The New Life (29 page)

I brought up Uncle Rıfkı to ambush him and take him by surprise for a moment, in order to drag out of him the information he was withholding from me. I said this man might very well be the author. I mentioned that I had known him in my childhood when I used to read madly his illustrated fictions. After reading the book, I had once more carefully examined these comics, for example,
Pertev and Peter,
where I had seen that many of the topics had already been promulgated.

“Was this disappointing for you?”

“No,” I said. “Tell me about meeting him.”

What he told me completed in a logical fashion the information provided in Serkisof's reports. After having read the book thousands of times, he had seemed to remember something reminiscent of it in the children's comics he had read. He had located these comics in the libraries, and pinpointing the astonishing similarities, he had detected the identity of the author. He had been unable to talk to Rıfkı Ray much the first time, having been forestalled by the wife. During the interview that took place at the entrance, Rıfkı Ray had tried closing the subject as soon as he realized the strange young man at his door was interested in the book, responding to Mehmet's entreaties by saying that he had no further concern with the subject himself. A touching interview could have possibly taken place there at the door between the youthful fan and the elderly writer, but for Rıfkı Ray's wife—that's Aunt Ratibe, I interjected—who had interfered, as I had done just now, and had pulled her husband inside, slamming the door in the face of this uninvited guest who was a fan.

“I was so disappointed, I couldn't believe it,” said my rival whom I couldn't decide whether I should call Nahit, or Mehmet, or Osman. “For a while I kept going back to the neighborhood and spying on him from a distance. Then one day I screwed up my courage again and rang the doorbell.”

Rıfkı Ray had this time responded to him more positively. He had said that he still had no further interest in the book, but the insistent young man might stay and have some coffee. He had inquired where in the world the young man had obtained and read the book which had been published so many years before, and wanted to know why he had chosen this book when there were so many wonderful books to read; where was our young man going to school, and what did he want to do with his life, etc., etc. “Although I demanded several times that he reveal to me the secrets of the book, he didn't take me seriously,” said our erstwhile Mehmet. “He was right, though. Now I know he had no secret to reveal.”

He had insisted because he hadn't understood this back then. The old man had explained that he had been in deep trouble on account of the book, he had been pressured by the police and the prosecutor. “It all happened just because I thought I might provide some diversion and entertainment for a few grownups as I have diverted and entertained the kids,” he had said. And if that were not enough, Uncle Railman Rıfkı had gone on to say, “I certainly could not allow my whole life to be destroyed for the sake of a book I wrote to amuse myself.” Nahit hadn't realized in his anger then how grief-stricken the old man had become when he explained that he had repudiated the book and had promised the prosecutor he would neither get another edition printed nor would he ever write anything more in that vein; but now, when he was neither Nahit nor Mehmet, but Osman, he understood the old man's grief so well he was mortified every time he remembered his own tactlessness.

As any young man who was bonded to the book with deep conviction might end up doing, he had accused the old writer of irresponsibility, vicissitude, treachery, and cowardice. “I was trembling with anger, yelling and insulting him, but he was understanding and indulgent.” At some point, Uncle Rıfkı had also risen to his feet and said, “You will understand it some day, but you might be too old by then for it to be of any use.” “I have understood it,” said the man whom Janan loved madly, “but I can't tell if I am of any use or not. Besides I think the people who murdered the old man were the minions of that madman who was having me followed.”

The prospective killer asked the prospective victim whether causing the murder of someone was an unbearable burden for him to carry the rest of his life. The prospective victim said nothing, but the prospective murderer saw the sorrow in his eyes and feared for his own future. They were drinking raki at a slow pace like a pair of gentlemen; and among the pictures of trains, scenes of the homeland, and photographs of film stars, the portrait of Atatürk was smiling down with the assurance of having safeguarded the Republic by entrusting it to the crowd getting drunk in the tavern.

I consulted my watch. There was an hour and a quarter before the time of departure for the scheduled train on which he wanted to ship me off, and there was a feeling between us that we had managed to talk things over more than enough; as it says in books, “whatever needed to be said had been said.” We kept quiet for quite a while like a pair of old friends who aren't troubled by silence falling between them, feeling it might be empty; on the contrary, we considered the silence, at least as far as I was concerned, the most eloquent form of conversation.

Even so, although I fluctuated between admiring him enough to emulate him and wanting to finish him off in order to possess Janan, I thought for a moment I'd tell him that the madman who was having the author and the readers of the book killed was none other than his own father, Doctor Fine. I wanted to inflict this pain on him, just because I felt oppressed, that's all. But I didn't tell him. All right, all right, I thought to myself; you never know, of course; don't upset the apple cart.

He must have had an inkling of my thoughts, or at least picked up some sort of vague echo concerning them, so he related to me the story of the bus accident that had led him to shake off the men his father had set after him. His face lit up for the first time. He had known at once that the young man sitting next to him on the bus that was covered in black ink had died in the accident. He had picked the identification card out of the pocket of this youth whose name was Mehmet and appropriated it. When the bus began to go up in flames, he got out. After the fire died down, he had this bright idea. He slipped his own identification card into the pocket of the burned body, and moving it into his own seat, he fled away to his new life. His eyes gleamed like a kid's when he was telling me about all this; but, naturally, I kept it to myself that I saw the same joyous face now as in his childhood photographs that I had seen in the museum his father had dedicated to his memory.

Another silence, and silence, and silence. Waiter, bring us some stuffed eggplant.

Just to pass the time, you know. For the hell of it, we went into generalizing on the topic of our situation, that is, our lives, his eye on his watch, my eye on his, expressing back and forth this sort of stuff: Well, life was like that. Actually, everything was quite simple. A fanatical old guy who wrote for the railway magazine and who despised bus travel and bus accidents had written some sort of a book, inspired by the children's comics he had penned himself. Then, some years later, optimistic young men such as ourselves who had read those comics in our childhood happened to read the book, and believing that our whole lives were changed from top to bottom, we slipped off the course of our lives. The magic in this book! The miracle of life! How had it happened?

I mentioned once more that I had known Railman Uncle Rıfkı in my childhood.

“Seems strange to hear that, somehow,” he said.

But we knew nothing was strange. Everything was like that, and that's how everything was.

“It's even more so in the town of Viran Bağ,” said my dear mate.

This must have jogged my memory. “You know,” I said, deliberately enunciating each syllable and staring in his face, “many times I was under the impression that the book was about me, that the story was my story.”

Silence. Death rattle of a soul giving up the ghost, a tavern, a town, a world. Clattering of knives and forks. Evening news on TV. Twenty-five more minutes.

“You know,” I said again, “I have come across New Life brand caramels in many places during my Anatolian sojourn. Many years ago, they were available in Istanbul too. But they are still out there in remote places, in the bottom of tin boxes and candy jars.”

“You are really after the Original Cause, aren't you?” said my rival, who had had his fill of scenes from the other life. “You are questing for things that are pure, uncorrupted, and clear. But there is no prime mover. It's futile to search for the key, the word, the source, the original of which we are all mere copies.”

So it was no longer because I wanted to possess Janan, but because he did not believe in you, O Angel, that on my way to the station I contemplated plugging him.

For some reason he broke the fractured silences by saying some things, but I could not even give my undivided attention to this good-looking sorrowful man.

“When I was a kid, reading seemed like a career to me which one might take up someday in the future along with other professions.

“Rousseau, who worked as a music copyist, knew what it meant to write over and over what other people had created.”

Presently, not only the silences but everything else also seemed fractured. Someone had turned off the TV and tuned the radio to an intensely melancholic song about love-sickness and separation. How many times in one's life has mutual silence given one such pleasure? He had just asked for the bill when a middle-aged uninvited guest plopped himself down at our table and looked me over. When he understood I was Osman's army buddy Osman, “We are very fond of our Osman here,” he said, making conversation. “So you were army buddies!” Then carefully, as if he were revealing a secret, he mentioned a customer who had turned up for a handwritten copy of the book. When I realized my clever companion paid a commission to go-betweens such as this one, once more, for the last time, I realized you had to love the guy.

I assumed the parting scene, aside from the report of my Walther, would go along the lines of the conclusion in
Pertev and Peter,
but it turned out I was wrong. In that final adventure, when the two bosom friends who have gone through many a battle together realize that they are in love with the same girl with the same goal, they sit down and solve the problem amicably. Pertev, who is more sensitive and taciturn, knows that the girl will be happier with Peter whose nature is optimistic and outgoing, so he quietly relinquishes the girl to Peter; and, accompanied by sniffling from teary-eyed readers like me, the heroes take their leave of each other at the train station which they had once heroically defended. In our case, we had a literary agent sitting between us who didn't give two hoots about outpourings of sensitivity or spleen.

Together, the three of us walked to the station. I bought my ticket. I picked out a couple of savory buns like those I had in the morning. Pertev had them weigh for me a kilo of the famous large white grapes grown in Viran Bağ. While I selected some humor magazines, he went into the can to wash the grapes. The agent and I stared at each other. The train took two days to arrive in Istanbul. When Pertev returned, the stationmaster signaled the go-ahead with a firm but graceful gesture that reminded me of my father. We kissed each other on the cheeks and parted.

The rest was more in keeping with the suspense videotapes Janan loved watching on the bus, rather than with Uncle Rıfkı's comics. The frenzied young man who has made up his mind to kill for love flings the plastic bag full of wet grapes and the magazines into a corner in the compartment, and before the train gathers speed, he leaps out of the railway car on the farthest side of the platform. Making sure he has not been observed, he stays at a distance and watches with eagle eyes his victim and Mr. Ten Percent. The two talk for a while and then amble together through the sad and deserted streets before taking leave of each other in front of the post office. The killer observes his victim go into the New World Theater, and he lights a cigarette. We never know what the killer is thinking in this genre of film, but we watch him throw down the cigarette he has finished smoking, as I just did, and step on the butt, buy a ticket for the feature called
Endless Nights,
and walk into the theater with steps that appear confident, but before he enters the hall, we see him check out the bathroom, making sure he has an escape route.

The rest was fractured like the silences that accompany the night. I pulled out my Walther, released the safety, and entered the theater hall where the film was playing. It was hot and humid in there, and the ceiling was low. My silhouette carrying the gun appeared on the screen and the Technicolor film was projected on my purple jacket. The light from the projector glared into my eyes, but the seats were fairly empty, so I immediately located my victim.

Perhaps he was surprised, perhaps he did not understand, perhaps he didn't recognize me, perhaps he had expected it, but he stayed seated.

“You find someone of my ilk, you give him a book you make sure he will read, you cause him to slip off the course of his life,” I said, but more to myself.

To make completely sure I hit him, I fired three times at point blank range into his chest and his face which I could not see. Following the Walther's report, I announced to the viewers sitting in the dark, “I killed a man.”

While I was walking out of there, still watching my own silhouette on the screen and
Endless Nights
playing all around it, someone kept shouting, “Projectionist! Projectionist.”

I boarded the first bus out of town, where I considered many a life-and-death question. I also wondered why in our language the same French loanword,
makinist,
designates both the person who runs films and the person who runs railway engines.

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