“I’m going to destroy all of you.”
“Eh?”
The door hit her so sharply that she staggered a few steps back.
She shouted, “What did you say, you fucking maniac?”
Derda turned away from the door and walked over to his father, lying on the floor. Right over to his bloodied head. He raised his right foot and held it in the air just a hand’s distance away from Celal’s face. If Celal had come to at that moment and blinked open his eyes, he would have seen that the world had been blotted out by the bottom of his son’s shoe. But he didn’t. He just groaned softly. For a minute that felt like a year, Derda wavered between wanting to smash his father’s face in and not. In the end, he settled on mercy and took his foot away. He sat on the chair by the table and took the stolen book in his hand. On the cover was one of Oğuz Atay’s caricatures.
Bringing it up to his lips he whispered, “Forgive them.”
Then he opened the book and started to read. “Stop moving your lips,” Saruhan would have said if he’d been there. “When you read to yourself, don’t mouth the words.” But Derda wasn’t reading the book to himself. He moved his lips so that the whole world would hear and he whispered the words he read. As he read he looked up at the cemetery wall.
“Sons of bitches,” he said. “I’m going to destroy all of you.”
He read three pages, then abandoned the house without even bothering to close the door behind him. He took his books with him. Süreyya and her mother watched Derda leave, and they picked up stones from the ground and waited for him to move on like he was a rabid dog. Then they ran inside his house, and releasing a death’s wail they dropped to the ground by the man’s head. But they saw the man was still alive and they stifled their wails.
“Go, get some cotton,” said the woman. Süreyya went. Whatever else, Celal wasn’t a mugger anymore, he was a promising new customer. And he hadn’t even been back from prison for a day. Who knew how thirsty he was for a woman?
Süreyya’s mother turned Celal’s pockets inside out, but they were empty so she shouted toward the open door, “Someone come help us!”
She thought someone else might as well bring the hydrogen peroxide. She had a point. Cotton bandaging was expensive.
“Where have you been, boy? Last night we had the kids hauling all the stuff.”
He couldn’t well say that the first time he saw his father, after eleven years and thousands of dreams, he’d beat his face in until it was good and bloody and then left home for good.
“I’m sorry, Brother Süleyman,” was all he could manage.
“Well, what’s going on, what are you doing here at this hour?”
At least he might be able to say that he didn’t have a place to stay.
“I left home. Maybe I could …”
Süleyman cut him off. Opening the door and clearing the way, he said, “Get inside.” Derda went inside the depot. A question followed in his wake.
“You hungry?”
Derda remained silent. In the language of poverty, “Yes.”
“There are some buns left over from breakfast over there. Sit, eat them if you want.”
Süleyman had created a world out of empty boxes for himself in the depot. He’d laid out a spread with vodka and food and would be in his little world until morning. He slipped to the head of the table where he’d been when Derda had knocked, and he took the glass in his hand. He bit the top off a pastry almost entirely buried in the grip of his two hands, and he looked at Derda. He sighed, then took a gulp of vodka and spoke.
“So what are you going to do?”
Derda was trying to get the stale pastry, as hard as smashed rock, down his throat. He swallowed and asked, “Could I stay here for a little while?”
“How little?”
“A few days. Then I’ll find something.”
Süleyman didn’t believe it. But he didn’t think it was important, either. Whatever else, a person to talk to had emerged out of the nothingness of night. He looked at the books Derda had pulled out from under his arm and set on top of the box.
“Son, a man who leaves home usually has a bag in his hand. You left with just these books?”
“Yes,” said Derda.
“And what books are these?”
He couldn’t see from where he sat. If he could have seen them, he’d have recognized them. Among them was a book he’d been printing for years. Derda said its name.
“There’s Waiting for Fear, Oğuz Atay’s …”
“Hmmm. Oğuz Atay … They laid that man to waste,” said Süleyman.
Derda asked like he was going to learn a secret about his own past.
“Why?”
“In those days I was deep inside the movement, you understand? Anyway, one day one of our guys brought us Tutunamayanlar. We take a look at it, at its psychology and all. Fuck that, we said. We, we said, are here shoulder to shoulder at war for the homeland, and this guy goes and explains it all, going only by whatever’s going through his head, we said. We couldn’t have known of course … And what a mind, you know? Anyway, here you go, drink some of this. It’ll warm you up.”
For a moment Derda remembered the fools Oğuz Atay had talked about.
He asked, “That movement you mentioned, what movement was it, brother?”
“Issues between the right and the left, son. You don’t know anything about the world. Shit. The people were eating each other up, arguing over which sidewalk is yours, which is mine, men knifing each other, then he goes and explains it all jagged like that, anyway, that’s what we said, you get it. Against us, I mean. Not just against us, against everyone. Against time, even time. Come on, son,
