The Last Day of Tokjai (7)

I don't know how long we traveled in that truck that smelled of urine, mold, rotten meat, and shit. I remember it stopped at some point, but the doors didn't open — if they had, I'd have felt the cool of the air on my face. We waited in the dark for hours, no different from rotten onions. Then dawn came. The morning light and scent — yes, no matter how hard you try, you can't overcome that pungent smell — entered through the cracks and poured over us. Still, I did nothing, lay motionless — like a broken-hearted lover, like a hopeless mother, above all like a betrayed dog. My body was so numb that I didn't want the journey to end. Whether it was because I feared something worse or from genuine laziness — it's hard to know the cause of this lethargy! Honestly, I didn't feel anything — I was aware I wasn't dead, and that was all. Like a fungus multiplying in a damp, airless room, like a weak weed growing by the wall, like maggots breeding in a festering wound, like mosquitoes swarming around unwashed dishes left in the sink… There was only a faint consciousness floating in the darkness that I could perceive; my legs, body, neck, even my head, seemed like pieces of meat not belonging to me, placed far apart from each other. As if, if the truck stopped, the cage door opened, and they said, "Come on, Tokjai, get out," I'd refuse life's generous invitation, saying, "I'm fine here, thank you." Only my eyes moved — looking at the light leaking through the truck's ceiling, dreaming, transferring the pain of the betrayed body to the soul, trying to stop the feeling of defeat mixing into my blood like a venom. And my ears — with difficulty, heard the whispers of the dogs in the other cages, their bitter complaints, their voices sometimes rising to a roar, their speech forked with fear. I couldn't see who was who, what the speakers looked like, but it didn't matter much. On a ship heading for death, it wasn't our differences that mattered, but our shared fate.

"How did they catch you, Wednesday?"

"I was sleeping — when I opened my eyes, I was here."

"Get out of here — how could you not wake up from all that jolting? Did they carry you wrapped in silk handkerchiefs?"

"They must have injected me in my sleep — I really don't remember anything."

"What about you, Curly? How did you end up here?"

"My owner of ten years sold me. They hadn't been taking care of me since I injured my left leg — not like before. They'd gotten a new dog — younger, more active, livelier. Next to him, I looked like a stray. The first chance they got, they got rid of me."

"Hmm, ungrateful humans. And you, Yellow?"

"I've been a street dog my whole life — can't you tell? I never had an owner. I always envied the dogs kept in gardens, courtyards, in front of barns. All my life, I've filled my belly from trash and under the tables of street vendors. I drank from puddles or the small ponds in the large gardens, usually after sunsets. So, this is how it ends? Such a life, such an end — I'll curse this whole business…"

"Enough with the self-pity. That's not what we asked you — tell us how you were caught."

"Dogs like me are easy to deceive. The man picked me up from the sidewalk. He put food in front of me. I ate it — I was very hungry. At first, everything was wonderful — I really liked him. I even stuck my tail up, thinking, 'Finally, someone's taking care of me.' Then my surroundings started to blur; my legs and chin shook; my stomach cramped. I thought I was dying. I didn't die, but you'll understand I wasn't too pleased about that news."

"You sure talk a lot! A story that could be told in one sentence — you ramble on and on. No wonder no one's taken care of you all this time — you'd bore anyone to death."

"Leave him alone, youngsters — when will this truck stop? Does anyone know anything?"

"I don't know anything."

"Me neither."

"Me neither."

"Me neither."

"Me…"

"Enough, stop it. If you don't know, shut up. Why are you making so much noise for nothing?"

"Dog meat isn't very common in Thailand. They're either selling us to Cambodia or Vietnam."

"Maybe China."

"Yes, China is possible, but China is far. Vietnam is far too. I think the destination is Cambodia."

"In cold weather, dog meat is supposed to warm the body. That's why people in Hanoi like it — I've heard my folks talking."

"Let them choke on it. If you want to warm up, wear a sweater, a coat — what do you want from innocent dogs?"

"Why say that? You eat chicken. People eat it too. Have you ever heard chickens complain? They're as innocent as you are."

"What's the connection? Are chickens friends of humans? What can they give humans except their meat and eggs? Besides, they shit around, scratch the ground, eat vegetables from gardens we dogs don't guard, and don't even recognize their owners. We dogs give humans our loyalty, friendship, love — in short, our lives. And what do they do? When they're done with us, they get rid of us and make money from our meat."

"I think it's time, long past time, for some self-reflection. The rules of nature are clear: the strong crush, use, and exploit the weak. Humans act as it suits them. Compassion, mercy, generosity… These are empty words. Since we can't object to humans eating chicken — because we get the chicken bones — when the time comes for them to eat us, we shouldn't object either. That's the objective conclusion — nothing can be done about it. It's another thing if we see ourselves as superior to other animals. Then we'd be making the same mistake humans do."

"But chickens are raised for their meat and eggs. That's their purpose — they provide no other benefit to humans. What could be more natural than their being eaten and exploited? Besides, I've never seen a villager name his chickens. Without a name, you're not an 'individual' in human eyes — you're a 'thing.'"

"Ha ha ha, go tell that to the chickens in our garden. No chicken wants to die, just as no dog wants to die. From a chicken's perspective, it doesn't matter whether you're useful to humans or not. It thinks it exists to live and is ready to do whatever it can to live even one second longer. Also, it's a huge lie that chickens can't befriend humans. I saw on TV: a French explorer took his chicken on a voyage to the North Pole. The chicken went everywhere with him on the boat. The man even had a sweater knitted for his chicken so it wouldn't get cold. Like everyone else, I thought it was a joke at first, but the news was quite serious and the footage real."

"Enough with your senseless chicken talk! We're going to our deaths, and you're still going on about what chickens think, what chickens do. Those near the holes should look outside and tell us where we're going. Maybe we'll pass near a police station — we can all bark together and get the attention of a good cop."

"I've been looking — no police. The only thing I see from this side is rice and sugarcane fields."

"I wonder where they're taking us?"

"Hah, we've gone in circles and come back to the same point — just like idle humans."

"It's not like that everywhere, you know? Dogs aren't eaten in every country. In some countries, they're raised just for food. We've lived pretty well, I'd say. It seems like it'll end badly, but oh well."

"By the way, that new white dog — with the pale-yellow spots on his nose — he's been sleeping since he arrived. It's been over half a day since he was brought in. The truck stopped, we spent the night quietly — he slept. Morning came, we set off — he's still sleeping. Did they give him too much of that stuff? Or did the poor thing die? Hey, white dog! Heeeey! You without the collar!"

I couldn't tell where the call was coming from. It sounded like a puppy's voice. That the first helping hand came from an underage youngster made me happy. Perhaps the reason for that happiness was that I think the feeling of mercy suits a puppy best.

"A dead one wouldn't be worth anything — they'll sell us alive to the restaurants. The restaurant owner will want to be sure we're healthy, not carrying infectious diseases. That white dog isn't dead — let's wait a little longer. He'll wake up when the drug wears off. Or maybe he's given up hope. In that case, we won't be able to get a word out of him. Forget him."

The big black dog across from me looks at me for a few seconds. There's more pity than curiosity in his gaze. It's impossible not to feel the piercing power in his eyes.

"Hey you, white thing! What's with you? You're spread out at the bottom of the cage like a doormat! Get up, say a few words, come to yourself. Don't give up to despair — it's not worth it! Okay, we're all on the same road. What can we do… Even if we die of sorrow, no one's going to take pity and help us — don't wear yourself out. We should grieve for our fate as much as pigs, chickens, and cattle do. At least we've had what could be called a good life until now. Our overall benefit is still considerable."

I knew he was talking to me, but for some reason, I stubbornly didn't want to let on that I'd heard him. I know humans do the same. They do it to appear important, to look down on others. They want to be the one seen, not the one seeing; the one noticed, not the one noticing. What about me? Humans are selfish, conceited, hypocritical… What about me? Could it be that after all those years with them… No, it can't be. Maybe I really had fallen into deep despair; maybe the wound in my soul was worse than I thought. There was no point in letting myself fall deeper into this vicious cycle — since my mental faculties were working perfectly, I should speak up. Otherwise, they'd think I was staying silent because I was stupid and ignorant.

"I'm fine, I've been listening to your conversations for the last fifteen minutes. I heard everything — chickens, humans, mercy, ingratitude, and so on. I haven't given up to despair — where do you get such ideas?"

A pair of eyes in the darkness sparkles like glass this time — black inside black, I can't understand for a moment how it can be so striking. I turn my head and look at his body, slowly emerging from the darkness, becoming more real as it emerges. He doesn't look at all like the rude, arrogant, dirty type I'd imagined.

"You say you're fine, but you haven't said a word, Collarless. Join us — we have plenty to say. You'll feel better, your spirits will lift. If there's anything worse than dying, it's dying unhappy."

"You're right," I say faintly. My giving this short answer isn't because nothing else came to mind. The whole truck has gone quiet; everyone inside is curious about what I'll say. So, I'm a little hesitant. The dog talking to me seems experienced, probably older than me too. There's a seriousness in his voice that comes from experience. He doesn't talk idly, and when he does, everyone around falls silent.

"Of course I'm right. Let me know your name. Better not to be without a collar — not good! Mine is Tam. They gave me that name because my fur is pitch black. The other dogs in the village call me Elder Brother Tam. Before being crammed into this cage, I was the oldest dog in the village — I'm exactly eleven years old. See, I've introduced myself. Now it's your turn…"

"I'm Tokjai. Everyone in the village calls me Tokjai," I say without thinking, without weighing.

"So, why are you here? Are you a stray? Where's your collar?"

"Collar? What collar? I've never worn a collar my whole life. When they tried to put one on me, I growled, barked, raised hell… Do I look like a city dog to wear a collar?"

"Fine, okay, we get it — they never put a collar on you."

"It's not that they didn't — they couldn't! I wouldn't let them."

"Whatever you say. So, tell me — what did you do to make your owner tired of you? Or did they run out of money and find selling you to be the answer? He he, they would do that! They're human — you should expect every kind of evil!"

"No, it's not that they ran out of money — because I'm naughty. At least, that's what they say. I used to go to the village school, and a couple of unpleasant incidents happened there. After that, they started looking for a way to get rid of me."

"That's how it always is. Everyone here has a story similar to yours, Tokjai. I'm telling you this so you won't be sad. It's not your fault — it's your so-called owners. They're all ungrateful; they don't have even a thousandth of the loyalty they expect from us. No matter what we do, in their eyes we're animals — just animals. Maybe a little more valuable than a chicken, but not much. They think we can't think like them. Actually, they do all this fussing because they can't admit that they themselves think like animals."

I like Elder Brother Tam's thoughts. These are issues I haven't thought much about before. I want to respond, but nothing serious comes to mind. Then a thin voice emerges from an indistinct point in the darkness — a voice I haven't heard until now.

"We're going to our deaths, and you're still concerned with how humans see you. We haven't learned a thing! That's the problem — despite all we've been through, we still define ourselves by how humans see us. Yet it's time, long past time, to determine our own identity independently of humans. We need to create a dog identity that can stand on its own and work to maintain it. Isn't that right, Elder Brother Tam?"

There's a silence in the truck for a while. The beam of light from the ceiling vibrates with the swaying of the truck, barely touching the bodies of all the dogs inside before continuing its wanderings. Seeing Elder Brother Tam yawn at length, I realize he's about to start a lesson that won't be short. In his eyes is the boredom of someone about to answer a complaint he's heard often. He looks blankly toward the direction of the voice for a while, then begins.

"You're right, young brother, but it's not as simple as you think. It's not nearly short enough to be summarized in two or three sentences of propaganda. We are the descendants of ancestors domesticated tens of thousands of years ago. Having given up a free life for prepared food, clean water, and safe shelter, we've abandoned any identity independent of humans. Trying to regain it now would be both meaningless and a waste of time. We dogs — those like you and me — if released into the forest, could no longer survive; we'd die of hunger in two days. Our ability to survive in the wild has atrophied over tens of thousands of years of continuous humanization. We now eat like humans — don't we all eat two or three meals a day? — think like humans — we have no other choice to adapt — live like humans. To deny this is to deny the choice our ancestors made. Yes, you have the right to refuse the past, but that right doesn't give you the power to change it. Unfortunately, the wall we've leaned on for so long has made us weak. Not only weak, but just as lacking in will. Do you know what that means? The creature called the dog has been recreated by humans, attached to the human mind, shaped by human arrangements. Today, we cannot think of the word 'dog' independently of humans. We're not whales, tigers, or elephants. Those animals can live, multiply, and die happily without ever encountering a single human. But what about us dogs? Cities have become our home; even the freest of us depend on human food scraps to fill their bellies. Without humans, there are no dogs. The talk about collars reminded me of this. In my youth, I lived in Bangkok for a few years. I had a collar, and when my owner took me out, instead of being ashamed, I was happy to be let outside. When I saw a female dog approaching, I'd wag my tail and want to approach her — but my owner would pull my rope, restrain me. Why? Because he didn't want me to be with the female I desired, 'now' and 'here.' That is, he objected to my being a dog — he wanted me to deny myself. Because they themselves can't live as they desire, because they constantly postpone all beautiful things to another place and time, and above all because their purpose in life is to be successful and powerful even at the cost of unhappiness — they impose their own boring, restless lives on us. They frame it differently to us. With soft rhetoric like 'Dog equals human's loyal friend, aide, guardian of the home when needed, last resort against loneliness' — they try to ease the pain of what we've lost, supposedly. But the truth is much harsher, much more wounding. The modern dog has become part of human social life, family, even education and morality. Since turning back from this point is impossible, let's skip that question. If anything is to be done, it's to ask how we can put a stop to this tendency. To ask that, you need to find dogs who are dissatisfied with their situation. Here, right now, captive and about to be sold, is there anyone who longs for freedom, for a return to true dog identity, for the beauty of the wild? I doubt it. We're all quite comfortable. Even though we know the food scraps our owners give us could feed two dogs, don't we choose to growl rather than share it with stray dogs sticking their necks into the garden? Look — didn't we even silence Yellow, who was telling us his troubles a moment ago? Haven't we failed to put ourselves in his place? We can't even stand to listen, let alone empathize. You don't even know his name — you call him 'Dirty One' among yourselves. Then you come here and drone on and on about dog identity and dog pride. Where was that dog pride when you claimed ownership of the food given to you and condemned the dog on the street to hunger? Where were the ideals of equality and justice you claim burn inside you when you looked down on others, relying on your soft fur, your rare breed in Thailand, or your cute little size? Where were the moments when you pretended to seek that unknown identity you call 'the true dog'? Now you're in a bind — you're looking for a principle, a momentum to motivate you and get you out of this difficult situation, an anchor around which to revolve. For that, you're taking refuge in the freedom of the wild — something given up tens of thousands of years ago and never once looked back upon. Excuse me, but in my kindest words, I call that naivety. Not knowing yourself, selfishness, refusal to give up comfort — I call it amateurishness. And let me add…"

"Sorry to interrupt, Elder Brother Tam, but I think the truck is stopping. Listen to the engine!"

I didn't know who said that last bit at the time — though later, thinking calmly, I decided it could only have been Curly. But then the back of the truck erupted in noise. This intense shower of sound — for which words are insufficient — lasted so long that at one point, I thought it would never end. Elder Brother Tam's warnings — "Enough, children, be quiet so we can hear what's happening outside" — finally, though late, began to take effect, and the noise dissipated like mist scattered by rain. The truck had stopped at the side of the road; a black water canal was visible ahead, and beyond that, pomelo orchards… First came music. Pi Bird was singing "Abnaam gan, abnaam gan." Then we heard a door closing. Chaaaht! Then a few words of greeting. Have we arrived? Is this where we'll be sold? I pricked up my ears like sunflowers on a sunny day and listened to the sounds outside. The truck driver — the man who caught me — was talking to a woman.

"I want my dog back."

At first, I wasn't sure who the voice outside belonged to. The voice sounded strange somehow. Whose head wouldn't be turned by a helping hand from far away — from very far away? Just when I'd gotten used to the bottomless well awaiting me, just when I'd surrendered to the monster's hands… After all, I had accepted my approaching end. That's what it's like to know the future — you can prepare yourself for even the worst outcomes, numb your soul. Nothing can hurt you anymore; when you know death is prowling nearby, you stop being afraid of anything. If a living being's most valuable possession is its life, why worry about the rest, why chase after trivial calculations? My only wish was that it be painless and quick. I had no strength left to want anything else.

"Give me back my dog. I couldn't sleep all night. I made a mistake — I'm very sorry."

Yes, it was Mother. That was her voice, her worry, her remorse. This was a moment I would never forget, would never let anyone forget, would tell every dog I met. Coffee must have heard this part of the story from me ten times — she listened and got bored. At every opportunity, I'd quote it, comparing a feeling or situation to this "moment of rapidly rising from the depths," and I'd take insane pleasure in that comparison.

"Don't be silly, sister. You gave the dog away once. And I gave you all those basins, buckets, clotheslines, and clothespins in return."

"You gave me two buckets and a basin — you didn't give clothespins or a line. I'll pay you back the money, don't worry."

"But it doesn't work like that, sister. We traded. We agreed — time has passed. On top of the two buckets and one basin, I'll ask for money too."

The dogs in the back hadn't yet realized who the woman outside had come for. Knowing she hadn't come for them must have hurt — the increasingly thin walls of that glass palace inside them. Being chosen from among them and taken out also created an inexplicably heavy guilt in me. As if I had eaten too much and couldn't move, while dozens of dogs around me were starving to death. Knowing this would happen, I felt the sting in advance. The anxious silence in the truck was broken by Elder Brother Tam's whisper-like voice.

"Who has this woman come for? You or Curly?"

"No, not me — that's not my owner's voice. I wish it were, but it's not."

"What about you, Wednesday — is this woman your owner's mother?"

"No — that's not Pornsuda's mother's voice. I've never heard it before."

"So, whose is it then? Whoever it is, come forward, so we can congratulate you."

"Mine."

"Tokjai?"

"Yes, mine. That's my owner's mother's voice. You don't mind, do you?"

"Ha ha ha, why would we mind? If we're unlucky, it's not because of you; if you're lucky, it's not because of us. Go, live your life. Run through your village streets, the fields, along the canals, lie down by the fishermen mending their nets by the pond, enjoy the sunsets at the temple for us too…"

Suddenly, the truck was filled with bittersweet congratulations. All the dogs — whose names I knew and didn't — tried to hide their jealousy and sadness with words like "Congratulations, Tokjai," "Live for us too, Tokjai," "What a kind-hearted owner you have — you're so lucky, Tokjai." I could feel it, because if I were in their place, I'd be jealous — even a little resentful and irritable. When the shower of congratulations died down, leaving only scattered drops, Elder Brother Tam spoke again.

"Try to live well, take pleasure in life. Look, I'm eleven years old. Above all, live at peace with yourself, love yourself — not selfishly and arrogantly, but value yourself. I don't know if you can grasp the difference. Don't despise yourself, your needs, your pleasures either. Live so that when death comes, you won't say, 'I wish I'd had another life.' Do you understand, Tokjai? Be happy."

Just then, sounds come from the door of the truck bed. The rusty lock squeals like a mouse held by its tail and shaken in the air as it's removed from its hole. Then the door opens. Sunlight pours in like floodwaters hitting a street at the most unexpected moment — so fresh, so magnificent, so beautiful — the world repeatedly existing before my eyes, so splendid the riot of colors, so distant and unreachable. Ohhh the blue of the sky…

"Tokcaaaay… My baby, are you all right?"

"Don't you go in — I'll get your dog for you. Your baby? Don't you have children? You call a dog your baby?"

"What's it to you, man? I have both a child and a dog! Mind your own business. Give me my dog."

"I'll give him to you, don't worry — just hold this lock a moment."

All the dogs in the truck start barking at once, showing their teeth at this demonic man, but he's afraid of nothing. What human would be afraid of slaves in cages? He knows we can't hurt him while we're caged, so he doesn't care about our barking. He pushes the latch on my cage door, unties the rope. Here are the man's hands — he grabs and pulls me; I'm like a corpse dragged by floodwater. My feet leave the ground; I'm in the hands of the man who could be my killer. Inside me, a growing wave of guilt, an excess I don't know where to put, a huge tumor on my back. When Tossapol in melancholy, he says, "A person never knows what they're missing until they encounter it, but they know what they have too much of as long as they carry it." Those words came to mind at that moment. I didn't know what I was missing, but I felt what I had too much of — in the very middle of my heart, with all its weight. Being chosen from among all these dogs made me ashamed, as if I had gained unjustly. I had taken what belonged to others — to others. If only the freedom Mother brought could be divided among the number of dogs here, and I could take my share and be content. Elder Brother Tam's words "Be happy" ring in my ears. "I can't," I say to myself. "I can't."

The man grips me with his huge hands, tucks me under his arm. With his other hand, he covers my mouth so I won't bite him. I give no reaction — neither struggle nor bark. My head tucked to my neck, my eyes wet, my ears covered in cage dust…

"Tokcaaay… How are you, my baby!"

I don't answer. Mother takes me in her arms. She looks at my head, my ears, my feet. Seeing that nothing's wrong with me, that no wounds have formed on my sides, that nothing's been torn off, makes Mother happy. She puts me in the back of the Isuzu pickup as if snatching me from the man, saying, "You sit here nicely, okay? The road is long; if it gets too hot, we'll bring you inside." I don't wag my tail, I don't bark. I tuck my head between my front paws and curl up like a ball of wool. Mother looks at me anxiously — I know this, but there's nothing I can do. How can I be happy while my friends go to their deaths? How can I rejoice at being saved? How can I believe that life will be the same after that day? How can I believe that this moment won't haunt me later?

"Come on, let's go home, Tokjai."

I hear Father's voice from inside the car. Though weak, I can clearly make out what he's saying. So, they came together, but Father never got out of the car. Maybe he's angry at Mother. "You gave Tokjai to that man — you get him back," he says.

"Did you also pay?"

"I paid a little — but it doesn't matter, we found Tokjai. We caught them thirty kilometers from the Cambodian border."

"We're lucky. If we'd left the house a little later…"

"Yes, Tokjai is lucky too. But I'm the luckiest. If I hadn't found him, I would never have forgiven myself. I would have waited my whole life for the karma that my cruelty would bring. How did I manage to dull my conscience? How did I lose my sense of mercy?"

"Forget it now — never mind. We found Tokjai. That's what matters."

"You say that, but will Tokjai forget? He must be angry at us."

"He won't be angry, don't worry. Dogs don't stay angry. And if he is, you'll make up soon."

"Fine — let's go. Nothing left to do here. I don't know why you turned off the engine. I said I'd be back in two minutes — and here I am."

"Why waste gas? Besides, it's not that hot yet. I opened the window and watched the surroundings."

"This car doesn't run on gas — it's diesel," Mother says, closing the window with one hand. Their voices slowly drown out. I hear the engine's hum then — the pickup shakes as if struck by a hard blow from outside. We pull onto the road. We're going home, but I don't know if that's still my home. Despite what Father says, I am angry — very angry. "Love makes you forget the rope around your neck," we dogs say when a collar is put on us. Though I've never worn a collar, I've heard those who do use this excuse and accept the situation. But my problem isn't like putting a collar around my neck — it's outright betrayal. They stabbed me in the back at my weakest moment. Don't humans feel the greatest disappointment and heartbreak when they are betrayed? Why should we dogs be any different — especially after living with them for tens of thousands of years, sharing a common fate, learning so many things together? Whatever the excuse, however it's rationalized, the result for the betrayed remains the same: you've been deceived by those you trusted, tossed aside, and left to be forgotten. Could there be a greater insult, a heavier humiliation than that?

I lay motionless in the back of the pickup the whole way. At one point, they stopped. "The back of the pickup is hot, Tokjai — let's bring you inside with us," they said, wanting to pick me up, but I resisted — I growled at both Mother and Father. They gave up, left me alone. If they can say, "He's a dog — he doesn't know how to be angry," why did they come and get me? Or was it Mother's fear of karma that set them on the road? Perhaps conscience is just a veil invented to hide the fear that something might happen to me. Fine — let's say they see themselves as smart, conscious, responsible humans toward their own kind. But what about me? Doesn't it ever occur to them that I might have responsibilities toward my own kind? Now and then, I stuck my head over the side of the pickup and looked at the roads, the fields, the water buffalo lying in water-filled potholes to cool themselves, the free village dogs wandering near them. How beautiful life was, how joyful to live. A voice inside me said, "Come on, Tokjai, jump down, dive into those rice paddies, disappear among the grass" — but I knew very well I didn't have the courage. Perhaps fear of regret is the greatest obstacle to freedom, but regret is just as real. The greatest success in life is to live as long and free as possible; the greatest success is to achieve sustainable happiness — especially for us dogs.

Sometimes my eyes would well up; the tears that spilled wouldn't run down my nose but, swept by the wind, would streak down my temples and wet my ears. If you do wrong to someone and have no way to make it right — Mother had a way and she fixed it — you become a prisoner of that wrong for life; its victims will spit in your face at the most unexpected moments. Yes, I was not the cause of Elder Brother Tam's, Curly's, Yellow's, Wednesday's, and the others' deaths. But could I have done nothing? After Mother put me in the Isuzu, if I had jumped down and gone back to my friends and barked — wouldn't they have sensed my trouble? Perhaps they would have known I meant "Save them too!" But I acted selfishly to the core — I threw myself into Mother's arms and acted as if I were very grateful to her for saving me. I clung to my saviors like a sycophant, like a flatterer. I sold out my friends! And now I'm annoyed with myself. I'm kicking myself — just to rid myself of guilt and break the vise gripping my heart. Could I go on living like this — eating, running? Could I break free of the clutches of memories and get used to living in the present? How long would it take? Mother didn't yet know I wouldn't make a sound for a week, that I'd wander the garden half-dead. For days to come, every time I saw a black dog, Elder Brother Tam would come to mind — Curly, Yellow, Wednesday… the others whose names I didn't learn, the terrible death awaiting them. I wouldn't eat properly for four days — Mother didn't know that yet either. I'd just drink water and sleep. They'd take me to the vet. The vet would say, "Nothing's wrong — his psychology is disturbed," surprising Mother and Father. I'd continue — watching life flow past the house from a distance, turning my back on the cycle of the universe — until the poison of memories weakened and let me be, let me rejoin life. And it was during this turbulent time that Coffee appeared. Her contribution to getting over the shock was not small. Perhaps it was because of my depression that they allowed Coffee to stay with me in the garden. Who knows?

- To be continued...

The Last Day of Tokjai (6)

                          Chapter 6: Betrayal 

All buckets in the world are my enemies. Their diameter, depth, hardness, color — none of it really matters. If it's a bucket, it's my enemy; if it's not a bucket, I have to think about it. Not only buckets — I don't like basins either. Especially if two buckets and a basin are placed side by side — I go crazy. I gnaw them until I tear those two buckets into pieces, until that basin is full of holes. When Tossapol senses that Mother and Father are paying me too much attention, he gets jealous — but to hide his jealousy, he says, "And now you're spoiling the animal you traded for two basins and a bucket." That's what he says, but he doesn't know — it's not two basins and a bucket; it's two buckets and a basin. From where I sit now, I hear Tossapol murmuring. He whistles sometimes. The boy is in a good mood — who knows what dreams he's having, what girl's magical warmth is on his mind, what uncharted seas, what undiscovered cities. But he doesn't know — what the buckets he's filling with freshly-cut grass remind me of. He doesn't know that even the sickening smell of that plastic is enough to make the neurons in my brain hop and jump. Ahh, humans, ahh! How forgetful, how insensitive, how absent-minded you are. You spend your lives taking notes all over the place, so you won't forget, but you overlook that having a peaceful life in this world is only possible through forgetting. We dogs, on the other hand, never forget — and because we can't forget, we are always full of sorrow, always sinking into the past at inappropriate times, acting melancholic whenever we have the solitude that we yearn for. If Tossapol didn't come to visit us for three years, I would still catch his scent as he passes the nook of the market at the village entrance. I'd catch it, and my stomach would churn with joy. I'd pace the garden, waiting for the moment he'd come through the gate, my tail pointing to the sky. Not only scents — sounds and touches are unforgettable too. From the tone of a human's voice, I can tell if they're happy, sad, angry, or excited. From the touch of their fingers on my head and between my eyes, from the way their palms rub the back of my neck and my back, from how close they bring their face to mine, from the light touch of their nose to mine — I can infer how their day went, whether they made a profit or they lost money on that day, whether they had serious trouble with friends or family. Not only that — I adjust my behavior accordingly, showing the necessary attention to the needy person standing before me, especially to the ones who try extremely hard to hide their hunger for affection.

"Tokjai, are you sleeping again? You just woke up, you lazybones! Look, we're working, and you just lie around all day."

I bark once, but that's it — I'm not going to start a fight. Just so he knows I'm not sleeping. When I have an unfinished topic on my mind, I can't move on to others. With the impatience of eyes waiting for the bob at the end of a swinging pendulum to swing back, I wait for the moment to return to that unfinished topic. So, any conversation — from anyone — that interrupts my thoughts is just chatter, blather. I may be wrong — even selfish and arrogant. Spoiled as I was, maybe I'm bored with subjects other than myself. Since I can't change after this age, complaining is pointless. Life is what it is — you have to gloss over it. And it is short too; it ends before you truly understand and appreciate its true charm. Let it end — I lived happily; I'm dying happily. Let those who live and die unhappy think about the rest. I'm ahead of everyone right now. If life — the world we walk on, the universe in which we experience our existence — has any meaning, it is to have sustainable happiness and make others happy. I think I have done both fully. I have no other worries, no regrets.

I hear Tossapol's footsteps. Since he's wearing sandals slightly too small for his feet, he walks scuffing the soles. Now he has that bucket in his hand. When my eyes were good, they wouldn't dare put that bucket in the open. They knew I'd get angry, knock it over, vomit on it, or pee on it. Now that my eyes don't see, they don't pay much attention to things that annoy me. And that's one of the signs of old age: not being cared about, not being anyone's concern, being kept on a shelf and only asked for your opinion out of politeness. Those who feared your reaction when you were young inwardly rejoice at your passivity when you're old. Yet no one can deny that you were right in your reaction. They are guilty, after all — their necks bent in shame before their only dog, whom they traded for two buckets and a basin.

I was about three and a half then. I had a large body, a loud voice, strong legs, and an insatiable appetite. I could run from one end of the garden to the other in seven seconds, jump the wall without stopping, and throw myself outside in two leaps. Everyone in the village knew me. Every morning I left the house with Mother. Mother rode her green Kawasaki motorcycle — back then, they hadn't put the third wheel on — and I ran behind. The villagers who saw me smiled and cheered, "Run, Tokjai, run… Come on, you're almost passing the bike!" And I'd see myself as a marathon athlete, running to the end of the road with my tongue out and tail up. Mother and I would go to school together. She'd go into class and teach the letters of the Thai alphabet; I'd either doze in the back of the room or play in the schoolyard with the children and occasionally with the stray dogs. Life was good for me. I had breakfast at home and knew I'd have dinner at home too, so I was relaxed about food. That didn't stop me from eating the biscuits and snacks the children dropped or freely gave me, of course. I am a dog — even if I'm not very hungry, if another dog or human eyes my food, I can't stand it; I raise a ruckus. A few incidents like that happened, and in the end, things got unpleasant.

Once, for instance, a child dropped his biscuit — so he said. In my opinion, he threw it in front of me so I could eat. So, I reached for it and took it. What else was I to do? Say, "No thanks, I'm full"? Then the child started hitting me for taking the biscuit — with a freshly snapped tree branch, not once, not twice… I didn't make a sound at first, but the child wouldn't stop. I turned and barked at him. I growled like a rabid dog, drooling, showing my teeth. Not just him — all the children playing in the yard were scared. They went and complained to the principal. After that day, Mother didn't want to take me along, but I kept going. I wasn't the guilty one — why was I being punished?

Another day, a commotion broke out in the classroom. While I was sleeping soundly, some students, taking advantage of the teacher's absence, started playing with my ears and nose. Am I a toy? Once — I'd call it a joke. Twice — a prank. But what's the point of repeating an act that disturbs someone's peace and annoys them? Who benefits? When they wouldn't stop, I started barking. And I mean barking — it had pushed me to my limit. The classroom rattled; windows and doors shook. If my voice had been any louder, people would have thought it was thunder, and the clouds would have poured rain. My eyes red with anger, my ears pricked and alert! The children scattered like chickens to the corners of the room. I was furious. I wasn't attacking anyone, but it was only a matter of time. One more step and I'd bite a random leg. Then Mother came, calmed me down, grabbed my head, and took me outside. Then she went back into the classroom and shut the door in my face.

After this incident, the downhill path to my planned end became clear. I was bored sitting in the garden all day, and Mother wasn't pleased with me coming to school and disturbing people. Failing to find a middle ground — they tried putting me in a cage once, but I barked nonstop for twenty hours and let no one sleep — Mother and Father decided to send me away. They would get rid of me without telling Tossapol. But they don't know that the biggest obstacle to getting rid of something we want to send away is the fear of being alone, left behind, forgotten — a fear we can't express, that we hide even from ourselves, that we get angry about if others mention it. Still, my folks got it in their heads — they're going to send me away. But how? When? And most importantly, where? They've made the decision, but they don't have the courage to act. So, they keep putting it off. They're hesitating! If an opportunity arises, maybe they'll do it; otherwise, they'll postpone it forever. Next week, the beginning of next month, in the middle of Songkran, after the schools close… They're both afraid of Tossapol's reaction and of not being able to get used to my absence. At the same time, they're worried that the disturbance I've caused isn't over and will happen again. But that's life — it confronts you with your fears at the most unexpected moments, takes its revenge, turns your weaknesses into your greatest enemies, and forces your powerful body to its knees. That's how it was with me — at a time I least expected, in a way I least expected…

It all happened one afternoon when even time had melted from the heat and fell asleep in a quiet corner. A truck pulled up in front of our house — slowly, slyly, with the timidity of a squirrel afraid of its own shadow. I was dozing on the damp ground under the newly finished concrete rooms. I half-opened my eyes, looking around without lifting my head, with a demeanor that fooled even myself. Mother was talking to a man at the garden gate. In the back of the truck were colorful basins, clotheslines, plastic stools, ladles, and buckets. At first, I didn't understand what was happening. "Mother must be replacing the basin she does laundry in," I thought. Because the one at home had torn — it leaked water when filled with clothes.

But things didn't unfold as I expected. Mother opened the garden gate. There was no iron gate in those days — just a primitive wooden door separating the garden from the street. The man came inside. In his hand, a long stick with a tightly woven net of white strings at the end — a thing I'd never seen before. How was I to know his intention was to catch me? On the contrary, since Mother had let him in, he must be a good man, I thought. Though when I got a little closer, I sensed the evil in his heart — but it was too late. I saw the cigarette in his mouth when we locked eyes. His face was wrinkled like clothes that hadn't been ironed in decades, his forehead and neck sunburned, his hands and arms covered in cuts and scrapes… He looked less like a merchant selling plastic household goods and more like a criminal who, in the blink of an eye, snatches children who've strayed from their parents' sight and sells them to the organ mafia. I sensed it, but it was too late. When he saw me, he smiled faintly. His chin moved left and right as if trying to dislodge a piece of meat stuck between his teeth. Then the stick in his hand rose into the air, stood there perpendicular for a moment. He waited, and I stared dumbly at the stick. The sun was in my eyes, so I couldn't see the net at the end. There was a cloud at the end of the stick — a small white cloud left over from the morning's downpour. The rest was blue. To avoid being dazzled, I turned my head slightly downward, but it didn't help much. I could only see the man, his raised hand, and his leering, pockmarked face. I also remember Mother trying to pick out basins from the truck behind him. Then the man's hand came down, and the net on the end of the stick enveloped first my head, then my entire body. I remember being very itchy at that moment — an intense itching covering my whole body from tail to nose. The net touched me everywhere, and at every point, sparks seemed to fly. Whether I thought, at that moment, that the days ahead would not be bright, that I wouldn't see the blue sky when I turned my head, that I wouldn't feel the damp grass when I moved my feet — I don't recall. I know I struggled; I growled and barked. And I remember the man approaching me with a syringe in his hand. He had caught me fast, and now he would inject me and put me to sleep. Having experienced the vet's anesthesia, I knew about needles. A thin pain starts, then disappears, replaced by a spreading ache. Then the injection site numbs, and the numbness spreads to my legs, my neck, and my head. As my ability to control my body diminishes, I feel like a guest in someone else's body — a visitor saying goodbye to the host at the door. I'm about to leave; the door will close behind me, and I'll be free. But what freedom, what kind of freedom… Finally, my eyes grow heavy; the world becomes a tattered picture seen from under a descending curtain. After a while, the connection breaks completely. I wait for hours in pitch darkness. I don't remember that darkness because my consciousness isn't open. All I have upon waking is the shock and questions that take hours to answer. Where am I? Why am I here? Who are these people? Why have they laid me on this table? Why can't I walk?

That day, it was exactly the same. I remember seeing Mother just before I closed my eyes. She had two buckets and a basin in her hand. The ugly-faced man who had dragged my body, now no better than a sack of rice, said something to Mother, and Mother, not wanting to leave his greeting unanswered, had put her things down. Then I felt the truck's engine start. I couldn't hear it, but my body — however weakly — perceived the vibrations. Finally, even that vibration stopped. I felt a lightness, a coolness as if I'd begun to fly. And then darkness fell completely over me — not just visual darkness, but one that would blind the other four senses as well. When I opened my eyes, I was crammed into a dirty, narrow cage among dozens of dogs. The space was so tight that my feet touched the head of a dog in another cage. There were cages below, above, beside us, and all were filled with dogs of all sizes. In some cages, two or three dogs were piled on top of each other. Surrounded on all six sides by dogs, we were moving in the back of a truck. It didn't take me long to understand that.

Next chapter: Yer Üstünden Notlar: The Last Day of Tokjai (7) 

The Last Day of Tokjai (5)

 

                          Chapter 5 -  Love of Coffee

 No lie — of all the villages, I love this village the most; of all the houses, this house the most; of all the people, Mother the most. She also seems to be the most upset that I will die soon. Since she doesn't feel the need to hide her sadness like the others — that is, she can show her feelings openly — I never doubt Mother's sincerity. Whatever is inside is reflected outside in Mother's world. Tossapol is a chatterbox — talks a lot, does little. Because he talks so much, some of what he says become meaningless. He lives in a language where empty words and sentences reign, expecting those around him to admire this language and applaud him. He makes noise, makes his presence felt, shows he's afraid of being forgotten. Father is the opposite. He works hard, gets things done, but speaks little while doing so. He doesn't walk around saying, "I did this, I did that." He's quiet; he lives his joys and sorrows inside. He doesn't let a drop spill out. He is responsible for my being fed, but I have a suspicion that the daily task of putting food in my bowl three times a day is driven by a feeling of loneliness that, despite the crowd around him, never fades from his heart. Otherwise, how else to explain the precision with which this old man, who otherwise pays little attention to me, prepares my food with the meticulous care of a responsible soldier? Not only when he's home — in my wild younger days, I'd sometimes spend the night in other people's gardens. Sometimes I wouldn't come home for days. Even then, Father would somehow find me and bring my food. He was afraid I'd starve and get sick from hunger.

Mother is the middle path — like a sparkling clean mirror. When you look into her, you see the reflection you left in her, without any breakage or blur. You feel that she will unhesitatingly give back to you the small share you contributed and the huge palace she built using that small share. When it comes to growing and sharing love, Mother lives ahead of life; she grows it in her chest, develops it, and doesn't reduce her care until it flies away. Neither Tossapol nor Father can come close to Mother in this regard. That's why Mother is the pioneer of the house, the true leader. Neighbors who come to borrow money talk to her; the relative cheated by her husband, the childhood friend who hasn't won a single lottery prize in months — they all sit before Mother. She is such a pioneer that when the weather starts to cool slightly, when the evening cool begins to bother people even a little, Mother is the first to wear a cardigan. After she wears it, the villagers know it's cardigan time. Because the Isan villagers don't want to believe — even in the evening — that the weather can get cold, and they won't be convinced until they see someone else believing it.

I pass by the tables; Mother's voice grows fainter. Having given up on Tossapol, she's gone to water the tomatoes and chilies she planted behind the barn. There were also cucumbers, but I heard the neighbor's chickens pecked away at them while they were still just flowers. The Tokjai of old isn't here to chase them and scare the living daylights out of the chickens. I used to make even the crippled chickens fly. They say where there's no cat, mice will play — well, where there's no dog, chickens leave no vegetables behind. As soon as the tomatoes redden, the chickens pounce. They know good taste. What can I do? When chickens come into the garden — if I catch their scent — I just bark from where I am. They know I'm harmless, that I can't do anything to them. And that's the worst part. If being weak punches my dog pride, the fact that other animals have noticed this situation knocks me out. If I can't strike fear into their hearts, it means I've suffered my greatest loss. Can life be darker or more hopeless than that?

Anyway, enough of these gloomy thoughts — what do I need them for? Pessimism benefits neither me nor the household. From the front of the house comes the sound of a motor. I pass between two pickup trucks parked side by side and go to the front. The motor stutters sometimes, stops, then starts again. Like the sobs of a baby crying and coughing between breaths. In my youth, I loved watching the grass being cut. When the metal blade on the long stick started spinning, I'd be a little scared at first, bark once or twice, and squeeze in by the flowerpots near the front door. The sizzle as the blade touched the grass, the golden grass spraying into the air, shrouding the garden in haze until it fell, the neighbor dogs — Coffee and Lucky — starting to bark at the noise, Coffee jumping over our wall from the empty lot with the pink house in the middle and looking at me for a long time, wagging her tail…

How quickly that came to mind! When was the last time I remembered Coffee? When had I last thought of that tragic partnership? To feel the pride of being able to forget, you need to remember. What a contradiction, what an injustice! Everything about memories contains injustice! Isn't even thinking about them the same as objecting to them becoming memories? "Memories are like wine," Father would say when a little tipsy, "the older they get, the better they taste." That's how they are — what can you do? As if they exist to sadden you, to drive you mad. They come at you at the most inopportune times to take revenge for the mourning you failed to do properly in the past. The worst part is that while they occupy your mind with the crumbs of sad events, they also infuse a little pleasure. Thus, you cover the sadness of dwelling on memories with the pleasure you derive from them. Pleasure and pain, like oil and water that seem to mix but then separate, first mix, then slowly separate. They are like a drug injected into a vein. First you relax, you feel happy, you take childish pleasure in digging up old ground. Then what you've gathered grows heavy and settles on you. So much so that after a while you can't breathe. But as an adult dog who has overcome youthful delusions, I don't lose myself as easily in the swampy, deceptive softness of worn-out loves. I leave it at a taste. If I see sadness turning into a flood that will sweep me away, I jump into another memory. That's how I escape, without the slightest scratch from the venomous arrows of bitter memories.

Where was I? Coffee. Ahh, Coffee, ahh my Coffee, ahh my love that I found late and lost early, ahh my light of nights, coolness of days, ahh the sharp sword that cut my life in two… How your eyes glittered in the dark of night, how you would come and sleep on the thick cushions placed between the one-ton water tanks, how we would sneak into the neighbors' cornfields together. Didn't we often get lost among the sugarcane stalks as tall as two men, didn't we make the village's chronic dogs a little jealous. "Tokjai and Coffee, the king and queen of the village" — we were even famous for a while. Those who saw me sensed you were near, and those who saw you knew I couldn't be far. You were the only dog I shared my food with; my cushion, the shabby bed made from old clothes by the shoe rack, the wooden stool under the television mounted on the kitchen wall, the duck-shaped water pots to the right of the garden gate, the large metal cage under the two rooms added to the house — I shared everything, I wanted you to have whatever was given to me, I didn't want you to feel alone and abandoned in this garden. I wanted us to live together in this garden and die together. But life had other plans for you, and it executed them one by one, slyly.

After giving birth, you never stood up again. I so wished for you to return to your old self, to take care of our newborn babies, to drink milk and give your cubs more milk — but it didn't happen. Mother and Father tried hard too. The vet gave medicine to heal the inflammation, gave you shots so you could stand. None of it worked. You slept for days, and in the few times you opened your eyes, you remembered neither me nor your babies. The emptiness in your gaze was like the windows of an abandoned house — inside, broken furniture, moldy book bindings, dirty, dusty kitchen utensils. Yes, a family had once lived there, even enjoyed happiness to the fullest there. Then a wind had blown, carrying it all away. Now only traces remained — hazy leftovers linking past experiences to pain and suffering, and observers sighing at those remaining signs. When I couldn't see the slightest glimmer in your eyes, I knew it was a bad sign. But what could I do? A week later, you closed your eyes never to open them again. Look, now even Tokjai's eyes — the eyes of the one who never left your side — have gone blind. My eyes may not see, but the eyes of my heart still value no one but you. Do you know that? If I told you I secretly take pleasure in this loss just to feel closer to you, would you believe me?

 

Some people's eyes won't open in the morning until they've had a sip of coffee; after the first sip, they begin to perceive the world. That's what you were to me, Coffee. After I met you, I understood the world, life, the meaning of being a dog so much better. My horizons expanded, Coffee — so much that I began to see the life before I met you as the wasteful, useless days of a poor dog chasing empty tasks. There were two Tokjais: before Coffee and after Coffee. And the Tokjai who existed after Coffee was brand new — restless inside, clear-minded, open-hearted, always conscious. This power of love has always amazed me. After falling in love, you forget how you made yourself happy before, how you spent your days, what occupied your nights. Love doesn't erase the unhappiness lived before it, but the happiness — it makes it invisible, looks down on loveless lives with a selfish possessiveness. So much so that life before love seems weak and insignificant, like a candle placed next to a lamp, no one caring whether it's lit or not. That was Coffee — she came into my life like a sunken ship suddenly surfacing, burned me, changed me, transformed me, and then quietly disappeared into the same pitch-black water that had brought her to me. She gave me four babies; after giving birth, she never stood up again. She breathed her last on the mat where she gave birth to her puppies. She neither saw her puppies walk nor heard their first yelps. After she died, the puppies were given away to neighbors, and neighbors' neighbors. The love of Tokjai and Coffee spread across the earth to sprout in other lands.

"Ooo, Tokjai, is that you? You heard the motor and couldn't resist, right?"

"No, son, it's not the motor — he probably needs to pee. He's been sleeping since lunch. Open the garden gate so he can go out. He likes to go by the neighbor's wall."

"You're really something, Tokjai. The garden is surrounded by walls. You've been going out for years to pee on the neighbor's wall."

I hear the rumble of the heavy garden gate's steel wheels sliding on the metal track. In the old days — when I was young and strong — I didn't bother with the gate. I'd jump over the wall, then down. All in two leaps — hop, hop, and I'm out. Mother even had an iron fence built on top of the walls, but it didn't stop me. I'd still find my way, discover the spots where the fence had bent from rain and wind, and somehow release myself into the freedom of the street. Now, they slide the iron gate open because even the threshold might be an obstacle for me. There's also a hinged gate at the beginning of the wall that swings open, but they think I won't manage the threshold or will trip and fall. Oh, those days — from Tokjai, whom not even walls could stop, to Tokjai, for whom a threshold seems like a hill. Though in the evenings they do open this hinged gate, and if I really feel like it, I go out, bark a couple of times, and come back. I check what the neighbor dogs are up to. I sniff around; I fill my being with the smell of flowers, insects, and dust coming from afar. There aren't many cars on the village road in the evening, and I've learned to stay to the side — as long as even my tail touches the bushes, I'm safe.

"Father, does that black-and-white cat belong to the neighbor or is it a stray? He was around here last time I came too."

"He belongs to the neighbor, but not the ones next door — the motorcycle repair shop on the other side of the sugarcane field. They have four cats and two dogs."

I draw the cat's scent into me. A discharge, like hard nails rubbed on dry wood, comes to the tips of my paws. An icy waterfall runs through me. It's a natural reaction from my weak heart. No matter how hard I try to establish friendly relations with cats, my body gives its natural response, straining me to the end. Luckily, I'm not a spineless robot as some people think. I know very well whom to ally with, whom to show compassion to, and whom not to tolerate. If it's the cat I think it is, I used to know its grandfather. He was a nice cat; we didn't startle each other when we met in the village. As you know, we dogs traditionally don't like cats — we find them rude, ungrateful, and snobbish. There are many cats in our village, but they're not often seen during the day. So, people think we dogs have chased them all off. They come out at night to hunt — they sometimes enter our garden. I don't make a sound. Why would I? After all, they don't steal my food. I don't chase them for drinking two drops of water from my bowl. Water is abundant in this house. Besides, they catch the mice stationed around the barn and chase the geckos that have grown large enough to harm the household. By the principle "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," I get along well with cats — or rather, I ignore them. They don't abuse my goodwill either. When they're in the garden, they disturb neither me nor the household. They come quietly, do their business, and leave. I don't know where they go in the dark, or what dark passages they slip their heads into when they need to sleep. Honestly, I don't care much. Also, I find it funny how they stare at anything that moves and then chase after it, regardless of what it is. They can't resist moving objects — they attack immediately, as if their cat identity would be damaged if they didn't chase. I'm describing such cats, but don't think I'm looking down on cats. Maybe in this garden, yes, I need to show I'm the boss. Outside the garden, we are equals. And now I'm outside the garden. I smell my own scent on the bushes where I always pee. Hmm, the neighbor's dog has peed here too. That's a bad sign, but there's nothing I can do. If he were nearby, I'd tell him not to. Who knows where he is? He's only five — in the prime of his youth. He has enough energy to run from one end of the village to the other, enough appetite to wolf down three bowls of food in one sitting, enough affection to wag his tail from side to side like a car's windshield wiper when he senses his owner is near.

 

"Tokjai, hurry up and pee so I can close the gate. Look, it's late afternoon — cars are passing on the road."

"Tos, you tell your mother — I'm going as far as your uncle's house. I'll pick up something for dinner too. And I'll get some food for Tokjai — some protein, so he heals quickly."

"Okay, Father, I'll tell her. Don't be late. Come on, Tokjai, get inside."

"Leave him, son — nothing will happen. He doesn't go on the road like he used to — he's scared. He knows where to stop."

Yes, I'm scared. Like everyone else, I don't want to die. But at the same time, the thought that life might continue like this — as torture — for a very long time disturbs my mind. Not wanting to die is one thing; not objecting to death when it stands before me is another, right? My state is like that of a criminal who, tired of running, surrenders to the police who've been chasing him for a long time. I haven't lost my will to live, but if death comes and says, "Come on, Tokjai, you've lived enough. It's time to put out this fire. Come, let me take you to nibbana," I'd surrender my soul without much resistance, without huffing and puffing, without setting the world ablaze. I'm not tired of living — I'm tired of not being able to live. Even Father has understood: "He knows where to stop," he says of me. My place now is at the edges; the middle of the road and the squares are not for me. How suitable to a dog's identity is the life of a dog who can't run, can't walk properly, can't see his surroundings, can't make new puppies, whose smell repels anyone from coming near him, whose wounds breed maggots, who walks around in a cloud of flies? I can't even break bones with my mouth like I used to. Inner surface of my mouth hurts; before I can break a tiny chicken bone, I have to turn my jaw thirty times, bend and twist my mouth thirty times. So, I'm glad Father is going to get food from the place near Uncle's house. Boiled rice mixed with broth is my most preferred meal these last few months. Sometimes they also put fatty bits stripped from meat into my bowl — I can get those down without too much difficulty. Though I don't have much of an appetite anyway!

"Come on, Tokjai, don't make me regret opening the gate."

I bark. Not at Tossapol, but at the road passing through the middle of the village — the road I can no longer walk down, the road where children will still ride their bicycles to school after I'm dead. Tossapol is a little startled but doesn't say anything. Maybe he's laughing at my high-pitched voice from weakness, my limping body, my face unchanged for so many years, the greenish discharge hardening from my blind eyes… I bark because I'm sad, I bark because I can't put that insolent dog in his place, I bark because my voice is the last thing I can give to this world. When my voice goes off, I too will go. Will any void be felt — in the minds of villagers raising glasses of beer against the darkness in the far corners of the village, eating spicy snacks? And what about the teachers at the school at the mouth of the village road — will they remember my name after I'm dead? "There was a Tokjai who came to school every day, who sat in the back of the classroom, listened to the lesson, and went home with the other children in the evening" — will they say that when they enter the garden and don't see me there? Will they talk about the legend of Tokjai among themselves?

"I'm closing the gate, Tokjai. Come inside. I'll fill a bucket with the grass I cut and burn it in the back of the garden."

I stopped barking. There's a relief inside me I can't explain. I guess barking did me good. I walk slowly toward the gate. Meanwhile, I hear the sound of the closing gate sliding on the metal track. I stop, motionless and breathless. I wait a while. Did Tossapol just say "bucket"? Yes, he said bucket. Once more, I bark long and loud — I even howl like a wolf, lifting my head to the sky. Bucket, yes. Damn it. I bump into the trash can placed by the magnolia tree because I'm not paying attention. I turn slightly to the right. How did I get here? Yes, he said bucket! Under my feet, dry soil, stones large and small; this tree on my left that I smell must be the magnolia. The swing should be here — the one Tossapol likes to sit on before his morning coffee. I lie down under it gently, careful not to hurt my wounds.

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Next Chapter: Yer Üstünden Notlar: The Last Day of Tokjai (6)

THE MAN WHO WAITED FOR THE RAIN TO STOP

 

He was either a truly outstanding fool, or far too optimistic for his age—though he could never quite admit that to himself. Even if we were to claim that the two are one and the same, no significant objection would arise from the majority of people. Trusting in good weather is like trusting every handsome man who crosses your path. Women know this best. Especially in a city like Ç, where the sun shows its face only in exchange for a bribe, anyone would be taken aback by such recklessness.

He was foolish, optimistic, got along with everyone and everything; he had no enemies, but he also had no friends. Above all, he was young, callow, inexperienced. If he hadn't been, why would he have dashed out into the street the moment the sun so much as winked at him? Didn't he know that black clouds were lining up at the city's gate? He knew, but did he simply not care? Perhaps it was the days of being cooped up at home, head buried in books, that had stretched the spring inside him to its breaking point. After all, the more you compress a spring, the higher it leaps—and always at the most unexpected moment, hurting the most indifferent souls.

He had brought neither an umbrella to shield his head nor a raincoat to keep his body warm and dry. A thin, sea-blue shirt, unpressed trousers—both wrinkled. The ease of being a student flowed from every pore. No matter how indifferent he seemed, everyone in this city would help a student in trouble. Maybe hoping they'd be repaid someday, maybe falling victim to a momentary thoughtlessness.

Once he had thrown himself out onto the streets, the parks, the crowded pavements, there was no going back to the dark solitude he'd left behind. At least until evening, he wanted to breathe in the cheerful air he could never quite bring into his home. He had flowed through the streets like oil—talked to strangers, tossed coins to beggars, patted children on the head, flashed smiles at girls his age that promised nothing, and spent the evening with a heartache born of losing the sun's trace on his skin. He had wandered far from home, to the other side of the city, but that was no problem—there were buses until late at night, after all. As the day was turning to dusk, he stepped into a shop to buy some water—and there he ran into a distant relative he had met years ago at a family gathering (a funeral, he thought, though he wasn't sure!) and never seen since. If not for that chance meeting, he would have gone home that evening just like any other, slipped under his thin quilt, and fallen asleep reading a book.

They first spoke of relatives who had died years ago—this man had married the stepdaughter of his mother's uncle. He was older, so the young man called him "uncle." Pressed with warm water, he took it reluctantly. As his fingertips softened in the warmth of the glass, he wondered whether this reluctant acceptance meant he would stay long. When he could have just said, "No, thank you. I really have to go now"... The steam of the water brushed his nose, and he silently cursed himself—his greatest hatred was reserved for the hesitations that endlessly dragged him into dead ends. He should act naturally, yes! He shouldn't overthink things; he should ignore the details that no one else even noticed. Peace lay in neglect—he knew that, but he couldn't put this sharp principle into practice.

They sat across from each other on the stools by the shop's front window and began to talk like two close friends. First, they discussed the weather—how in cities other than Ç, the sun was brighter, the rain more measured, the wind more satisfying, the sky bluer. Everyone knew this, and no one would claim otherwise. The young man called the sullen face of Ç's sky "the city's hazy blue." He had grown used to the pale colors he saw every day, so he rarely thought of the brighter, cleaner, wilder blues said to exist in other lands.

To anyone who came to Ç later, it wasn't a city to live in—just a place to wander for half a day and leave behind. After all, he had come here for university, from a southern city where sea, sand, and sun were never absent for 365 days of the year. "Missing things is good," he had said when he first arrived in Ç. "If I stay away, I'll appreciate it more." Yet by the time he realized that what he truly missed was not the sunny city he had left behind, but the version of himself who had been happy living under that bright dome, it was already too late. Missing someone is really missing yourself. When a person longs for a beloved, aren't they really longing not for the beloved's presence, but for the moment of happiness and satisfaction they felt beside them? He had called this the most selfish side of longing—the most wretched and truest face we refuse to acknowledge.

After listing all the negative aspects of the city they lived in—the usual complaints everyone knew—the conversation turned to his mother and father, who had died seven years ago. Then he had to listen to the uncle's grievances about his children's school situation. The older daughter was in her final year but still couldn't quite grasp that she needed to prepare for exams. The younger son saw his sister wasting time on the internet, in front of the TV, on the phone—so of course he wouldn't study; he had started wasting his time just like her. The mother was uneducated anyway—she figured the girl would finish high school, then they'd find a suitable candidate and marry her off within a few years. The house needed grandchildren; the rest was detail.

The conversation stretched on and on. At one point they counted the university graduates in the family. Dozens of relatives whose names he'd never even heard emerged, scattered across the country. His father's uncle's grandchildren were studying in A, and his mother's other uncle's grandchild was in the capital, P, this year. He was hungry too, but he couldn't bring himself to say so—whether out of shyness or because he believed he ought to be shy, he kept his silence.

When an elderly customer entered the shop, the uncle got up from his seat and went behind the counter. The young man took the opportunity to gather himself slightly—he picked his bag up from the floor and set it on his lap, straightened his back, and went on alert like a soldier ready to stand at any moment. As soon as the uncle came back, he would say, "I should be going now, it's getting late." Or should he say, "Thanks for everything, I really must go"? Maybe the best thing was to say plainly, "I'm heading out, Uncle—see you later." He thought of other alternatives, added words, removed words, switched subjects and predicates, added adverbs, simplified. He just couldn't decide what to say and what not to say. It was the first time he had realized that what you don't say can be just as valuable as what you do.

At one point, he and the uncle made eye contact. He didn't know about his own eyes, but the uncle's were clear as glass—as if there was no secret behind them, like an open chest. He was a silent guard trying to contain the chaos inside him, facing an older relative who could say whatever came to mind without weighing it once. Could they ever meet in the middle? Perhaps the uncle's way was the right one. The more he thought, the more his sentences fell apart; the more he weighed and measured, the more the pleasure of conversation tumbled upside down. The best thing was to speak as it came, bluntly and openly. You had to tear out whatever had built up inside, without accounting for past or future.

"Don't go now—look, it's started raining," the uncle said from behind the counter, gesturing toward the window with his eyes. The young man looked outside. Raindrops struck the glass and slid down like thin centipedes. Why hadn't he noticed it before? He could have sensed the rain approaching just as well as taxi drivers or street vendors. The frequency of the drops was clearly increasing by the second. "Damn," he thought, "now I have to drop everything and keep up this pointless chat!" He got up from his seat and walked toward the door. For a while he watched the raindrops scattering like grains of wheat thrown across a field, under the light of the streetlamp at the head of the avenue. "If I walk even a minute in this rain, I'll be soaked to my underwear," he thought.

How beautifully the wet asphalt gleamed in the rain! The water splashed up by cars passing slowly struck the pavement stones like waves battering the shore. The headlights seemed to make the rain worse—under the light, the drops grew larger, becoming heralds of an unstoppable flood. Yet in the darkness, neither rain nor wind was visible! It was light that showed the young man what to fear, that revealed the object of terror. So should he thank the light? Or should he direct all his disappointment toward the light? He closed the door and went back into the shop.

"I might as well stay a little longer," he said in a hesitant voice, but as soon as he said it, his mind caught on the word "might." He had been rude, unjust, presumptuous for no reason—and now he couldn't take it back. Hoping no one had noticed his faux pas, he sat back down on the same stool. The uncle smiled. "Stay, of course—we still have plenty to talk about. Besides, your aunt will call us to dinner soon, and we'll go upstairs together. You'll meet the kids. The older girl should get to know you, take you as an example—she can say she has a big brother in university. Maybe seeing you will shame her into studying."

When they went upstairs, he found less than he had hoped for, or maybe more—a deep pity settled into him, of the heaviest kind. Should people who had lived in this city for years, given their labor to it, been nourished by it and nourished it in return—should they have to live in such a shabby place? The girl had retreated to her corner, endlessly playing with her phone. The boy was waiting for his sister to finish with the phone. Clearly, his turn at the game was next, and he had no intention of giving up. The uncle's wife was nowhere in sight, but clattering sounds came from outside the room. "Dinner will be ready soon," the uncle said in a fatherly tone, showing the young man where to sit. Then he turned to his daughter and called out, "Daughter, what are you standing there for? Say welcome to our guest!"

The girl came forward with her face down, in small steps. "Welcome!" she said in a barely audible voice. As soon as she said it, she turned right back around and sat down in the same spot. She hadn't even looked at the young man's face—but he, taking advantage of her shyness, had studied her face like a textbook in that brief moment. She had a long, beautiful face, a pointed chin, a broad forehead, long hair, and a modest nose... Everything was in its place, like those short equations that emerge at the end of a complex process—both admirable and doubt-inspiring. The freshness radiating from her fiery red cheeks reminded the young man of fireworks that light up dark nights with colorful bursts. Her eyes were on the ground, but it was clear from the curiosity spilling at the edges that she was sizing him up. Either she couldn't hide the need for attention gathering in her gaze, or she wanted to reveal everything to a man she was seeing for the first time. Had he read somewhere, or overheard friends talking in the university cafeteria, that women have no limits when it comes to revealing their secrets to unfamiliar men? Was this weakness, or revenge against those they knew—the eyes that measured, judged, and found fault every time?

With these thoughts, the young man turned his face to the window. The rain continued with full force. In fact, the drops striking the ground now pained him more than when he had first seen them. The presence of a beautiful girl within reach would surely change the young man's perception of the world. The rain was no longer the same rain, nor the city the same city. As if a wild horse had swallowed all its vitality and resilience. At the center of his heart was a black stallion—thrashing, stomping, kicking! The rain was no longer falling outside but inside—a dam he had never even noticed was filling slowly. Water was flowing, carving its own bed.

Dinner was noisy. The children kept complaining about each other. The sister complained about the little brother, the little brother about his sister, and their father was dissatisfied with both. The mother showed her displeasure through her silence. As if she were the mother of the wrong children, the wife of the wrong man, the female bird of the wrong nest... She seemed to want to become the steam of the soup, to escape, to be free. The young man hadn't missed the smoke-laden thoughts in his aunt's mind. He knew this best from himself—a devotee of escape. Going far away, never returning—wasn't that what everyone wanted but no one could do? If only he could believe he could become someone different wherever he went, he would surely slam the door and leave whenever the whim struck. Yet wouldn't he become the victim of the same passions, the same choices, the same searches at his destination? It wasn't going that was hard—it was changing. People too lazy to change took the easy way and focused on leaving, linking their inability to change to their inability to leave, thus avoiding responsibility. After all, man tries most to escape from being human, even if he puts a thousand screens between himself and that realization. And because he can't escape, he spends his life cursing those screens—the excuses he himself created, and the life those excuses nullified. If this weren't true, why would the dreams of everyone who wants to escape be filled not with other places, but with deserted islands, dim forests, mountain-top houses?

After dinner, the young man watched the rain for a while longer. At this rate, it showed no sign of stopping. It hadn't even slowed down, let alone stopped. He fell silent like a commander accepting defeat, as if he had lost his right to demand and object. The rain had taken him captive at the most unexpected moment, in the most unexpected house. He helped the uncle's younger son with his homework for about an hour. He found the mistakes in the test that the older daughter had started a week ago and abandoned out of boredom, and wrote the correct answers in the blanks. No matter how much her father insisted, the girl wouldn't go to work with the young man. From where she sat, she continued to watch the stranger in the house with furtive glances.

When bedtime came, there was no trouble. The house had two rooms. In one slept the uncle and his wife, in the other the children. The young man was left with the long sofa bed in the living room, no questions asked. The night would pass like an endless, boring film—that was clear from the start. The rain, whose patter never ceased, was like an executioner reminding its prisoner of its presence every second. "I threw you here, I cornered you here. You can't go anywhere," it said. The young man had no answer to the rain's threats. He waited a long time for sleep to descend upon him like a thick blanket.

At one point, he imagined a long, endless train moving through tracks covered in snow as far as the eye could see. He thought about how the train was a prisoner of the tracks, but he didn't dwell on that detail. What mattered was moving forward—even if he couldn't leave the tracks, he had to go; as long as he moved, he would exist. He drove the train along curves; it passed through snow-covered trees, waved at deer searching for food on the slopes, blew its whistle for village children playing ball in the distance. He continued on his way until daylight seeped through his closed eyelids and woke his weary mind.

There was light, but no sun. The living room was covered in dim illumination. The young man lay on his back for a while, thinking about where he was and how he had come here. Clouds had taken over his mind. He had just noticed the shiny stars pasted on the ceiling. "So in houses where children grow up, there are always stars," he said to himself. There was no sound of rain from outside. Since no sound came from the other rooms, everyone must still be asleep. Slowly he sat up, careful not to make noise, and stood. He wanted to run out of the house, to leave without looking back and never return. He had no intention of thanking anyone nor the luxury of wasting time with the optimism of "I'll drop by again sometime." He would take advantage of the rain's momentary pause and not forgive its weakness. He would run to the bus stop, then take the first bus to the city center. Then he'd need another bus to get home, but that part was easy—nearly half the buses departing from the city center passed near his house.

With soft steps, he approached the door, slid the bolt, and descended the stairs like a cat. The shop was just as they'd left it the day before. Touching nothing, careful not to bump into anything, he headed for the door and turned the key in the lock. As long as the key was in the lock, the door couldn't be opened from outside. Once he pulled the door shut behind him, he would be free of all his responsibilities. How humiliating it was to be a reluctant guest. To feel gratitude toward someone, to be crushed under the weight of a favor, to bend double with thanks and wary eyes... He had never liked such things. He had learned to be self-sufficient, to live without needing anyone, to stand on one foot if necessary, ever since the day he lost his parents. At this age, it was impossible for him to change. He pressed the door handle with his hand and leaned his shoulder against the door. The cool air hitting his face through the open door immediately halted the internal reckoning in his mind. He quietly closed the door. He was outside now.

The cold raindrops falling on his face and hands didn't frighten him. Though he tried to walk without splashing water on himself, he couldn't manage it. He thought if he ran to the bus stop, he'd get less wet. He quickened his pace. As he sped up, the rain seemed to intensify. His blue shirt was already soaking wet; the cold water was biting his body, the wet shirt sticking to his skin like a second layer. Running along building edges and under eaves didn't help either, because almost none of the buildings had proper downspouts from the roof to the road. So the drops at the roadside were larger and flowed faster than those falling from the sky. Besides, there was no one on the road—if there had been, he might have slipped under someone's umbrella and gone as far as he could. The rain seemed to have swept away not just the dust and dirt, but all of the city's people too.

When he turned onto the street leading to the bus stop, the rain had intensified so much that there was no visible difference between being newly wet and being soaked through. He was at least as wet as the stone he saw on the pavement, which had been under the rain since last night. He could feel his socks moving inside his shoes, cold water running down his groin, and the droplets collecting at the tips of his wet lashes creating a jar-bottom effect in front of his eyes. When he reached the stop, he was still hopeful. Soon a bus would come, pick him up, and take him to the city center. At least inside the bus he would escape the rain's sharp teeth.

The bus didn't come. The young man waited at the stop for over half an hour, but during that time, not a single car passed by on the road, let alone a bus. He wasn't afraid of the rain he was taking, the wind that occasionally blew and struck his chest, or the roaring sky—but standing stupidly by the roadside without going anywhere, getting wetter by the minute, had disturbed his young soul, which knew nothing of serenity. Either he would swallow his pride and return to the uncle's shop, or he would stubbornly walk all the way to his own house. Walking dozens of kilometers in this rain was certainly not wise, but going back was no good either. As he wavered between two minds, he noticed the uncle appearing beside him with a huge umbrella. Where had he come from, how had he found him, why had he bothered? He couldn't ask any of these questions.

"Come, let's go back to our place. In this rain, neither buses nor the metro run. You can dry off at home, have some hot soup, and then we'll figure something out," he said with a fatherly face. There was no anger on his face, nor the disappointment of betrayal. Perhaps he was used to the callous and impatient attitudes of young people. Was his high tolerance because he too had once been young? Or was this what it meant to be a father? The young man didn't bother seeking answers—he wasn't in a position to make choices anyway.

They huddled under the umbrella and returned together. They didn't speak at all along the way. The sound of the rain, tearing at the asphalt, covered everything, almost forbidding the thought and speech of anything other than itself. When they arrived home, the young man took a hot shower, put on the uncle's dry clothes, drank two bowls of hot soup—but still couldn't escape the cold that had seeped into his bones. First his fever rose, then came a cough he couldn't shake from his chest. His throat began to burn, his eyes ached, and all the muscles in his arms and legs started to throb. Afterwards, he remembered only lying down on the sofa to rest a little.

He lay on the living room sofa for days. When his fever dropped, his cough worsened; when his cough subsided, his throat hurt. It took nine days for him to recover. For nine days, he carried regret and shyness within him. He had unnecessarily burdened strangers, entered their lives for no reason. Having entered and not been able to leave, he silently pulled the flag of rebellion over his own face. During the sick nights, he had countless nightmares he couldn't remember. Sometimes he sailed on sailboats across stormy seas, sometimes he walked naked through the city streets. Neither the fear of stormy seas nor the shame of women's reproachful glances bothered him as much as lying sick in a stranger's house. He wanted what he was going through to end not while sleeping, but while awake.

Occasionally he saw the uncle's daughter come to his bedside and wipe the sweat from his forehead, but neither during the illness nor after his recovery could he find out whether this was real. Even if it was real, the thought didn't bother him much. So much so that his own lack of discomfort surprised him. Perhaps the girl's closeness was the only pain worth enduring, no matter the cost. If he was truly a prisoner locked in this house, then the interest he felt for the girl inside was the only medicine that could keep him alive. When trees dry up, they don't bear fruit—but humans are the opposite; they wither if they don't bear fruit. In fact, even the mere idea of fruit was enough to keep a person alive. As long as the fruit in one's imagination was worth living for. This is what the young man knew and believed.

When, after nine days, he believed he was fully recovered, he got up from his bed and thought to look outside the window. "Surely it has stopped by now," he said to himself. "It can't rain nonstop forever! Even the Amazon forests don't get such continuous rain for this long." When he approached the window and pulled back the curtain with his weak hand, he couldn't believe the scene before him at first. Was he dreaming? Was this one of the nightmares he'd had while sick? No; he had gotten out of bed, was standing by the window, the usual shouting sounds came from the children's room, and the living room smelled of medicine and moisture. Outside there was a morning leftover from night, neither comforting in its presence nor despairing in its absence. So many details couldn't come together in a dream. At least none of the dreams the young man had ever seen were so rich in detail—his dreams were more like momentary emotional discharges sensed in a blur. Either there was a sea inside them, or a shameful nakedness. In that case, who could explain what he was seeing?

"It's been raining nonstop since you got sick, my boy. Everywhere is flooded. We send the children by boat to the head of the street."

The young man had only just noticed his aunt appearing beside him. Like a ghost, she had come without touching the ground, covering the distance between the kitchen and the window. Her face bore an autumn that had shed all its green leaves; a deep melancholy reminiscent of a long, trying day had taken over every line of her features.

"Thank goodness you're awake, my boy. You've finally beaten the cold. The rain hasn't stopped at all—it rained so hard that sometimes we couldn't tell if it was falling from above or rising from below. One day it rained in lines, one day in torrents. One day it rained as if it weren't raining, another day as if saying, 'The earth belongs to me, just like the sky.' For the last four days, floods have appeared. The drains overflowed, the streets filled with water. Luckily, our house is on the second floor; we stayed dry, but the shop can't be entered anymore. Your uncle goes down occasionally for food and such. But he hasn't got the strength in his arms—he brings supplies, but when it comes to taking the children by boat to the head of the street, he gets scared. At the head of the street, the water reaches waist level, and a tractor picks up the children. We've been asking the neighbors for help for days. This morning, please take them yourself, so we don't have to keep troubling the neighbors."

The young man knew he couldn't say no to such a request. But he wouldn't say yes either. He wasn't bold enough to say yes—he had never felt like a leader; he preferred to follow from behind, from the edge, along paths already traveled. He would simply do what was needed. If he didn't help the family that had been caring for him all this time, he would be committing a great wrong. It wasn't the wrong itself that mattered—it was them saying "he was very rude," or even if they didn't say it, thinking it in their hearts. Besides, at a time like this, playing the victim was meaningless. This was a time not for talk, but for action. Even if it didn't suit him, he had to get used to it.

He went downstairs and looked into the shop. The water level was nearly as high as he was tall. From the top of the stairs, neither the counter nor the door handle was visible. On the steps, piled-up items rescued from the flood left only a single-person path. The shop seemed to have shrunk, become miniature. "The water's drawn back," he thought, chuckling lightly at his own joke. Only the debris floating on the dirty water retained traces of its former state.

When he went back upstairs, he found the little boy waiting with his schoolbag, ready. The older girl was just coming out of the room with a red comb in her hand. "Come on, young ones, let's go," he called to them both. That way, he had a reason not to treat the girl like a child. They were young people, not children; and he was a young man himself. If the boy tried to act like a sullen adolescent, he would say, "You're a grown man now—act like your sister."

The young man pulled the oars slowly. The little boy held the umbrella. The girl, to avoid getting wet, had no choice but to press close to them. The rain was light, but one shouldn't be fooled by its lightness. The young man was doing one of the most natural things in the world—rowing down the very street he had walked ten days earlier. It was like taking a leisurely trip on a calm lake after the rain. He realized that the feeling of ordinariness was triggered by the sight of people up and down the street rowing boats, but still, it wasn't easy to accept. The street's residents sat on inflatable pools, old sofas, and burst tires they'd thrown in front of their houses, chatting with neighbors. Had they gotten used to the water's presence, or were they trying to make the best of it, saying there was no point mourning defeat? Under the muddy water turning a naphtha green here and there, the street they knew was still there—the earth wasn't going anywhere, the rest didn't matter. One day would come when the waters would recede, and the street would be theirs again. The antennas of submerged cars gave him some guidance on where to steer and where not to. With this much water, he thought, the metro must certainly be closed.

When they reached the head of the street and put the children onto the tractor waiting there, he turned back. At a time like this, he couldn't abandon this family. "The best thing is to fix what's broken in the house, clean the shop, thank the family that's been looking after me all this time, and then leave," he said to himself. He felt proud of himself for a moment—proud to be someone who had made a decision worthy of pride.

When he returned home, the sheer number of tasks made him reconsider his decision, but it was too late to back out. First he cleaned the stairs, then carried up the remaining dry goods from the shop's windows and cabinets. He piled the items that weren't completely soaked against the wall of the upstairs balcony to dry. In the afternoon, despite the rain picking up again, he went back and forth in the boat, buying the food the household needed. Toward evening, he went again to the head of the street and brought home the little boy and the older girl returning from school. The day had passed quickly—he hadn't even noticed. Maybe he could go home tomorrow. At dinner, he said to the uncle sitting next to him, "If nothing goes wrong tomorrow, I suppose I'll go back home. Thank you so much for taking care of me all this time." But for some reason, he got no response from either the uncle or his aunt. If only they had said something like "Of course, my boy, off you go"—at least he would have felt better. But this reticent silence ruined his spirits. Was there something everyone knew that he didn't? After dinner, he first helped the little boy with his homework, then the older girl with her term project. They worked late into the night—sometimes he was the teacher correcting her mistakes, sometimes the brother teasing her about her errors. The old shyness had given way to a friendly relationship. Even the young man was surprised at how open he could be, how easily he could talk to the girl.

The next day began with rain again. Whoever opened the window was met by a scowling sky. The children couldn't go to school because of the waves caused by rain and wind. "You can't go out in this weather," the uncle said when he saw the young man getting ready. More than a shopkeeper running a store in the city's outskirts, he had the air of a fisherman who had spent his life at sea. "Don't go out in this weather—the waves will swallow you..." Another whole day would be spent at home. The young man spent the day repairing the broken items he'd brought up from the shop. He spent a long time dismantling the planks swollen from soaking up water. The young girl, curled up in her corner, watched him. She observed his sensitive face shifting through colors like a detective following a thief, recording every move—smiling when he got angry and threw materials on the floor, resenting it when he whistled as he worked.

When the young man took a break to rest, he turned on the TV to check on the city's situation, but no channel had any coverage of the flood. All the images showed other parts of the country, citizens continuing their usual happy lives under a brilliant sky. ÇTV was off the air. Either the TV building had been flooded, or the government had temporarily suspended the channel's operations so that the shameful images of the citizens' plight wouldn't cause unwanted consequences. "Considering that no other channel has even the slightest news about the flood, ÇTV being closed makes more sense," the young man thought once he realized the situation. After all, if it wasn't going to broadcast the biggest disaster in Ç's history, what was the point of ÇTV? Wasn't a ÇTV that didn't represent Ç a contradiction in itself? In that case, if it stayed on air and broadcast other news, wouldn't it become ridiculous in the eyes of the people living in Ç?

Abandoning TV for the radio, they encountered a similar situation. Only announcements that the city's largest university was closed due to bad weather, and that metro and bus lines weren't operating. Then they moved on to other news. The great actor K.T. had entered his third marriage, and President R had made his second visit. The famous basketball player Y.M. had met with his fans one last time before retiring, civilly distributing thousands of personally signed photos to young people standing in line...

The next day, the rain was drizzling, but it still wasn't safe to go out. At the cost of getting completely soaked, the young man took the children by boat to the head of the street and then returned home immediately. He no longer felt any longing for his own house, his own room. The relationship between him and his home was like a worn-out love—too respectful of memories to break, too lacking in interest to see each other often. Surely one day he would go home, but it didn't matter when that day was. He would go—that was the only thing he knew. The rest didn't matter.

In the following days, the young man became more involved with the girl's project. The project finished, and the exam preparation period began. Meanwhile, they grew warmer toward each other; the girl sent him signals, one contradicting the other, through subtle touches. One day her hand accidentally brushed his; another day her hair grazed his face. The young man might have been foolish when it came to trusting people, but when it came to girls, his mind worked differently—just like any other man. He could decipher the messages the girl was sending. Because he couldn't do anything about it, he was constantly on guard while inside the house. Sometimes he thought, "What if the uncle sees, what if the aunt notices; they're taking pity on me and hosting me, and I'm provoking their daughter who's at marriageable age. Does this suit me at all?" But other times he thought, "Isn't their presence the only reason I'm here? Just as I eat their food and drink their water, I should be able to use the house's resources for my other natural needs—like loving and being loved." With this nebulous state of mind, one day he would say to the girl, "Come here!" and for the next two days he'd say, "Don't come near me, it would be bad."

On one hand, the love he was growing in his heart; on the other, the house's endless chores... The young man had forgotten the fact that he had a home on the other side of the city. Sometimes two or three days would pass without his home, his room, or the desk he'd left behind even crossing his mind. On days like that, when his room suddenly came to mind and a longing filled his heart for no reason, he would try to calculate how many days it had been since he'd last thought of it. He felt a mature pride for the days he hadn't even brought his old life to mind—a justified confidence appeared in the center of his chest from being able to leave things behind.

He couldn't remember which movie it was, but the leading actress, with all her maternal warmth, said to her young son, "Beware of those who have no wounds." A person needed a wound to be human, to understand others, and to invite outside light into their body. Every person needed a wound that wouldn't heal, or if it healed, left a deep scar in the most invisible part of the skin, aching from time to time. Perhaps the life he had left behind was that very wound that would leave a mark on his soul—he should long for it, but also forget it just as much, cover it with cold ashes, and hide it from others.

Some days, after lunch with the uncle and aunt, he would sit by the window, watch the fine rain falling, imagine the sun above the pitch-black clouds, and try to bring to mind all the details of the life he'd left behind. His house, his room, the door, the doorknob, the bed, the bedspread, the desk, the desk lamp, the open textbook, the problem solutions written in the book, the lines of poetry scattered among them... But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't reach the desired result. All that appeared in his mind were blurry, silhouette-like images, like a person moving behind frosted glass. He could go neither forward nor backward from this point. Their relationship was like a finished love affair. Even if he gathered all his courage and tried to return, to be reunited with his house, his room, his desk after all this time—he knew very well that nothing would be the same as before. He would quickly get bored, feel stifled, sigh and puff, say "What did I even love about you, what did I miss?" and run away from his home.

Besides, he now had a home here too—one he cared for and that cared for him. There was also the girl, with whom he played hide-and-seek inside the house. The unnamed ball of affection between them was like an avalanche ready to fall. Once it fell, it would sweep away everything in its path—they both knew this. They just didn't dare to cause the first crack in the snow mass piled on the slopes.

One evening, in the twilight of a day when he missed his old life but didn't think of leaving, he kissed the girl on the lips for the first time. Schools had closed, vacation had just begun. The rain was falling crookedly outside. The young man sat by the window, quietly reading an old book he'd found in a forgotten corner of the house. He had noticed the girl approaching, but didn't want to show it. He liked giving people the message that he wasn't paying attention. Even though the girl had no interest in books, she asked questions about the author, made unnecessary comments, and pressed herself close to the young man. So close that her long black hair fell over the pages, slipping like a spy between the letters and words, filling the spaces on the page with messages written in a language only the young man could read. The scent of the girl's youthful skin made him forget the worry that there might be others in the house. Besides, the girl knew very well that her mother had gone to the neighbor's, and her father and brother were cleaning the shop downstairs. She had calculated everything before coming—she had no intention of leaving things to chance. Only after ensuring all conditions were met did she lay her head on the young man's shoulder, signaling that she was waiting to be kissed. And the young man could no longer hold back the waters of the dam he'd kept in his heart for months—he slowly opened the floodgates, releasing everything he had into the riverbed that had been dry for so long.

In the following days, their time was spent calculating the moments they could be alone in the house. Even in the time it took to smoke a cigarette, when the parents weren't home or had gone down to the shop, they found each other's arms, bodies bruised by the rain. This was a kind of revenge—against the needle-like rain, the black clouds that made the sky unbearable, the raging waters that condemned the streets to mud and flood; above all, against the fate that trapped the young man and the young girl in the house... Despite all the adversity, they seized every opportunity, finding each other's lips like a blind person searching for raised markings on the ground. This was nothing more than a small candle to offer to such a dark life. In a place where the sun was hidden behind layered clouds, where rain like thorns tore out the city's lungs, what else could a person cling to but love?

Whether what was happening between them was love or simply two wretched people falling from a cliff holding hands before hitting the ground—neither of them knew. The only thing they knew was their need for each other's flesh. It was flesh—it drew the other in, then sucked, swallowed, destroyed everything impure in the world. It colored their souls, weary from carrying rain and clouds, with the reddest of reds and the whitest of whites. However, an accident in the third month of the young man's stay was enough to fade all the colors in the picture.

The uncle and aunt had taken advantage of the relatively good weather that morning—now classified as "little rain" spring, "too much rain" autumn, or "crazy rain" winter—and gone to the tailor at the head of the street. The aunt was having a dress made, one with flowers and ladybugs on it. She had wanted the uncle to see it, approve it, at the very least like it. Shortly after they left, the rain began to fall—not like pouring from a bucket, but as if every cauldron in the sky had been overturned. The downpour was so intense that the drops seemed to merge in the air and fall to the ground in masses. The street was suddenly captive to the flood; the shop, newly repaired and cleaned, began taking on water like a sinking ship. The young man and the little boy went downstairs and tried with all their might to block the holes and prevent water from entering, but they couldn't. Within five minutes, the water level reached their knees. The young man, in a state of accepted defeat, went back upstairs while the little boy, with childish stubbornness, continued plugging the holes. He had only reached the middle of the stairs when there was an explosion at the point where the boy had covered the holes with his hands and arms. An explosion, followed by a thin scream, echoed through the shop's walls, making the young man fix his terrified eyes on the little boy. The child had fallen into the water right there, face down on the surface. The young man ran immediately to save him—but the electricity in the water prevented him from reaching the child. Then he understood the gravity of the situation.

By the time they cut the power and reached the child, it was too late. His heart had stopped, his body was ice-cold; the child in his spirit had merged with the water, had become the water itself. For days, tears flowed in the house; like spring waters too much for the gutters, drops overflowed through the nights, laments were sung, mourning clothes were worn. One way or another, the rain had finally entered the house, rotting not just its walls and doors but its very soul.

After the child died before his eyes—a child entrusted to his responsibility—the young man resolved to leave. Once the mourning period was over, once the waters calmed a little, once the rain lessened even a bit, he would escape from this ill-fated house. True, he had brought the ill luck himself, but for some reason no one suspected him. The hearse that came to take the little boy couldn't enter the street. The boatmen were asked, but they didn't want to risk carrying a coffin in days when waves were pounding and eroding the building fronts. Finally, they drilled through the concrete of the courtyard behind the house and buried the child's tiny body there. This was better than letting it rot inside the house. Besides, for a mother who had lost her son at such a young age, having the grave so close was a comfort. Every day, the mother went out with a large parasol and wept for hours at the graveside—each day searing the young man's heart from a different point, as he woke with the intention of "going home this morning."

After the child's death, the girl had not come close to the young man even once. They only caressed each other's hair with their eyes, unable to embrace and weep together because of the greatest loss. It wasn't their mourning that caused this distance. At a time when everyone was seeking consolation in other family members' arms, the young girl was mostly at her mother's side. The father, like the young man, had taken to sitting by the window, waiting for the rain to stop. Whenever the image of his little son, the days they'd run through meadows and grass in sunny weather, came to mind, he felt the rain seeping through the window, piercing his chest, flowing inward—but he still didn't show his sorrow. His wife was already devastated by grief; if he also lost himself, the household balance would be upset beyond repair. The young man had joined this family tragedy from the outside—an ineffective element whose presence or absence went unnoticed. He didn't mind this, but a voice inside him whispered that his now thoroughly internalized guest status wouldn't last much longer.

One evening during dinner, taking advantage of the girl being in her room, the aunt finally spoke. Even the walls seemed to have forgotten her voice, let alone the household. Her voice was so foreign, as if torn from another life entirely. "I think you should get married," she said. "You love each other, you know. The girl's not going to university, and you're not leaving this house either. Let's marry you off—would that be so bad? You'd become this house's son, take care of the shop, handle the errands. You'd be our son. What do you say, huh? We could even have a small ceremony."

The young man didn't know what to say in response to the aunt's proposal. The food stuck in his throat; everything he'd eaten lined up one after another. So they had known all along—so just as he and the girl had hidden their love, the elders of the house could also hide things from them. He remained silent for a while, deciding on an instinct to act as if he knew that they knew. He looked at the uncle—or pretended to. There was no sign of the rain stopping outside, and even if it did, he had no intention of going anywhere. A house he had stumbled upon by chance had become the house that would determine his future—this surprised him most of all. The apartment he'd left behind three months ago, the open book on his desk in that apartment, had all become faded memories. The rain had swept away even the details that had fled to the deepest corners of his mind. Now it was time to look forward, to live knowing there was no turning back.

Two weeks later, when they held a wedding ceremony inside the house, the young man was happy. Despite the rain pattering outside, despite the constant presence of the little brother's ghostly memories, despite the grief that would never fully leave the house, despite the young girl crying for her lost brother—he was happy. The neighbors may have found it difficult to adapt from a house of mourning to a house of celebration, but the strangeness of the young couple using the room the girl had shared with her brother until a few months ago as their bridal chamber couldn't be ignored.

That night, the hours passed long for both of them. The night expanded, engulfing all past and future, covering the young couple like a silk blanket. No one could harm them now, no one could touch their fragile bodies, no one could cast an evil eye on the fire burning on their skin, no one could rule over their small enchanted garden. Not even the rain—which had been falling relentlessly for months, at times taking lives and breaking hearts, at times fraying nerves and destroying homes...

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September 2014

Published in Turkish in 2016 in the short story collection The Blue of the Hazy City. English translation is made by Deep Seek on Aug 6th 2026.