A Useless Man

Sinağrit Baba

We were five rowboats at Hell’s Point. A beautiful January evening. A southern wind. Splashes of red rippling over the sea. Long, vast, dying waves the color of strong linden tea. The boats rocking heavily in the sea, fishing poles in suspense, silent souls …

Does a creature lurk beneath us, woven from the darkest of the seven colors, drifting through the hushed and twisted caverns thirty-eight fathoms deep? How can it be, that Sinağrit Baba has left the hunt so soon? He’s the king of the deeps, lavishing kindness and magnificence on all he leaves in his wake. His jacket, noble but cruel with its shimmering rainbow scales. He is rushing back to his palace; it’s made of gold, emerald, coral, and mother-of-pearl, all twinkling in the dark blue.

Sinağrit Baba hasn’t said a word in his life, he’s never married and he’s always lived alone. How many tragedies has he watched from his cavern’s emerald window? How many fishing lines has he dragged into the sea?

But tonight he will choose a line and put an end to his long life. He will end his long life while every scale on his jacket is still sparkling, and long before mayonnaise is smeared over his flesh. Though there is still time before he is devoured by that pale and sticky creature, the wretched stingray, he knows he should surrender now to that intelligent creature from the strange world above, to be feted at a sumptuous feast served with white wine.

Sinağrit Baba sniffs one of the lines. It belongs to the fisherman Hristo. He’s a flawed man. Greedy and always calculating. Yes, he’s poor, but he’s not proud. Sinağrit Baba favors poor men with some pride. He drifts to the next line and sniffs. Hasan’s line. Forget him. Forget his temper, too. Underneath it, he’s a coward, and Sinağrit Baba favors the brave. He tries another line. Fisherman Yakup is a good man about town, charming, loveable, and sometimes crude. But he has a jealous streak. Sinağrit Baba doesn’t favor jealous men. Forget him, too. The next line belongs to a stingy man. Whereas Sinağrit Baba favors generosity. Nevertheless he tries the bait and, tearing off half a Spanish mackerel, he flattens the hook entirely and swallows the bait whole before its stingy owner yanks up his line.

“Holy mother, Nikoli,” he says. “He’s completely flattened the hook.”

With Nikoli’s bait in his belly, Sinağrit Baba tries to find a flaw in Nikoli. Surely he’s flawed. First of all, he’s a drunk. And he’s immoral and self-centered. But he’s also generous and brave. He’s hardly a coward. He’s poor. He’s proud. Sinağrit Baba favors the poor and the proud, but not Nikoli’s brand of pride. Sinağrit is after something just a bit different: a pride that’s timely and true; but no, that’s not quite it either, it’s something you sense in the way a fisherman holds his rod, something about him that goes down to the very roots of his hair, the best of humankind. Sinağrit Baba can’t flatten a fishhook borne by a proud hand, or sever his line, or make away with his barrel swivel.

He sniffs all five of the rowboats, and he isn’t pleased.

Sinağrit Baba hovers beside the corner of his cavern, watching the sea palace sparkle, lit by the mercury bait and the hooks shimmering soft as moonlight in the deep blue sea. More lines drop down and soon fifteen mercury lamps are swinging softly in the center of the land of Sinağrit and Çüpra … One after the other red bream dart out from their hollows and attack the lamps, foolishly snagging themselves on the hooks. Pulled up to the surface, their eyes wide as they turn and look down, unsure if they should give in and see the world above them or struggle back down into theirs. Their eyes grow wider still as they look down at Sinağrit Baba, as if to say, “save us from this horrible fate.” Sinağrit Baba takes a moment’s pause. He only has to swim over to the shimmering line and bite through it, nothing more. But he stays still and decides not to save them. He knows it would be an easy thing to do, but he knows something else, too: that reason can’t fix these things, that it makes no difference if you are animal, vegetable or human being, if you live in the water, on land or in the air. His good deed would only have a real and lasting effect when all the other fish in the sea understand that severing the shimmering line meant saving all the others. The Mighty Sinağrit might bite through the line, but then who would save him when his own time came? Who would ever think of biting the line for him?

A brightly shimmering hook falls into the sea. Hopeful, the Mighty Sinağrit swims toward it and sniffs. The owner’s vaguely familiar. Nibbling a little on the bait, he thinks for a moment that this is the very man he is looking for. Then suddenly he’s caught. Tumbling into the boat, the Mighty Sinağrit stares up at the fisherman with wide and joyful eyes. Again and again, he looks up through his luminous, red-rimmed black eyes. Then he flaps his body up and down on the bottom of the boat like a furious young girl pounding her foot on the floor. Maybe he sees something in the man we can’t see: that this man has failed the test. Yes, he has led a brave and generous life. And he lives as a proud man, something the Mighty Sinağrit thinks is good. But somehow now he knows that this man is a wretched dog; he sees what no one else can see. This man who just fished him out of the sea has never put his courage, his bravery, his pride to the test over the years; he’s been that lucky. But who is he? What is he? Sinağrit Baba doesn’t know. But he’s understood that, despite having lived a generous, proud, and courageous life, this man has failed the test. And might never have been tested at all, he might end his days like that. Sinağrit Baba has never encountered anything like it. Just before he dies, he looks up at the man again. From his forehead alone, he knows the man to be the most dishonorable of all dishonorable men, the most cowardly of all cowards. But he will die a brave and honorable and generous man. He has been so fortunate throughout life that he never once considered his duplicity. Would Sinağrit Baba have surrendered willingly to him if he had? So he flails desperately about in the boat again, his mouth fixed in a silent scream. Then it closes. It was with regret and a swell of defeat that the Mighty Sinağrit gives his dying breath in that rowboat, watching humanity fail the test.