The Aziz Bey Incident. Ayfer Tunc

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СКАЧАТЬ would seize him by the collar and sling him out.

      That day he wandered around the city yet again and returned to the hotel with his hands empty. It was getting towards evening. Again that beautiful redness had settled on the city. There was no one in the hotel where only vagrants and lonely people stayed for a few days and then left, whose corridors were always empty, where occasionally a cry or a strange shout rose and died away. Despite the fact that Aziz Bey had opened the windows and the door wide, not even the slightest breeze could be felt. He took his tambur and sat on his bed. His woeful voice wandered round the corridors of the empty hotel, reaching even the ear of the young clerk, who was sitting, leaning back in his chair as usual.

       My heart, the day has ended again with separation; the sun has set.Shame, hope has deceived you yet another day, my heart…

      The clerk was drawn towards this music, whose words he did not understand but which quietly penetrated his heart. To be able to hear better, he went upstairs and put his head round the door of Aziz Bey’s room. There was reverence and wonder on his face, but Aziz Bey who was lost in the melodies of his own music did not even notice it. The song ended and when Aziz Bey lifted his head he saw the clerk in front of him, looking at him with a broken smile. Knowing full well that the clerk did not understand, he said, ‘That’s how it is mister clerk. Look, hope has deceived me yet another day.’

      All he ate that night was bread.

      The next day he felt weak and spent the whole day in bed, turning first one way then the other. Towards the evening he got up and, looking at his growth of beard in the mirror whose silvering had flaked off, he thought how he must first find someone who understood his language. Wasn’t there a consulate or something in this city? At that point the clerk came. He was speaking continuously in the city’s complicated and misty language, but in a really noisy and excited way, as if trying to tell Aziz Bey something. He pointed to the tambur lying on the bed. Aziz Bey smiled, he thought the clerk wanted a song, took the tambur and sat on the bed. However, the clerk took Aziz Bey by the arm, showed him his clothes and succeeded in explaining to him with weird movements that he wanted him to follow him.

      Aziz Bey got dressed in a state of bewilderment, took his tambur and followed the clerk. Dusk had fallen. It was as though the people of the city who could not go out during the day because of the heat had now flowed onto the streets and they were full of lights, alive. There was a delicately sweet fragrance in the still hot air. It was as if a sharp scent of jasmine pervaded the air from somewhere and in a funny way also gave Aziz Bey the will to live. This time he felt pleasant things filling him and his feet fairly flying along the city streets, which he had hitherto wandered in a mood of hopelessness and angst.

      The clerk walked very fast, greeting everyone and making rude remarks to strange men with bohemian faces, while looking behind him from time to time to see if Aziz Bey was coming. They were progressing towards the city’s nightlife. The clerk stopped in front of a highly decorative, low door with Arabic writing in shiny letters. He pushed the door open and signalled to Aziz Bey. They went down some steep steps and came to a large area divided into sections by columns covered with mirrors. A few feeble lights lit this dark basement decorated in burgundy velvet; the nightclub that had long since sent home the clients of the night before was preparing for its new patrons.

      Aziz Bey looked around; there was a lack of feeling inside him. A little later a well-built Arab, moustache and hair sparkling with brilliantine, wearing a pin-striped suit and waistcoat appeared along with a few well-fed men. Pointing here and there, he was giving some orders in a loud voice in words that were a mixture of Arabic and French. He was attentive, he was firm. When he saw the clerk his face softened. They embraced and began to talk immediately in loud voices, laughing heartily from time to time.

      Aziz Bey had shrunk terribly, he had crumbled. His shoulders had fallen, his head was spinning slightly. He thought he was melting in the shadow of this huge Arab. He swayed. At that moment he felt the clerk’s hand on his shoulder. Both looked at Aziz Bey and began to speak. The clerk’s face revealed his respect for, and praise of, Aziz Bey, but at that moment Aziz Bey failed to understand this; he was too alone and estranged from everything to understand and be happy. The Arab took a cigarette from his case and lit it and his signet ring dazzled Aziz Bey for a moment. He addressed Aziz Bey with a pleasant expression on his face. He made rapid movements in the air with his large-fingered hands as if he wanted to explain something.

      But Aziz Bey, a cock crowing in his own dunghill, a lion in his own neighbourhood, clever, proud, even conceited, did not understand a word of what the two men were saying. He just looked. Finally the clerk could not stand it, took the tambur and thrust it into Aziz Bey’s hands. It was then Aziz Bey under - stood that they were asking him to play. The clerk pulled up a chair, Aziz Bey sat down and began to play the tambur that had been placed between his knees.

       The heart is tired now of shedding tears with your love.

       Because there are no tears left in the eye, it has sobered with patience now…

      He shut his eyes tightly to stop the tears falling. In spite of his hands trembling and his voice sounding tearful, the Arab smiled with pleasure and the clerk was looking at Aziz Bey with a broad, stupidly naïve smile, as if taking pride in this work of art. The song ended, the big burly Arab patted Aziz Bey on the back patronisingly, as if praising a child who had memorised his times tables well. He smiled and left saying a multitude of words to the clerk. The clerk took Aziz Bey by the hand, brought him over to a corner and seated him down, then disappeared under the gloomy lights.

      Aziz Bey was alone, helpless and melancholy. He was tearful. His hand, still grasping the tambur tightly, was sweaty. He was such a stranger to everything, he could not find even a tiny clue to help him understand his state. He could not even think of a face-saving interpretation to enable him to sit up straight on the burgundy velvet chair. His face was as sad as a child who had lost his mother in a crowd and was waiting for her to find him. No doubt if he had seen this childish, tearful, deprived expression, that pitiful state would never have been erased from his memory, and his relatively short life would have been even more brief. But luckily there was not enough light for him to see himself in the broken mirrors that covered the columns from top to toe.

      A little later, a waiter left a tray on the coffee table in front of him. Two round flat loaves, a few meatballs and a little green salad. Aziz Bey did not even consider it an offering made out of pity for a poor stranger. Yet although he was fainting with hunger, he ate the food unhurriedly, ridding his mind of any thought of pride. A few hours later, the lights of this vulgar place glitz brightened, and the tables began to fill up. Aziz Bey was lost in contemplation of these sweaty, noisy men of this baking hot land, happy in their own world.

      While he was watching them swallowing the drink they had poured into small glasses, watching their smiles, their hearty laughter, and their constant embracing of their long haired, tired women with greasy-looking complexions, he heard a sentence right in his ear.

      ‘You are the one from Turkey?’

      He started. A slim, handsome young man with a very thin moustache stood smiling in front of him. They were about the same age. While Aziz Bey was searching his mind for an explanation for this scene the young man had already drawn up a chair and sat next to him.

      ‘So a tambur? And one with a bow too.’

      An excited delight appeared on Aziz Bey’s face. The deepened, hardened lines that had formed, and resembled a dried corpse in the desert, softened and he smiled.

      ‘With a bow…’ he said ‘Left by my grandfather…’

      The eyes of the Armenian filled as he put out his hand and touched the tambur. He looked at Aziz Bey. СКАЧАТЬ