Then Isa called out, “To marble!” and raised his glass high. And then, because every man at NAIL had no thought in his head except the thought to drink, they could care less they were toasting a stone and they laughed and drained their glasses. Some guys hit the bottom of the empty glass and yelled “Mahmut!” But he was at least as drunk as his customers. He yelled, “I’m coming,” and took one step, but discovered one foot was missing from beneath him and crashed to the floor. Everyone laughed. Two marble cutters pulled him up. Over the course of four beers, Derda and Isa had run out of talk and just looked around NAIL, chuckling. One was listening to whoever was talking. The reminiscences of a marble cutter. One to the stories of a tombstone in its most exhausting days of mourning.
Then, one by one, the stools were left empty. Only Mahmut and the two boys were left. And only then did Derda begin to speak.
“There’s this guy called Oğuz Atay …”
“Yeah, who’s that, man?” said Isa. “Your relative or something?”
“No, man …”
So many liters of beer had left Derda’s throat squeezed for air, and he gasped like he was out of breath. He was trying to explain it to him, but it wasn’t working.
“No, that’s not it. The man …”
“What?” said Isa. “What man? Your boss?”
Derda almost died laughing.
“What do you mean, boss?” he said. “Look, what did I say. Oğuz!”
Then he started tapping on the fingers on his left hand with his right pointer finger, spelling out “O Ğ U Z” as he knocked each one. All of a sudden, he stopped and sat completely still.
“Yeah, we got it, Oğuz,” said Isa.
Derda was staring at his fingers like he’d never seen them before. Like he was trying to figure something out. Then he looked up at Isa.
“It works, man!” he said.
“What are you yelling about, for fuck’s sake.”
“Man, it works!”
“What works, come on.”
“Now look,” Derda said, and then using his left pointer finger he started from his right pinkie finger, tapping one finger after the other. At the same he yelled, “Look, look. O Ğ U Z.” Then he went over the fingers on his left hand with his right pointer finger, crying “A T A Y!” Isa didn’t understand anything.
“Boy, are you out of your head? What are you talking about?
“You have a needle, man, a needle?” Derda was yelling.
“What do you mean a needle?”
“For a tattoo, man!”
“Fuck that, man, you’re drunk,” said Isa.
Just then Mahmut came staggering up with two more beers. He plunked the brimming beer glasses on the table, then the owner of NAIL bar said, slurring his words, “One more drink never screwed anyone.”
The high-pitched sound of an oud was coming out of the one speaker that hadn’t blown out of an old, beat-up cassette player whose make and model had long since rubbed off. The cassette was just as old as the player itself, and its sound encircled the three bare bulbs hanging down from the ceiling and mixed with the dust of the workshop. Then the voice of Münir Nurettin Selçuk rose over the oud. It rode over the oud like it was flying. “I have no power over the dawning day …” it said. Isa had first heard the song playing from his master’s tape. It was like the first two lines had been written for him; he believed they were meant for him, and he carved them into his arm himself. He couldn’t have heard of either the poet Cahit Sıktı Tarancı, nor the composer Münir Nurettin Selçuk who set the poem to music. “Cassette tape” he would have known, and that was all he needed to believe. “Master, leave the tape, I want to listen to it tonight.” And now he was playing it again. But this time, he was having Derda listen to it.
“Man, that hurts!”
“Of course it’s going to hurt,” said Isa.
Meanwhile, Isa was holding two needles gingerly pinched between his fingertips, heating them over the flame of the stove. Then he dipped the points of the needles into black paint mixed up on a plastic plate, and swiveling around on his stool, he took Derda’s outstretched left hand. He started to pierce Derda’s pointer finger as fast as a sewing machine, with two needles bound together with a rubber band. As the painted points of the two needles pierced the skin, the black mixed with blood. Every so often Isa wiped Derda’s finger with a filthy rag. Otherwise he couldn’t see where he was going. When he wiped the finger the letter “A” jumped out like a beacon.
Isa’s forehead was sweating out all the beer he had drunk. But Derda couldn’t be bothered to notice; he was looking intensely at what Isa had done on his right fist. There was a letter on each finger on his fist. And his fist said OĞUZ.
“That’s all done,” said Isa. Wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, he said, “But it won’t work this way. Make your hand into a fist, make your skin good and tight.”
First Derda looked at the bleeding letter A, then he made a fist and dropped his hand onto the table between him and Isa. Next was the letter T. Isa’s back and neck ached from leaning over and trying to focus his two crooked, drunk eyes. He stretched out then hunched back over the table. He started to pierce into the middle finger of the fist before him with the painted needles. Again and again.
“Ok, now you can’t wash your hands for at least three days,” said Isa. At the same time he was holding Derda’s fist, admiring his work.
“Eventually it’ll scab over. But be patient, don’t pick at it. If you do, it’ll make it come off.
