Istanbul Noir - Mustafa Ziyalan [80]
It’s a deep conversation, of words and glances. I keep looking at my friend. The memories compound as we laugh. I recall that I hardly laughed at all back in those days though. I feel another sinister joke rising in my gut.
Just then, a guy who knows my friend from college walks up to us. We change the subject. I have a hard time taking interest. The man’s conversation is dull. Politics, the difficulty of making ends meet, earthquakes, and whatnot. My attention wanders away from the conversation and onto the waters outside the window. If I weren’t in the ferry, but on an open boat, I’d be throwing simit crumbs to the seagulls right now, I think. The weather outside is beautiful, the man sitting next to me is not. He’s a depressing rain cloud, interrupting and darkening my day.
Mercifully, we approach Yenikapı. On the pier I see men with hands like ropes. They look like they could grab a ship by one end and haul it in with their bare hands. Their job is a matter of life and death, and so they are animated yet earnest, running to attend the scene like surgeons, readying the pier for docking in the nick of time. I move quickly, dragging my friend away from the boring guy and onto the pier. Having extricated ourselves, we take to the streets.
Silently and swiftly, we make our way to the tiny bar beneath the railway, cramming ourselves into an already packed sardine can. We turn into two dirty beards, gawking at an erotic flick on a twenty-inch TV screen, lined up on high stools underneath fluorescent lights. Even though it is filthy and flickering, holding on for dear life, it’s still too bright for a place this obscene, I think. It is on to announce to the outside world that in here, everything’s all right.
A man eating rice pilaf with chickpeas from a street vendor, probably taking in a quick dinner before he heads home for the night, is glad that everything’s all right; he takes a peek inside the bar as he shovels down his final spoonful of pilaf, and relaxes upon seeing that the other members of his sex are not up to anything new. They’re just like he left them, right where they belong. Rakı is still the belle de jour. He wipes his greasy hands on his pants and disappears, leaving behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. Now you see him, now you don’t …
Inside the bar, the volume of the conversation is low. Eyes are squinted. The TV murmurs on. Droopy lips and gaping mouths stare at the small screen, where a couple is shown in compromising positions, until a train passes overhead, sending a quake through the bar and prompting the viewers to regain their tight-lipped composure.
My friend and I leave the bar. We go our separate ways, postponing a stroll by the water to another time. As I walk alone on the cracked sidewalks, I feel a desire to find a woman, to make the night bearable, to pour my heart out in the filthiest hotel room in the world. I see a figure standing next to the road. Someone whose back is turned to me, someone with long hair. Even the way I walk becomes more erect. I check my pocket to make sure I have enough cash on me. I croak out a hello with all the courage I can muster. When the figure turns around, my knees almost give out. It doesn’t have a face, but a deep, dark void, with pitch black eyes, eyes that are beastly—not human. What I had mistaken for hair is a black pelt enveloping its body from head to toe. I am scared shitless. It approaches, floating, feetless. A chilly vapor precedes it. And a muffled scream. Then a sobbing sigh. I lower my head, covering my face with my hands. I quickly turn away and start to run.
Without quite understanding what I have just seen, as if not yet feeling the pain of dismemberment, I slow to a walk. I’m stunned. I know it is following me, I can feel the cold vapors on my sweating back. I speed up again. I want to leave it behind, I want it to disappear. I want to be left alone with the snack shops and their garishly colorful signs, with that dark, wilted guy selling sunglasses on the corner.