A MID-SUMMER NIGHT'S STORY "Bir Yaz Gecesi Oykusu," Jaguar (1996 -- first printing 1978). Istanbul: Can Yayinlari, pp. 111-119.

Author: Peride Celal Translator(s): Yurdanur Salman Genre: short story/fairy tale

I was sitting on the balcony, thinking, "What a beautiful night!" I must write the story of this night. I must write about the moon rising from behind the mountain, accompanied by the shining evening star, about the sea, about the lights twinkling on the opposite shore. It was such a strange feeling: to capture, to internalize, to keep that beautiful summer night in me!
There’s a shooting star! I must write about that star melting into the darkness, about the happy and proud voice of the girl crying at the next window, "I got my wish!" I must write about the pine trees surrounding the house like black, shadowy figures, about the branches reminding one of rustling silk, about the black, wooden house next door with only one window lit up with a faint, warm, yellow light, like an eye watching throughout the night... I must write about Kitmir, barking at the sound of the guitar and the singing coming from Indos; about Kitmir, who is leaning out into the night through the balcony railings, about his long yellow ears twitching constantly...
Yes, I was sitting on the balcony with Kitmir at my side. At the next window, young girls and young boys were leaning out of the window, crowding on top of one another, watching the rising moon, whispering and laughing among themselves. I liked listening to their low voices. There were strange thoughts passing through my mind: like the huge Arab in The Arabian Nights whose head reaches up to the skies, to get hold of Spoon Island which was lying in the sea, sleeping, and to lift it high up, to raise it so high that the whole world could see it, and to shout, now — what would I shout? Peace for the sleeping people, for the children who laugh without knowing why, for the youngsters, the sea, the trees, the sound of the guitar! I would shout, peace for the world, for the people. I was in a sentimental mood. And I was a bit embarrassed because of this. I leaned down and stroked Kitmir’s head to quiet him and laughed at myself in the darkness. While I was laughing at myself like that, a sonorous voice from below called, saying "Hello!" as if responding to my laughter.
I stretched my head out to see who it was; so did Kitmir.
It was Angelos, who had come and stood under the balcony. He was wearing his Sunday best. A white shirt, a black suit; his hair had been wetted and combed neatly. His sun-tanned face was shining in the night, dark-skinned and strained. Angelos, in his old age, was a good-looking man with his black moustache and his tender-looking black eyes, which he constantly blinked.
He stood down there quietly for a while leaning against a post supporting the balcony, his face turned slightly towards the sea.
Whenever he felt like having a chat he would just appear out of nowhere and come over to our place without giving any notice. He was quite a strange fellow. Most of the time he would not greet you when you met him in the street; he would try to go past sideways, one shoulder hanging down, without taking any notice of you; and when he did greet you, he would turn his head away and hasten his steps as if he had regretted doing so; and he would walk on, his head hanging down, sulking, behind his donkey, loaded with baskets of sand. Then, most unexpectedly, he would one day appear under the balcony. This, he would do mostly on Sunday nights, when he had drunk a lot and had a row with his wife.
After we had moved into our summerhouse on this island and become his next-door neighbor, I began to hear strange things about Angelos. There were some people who mockingly said, "He’s madly in love." There were other people who would put their hands to their heads and with a strange gesture try to say, "He’s nuts!" The Greek fishermen had once pulled my leg, saying, "Angelos? He’s crazy, you know! He’s in love with Fokia. Do you know what Fokia is?" As for my neighbors, when they saw that I was curious, they said briefly, "Well, he’s like that; a man of his own kind! He’s a bit bad-tempered, but he’s got a good heart!"
This was all I knew about Angelos, who was now standing under the balcony in the moonlight, puffing on a cigarette. As for "Fokia," I had no idea what that meant.
"Hello, Angelos," I said.
"Hello!" he echoed back. "Beautiful night!"
"Beautiful!" I said. "Look at the moon; how it lights up the whole sky like a lamp."
"Yes, but the iron is rising!" said Angelos.
No voices were to be heard from the next window. It was obvious that they were all listening intently to us.
A little confused, I said, "Yes, the iron is rising."
I could not figure out what iron had to do with moonlight. Still, I tried to hide the fact that I was confused. I didn’t want to scare him away. There had been many nights when he would say nothing except "Hello," then walk round under the balcony and leave, finishing his cigarette quietly and disappearing into the darkness without saying anything more. This was the first time he seemed willing to talk.
"That thing, you know, the thing I bought last year... you know what?"
He was trying to describe it with his hands.
"The tap?"
"Yes, the tap, that’s it! It was 28 liras; I went to ask yesterday, and it’s 48 liras now. Things are getting worse. People... People are bad... There, I wouldn’t give them a penny... This island has lost its charm. The sea is different; the mountain is also different. Now, people don’t believe in anything anymore. They’ve dried up. There now, this part of them..."
He put his hand on his heart and pounded on his chest with his fist.
I felt that I should say something: "Well, the world is changing, Angelos. They are going to the moon, just think of that! There is a danger of war in China, in Russia, and in America. Look, what they’ve started talking about now: Vietnam, Israel; they are talking about what’s happening in Czechoslovakia..."
I found myself saying whatever came to my mind in order to humor him, against this background of the sea, the moonlight, and the night.
Angelos squeezed his cigarette between his fingers and flung it into the garden. He straightened up where he was standing. Putting his hands through his belt he laughed mockingly.
"Never mind! Do not believe all this war-talk. The newspapers make it up. All the businessmen come together and force the press to publish such news. As the newspapers report the news, the merchants raise their prices. All those godless people! They’re fooling us by saying that there’s a war coming, that there’s going to be a war, that the world will be a mess. They claim that there’s a new bomb which will shake up the whole world; do you believe all this? They’re nothing but myths, you know!"
Now, he took his hands off his belt and began to stroke his moustache.
"What great liars these people have turned out to be! They’re dishonest, completely dishonest! When they say a war is going to break out soon, the price of barley goes up, the price of hay also goes up... They’ve stopped construction work; I can’t sell sand anymore. And the donkeys are just starving! Those newspapers publish such news to scare people each and every day!"
He was looking up at the sky, shaking his head as if he were speaking to some people up there. For some time, we were lost in reflection, saying nothing, I on the balcony and Angelo under it. It was again Angelos who resumed the conversation! He put his head down as though he had become tired of watching the stars. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and moved a little.
He began saying, "The trees haven’t given us any fruit this year. They’ve all dried up. They say that they’ve contracted a disease from the pine trees, but I don’t believe it... Neglect, it’s all because of neglect... But look at that sea, look at those hills! Just look at that small island... It’s so bright, completely lit up, isn’t it?"
I was amazed at his talkativeness. But I didn’t say anything for fear he might take offense and stop talking.
Angelos had turned his head towards the sea and was now listening closely to the night. I was also listening like him; so were the people at the next window.
The sound of singing was getting louder and louder. You could tell that up at the taverna the evening’s entertainment was warming up. A drunk man’s voice was singing in Greek, "Kapitane... kapitane..." and some high voices, women’s voices were joining in the song.
I was looking at Angelos, secretly, without saying anything because I was afraid of scaring him away. With his moustache puffed up and a faint smile on his lips, he looked as if he were lost in happy memories. I could almost say that that was a womanizer’s smile, but there was some insensitivity in his eyes, something like anger. I found myself thinking, "A very strange man, this Angelos is! What the people in the village say might be true; maybe he’s crazy, after all!.." He had straightened up now and was looking up at me. Then he sighed deeply.
"Everybody is enjoying himself; they are having real fun at Indos tonight. Pretty soon someone will say ‘Let’s swim in the moonlight!’ They’ll jump into the sea quite drunk and break their necks in the water. Their dead bodies will be dragged from the sea the next morning."
"They said someone drowned yesterday, Angelos!"
"He drowned all right. In that whirlpool behind the rocks... A young boy of nineteen! There the whirlpool pulls you down; you just go down, gluck! One day, I..."
Under his knitted brows, Angelos’ eyes were blinking rapidly. I leaned down to watch with curiosity. So did the people at the next window. Occasionally, they stirred among themselves. It was clear that they could hardly contain their laughter and that they were listening closely.
Angelos moved away from the post he was leaning against and turned his face towards us. He was now standing very straight in front of the balcony. He looked as if he had grown a bit taller. He seemed to be younger and stronger. He was no longer the man who walked behind his donkey, his head hanging down, drawn inward. He smiled all of a sudden. And he smiled so beautifully! When he smiled, he became the sweetest man in the world. He began to tell me about the incident.
"I was going past the Kalpazan rocks, just near the whirlpool, in the boat. I was out fishing. And the sea was very smooth. I looked down and what did I see? Down there, you won’t believe this, but three strokes below the surface, at the bottom of the hole, a girl was struggling like mad. Oh my good God!.. She’s throwing her arms about, trying to swim, but she’s been caught in the whirlpool. She could not come up to the surface of the water. Do you know what I did? I realized I wouldn’t be able to do it with the oars; I’d never be able to reach the deep; I’d never be able to reach the girl with the oar, so I got hold of the boat-hook, I wrapped it up in my jacket so it wouldn’t hurt her neck. I sent it down into the water. You should have seen it! How the girl made for it down there, at the bottom of the sea; how she grabbed it! I pulled up the hook; I got the girl into the boat. She was almost frozen to death; I had a hard time bringing her round. Her father was an M.P. or something like that. Her mother was so happy when she heard that her daughter had been rescued from the whirlpool. ‘I’ll do anything for you, Angelos!’ she said."
Angelos moved his shoulders and pursed his lips. He looked happy and confident in the moonlight, with his smiling eyes.
The people at the next window began whispering. Someone stretched his head out into the shadows: "What a whirlpool that is! They go out and always drown there."
The creaking of a chair was heard in the dark and then another voice said: "They say it is very very deep, is that true, Angelos?"
Angelos seemed pleased that his audience had grown larger. He raised his shoulders in a rowdy manner; he was constantly caressing his moustache.
"It’s just a whirlpool, you know. Behind the rocks. It’s seven or eight strokes deep. At the bottom, there is nothing but very black sand. Fish swarm down there; if you cast your net there, it will never come up empty in the right season. When I saw the girl down there, three strokes down from the surface, moving and struggling, her long hair streaming, Fokia, what do you call it? She had a tail, you know, the mermaid, I first thought she was that..."
Now, there was more movement at the next window. Some were shouting, "Oh!.. Oh!.. Was it a mermaid, what kind of a mermaid, Angelos?"
Angelos turned towards the window with an angry expression on his face, showing that he scorned them all. His voice was a bit irritated when he answered them: "Well, let’s say that you have never seen her, but haven’t you ever heard of her? The mermaid, you know! I have seen her myself, and so have others. But the one I saw was the most beautiful of them all! Such a beautiful girl, you know; you’d think she was Miss Universe!"
Voices merged into one another at the next window. Laughter and cries overflowed and poured out of the window, raining down on Angelos’ head. Kitmir also stood up from where he was lying, his ears pricked; he was leaning over the railings now, almost falling down, looking at Angelos, wagging his tail. The moon was like a copper tray over the opposite island, the wind had stopped, all the sounds had been silenced down at Indos. The island was about to go into its warm summer sleep. We looked at Angelos, we watched him with curiosity. The man’s eyes were shining in the night; his excited voice fascinated us all. We leaned over the balcony, out of the window towards him. Cries, laughter, questions poured out incessantly: "He’s seen a mermaid, this Angelos here! He’s seen a mermaid!"
"What did the mermaid look like, Angelos?"
"Angelos, tell us, please tell us about the mermaid!"
Angelos looked proud now. He was smiling into the night, his white teeth showing and shining in the dark; he was very pleased with himself.
"She was as big as this! Very big; she was tall, very tall. Below her waist, she was completely covered with scales; you know, like the tail of a grey mullet. Her hair was very long, but so very long! It fell down below her waist; you would think it was golden."
Running his hands over his head, then down his shoulders, Angelos was trying to describe the mermaid’s long, wavy fair hair. His eyes were shining with pride. His lips were swollen with desire. I could see his chest heaving with passion under his white shirt. He was not that shy, sulking man anymore. It was as if a different man were standing there before us. Young looking, a womanizer, a completely different-looking Angelos!
They began to shout at the next window now:
"What was her hair like, Angelos? Was it golden? Did she have a face, Angelos, a face like ours? Angelos, did you hear her speak? How were her shoulders shaped, and what about her breasts? Was she completely naked, Angelos? How about her tail, tell us about her tail, Angelos!"
Angelos’ cheeks were puffed up, rising and falling as if he were going to break into laughter any minute. His hands were tucked under his belt and his muscles were tense as if challenging the stars, the moon, and the night.
He said, "Yes, she had them! She had arms, she had a face, and she had plenty of hair! We had gone over to Flat Island to catch fish. We were right over the rocks. Lo and behold! What did we see! Down there, a huge thing was reclining on the rocks! Hristos says, ‘I guess this is a monster!’ I say, ‘Oh, let’s be careful!’ He says ‘If we catch it, we won’t have a worry for the rest of our lives; we can sell it at the fishmarket, then live like kings!’ Our friends had caught monsters before that. One weighed exactly three tons! They had sold it at the fishmarket for four hundred liras! Then, the men at the fishmarket showed it to the people for ten pence each and made a lot of money in this way. Up there, on the surface, the four of us got hold of a big boulder and let it down directly on that thing. Then we rushed down to catch it. I was the first to see her golden hair, her white arms, her tail of scales. She was such a beautiful girl! There, on the rocks, she was lying quite motionless, in a disheveled, relaxed position, the poor thing! When she saw me, she was startled; she looked at me scared. But what eyes she had! Blue, very blue, azure blue like the sea, clear blue like the skies! She suddenly threw herself into the water and began to swim very fast, trying to escape. And I jumped into the water after her. My friends were yelling and shouting from the rocks, but I swam like mad following the girl in the water! But, no! It was hopeless! She swam away, moving her silvery tail as if she were mocking me and disappeared in the distance. Later on, I went back to Flat Island, God knows many times! I couldn’t find a trace of her. Old folks say, ‘She appears on Flat Island in the summer and she hides there in the winter.’ But now, they are going to install that horrible thing there in the winter — a radar or something. I don’t know what will happen to that poor creature then. These people, these evil people, they don’t leave anybody any space to breathe. In this world of ours, not even mermaids have a place of their own, can you imagine?"
There were more whispers coming from the next window. Then, someone among them, not being able to contain himself anymore, shouted:
"He’s seen her! Don’t pull his leg anymore, because he’s seen her! He’s not lying, you know!"
Angelos jumped where he was standing and turning towards the voice he began to say something, shouting:
"What do you mean, lying! I saw her, and others like me saw her as well! I’m telling you, she had hair this long, shining like gold in the water. Her eyes were azure blue, her face was as bright as the moon!"
Then he fell silent as if he had lost his voice. We discerned a shadowy figure emerging next to him. This was a tiny woman dressed in black.
"Everybody saw her, they all saw her, but none of them went nuts like you did!" she began to complain in a weeping voice. She got hold of Angelos’ arm and tried to pull him away while at the same time complaining as if she wanted us to hear.
"He says he’s seen Fokia! Fokia! How I wish he hadn’t seen her! He hasn’t taken the donkeys back to their yard yet! The stupid sot! He comes here in the middle of the night and raves about Fokia! Come on Angelos, let’s go, you’ll give me T.B. Have pity on me Angelos! Don’t you ever think of your children Angelos?"
We were watching them from the balcony, from the window. We were all looking at Angelos, feeling extremely sorry for him.
Angelos pulled himself away from the woman’s hands as if he didn’t want to touch something dirty. I didn’t say anything. They disappeared into the darkness.
For a while, nobody uttered a word. Kitmir had moved away from the railings and was now getting ready to curl up on the mat to go to sleep. I heard someone sigh deeply in the night. A star shot down, its fine silvery tail flowing through the dark sky. At the next window nobody made a wish!