Hasan Toptas: Reckless

Ziya locked the door. Without pausing to pocket the key, he hurried towards the lift. Something strange had happened to the corridor. Something with the lights. The yellow globes that should have lit his way illuminated only themselves, leaving the rest of the corridor in darkness.

And the silence, it could turn a man to stone. But it did not last. Someone shattered it by slamming one of those brown steel doors on the ground floor. All Ziya could see was a shadow flying from one end of the corridor to the other, as fast as a peal of laughter, until this, too, was lost. And now, in the ill-lit stairwell, a child was howling. Then a woman, screaming blacker than the night. Then the maddening whine of a vacuum cleaner, moving this way and that, and the juddering of a distant drill. Behind the walls were other walls, and behind these were murmurings that now grew louder. With them came the sounds of the city, deeper and denser than the memories they conjured up, until the building was swaying not just to its own beat but absorbing, with every twist and turn, the pandemonium of the streets. He had never heard a noise like this, ever.

By now Ziya had reached the lift. As the door opened, he stopped for some reason and, with a sudden turn of the head, took stock of the corridor and the stairwell. Staring straight into the sounds tumbling towards him from both these places, he caught glimpses of the plastic flowers hanging from each door. Seeing all this had the unexpected effect of darkening his gaze somewhat. It also turned his stomach. It was as if he could see right through to the heart of things, to the heavy swell of dirt and darkness that now threatened to engulf him. Best to move on. He jumped into the lift and went straight up to the nineteenth floor, and in no time he was ringing the bell at number 91. Here was another brown steel door, with an enormous spyhole and two locks, and the same plastic flowers hanging over it. From the delicate ribbon attached to one of their stems was an evil eye the size of a camel’s tongue. As he stood waiting for the door to open, he stared unblinking into that evil eye. He might have stayed there, transfixed, had the door not cracked open, to reveal Binnaz Hanım’s honey-eyed maid.

‘Good day,’ she said haughtily. ‘May I ask what you’re here for?’

‘I was hoping to return the key,’ Ziya replied.

And he offered the girl the key.

‘Stop!’ cried the girl. She jumped back as if something had been thrown at her. ‘Stop! You can’t return that key to me. That’s just not done. You must return it to Binnaz Hanım personally.’

‘Fine,’ said Ziya. ‘Let me do that now.’

He followed her down a corridor whose walls were covered in green tapestries and into a narrow chamber so airless he nearly choked. Beyond this was the living room.

It was vast, and drenched with light. But what assaulted his eyes and his mind were the teetering mountains of furniture. Piles and piles of upholstered chairs, wherever you looked. Acquired from an antiques dealer, no doubt. The patterns varied, but they all had fat legs. Beside them stood ungainly coffee tables. They were adorned with embroidered tablecloths, on which stood forests of long-necked vases and glass bowls filled with baubles. The recesses of the walls were lined with shelves. In the left-hand corner, cardboard boxes. Amidst all this, and flanked by fluttering gilded curtains, was a gigantic wardrobe covered in lace. Running the full length of another wall was a second wardrobe, lurching over this sea of furniture like an overladen ship. The more Ziya looked at it, the more it seemed to recoil, and soon he could look at nothing else, while inside his ribcage he felt a stirring — something akin to a small, warm bird.

The maid pointed at a chair near the window. ‘Wait here, please. I’ll go and get Binnaz Hanım.’

Ziya walked over to the chair but instead of sitting down, he turned to the window. Hands on hips, he gazed sourly at the city below.

It was cloaked in a mist that didn’t look like mist. Red smoke rose in veins from shadows clouded by the soiled music of despair. Glittering skyscrapers, forgotten courtyards and ramshackle marketplaces; shopping malls, ruins and factories; the enclaves of the rich and the slum dwellers’ muddy hills rolling off into the distance — there was more than despair here. Despair was merely the outer shell, beneath which lurked the deepest disarray: a bleak and fearsome stagnation, an absence. A rustling, muttering fog of noxious fumes. As they climbed from wall to window, window to wall, these fumes fell silent. As they flowed down avenues and side streets — snaking through crowded bus stops where the crowds were even thicker, filling up the city’s squares and intersections and great parks — they looked, from time to time, like ribbons of unfurling smoke. Amongst them flew pigeons, mouldy and tired, their wings dyed black by exhaust fumes. They would rise out of nowhere in a single mass, leaving a smudge of grey on the pale firmament as they dived back down into the crowds, skirting car horns here and there and spreading their wings only to tire of the sky’s infinities and return to the smoke. You might almost say they landed on it. Perched on them. Nudging their wings forward, they narrowed their unblinking eyes to stare blankly up at Ziya’s window. And just then it seemed to him as if their countless, aimless flights had left these birds with a gaze that carried the city’s stink. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if he might be imagining things. A wave of disquiet passed through him as he stared into the shadows he might have created for them. He leaned closer to the window, to put his illusions to the test. As fast as it had read his thoughts, a pigeon separated from the flock, tracing out a vast and blurry parabola to arrive level with the nineteenth floor. With wings beating feverishly against the glass, it perched on the sill. It cooed a few times, as if to assure Ziya it was real. Then it lifted its beak in the air, swelling up with such surprising speed that — even though he had seen it fly, heard its wings and was close enough to touch its feathers — Ziya again wondered if this pigeon could be real. Abandoning the window, he turned around to find himself face to face with Binnaz Hanım.

She, too, could stare without blinking. Her face was flushed, very flushed. She was standing amongst the armchairs, and although he was in no doubt that she was there, in the flesh, she also gave the impression of being somewhere else. She had been watching him for a very long time, he decided. Watching him from some point in the distant past. Echoing forwards as well as backwards. Like a ghost. A huge old ghost. With huge red cheeks, no less. How to address such a creature? This Ziya could not begin to imagine. So he stood before her, shifting from foot to foot like a small child who was trying not to wet himself.

He drew himself up to his full height. ‘I’ve come to return the key,’ he said crisply.

‘I know,’ his landlady purred.

Already she was waddling over to the corner. Having lowered her great bulk into an armchair, she directed Ziya to another with an imperious wave.

After dithering for a few moments, he obeyed her. It vexed him that he still hadn’t managed to hand over the key; he didn’t know what to do, so he just sat there, rubbing the arms of his chair.

‘There’s no rush,’ said Binnaz Hanım. She glared at him, but from the corner of her eye. ‘The piece of metal you call a key,’ she said finally, ‘is neither as small nor as simple as it first appears. You aren’t just giving me a key, after all. You’re handing over an entire apartment.’