I put my back into it again, but we still didn’t get very far. It was more like moving a boulder than something with wheels! I stopped for a second, and I was going to say, Let me rest again, when he released the brake. I pushed so the car wouldn’t roll backward, but then I stopped.
“What’s wrong?” he said. “Why aren’t you pushing?”
“Why aren’t
you
pushing?” I said.
“I don’t have any strength left!”
“Where are you going at this hour?”
He didn’t answer. He just looked at his watch and cursed. He started pushing the car with me, but we didn’t get anywhere, because while we were pushing the car uphill, it seemed the car was pushing us downhill, and we were just stuck in place. We both tried harder and managed to go a few feet, but by then I’d had it. When the rain started again, I got in the car. Metin came and sat next to me.
“What are you doing?” he said. “We’ve got to keep going.”
“You can go there tomorrow!” I said. “Let’s talk a little now.”
“What are we going to talk about?”
“What a peculiar night,” I said after a while. “Are you afraid of lightning?”
“No, I’m not afraid,” he said. “Come on, let’s try again.”
“I’m not afraid either!” I said. “But when you think about it, it’s pretty terrifying stuff, you know what I mean?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Want a cigarette?” I said. I took out the pack and offered it to him.
“I don’t smoke!” he said. “Come on, let’s push a little.”
We got out, pushed it as far as we could, and when we were good
and soaked, we got back inside. I asked him again where he had to get to, but he answered with another question: why did those guys call me Fox?
“Oh, it’s stupid!” I said. “They’re maniacs, if you want to know the truth.”
“You hang around with them,” he said. “You joined in with them to rob me.”
I thought about telling him everything then—should I tell him the whole story?—but it was as if I didn’t know the story, not because it wasn’t all in my head, but because I didn’t know where to start. Because once I’d found the beginning, I’d feel obliged to go and punish the ones who were to blame in the first place, and since I had no desire to get blood on my hands, it seemed as if I really didn’t want to remember who started this, even though I knew that’s what I had to do, but I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow morning, Nilgün. But why wait till then? If Metin and I could just push this Anadol to the top of the hill, we could coast down the other side together as far as your house, and Metin would wake you up and then, while you listened to me in your white nightgown in the darkness, I could tell you without delay about the great danger you were in: They think you’re a Communist, my beloved, come on, let’s run away, let’s go, they’re everywhere, and they’re so powerful, but there’s got to be somewhere in the world we can live in peace, I’m sure there is …
“Come on, push!”
We pushed and pushed in the rain. After a while he gave up, but I kept at it until I couldn’t do it anymore, and when I stopped, too, Metin was staring accusingly. I went and sat in a spot where I thought I would not get wet.
“You say they’re maniacs,” he said, “but you hang around with them. It wasn’t just those two that took that money from me, it was all three of you.”
“I don’t answer to anybody!” I said. “And I didn’t take a cent of that twelve thousand liras, Metin! I swear.”
When he gave me that severe look that said he didn’t believe me, I wanted to grab him by the neck and strangle him. The key was there in the ignition. If I knew how to drive! There were so many roads in the world, so many countries, cities, seas, out there in the distance.
“Go on, push!”
I threw my back into it again, out in the pouring rain, but Metin wasn’t pushing, just standing there with his hands on his hips, observing like a gentleman. When I ran out of steam, he couldn’t even bother to pull the hand brake.
I practically shouted to make myself heard in the rain: “I’m tired!”
“No!” he said. “You can still push some more.”
“I’m letting go!” I shouted. “It’s going to slide back!”
“Fine, who can I ask about that money?”
“Are you saying if I don’t push you’re going to go to the police?”
When he didn’t answer, I pushed with all I had, until I thought my back would break. Finally he put on the hand brake. I was completely soaked. Just as I lit up a cigarette the whole earth and sky blazed with an awesome brightness, and I was terrified to see lightning fall right there at the tip of my nose.
“That scared you, huh?” said Metin.
“It landed right there!” I said.
“It landed way over there, maybe all the way out at sea, what are you afraid of.”
“I don’t want to push anymore.”
“Why?” he said. “Because you got scared? It won’t come that close again. Don’t they teach you in school?”
“I’m going home,” I said.
“Fine, what about my twelve thousand liras.”
“I said I didn’t take it!”
“You can tell it to the police tomorrow.”
Tucking my head between my shoulders to protect my neck from the rain, I began to push again, not even looking up, until I realized that we were nearly at the top, and my heart was glad. Metin got out
of the car now, but unlike before he wasn’t even pretending to push with me, only once in a while contributing a “Come on, that’s it” word of encouragement.
Finally I stopped, thinking, I’m not his father’s servant.
And he said: “No, you can’t stop now! What is it, a matter of money? Do you want me to pay you? I’ll give you whatever you want. Just please keep pushing, Hasan.”
I got back at it only because we were very near the top. But when I couldn’t stand the pain in my back, and I paused to give my poor heart a little blood and my lungs a little breath, he started to whine again. “I’ll give you a thousand liras!” he said. So I pushed with all the strength I had left. And the next time I had to stop, he said, “Okay, two thousand liras!” I was thinking, I don’t know how you’re going to pay that after our guys cleaned you out, but I didn’t say it. When we finally got to the top he was so angry and impatient that he was no longer paying any attention to me. I thought that in a minute he might start kicking the car again, but he did something strange and frightening: he turned his face to the rain, cursing the dark sky, as if aiming his anger at the Almighty. I was afraid even to think it, so I pushed the car to the other edge as the sky rumbled just above the hilltop and everything flashed bright blue again, with the incredible blue rain streaming off my hair and forehead right into my mouth. I closed my eyes not to see the lightning flashes coming more and more frequently, and with my head pulled in between my shoulders, I turned my face toward the earth and started pushing like a blind slave, a pathetic creature who had forgotten his every thought, so no one could accuse me or punish me, with my head bowed down, see, and I don’t even know about guilt and sin. I felt a strange happiness as the car picked up speed. Metin got back in behind the wheel, still cursing and howling out the open window, like that old wagon driver who gets so angry at his horse, he winds up cursing Him as well. As though it wasn’t He who made the sky rumble! Who are you anyway? I won’t take part in anybody’s blasphemies. I stopped; I was not pushing anymore.
But the car still glided on for a while all by itself. As it slowly pulled away, it was like watching some terrifying ship silently slip its moorings. The rain had let up, too. And as I looked at the car going off by itself it occurred to me that God was separating the two of us in order to spare me the punishment He would deliver, but a little farther on the car stopped. The sky lit up in a flash, and I saw Metin get out.
“Where are you?” he bellowed. “Come here, you have to push it!”
I didn’t budge.
“Thief!” he shouted into the darkness. “Shameless thief. Run away, go ahead, run!”
I stood where I was for a minute, shivering from the cold. Then I ran over to his side.
“Aren’t you afraid of God?” I shouted.
“If you are, why do you steal?” he shouted.
“I am!” I said. “But you, you look up at Him and curse. You’ll be punished one day.”
“Ignorant fool!” he said. “You were afraid of the lightning just now, weren’t you? A little lightning, and you’re afraid of every tree’s shadow, the cemetery, the rain and the storm, aren’t you? At your age! What grade are you in? Ignoramus! Let me tell you: there is no God! Neither here nor in the West. Got it? Now, come on, push this thing. I tell you I’ll give you two thousand liras.”
“Where are you going to go?” I said. “To your house?”
“I’ll take you, too,” he said, “or wherever you want to go, if this car would just slide down the hill!”
I pushed, Nilgün. He got into the car, still cursing, but not in anger, now more like the wagon driver, out of habit.
As the car started moving a little faster, I thought how the incline of the hill would soon become steep, and then the car would be going nicely on its own, which made me think: Poor Metin, he is just as sick and tired of everything as I am! I’ll get in the car, and he’ll turn on the heat, and we’ll warm up. Then we’ll pick you up and go off somewhere far away, maybe to another country … When the car started
to go down the hill, the motor didn’t make a sound, and all you could hear was the strange whisper of the tires on the wet asphalt. At that point I ran and caught up to him to jump into the car, but the door was locked.
“Open up!” I said. “Open it, Metin, the door is locked! Open it and take me, too! Will you stop!” But he seemed not to hear me. I ran next to him as far as I could, pounding on the window, gasping as if I were drowning, but before you knew it, that hunk of plastic had passed me by and was gone. I continued running after it still, shouting, but it didn’t stop, and Metin wouldn’t stop it. I kept on after the car as the headlights softly illuminated the gardens and orchards, and it swayed and swerved around the turns, all the way down until it was lost to sight. Then I stopped and stared.
My teeth were chattering at the cold. I realized: Your record, Nilgün, I left it there, all the way on the other side of the hill. I turned around and ran back the way I came, hoping it would warm me up, but it was no use, because my shirt was sticking to my body. My feet were trudging through little streams of water. When I got to where I thought I had left the record and I couldn’t find it, I started to run around frantically. I shivered when the sky rumbled and lit up, not because I was afraid but because I was cold. When I was out of breath I could feel the pain in my back again. All that running, bending down, and standing up, shivering, and searching, but there was no record.
I forget now how many times I ran up and down that hill until I found the record a little after the sun came up. Just as I felt myself about to faint from exhaustion and the cold, I realized that one of the shadows that I’d been sure wasn’t what I was looking for was in fact the stupid record and notebook, and it seemed as if somebody was playing a dirty trick on me, hiding things for the pleasure of watching me crawl around like a slave. I felt like digging the heel of my shoe into that idiotic American cover on the “Best of Elvis” and saying, To hell with all of them! But it had turned to mush from the rain anyway. So I didn’t crush it, I’ll bring it to you!
Halil’s garbage truck was the first vehicle to climb the hill; the beautiful rosy light of the rising sun was behind it. Leaving the main road, I went into the orchard and came out onto the cemetery road, which I followed to the end of the wall until I got onto the goat path I used to take with my mother when I was little. There was a favorite hiding place of mine here, among the almond and fig trees.
I gathered sticks and branches, though it was hard to find any dry ones. So I pulled a few pages out of Faruk’s stupid notebook, and I was able to start a fire. No one would see the hazy blue smoke that rose up. I took off my shirt and pants, just about walked into the fire in my sneakers and stood there. It felt good to warm up. I looked at my body with pleasure, naked in the red flames: I’m not afraid of anything! My dick hanging above the flames; I looked at how it hung there. It was like looking at some other man’s body: tanned by the sun, strong like steel, taut like an archer’s bow! I thought:
I’m a man, I can do anything, you’ve been warned! It seemed that even if the hair on my legs caught fire, nothing could happen to me. In a little while I stepped away from the fire to feed the flames, and as I was looking around for branches and brush, a cool wind blew and made my butt shiver, and I thought: I’m not a woman that I should be afraid. After the flames roared back to life and I stepped back into the fire, I thought of all the things I was capable of, and more, of death, fear, fire, foreign countries, weapons, wretched souls, slaves, the flag, the nation, the devil, hell.
Then I held the mushy cardboard record sleeve to the flames and dried it out. I dried my clothes, too, and put them on, before finding a dry corner in which to stretch out.
I fell asleep right away. When I woke up I knew I had been dreaming but I couldn’t remember what the dream was about. Something hot, I guess. The sun was high in the sky. I jumped up and started running. It might be too late!
As I raced down the hill past our house with your record in my hand, the Sunday beach crowd whizzed past me in their disgusting cars. Nobody seemed to be at the house, neither my mother nor my
father. Anyway, they had pulled the curtains. Tahsin’s family was busy gathering the cherries before they could get all wormy after the rain. When I got down into the neighborhood I broke the five hundred liras; all the stores were open around here on Sundays. I asked for tea and toast, and while I ate I took the combs out of my pocket to look at them: one green and one red. God sees everything.
I would tell her the whole story, not holding back anything. You’ll realize what kind of man I am, Nilgün. You’ll say, You are not like the others, I’m not afraid. Take a look at me, will you, I can do what I like, I have the rest of the five hundred liras in my pocket, I’m my own master, a gentleman. You there, going to the beach, with your inflatable balls, your bags, and weird sandals on your feet, you with your husbands and children beside you! You look, but you don’t see, you think, but you don’t know! They don’t realize who I am, they don’t know who I’m going to be, because they’re worse than blind, this disgusting crowd, going to the beach, seeking pleasure! If I’m the one who has to straighten all of them out, so be it. Look at me: I have a factory! A whip in my hand! I’m a gentleman.