The New Life Read online

Page 12


  I don’t even want to remember the rest of the night. My role was to console Janan, who was weeping for Nahit alias Mehmet, and perhaps this was not too much to ask, but I was reduced to having to remind Janan that we already knew that Mehmet-Nahit had not actually died in a traffic accident; he had only made it appear as if he had. We were sure to find Mehmet walking in the wondrous streets somewhere in the heart of the steppe, and he would have transformed the wisdom he gleaned from the book into his own existence in the wondrous realm where new life is possible.

  Even though this conviction was actually stronger in Janan than in me, anxiety created violent storms in my dolorous beauty’s soul; so I was forced to explain to her at length why I thought we were on the right track. Look how we had managed to sneak away from the dealers’ convention without getting into any trouble! And look how we had managed to follow an internal logic that only appeared coincidental, ending up in this mansion where the object of our quest had spent his childhood, in this very room that was full of his traces. The reader who senses the sarcasm in my tone perhaps perceives that the scales had fallen off my eyes, that the enchantment that invaded my whole being and illuminated my soul—how shall I put it?—had changed direction. While Janan was grief-stricken merely because Mehmet-Nahit was assumed to be dead, I was despondent because I now understood that our bus trips would never again be the same.

  After a breakfast of bread, honey, ricotta cheese, and tea with the three sisters, we saw the museum of sorts on the second floor that Doctor Fine had dedicated to the memory of his fourth child, and only son, who was burned to death in a bus accident. “My father wishes for you to see this,” Rosamund said, putting a very large key surprisingly easily into a small keyhole.

  The door opened into a magical silence. The smell of old magazines and newspapers. Low light filtered through the curtains. Nahit’s bed and coverlet embroidered with flowers. Photographs of Mehmet’s childhood, adolescence, and his Nahit period hanging on the walls inside frames.

  My heart had speeded up under a strange compulsion and it was beating wildly. Rosamund whispered to point out Nahit’s primary and secondary school report cards, his honor roll certificates. In hushed tones, all A’s. Little Nahit’s still muddy soccer shoes, his short pants with suspenders. A Japanese make kaleidoscope ordered from an Ankara store called Jonquil. In the dimly lit room, finding correspondences to my own childhood gave me shivers, and I was feeling as scared as Janan had said she was, when Rosamund pulled aside the curtains and whispered that during his years in medical school her darling brother used to stay up all night reading and smoking whenever he was home, and then in the morning he would open this window to gaze at the mulberry tree.

  There was a silence. Then Janan asked what books Mehmet-Nahit had been reading during that period. The eldest sister had a brief attack of uncertainty and indecision. “My father didn’t think it was appropriate to keep those on the premises,” she said, and then she smiled as if consoling herself. “But these can be looked at,” she said, “the stuff he read in his childhood.”

  She was pointing to the bookcase next to the bed, which was full of children’s magazines and comic books. I didn’t want to come any closer to the bookcase because I wished to avoid over-identifying with the child who had once read these publications, besides I was afraid Janan might become emotional and burst into tears in this unnerving museum; yet my resistance was broken when my hand reached out of its own volition to touch the picture on the cover of one of the magazines neatly stacked in the case, the colors on their spines looking quite familiar although somewhat faded.

  The picture on the cover showed a twelve-year-old kid who was clinging with one hand to the thick trunk of a tree, on which the leaves had been drawn painstakingly but due to the bad printing job the green had bled outside the lines, while with the other hand he had grabbed the hand of a blond kid who was the same age as himself, saving him at the last minute before he fell into a bottomless ravine. Both of the child heroes wore expressions of terror. In the background was a wild American landscape rendered in grays and blues, with a vulture circling in anticipation of a disaster and spilled blood.

  I sounded out the syllables of the title the way I used to when I was a child: NEBÎ IN NEBRASKA. I flipped through the comic book, which was one of Uncle Rıfkı’s earlier efforts, remembering the adventures that took place within the pages.

  Young Nebî is appointed by the Sultan to represent Muslim children at the Chicago World’s Fair. There, a kid called Tom who happens to be an American Indian tells Nebî about his problem, so they go to Nebraska together to solve it. White men who have their eyes on the lands where Tom’s forefathers have for centuries hunted buffalo are encouraging Tom’s Indian tribe to become addicted to alcohol, handing guns as well as bottles of whiskey to tribal youths with a penchant for bad behavior. The conspiracy Nebî and Tom bring to light is absolutely merciless: getting peaceful Indians drunk enough so they will revolt, then getting the federal army to squash the rebels and drive them off the land. The rich hotel and bar owner who tries to push Tom into the sheer ravine falls into it himself and dies, so the children save the tribe from falling into the trap.

  Janan was looking through MARY AND ALI because the title sounded familiar to her; it was about the adventures of a boy from Istanbul who had also gone to America. He arrives at Boston harbor on the steamship he has embarked on in Galata in search of adventure; at the docks he meets Mary, who is weeping with great big sobs and looking at the Atlantic Ocean because her stepmother has turned her out of her own home; the two kids set out on the road west in search of her absent father. They pass through St. Louis, which looks like the illustrations in Tom Mix comics; they make their way through the white forests of Iowa where Uncle Rıfkı has placed in dark corners the shadows of wolves; and they arrive at a sun-drenched paradise, having left behind them all the errant cowboys, bandits that attack railway cars, and Indians who circle wagon trains. In the green and bright valley, Mary understands that true happiness is not finding her father but comprehending the Sufi virtues of Peace, Resignation, and Patience which she has learned from Ali; and heeding a sense of duty, she returns to be with her brother back in Boston. As for Ali, he thinks to himself, “When you come to think of it, injustice and wickedness exist everywhere in the world”; and looking back at America from the deck of the clipper he has boarded feeling homesick for Istanbul, he says, “What is important is to live in such a way that the goodness inside you is kept intact.”

  Instead of growing despondent as I imagined she might, Janan had cheered up considerably turning the ink-smelling pages that reminded me of the dark and cold winter nights of my childhood. I told her I too had read the same comics as a child. Assuming she had not perceived the sarcasm in my words, I added that it was one more thing Mehmet alias Nahit and I had in common. I suppose I was behaving like some obsessive lover who thinks because his love is not requited his beloved must be insensitive. But I did not feel at all like telling her that the illustrator and writer who created these comics was someone I used to call Uncle Rıfkı. I did tell her of one instance when the author had felt like telling us readers why he was compelled to create these comic-book characters.

  “Dear Children,” Uncle Rıfkı had put in a brief note at the beginning of one of his comic books, “wherever I see you after school, be it in train compartments or in the street in my modest neighborhood, I always see you reading about Tom Mix or Billy the Kid’s adventures in cowboy magazines. I too love those brave and honest cowboys and Texas rangers. So I thought that if I told you the story of a Turkish kid among American cowboys, you might like it. Besides, this way you will be exposed not only to heroes who are Christians, but through the adventures of your plucky Turkish compatriots you will also come to cherish the ethics and the national values that our forefathers have bequeathed to us. If it is exciting to you that a kid from a poor neighborhood in Istanbul can draw a gun as fast as Billy the Kid or be as honest as Tom Mix, j
ust you wait until you read our next adventure.”

  Patiently, carefully, and as quietly as Mary and Ali had contemplated the wonders they met in the Wild Wild West, Janan and I studied for a long time the heroes Uncle Rıfkı had drawn in a world that was black and white, the dusky mountains, the terrifying woods, the cities teeming with odd inventions and habits. In law offices, in harbors full of schooners, in distant train stations, and among gold rushers, we met swashbucklers who sent greetings to the Sultan and the Turks, Negroes who had been freed from slavery and had embraced Islam, Indian chiefs who consulted shamans who were Central Asian Turks on their methods of making yurts, as well as farmers and their children who were so pure and good-hearted they were like angels. After reading some pages of a gory adventure where gunslingers mow each other down like flies, where good and evil bollix up the heroes by trading places time after time, or where the ethics of the Orient are compared to the rationalism of the Occident, one of the good and brave heroes gets shot in the back by a craven bullet, and just as he dies at daybreak he has an intimation that he is at the threshold of encountering an angel. But Uncle Rıfkı had not rendered the angel on the page.

  I put together the issues in which a string of adventures related how Pertev from Istanbul and Peter from Boston become fast friends and turn America upside down, and I showed my favorite scenes to Janan: young Pertev with Peter’s help foils a crooked gambler who robs a town blind by virtue of a system of mirrors he has rigged up; then he runs the gambler out of town with the aid of townsmen who swear off poker and gambling. When crude oil comes gushing out right in the middle of a church, and the townspeople, who are divided among themselves, are ready to come to blows and fall into the trap of either oil billionaires or exploiters of piety, Peter saves the day by giving an Atatürk-style speech on secularization, enlightened by ideas of Westernization which he has learned from Pertev. Not only that, young Pertev provides the initial electric idea that leads to the discovery of the light bulb by Edison, whom he meets when young Edison made his living selling newspapers in railway cars, by telling Edison that angels are created of light, that angels have a kind of mysterious electricity.

  But then, of all his works, Heroes of the Railroad was the one that most strongly reflected Uncle Rıfkı’s own enthusiasms and yearnings. In this story we see Pertev and Peter supporting the initiative to build a railroad from East to West across America. The railroad that would connect the country coast to coast was a matter of life and death for America, just like it was for Turkey in the thirties, but there were a great many enemies of the endeavor, such as the Wells Fargo Company or the minions of Mobil Oil, clergymen who refused to let the railway through their land holdings, or international rivals like Russia, sabotaging the railway men’s enlightened efforts by inciting the Indians, or instigating workers’ strikes, and encouraging young men to slash railway car seats with razors and knives, just as it was done on Istanbul commuter trains.

  “Should the railroad proposition fail,” Peter was saying anxiously in one of the balloons, “the development of our country will be curtailed, and what people call accident will be a matter of fate. We must fight to the end, Pertev!”

  How I used to love those big exclamation marks that followed boldface ejaculations that filled up the balloons! “Look out!” Pertev would shout out to Peter, warning him to dodge the knife before some treacherous villain stabbed him in the back. “Behind you!” Peter would shout out to Pertev, who, without even bothering to look back, would swing his fist, which would connect with the chin of some enemy of the railways. Sometimes Uncle Rıfkı would mediate directly, inserting among the pictures small boxes into which he wrote in letters as spindly as his own legs words like SUDDENLY or NOW WHAT and ALL OF A SUDDEN, punctuating them with huge exclamation marks, at which point, as borne out by my own experience, Mehmet alias Nahit would be drawn into the story.

  Janan and I had been watching for sentences that took exclamation points when we read this one: “The things written in the book are now left behind me!” It was spoken by a character who had dedicated himself to the war against illiteracy and said to Pertev and Peter when they visited him in his hut where, disappointed with his failed life, he had secluded himself.

  I pulled myself together when I realized Janan was becoming alienated from these pages where all Americans of good will were blond and freckled, all the evil ones had crooked mouths, where everyone thanked each other for every little thing, where vultures always picked all the corpses to shreds, and where cactus juice saved the lives of people who were dying of thirst.

  Instead of fantasizing that I might start life anew as another Nahit, I said to myself I had better disabuse Janan of her false dreams. She was getting sentimental looking at Nahit’s middle-school reports and the picture on his identification card. Just then Rosebud came in the room suddenly, like Uncle Rıfkı coming to the aid of his characters cornered by ill luck and adversity by inserting the small box that said SUDDENLY! She informed us that her father was expecting us.

  I had absolutely no idea what would happen to us next, neither did I have the least notion on what to base my calculations in order to get closer to Janan. Coming out of the museum dedicated to the Nahit period of Mehmet’s life, two instinctive thoughts occurred to me: I wanted to leave the scene, or I wanted to become Nahit.

  9

  Later, when the two of us went on a long walk on his estate, Doctor Fine generously offered me a choice between the two alternative lives, both of which I wanted. It is entirely coincidental when fathers seem to know, as if they were gods in possession of an infinite memory and books of records, the thoughts on their sons’ minds. In reality, they are merely projecting their own unrealized desires on their sons, or on perfect strangers that remind them of their sons. That’s all there is to it.

  I had been given to understand that once I had been shown the museum, Doctor Fine wanted us to go on a walk together and have a talk. We walked along the edges of fields where the wheat was waving in the breezes; we crossed fallow ground where a few sheep and cows were nuzzling the scarce herbage under apple trees on which the fruit was small and unripe. Doctor Fine showed me dens that had been excavated by moles; he drew my attention to tracks made by wild boars, and explained how the thrushes called fieldfares flying from the southern outskirts of the town toward the fruit orchards could be recognized by the small irregular beat of their wings. He explained a great many things besides, speaking in a voice that was instructive, patient, and not too far from being affectionate.

  He was not really a doctor. His cronies when he was doing his military service had nicknamed him Doctor just because he was cognizant of details that came in handy for small repairs, such as the eight-thread nut required for a certain bolt or the cranking speed of a field telephone. He had identified with the nickname because he loved equipment and enjoyed taking care of it, and because he had recognized that discovering the unique properties of each object constitutes the highest good. He had not studied medicine but the law in accordance with the wishes of his father, who had been a deputy member of parliament, and he had pursued a law practice in town; but when his father died and he inherited all the trees and lands to which he pointed with his index finger, he had decided to live as he pleased. Just as he pleased! Among products he had chosen himself, products he was accustomed to, products he himself knew. He had opened the store in town with this goal in mind.

  We were going up a hill that was partially warmed by rather hesitant sunlight when Doctor Fine divulged to me that objects had the capacity to remember. Just like ourselves, objects also had the faculty to record what happened to them and preserve their memories, but most of us were not even aware of it. “Substances inquire after each other, come to an agreement, whisper to one another, and strike up a harmony, constituting the music we call the world,” said Doctor Fine. “Those who are attentive hear it, see it, and comprehend it.” He could tell fieldfares had been nesting around the area by looking at the limy st
ains on the dried branch he had picked up; and having studied the signs in the mud, he explained to me how the branch had been broken two weeks ago by a certain storm.

  It seems that he sold merchandise he brought not only from Istanbul and Ankara but from manufacturers all over Anatolia, such as whetting stones that never wore down, handwoven rugs, locks made out of hammered iron, sweet-smelling wicks for kerosene stoves, simple versions of refrigeration, beanies made of fine grade felt, RONSON trademark flintstones, door handles, stoves made out of recycled gasoline barrels, small aquariums—anything at all that made sense to him, or anything that was sensible. The years he spent in the store where all sorts of basic human needs were supplied in a humane way had been the happiest years of his life. When he was granted a son after he had fathered three daughters, his happiness had been complete. He asked my age, and I told him. He said when his son died he had been the same age as me.

  From somewhere below the hill there came the sounds of children who were not visible to us. When the sun disappeared behind several insistent and dark clouds that traveled fast, we could see in the distance kids playing soccer on a bald playing field. There was a time lapse between seeing the ball being kicked and the moment we heard the sound. Doctor Fine said there were some among the children who perpetrated petty theft, and that the downfall of all great civilizations and the disintegration of their memories was first signaled by the moral degradation of the young. The young had the capacity to forget the old as quickly and painlessly as they could imagine the new. He added that the kids lived in town.

  When he was talking about his son, I felt enraged. Why were fathers so full of pride? How could they be so unconsciously cruel? I realized that his lenses made his eyes behind his glasses look unusually small. I remembered his son too had the same eyes.