crying for Hamza, the sky was crying for Hamza, and the swords were searching for Hamza — even the children stood around them, still as kittens that had spilt the milk. The grown-ups listened to these songs with a despondency even greater than their singers. They would nod sadly, as if to confirm the truth in the words, or cup their chins to stare into the distance, thinking deep and mournful thoughts, and all this made it seem as if it was not a wedding going on in this house, but a funeral.