A Useless Man

The Valley of Violets

My friend was lost in thought. His head was resting in his gigantic hands. His half liter of wine stood half empty; his rank mackerel and rancid green beans were misery in still life; even someone who hadn’t eaten in days would know that the food was somehow alive, mourning its own decay: a single bite was bound to bring on sharp stomach pangs. Abandoned food in second-rate tavernas looks so forlorn: I see traces of the same resignation in men who haven’t chosen a mate and women who have not yet been chosen.

His name was Bayram: he was a big-boned man who spoke Turkish with an Albanian accent. Once upon a time he’d sold dried almonds that he turned back into fresh almonds with nitric acid and ash; after that he sold lottery tickets; then he was a driver, and for a while I suppose he was making a decent living, earning thirty or forty lira a day. That’s when I met him. But old habits die hard: he still dressed like a mobster and he could still burn through a week’s wage in a day. He hung out with the prettiest girls in the worst tavernas. Seher was one of them. She was incredibly tall. He had already moved in with her. I’d seen her in his car.

“Hey, my man,” he’d say. “You mark my words, that one’s a devil in disguise.”

And he’d crack his whip over his horses and the wiry mares would shoot through the narrow streets like lightning. So Bayram was living with Seher then, and they got into all sorts of fights. Once there was even a stabbing. He was on the run for days but eventually they caught him. They put him away for seven or eight months. That’s when Seher fell for an officer, she’d always had a thing for men in uniform. And then she stopped going to the taverna on Asmalimescit.

Bayram couldn’t work after that. His spine stuck out like pack poles on a saddleless camel. He’d start drinking in the morning. And he was bent on finding Seher. One day he drew an enormous knife out from under his belt and slashed her side. But she didn’t die. And she never told anyone who’d done it.

After she was released from the hospital she went back to the taverna but she refused to speak to Bayram. And that’s what really got to him. She was tough and had him tied up like a workhorse. But time went by and they made up and Bayram sold his carriage and his mares. And Seher burned through all his money. She was literally breaking Bayram’s back. By that time he was driving someone else’s carriage for ten lira a day. He didn’t like the people she spent time with. Eventually he lost his job driving the carriage and he went back to selling almonds.

I would find him drinking away his wages in the tavern; steeped in darkness, his face looking like a bombed-out European city. His eyes no longer flamed. The light had gone out of his chiseled face, the passion, too. And he had a harsh, dry cough. Some of the old luminosity came back when he was drinking, but the passion — it only returned when he headed out to kill Seher. Finding him in that pitiful state one night, I said:

“Bayram, my friend. What the hell’s happened? This is crazy.”

“Sit down,” he said, and then he shouted, “Barba! Another bottle of wine!”

Barba brought us a bottle of Çavuş white and we got pretty drunk. At one point Bayram gave me the strangest look; he was on the verge of saying something but stopped himself. I didn’t push him, but then he said:

“I love you like a brother, and you love me, right?”

“How could you think otherwise, Bayram?”

“So then would you take me home?”

“Sure. If you’re that drunk,” I said.

“No, not to my room,” he said. “Home, home, my real home. I haven’t been back in seven years.”

“Seven years?”

He smiled.

“One morning seven years ago, I left,” he said. “It was February and I had just turned twenty-one, but the waters in our stream were still as warm as a morning in spring, and the air was filled with the scent of violets. I set out for Beyoğlu with a bunch of flowers in my arms. I sold them in the Çiçekpasaj. I got nine lira for them. I hadn’t tasted drink before that. And then I did. I’d been married for three years but I’d never tasted a woman who was done up and perfumed. After that I never went back home. I wonder if any of them are still alive. In all this time, I’ve never run into one of them. My dad was already an old man then. Then there’s mother, and my wife and my two children, one a year and a half and the other just nine months. So I sold almonds, as you know, and you know the rest, too.”

He called out to the proprietor:

“Barba! A bottle of red, but make it a full liter.”

“Hold on, Bayram! You’ve had enough as it is.”

I asked the old waiter how many bottles he’d drunk.

“I really don’t know, brother,” he said, “I’m not too good with this sort of thing. I’ve written it down here, everything he drinks, but I may be wrong …”

In a warm voice Bayram said:

“Bring us the wine, but I won’t drink any.”

But he had some all the same. Then I ordered another bottle. When we were back on the street I could barely stand, and Bayram was no better. We stopped off at the taverna on Asmalımescit and asked for Seher and the waiter Bekir. We were told they’d gone to the Hilltop, so we jumped in a car and sped off. Bayram kept muttering:

“I’ll topple her down the hilltop.”

Thank God Seher wasn’t there. From there we set out on foot. It was damp and the wind was cold and pieces of icy cloud slid across the sky. From time to time the moon seemed more suspicious than usual. From time to time the driving wind was at our backs, and from time to time it pushed us back.

Suddenly we stopped and it was calm. A great old Ottoman house emerged from the night. We were in a cabbage patch; we had somehow stumbled over the garden walls. Bayram leading the way, we began descending into the darkness, trudging over the soft earth; the wind grew softer and softer and soon we were surrounded by thick, warm air. I could hear the sound of water. A soft light flowed from the huddle of buildings below. Dogs barked in the distance. We knocked on a door. A girl’s voice on the stairs:

“Mother! Someone’s at the door.”

“Well go and open it. Grandpa must be back from the coffeehouse.”

“I’m scared.”

“What’s there to be scared of?”

“There are two men out there.”

“Don’t be silly. Well then it must be Grandpa and Uncle Hasan.”

The door opened, and a girl with blond hair and speckled blue eyes stared vacantly at Bayram’s face. Then her luminous blue eyes were on me, looking me over. And she slammed the door shut.

“There are thieves at the door, Mom! Thieves, I swear to God, thieves!”

Then a woman was standing before us; her brow was pure white, her eyes were jet black and wide open in surprise, and she held her headscarf over her mouth. First she simply stood there, staring, then she pulled the headscarf away from her mouth, stepped back and said:

“Come in, gentlemen.”

We went in. There was a stairwell just beyond the door. We hadn’t gone up ten steps before we were at another door. We opened it. We were in a room with an iron stove, and a strong scent of children and linden flowers. We sat down on the divan as a low, round wooden table was set in the middle of the room and a round copper tray, sparkling with red streaks of light, was placed on top; pickles, cheese, jam and six hardboiled eggs sat on the tray. We sat around the table, and without saying a word we ate. While we ate a little boy opened the door, peered in, and then disappeared. The little girl attended to us while we ate and when we finished, the older girl returned, with her hair pulled back and her headscarf tied tightly around her forehead. She moved in and out of the room in silence, collecting the empty dishes from the tray. Then she opened the lid of a large chest, laid out blankets for two beds and left the room. Later she came with coffee. We went to bed without exchanging words. It was like we were angry with each other: frowning, we avoided each other’s eyes.

When I awoke in the morning, Bayram was by the window smoking a cigarette. I sat down on the divan beside him and looked at the garden below, stretching out before us in the mist. On one side there was something like a greenhouse, covered in glass and wicker. I opened the window and breathed in the sweet scent of violets. The weather was warm, almost balmy. Soon the mist slowly rose and I could see the entire orchard: cabbages, flowers, parsley and lettuce all rearing up like horses. In the distance among the flowers there were other gardens, other warped, crooked buildings. The same vegetables, the same animals, the same bent and solitary structures filled the surrounding landscape, and everywhere the scent of violets. A swirling stream ran across the road. Did we cross it when we came to the house the night before? I couldn’t remember getting my feet wet.

An old man came up behind us.

“Dad!” Bayram cried.

It was the first word uttered since the night before.

The old man turned to me and said, “Welcome home, my son.”

Then an old woman brought us milk and said to the old man:

“Are you going to the market? Should I get the cart ready?”

The man looked at Bayram.

“Yes, I’m going, Mother!” Bayram said.

The old woman wiped away a tear waiting to run down her wrinkled cheek. It seemed that no one else was touched by Bayram’s return.

Cabbages, leeks, red radishes, and spinach were loaded onto the carriage, and we piled in. Bayram’s little girl turned up with a bursting bouquet of violets and gave them to me, and a woman with a face as yellow as a quince came running to the carriage with an armful of celery root. She threw them all into the carriage, lifting only her eyes to glance at Bayram. I looked at Bayram, but he didn’t seem to notice. She watched the carriage until it disappeared from view. Bayram didn’t stand until we had turned the corner. Then he cracked his whip over the white workhorse, turned, and snapped it back toward the woman who had been watching him disappear. We had turned the corner so we couldn’t see the woman racing back home.

I could smell the violets, oh, and that wonderfully pungent scent of the celery root! I wasn’t sure where we were going and didn’t ask.

When we got to the market we jumped out of the carriage and the middlemen swarmed around Bayram.

“Back from military service? We thought you’d died, my man Bayram!” they cried.

“I’ll be off then, Bayram,” I said.

“Stop by some time.”

I wandered along so many streets, down and up and then back down again until I ended up in Ortaköy.

I haven’t been back to the valley of violets in nearly a year. I always said I was going but then I could never find it. But last year, one cold day in February, I found myself with a few friends in that same cabbage patch near Mecidiyeköy. The landscape before us opened onto a valley whose depth and mystery drew us toward it. I knew just where I was when I felt the soft earth under my feet, and over the soft earth we ran down into the valley. And the valley was so warm, so warm, and steeped in the scent of violet. We walked along the bank of the stream and saw Bayram hoeing a lettuce patch with a pick, his wife bent over the earth, collecting what I think was mallow. She turned to look at us. Bayram didn’t remember me at first so I had to introduce myself to him.

As we traveled back up into the hills of Arnavutköy, passing along the edge of the garden, we could still smell the violets. We left a warm day in May to find February waiting for us like a whip.