A Useless Man

The Story of a Külhanbeyi

The street was deserted. Where else would a raw cucumber like him get it on with his girl? The bar’s a little further on. You can see the agency light reflected in its iron grill.

In the old days this was an Ottoman han, but now they rent by the room. It’s more a prison than a han. There’s this office next door. But no, that’s the agency. You can buy a ticket to America there. But the main attraction is just opposite: the state factory. They make booze there. Man! Do they ever! Sometimes you just want to bang on that metal grate and scream, “Damn it, man! Can’t you give me just one little taste?”

Ömer keeps an eye on people who go into the han and don’t come out. Every day he listens to that horrible mash of languages pouring out through the agency’s back window. It’s bracing stuff. Even the curly blonde gets a little scared, though she should be used to it by now.

But now she is soothed by the harmonies of the suma factory: the beds, the slippers, and the strops; she can even hear the trembling whispers of desire — she likes them.

Ömer is sitting on a truck, inside a wreath of cigarette smoke. He is waiting for someone to leave but his slow and heavy gestures betray no anxiety. Though his shoulders are hunched, he keeps one a little higher, just in case. The shabby ends of his long pants dangle over the edge of the truck — it looks like he has no legs. A few people go into the han. A few go out. He listens to their footsteps crossing the long courtyard. He thinks of taking off, but then he stretches. Stretches and stretches until he feels as long as that dark and dusty courtyard. He can almost feel the footsteps in his chest. Now comes the worst of it: the ruthless, godless desires that come on with the drink. Hours go by and no one comes out.

The han has five floors, with a great courtyard in the middle. There are sunflower seeds and cucumber skins and paper wrappers scattered over the stone steps. But no matter how drunk a man gets, he always knows when it’s a cherry pit jammed in the sole of his tattered shoe. That’s just how it is. It’s the season, my friend. The cherry season. Surely the han boys wouldn’t be eating strawberries at this time of year! And what the hell’s a strawberry seed, anyway?

Now, if I were Ömer, I’d check out that dark elevator that’s been sitting idle there for years. When he gets to the second floor, he regrets not looking in. But it’s too late to go back.

Not a single beam of light slips out onto the torn and dusty linoleum floor. That’s good — it means everyone’s asleep. Why not light a cigarette? His match hits the floor, leaving a little scratch in the dust. Like the wick of a dynamite stick, almost. Oh mother of God! What’s become of us? he asks himself. This place gives him the creeps. Why in the world would anyone want to be here?

He tries every room on the third floor. A woman peers out through the sack that’s been taped over the broken glass. Calling back into the room, she says:

“Careful, Hüsnü, there’s a guard downstairs.”

She stands erect and silent; Hüsnü must be doing the same. Isn’t that why she stays there, eyeing the corridor?

“Hüsnü,” she says. “Give me a cigarette.”

He is three steps behind her. He hands her a cigarette. Then the matches. He waits. She takes them.

The woman says:

“Hüsnü, I’m leaving tomorrow. That’s why I called you here. Did Hatice tell you?”

He comes three steps closer. With one stroke, he pushes the door open. As the darkness in the room collides with the darkness outside, she cries:

“Come to the pier tomorrow morning and we can talk there. If you don’t come, I’ll leave my clothes at the gazino.”

She has stepped outside now, with Hüsnü. But Ömer doesn’t understand a thing she’s saying. Who is Hüsnü? Which Hüsnü? Which clothes, at which gazino?

The second room is locked. The man in the third room groans:

“Who’s that? Who the hell’s out there? You’ve got the wrong room, my friend.”

The handle on the next door turns. A blinding shaft of light pins him to the doorsill. Man! This light is slicing right into his brain like a bullet.

There is a bed on the floor and an overturned strawberry basket in the corner. A plateful of onions, cucumbers, and bits of tomato, and a bottle of water beside it. Is it water? Two people are in the bed. One has graying hair. He can’t see the other. Just a bit of leg peeping out from the covers. Smooth and slender. Olive-skinned. He imagines long black hair. Good, he can’t see it!

What a powerful bulb! How many watts? A hundred? That hulking, graying man has pushed the tiny olive-skinned leg into a corner. That little bump under the covers is snoring. No — not snoring. Whistling. Wheezing, like the strops in a rakı plant. How beautiful is that? There’s nothing revolting about it. Doesn’t rakı make that sound when it passes through the alembic, and those zinc tubes? Something between a whistle and a snore? But no, it turned out not to be that little creature snoring under the yellow blanket: it is just a puppy, snatched from its pack. None of this is arousing. Well, just one thing: the protruding shoulder under the blanket. If he were not already slipping through the door and into darkness, he’d be pulling back that blanket. Kissing that shoulder. Facing the music! Maybe a matter for the switchblade. He turns to look but lets the idea go.

In the corridor he bumps into three young baker’s boys. He doesn’t argue with them because he has other things on his mind: rocky shoulder under the yellow blanket. The whiff of dust.

The boys retreat into their room. He hears the clink of coins … Simit sellers always slap down their coins when they count them. There’s no other way to count the money made from simits. It’s one thing to wet your thumb and index finger and flick through a wad of paper cash. But slapping down coins is what it sounds like: a slap. And then another. And another.

He joins his hands. Laces his fingers. Hits his knee. Slap. Slap. Slap! Then he looks up. Our Külhanbey is acting like a little child. What if someone sees? What is the difference between darkness and childhood? But he has no time for this. He is in love. He’s broke. He leaps up the steps in fours, and now he reaches his floor.

“Hey, you in there!” he cries. “It’s me. Wake up, you bastards!”

Doors open and close. Then silence. A woman appears from behind one of the doors. He stares. She goes back inside. Then an old woman opens another door. Ömer looks at her. She says:

“Come on, Ömer, get inside.”

“You go, mother, just relax.”

“You’ll get cold, Ömer.”

Oh, the way she speaks, a booming voice, like a man. What a woman! The mother of a Külhanbey!

“Mind your own business.”

His mother stiffens. She closes the door.

Ömer turns toward the other door. On the other side of this door is the person he is waiting to see leave the han. He walks over and sits down. He puts his head on the mat. He drops off.

“Ömer, Ömer, get up!”

He stays silent as the tenant shakes him and sweeps him away, dragging him down the stairs. Now they are standing in front of the truck. She says:

“You have anything to say, Ömer?”

“Nah, what would I have to say, nothing!”

She presses two pale twenty-five notes into his hand. She has come into some cash, then. Ömer looks down at the money.

“Whore’s money, man. Screw it,” and he spits on the ground.

The streets of Galata are waking up to the smell of rakı.