A Useless Man

from A Cloud in the Sky

I could say that everything I know about this man I have on good authority, but please, don’t take my word for it. There is, I think, no need to dwell on the rumors. Let me just confirm that he has a flat stomach and very long legs, with a head of golden hair, and shifty eyes. Let me also make it clear that I have no wish to imply that gossip is a wicked pastime, bringing us no joy. At the end of the day, it can enhance a reputation. We could, if we wished, imagine this man in an old-style photograph — a figure set against a background of shimmering fog. For we are not afraid.

So there he was, sitting on the low wall overlooking that vacant lot and the sea. And there, at his feet, was his dog, resting on its haunches, its front legs stretched out straight, still as a statue but for its cold, wet nose … Every now and then it looked up at its master and whimpered, as if to say, let’s go …

The man lit a cigarette and said:

“Sit. Stay still!”

The dog stretched out its front legs and put its nose between them. It closed its eyes. A gentle breeze rustled through its yellow fur, and the man’s wiry hair.

There was white mixed in with the gold. Beneath each line on his face were untold stories. Unrequited loves. Bitter heartaches. Lost looks. Lost books. Years wasted on drink and inner turmoil. Had I all the time in the world, there’s no telling what I could have found there. And what if I said that those crow’s feet around those blue eyes of his were not from laughing but from squinting at the sun? You’d just have to take my word for it! That said, I’m sure he utters those exact words whenever he happens to catch a glimpse of his reflection. I’m sure it’s what he tells his dog. But if you asked me how I can dare to make such a claim, when not a single neighbor has ever heard him utter these words, I would urge you to forget about neighbors and think instead about postmen — a nosy postman who can’t get this man out of his mind. And so there he is, in the middle of nowhere, passing the time of day with a man who has just offered him a cigarette, and saying:

“Aha! Oho! You mean that man who talks to his dog? Well, let me just tell you. The other day I took him a letter. The front door was ajar. I could hear all kinds of strange noises inside. Of course I pricked up my ears! I said to myself, ‘Now, there’s no one else inside but the man and his dog. Oh my God! What sort of dark business is this? Who could this man be talking to?’ So I peer inside to take a look. And wouldn’t you know it? He’s in there talking with his dog. A Rumeli Turk, chattering away with his dog — in Greek …”

The man who has given him the cigarette says:

“Good God, what was he saying? Or don’t you know Greek?”

“My good sir! How could I not? This is a Greek village. I’ve been the postman here for fifteen years. Of course I know Greek. Except … Forgive me, my good sir. But my throat’s a little dry. You wouldn’t mind stepping across there and fetching me a lemon soda? The good gentleman will be well aware that it’s no easy business traipsing all over town. Let me confirm that officially, my good sir. There are evenings when I pull off my shoes to find my feet aren’t the ones I left with in the morning. They’re twice the original size … Twice at least! Oh dear! All the same … Ah, what a pig! This soda’s ice cold! It’s not always like that … So where was I? Oh, so I peered inside and listened: ‘You,’ he said, ‘you think I’m old, don’t you?’ And then he says, ‘No, of course you don’t. I know you and you know me. So let me ask you … Do I ever tire of stomping over these hills and dales? You could try and tell me I’d had my fair share of laughter. You could point at all those wrinkles around my eyes … and around my lips … But you wouldn’t, my fine friend. Would you? I can’t say I never laughed, because I have. But I have never truly laughed. Not from the bottom of my heart. Whenever that urge comes to me, I recall something my mother liked to say: ‘Laugh from the bottom of your heart and you shall weep as many tears.’ I simply can’t laugh the way I want to. You know how people smile when they meet someone they know. Well, that’s the best I’ve ever managed, in my happiest moments. If I hold back my smiles when I greet people, it’s because I’m afraid they might lead me to cry. But I’m rambling, dear friend! All I meant to say was that those crow’s feet aren’t from tears or laughter. They’re from that sun up there … Up there in the sky. You know how I wander about all day under the sun. Now look closely right here. There are more wrinkles around my left eye, aren’t there? That’s because the squint in that eye is stronger. Because the eye itself is more sensitive to light. It’s been that way since the day I was born. The other eye’s fine, thank God. So I can get by. Otherwise I’d have to wear a monocle. Imagine that, my friend. A one-eyed dandy!”

Could we imagine the postman uttering the very words I have just set down on paper? I ask because he never did. But just imagine that he had. Imagine his voice, hissing like a serpent. Imagine the cold, jaundiced glint in his lying eyes. Imagine all that and you can see the listener bidding the postman goodbye, and going off to repeat the story, and not just the story, but the fidgeting. The hissing voice. The gaze. That much you would agree. So now that I am ready to write what remains of this story — beyond the episode that cost me a cigarette and a lemon soda — allow me to indulge in a modest preamble, in which I’ll reveal the secrets of my trade. From now on, I shall write in such a way as to stir you to ask, “And how do you know all this?” How I know such things I decline to say. But I can’t stop myself from saying this: maybe I live with this man. Though I won’t say that maybe he’s me. Say if I were to write, “Alone in his room, he scratched his head.” You might ask me how I knew that, or if I had seen him do it. Or if I were to say, “He wakes up in the morning with a heavy heart.” What a ridiculous line that would be! You might ask, “Are you this man? Stop playing games! Enough! How could you ever know how the bastard feels?” You have every right to lose patience … Please forgive me. I shall make the same mistake many times over in the story I am about to tell. I can no longer remember if I mentioned the remarkable affinity I feel for this man. But there is one last point I’d like to make before proceeding to the heart of the matter; though this man is a kindred spirit, I have no real connection to him. I am simply setting down what our inquisitive postman and others like him have told me. So if that much is clear …

Like the postman said, I don’t think he’s avoiding people. But surely there’s a reason he spends so much time alone … He himself might not know the reason why. As the postman pointed out, he doesn’t seem cut out for life on an island, surrounded by water on all sides. He belongs in the city, surrounded by throngs. No one here in this little place would ever talk to such a man, let alone drink rakı with him; people might befriend him early on, just to learn a bit about him, but then they would peel away, leaving him alone with his dog. No one bothers him. So let’s leave behind what the postman had to say and turn to the barber:

“It’s love that did this to him.”

So what’s this man’s problem? You cannot pretend he’s just like you or me. The fact of the matter is that this man talks to his dog! But then again, we hear of people speaking to walls, and their personal effects, to their dreams, beds, and mirrors. Some even talk to their neckties. Young girls speak to their hope chests. Young men speak to their own bodies as they make love. We know all this.

Then we have the poets speaking to women with no names, conversing with the stars and the winds, addressing lakes and distant lands and migrant birds and clouds drifting two thousand meters up in the sky. We have the fishermen, prattling away to their boats and rods and fish … but in these parts, when a man speaks with his dog, he becomes the object of ignominious gossip. Personally, I am not convinced that love made this man the way he is. For me, there’s nothing unnatural about him at all! But I am alone in this, I regret to say … No doubt the man’s not quite in his right mind … Here is my theory, for what it’s worth: people don’t much mind that he talks to his dog. What bothers them is his reluctance to speak to anyone else. And well, how shall I put this? These people spend their lives pouring their hearts out to each other. When anyone backs away from them, they thirst for answers …

Back to the rumors.

It seems that he owns two stores in the city and that he collects rent. He keeps the books for a tradesman involved in some mysterious business located who knows where. This tradesman is cut from the same cloth: he doesn’t speak much, shuns society; and he’s also a bachelor. They rarely say more than hello and goodbye.

Then there is this story:

They say that once upon a time there was a young woman he’d chat with on the ferry. There are even those who claim to have heard this eighteen-year-old girl speaking intimately with this man who was more than twice her age. They even heard him singing to her. Word finally reached the young girl’s father: he gave her a stern warning, and there the friendship stopped. Sometimes they would both end up on the last boat back to the islands, but now the poor girl goes straight back to sit with her two friends. After wandering along the decks for a spell, he heads to the prow, there to whistle a soft folk song. Though he was known for never greeting anyone, he would always greet this girl, and — strange as it might sound — she would greet him …

But the fact is, they never really exchanged more than a few words: “Hello,” and “How are you?” and, “I hope all is well with you.”

So that’s all the gossip I have on the man. That’s all anyone knows. But there is one creature on this earth who could reveal to us his deepest secrets. And that, my friends, is his little dog. A bright-eyed dog with a wet nose, and a golden coat that flutters in the wind … Now this dog belongs to him, not me. I mention him here only to make a point. Unless the dog is a figment of my imagination, at least in part? The fact is that the poor man will never manage to make the small creature understand how he lost his illusions, and let his fears get the better of him, to be left all alone. Dogs are not, and never will be, creatures of the word. If they want to show their owners some affection, they lick their hands and dash about wagging their tails. But here’s what I know from my imaginary dog:

“He got up early that morning. I heard a soft whistling, and I raced over to him …”

I suppose if I let the dog tell the rest of my story things would take a turn for the worse … The long and the short of it is that I decided one day to make friends with the man who sat on that low wall every evening, smoking his cigarettes, lost to his own thoughts. I walked over to him:

“Beyefendi,” I said. “If you don’t mind …”

“Oh, but of course, efendim, please sit down.”

I lit a cigarette. I sat down beside him. As I stroked his dog, he felt the need to speak first:

“You’re an animal lover?”

“Beyefendi, I adore them.”

“Truth is I was never very fond of them. But I’m quite used to them now. This one’s mother once belonged to an old lady who ran the little hotel I used to live in. Long before this one was ever born. The poor woman died. Her dog stayed with me from then on. I was very fond of that lady. Then some time passed. The dog died. It was a girl. This one here’s a boy. Back then someone wanted to take him away and I was going to give him up. But I kept him as a memory of his mother …”

That evening we didn’t share anything more interesting than this. Neither of us understood politics, nor did we have any interest in the subject. We could do little more than confirm each other’s beliefs: which is, of course, to say we talked politics. When I got home that evening, I couldn’t understand why the postman was so interested in this fellow. He was the most ordinary man in the world. Even the wealthy shopkeeper who lived across the road was more interesting than him. Wouldn’t you agree? His thoughts are mired in olive oil, green beans, flour, and garbanzo beans; he’s rolling in money, his children go to the famous schools and take dancing lessons and wear expensive clothes … And his daughter — she speaks such beautiful English! She graduated from a private college, no small feat! How pleased that’s made her father! How proud she’s made him! He’s more than happy to tell you the whole story: how he came here all the way from Chios to work as an errand boy at a corner shop, how in time he took over the business, how the owner continued to stop by to see him now and then, and how one day he offered his own daughter’s hand in marriage … His life, as he tells it, has been one long, thrilling ascent. Up and up he went, achieving one miracle after another. But how could people seeing only his tiny little shop in the fish market have any concept of the enormous storehouse just below? The Kurd at the door is impenetrable. The same could be said of the bleak iron shutters of the Byzantine warehouses beyond. Everything’s there in that tangled, medieval labyrinth where the carts pile up one on top of the other and porters walk along dark, oily conveyor belts, shouting as they go. The shopkeeper is fair-skinned. But his wife is olive-skinned. So, can that blond and honey-eyed son really be hers? He has a classic Grecian nose. And broad shoulders. He reminds his father of Alexander the Great. Yani Efendi is a well-educated man. He adores his son. His daughter, too. He’s so very proud of her English. But in Greece they are dying of hunger. In the coffeehouse he seems despondent. At home with his wife, he’s driven to tears. Sipping his coffee, he says, “Why not buy five, ten kilos more than we need and put them to one side, my sweet Eleni. You just never know!”

But that’s as far as I can take Yani Efendi’s life story … My fault entirely! As tired as I was, I still managed to retrace his steps. I was like Balzac, plotting the life of a perfumer. But you can’t really expect me to burst into the man’s home and compose a great novel, rattling off details of a place I’ve never seen.

But never mind. What I meant to say was that Yani Efendi had me so intrigued for a time that I forgot about the other one, the man with the dog, who once upon a time had kept everyone guessing — even me. Had I cared to do so, I could have joined him any evening on that little wall and drawn him into yet another tiresome conversation, from which I might have learned all manner of things. But no, I’ve had my fill of oddballs. No good can come of them! I’m saving myself for the ones who rejoice in life! This man hardly has a life … He has no one but his dog. He speaks to his dog and no one else. Bearing that in mind, let’s return to the postman’s observations:

“My good sir, this man has never once treated another man to a coffee. But please, let’s step into this gazino here and have a cup of coffee together. Oh, the things I could tell you about him … You could never imagine …”

“Some other time, some other time!”

I couldn’t be less interested. It’s Yani Efendi I want to know about now. I’ve just become friends with his son.

But five days on, he’s beginning to wear on me. He does have his charms, if only he’d stop talking! Now I can talk as much as any man about films and dances and poker games and women’s legs. But with this one, it’s the same every night! There’s no harm in it, I know. But one evening he takes it upon himself to mimic a matinee idol, a certain John Payne. Now I might enjoy speaking to the man himself, were I in America, but what business does this John Payne have, talking to me in Istanbul? That was our final conversation. These days, when we see each other, we just exchange a few laughs. In a few days, we won’t even do that … Meanwhile I’ve more or less given up on the idea of writing about the life of Yani Efendi. I’ve gone back to the man and his dog. Good that I took a long break from him. His shyness must have got the better of him that first time. But this time he even offered me a cigarette. And then, just for my sake, he scolded his dog:

“I was really beginning to worry about you. Where have you been, my friend? You just disappeared.”

“Just a little cold, but it kept me in bed for the week, beyefendi!”

“You’re feeling better now, I hope?”

Then he told me how he once caught a cold that simply wouldn’t go away. But even so, he couldn’t keep himself out of the sea, and so he’d spent the entire summer sniffling. Here was this man, who’d told his own dog he never laughed. But today he couldn’t stop! It seemed to me the dog was flashing him a funny look: no doubt the result of a long chat with the postman!

I suppose it’s time I told you more about the postman. As I’ve already said, I found few failings in him, beyond his habit of ferreting out other people’s secrets — tidbits about their little failings and predilections, the sorts of things that should never go beyond four walls.

Is the postman a good man or is he not? What do I care, either way? All that matters is that I can’t help liking him, even though he gets on my nerves. He has this infuriating habit of planting himself three paces behind me, and staying put. No chance of talking to anyone else after that. There is little I have to say to the world that I can’t say loud and clear, but when I see this postman sitting there, drinking in my every word, I can’t help myself. I fly into a rage. I forget whatever it was I wanted to say. Whatever it was, I just wanted to say it slowly. And then I remind myself: “The bastard can take two words out of a sentence and add twenty new ones, and come up with a whole story, so watch out!”

This is, in fact, what happened: We have a mutual friend named Ahmet. He rents a room for the summer season from Mademoiselle Katina. The other night he went for a swim. Two friends of his were speaking about it just a couple of feet away from the postman:

“You know Ahmet from Katina’s house, well he went for a swim in the sea last night despite all that wind. He told us to come in too but …”

From this the postman extracted three things exactly: “Katina, Ahmet, last night …” And this is what he said to his barber:

“Now hello there, barber! How about helping me get rid of this rubble? But listen to what I have to tell you. You know Ahmet, who stays in one of those houses on the hill? Last night he took off in a rowboat with none other than Katinaki, the daughter of the famous chocolatier. They rowed all the way over to Heybeliada. Then they hopped into a phaeton and it was off to Çamlimanı! I watched them from that promontory. First I saw them rowing across the channel. Then, a little later, I watched them make their way along the lengthy shore road in a lit carriage. I swear I saw that phaeton with my own two eyes. The driver was waiting for them in Abbaspaşa. Oh! How sweet it must have been, Barba. You’ll remember it rained yesterday. You know how sweet it smells in that pine forest after it rains! But who will ever know the scent of lavender in Katinaki’s hair? Oh lord! Barba, it’s enough to drive a man mad! As for this Ahmet Efendi, he’s not bad looking himself, is he? What eyes he has! Thin as a whip, too! Let’s hope he wasn’t too hard on that delicate Katinaki!”

So that was the story that the postman spun. I can only admire his knack for making a story out of nothing because serious writers like me can only dream of it.

Let me say what I think is underneath it all:

On the surface, it might look as if he is divulging great secrets in exchange for small favors — a tea here and a soda there. A shave, a small glass of rakı, a bunch of grapes … But if you ask me, these trifles are not what keep him serving up secrets. I figured this out when I noticed that if he could find no one else to confide in, he would go to Zafiri, who is a quiet soul and hates gossip and cannot afford a coffee for himself, let alone anyone else, and can barely speak Turkish. Or he’ll go and sit with Zeynel Efendi, the retired ticket salesman, who is as quiet as Zafiri and just as disdainful of gossip.

The postman hungers after secrets because he longs to grasp the world he can see only in his imagination.

And there are times, many times, when I think he goes too far. First he strings up the dirty laundry, and then comes the laundry that he’s soiled himself. The innocent truth is never enough for him. Never — but then what are we to do? He’s the one who has to pay the price. It’s a risky business, building a house of lies, even if it sits on a foundation of facts … I’d end up forgetting what the postman’s said about whom, and soon I’d even forget what he’s said, and at that point, I’d move on. As we all do, eventually. Some days, we believe what people tell us, and the next day, we don’t.

I do not hide the fact that I am a writer. It’s nothing to be ashamed of! But I don’t like to announce it. Now if I choose to sit and write in the corner of a gazino every morning, that is why. In the old days I would go and write under a pine tree. Now I have my own table! And they bring me a coffee. Girls stroll past. I can write whatever I wish …

What I am trying to say is that the postman has proved very helpful!

“He sits under the pines and writes letters … Who knows who he’s writing to … or what he’s saying?”

But oh, the things he has inferred from stories I have written and then torn up! It shames me just to think of them. Once I nearly got into a fight over it. They all descended on me, saying, “This brute has the gall to write about our lives! Who does the bastard think he is?”

I have gone on far too long about the postman. Let’s just accept him as he is. Let’s leave it to the others to decide if he is good or bad. But let’s not smear him, since he has proven useful.

He caught up with me one morning, when I was going out for a swim:

“Look,” he said, “the man with the dog! He is sending letters to his newspaper.”

I looked and saw that it was indeed an envelope addressed to an assistant editor named X at a paper named Y.

Without looking up, I cried:

“Indeed it is!”

Then our eyes met. Something strange passed between us.

Turning my eyes back to the envelope, I said:

“Well it is indeed. Perhaps it’s a complaint. Or a letter to the editor.”

Again, our eyes met. There isn’t a judge on this earth who could say who was the offender and who the accomplice, or who was provoking whom.

We ripped open the envelope. We didn’t hurry to read it. First we went and got an envelope. We addressed it to the same editor, at the same paper. Then we went to the beach and settled ourselves beside a lone boulder.

On a sheet of paper folded in four, we found the following lines:

Esteemed Sir:

I am sending you this humble story as a contribution to your short story competition. Please feel free to publish it if you like it. With all my respect.

On another piece of paper folded in two there was this story:

(The name was lyrical, even sensual!)

Moonlight

Once upon a time I was in love. I am counting on you to understand why! How could anyone not fall in love with her! (There followed a torrid description, which we passed over quickly.) I was living in a village on the other side of the Sea of Marmara. Every evening, we’d travel back together. I won’t lie to you. My feelings for her were not entirely normal. By which I mean to say they were not as they should have been. When we fall in love, we should feel as if we’ve been struck by lightning. We should resolve to do whatever it takes, to win our beloved’s heart. A love like this has its charms, but it’s not for me. First I need a little bit of encouragement. After that, things are easier. Until I am again encouraged, and then I feel as if I’ve been caught in a trap, and from then on, I am trying to escape. Until there is a third bit of encouragement. Then it’s all over. I’m madly in love.

And now it had happened once again. The second time I saw her, I knew I was heading for parts unknown. Never again would I see the place of my birth or the beloved country where I had made my life. A great sadness fell over me. I almost said an “indescribable sadness,” but here I am, describing it.

Everyone and everything I loved was falling away: my language, my homeland, my mother, my father, my house, my garden, and my friends. And oh, the tears I shed as they gathered round me, saying, “You’re leaving us! How can you do this to us? Shame on you! Can it be true? Are you really going to abandon us, just like this? We never expected this of you … Are you really leaving us? Are you never coming back? Are you actually leaving us for … her? For this woman? Take a good look at her now. Take a good, long look. You won’t regret it!”

The ferry cuts through the calm waters, the stars trail behind. The passengers become their own shadows. And on we sail. I want the journey to go on forever. I pay no heed to the warnings my loved ones keep whispering in my ears.

Who first introduced us, I cannot say. Neither can I say how this came about, or on what pretext. I’ve forgotten everything and everyone but her. Were there stars in the sky above her? Ships in the sea? … Even the sun did not exist, because it wasn’t there that night. Even the moon! This pale slip of a shadow, hardly visible by day had only been with us for fifteen days — and how could we be sure that it existed at all? There were moments when I forgot even this. How beautiful the face of this earth! Such lies it conjures up! Lies can be made of all the things we know to be true — the moon, the stars, and birds, and whistles, and violins, and ships! Oh, such beauties we can find on the face of the earth! And oh, my beloved! And oh, the things I could do, if she and the world were both mine! The third time, I sought her out. She half recognized me, half didn’t. I was crushed. The fourth time, I gave her a casual wave, in passing. But inside I was churning, like a river joining the sea. “Let it go,” I told myself. “Just keep your distance.” The fifth time our paths crossed, I didn’t even say hello.

I went up to sit at the bow. The moon that night was lovely. Was it full? I’m not sure. All I can remember is that there was the moon, and my beloved. How flat those two words are. But what a history they carry. It could only have been a moonlit night when Adam first fell in love with Eve. There were many more to come in the centuries that followed! But there is no one on this earth who could have been unhappier than I was on that moonlit night. Not even the lover caught in the midday sun. Not even the man standing at his window, puffing miserably at his cigarette. The word itself does not begin to describe it. But never mind. There’s no need to look for a better one. A man in the moonlight is a man walking the thin line between misery and bliss. Did you know, for instance, that love has two sides, like the moon itself? Think, perchance, of the lover who commits suicide on a moonlit night. He’s a happy man! Miserable enough to find the joy in death, but happy in the knowledge of the joy that death will bring! (“This part’s awful!” I said to the postman.) On the night in question, that was precisely my line of thinking. In my mind, I could feel death’s cold lips pressing down on me. But here, before me, was a woman with warm lips, and a body smooth as marble. “Hello,” she said. She sat down beside me. “How are you doing?”

“Terrible,” I said.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Honestly, nothing at all. Oh, who knows. Who can say?”

We fell silent.

When she finally spoke, she seemed to have come closer.

“What’s there, on the surface of the moon?” she asked.

“On the moon?” I said.

I gave it some thought. Then I told her whatever I could remember from school.

“There’s nothing on the moon … It’s empty, meaningless, dead … There is no atmosphere, nothing that can support life. Even the light we see up there is false. It doesn’t radiate its own light … What you see is a reflection of the sun’s light … No, there’s nothing there … Nothing … It’s cold, or maybe it’s not even that … Where there is no atmosphere, can there even be such a thing as heat, or cold?”

“So there’s no life on the moon?”

“There’s no air, as I just said!”

“Fine. But how about if you took your own oxygen?”

“Look, that part I don’t know. Maybe you could last for a few hours, or a few days … It might be possible to stay there long enough to see a bit of the place, and satisfy your curiosity …”

She looked up at the moon. It felt as if she were resting her head on my shoulder. Or maybe it was the moonlight that made me believe this was so.

I succumbed to the light:

“My lovely,” I said. “Have you taken leave of your senses? How could there be anyone up there living on the moon? The only ones who can live there are lovers. They meet for an evening, and two become one. And then they fly up to the moon together. And most of them get there. If I were to take hold of you, if you and I were to fall to the bottom of the sea, never to return, a host of other creatures would come to our rescue and fly us straight up.”

What a lovely laugh she had. I had taken everything I’d learned in geography class and turned it on its head. And that was how I came to find the courage to hold my beloved’s hand.

I managed not to laugh. The postman laughed a great deal. But something in his face had changed. He was no longer curious. He no longer wished to know what secrets lurked in people’s hearts. He put it like this:

“They’re all alike. But I used to think that the man with the dog was different. There were things about him that seemed unique. Oh, the tragedies I dreamed up for him! He certainly kept me guessing. When all it was was love. But I just couldn’t see it — how a man who kept his own company and talked only to his dog could be like you or me. Now I can read the letters I carry without even opening them. I already know them all by heart.”

And off he went up the hill.