That night, as the illegal printing world came down and a cardboard box castle was erected in its place, the first thing that was put in place was the after-work vodka spread. But this time there was only one glass next to the bottle.
“You’re not going to drink anything?” asked Süleyman.
“No,” said Derda. He showed him the book in his hand. “I’m going to read for a while.”
“You know best.”
Since the night before the ghosts of the past were still very much inside him. Maybe if he talked about them more, then he’d be able to fall asleep like everyone else. But Derda didn’t know about Süleyman’s ghosts. How would he know, he thought, how could he know about the revolutionaries of those times? How could the kid know? He tipped the glass into his mouth with a greedy violence. He wanted to get drunk, drunker than he usually did. But Derda interrupted his drunken reveries, coming in to ask some names from the book in his hand. He asked about Oğuz Atay and The Men Who Saved the World who didn’t even have the power of speech. He asked some questions about a small group of people who called themselves socialists but wanted to be perceived as social realists by others. And Süleyman spoke of it all so vividly that the enormous depot was transported back in time. He talked about anything he knew. He even tried to explain some of what he didn’t know.
But after every name, the same question: “Is he still alive?”
“What do I know, he died, probably,” Süleyman would say. “Look, a new book came out. There, I printed it yesterday,” he would say sometimes. Derda was marking the book with a pen. He was creasing the pages of the book in front of him and flipping the pages violently. He was drawing in oxygen and exhaling poison into the growing pyre of the endless names. All at once Süleyman realized that Derda was making out a hit list.
“Hey, what are you doing, man?”
Derda looked up but he didn’t say anything. No matter how drunk he was, Süleyman was going to remember.
“Boy, are you crazy? Of all the people in the world, what are these men to you? Don’t let me hear you say that you’re going to cut them down or anything else ever again!”
Derda looked at the floor and spoke.
“Didn’t you say they laid him out to waste?”
“Yes, but—” said Süleyman. He was going to continue, but Derda was getting to his feet and Süleyman saw he was going to speak.
“What’s written here, do you know? Look, you know what’s written all over this book? They killed the man. They say Oğuz Atay had this brain tumor, right? Then he went and died at such a young age. That’s just it, this tumor is bullshit, it’s those bastards you were talking about, they were the tumor. The man died of sadness. You still don’t see it? Look, it’s written here. They didn’t get up and curse the man down. You know what they did? Nothing! They didn’t do anything. Just like that, like some dog just walked past them or something, they didn’t even turn back and look. That’s why the man died. No one turned around and looked. How’d they get away with it? You tell me. Can anyone with a conscience do this? Fuck! The man died right in front of their eyes.”
Derda was crying like a child. Because he was still a child, a newborn in fact. His world was as wide as his swaddling clothes. He couldn’t hear Süleyman telling him, “Calm down, son, sit down! Go splash some water on your face.” Because Derda the newborn had just opened his eyes, but his ears had yet to start to hear.
“I’m going to find them one by one and fuck them all!” he said in the end.
Süleyman’s voice came on top of him.
“Sit down like a man. Don’t make me get up and stop you. Are you on drugs, boy?”
Derda looked at Süleyman like he was the wildest creature to come out of the most untouched jungle of the most remote corner of earth.
“No,” he said. “I’m fine, in fact I’m more than fine.”
After that they didn’t talk anymore. Derda buried himself in his book, muttering to himself as he read. And shaking his head. And wiping his tears with the back of his hand. And swearing. And all the while whetting his desire.
In the morning, Süleyman woke up coughing and saw Derda was still reading. There were some things he wanted to say, but he gave up. Derda reminded him of himself, of his life, in the deepest days of the revolution. Torture, fights, those nights when they handed out pamphlets, all the swindles they ate and all the swindles they served. What does someone learn from life, what does it teach Derda? “Fuck it,” he said to himself. “Fuck it all.”
Every night that week Süleyman and Derda sat side by side in silence. One drank vodka, the other never stopped reading. Then, one day, Derda went into a shop in an industrial park and came out with a can of spray paint in his hand. He had asked for black. They were all out. In the end he was willing to settle for red. That night he left, telling Süleyman, “I have to go do something.” And Süleyman had told him, “Get cigarettes on your way back.”
Derda walked forever until he made it to the overpass where Saruhan sold his books. It took him a good hour of walking. He pulled the scarf he’d gotten from Remzi off his neck, wrapped it around his face, and shook the can in his hand. That’s how the man who’d sold it had told him to do it. It was five steps to the door of the bookstore where he’d stolen the book from. He checked the stairs on both sides of the overpass then looked around him to
