The Black Book Read Free Page B

pictures he’d seen? He longed to grow up and become a man! When he announced he wanted his hair cut, Grandma was pleased, but the barber, being insensitive like most blabbermouths, sat him on a stool he placed on the dining table rather than in Grandpa’s armchair. On top of that, the blue-and-white checkered cloth which he took off Grandpa and tied around Galip’s neck was so big that, as if it weren’t enough that it almost choked him, it fell below his kneecaps much like a skirt on a girl.
    Much later after their first meeting, 19 years 19 months and 19 days after (according to Galip’s calculations), looking at his wife’s head buried in the pillow some mornings, Galip would register that the blue quilt on Rüya and the blue cloth the barber took off Grandpa and tied around Galip’s neck gave him the same willies; yet he never mentioned anything about it to his wife, perhaps because he knew Rüya would not have the quilt recovered for a reason so vague.
    Thinking the morning paper might have already been slipped under the door, Galip rose out of the bed with his habitually careful, feather-light movements, but rather than go to the door, his feet took him first to the bathroom and then to the kitchen. The teakettle was neither in the kitchen nor in the living room. Given that the copper ashtray was full to the rim with cigarette stubs, Rüya must’ve been up all night reading or not reading a new detective novel. He found the teakettle in the bathroom: there just wasn’t enough water pressure to run that scary contraption called a “chauffebain,” so bath water was heated in the same teakettle, a second one not having managed to get itself purchased. Before making love, much like Grandma and Grandpa, and like Mom and Dad, they too sometimes heated water, quietly and impatiently.
    Grandma, who’d been charged with ingratitude after one of those fights that began with “quit smoking,” had once reminded Grandpa that she had never gotten out of bed after him, not once. Vasıf had stared. Galip listened, wondering what Grandma meant. Later, Jelal had pronounced on the subject also, but not in the same sense as Grandma: “Women not allowing the sun to rise on them,” he’d written, “as well as getting out of bed before the men, is customary among peasant folk.” After reading the conclusion of the column in which Grandma and Grandpa’s morning routines had been described pretty factually (the ashes on the quilt, the toothbrushes in the same glass of water as the false teeth, the habitual quick perusal of the obituaries), Grandma had said, “So, now we’re peasant folk!” “Should’ve made him eat lentil soup for breakfast so he’d know what it is to be a peasant!” Grandpa had responded.
    As Galip rinsed the cups, looked for clean knives, forks, and plates, took out of the fridge that smelled of spiced pastrami the cheese and olives which looked like plastic food, and shaved with the water he heated in the teakettle, he contemplated making a noise loud enough to wake Rüya, but he didn’t manage to. So he read the sleepy contents of the ink-scented paper which he pulled out from under the door and spread out next to his plate. He thought of other things as he drank his unsteeped tea and ate the stale bread and the thyme-flavored olives: This evening he’d either go to Jelal’s or to the movies at the Palace Theater. He glanced at Jelal’s column, decided to read it when he got back from the movies that night, but at the insistence of his eye he couldn’t help reading one sentence; he rose from the table leaving the paper spread out, put on his coat, was at the door but went back inside. Hands stuck in his pockets full of tobacco, change, and used tickets, for a while he watched his wife carefully, respectfully, quietly. He turned, pulled the door lightly behind him, and left.
    The stairs, mopped in the morning, smelled of wet dust and dirt. Outside, it was a cold and muddy day darkened by the