Whatever had happened, there was no reason for Israfil to have been killed. He was like someone who stumbles onto a battlefield. Of course the truth of the matter was that Israfil had arranged everything so Derda would be the one to shoot the man and rot in prison. But Derda’s mind was so full of thoughts of Tayyar that that didn’t even occur to him. Looking at the OĞUZ on his fingers, he said, “You, too. Forgive me,” and he crumpled down onto his knees. His sobs shook the bed. He cried looking at the photo, pressing the palms of his hands against the image again and again. When he had no more tears left to cry, he curled up like a child and slept in the bed of the man he’d killed. In his slumber, there was no trace of the regret that had risen like a great flame.
He took all the frozen meat he could find in the freezer in the kitchen and dumped it out onto the living room floor. Then he took a ball of string he’d had to turn the house upside down to find and went out into the garden. He propped the front door open with a chair so it wouldn’t swing shut. As soon as they saw Derda, the dogs started to bark. Their barks got even louder and more frantic the closer he got to their kennel. They started to jump and butt their heads against the chicken wire.
Derda tied one end of the string to the sliding iron bar on the kennel’s gate, then started pacing backward until he reached the iron fence surrounding the garden, feeding the string out as he went. Then he dropped the now slim ball of string to the ground and grabbed onto the fence. He jumped over the fence and landed outside the garden. He crouched down and pulled the ball of string through the iron bars of the fence. The first time it didn’t work, but on the second tug the iron bar slid open and in one leap the dogs jumped out the open gate and flew into the garden. In one fell leap, they were out of the kennel and lunging after Derda. They were going to kill the stranger. They stuck their muzzles through the iron bars and tried to jump. But they couldn’t reach him. The stranger was half a kilometer away, smiling. “Go on,” he was saying, “go on inside, there’s food in there.” Then he turned around and walked away. To the highway on the horizon.
When he reached the highway, he saw there were lanes going in three directions, but he didn’t know which direction he wanted to go in. But despite his state of panic he managed to remember which way the Mercedes had come from, and he crossed to the other side. He was going to go back to Istanbul. There was only one thing he had left to do. The last thing he was going to do in this life. After that, he didn’t care. But first he had to flag down a car. Or a truck would do. A red one stopped.
“Where you going?”
“Istanbul.”
“Hop in!”
The driver was an old man.
“What are you doing in these parts, son?” he asked. “There are wild dogs around here, this place is cursed.”
You couldn’t tell that Derda had two corpses to account for. He was just a kid who, at the age of seventeen, had the last spark of life he was ever going to get. That, and he was just a tad afraid. Because he hadn’t had time to clean himself up.
At first he didn’t answer, then all at once he asked, “Do you know a place called Beyoğlu?”
The old man laughed.
“Aren’t you listening to what I’m saying to you? What are you going to do in Beyoğlu?”
“My dad’s waiting for me there.”
“What’s your dad do?”
“He’s a writer,” said Derda.
“What’s his name, maybe I know him.”
“Oğuz Atay.”
“Never heard of him.”
For a second, Derda thought of pulling the gun out from under his shirt and shooting the man. For not knowing Oğuz Atay. But he gave up on the idea. It’s not his fault, he told himself. Those guys who ignored Oğuz Atay wouldn’t be driving a truck now. So he forgave the old man.
“You will,” he said. “Pretty soon you’ll hear about my dad.”
The driver laughed again.
“Yeah, why not, let’s see.”
They didn’t speak again.
When he got out of the truck, the sun was just starting to leave Istanbul behind. The old man had told him how to get to Beyoğlu but it didn’t help him out any. He didn’t know any of the roads or the square he’d mentioned. He only knew Beyoğlu. And that was only the name. Saruhan had told him: “All the stuff he wrote about and the drawings, they’re all in Beyoğlu. There was one meyhane in particular, it’s famous. What was its name … Çolak? Çorak? anyway, something like that.”
He flagged down the first taxi that passed. “Beyoğlu.”
When they arrived in Taksim Square, the driver said, “Well, this is it.”
Derda was searching out of all the car’s windows. “Where?” he asked.
The driver released a deep sigh to calm himself and then, jabbing a finger toward Istiklal Street, he said, “Go down there. All of that is Beyoğlu.”
Derda got out of the taxi and walked into the crowd, thinking about just how many people lived in Istanbul. For years he’d
