“Every country has its fools—I mean, among the people in every country who understand literature. They scramble after foreign books. They don’t even know I exist. And I, apparently, am waiting for a crowd of fully formed readers to emerge out of these men. How idiotic …”
And Derda’s spirits were dashed once again.
“I suppose that here, I feel like I’ve been left on the outside …”
And Derda, from deep inside himself, said, “Me, too.”
“I’m afraid that in the end, I’ll give in, too; that would be even more tragic …”
Derda was crying. He had to wipe his tears off the pages at the end of Oğuz Atay’s Journal that had photographs of the author at each stage of life, drying them again after each drop. He felt like Oğuz Atay was so close to him, and he couldn’t have felt the unhappiness any more deeply.
He believed that Oğuz Atay was as lonely and unhappy as he was himself. It must have taken him half an hour to subtract 1934 from 1977. When he got the result—forty-three—he thought “so young.” He glared at all the tombstones of the dead in the cemetery who had lived beyond forty-three with a strange animosity. Maybe, he said to himself. Maybe, some of these people were the fools Oğuz Atay talked about. He calculated the age of one resting in peace and yelled, “The jerk lived for seventy years!” Then he did some more calculating. “That’s twenty-seven years longer.” He raised his head and looked toward the sky. There, whomever he might see, he understood. Another of Derda’s dreams had been dashed. For the nth time.
Inside his dark house, he stacked three books one on top of another and made himself a headrest. Lying down on his back and staring at the gray ceiling, he told himself, “More. I have to learn more. Everything. I have to learn everything about him.”
Why did he die at forty-three? In his Journal he talked about an illness. About the hospitals he went to. About surgery he’d had. He couldn’t have died like Derda’s mother did. There was no way. Oğuz Atay had to have closed his eyes for the last time in a different way. Maybe he died by looking at people too much. Looking through to the other side of other people’s eyes. But how could he be sure? Who could he ask? Saruhan, of course.
“Say you want to learn about a writer’s life, what do you do?”
“Well, there are biographies,” said Saruhan.
“Where?”
“Where do you think? At a bookstore.”
“This biography thing is a book?”
“Derda, for the love of God, get out of my face. I’m already going crazy because of those insane clocks.”
Derda went back to the same bookstore, just five steps from the foot of the overpass. The same woman popped out in front of him. This time she was smiling. After all, now Derda was a good customer.
“How may I help you?”
“Just … one second …” he said as he pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. Not paper exactly, but a palm-sized corner of a box top. Saruhan had written on it. He showed it to the woman.
“Biography. All right, but whose?”
Derda said it as if it were his own name: “Oğuz Atay.”
“Let me see,” said the woman. She slid in front of the computer at the cash register. She typed something then looked up at Derda.
“Yes, we have one left.”
She walked past Derda, scanning the shelves. Running the fingers of her right hand down the spines of the books, she found one and pulled it out. Then she handed it to Derda who had followed her to the shelf. Derda realized thick books were expensive. And he knew that the money in his pocket wasn’t enough. He asked like he was a small child.
“What if I read it then bring it back?”
The woman laughed. “Do you really think that sort of thing is allowed?” she said.
Then she yelled, “Hey, where are you going? Stop!”
Derda was four long steps away from the bookstore and cutting through the crowd. He started to run. He knew that the woman herself wouldn’t be able to catch him but still he didn’t dare slow down. Saruhan was the only one who saw Derda escape up the stairs like a huge cat. At the time, he was propped against the edge of the guardrail, smoking. He watched him get lost in the crowd, slipping through without knocking into people, running with a childlike agility. Then Saruhan saw the woman come out of the bookstore and look around anxiously.
“That boy is crazy,” he whispered to himself. He turned around and looked at the clock seller. He was pulling them out of a box, setting them one by one, then putting them on display on his tarp on the ground.
“Oh, God,” said Saruhan, shaking his head. It didn’t escape the man’s attention.
“What do you want? You got a problem?”
“No, nothing, no. I just said I hope you have good sales today.”
Saruhan put the headphones dangling out of his coat pocket in his ears and cut off the sounds of life with a bit of Slayer. With a knife from the “Raining Blood” line.
Derda was just about to walk through the cemetery gates when he heard a voice.
“Where you going?”
A young security guard in a navy blue suit was standing in the door of Yasin’s guardhouse.
“What do you mean where you going?”
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“There’ll be no more going through the cemetery to get home anymore. It’s forbidden.”
Derda stared at the young security guard for a few seconds. In silence. Then he spoke.
“Where’s Brother Yasin?”
“I don’t know any Brother Yasin or anyone else.”
Derda hadn’t gone through the cemetery gates for a few weeks so he hadn’t found out yet. Yasin and the job he’d held for twenty-four years had been terminated, and so he took his bağlama and left. It was the first thing that Yasin had done that
