Silent House (28 page)

she’s not really that afraid of her mother and father, who’s basically a good man even if he’s a little too Turkish, and I’m saying, Unfortunately, I never got to know mine well, because my mother and father passed away, and Ceylan is saying how she wants to study journalism and see the world, and she says, Don’t look at me now, here we’re only out to have fun, we don’t do anything, but that’s not what I want to be, I want to be like that woman, what is her name, that Italian journalist, the one always interviewing famous people, she talks with Kissinger or Anwar Sadat, yes, I know that to be like her you have to be very sophisticated, but I can’t read books from morning till night, I have a right to live, too, because I passed all my classes this year, so I want to have fun, not like that kid in our school, who read so much he went nuts, they put him in the asylum, what do you say, Metin, but I don’t say anything, I’m just thinking that you’re beautiful while you’re going on about your father, school, your friends, your future, and what you think about Turkey and Europe and such things and, when the dim light of the streetlamps filters through the leaves and falls on your face, you’re even more beautiful, and when you puff on your cigarette with an anxious expression and toss back that curl on your forehead, my God, just seeing you a person would want to have a child with you, and suddenly I said to her, Let’s go to the beach, look how nice it is, there’s no one around, it’s so quiet, Ha, she said, and off we went, and when we were walking on the sand Ceylan took off her shoes and carried them in her hand all along the shore, with her feet sparkling on the sand, those pretty little feet she carefully dipped into the dark mysterious water as she talked, splashing the water around, I couldn’t see anything but those feet making little waves in the water as she was talking about how she wanted to live like a European, from then on not listening to me, but I was lost anyway in the humid heat and the smell of the seaweed and of her skin, then suddenly I ran into the water with my shoes still on and put my arms around you, Ceylan, and she said, What are you doing, I love you, I said, and I wanted to kiss her on the cheek, and she, laughing at first, said, Metin, you’re very drunk, but then I could tell
she got scared, so I pulled her to the shore and tried to pin her down, and as she was squirming under me on the sand, I tried to find her breasts and feel them, No, she said, no, no, Metin, what are you doing, have you gone crazy, you’re drunk and I said, I love you, and she said, No way, and I kissed her neck and smelled her incredible smell, but when she pushed me again, I thought, What right does she have to treat me like that, so I worked my way on top of her again, lifted up her skirt, and there it was, under my legs, that unapproachable body I had imagined so long from a distance, and I unzipped my pants, and she was still saying no, pushing at me, why, Ceylan, why, one minute I love you so much and the next we’re struggling like a cat and a dog, rolling on the sand, it’s so stupid, everything is so hopeless, and you tell me again I’m drunk, fine, fine, I’m not some crude guy who can’t take a hint, I’m stopping, but so what if we had, I was saying, I’m not some sex fiend, I really only wanted to kiss you a little, so you would know that I love you, but, okay, I got carried away, but I stopped, I let her pull her body out from under me, let my angry dick bury itself in the cold sand without finding relief, fine, I’m leaving you alone, I pull up my zipper and turn my face to the sky and stare vacantly at the stars, leave me alone, understood, go run off and tell your friends, Hey guys, be careful, that Metin is a weirdo, he attacked me, no-class slob, that much was obvious, absolutely no different from the creeps whose photos you see in the paper, my God, I could cry, I’ll pack my bag and go back to Istanbul, this little Cennethisar adventure is over. If you want to sleep with a girl in Turkey, I guess you have to be a millionaire or marry, next year I’ll be in America anyway, meanwhile giving lessons in mathematics and English to private high school students till the end of the summer, help for the mentally deficient at two hundred fifty liras an hour, and all summer long while I’m squirreling away money, staying in my aunt’s hot, suffocating little house, back here, Fikret and Ceylan … I can’t even think about it, it’s so unfair, girls shouldn’t be seduced by money but by cleverness, talent, and good looks, oh, just forget about it, Metin, it’s not important, look at those stars, what could all those
shining stars mean up there in the sky, people look at them and recite poems, and why do they do it, they claim they feel something mysterious, but they’re just confused, and they call their confusion feeling, no, I know why they read poems, the whole point is to get women and make money, that’s it, the fools, what counts is knowing how to use your head, and when I get to America the first thing I’ll do is make some kind of very simple discovery in physics, something nobody has thought of, and immediately publish it in the
Annalen der Physik
, the journal that published Einstein’s first discoveries, and after I get rich and famous overnight, the Turks will come begging me for the secrets and the formulas of all the rockets I’ve developed, Come on, please, won’t you share with your fellow countrymen, so we can rain down some rockets on the heads of the Greeks, and then it’s off to my villa, a bigger and better one than the one that billionaire Ertegun has in Bodrum, unfortunately, I don’t have much time, I just come here once a year for a quick one-week visit, and by then, who knows, Fikret and Ceylan, maybe they’ll be married, but where are you getting this from, there’s nothing between them, Ceylan, where are you, maybe she ran off, I can see her panting while she tells the others all about it, but where is she now, I couldn’t even lift up my head to look, I’m losing it, all alone out here on the sand, I have nobody, it’s all your fault, whose parents leave their son alone like this, you could at least have left me a decent inheritance, then at least I would be like them with my money, but no, not a cent, not a dime, in the end all you left me was a fatso big brother and a big sister obsessed with politics, of course there’s also the senile grandmother and the dwarf, not to mention the decrepit house they refuse to demolish, just you wait, I’ll knock it down! I know why you never made any money, to make money you need courage and talent and guts, and I’ve got them, so I’ll earn plenty, but still I feel sorry for you and for myself and how I have nobody, and as I was thinking of you and of my own loneliness, afraid I might start to cry, suddenly I heard Ceylan’s voice: Are you crying, Metin, she said; she hadn’t gone! Me? I said, Nooo, why would I cry, I said, Good, then, said Ceylan, that’s
what I thought, come get up, let’s go back now, Metin, she said, Okay, okay, I said, I’m getting up, but I continued to lie there without budging, just looking stupidly at the stars, and Ceylan said again, Come on, get up, Metin, and when she put out her hand to help me me, I got up, though I could hardly stand, I was swaying back and forth, and I was looking at Ceylan, so this is the girl I just attacked, what a strange thing, she’s smoking a cigarette as if nothing happened, so, to say something, I said, How are you, I’m fine, she said, I lost some buttons from my blouse, she said, but not in an angry way, and then I was ashamed, thinking what a warm, compassionate person she is, God, I was quiet for a little while, and then I said, Are you mad at me, I was really drunk, forgive me, I said, No, no, she said, I’m not mad, we were both pretty drunk, things happen, I know that’s not your nature. I was stunned. What are you thinking, Ceylan, I said, and she said, Nothing, I’m not thinking anything, come on, let’s go back, she said, and as we were turning to go she saw my wet shoes and she laughed, and I just wanted to put my arms around her again, I just don’t understand anything, I thought, and then Ceylan said, We’d better pass by your place so you can go change those shoes, and I was even more stunned, and so we left the beach, without saying anything we walked and walked through the silent streets, breathing in the scents of honeysuckle, dried grass, and hot cement rising from cool dark gardens, and when we came to our garden gate, I was ashamed of how run-down the place was and a bit annoyed at those sleepyheads inside, when I saw that Grandmother’s light was still on, then, on second look—oh, God—that my brother was in a stupor at the table on the balcony, where he was sitting in the darkness, and when his shadow moved, I figured he wasn’t asleep, only leaning back in his chair at this hour of the night, or, rather, the morning, and I said, Let me introduce you, Ceylan, Faruk, my big brother, and they were pleased to meet, and catching a whiff of that disgusting stench of alcohol coming from my brother’s mouth, I ran up the steps and madly changed my shoes and socks, so as not to leave them alone too long, but when I came downstairs Faruk had started:

          
Your moon appears step by step at night Naili

          
Is this not worth suffering worlds of pain

He was saying, Of course you understand, that it is Naili’s seventeenth-century Ottoman poem, but after he’d recited it, the fatso looked so satisfied you’d have thought it was his own, and he started reciting again:

          
So intoxicated was I that I could not comprehend what was the world

          
Who am I, who is that the wine server, what is the elixir of dawn

Whose that is, I don’t know, he said, it’s from
Evliya’s Travels
, said Ceylan smiling kindly at the unlidded Ottoman alcohol vat before her and ready to hear more when I said, Faruk, could I have the car keys, we’re leaving, Sure, he said, on one condition, the lovely lady will answer one question for me, yes, I couldn’t comprehend what was the world, please, could you tell us, Ceylan Hanim, it is Ceylan, isn’t it, such a beautiful name, Ceylan, tell us please what then is the world, all these things around us, the trees and the sky and the stars and the empty bottles on the table before us, yes, what do you say, he said, and Ceylan looking at him with a sweet, familiar way, said nothing in words but with a look, You would know better than I do, and trying to change the subject so my drunken brother wouldn’t get embarrassed, I said, Wow, Grandmother’s light is still on, and for a moment we all turned and looked up, before I said, Come on, Ceylan, let’s go, and we got into that piece of Plexiglas junk and as I started the engine, and as we pulled away from the garden that smelled of the graveyard, the decrepit old house, my stupefied fat brother, I wondered with a shudder what Ceylan must think of me, because she was surely saying, Only somebody with a house, car, and family like this would attack a girl on a deserted beach in the middle of the night, but please, no, Ceylan, I can explain everything, but there’s no time, see, we’re already nearly to Turan’s, but no, you have to listen to me, and I veered off turning the car toward the hill,
and when Ceylan asked where we were going, I said, Let’s get a little air and she didn’t protest, so off we went, and I repeated that I had to explain, but because I didn’t know where to start, my foot started pressing on the gas, and as we zoom downhill, I’m thinking, and still I’m racking my brain when we get to the hill, and we head down and I still haven’t started talking, but by now my foot is pressing down so hard that the Anadol begins to shudder, but Ceylan doesn’t say anything, and going around the curve the rear wheels skid, but Ceylan still doesn’t speak, and we came to the Istanbul-Ankara road, with vehicles coming and going, just to say something I said, Should we have some fun with one of them, and Ceylan said, Let’s go back now, you’re very drunk, and I thought, Okay, you want to get away from me, but at least listen for a little, I want to explain things to you, I’ll tell you, you’ll understand I’m a good person, even though I’m not rich, I know what people like you think, and the rules you live by, I’m just like any of you, Ceylan, but when I got ready to confess it all seemed horribly crude and insincere, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do except to step on the gas, okay, then, at least see that I’m not some bastard, because people like that are afraid to die, and, look, I’m not afraid, I’m doing one hundred thirty in this crappy car. Are you afraid that we might die, and I stepped on the gas even more, and soon, when we start downhill, we’ll fly off the road and be killed, and when my friends in the dormitory set up a poker tournament in my memory, they better use some of the money they win off the rich boys to buy a marble gravestone for me, and I pressed harder still, but Ceylan still was keeping quiet, and I thought that the end really was very near, when oh my God, I saw people strolling down the middle of the road as if they were walking on the seashore, so I slammed on the brake and the car came about like a boat and started to slide, so that we were coming right at them, and they all ran for cover, still holding some cans, and the car skidded on before entering a field where it smacked into something, and once the engine died we could hear the crickets. Ceylan, I said, are you all right, were you scared, and she said, No, but we almost ran over them, and they came
running toward us, furious, and when I saw the paint cans in their hands, the kind for spraying slogans on the walls, I decided I better not get into something here with a bunch of terrorists, so I tried to restart the car, and luckily it worked on the second try, but as I was maneuvering to get back on the road, those three hoodlums came up to the car and started to curse at us, and I said, Lock your door, and one of those fools must have bumped into us because he cried out, and they all started to pound on the back of the car, but too late, you idiots, we were on the road and we were out of there, though not entirely, because up ahead, we saw there were still others writing on a wall:

          
Yeni Mahalle will be the graveyard of Communists

and

          
We will free the Slave Turks of Central Asia