“And in the fight over the treasure, someone died …”
Derda started to walk away. Seeing that he wasn’t going to say anything, Isa kept talking.
“Our cemetery is really big. Bigger than here. Anyway, there’s these two brothers. They hate each other. They both have their own gang. I’m on the younger brother’s side. He doesn’t look big, but whenever they get into a fight he beats up his big brother. Anyway, each gang has its own territory. We don’t get mixed up with each other. Everyone stays on their own side. It’s like here, you can’t just claim a tomb and stand there. Then, one day, there was this rumor about some treasure. But it wasn’t buried on our side. It was on the other side. So we snuck over there. We dug everywhere. But somehow we couldn’t find anything. Then, the next day, one of our guys found this weird tomb, like a mausoleum. But no one knew what it really was. Then they said, yeah, that must be it. But how are we going to dig for the treasure? It’s on the other side. So then we said, let’s go, if we have to we’ll fight, then we’ll dig and get the buried treasure. So we went over there and then there’s this kid from the other gang sleeping on top of it, guarding it. One of the little guys. Lying on top of the tomb, asleep. So we wake him up. He’s terrified. No, don’t do it, he’s begging us. We didn’t listen, of course. You’re going to dig! So he started to dig. Then …”
“Fuck that,” said Derda. The story was flying out of Isa’s mouth so fast that it smashed right into Derda’s two little words and shattered.
“Who cares? In the end did you find the treasure? No! So fuck it.”
Isa’s face went hard like marble. Cemetery marble. His veins stuck to his skin like the green veins running through marble. He understood then what no one had been able to really explain about life. For some, death is a permanent condition. For another, it’s just dust in your eye. Isa looked around at the tombstones and thought it was good that they were dead. That day he believed that humanity died because that was their right. Till the day he died he never believed anything else. Maybe that’s why he became a marble engraver. He walked into one of the workshops on the road going to the cemetery as an apprentice and walked out a master. All because that day Derda cut him off. Because he didn’t let him tell the story of his life. Maybe that’s why Isa only spoke to marble for the rest of his life. If only he could have told his story. Maybe he could have told it to one of the kids at school who listened so carefully to the teacher but somehow never heard him. But it didn’t work out. In the final days of his apprenticeship he made his own tombstone. He hid it in a corner. Every now and then he’d go by and speak to it. To tell it the story Derda had cut off. Over and over again. And then he died. From all the marble dust he had inhaled. Just up and died one day. And his story? Who cares? Especially not after Isa was dead and buried.
They walked silently to the square. Side by side. Neither could have guessed what was passing through the other’s mind, not even if they’d had a thousand chances. Derda’s dark mood, Isa’s words. Since Derda had chopped up his mother, words just got stuck in his mouth. How would he know, he asked himself. Then, to be forgiven, he took the pack out of his pocket and pulled out a cigarette.
“Light one up.”
Isa didn’t refuse. He took the cigarette like he’d been waiting his whole life for it. He lit it like he’d discovered fire. He sucked down the smoke like he’d been smoking for a hundred years. But it was his first time, too. Who knows how many more children started on cigarettes that day? All over the world.
Derda took a few steps then kicked a pebble with the tip of his toe. The pebble hit Isa’s arm, so he got a free kick. They drove that pebble like they were in the World Cup. Sometimes it went off the road and onto the paths but they kept after it. Who knows, on that day, how many kids kicked a pebble. And who knows how many felt like a kicked pebble themselves.
The morning ezan slid off the houses’ rooftops and into Derda’s ear. His two black eyes opened and saw the ceiling. His nose wrinkled from the smell as he straightened himself over his two feet and stood up. He was late. It was so hard to wake up. His belly was full; Süreyya’s mother had given him a dish of rice. But if he didn’t hurry, he wouldn’t be able to get all five parts buried.
As he buried the first four parts at the foot of the marble tombs in the row, the sun, outlining the tree branches, had already risen enough to prickle the nape of his neck. He took a deep breath.
“Just one piece left.”
He ran to the row of tombs by the wall. His mother’s right hand was under his arm. It was the first piece he’d wrapped in the sheet. He collapsed at the foot of the tombstone. He looked around. He could make out a figure in the distance. In his excitement he’d forgotten his shovel, that is, the pot lid. He
