A Useless Man

The Hairspring

“How many minutes left?”

Clearly confused, he said:

“Till what?”

I looked at him, surprised.

“Till we get out of here, my dear,” I said.

“Oh …”

Then he pulled a good-sized silver watch out of his pocket. Prying his eyes away from the blackboard, he looked down at it. He seemed calm, and a little afraid:

“Seventeen minutes …”

The spring afternoon came into the classroom in waves; flies were mating on the broad classroom windows, paying the botany teacher no heed. He was talking to us about seeds. They seemed to float in the thick, white light around us.

A sharp poke from behind. I spun around to hear someone say:

“How much time left? Ask him.”

“You ask him. I already did.”

The voice behind me:

“You beast.”

I turned to the pensive boy beside me and said:

“Celil, efendi, my good man, I was wondering if you could tell me how much time is left?”

My friend was about to ask me again, “how many minutes until what?” But looking into my eyes he made the connection and pulled out his good-sized watch. With great reluctance, he said:

“Two minutes.”

Every class went like this. Because he was the only one with a watch. Over the course of every lesson, he would take his timepiece out of his vest pocket. And then, in that deep, hoarse voice of his, he’d say:

“Ten minutes … Five minutes, twenty minutes, time’s up …”

Lessons back then lasted fifty minutes. Once, I heard him calling out to the back: “Forty-five minutes!” There was shame in his voice that day, and exasperation.

But he was as punctilious about this duty as he was about his studies. Only during long breaks do I remember him looking at his watch without an audience. Though sometimes, as a lesson drew to a close, his thin and beautiful face would pale as his weary eyes went heavy with sleep. He would look down at his watch then, too.

After that first time, I never had to ask him again; he would just tell me.

One by one my hopes of going up to the next class were dashed. My heart was bitter and sad. In geometry class, where I didn’t understand a thing, I never asked him for the time and neither did any of the others. Even the lazy students applied themselves. There was no time to ask for the time. I was pretty much the only one who dozed off. I could almost feel the steam rising up from my melting brain.

We were in geometry class, going over and over which factor went with which variable, and I just couldn’t factor in any of it! I was stuck, and I turned to my friend.

There was something quick and bright about his sun-tanned face. I nudged him with my shoulder almost as if by accident. He turned and smiled at me. His eyes narrowed in on the angle on the blackboard.

“So it’s like this,” he said, “the outer angle of this triangle is equal to the two combined angles in this triangle because …” and he stopped.

He didn’t want to make me feel bad, forcing his knowledge of geometry on me, and he said:

“I’ll explain it later. Let’s see what time it is.”

His thick, long fingers plucked his watch out from his vest pocket with an uncanny ease. He cast his sad eyes over the face of his watch. They were fixed there for some time. Clearly he was still trying to work out the equation.

I was restless. The teacher was now looking at both of us. Then suddenly my friend turned to look at me. His eyes were swimming with anguish.

“I suppose I forgot to set it. It’s not running.”

He tried winding it. But the hairspring kept slipping. Crestfallen, he said:

“The hairspring’s broken.”

I didn’t think anything of it, and for the first time I actually paid attention in geometry class. It was fun.

We had religion after geometry. The teacher had a way of speaking that bored us to death. He was an old man with a voice that was even older, and his passion for the subject had long since disappeared. But religion was a class where we could relax, because we never listened to that dull and mind-numbing voice. His examples were no good and the comparisons he concocted either had little or nothing to do with the topic.

Soon everyone was asking my friend for the time, whispering from near and far. Hearing them, he said, “The hairspring’s broken.” In the back row there was a student we didn’t know very well. He was probably repeating the year. Or maybe he was our age, but he looked like an old man. The way he talked and the way he smoked reminded us of those strange men we saw in the neighborhood coffee houses; he was from the streets. He gave off those dark desires. When he called out from the back, his voice was rough, even unbridled. Or maybe he was trying to bring the poor teacher back to life:

“Damn, Celil! How many minutes left, for the love of God …”

My friend blushed bright red. I could see sorrow in his face, but also rage and loathing. He turned around and stared at the brute in the back without saying a word. I’m sure the brute would have beaten him to a pulp if the teacher had been the sort of man who would let a brute beat a boy who wouldn’t hurt a fly. But the teacher was not that sort of man. With a kindly smile on his sallow face, he said:

“Celil, efendi, my son, could you have a look at your watch? I would also like to know how much longer I must wait until I can leave.”

Ashamed, Celil stood up:

“Sir, the hairspring on my watch is broken.”

Silence from the back. And then a shout:

“Boooo … The hairspring’s broken … Go, hairspring Celil, go … Hairspring! Hairspring!”

Then there were cries from the back and the front:

“Hairspring! Hairspring!”

I never imagined that the nickname would stick, and neither did my friends. But even before he left the classroom, Celil himself seemed to know.

Within days, no one even remembered what his real name was. Even I wasn’t sure what to call my sad-eyed friend: Celil or Hairspring.

I couldn’t call him Celil because everyone else in the class called him Hairspring. And for the same reason, I couldn’t call him Hairspring.

When they called him by that name, he would lower his head and do his best to ignore them; but on the second or third time, he’d turn to face them, calmly, furiously. But he wouldn’t say a word.

It was the last class of the day. My friend stood up to help a friend with his work. On his desk there was a clean copy of a letter he’d been scribbling out since the beginning of class. Though I knew it was a tasteless thing to do, I read the letter out of the corner of my eye, as if my friend had never left.

Dearest Father,

I received your letter dated the 8th of this month. I can’t tell you how happy I was to hear from you. The weather here has been excellent. Though yesterday clouds covered the sky, and it rained buckets. The Nilüfer plain was so beautiful in the rain. The entire plain stretches out in front of my window. In the mornings it’s covered in mist, and it reminds me of the sea, and I think of Gemlik (that’s where Celil was from) and I long to see you. I’m studying hard like you told me to. But father, if I may, I need to ask a favor of you. You know the watch you gave me on our journey to school. It’s broken. You know the metal piece inside … what’s it called, that curly steel bit inside? Well, that’s broken. If someone is going that way next week I’ll give them the watch. The school is full of clocks. I don’t even need a watch. You can have it repaired and use it yourself. Love to you and mother and waiting for good news from you, my father.

Your son,

Celil