Endgame, page 12
The women were silent, quietly listening to our conversation. The roles at the table had suddenly shifted. Even Kamile was quietly listening to her husband.
‘No. We met here. I first bumped into him in the Çinili restaurant.’ Another hmm.
‘And you wrote the announcement at the municipality?’
‘No, we were at Mustafa’s house.’
‘I think the honourable judge and the district officer were there too.’
‘They were.’
‘The announcement was a good move,’ said Raci Bey. ‘Otherwise things would have spiralled out of control.’
I asked if there really was treasure there and Rahmi bleated, ‘Of course there is.’ But at the same time Raci Bey said, ‘I don’t know’ and shot his son a look and said, ‘It really isn’t important if it’s there or not. But if the people here believe it to be true then you have to believe it’s really there. That’s what this boils down to. You can’t be high-handed.’
‘Mustafa is being high-handed,’ Rahmi said, angrily, forgetting to use the formal Bey. And his father shot him another look.
‘Mustafa wasn’t like this before,’ said Raci Bey. ‘He was more careful, more respectful, listened to what the people around him had to say, and he wasn’t headstrong. But something’s changed. May God put him back on the right path. But it doesn’t look good, the way things are going.’
‘Are you worried about more murders?’ I asked.
‘Anything is possible,’ Kamile said. ‘Once they go off the rails and lose respect for the rule of law, anything could happen. I supported Mustafa when he ran for mayor, because he needed it. He’s a pious man and was never disrespectful until now, not once, but he’s been strange ever since this new district governor arrived, he’s acting all high and mighty. Anyway, now it seems like he’s come to his senses but no one can be sure of his next move. I don’t want him to disturb the public peace. We owe it to our elders to protect it. We should leave it to our children in the same way it was passed down to us. We can’t let him break us apart, unsettle the public peace, let it go to the dogs.’
She had captured everyone’s attention.
Then came dessert. Kamile had made a kind of candied fruit that I’d never tasted. The raspberry ones were incredibly delicious.
‘Oh my,’ I said. ‘These are divine.’
‘We call them daddy fruit. I don’t know what you call them in the city,’ Kamile Hanım said. ‘I’ll make you more if you liked them that much.’
‘Please do,’ I said.
So she had a reason for us to meet again and no one seemed to notice except Nuray’s mother-in-law, who glared at me out of the corner of her eye.
‘I wonder if Muhacir will take his revenge on Oleander,’ I said to Raci Bey.
‘They’re always fighting but now it’s a different story. We’re heading towards a real disaster, God protect us. Once the balance has been tilted there will be worse to come.’
There was a threatening tone in Rahmi’s voice but Raci Bey’s silence was far more unsettling than his son’s anger.
That night I sensed he would never forgive Mustafa for disregarding them in his decision to starting digging at the church.
This matter wouldn’t be easily set aside.
Mustafa had backed off but his actions were still fresh in everyone’s minds – they would never be able to trust him again.
They all walked me to the door.
Kamile Hanım stood at a distance.
She was looking straight at me with a flat expression on her face
I knew exactly what she wanted to say.
XVIII
I don’t quite remember now but it must have been two or three days after that dinner that I found myself looking for a jeweller in town.
Zuhal had asked me to get something for her. ‘I don’t want anyone to know it’s from you, but I’ll know and I’ll always wear it.’ I asked her what she wanted and she told me to choose.
I had decided to get her a ring, something stylish but simple enough that it wouldn’t draw too much attention.
There was a famous kebab restaurant in the centre of town. I’d never eaten there but I’d heard a lot about it. There was a jeweller’s just opposite.
Looking in the front window, I heard voices behind me and turned to see who was there.
Raci Bey and his men were standing outside the restaurant and a young captain, who led the town gendarmerie, was walking over to his car. I could see that Raci Bey was beside himself, his face flushed bright crimson.
‘You dog,’ he screamed at one of his men, who stood meekly before him with his hands clasped. Raci then slapped him across the face. The captain turned to see what was happening and Raci slapped the man again.
And then he left.
The man sat down at the base of the wall, covering his face with his hands. He must have been crying. No one went over to help him.
‘This Raci Bey is bad news,’ I thought, ‘with no good intentions.’
I saw the extent of his anger in the way he’d shouted at that man, and then slapped him, but I had also witnessed an evil born of an unwavering confidence in his own power.
On this bench in the middle of the night, hopeless, and in the midst of a town groaning in a communal slumber, driven mad by its dreams, I consider all the shades of evil I’ve seen since I first arrived.
The cradle-maker told me people commit evil because they’re blind but I don’t think that’s how it works.
God plotted his novel with this thought in mind.
Isn’t that so?
Isn’t that the way you did it?
You know better than me that this is how it is.
There’s something deplorable in your need for evil, in how you resort to evil to move this novel along. You insist people should do good but place evil in their hearts.
We both know you have no choice but to shelter evil and those who dabble in the black art.
I agree that it’s not a bad idea creating an opposite for everything, dramatic tension in your work swirling back and forth; it’s simple but gets the job done.
But this is where your novel falters.
Because you created evil first and structured your narrative around it, giving your heroes an exceptional urge to sin; but to balance out the scales, you command him to be ‘good’.
Allow me to explain.
You are incapable of meting out punishment to your evildoers.
For if you do strike evil down with penance then no one would truly continue to commit the crimes, and you would get nothing out of the bargain. Where would you find the fools to fumble and receive their sentences? You could create them, of course, but then who would read your book if all its heroes were fools?
You must inspire and reward evildoers to perpetuate evil, to sustain the dramatic tension in your work.
Which is precisely what happens in your book.
Despite all injunctions for them to struggle against the dark, and the punishment you dangle above them, these evildoers are always rewarded in the end.
This is the result.
And if you fail to solve the problem in this book, you leave the solution for the hereafter, the book to come, a second volume.
But know that this is hardly an adequate solution.
No well-structured book will leave the ending for a sequel, but you have no other choice.
Speaking frankly, it seems like you just dashed it off.
Now, if you had managed to find a way to punish evil and still maintain a narrative in which evil exists, well then I would have said, ‘Bravo, a true masterpiece indeed!’ But evil unpunished only serves to hinder your novelistic efforts.
Of course you have powers that we will never have, and you can do away with naysayers when you wish, which gives you a tremendous advantage over us.
No one dares to say your novel is badly plotted.
I can, because you made a mistake, you punished me before I could criticise you.
‘I have more in store for you if you keep on like that,’ you say, that much I know, but let’s save that talk for when I read ‘the sequel’, that is to say the book of the hereafter, so I now declare unapologetically that this book is flawed.
But praise where praise is due. The concept of good and evil was indeed a profound discovery – I will give you that. You are wonderful in the creation of concepts, it’s just that you fail to entwine them in some kind of narrative structure, because there’s always the sense of the blasé in the approach, a devil-may-care attitude if you will.
How did the idea of evil come to you?
Which one did you discover first? Good or evil?
I think you came up with evil first, because good is flimsy and attenuated by comparison, but you’re aware of this because you’re always sending people to the footnotes to bolster their good sides.
But then what I’ve lived through is there for all to see, which means these footnotes aren’t enough to fix the book.
By rewarding good deeds and punishing evil you will not end up with evildoers. Who would opt for evil in such a scenario? And if you don’t punish evil then you only end up encouraging people to engage in it, and then I have every right to ask you this: ‘If your intent is to goad people to the heights of malevolence, well then why punish them afterwards?’
Between you and me, there is nothing duller than a hero with a good heart.
The alluring ones are all depraved, winners all have the devil inside.
Do you find it amusing?
Indeed I might ask of the creator of such overwhelming evil this: ‘Are you good or evil?’ But the truth is that I hardly have the strength to even broach the subject.
I too fall back on cliché: ‘Let us never equate a writer’s personality with his work.’
You know evil better than I.
But you are punishing me.
Not because I am bad but because I am questioning the very nature of evil. The gall!
Truth be told, I was expecting a little more compassion from a colleague.
No, I will not lie to you on such a night. I have also committed crimes, but my punishment is far greater than what others have received.
Observing people, hunting down their weaknesses like a hound, taking in the scent, just like a dog – these are my crimes. All I need is a faint scent in the air.
And I’m off.
Digging up their secrets.
I don’t know why I derive such pleasure from these pursuits but for me there is truly nothing more enticing than the secret of another human being.
You leave them no choice but to hide these secrets, and I then try to find what they are keeping from you, and from others.
You shouldn’t have rewarded evil and forbidden it, there shouldn’t be so many secrets, this thing called literature should never have been invented.
Is this my sin?
Am I at fault?
While all the secrets you know are hidden, isn’t the greatest crime bringing them to light?
Or is it to show how hopeless and pathetic you have left your subjects?
Will Hamiyet’s nephew burn in hell?
He’s only twenty and he’s committed the gravest sin.
I knew he was a sinner from the moment I saw him. Is it a sin for me to recognise a sinner like that?
But how can I explain how you leave a sign that allows me to identify them?
I don’t want a secret sign for sin, a trace of your work, yet I see these mysterious clues, faint codes hidden somewhere in the eyes, the lips, the bodies, a blatant sign, a seal that you have pressed upon them, and I can see it.
That’s when I watch them.
I’ve been watching Hamiyet’s nephew for some time. His name is Yavuz, internet codename ‘my aunt’. The moment I saw the username, I knew I was on the right track.
I started chatting with him.
I told him I was twenty-two years old and that I was attracted to my aunt.
Initially he was shy but I knew he wanted to share something with me. I’d come to know that for many the internet was a kind of confessional, a place where people wanted to speak and share the sins too heavy to carry on their own, and with people they would never meet in the real world.
My crime is pretending to be a stranger. Yes, it is a crime. And yes, I have done so many times. I have stolen secrets from people I know. I have lied to them. I have made them talk.
This kid sat alone in the coffeehouse, and never spoke to anyone, as if in another world, an absent look in his eye. Even on the internet he was reluctant to open up.
But slowly and over time, by spinning lies about myself, inventing sins, I was able to bring him to the point of confessing to me.
At first he only asked me questions. I liked my aunt? When did I first realise this? Does she know? How does she act when I’m around? Have I ever seen her naked?
In fact these were the very questions he wanted me to ask him.
That much I understood.
So among my own confessions I started to ask him the occasional question.
‘Do you like your aunt?’
‘Yes.’
It actually took us some time to get this far.
‘Does she know?’
There was a long silence. I felt like he might close the chat.
‘I suppose so,’ he wrote.
‘Have you ever seen her naked?’
Another long silence.
‘Yes.’
‘How did it happen?’
He started to explain.
‘One night I came home and I thought she wasn’t there. Then I heard the water running and I went to the bathroom. The door was open and she was in the bath, her eyes closed. She didn’t see me.’
‘Did you watch?’
‘Yes.’
As Yavuz answered my questions, Hamiyet was a few steps away, speaking to the furniture as she dusted. I looked up at her as I read his words.
The people here were like the town itself, silent on the surface but sinful beneath the still façade. You can either drive right past without noticing a thing or, like me, you could stop and take a closer look. And eventually you would be drawn in.
‘What was her body like?’
It was a difficult question, one that might frighten him, but I couldn’t help but ask.
‘Full, big boobs, a bit of a belly, strong legs, beautiful.’
‘What was she doing?’
‘Rubbing soap over her body.’
And then before I could ask another question he wrote ‘I need to go now’ and the screen went blank.
He was scared of what he’d just told me, of revealing his secret; he was scared of himself.
I knew he would come again but he needed time to let this initial confession sink in. People never get it all out in the first go; there’s always something missing, lies wedged in along the way, doors left open to scramble back through. So you have to wait patiently for the final story, without ever pushing. But once they start they almost always finish.
The hardest part is getting that first confession out.
He was offline for two days.
I saw him at the coffeehouse, sitting quietly in a corner, not joining any of the conversations, not joking with anyone, only thinking with an enigmatic smile on his face, a smile that only someone privy to his secret would have known. I knew what he was thinking.
His sin had set him apart from the others and he was practically consumed by it.
As long as he didn’t speak about it, he could revel in the pleasure it brought him without acknowledging it was indeed a forbidden act. But still he had to tell someone. He wanted to share the feeling, and listen to the sinful thoughts of others to know that he was not the only guilty one.
One day I went back to the cradle-maker and asked him why we were so drawn to sin. He responded, ‘Indeed the creator endowed us with sin. But why?’
He looked up at me over his cradle.
Then he lowered his head and said, ‘The sins of man bring us together. We gather to share our sins so that we will be stronger in facing them the next time, to know that others have sinned too. If not for these we would be forever isolated, stranded on our own mountaintops. We are united by sin.’
He looked at me with a broad, luminous smile and added, ‘But we should gather to do good deeds. Sin brings us together and then we endeavour to do good only to purge ourselves of sin.’
For a while we were silent.
Then without looking up at me, he spoke: ‘Don’t doubt the creator, my friend. Whatever obstacles he has set before us it is for the good of humanity. You cannot attain perfection without passing through these trials of fire. Sins are there for us to purge ourselves of them, and passing these trials you come closer to the light of the creator. This is the difference between man and beast – the struggle with sin and then achieving salvation.
Maybe he was right, maybe all these cities, towns and villages were nothing but vast fairgrounds of sin where we secretly gathered to share them with one another.
I wondered if that old man who whittled away at his cradles really knew the sins we so desperately needed to share. Does he know what will become of the little creatures that will soon sleep in his cradles?
I don’t think so.
I was the one who knew.
I was the one who pursued them.
I was the one who studied sin and indulged in it.
And there were so many I had yet to discover.
The day after I saw Raci Bey I asked about the incident at the restaurant and they told me that the man he’d slapped was the driver of the digger up on the hill.
XIX
‘why does a woman want to have children?’
I leaned back and smiled.
But the sentence that followed knocked me out.
‘i decided to have a baby with mustafa … i won’t marry him … i’m just going to have a baby.’
‘why?’
The screen was blank for a few minutes, and just when I thought the connection was gone she started.
‘i can’t get over him … he’s like no one else in my life … i call it love … but maybe that’s not it … but the end result is the same … call it whatever you like … i just can’t get over him … it’s like a curse … the more i struggle to get free, the deeper i sink … maybe if just once i could really have him then i might not want to ever see him again …
