A Useless Man

On Spoon Island

Mücahit was at the head of the rowboat, holding two little oars. I was bent over at the very bottom because rowboats always made my head spin. I couldn’t see the water. All I could see was the bright sky above me shifting like running water. Odisya was singing something in Greek. Yakup was naked from the waist up and seemed to be listening. Sometimes moonlight flashed across his blue eyes. A boy whose name I didn’t know was sitting beside me. He had an unusually small face and his body was small. Every part of him was small: his hands, his ears and his eyes. We called him “Sultan Hamit’s dwarf.”

We were crossing over to Spoon Island. Robinson’s ghost was whirling inside us: Our ship had sunk and we were on a raft, we were bound for a deserted island, where we’d build a hut …

Reluctant to share our secret Robinsons, we all fell silent; the better to keep the dream alive. Seven of us on the boat, seven Robinsons in disguise. A single word would remind us that we lived on Burgazada, and that just an arm’s length away there was Spoon Island, which looked like an overturned spoon in the moonlight — it belonged to a man; that because he had no heirs the island would fall into the hands of the state when he died; that though the island was deserted then, it would eventually end up in the hands of half a dozen people; that they would build houses and maybe even clear the land for beaches. This enormous imaginary transatlantic liner we had built from huts and rafts and dreams and savagery would come crashing into an iceberg. Never again would we set out for Spoon Island by moonlight in search of adventure. Instead we teased Yakup and he stopped pulling off his shirt and dressing up like a savage, and he stopped trying so hard to shape his dreams to fit with ours.

When I raised my head, I saw that we were gliding into a bay with white rocks glimmering at the bottom of the sea. And there before us was a white building. Were our eyes fooling us? A building on a deserted island? Still no one said a word. Even Odisya’s Greek song died away. The little dwarf had rolled himself into a ball. The ones at the oars were angels soaked in sweat. Yakup wore the pride of an emperor. The children at the oars looked like slaves and Mücahit a cruel slave trader with a whip. The moment we stepped onto the sand, Yakup called us together:

“This building is an ancient Portuguese fort,” he said. “Portuguese pirates were the first to discover the island. They came and left the youngest one of their party behind. The fierce young pirate had disobeyed his king. Walk quietly. He might still be alive. Some say there’s a savage tribe on the island. We must be careful.”

Odisya and Yakup played the savage and the Portuguese pirate. They suddenly disappeared. Jackal went after them, barking. I was left alone with Sultan Hamit’s dwarf. The three other boys had set off for the old white building.

Spoon Island is full of cisterns. It’s very dangerous to run across the island, especially at night. We didn’t want to tumble down into the deep, dark water of a cistern hidden among the long weeds that swayed on the hilltops. So we watched where we stepped. The dwarf and I reached the top of the island. For a moment we stopped to look. In the distance, we could see that our three boys had lit candles in the windows of the white house. Further on, we could see the young Portuguese pirate’s mansion, built when the island was a farm with pig stables and wire fences, and later abandoned. It was far too dangerous to go inside. A gardener’s shed stood ten or fifteen meters in front of the stables. We could see it from where we stood. A light appeared in the window and we slowly made our way. We knocked on the door. Odisya opened it; he was alone with his dog. He had wrapped a garland of weeds around his head. He was wearing a baggy, striped shirt, and with his tanned chest, his bare feet, his blue eyes, his delicate and slender face, he was more of a pirate than Yakup would ever be. He was as beautiful and as savage as a pirate’s child. I was overcome by the desire to be one of his bandits. His most brilliant bandit. He was our king. Beyond the door I could see across to a beach on Heybeli that reminded me of a lovely little public square, and whose lights were slowly fading like the lights on a massive ferryboat.

Odisya began singing again. Yakup and the other children would listen to him till the end, then the little ones would find us and make us slaves; then we would lay siege at the Portuguese Manor and force surrender. Odisya would sing again, and Yakup would tell a story. Then we would go home. We would argue on the way back. Yakup would refuse to speak to the ones who had spoiled the game; Odisya wouldn’t sing and little Dwarf wouldn’t indulge us with his funny games.

We three — Odisya, Yakup and I — were the only real islanders. The others lacked the patience for friendship and adventure in particular. Yakup’s parents would hear about it, and they would try to stop us from setting out to the island. That’s why our numbers could suddenly drop to three. But still we’d jump in the boat and cross over. Sometimes we’d stay until morning.

Jackal waited at the white building’s open door while we slept inside, spinning our dreams from torn fishnets, corks and hooks. None of us ever told the whole truth. I only understood Greek. Odisya spoke good Turkish, and Yakup knew the odd broken, sweet phrase in Greek.

Odisya was the son of a gardener. He was the best swimmer among us, and he could fish, sing, row, and he had the best smile. He was a strange one. His mood could go sour without warning. It upset him enormously not to be taken seriously. The tiniest slight could turn his mood sour. The most innocent little word could cause him grave offense. Most of all he liked to fight. His face would turn yellow with confusion. He’d begin to stutter. Monsters didn’t scare him, and neither did people; other children might tremble at the thought of savages and Portuguese pirates, but not he … He was different with children and eccentrics: he treated them with respect. It angered me to see how the little ones made fun of him. They undid him: the courage he carried in his wild face and blond hair and muscular arms suddenly splintered. I think Yakup liked Odisya because he found him useful. He might need Odisya to take care of something for him, something low and dirty that he couldn’t do himself. He would get Odisya to do it by taunting him, saying he wasn’t man enough for the job.

One day we couldn’t find Jackal anywhere on the island so we crossed over to Spoon Island. We spent the night there.

Yakup said to Odisya:

“Just to be sure, you stand guard there by the door until the sun comes up. You can sleep during the day, and we’ll wait for you. Maybe the savages will attack!”

Odisya wasn’t a fool. But he was happy to play the part if it meant being a hero or doing a good deed for someone else.

Half asleep, I looked over and saw that Odisya was still awake. But before the sun came up, I lay down next to him and took his hand. Abruptly he rested his warm head on my chest and said:

“If my dad wasn’t some grunt of a gardener I’d be a real man like you guys, I’d go to school, and if I knew how to read I’d keep reading and never sleep.”

I lifted his head to the left. There were tears in his eyes. He let go of my hand. He got up and walked over to the pomegranate tree.

“I can’t sleep, Odisya,” I said. “Why don’t you get some sleep now?” He lay down under the pomegranate tree. I lit what was probably the second or third cigarette I had smoked in my life. And he had already fallen asleep.

The moon was back up in the sky. It was the first time I had ever watched someone sleep. But he wasn’t just anyone — he was an angel, a little man, pure and simple. I can still picture him now … dreaming his way through a world of peace and goodness and beauty. His waking world — that could make you tremble. But though I am awake, I swear I am sleeping his sleep. There I am with his heroes and his loved ones and the giant weeds and the fish and the sea; here now is a boat, and there, in front of the gardener’s shed, is a large-breasted woman, and a winegrower with his fat moustache and his breath reeking of tobacco and wine, and inside the shed is a pile of clean but broken furniture; and here was his wiry, olive-skinned sister with her windblown skirt fluttering over her thin long legs, and I feel close to her, and the pine trees and arbutus berries and all else I have seen. Desire bubbles up in me like water from a spring. I am leaning over. I am kissing my friend on the cheek, his eyes are shut and his lips open. For the first and last time, I am kissing someone with a desire that is as pure as it is secret. Then I am running up to the Portuguese pirate’s house to sleep. But I am a child, and I feel the Portuguese pirate might really be there and so I am vigilant. Silent as a mouse, I approach the house. The bottom of the window is at eye level and I look in. Moonlight is cascading across the room through another window; a young woman is sitting on one side of the room and a young man has his head in her lap, and she’s caressing his hair; he keeps trying to kiss her free hand. I watch for a moment, hardly believing my eyes. Then I head down the hill, skipping over the rocks, and I race to the shed where Yakup is sleeping. I wake him and say, “Up there … there’s …” Yakup asks me about Odisya:

“The fool. What’s he waiting for?”

“Don’t torture the poor kid. He’s a good boy.”

“I know better than anyone else that he’s a good boy. I’m doing it on purpose, I only treat him like this because I love him. He’d do anything for the experience. What’s he doing?”

“I just woke up. I told him to get some sleep. He’s sleeping now.”

“He never went to sleep? What a fool!”

We go over to see Odisya. Yakup looks him over carefully. As carefully as if he were dreaming his beautiful dreams. He leans over and caresses Odisya’s hair:

“Let him sleep then. Let’s go and have a look.”

In the shed on the hill, it’s the same as before. The boy in the girl’s lap is trying to kiss her hands. When he turns his head in our direction, we take a step back. Her head is still, bowed. She is looking down at the boy. When the young boy turns again we duck. A shadow seems to fall over Yakup’s face, which until then was strange, smiling and swirling with desire.

“He’s my age.”

“Who?’

“The guy in her lap.”

For a moment we stand there upright, our eyes fastened on the scene. Then we step back. Yakup speaks, lost in thought:

“He’s just my age, man!”

I don’t say a word.

Winter drove our dreams into the rain, the snow, the cold, and the dark; some of us were at school, some of us were apprentices at corner shops, some of us were trudging through fog-covered fields of spinach, some of us were like Yakup, at the head of a boat, the sail billowing against a lodos or a poyraz …

From winter to summer a person can change beyond recognition. Most people grow fatter, and paler; some take on alarming new shapes … It seems to me that children never change over the summer, only over the winter do they grow.

We almost never saw each other that winter. By spring Odisya had grown tall, and in his face I could see the sinuous traces of a trickster. He was still singing but he had lost that crystal clear voice. That voice that had once drawn me into a warmer, sunnier world now sounded like the voice of a village trickster, a throaty, snaky, swaggering voice that sang of wine and greed and lies and gossip and lust and sleepless nights. It was as if he had thrown off the warm and open face that had once held me captive and discarded it like an old shirt; the face I saw now was the one I feared. It was the face of his uncle Manoli, the face he wore that week he spent trying to sell a lobster. Once I remember marvelling at how one face could evoke a world of sun and warmth, while another face, even a face that bore a close resemblance, could only convey the cold of the world we lived in. Back then I think I drew a line between a person’s face and his character. That is not to say I thought beauty and good character went hand in hand. A wicked soul performs its sorcery best when it can hide behind a beautiful face. What I am trying to say is this: the facial gestures, even color and subtle movements that bespeak morality, are only there when the face is as true as the soul shining through it. The traits are then quite charming. And if the soul remains true, your friend will be pure, and easy to love, and almost too sweet to be true. But how wonderfully beautiful was the look on Odisya’s face when he was exploring the real world back then: his nose crumpled up at a new scent and his mouth hung half open as he listened, trying to make sense of his discoveries. But today the same movements of his face are easily likened to his uncle Manoli and his impertinence, his jealousy and his deceit.

The fourth time I saw him, my regret knew no bounds. Oh, why did I do that? I couldn’t stop asking myself. Why ever had I kissed that boy? How could I have ever loved that face?

Yakup had changed, too. Completely. Now he had as thick a neck as that boy we’d seen with that girl in the stable on Spoon Island. Somehow the barber had changed the color of his dark hair. He still hadn’t shaved his moustache. And the barber had trimmed it into the oddest-looking thing. Despite all the unfortunate changes in his outward appearance, you could still see the old Yakup. When I looked into his face, I could still see traces of the adventures we’d shared. No, they were more than just traces. But not a word about Spoon Island. Now all he wanted to talk about were his adventures with a young girl:

“Eftehia’s legs were as desperate to burn as yellow church candles, her crisp white teeth were as white as fresh walnuts, and her hands asked to be kissed.”

Yakup met Eftehia in the autumn, when those arbutus berries I told you about were at their ripest. The bushes with blooming red flowers. Together they collected berries. Eftehia always took the ripest, plumpest berries. And then she was drunk, like all the other island women who said the berries made you drunk. She brought a ripe berry to her lips, took a bite and said to Yakup, “Now you eat the other half.” Then they lay down as the scent of honey wafted over them from the bushes’ red flowers.

Eftehia’s face was the face of an ordinary Greek girl. Full of fire, nothing more. She wasn’t very beautiful, and she wasn’t ugly either. But when she was in the sea in her dark blue bathing suit, the sight of her little breasts, and the rounded, cruel curves of her lustrous, powerful legs could make a boy double over and drive his hands into the earth, and tear up the grass with his teeth … how beautifully she swam. When the island’s summer houses filled up with dashing young men who dressed in sparkling whites, Eftehia quietly moved on from Yakup, who dressed in thick grays and had holes in his trousers. Odisya, meanwhile, had befriended the new boys, and with the money he’d saved up over the winter, he bought himself a pair of white pants and a short-sleeved silk shirt, and after begging a thousand different ways with the dashing youths he managed to get himself a sailor’s cap. When he strolled out onto the square in his new get-up, his powerful, well-proportioned body could make a young girl’s heart flutter and her thoughts race — at least from afar. Yakup and I would exchange only quick hellos before he went off to join the new boys, and the girls would introduce him. They would play cards in the gazino and because he won more than he lost, he always had money in his pocket.

That summer we only went over to Spoon Island once. And that was with Odisya and his crew. Four Greek boys. With a fake smile he told them about the things we had done together the year before, but without affection. He made it sound foolish. I could see from the pained smile on Yakup’s face that he, too, now thought it foolish, and that he found it distasteful to even speak about it.

Odisya’s friends split their sides laughing.

With their Greek tangos, they chased all our Robinsons off our desert island along with the air of Robinson; they were rowdy enough to reduce the Portuguese pirate to tears. I kept thinking of how I had kissed Odisya. I kept peeling the skin off my lips.