He reported his daily progress to Oğuz Atay every morning at the head of his grave and he read him chapters from children’s storybooks. Daisy season had long since passed, and violets now bloomed around the tomb.
In the evenings, he walked around reading all the street signs, feeling like he owned the world. Like he flew home on a carpet woven with letters. His mouth was thirsting for knowledge dried out by the wind.
Then, one evening, despite all desire to extend his profitable lessons, Saruhan said “Ok.” Saruhan closed the children’s book that Derda had read completely, without error, to the very last line, and he looked at his pupil.
“Well, there you go, you can read.”
And it was true. Derda could read. But that was all he could do. Saruhan, who had, despite himself, accomplished something practically impossible, had only taught Derda how to read. Derda had memorized letters and syllables, but had never once taken a pen between his fingers. Because, according to Saruhan, his fee didn’t cover that. And if he wanted to do another round of lessons to learn how to write, well, that would mean another agreement. Saruhan wanted to make more money. Saruhan’s appetite for money had been whetted over time. He’d noticed his lack of success as a teacher and also how Derda forgot how letters were written. Now the time had come to profit from it.
“And writing? Do you want to learn how to write?”
Derda smiled.
“Why would I need to know how to write? What am I going to write? Like I need to learn how to write!”
“Ah, shove it,” Saruhan said to himself. Then, “Hey, another tea over here!”
It was the first time he’d had the sixth tea. When it was all said and done, it was their last lesson.
Derda had slept like he was paralyzed. He lay on the concrete floor, his arms stretched open wide like a man crucified on an invisible cross. Every time he breathed in and breathed out, the copy of Tutunamayanlar on his chest rose and fell. He’d read a seven-hundred-page book. And now he was staring at the ceiling. It was the first novel he’d ever read in all his life. And all that he’d understood of it could fit inside one speck of dust. There was one speck of dust rattling around in his mind, but there were many more left behind in the Tutunamayanlar rising and falling on his chest. And all the weight of those specks of dust made it very hard to breathe. Even if he hadn’t understood the sentences, Derda did understand the compounding feelings he got from the book. Derda couldn’t understand Oğuz Atay’s words per se, but he sensed something even beyond what was written. And maybe he continued into the beyond, passing out of the realm of mere understanding, passing out of the realm of not understanding. The names, events, the conflicts, the speakers in the novel, everything was spinning around his head, making even the walls of the house seem like they were changing colors. Derda watched the ceiling like it was a rainbow, like he was a drunk lying out in the rain.
He saw a man pass before his closed eyes. Each time he closed his eyes. One solitary man. He came to Derda like he was one and the same with all the names in the book, like they were all him. Turgut, Selim, like everyone was contained in just one man. A man constructed from goodness. Or maybe from pieces of shattered glass. Maybe carved out of the air itself. Then he smashed into a stone of darkness. The man was broken into a thousand and one pieces. Or maybe he just dissipated. Whatever he experienced, the darkness became a stone and the man was crushed like he was built out of sand. He melted like ice; he was left behind in the book. That was everything that Derda had understood. And he was one to understand those people who are left behind. He would have called them tombstones. He believed in the book rising and falling on his chest and he closed his eyes, without even bothering to blink first.
THE TRANSPLANT
The door to the cemetery house was forced open with one swift shove of the shoulders and three men in white aprons filed in. With a gurney. They filed in and stood around Derda, who lay as if dead and stuffed. One of them leaned over him and pressed his jugular vein to make sure he was still alive. Then he reached over and picked up the book resting on Derda’s chest.
Just then, Derda’s eyes opened and he tried to shout, “What’s going on? Who are you?” But he couldn’t. He couldn’t work his vocal cords any more than he could raise a finger. Only Derda’s pupils listened to his unconscious commands. Derda couldn’t do anything but look. That, and breathe in and out. He took three breaths in and three breaths out while he watched the book being put into a box. The titanium box and the man carrying it directed themselves to the front door and the others shifted Derda onto the gurney. It was all one coordinated assault.
The gurney slid into an ambulance waiting in front of the house and Derda’s eyes watched an oxygen mask being lowered over his mouth. His eyelids started to feel heavy. Then the weight was too much to bear and his eyes closed.
When they started to feel lighter again, Derda blinked his eyes open and saw that he was being pulled out of
