The New Life (17 page)

“When you read the reports yourself, you will see what I mean,” he said. “Everything and everybody that is involved with them must be tracked down. I have undertaken the work that should rightfully be done by the government. I am up to it. I now have many sympathizers, many heartsick individuals who have put their total trust in me.”

The vista before us which we could see like a postcard, and which was all Doctor Fine's property, was now covered over by dove-gray clouds. Starting at the hill where the graveyard was located, the clear and brilliant view was disappearing inside some sort of pale, saffron-colored oscillation. “It's raining there,” said Doctor Fine, “but it won't come here.” He had spoken it like a god who was standing on a hill and regarding the creation that was animated by his own volition, but at the same time his voice possessed a note of irony, or even self-deprecatory humor, which indicated he was well aware of how he had spoken. I decided his son didn't possess a single iota of this kind of subtle humor. I was beginning to like Doctor Fine.

Thin, fragile lightning bolts were flashing back and forth in the clouds when Doctor Fine repeated once more that what had turned his son against him had been a book. His son had read a book one day and thought his whole world had changed. “Ali, my boy,” he said to me, “you are also the son of a dealer, and you are also in your early twenties. Tell me, is this possible in this day and age? Can a book change someone's whole life?” I kept quiet, regarding Doctor Fine out of the corner of my eye. “By what power can such a strong spell be cast in this day and age?” He was not merely trying to strengthen his own conviction, but for the first time he truly wanted an answer from me. I kept quiet out of fear. For a moment I thought he was coming at me instead of walking toward the ruins of the fort. But he suddenly stopped and picked something off the ground.

“Come see what I found,” he said. He showed me what was in the palm of his hand. “A four-leaf clover,” he said, smiling.

In order to counteract the book and literature in general, Doctor Fine had soldered his relations with the dapper fellow from Konya, the retired general in Sivas, the gentleman called Halis in Trabzon, and his other heartsick friends who hailed from Damascus, Edirne, and the Balkans. In response to the Great Conspiracy, they began to trade with each other exclusively and to confide in others whose hearts had also been broken, and to organize—carefully, humanely, modestly—against the tools of the Great Conspiracy. Doctor Fine had requested that all his friends preserve the products that were real to them, products which were like the extensions of their hands and arms and which like poetry made their souls complete, “in other words, whatever object it was that rendered them whole”—like their hourglass-shaped tea glasses, their oil censers, their pencil boxes, their quilts—as a measure to prevent being rendered helpless like hopeless boobs who had lost their collective memory, which was “our greatest treasure,” so that despite having suffered through all the misery and oblivion foisted on us, we might establish victoriously anew “the sovereignty of our own unadulterated annals of time which were in danger of being annihilated.” And everyone had squirreled away to the best of his ability old adding machines, stoves, dye-free soap, mosquito netting, grandfather clocks, etc., in their stores, and if keeping these products in the stores was prohibited by the state terrorism called the laws of the land, then in their houses, their basements, even in pits dug in their gardens.

Since Doctor Fine was pacing up and down, at times he put some distance between us, disappearing behind some cypresses among the ruins of the fort, which required that I wait for him. But when I saw him walk toward a hill that was concealed behind some tall brush and the cypresses, I ran to catch up. First we went down a slight grade that was covered with bracken and thistles, then we started up the hill, which was quite steep. Doctor Fine led the way, stopping to wait for me at times so I would not miss hearing his narrative.

Considering that the pawns and tools of the Great Conspiracy assail us, either knowingly or unknowingly, through books and literature, he said to his friends, we ought to take precautions against printed matter. “What literature?” he asked me, leaping from one rock to another like some nimble Boy Scout. “What book?” He had reflected on it. He fell silent for a while, as if to demonstrate how meticulously and in what great detail he had reflected upon it, and how long the process had taken him. He explained it as he helped me out of a patch of brambles where I was caught by the cuffs of my trousers. “The culprit is not only that particular book, the book that snared my son, but all the books that have been printed by printing presses; they are all enemies of the annals of our time, our former existence.”

He was not against literature that was scripted by hand, which was an integral part of the hand holding the pen—the kind of literature that moved the hand, and in expressing the sorrows, the curiosity and affections of the soul, pleased and enlightened the mind. Nor was he against the kind of books that informed the farmer how to deal with his mice, steered in the right direction some absentminded person who had lost his way, reminded the misguided of their own traditions, or informed and educated the naïve child about the nature of the world through illustrated adventures; he was all for these kinds of books which were as necessary now as they had once been, and it would be a good thing if they were written in greater numbers. The books Doctor Fine opposed were those that had lost their glow, clarity, and truth but pretended to be glowing, clear, and true. These were the books that promised us the serenity and enchantment of paradise within the limitations set by the world, those which the pawns of the Great Conspiracy mass-produced and disseminated—at this point a field mouse zipped past us and was gone in the blink of an eye—in their concerted effort to make us forget the poetry of our lives. “Where's the proof?” he said, looking at me suspiciously as if I were the one who had asked the question. “Where's the proof?” He was climbing quickly among spindly trees and rocks covered with bird droppings.

For the proof, I must read the records kept by his men all over the country, the spies he had dispatched to do the investigations in Istanbul. After reading the book, his son had lost his bearings; not only had he turned his back on his family—which one could attribute to youthful rebellion—but he had closed his eyes to the wealth of life, that is, the “unmanifested symmetry of time,” carried away by some kind of “blindness” against the “totality of details reposited in each object,” having succumbed to some kind of “death wish.”

“Can one book accomplish all this?” asked Doctor Fine. “That book is merely a tool in the hands of the Great Conspiracy.”

Still, he underestimated neither the book nor the writer. I would see for myself, when I read the reports his friends and spies had made and the records they had kept, that the use made of the book was not consistent with the writer's aims. The writer had been a poor retired bureaucrat, a weak personality who didn't even have the courage of his own convictions. “The sort of weak personality we are required to produce by those who infect us with the plague of forgetfulness that blows here on the winds from the West, erasing our collective memory. Someone feeble, someone wishy-washy, a nothing! He is gone, destroyed, rubbed out.” Doctor Fine made it clear that he didn't feel in the least sorry for the writer's death.

For quite some time we climbed up a goat path without speaking. Silken thunderbolts flashed through the rain clouds that kept changing places without either approaching or departing; but the thunderclaps were inaudible, as if we were watching a TV set with the sound set on mute. When we got to the top of the hill, we could see not only Doctor Fine's holdings but also the town that stood neatly on the plain like a table set by an industrious housewife, the red tile roofs, the mosque with the slim minarets, the streets spreading out freely, and outside the town limits, the sharp boundaries of the wheat fields and fruit orchards.

“In the morning I get up and greet the day before the day has a chance to wake me,” Doctor Fine said, studying the view. “The sun comes up from behind the mountains, but one knows by the swallows that in other places the sun has already been up for hours. Sometimes in the mornings I walk all the way up here to welcome the sun who greets me. Nature is bestilled; bees and snakes are not yet stirring about. The earth and I ask each other why we are here at this hour, for what purpose, for what grand purpose. Very few mortals think these things through in concert with nature. If human beings think at all, there are only a few pitiful ideas in their heads which they have acquired from others but think are original with them; they never discover something by contemplating nature themselves. They are all feeble, wishy-washy, fragile.

“Even before I discovered the Great Conspiracy that came from the West, I had already comprehended the fact that to remain unvanquished one must have strength and determination,” said Doctor Fine. “Our melancholy streets, long-suffering trees, ghostly lights held out nothing to me but indifference; so I put my stuff in order, pulled my time concept together, refusing to submit either to history or those who want to govern it. Why should I submit? I trust in myself. It was because I trusted in myself that others too put their trust in my willpower and the poetic justice of my life. I made sure they were bonded to me, so they too discovered the annals of our own time. We were bonded to each other. We communicated through ciphers, corresponded like lovers, held clandestine meetings. This first dealers' convention in Güdül, my dear boy Ali, is the fruit of a long and hard struggle, well-planned action that has required the patience of digging a well with a needle, and organization that has been meticulously constructed like a spider's web. No matter what, the West can no longer deter us.”

After a silence he added this information: Hours after my pretty young wife and I had left Güdül, fires had broken out all over town. It was not coincidental that the fire department had been unable to cope despite the help they received from the government. No wonder that the tears, the flashes of anger, to be seen in the eyes of the insurgents, that rabble roused by the newspapers, were the same as those of his heartsick friends who had intuited that they had been robbed of their souls, their poetry, their memory. Had I known that cars had been set on fire, that guns had been discharged, and that one person—one of their own—had lost his life? The whole thing had been instigated by the district governor himself with the aid of the local political parties, when he forbade the convention of the heartsick dealers to continue on the pretext that it threatened law and order.

“It's a done deal,” said Doctor Fine. “I am not about to acquiesce. I was the one who requested that the subject of angels be debated on the floor. I was also the one who put in the request for building the television set that reflected our hearts and our childhood, I was the one who had that device built. I was the one who demanded that all wicked things, like the book that took my son away from me, be chased back to the hole they emerged from, back to the evil pit where they seethe and roil. We found out that hundreds of our young people had ‘their whole lives changed' through this sort of subterfuge every year, ‘their worlds deranged' by having a book or two put in their hands. I gave everything thorough consideration. It is not coincidental that I did not attend the convention. That the convention brought me a young man like you is not a mere stroke of good fortune, either. Everything has been falling in place just as I premeditated it. When my son was taken from me by the traffic accident, he was the same age as yourself. This is the fourteenth of the month. I lost my son on the fourteenth.”

When Doctor Fine opened his large fist, I saw there the four-leaf clover. He picked it up by the stem and studied it before he let it drift away on a light breeze. Air was wafting from the direction of the rain clouds but so imperceptibly that I felt it only by the coolness on my face. Dove-gray clouds tarried where they were situated, as if by indecision. Light that had a yellowish cast seemed to simmer somewhere in the distance beyond the town. Doctor Fine said it was “now” raining over there. When we reached the rocky cliffs on the other side of the hill, we saw that the clouds over the graveyard had scattered. A kite had nested among the rocks which were rough in places; the moment it realized we were approaching, it fluttered off in alarm and began to soar, defining a wide arc over Doctor Fine's territory. Silently, respectfully, and with a kind of admiration, we watched the bird glide in the air.

“This land has the power and wealth,” Doctor Fine said, “to support the great movement inspired by the single-minded grand idea that I have been nurturing all these years. If my son had had the strength and the willpower to resist the ruse perpetrated by the Great Conspiracy and had not allowed himself to be taken in by a mere book despite his great intellect, he would have felt the creativity and strength I feel today, surveying the land from these heights. I know that you yourself have perceived today the same inspiration, the same horizon. I knew from the beginning that what was communicated to me about your resolution was not in the least exaggerated. When I found out your age, I had no remaining reservations; there was not even any necessity to dig up your background. Even though you are only at the age when my son was so mercilessly and underhandedly taken from me, you have already comprehended everything thoroughly enough to want to take part in the dealers' convention. Our acquaintance of a single day has already shown me that a manifest destiny aborted in one individual can be reactivated through another. It was not for nothing that I gave you access to the little museum I established in memory of my son. You and your wife are the only persons who have visited it aside from his mother and his sisters. You were able to appreciate your own self there, your own past and your future. And now you are becoming cognizant of our next step as you contemplate me, Doctor Fine. Become my son. Take his place. Carry on my work after me. I am growing old, but my passions have not in the least abated. I want to be sure that the movement will survive. I have connections in the government. Those who report to me are still active. I am keeping track of hundreds of young people who have been hoodwinked. I will make the dossiers available to you, all of them without any exception, even the records of my son's activities. Just read them. So many young people have been taken off the course of their lives! It's not necessary that you renounce your own father, your family. I also want you to see my gun collection. Just say ‘Yes!' Say yes to your destiny. I am not a decadent person, I am aware of everything. I didn't get a male heir for years on end, I suffered; when they took him away from me, I suffered even more; but nothing can be more painful than leaving behind my inheritance without someone to inherit it.”