The New Life (13 page)

It was much later when Janan said, “No! Please don't touch me! I have never been with a man.”

As sometimes happens in real life or when remembering the past, I felt for a moment as if the situation and the town I was seeing out the window were not actual but in my imagination. Perhaps the small town of Güdül I saw before me was not a real town, perhaps I was only looking at the picture of a town on a stamp, like one issued by the postal service administration in their homeland series. Just as with the towns on those stamps, the town square made Güdül appear to be more like a souvenir than a place with streets to walk in, where a pack of cigarettes could be bought or dusty windows inspected.

Fantasytown, I reflected; Souvenir City. I knew that my eyes were searching for that indelible objective correlative for a bitter memory that can never be forgotten, which arises from someplace very deep and arrives of its own volition. I scanned the dark space under the trees next to the square, the tractor fenders gleaming in light that came from a mysterious source, the lettering in the names of the pharmacy and the bank partially obscured from sight, the back of an old man in the street, and some windows in particular. Then, like some cinematography enthusiast who has located the vantage point of the camera and the photographer who filmed the town square, I began to see my own image looking out of the second-story window in the Hotel Trump. I was standing there and looking out of a window in this remote and secluded hotel, and you were stretched out on the bed next to the window, when I zoomed in on the images in my head, starting with the countryside, the route we traveled, the town, the town square, the hotel, the window, the two of us—just like the camera in the opening scenes of foreign films we saw on the buses, zooming in on the city first, then the neighborhood, then a yard, a house, a window. It seemed as if all the towns, villages, films, filling stations, and passengers that I imagined and remembered inadequately had been fused with the pain and longing I felt somewhere deep inside me, but I couldn't determine whether the sorrow of the towns, broken-down objects, and passengers had infected me, or if I was the one who spread the sorrow in my heart all over the country and the map.

The purple wallpaper around the window reminded me of a map. The trade name on the electric heater in the corner was
VESUVIUS
, the regional dealer for which I had met earlier in the evening. The faucet in the sink on the wall across from me was dripping. The mirror on the door to the closet was ajar, reflecting the bedside table between the two beds and the little lamp that stood on top of it. The light from the lamp softly washed over the sleeping form of Janan, who had lain down on the bedspread with purple leaves without taking off her dusty clothes.

Her light brown hair had turned somewhat auburn. How was it that I hadn't noticed the reddish highlights?

Then I thought there were a great many things I still had to notice. My mind was brightly lit like the restaurants at rest stops where we got off to have some soup, but it also was, at the same time, in total disarray. Weary thoughts crossed the confusion in my mind, changing gears, huffing and puffing like the sleepy phantom trucks that kept going by one of those crossroads restaurants, and I could hear immediately behind me the girl of my dreams breathe as she slept dreaming of someone else.

Lay yourself down beside her and wrap her in your arms! After all this time together, bodies can't help longing for one another. Who was this Doctor Fine anyway? When I could no longer bear it and turned around to behold her beautiful legs, I remembered, brothers (brothers, brothers!), that they were conspiring out there in the still of the night, and lying in wait for me. A moth that had seeped in from the stillness was circling the light bulb, painfully shedding itself in flakes. Kiss her long and hard until both our bodies are consumed with fire. Did I hear the sound of music? Or was my mind playing the piece called “The Call of the Night” that had been requested by the listeners? As any young man my age whose sexual passion remains ungratified knows all too well, the call of the night is actually nothing more than finding oneself in some dark dismal alley and howling bitterly in the night in the company of a couple of hopeless characters in the same predicament, bringing down invectives on other people and making bombs that will blow them up, and—have pity on us, O Angel—cursing those who deal in the international conspiracy that has condemned us to this miserable existence. I believe gossip of this sort is called “history.”

I watched Janan sleep for half an hour, perhaps forty-five minutes, all right, all right, an hour at most. Then I opened the door and stepped out, locked the door, and pocketed the key. My Janan remained inside. And I, I had been turned down and exiled.

Walk up and down the street, then go back and embrace her. Smoke a cigarette, go back and embrace her. Find someplace open, get soused, take courage, go back and embrace her.

The conspirators in the night pounced on me as I descended the stairs. “So you're Ali Kara,” one of them said. “My congratulations, you made it all the way here, and you are so young.” “Join us,” said the second thug who was about the same age, same height, and wore roughly the same narrow tie and the same black jacket, “and we'll let you know what's going to happen when the ruckus starts tomorrow.”

They held their cigarettes as if the red tips were gunpoints aimed at my forehead, and they smiled provocatively. “Not to scare you or anything,” added the first, “but we just wanted to warn you.” I could see that they were conducting some sort of gossip session in the middle of the night, doing the footwork to catch converts.

We went out into the street where the stork was no longer keeping watch, and we passed by the shop window with the liqueur bottles and the stuffed rats. We went into a back alley where we had only taken a few steps when a door was opened and we were confronted with a dense tavern smell reeking of raki. We sat down at a table covered with a filthy oilcloth and in quick succession tossed down a couple of glasses of raki—in lieu of medication, please!—and soon I learned quite a few things about my new acquaintances as well as the subject of life and happiness.

The one who first accosted me, let's call him Mr. Sıtkı, was a beer salesman from Seydişehir who told me his story as to why there was no contradiction between his occupation and his creed because it was all too obvious, if you thought about it, that beer was not really an alcoholic beverage like raki. He called for a bottle of Ephesus beer and pouring it into a glass demonstrated that the bubbles were nothing but carbonation. My second buddy paid scant attention to such dilemmas, sensibilities, and distinctions, perhaps because he was a sewing machine dealer, plunging instead into the heart of things like those drunk and sleepless truck drivers who in the middle of the night blindly meet up with purblind power poles.

Here was peace; peace existed here, in this peaceful town, here in this tiny tavern. We were here and now, three faithful cronies in the heart of life, sharing a table. When we thought over everything that happened to us and all that would happen tomorrow, we were well aware how precious was this unique moment which existed in between our victorious past and our gruesome and miserable future. We swore we would always tell each other the truth. We hugged and kissed. We laughed with tears in our eyes. We exalted the magnificence of the world and life. We raised our glasses in honor of a party of crazy dealers and a coterie of mindful subversives who were in the tavern. This was life in its essence; it was neither one thing nor the other, neither in heaven nor in hell. It was right here, in the present, in the moment, life in all its glory. What madman had the nerve to contradict us? Where was the idiot who would put us down? Who had the right to call us pitiful and wretched trash? We had no desire to live in Istanbul, nor in Paris or New York. Let them have their discos and dollars, their skyscrapers and supersonic transports. Let them have their radio and their color TV, hey, we have ours, don't we? But we have something they don't have: heart. We have heart. Look, look how the light of life seeps into my very heart!

I remember gathering my wits for a moment, O Angel, and wondering why, if all you have to do is drink down the panacea against unhappiness, then why isn't everybody drinking? Out of the tavern and into the summer night with his bosom friends, the person walking under the pseudonym of Ali Kara keeps asking: Why all this pain, all this sorrow and misery? Why, oh why?

In the second floor of the Hotel Trump a bedside lamp casts reddish highlights on Janan's hair.

Then I remember being pulled into a milieu of the Republic, Atatürk, and legal stamps. It was in the government building, where we went all the way to the inner sanctum, the office that belonged to the district governor, who kissed me on the forehead. He was one of us. He told us an edict had been dispatched from Ankara, no nose was to be bloodied tomorrow. He had already singled me out, he trusted me, and if I felt like it, I might as well go ahead and read the missive which was still damp out of the brand-new duplicating machine.

“Esteemed denizens of Güdül, notables, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, and devout young members of the Imam-Preacher School. Some people are apparently oblivious to the fact that they are in our town as our guests. What is it that they want? Are they here to insult everything that is held sacred in our town? Our devotion to our religion, our prophet, our sheiks, and the statue of Atatürk has for centuries been demonstrated amply in our mosques and on our holy holidays. Not only do we refuse to drink wine, we will not succumb to drinking Coca-Cola. We worship Allah, not the Cross, or America, or Satan. We cannot understand why our peaceful town has been chosen as the convention site for these certified madmen, copycat versions of Marie and Ali, and the Jewish agent Max Rulo, whose only aim is belittling our Field Marshall Fevzi Çakmak. Who is the angel? And who has the temerity to put the angel up for ridicule on TV? Are we to watch idly while insolence is perpetrated against our conscientious firefighters and our Hadji Stork who has watched over our town for the last twenty years? Was it for this that Atatürk chased out the Greek army? If we do not put these impudent so-called guests in their place, if we don't teach the lesson they deserve to the derelicts who are responsible for inviting these people to our town, how are we to face ourselves tomorrow? There will be a rally at ten in the Firehouse Square. We prefer death to life without honor.”

I read the announcement once more. If it were to be read backwards, or if an anagram were formed by the capital letters, would one get an entirely different version? Apparently not. The district governor said that the fire trucks had been loading up water from the stream since morning. There was a possibility, however small, that things could get out of control tomorrow, fires could get out of hand, and in the heat the mob might not be so easily deterred by the pressure hoses. The mayor had assured our supporters that the mayor's office would provide full cooperation, and the gendarme units dispatched from the provincial capital were to put an immediate lid on any and all disturbance that might ensue. “When things calm down and provocateurs and enemies of the Republic and the nation are unmasked,” said the district governor, “let's see who is left around to deface soap ads and billboards featuring women. Let's see who swaggers out of the tailor shop dead drunk, cursing the governor up and down, not to mention the stork.”

It was decided that the tailor shop had to be seen by me, the staunch young man. After the governor had me read the opposition's statement penned by two school teachers who were semisecret members of the Caucus for the Promotion of Modern Civilization, he assigned a janitor to me, telling him to take the young man to the tailor shop.

“The governor has been pushing us to work overtime,” said the janitor, who was known as Uncle Hasan, once we were out in the street. Two members of the secret police were busy ripping out the cloth banner for the Koran school, working as quietly as a pair of thieves in the dark blue night. “We're all hard at work on behalf of the nation and the state.”

In the tailor shop, there was a television set on a stand with a video player under it, sharing the space with sewing machines, bolts of cloth, and mirrors. Two fellows slightly older than me were working on the set, wielding screwdrivers, trip wires, and such. A man sat in a purple chair in the corner watching them, as well as his own image in the full-length mirror across from him; he looked me up and down first and then turned his questioning eyes to the janitor.

“The Honorable District Governor sends him,” said Uncle Hasan. “He entrusts this young man to your care.”

The man who was sitting in the purple chair was the same one who had parked his car in front of the hotel before stepping on the butt of Janan's cigarette. He smiled at me affectionately and asked me to sit down. Half an hour later he reached to turn on the VCR.

The image of a television screen appeared on the screen, within which was the image of yet another screen. Then I saw a blue light, something that was associated with death, but at this juncture death must have been quite a distance away. The blue light wandered aimlessly across the vast steppe where we had been riding on the buses. Then it was morning, dawn breaking on a scene that was like those on calendars. The images might have referred to the dawn of creation. How wonderful it was to get drunk in an unfamiliar town and, while my sweetheart was fast asleep in a hotel room, to sit with my mysterious buddies in some tailor shop, and without having to so much as wonder about the meaning of life, watch it being suddenly revealed through images.

Why is it that one thinks through words, but suffers through images? “I want! I want!” I said to myself without quite knowing what it was that I wanted. Then a white light appeared on the screen, the appearance of which the two young fellows who were working on the set perhaps realized by seeing the radiance that surged on my face; and facing the screen themselves, they turned up the volume. Presently the light was transformed into the angel.