A Useless Man

Milk

I did something just now that I haven’t done in years: I drank milk. The steam in that shop, the smell of milk — it took me back across four decades — returned me to my cradle, reducing me to tears and lulling me to sleep. Yes, it’s the truth I’m telling you. It had been years since I’d got up early and years since I’d last drunk milk. There was a time when I started each new day with milk. How greedily we all clung to our mother’s breasts back then. How monstrous those toothless gums on her nipples. How sad that we have no memories of our mothers’ milk or our first sight of the world, through eyes made blurry by the tears we shed for milk …

We begin our days with milk and we finish them with wine, but this morning, from the moment that first cry rose up in me, from that first pang of hunger, I knew those days were over. Over and done with. The moment I walked through the door of the dairy shop, my old life abandoned me. And this is what I said to the flotsam that tried to come in after me: my first cry, my cradle, my mother’s milk, my loves and hates, my public face, my private life, my days of wine, and rakı, and cards, and women, and lust, and my many fine days in the company of friends. This is what I said to the child who was crying for milk — the child I never knew, and would never learn to know:

“So we’re leaving you here, outside. You say you wanted to drink milk? Nonsense! We’ve had our fill of milk! What sort of man are you anyway? Shame on you. This is the last straw. This is where we part. You’ve sunk so low as to bring me to this shop. It’s all over between us …”

Turning around, I cried:

“Get lost!” And off they went, toppling over each other in the wind.

I walked into the shop like a man reborn. And how I longed to shout out the good news. I was beginning a new life! From now on I would wake up fresh as a newborn to the fragrance of hot and foaming milk, and its white mist would fill my nostrils until at last I sneezed. The milk I had taken from my mother’s breasts would come out through my nose. I would have my breakfast at a dairy shop that was foaming with the fragrance of milk. My new life would begin here. I would ascend to a world steeped in the scent of milk. After forty-two years of burning my nostrils with hot olive oil I would be delivered to this faraway land of peace and freedom, this land of milk, to begin anew.

My hands are cracked, my skin as dark as earth. I’m proud and I’m free, because at long last I have vanquished the monster in the cradle, and to mark this glorious day I shall drink in the milk foaming in my bowl like a man whose beard has gone white.

Outside it’s raining. But I am still inside. I’d seen off my past, and I was feeling fine. I don’t miss my old life, not one little bit. One bowl of milk and I’ve sent it packing. I’ve lifted up the mansion of the past. I’ve closed my eyes to the memories flashing from each window, and smashed it to bits.

And still it rains. Let it rain, what do I care? Let it rain forever. A line of poetry floats into my mind:

“We never knew the spring day when we were weaned …”

And that was when I knew I had to free myself of all the verse, couplets, novels and books. I was entering a new world. I required poems just as new. I needed to start reading new novels, viewing new paintings, and to write I needed to forge a new Turkish. I needed to seek out new sentiments, new books, new ideas. But what of the flotsam I’d left at the dairy shop’s iron door? What if they mobbed me when I left? What if they herded me back to my old bad habits? The chain that binds the milk of memory with the future — it forms a ring, doesn’t it? It’s bound unto itself. When I was back on the rainy street, when I had rounded up my runaways, here’s what I’d say to them: “What a fool I was back there in that dairy shop. Why didn’t you warn me? Please forgive me. Everyone gets like that sometimes. I hope you’re not offended by me. Forgive me, please.”

“Would you like another serving?” asked the man in the dairy shop. I drank one more cup. No, it no longer had the same effect.

The everyday world waiting outside in the rain said this to me: “Come on, now. Hurry. Enough is enough. Come out here. You need to be with us. You can’t spend the whole day in the dairy shop, pretending you’re a newborn. We’re out here waiting. We’re coming to get you. Everything and everyone is out here waiting. Time to finish this game you’ve been playing with them inside. No one’s ever born again. And even if you could be. What would happen then? In two years, no, not even two years, in two days we’d turn you back into the old you. The old you who thinks only of himself, with the same jealousies, the same ill humor, the old you who drinks too much and is a fool. We have all we need to knock you out with the old maladies. And what sort of new world did you have in mind, my dear man? A world never seen, or heard, or tasted, or written … are you serious? Come on now. Come back to the life you know. No milk for you tonight. Tonight you’re going to drink pure molasses mixed with water and grain alcohol. And then you’ll feel good, and your old hopes will come crowding back — the fond wishes that the hand cannot grasp and the eye cannot see and can only rarely be so much as felt, and the half-baked illusions that are clear to the naked eye, and begin with wine, and overflow with drunken heroics … When you greet these old friends again, you will be ashamed of the state you were in this morning.

“Tomorrow morning when we wake you up, you’ll have a foul, fusty, pasty mouth, like you always do.”

By now the aroma of foaming milk was streaming down the walls of the dairy shop. I put on my hat. I raced out into the street. Hearing my shouts — “Stay away from me! Stay away!” — my runaways approached me softly, warily, the way doctors or nurses or guards might round in on a mental patient in distress. They took my arm. They stroked my shoulder, and then, in one fell swoop, they all grabbed my collar. And suddenly, I found myself all buttoned up inside my crazy shirt, and back in my old crazy life.

Two glasses of milk. Oh, look what you’ve done to me.