A Useless Man

Papaz Efendi

The church was just across the street from us. It was hemmed in by pines, which at twilight would sink into shadow, leaving the brick walls of the church to glow red and hot against a dark blue sky. Often we’d see a crow or a poet seagull landing beside the cross on the roof, which, lacking a bell tower, had been restored many hundreds of times by Greek master builders of the Orthodox faith (or others oblivious to it), and at times like these it seemed more like the home of a Byzantine feudal lord than a church. It wasn’t an ugly building, but it wasn’t pretty either. It had only one main dome; where there should have been smaller domes, there were holes and crenels that looked like gutters. By day it all looked rather crude and tired, but when the evening blues and greens turned dark enough to seep into the color of the tiles, the church looked so close you almost thought you could reach out and grasp the cross on the top and pull away the entire tableau, without so much as frightening a bird away, to stencil it onto a dark blue background in your notebook or hang it on your wall, to savor forever after. That’s how the church looked to me on May evenings. As a child I was always trying to get those evenings onto the page, perhaps I lamented the fact I wasn’t a painter or a child putting stickers in his notebook. The bell tower was in the front yard, though you couldn’t really call such a thing a bell tower. It had two bells: a big one that rang on the days someone died and a small one that rang to announce ferryboat and prayer times to the village. I first saw Papaz Efendi sitting cross-legged with a black hat in his lap on a board between two pines, a little behind the bells. His beard was pitch-black, and so were his eyes. He was wearing a raw silk shirt that he seemed to have slipped into without using his hands. It shimmered in the sunlight. The greasy tufts of hair hanging over his forehead gave him the look of an unruly child.

“Hello, sir.”

“Hello, Papaz Efendi.”

“How are you, sir? We’re neighbors, I believe.”

“That’s true.”

Whenever he flashed his bright teeth beneath his black beard, he suddenly looked less Orthodox, less Byzantine. Having shed his churchman’s mask, he would take on the delightful aspect of a workman relishing a meal.

“Tell your mother I’ll be tending the garden over the winter.”

“I’ll tell her.” And I did.

Early next morning I found Papaz Efendi tilling the garden with a spade. His long raincoat hung over an apple tree like a scarecrow. He had pale, muscular arms and long, white fingers that kept a firm grip on the spade. Leaning over, he picked up a handful of dirt:

“I love the earth for its quiet, its humility, its passion, its peace. The earth is the source of all life. How could anyone be more alive than the earth? That’s why they say we’re made of the earth.”

“So you’re a philosopher, Papaz Efendi?”

“Oh I’m not a philosopher and I’m not a priest. I’m a human being without any earth to call my own. Or home, or religion.”

“Religion?”

“In a way, absolutely. But if there’s a God, I suppose He created us to live. On those terms, I can accept Him.”

He paused.

“But let’s forget all that. Think of the earth …”

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Sixty-three.”

“What?”

He stood straight and tall: There wasn’t a pinch of spare flesh or flab on his body; well proportioned and straight as a rail, nothing he didn’t need.

“Heavens, that’s impossible. You don’t look a day over forty.”

“I live to eat. I’ll drink my fair share of wine if it’s around, and you’ll never see me without a cigarette hanging from my lips. I’ll eat leaves and birds and if there’s nothing else, I’ll eat the earth — but never human flesh. It’s my stomach — I have an iron stomach. But I don’t eat much, just the amount I need to get the gears turning. I’ll never overindulge, but I like my food and drink. It keeps me young. And another thing — I never listen to what others have to say about me: ‘The papaz drinks rakı, he gets drunk, he chases after girls, he laughs too much.’ That’s what they say. Well, let them talk. To me it’s mindless chatter, nothing more. I’ve always wanted to make something of my life but I never did. I never gambled, no, I never went that far. Of course, there’s a part of me that wishes I had. When I was young there was a time when I ate nothing but bread and onions, and if a pretty girl walked past me, I’d whinny like a colt.”

“I don’t believe you, Papaz Efendi.”

“That’s the way I was, sir. And why not? Because I’m a priest? I’m in love with beautiful things: beautiful women, good wines, and grass and trees and flowers and birds — everything that’s beautiful.”

And he spoke beautiful Turkish.

“You’ll have to excuse me now. But I’ll see you soon.” And with a soft thud he drove his spade into the moist red earth.

“Here, have a look,” he said. “How is this any different from a handful of gold? What’s gold to us anyway?”

He leaned over and pulled up a tuft of curled couch grass and looked me in the eye and smiled, showing me his sturdy teeth.

“Our teeth are strong because we don’t have gold, because we love the earth and are nourished by it. It’s a blessing not to have gold. If we did we’d have long since died of overindulgence. Our livers could never have taken it.”

When Papaz Efendi’s tussle with our little garden was over, he stood there like a man who’d won a lover’s quarrel, compassionate and proud; and there, bedecked with flowers, was the beauty who’d submitted to his will: the radiant earth. Every tree had the perfect number of branches. Not a trace of unwanted couch grass on the ground. The tomato vines had grown high.

As he surveyed the garden’s middle rows — the cucumber flowers and the newly budding yellow squash — he puffed on a cigarette, his reward for a job well done.

I watched him from my window: he was sitting on a rock eating sunflower seeds and flicking the shells over the great mounds of earth, marveling at their flight. It was a late May afternoon and heavy lightning clouds had gathered in the sky like mist. He saw me and looked over his garden.

“Well, what do you think?”

I looked out.

“Magnificent, Papaz Efendi. You’ve won,” I said.

He thought for a moment.

“I am a soldier of the seed. The soil is my battlefield. Defeat would sully my name. Come on down.”

He was standing tall in the garden, leaning against his spade, and he seemed to me the spitting image of the shepherd from the Holy Book.

“You look like a victorious general,” I said.

He smiled.

“Pasha Papaz Aleksandros,” he said.

And he picked up a handful of moist red earth and rubbed it into his beard.

“Iron, magnesium, phosphorus, calcium, everything’s here,” he said. “But I know seeds. They’re little granaries, little eggs. But this thing, the earth, well that’s something else, something I could never understand. A scientist can analyze it and tell us there’s so much of this and so much of that. But seeds, well there’s no problem providing everything they need: scent, color, vitamins, minerals, iron, phosphorus, arsenic, sugars and, who knows what else?”

“Is that all? What about sunshine and the rain?”

“They’re less important, somehow. Maybe because they’re too proud. Rain makes us beg and pray for it, and when it comes pouring down from the sky, we rejoice and give our thanks to the Lord. And while the sun shimmers all day long in the sky, the earth says, I have something for every one of you. You can’t live without me. Without me all your efforts would be smoke. All winter the earth lies and waits silently beneath our feet, soiling our boots and our clothes. It’s pitch-black, or the color of ash, or yellow, or dark red, or lifeless mud or clay. Then with spring it releases unbridled joy. It showers us with its bounty, and the festival begins: clover spreads across the pastures. Poppies and daisies cover the hilltops. Even the straw brooms seem to smile. The earth gives without asking for anything in return. It’s generosity, sheer generosity! And then, after it has showered us with so much joy, it begins to recede. It decays and gives birth. It decays and gives birth. Women are of the earth, that much is clear. Mother Earth. Mother Earth! There’s a little earth in every female. Perhaps men are children of the sun. Perhaps we’re made of air and water. But women — they’re made of the earth.”

He opened his hand and let the soil fall over his eggplant seedlings.

“Have you ever heard me sing?”

“No,” I said.

“I have a beautiful voice. You should hear me sing. When I sing my prayers, it’s not Jesus and his father I’m praising. It’s the earth. You should hear me. These Byzantine dirges are dreadful. They’re painful and they’re false. The world they paint is an illusion. It’s a kind of slow madness, full of longing, and grief. Lust and enslavement. But I sing them differently. Everything changes when I sing with the earth in mind. The island has two beautiful voices. One is mine. No one doubts that. The other belongs to the fisherman Antimos. Have you ever heard him sing?”

“No, I haven’t,” I said.

“I’m sure you have, but you weren’t really listening. He sings when he’s weaving or mending his nets. You can’t understand the beauty of his voice if you’re too close. It’s nothing but a faint echo. He sings so softly you hardly hear him. Would you like to hear him? Take a rowboat out to sea when he sings beside the kiosk on the shore. Row out for ten minutes or so and stop in the middle of the sea. That’s when you’ll hear the fisherman’s song. When you’re just beside him you can’t really hear him, but no matter where else you go in the sea you’ll hear him. And so clearly that … Then listen to him for a while. At first you’ll feel restless, overwhelmed. Then start rowing swiftly, moving farther out from shore. Then even farther! Don’t be afraid. The voice will find you. And from the moment you stop hearing, to the moment you begin rowing toward it again, you will know. Maybe you’ve gone out just to catch a fish or two. But when you look into the sea and see its fish and the light on the water and the lapping waves splashing all around you, you will understand — this song is not of God, but of man. The fisherman might think he’s singing to God, but he’s not — he’s singing for the sea. He’s eighty years old, and he’s never hurt a soul. He’s spent his life weaving nets and taking his sustenance from the sea. If he didn’t fish for two days, he’d go hungry, but for seventy years he’s fished every day, catching enough to buy his daily bread. Nothing more. He’s found a treasure that offers him the same bounty every day and nothing more. He never deprives others of their fair share. I can’t tell you how much I love the song of thanks and praise that he sings for the sea. In church, I sing for the earth. But it’s a sinner’s lament. I earn my living peddling a drug that has deceived humankind for centuries. I am the opium for those who can’t sleep. Who knows what my people would do if they knew that every time I don my golden robe, I pray only for the earth. They’d leave me and I’d go hungry, hungry!”

He scooped up another handful of earth and said:

“I say my prayers for the earth. Listen to me and to the fisherman, too. He sings for the depths of the sea. He’s a holy man who has found truth, though he doesn’t know it. Eighty years old and in his whole life he’s only ever hurt a fish! But I’m a clever sinner. I envy fishermen and farmhands who till the soil. Only them and no one else …”

Once I heard Papaz Efendi preach, and I listened to the fisherman Antimos, both close and from a distance, and though the Byzantine litany remained a mystery to me, the songs gnawed away at me like dark worms, for days on end.

The two voices were always ringing in my ears and on sleepless nights I would listen to them through my window. I’d fall so deeply into myself I could hear the flow of blood in my veins.

When Papaz Efendi tilled the soil: now that was something worth seeing. His joy seemed boundless. The only priest-like thing about him left was his beard, as black as the beards of the youngest men of the earliest race of man. The villagers didn’t take well to Papaz Efendi, but he never begrudged them. He’d have long and friendly chats with anyone. He paid no heed to their gossip. Once, in the coffeehouse, he said:

“Now who’s the one saying I’m a ladies’ man?”

When no one said a word he looked directly into the eyes of the man who’d stirred up the gossip.

“Enjoying women is like breathing, and how can we live without breathing, my friends?”

One moonlit night I saw Papaz Efendi sipping cold rakı on the top of the island with a group of Greek men and women celebrating around a roasted lamb. His dark mohair frock tunic was tucked into his belt. It glistened in the moonlight as he danced with a plump young girl. In one hand he held her little hand and a pure white napkin that looked like mastic; in his other hand he held his glass of rakı; and every so often he stopped to mop her brow.

In the winter I’d go out to the island on Saturdays now and again. I’d find Papaz Efendi in the garden. He’d show me his spinach and onions.

“You shouldn’t come out here alone. It’s cold. You need someone to make you salad,” he said. On the days I wasn’t alone in our house, and Papaz Efendi saw the reflection of a woman in the window, he would flash me a smile, baring a row of strong teeth, and it was like the sun shimmering off the sea on a summer afternoon.

Papaz Efendi passed away last summer. He died of liver failure. His stomach was the size of a balloon.

“It’s cirrhosis. I shouldn’t have contracted something like this. I don’t believe in illness. The pain’s only in my head.”

“What’s happened, Papaz Efendi? There’s a rumor going around.”

“Don’t pay any attention to that. I did, and now I’m dying. That dishonorable villager slandered me. It’s a lie. You have to believe me. But maybe I’ll survive. I’ll get through this one, too.”

But he didn’t, and he died. Papaz Efendi was only guilty of leading on a silly girl. Three days before he died I saw him in a countryside café. His face was pale. This was the day I noticed the pockmarks under his beard. But she was still young, still beautiful. He’d lost a lot of weight but his stomach was clearly bloated.

“They started talking about it the other day,” he said. Then he pointed to a bright young girl with sun-kissed legs.

“Now if all this gossip had to do with a girl like that I wouldn’t feel such a pain in my heart.”

“But I thought you never gave such gossip any notice, Papaz Efendi.”

“It’s gotten to me this time, and now it’s under my skin,” he said. “Why are people so obsessed with each other’s lives? I suppose with death knocking at the door it’s harder to bear. Otherwise I wouldn’t mind. But who knows? Are they all just backstabbing fools and liars and thieves? Don’t I know that they’re all after each other’s livelihood, their wives and their daughters? But I’m not like that. I have three more days, and I intend to spend them laughing, and loving Mother Earth, and marveling at beautiful girls.”

Three days later, Papaz Efendi was dead.