Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in My Mind

Nightclubs like these each have their own peculiar scent, a mixture of panfried meat, rakı, mildew, perfume, and stale breath, and over many years without a single window even cracked open, these elements ferment like wine and seep right into the carpets and the curtains. You get used to this smell eventually, until you miss it when it’s not there, and if you catch a whiff of it again one night after a long time absent, your heart speeds up and it’s like you’ve fallen in love. That night we listened dutifully to Lady Blue, the velvety voice of Turkish classical music. We watched the comedy duo Ali and Veli do impressions of the latest TV commercials and various politicians, and the belly dancer Mesrure, who is “famous in Europe, too.” There were many old songs that night, a melancholy atmosphere at the Sunshine Club, and behind every lyric and every note, there was Selvihan.

I met Mevlut again somewhere in Beşiktaş two days later to continue his training. “Our first lesson today is highly theoretical,” I said. “See that restaurant over there? I’ve been there before; let’s go and have a look. Don’t worry, no rakı, we’re working after all. Nothing to upset your friends at the Righteous Path. ”

“I don’t read the Righteous Path, ” said Mevlut once we’d sat down in the half-empty restaurant. “I just cut out that piece on Brothers-in-Law and that one picture.”

“Now listen to me, Mevlut,” I said, getting annoyed at his innocence. “The key to this job is reading people…You’ve always got to be alert, so no one can pull the wool over your eyes. These people who start whimpering as soon as they see me, ‘Oh, it’s the inspector!’ It’s all an act, they’re testing me…You need to be able to spot that. You also need to know how to hold back and play the nice guy if that’s what’s called for. In other cases, if necessary, you need to get angry and be able cut some poor widow’s wires…You may have to behave as if you were one of the Turkish government’s proud civil servants, impossible to bribe. Though, of course, I’m not a civil servant, and you won’t be either. The money you collect isn’t a bribe, just what you and Seven Hills Electric have coming to you. I’m going to show you all the ins and outs. There are guys with millions in the bank earning interest and bundles of dollars under their mattresses, but the minute they see some poor inspector at the door, they don’t know where their next meal is coming from. Eventually, they start believing their own sob stories, and, believe me, they cry harder than you ever cried even for your wife. They end up convincing you, too; they wear you down. While you’re trying to read what’s in their eyes and searching for the truth on their children’s faces, they’re watching the way you walk and talk and looking into your soul trying to figure out whether to pay up and, if so, how much and, if not, what excuse will get rid of you. These two- and three-story buildings in the backstreets are now mostly occupied by petty clerks, street vendors, waiters, cashiers, and university students, and unlike the bigger buildings, they don’t have full-time doormen anymore. Usually, the owners and tenants of these places will have had serious disagreements about how to split the costs of diesel or coal and how high to turn the boiler, and because of that, their central heating tends to be turned off altogether. So they’re all trying to keep warm as best they can, and most of them will try to get an illegal connection to the grid so they can run an electric heater for free. You’ve got to size them up and not give anything away. If they see that boyish face and realize that you’re too compassionate to cut them off, they won’t give up a cent. Maybe they think with inflation so high, they’re better off holding out and keeping that money earning interest for a little longer. Be sure you don’t let them think you’re too proud to take a bit of change some old lady might offer you. On the other hand, you don’t want them thinking you’re so greedy you’ll swoop down on any pathetic sum they propose. You follow me? Now tell me, how does the heating work here in this restaurant?”

“It works fine,” said Mevlut.

“That’s not what I’m asking. How is the heating being provided? Is the restaurant using stoves or radiators?”

“Radiators!”

“Let’s check and see, shall we?” I said.

Mevlut touched the radiator grille right next to him and realized that it wasn’t very warm. “So that means there must be a stove somewhere,” he said.

“Good. Now, where’s the stove? Can you see it anywhere? You can’t. That’s because they’ve got electric stoves going. They keep them hidden because they’ve got them hooked up to the mains directly, bypassing the meter. They turn the radiator on a little, too, but only so no one will notice what’s going on. I had a look on the way in and saw that their meters are ticking very slowly. That means there must be other rooms, ovens, and fridges in this building, all using stolen electricity.”

“What are we going to do?” asked Mevlut like a wide-eyed child.

I found the restaurant’s meter number in the purple logbook and showed it to Mevlut. “Read what it says in the comments.”

“ ‘Meter next to the door…,’ ” read Mevlut. “ ‘Cable for ice-cream machine is—’ ”

“Okay, so this place must sell ice cream in the summer. More than half the ice-cream machines in Istanbul during the summer aren’t connected to any meter. It seems the honest clerk who was here last time suspected something, but the technicians never found the illegal connection. Or maybe they did, but the giant at the cash desk gave them each a ten-thousand-lira bill to keep them sweet. Some places are so clever about where they tap the line that they think they’ll never get caught, so when you come in, they don’t even give you a little gift to say hello. Hey, waiter, over here, the radiator’s not working, and we’re a little cold.”

“I’ll talk to my manager,” said the waiter.

“He may or may not be in on it,” I told Mevlut. “Put yourself in the manager’s shoes. If his waiter knows they’re stealing electricity, he might report it. That makes it very hard to fire him, or even tell him off for slacking or hogging all the tips. That’s why the best thing to do is to call in an electrician who specializes in unmetered circuits and hand the whole place over to him one night when no one’s around. These guys can disguise an illegal line so beautifully that sometimes you just have to step back and admire the genius. In the end, our job is like a game of chess with these guys. They’re clever at hiding it; you have to be more clever and find it.”

“I’ve had the heaters switched on, sorry for that,” said the manager, walking into the room behind his fat belly.

“He didn’t even bother to say ‘radiator,’ ” Mevlut whispered. “What do we do now? Are we going to cut their power?”

“No, my friend. Lesson number two: you figure out what the trick is and make a mental note of it. Then you wait for the right moment to come back and take their money. We’re in no rush today.”

“You’re as sly as a fox, aren’t you, Ferhat?”

“But I still need a lamb like you, I need your gentleness and your honesty,” I said to encourage Mevlut. “Your sincerity and your innocence are great assets to this company, to the world in fact.”

“All right, but I don’t think I can deal with all these big managers and high-level crooks,” said Mevlut. “I better stick to the gecekondu homes, the poorer neighborhoods.”

—

Mevlut spent that winter and the spring of 1996 combing through logbooks and neighborhoods and learning at Ferhat’s side, but also venturing out on his own two or three times a week to poor quarters and backstreets in the city center, armed with only old meter readings to hunt for illegal hookups all by himself. The city center was falling apart: the broken and abandoned old buildings in which he’d lived as a waiter working in Beyoğlu nearly twenty years ago were now nests of electric thievery. Ferhat told Mevlut to stay away from that kind of place — both for his own safety and because he knew his friend would never be able to extract any money there. So Mevlut ended up in Kurtuluş, Feriköy, Beşiktaş, Şişli, Mecidiyeköy, and sometimes over on the other side of the Golden Horn, in Çarşamba, Karagümrük, and Edirnekapı—the Holy Guide’s streets and neighborhoods — collecting payments from families and housewives like one of those polite government clerks who once used to come calling.