Silent House (5 page)

“I just got some last week,” said the merchant.

“Did you get them from us?” said Mustafa. “We weren’t even here last week.”

“But if you helped the Communists that’s different,” said Serdar.

“No,” said the grocer. “They don’t come here.”

“Why not?” said Serdar. “Because they don’t feel like it, I guess?”

“I don’t know,” said the grocer. “Leave me alone. I don’t have anything to do with this kind of stuff.”

“I’ll tell you why they don’t come, uncle,” said Serdar. “They can’t
come because they’re afraid of us. If it wasn’t for us the Communists would have this place shaken down for protection money like Tuzla.”

“God forbid!”

“Yeah, you know what they did to the people in Tuzla, don’t you? First they take out their windows really nice …”

I turned and looked at the window: clean, wide, sparkling glass. “Then, if you still don’t pay should I say what they do next?” said Serdar.

I was thinking of graves. If all Communists act like this, the graveyards in Russia must be full to overflowing. The grocer must have got it in the end: he put his hand on his waist and glared red faced at us.

“So, uncle,” said Mustafa. “We don’t have a lot of time. How many do you want?”

I took out the tickets so he could see them.

“He’ll take ten,” said Serdar.

“I just got some last week,” said the grocer.

“Okay, fine,” said Serdar. “Let’s not waste our time, guys. I guess this is the only shop in the whole market, the only one who’s not afraid to have his window taken out. Hasan, what’s the number …”

I went outside, looked at the number over the door, and went back in. The vegetable man’s face reddened even more.

“Look, uncle,” said Mustafa. “We don’t mean any disrespect. You’re as old as my grandfather, we’re not Communists.” He turned to me. “Give him five, that’s enough this time.”

When I held out five tickets, the grocer took them by the edge, as if picking up something disgusting. Then, with great concentration, he began to read what was on the tickets.

“We can give you a receipt, you want one?”

I laughed.

“Don’t be disrespectful,” said Mustafa.

“I already have five of these tickets,” said the merchant. He dug around frantically in the dusty darkness of a drawer, then triumphantly pulled them out to show us. “They’re the same, see?”

“Yes,” said Mustafa. “The other guys may have given them to you by mistake. But you have to get them from us.”

“Besides, is it going to kill you to take five more, uncle?” said Serdar.

The old cheapskate pretended he didn’t hear and pointed to a corner of the ticket with his finger.

“This date’s already passed,” he said. “It was supposed to be two months ago. Look, it says May 1980 here.”

“Uncle, do you intend to go to this event?” said Mustafa.

“How can I go tonight to something that was two months ago?” said the grocer.

In the end, I almost lost my patience over five tickets. They taught us nothing in school. Being patient only loses a person time in life, it’s no good for anything else. If they asked us to write a composition on this subject, I’d have found so much to write that even the Turkish literature teachers who always had it in for me would have been forced to pass me. Good thing Serdar was just as furious as I was. He lurched over and grabbed the pen from behind the old cheapskate’s ear, scaring him half to death, and wrote something on the tickets before shoving them back at him with the pen.

“Satisfied, uncle?” he said. “We made the night two months later. Now five hundred liras please!”

Finally he took out the money and gave it to us. That’s the way it is: only the idiot Turkish-language teachers in our school think you can sweet-talk the snake out of its hole. I was so ticked off, I said, Let me hurt this old cheapskate, let me take care of him. As we were going out, I stopped and pulled out one of the peaches from the very bottom of the mound he had arranged by the front door. But he was lucky, and they didn’t all come tumbling down. I put the peach in my bag before we moved on to the barber’s.

The barber was washing somebody’s head under the faucet. He looked at us in the mirror.

“I’ll take two, guys,” he said, without letting go of the head in his hands.

“If you want, you could have ten, brother,” said Mustafa. “You could sell them here.”

“Leave two, that’s enough,” said the barber. “Aren’t you from the Association?”

Two! I suddenly lost it. “No, not just two, you’ll take ten,” I said and counted out ten tickets and held them out.

Even Serdar was surprised. Well, gentlemen, now you see, if I lose my temper this is what I’m like. But the barber didn’t take the tickets.

“How old are you?” he said.

The soapy head in his hand was now staring at me in the mirror, too.

“You’re not taking them?” I said.

“Maybe we make it eighteen,” said Serdar.

“Who sent you from the Association?” he said. “You’re awfully excitable.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say and looked at Mustafa.

“Don’t mind it, brother,” said Mustafa. “He’s still new. He doesn’t know you.”

“It’s obvious that he’s new. Guys, leave me two tickets.”

He took two hundred liras out of his pocket. The other guys immediately warmed up to him, practically kissed his hand, and immediately forgot all about me. So if you know the guys in the Association it means you’re the king around here? I pulled out two tickets and held them out. But he didn’t turn and take them.

“Leave them over there!”

I put them down. I was about to say something, but I didn’t.

“See you, guys!” he said and then, pointing to me with the top of the shampoo bottle in his hand, “Is this one in school, working?”

“He’s been left behind from sophomore year.”

“What does your father do?”

I kept quiet.

“His father sells lottery tickets,” said Mustafa.

“Watch out for this little fox!” said the barber. “He’s a real live one. Okay, I’ll see you.”

Our guys all laughed. I said, Let me say something, and I was just about to say it—Make sure you take good care of your helper here, okay?—but I didn’t. I left without looking at the helper’s face. Serdar and Mustafa were laughing between themselves, but I wasn’t listening, I was ticked off. Then Serdar said something to Mustafa like this:

“He’s just remembered he’s a barber; forget about it.”

I didn’t say anything. My job was to carry the bag and when necessary to take out the tickets and pass them out. I’m only here with you because they called us from Cennethisar and gave us this job and I have nothing to say to you who are on the side of the shopkeepers and make fun of me and laugh and call me names, so I’m just keeping quiet. We went into a pharmacy and I was silent, we went into a butcher’s and I was silent, same in the grocer’s, and after that, at the hardware shop and the coffee seller’s and the café, I was just as silent, not saying anything even when we reached the end of the market. When we came out of the last store Mustafa stuck his hands in his pocket.

“We each deserve a helping of meatballs after this,” he said. But still, I was silent, keeping it to myself that they didn’t give us that money so we could eat meatballs.

“Yeah,” said Serdar. “We each deserve a helping after this.”

But when we sat down in the meatball shop they ordered two helpings each. If they were having two each, I wasn’t going to have just one. While we waited for the meatballs, Mustafa took out the money and counted it: seventeen thousand liras. Then he said to Serdar:

“Why does he have that look on his face?”

“He’s mad we called him a fox,” said Serdar.

“Idiot!” said Mustafa. But I didn’t pay attention because I was looking at a calendar on the wall. Then the meatballs came. We ate with them talking and me not talking. They wanted dessert, too. I ordered a
revani;
it was good.

Mustafa took out his gun and began to play with it under the table.

“Give it to me!” said Serdar.

He played with it, too. They didn’t give it to me and shared a laugh about that before Mustafa stuck it in his waistband, paid the bill, and we got up to leave.

We walked through the market afraid of no one, entered the building where the office was, and went upstairs without saying a word. When we went to the Association, as usual, I felt afraid. I get all stupidly excited as if I’m cheating on a test and the teacher’s seen me and knows why I look so nervous.

“This is the whole market, right?” he said.

“Yes, brother,” said Mustafa. “All the places you said.”

“You have it all with you?”

“Yes,” said Mustafa. He took out the gun and the money.

“I’ll just take the tool,” he said. “Turn over the money to Mr. Zekeriya.”

Mustafa gave him the gun. The good-looking guy went inside. Mustafa went too. We waited. For a while, I thought: What are we waiting for; I forgot that we were waiting for Mr. Zekeriya so it was like we were waiting for nothing. Then somebody our age came and offered us cigarettes. I said, I don’t smoke, but I took one. He took out a lighter shaped like a locomotive and gave us a light.

“Are you with the Young Nationalists from Cennethisar?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What’s it like around there?”

I thought about what he meant. The cigarette had a weird taste. I felt like an old man.

“The upper neighborhood is ours,” said Serdar.

“I know,” he said. “I’m asking about the seashore. Where the Tuzla Communists are.”

“Nothing,” I blurted out. “There’s nothing in Cennethisar on the seashore. It’s all rich society people.”

He looked at me and laughed. I laughed too.

“So what?” he said. “You never know!”

When he laughed at the mention of “society people,” what did he mean? Serdar got up too and went inside somewhere, as if he intended that everyone coming and going should see me out there all alone and would figure out that I was new. I smoked cigarettes and looked at the ceiling, as if thinking important thoughts, things so important that it would be obvious to people going in and out as soon as they saw me: The problems of our movement! There was a book like that I’d read. As I thought that, Mustafa came out of the room and hugged somebody and just then everybody pulled back: Mr. Zekeriya had arrived. He took a good look at me on his way into the room, and I got up, but not all the way. Then they called in Mustafa. When he went inside I wondered what they would talk about, and when they came out again this time I stood up.

“Good!” said Mr. Zekeriya to our Mustafa. “We’ll get word to you when we need to. Good work!”

He looked at me for a second and I thought he was going to say something to me but he didn’t: he just abruptly sneezed and went upstairs again; to the party headquarters, as they say. Then Mustafa talked in whispers to a kid who had just been talking to me. First I thought they were talking about me, but that was crazy, they were talking about politics … I looked away so they wouldn’t think I was listening and curious.

Then Mustafa said, “Okay, guys, we’re going.”

I left the bag. We went to the station without talking, like men satisfied they had done a good job. Then I wondered why Mustafa wasn’t talking. I wasn’t annoyed with him anymore. How did he like the way I did my part? I wondered. Sitting on the bench waiting for the train I thought about this, then when I saw a lottery shop I thought of my father, even though I didn’t want to think about my father now, but I thought about him anyway and I muttered what I wanted to say to him: The most important thing in life isn’t a high school diploma, Dad.

When we boarded the train, Serdar and Mustafa were whispering
to each other again. They say something or tell some kind of joke and make me look like an idiot. Then I try to think of a comeback, but I can’t find one right away and while I’m trying to think of it they see the concentration on my face and laugh even harder, then I get mad and can’t help myself and curse, and they laugh harder still, and then I realize that I look even more like an idiot now. When that happens I want to be by myself, when a person is by himself he can relax and think about all the great things he could say and do. Sometimes they make jokes that I don’t understand; they wink at each other, like they did just before when they said that word: fox! What kind of animal is that, anyway? There was girl in elementary school, she brought her encyclopedia to school, an animal encyclopedia, you’d say tiger, open it, and look at the
T
s. If I had that encyclopedia I’d open it, and look up “fox,” but that girl wouldn’t let me see it. No, you’ll get it dirty! Okay, bitch, then why did you bring it to school? That girl went to Istanbul, of course, because her father was rich, they said. And she had a friend, with a blue ribbon in her hair …

I drifted off … When the train came to Tuzla I was excited, but not scared. The Communists could get on at any moment. Serdar and Mustafa had stopped talking; they looked pissed off. Nothing happened. As the train moved on, I could read what the Communists had written on the walls:
TUZLA WILL BE THE GRAVE OF THE FASCISTS!
The people they called the fascists were us. I cursed a little. Then the train came to our station and we got off. We walked without talking and came to the stop.

“Guys, I have things to do,” said Mustafa. “Take care!” We watched him as he disappeared among the minibuses.

“I don’t want to go home and study in this heat,” I said to Serdar.

“Yeah,” said Serdar. “It is hot.”

“I can’t think straight anyway,” I said. I paused for a minute. “Come on, Serdar,” I said. “Let’s walk over to the coffeehouse.”

“No. I’m going to the store. I have work.”

If your father has a store, then you automatically have a job as
well. But I’m still in school, I didn’t drop out like you. But the strange thing is I’m the one they tease the most. I’m positive Serdar is going to the coffeehouse this evening to tell everyone about “the fox.” Well, don’t worry about it, Hasan. I didn’t; I started to climb up the hill.

As I watched the trucks and cars going quickly by to catch the car ferry at Cennethisar or Darica, I enjoyed feeling as though I were alone, and I yearned to have an adventure. There are lots of things that do happen in life and lots that could, but you’re just left waiting for them. It seemed to me that those things I wanted were coming very slowly, and when they did happen it wasn’t the way I’d wanted and planned; they’d all taken too long, as if to annoy me, and then suddenly you’d look, and they’d have already passed. Like those cars going by. They started to irritate me, especially since I was watching to see if one of them might stop and save me the bother of having to climb the hill in this heat, but nobody cares in this world. I started to eat my peach, but it didn’t make things any better.