Silent House Read online

  15

  Metin Goes Along for the Ride and for Love

  I popped the last bite of the watermelon into my mouth and got right up from the dining table.

  “Where’s this one going off to now without finishing his meal?” said Grandmother.

  “Grandmother,” said Nilgün, “he even finished his watermelon.”

  “Take the car if you want,” said Faruk.

  “If I need it, I’ll come get it,” I said.

  “Don’t feel obliged. I don’t want you to be embarrassed driving my broken-down Anadol around here.”

  Nilgün laughed out loud. I didn’t say anything. I went upstairs to get my key and my wallet, which gave me a feeling of superiority and security because it contained fourteen thousand liras, all the money I’d made working for a month in the summer heat. Giving a last buff to those moccasins I liked so much and throwing the green sweater my uncle had brought from London over my shoulders, I was on my way out the kitchen door when I saw Recep.

  “Where are you going without eating your eggplant, boss?”

  “I ate everything, even the watermelon.”

  “Bravo!”

  Walking out the garden gate I could still hear Nilgün and Faruk laughing. They’ll be at it all night long, I thought: one of them setting himself up for the other to laugh at and then a little later the other returning the favor, on and on like that, they’ll sit under the dim light of the lamp for hours, deciding that the whole world is unjust, idiotic, and stupid while forgetting about all the stupid things they do, and if Nilgün hasn’t gone to bed by the time Faruk has polished off a small bottle of raki, he may start pouring his heart out to her about the wife he lost, so probably when I get back tonight I’ll find him shitfaced at the table, and I’ll wonder where a guy like that gets off giving me grief every time he lends me his crummy car. If you’re so smart, how did you lose that smart, pretty wife of yours? Here they are sitting on a piece of land worth at least 5 million, but the plates they’re eating off are all chipped, the knives and forks don’t match, for a salt cellar they use an old medicine bottle the dwarf poked holes in with a rusty nail, while poor Grandmother, ninety years old, is spitting all over the place the entire time she eats and saying not a word … I walked all the way to Ceylan’s and found her mother and father watching television, just like poor people with no other entertainment. So I went down to the shore looking for them and, sure enough, everybody from earlier in the day was there, with the sole exception of the gardener who watered the garden from morning till night and must have been handcuffed to the end of the hose. I sat and listened:

  “In a little while when my parents go to bed we can watch a video.”

  “Oh, come on, you mean we are going to be stuck here all evening?”

  “I want to dance,” said Gülnur, swaying to some imaginary music.

  “We were going to play poker,” said Fikret.

  “Let’s go to Camlica and get tea.”

  “Fifty kilometers!”

  “We could go to a Turkish movie and make fun of it.”

  As the lighthouse on the island blinked on and off in the distance I watched its reflection in the still water and I breathed in the scent of the jasmine and the girls’ perfume that was hanging in the air. I thought about how I loved Ceylan, but some feeling I couldn’t figure out kept her at a distance. Just as I’d planned all night long in bed, I knew I had to explain myself to her, but when I thought about it, this “me” that I was going to tell her about seemed like it never really existed. The thing I called me was like a box within a box; it was like there was always something else inside it, maybe if I kept looking I could finally find my real self and express it, but every new box I opened had, instead of a real, true Metin that I could show to Ceylan, just another box hiding him. Then I thought: Love makes a person deceitful, but I had also thought that believing I was in love would relieve me of always feeling two-faced. Oh, if this waiting would just end! But I knew that I wasn’t even sure what I was waiting for. Just to calm myself down I decided to list, one by one, all my good points. It didn’t do any good.

  I caught up with the others, who had come to a decision. We got into the cars, making quite a racket, and went off to the disco at the hotel. There was no one there except for some stupid tourists. The others made fun of the tourists who had the whole world to take a vacation in and wound up coming to this ridiculous nowhere place.

  We got out on the floor, and I danced with Ceylan, but nothing happened. She asked me to calculate twenty-seven times thirteen and then seventy-nine times eighty-one, and when I did it she laughed, but I could tell she wasn’t impressed, and when the fast music started she said “I’m bored” and went to sit down. I went upstairs, and after groping along the silent carpeted corridors I found the amazingly clean toilet. When I saw myself in the mirror I thought, Goddamn it, all of this is because I believe I’m in love with a girl; I was disgusted with myself. Einstein probably wasn’t like this when he was eighteen. John D. Rockefeller probably wasn’t either. Then I took my time thinking how it would be when I was rich: I’d buy a newspaper in Turkey with the money I made in America, but I wouldn’t drive it into the ground like our rich idiots, I’d get the hang of running a paper and live a life like Citizen Kane, I’d be kind of a mythic guy living by himself, but I’d also want to be president of the Fenerbahçe Club. When I was rich, I would forget all the grotesque stuff and pretensions that I hated about rich people, but thinking of Ceylan got me sidetracked. I smelled the place on my shirt where she had touched me when we were dancing. Coming out of the toilet, I met the others on the stairs, we were off to somewhere else, we got into the cars.

  In Fikret’s Alfa Romeo there were knobs, indicators, signals, gauges, and blinking colored lights, just like a cockpit. I was just staring at them when Turgay’s car got really close, just before we got on the Istanbul-Ankara road. There someone decided the three cars should race as far as the Göztepe intersection. We zoomed beside the trucks and buses, under the pedestrian overpasses, past the gas stations, factories, coffeehouses, and people who’d stopped to watch us from the roadside, others getting some air on their balconies, repairmen, strikers, watermelon peddlers, and the guys running buffet stands and restaurants. Fikret kept honking the horn, especially when something exciting made everyone yell at once. At one red light, instead of braking Fikret dove into a side street barreling toward an Anadol at full speed, before pulling over to the side at the last second. “Jerk!” he said.

  “We passed them,” shouted Ceylan. “We passed all of them, step on it, Fikret!”

  “Guys, I want to have fun, not die,” said Zeynep.

  “Why, do you want to get married?”

  “This an Alfa Romeo. You have to know how to treat it right!”

  We won the race and then turned to Suadiye and got onto Baghdad Avenue. I really like that street because it doesn’t try to hide how disgusting it is; it openly proclaims that everything on it is fake! The repulsive marble of the apartment buildings, the ugly Plexiglas shop-windows, the hideous chandeliers hanging from the ceilings, the fluorescent glare in the pastry shops! I like all the disgusting things that are fine just being themselves. What’s wrong with a little honest vulgarity? If I had a Mercedes I’d certainly try to pick up one of these girls on the sidewalk. But don’t worry: I love you, Ceylan, sometimes I even love life! We parked the cars and went into another disco, one that doesn’t say it on the door; it says CLUB, but anybody who gives them two hundred fifty liras at the door can get in.

  Demis Roussos was singing, and I danced with Ceylan, but we didn’t say much and it didn’t feel right. She seemed bored, distracted, even sad, and as she stared right past me, as if she were by herself, at that moment, for some reason, I felt sorry for her and I thought how I could really love her.

  “What are you thinking?” I said.

  “Oh! Nothing!”

  We danced a little more. I guess we both felt uncomfortable about the tension
between us, because it was as if we were clinging to each other more to block it out than out of any enjoyment. But all these thoughts I had were just suspicions. A little later, the music that had turned out to be sappy more than sad ended, and a fast beat brought a new crowd fired up for fun onto the dance floor. Ceylan continued with them, but I sat down, and watching the fast dancers in the flashing colored lights, I thought: Look at them contorting themselves like stupid chickens! They’re only doing it because that’s what everybody does, not because it actually gives them any pleasure! When I dance, I know the stuff I’m doing is ridiculous, and it annoys me, so I tell myself that’s the price I have to pay, unfortunately, to make this girl like me, then I think: It’s okay, I’m joining in with these fools, but at the same time I’m not, so in the end I get the credit for being like them while at the same time I manage to be myself. There aren’t a lot of people who can pull that off! Eventually, I got up and joined their silly dance, so no one would say I was sitting here all by myself playing the silent withdrawn teenage loner.

  When we finally got up to go, Vedat and I pretended to pick up the check or at least pay our share, but as we expected, Fikret wouldn’t hear of it. Outside I saw that the others were tapping on the glass of Turgay’s BMW and laughing: Hülya and Turan were asleep in each other’s arms in the car! Zeynep let out a happy laugh full of admiration, as though she had special access to the love force.

  “Well, they never even got out of the car!” she said.

  I marveled that a boy and a girl my own age could wrap themselves in each other’s arms and fall asleep like real lovers.

  As we got on the Ankara road, Turgay’s BMW stopped at the watermelon peddler on the corner. Turgay got out and said something to the guy under the gas lamp. The watermelon guy turned and looked at the three cars that were waiting. A little later Turgay called over to Fikret in his car:

  “He says he doesn’t have any.”

  “It’s our fault,” said Fikret. “We came with too many people.”

  “He won’t sell us any?” said Gülnur. “What am I going to do now?”

  “If you’re willing to drink alcohol, we can get it somewhere.”

  “No way, I don’t want to drink. Let’s go to a pharmacy.”

  “What do you expect to get there? What do the others want to do?” asked Fikret.

  Turgay went to the other car. He came back a little later. “They say we should get drinks,” he said. He took a few steps, then stopped to say, “You know, they still haven’t filled up the embankments.”

  “I gotcha,” said Fikret.

  We took to the road. Before we got to Maltepe they picked out a car with German plates and suitcases piled on the roof so that its rear was practically dragging along the road.

  “And it’s a Mercedes!” shouted Fikret. “Okay, guys!”

  Fikret signaled to Turgay with his side lights, then slowed down and got behind him. We watched as Turgay’s BMW first made to pass the Mercedes, but then instead of speeding up as a passing car would, stayed to its left, forcing the other driver toward the edge of the road until the Mercedes lurched side to side a little and, then, like it or not, had to let one of its wheels roll onto the shoulder, just to avoid hitting Turgay’s BMW. Everybody laughed, saying the Mercedes was going like a crippled dog. Then Turgay hit the gas and took off, and when the Mercedes had righted itself, he called out to Fikret:

  “Okay, your turn!”

  “Not yet. Let him catch his breath.”

  There was only the driver in the Mercedes, some worker coming back from Germany, I figured. I didn’t want to think about it beyond that.

  “Absolutely do not look at him, guys!” said Fikret to us.

  First he passed the Mercedes the way Turgay had done, then little by little moved over to the right. As the Mercedes started to blow his horn like crazy, the girls giggled, though they were probably a little afraid. When Fikret moved a little more to the right, and the guy from Germany’s wheel lurched over the edge again, they burst out laughing.

  “Did you see that guy’s face?”

  A little later, after we had zoomed on after Turgay, Vedat’s car must have done the same maneuver, because we heard the Mercedes’s hopeless angry horn sounding. We all met up at the next gas station, and they turned off their lights and hid. When the guy from Germany slowly passed by, they stomped their feet, laughing uncontrollably.

  “But really I feel sorry for the poor guy,” said Zeynep.

  When they started reenacting their stunts and comparing notes to see who had riled up the guy from Germany most, I got fed up. I went to the station’s canteen and ordered a bottle of wine, which I got them to open.

  “You from Istanbul?” asked the clerk.

  The interior of the canteen was brightly lit, like a jewelry-shop window. I don’t know why but I felt like hanging around there a little, sitting and listening to the woman singing Turkish songs on his little radio, just to forget everything. Conflicting thoughts about love, evil, affection, and success, were going through my head, all jumbled together.

  “Yes, I’m from Istanbul.”

  “Where are you all going like this?”

  “We’re just driving around!”

  The guy shook his tired, sleepy head, knowingly. “Haa! With the girls …”

  I seemed to be getting ready to say some things that could have been important, and he seemed ready to listen seriously, but the others started honking the horns outside. I ran and got in. Hey, where were you, they said, we won’t be able to catch up because of you. I had thought the game was over, but it wasn’t, not yet. We went full speed, and after Pendik we saw it again: the Mercedes slowly climbing the hill like a truck running out of gas. This time Turgay took the lead, closing in from the left and as he pushed the Mercedes to the right; Vedat bore down on its other side, after which we got behind it, so close we almost touched its bumper. He was caught in a vise that he could only escape by going faster than us. Eventually he tried to speed up, but he just couldn’t break away. We kept up the chase, blasting our horns nonstop, our high beams right on the guy’s neck. Then we opened the windows and blasted the radios, waving our arms out the sides, beating on the doors, whooping and singing along with the music. Things only got noisier as the panicked Mercedes stuck between us started honking desperately, and we went past I have no idea how many houses and factories and various neighborhoods in this crazy formation. Finally, when the guy from Germany got the idea to slow down, so that trucks and buses were getting jammed up behind us, we had to give him a last cheer and let him go. As we passed I turned to look him in the face, which I could just make out in the haze of his bright headlights: he didn’t seem to see us anymore. And we’d made him forget about his life, his memories, and his future.

  I didn’t want to think of him anymore either, and I drank some of my wine.

  We shot past the Cennethisar exit without even slowing down. The others seemed intent on squeezing past an Anadol with a ridiculous old husband and wife inside, but a little later they changed their minds. As they passed by the houses of ill repute beyond the gas station Fikret hit the horn and flashed the lights, but no one asked him why. After we went a little farther, Ceylan said, “Look what I’m going to do!”

  When I turned around I saw Ceylan’s bare legs sticking out the back window. Long and tanned, in the lights from the cars behind us, they looked poised and purposeful, like professional legs under the stage lights, sliding against each other as if probing for something in the air, as her feet, bare and pure white, twitched alertly against the wind. Gülnur pulled Ceylan by the shoulders and dragged her inside.

  “You’re drunk!”

  “I’m not the least bit drunk,” said Ceylan. She let out a happy laugh. “How much did I even drink! I’m just having so much fun!”

  Then we were all quiet. We continued on that way for a long time, as though in a hurry to get from Istanbul to Ankara to carry out some important mission, on and on through the rundow
n holiday towns, past factories and olive and cherry groves, without saying a word and oblivious to the music still playing and for no reason blasting the horns as we passed trucks and buses, not even paying attention to them. I thought about Ceylan and how I could love her for the rest of my life just on account of what she had just done.

  After we passed Hereke we stopped in a gas station, where we got some bad wine and sandwiches from the buffet. Eating on our feet, we mingled among the tired and timid passengers who had gotten off a bus. I saw Ceylan go over to the side of the road biting into her sandwich while her eyes followed the flow of vehicles, the way someone picnicking on a riverbank might absently watch the currents, and as I observed her I thought of my own future.

  A little later I saw Fikret walk slowly over to Ceylan in the darkness. He offered her a cigarette and lit it. They started to talk: they weren’t very far, but the noise of the traffic made it hard to hear what they were saying, and I was really curious. A little later this strange curiosity turned into a strange fear. I realized right away that I had to go over to them to beat the fear: but in the darkness, just like in dreams, I had this awful feeling of inferiority and shyness. But this loser feeling, like everything else, didn’t last for long. A little later we got back into the cars and went off into the night without thinking about anything.

  16

  Grandmother Listens to the Night

  When all that horrible hullabaloo lets up, when all that noise coming from the beach, the motorboats, the wailing kids, the drunken cursing, the songs, radios, and televisions, quiet down, and the last car goes screaming past, I slowly get up from my bed and stand just behind my shutters listening to the outdoors: nobody’s there, they’re all exhausted and have gone to sleep. Only the wind, occasionally the lapping waters of the sea, a rustling in the trees; sometimes there’s a cricket nearby, a confused crow, or maybe a dog barking for no reason. So I slowly push the shutters open and listen to them, I listen to the silence for a long time. Then I think about how I’ve lived for ninety years, and I am horrified. A breeze coming up from the bushes where my shadow falls seems to be chilling my legs, and I take fright; should I go back and wrap myself in the warm darkness of my quilt? But I stay there a bit longer to feel the promise of the silence; I wait and wait, as though something is going to happen, as though someone has promised to come, as though the world could show me something new, but at last I close the shutters and go back to sit on the edge of my bed and listen to the clock tick past one twenty in the morning, and I think: Selâhattin was wrong about this, too: there’s never anything new, nothing at all!