Man in a White Overcoat
“The coat fit him like a glove. The vendor spun him around, and the flared skirt fluttered outward.”
AUGUST 22, 2024
He stood there amidst the crowd: a penniless failure begging in front of a mosque. The mosque was a big one. Minarets, domes, arches and latticed windows, it had it all, including a courtyard, a beggar’s most important spot. Not only had he failed at life, he’d failed at begging too, either because he had no injury, talent or pathetic deformity to profit from, or because he couldn’t disconnect from his surroundings long enough to rue his failures for a while. He wasn’t selling anything like dried corn kernels in little dishes for the children to feed the pigeons, so he couldn’t say he was doing any good for the sake of others. He didn’t even have a place to call home, unlike the old man on the other side of the courtyard whose long red robe made him look like an astrologer — his home was a wheeled hut outfitted with leather walls and a front flap that rolled down and shuttered him up every day around lunchtime. And unlike the fat cripple nearby who merely twisted the throttle of his motorized pushcart once he’d finished selling his evil-eye pendants, worry beads and flint stones, he had no means of escape. He might have stopped someone. He might have passed himself off as a village rustic claiming he’d just been let out of the hospital and needed some money to make it back to the construction foreman, his hometown compatriot. But since he didn’t speak he probably would have failed in that endeavor too. In fact, other than leaning against the mosque wall he took no interest in any pursuit at all. He didn’t even bother holding out his hand. He simply stared at the pigeons and their dishes of corn, then at the sloped buttress walls lined along their bases with religious sex books, then at the tree trunks wrapped with newspaper clippings that advised the public against certain social evils, then at the charity workers sitting at their tables writing out receipts for donations received, until a shrunken old woman in a chador turned over this reluctant beggar’s hand herself and, assuming he was disabled, filled his palm with a coin.
The sun soared overhead. It made him squint, which perhaps was why he didn’t look at the money. And perhaps it was because his eyes had settled on some children playing in the courtyard that he forgot to close his hand. The day’s first charity began to move away, but then the woman turned around to look him in the face. Whether intentional or not, he didn’t even move his eyes, which was why this first patron of his assumed he was blind. Another coin clinked into his palm. The sound woke him up. As he lifted his head, he saw a man in the distance who with his long beard and torn clothes looked just like him. Then a girl walked up, digging nervously through a handbag that seemed to have been made from an old piece of carpet. She took out her change purse. One hand went heavy with the weight of a big coin, and he covered it with the other.
A dark, disheveled woman with an infant in her arms squatted next to him. Like a pair of stains, the two figures lingered there for a long time against the wall. Then the lighter of the two stains suddenly walked off towards the center of the courtyard. The old red-robed astrologer thrust his cane out from his hut, catching him between the ankles. He nearly fell. “Put me in that shade there, youngster,” the old man muttered. He tried to steer the hut. The old man stomped his foot. “Not there,” he said. He got out to turn the hut in the direction he wanted to go, jerked down on the front flap, opened a small window in one of the leather walls and glared through it at the courtyard.
He left the old man in the shade; he went back to the wall to stare at his money.
“You’re an able-bodied man. Aren’t you ashamed to be begging?” A fat man stood beside him. “You wouldn’t know what to do with a job if you had one.” He looked at the fat man’s suitcase and tried to pick it up. Even with both his hands, he couldn’t do it. Then he noticed a porter in the distance skillfully plying his trade. He tried his method: crouching down, leaning his back against the suitcase and pulling on the handle; that didn’t work either. It was only with the fat man’s help that he managed to get the suitcase off the ground.
A white overcoat suddenly touched his face, either blown by the wind or jostled by the passing crowd. Long, lustrous and clean, it looked like a ghost dressed in a wide collar, oversized buttons and a flared skirt.
“Two-and-a-half lira, that’s as much as I’ll give you,” the man said in his high-pitched voice once they were on their way. They walked side-by-side. At the pier, they both had to kneel to lower the suitcase to the ground. The fat man hesitated indecisively, then held out his money. He seemed to feel sorry for him. They could have boarded the ferry together on separate fares, but the crew of porters had rendered him useless. He rested at the wall of the ferry terminal until he saw more things he could carry, then he pushed himself off towards the street. He was already worn out, swaying on his legs whenever he stopped to rest. A few people accused him of being drunk in the middle of the afternoon, but he still found plenty of work: another suitcase, a trunk, et cetera (only to the pier). Back and forth he went, between those who thought he was healthy and those who thought he was hurt. He could have kept it up, but just as a well-dressed gentleman was fishing through his pockets to pay him, a woman walked by, whose child took one look at this wreck of a man and started crying. He crossed the street without waiting for his pay.
He returned to the mosque and slipped into the cool, vaulted entrance of the courtyard. In the dim light he counted his money, then he asked a simit-seller to exchange it for some bills. He walked until he came to a busy market street; he blended back in with the people. He fell in behind two tired and sweaty porters, watching himself in the enormous engraved gilt mirror they were carrying. He didn’t have a jacket on, and his shirt was in tatters from the time he’d reluctantly intervened in a fight between two vagrants; he brought its pieces together, undid the string that held up his pants and tied it tight. The porters suddenly turned up an alley before he could get a look at his ripped pants or the rubber shoes that hid his sockless feet. He wandered from one dense and narrow street to the next. Vendors soon began to gather around the more level areas of the sidewalk, their voices mingling with the pedestrian bustle. Next to appear were the short-legged market tables. They rose higher and higher, the vendors topped them off with poles and tarps, the sun and the upper floors of the buildings disappeared, and the heat eased. There was no space left to walk in the street; he was forced to a standstill, pressed between fabric and clothing that seemed to be held up for display by nothing at all. A white overcoat suddenly touched his face, either blown by the wind or jostled by the passing crowd. Long, lustrous and clean, it looked like a ghost dressed in a wide collar, oversized buttons and a flared skirt.
A light breeze stirred the dresses hanging in the stall of this stocky, dark-skinned vendor who was clearly from one of the provinces, but the overcoat didn’t budge. It must have been made from some heavy fabric. They both stood before it for a while. The vendor eventually broke the silence: “What, are you buying it?” He didn’t answer. The vendor grinned and spat on the ground, his face had the look of shrewd indifference. Glancing from the vendor to the overcoat, he sunk his hand into his pocket. “Wait,” the vendor said, “let’s at least get it on you.” The vendor turned around, looking for someone to join the fun. From the little meyhane across the street a man watched them with his elbows propped on his table and a beer in hand, waiting for a laugh. No one else was interested.
The coat fit him like a glove. The vendor spun him around, and the flared skirt fluttered outward. The man at the meyhane was so surprised he coughed out a mouthful of beer. The vendor composed himself: “This is a ladies’ coat, my friend. Not for you.” He quickly tried to pull the overcoat off the customer’s shoulders. He pushed away the vendor’s hand; beneath the coat, he rummaged through the pockets of his pants.
“It’s too expensive for you,” the vendor insisted. “A hundred-and-fifty lira. Ladies coat. What are you, crazy?” He ignored the vendor and held out all his money in a thick wad. The vendor warily pulled it apart, picked out the loose change and counted the bills.
“Forty-five lira,” he said. “Not in this world. Take off the coat.”
He didn’t take it off.
“It cost me a hundred-twenty-five lira,” the vendor said. He wasn’t listening. He was too busy looking down at the flared skirt that almost reached his ankles.
“You’ll look ridiculous,” the vendor said. “And let’s say you give me a hundred — all right, what about the rest?” The man at the meyhane had recovered by now. The pain in his chest was gone, but the situation was getting harder and harder to laugh at. Nonetheless, he watched them in a way that signaled his support for the vendor, who no longer looked amused; all he had left to go on was his dogged stubbornness. “Give me another thirty lira,” he said, “and whatever the hell happens to you, it’s out of my hands.”
He wheeled about on his heels with the white overcoat still on; he looked around and smiled for the first time. Then, suddenly, his face fell, as if he would never smile again.
The man at the meyhane turned away. The vendor was on his own. “To hell with you,” he said, “and take your filthy change too.” The vendor pulled his hand out of his coat pocket for him. “You won’t believe it,” he said, cramming the coins into his palm one-by-one, “but an old lady brought me that overcoat this morning.” His voice trembled with rage. “I gave her exactly thirty-five lira for it, God’s truth. But that’s ladies’ stuff for you, hardly sells.”
He kept his white overcoat on as he rejoined the crowd. Soon he was out from under the canopy of tarps. He looked up at the sky, then at the ground, where he saw the sun reflected in a large puddle. Then the spotless image of sun and sky went blurry with all sorts of colors and shadows. The wonder he felt had yet to fade, and as he leaned over to get another look at his overcoat he saw the reflection of a crowd that didn’t quite know what to make of him. He went around the puddle so the skirt of the coat wouldn’t get muddy. Those who tiptoed through the water gawking at him ended up half-soaked.
He walked on without looking back. He quickened his steps. The trailing crowd had gone silent, but its numbers swelled and a hum soon reached his ears. They eventually came to a neighborhood square that was partially bordered by the high courtyard walls of a small mosque. Some of the crowd made for the shaded outdoor coffeehouse tables but were quickly displaced by the indoor customers, who’d finished their tea but still didn’t know what to do with themselves. Altogether, they weren’t that large of a group. Even so, they had to push one another to get through the arched entrance to the mosque courtyard. An old man who’d been walking in the opposite direction stumbled on the set of steps wedged inconspicuously between the walls and fell on top of two children. A scuffle broke out. Meanwhile another portion of the crowd began to peruse the help-wanted flyers pasted to the walls. The logjam soon cleared up, the crowd freed itself, everyone sighed in relief. But now they couldn’t find the man in the overcoat. He was gone. Several people struck up an argument with each another, then hurled their insults at the dithering job-seekers and the old man who still hadn’t bothered to pick himself up off the steps. With nothing to gather for, the crowd dispersed.
The sun was blazing now. He’d slowed his pace, beads of sweat slipped from his brow and fell into his beard. He came to a bridge and leaned against its railing, taking refuge in the shadow of a comb-seller’s curbside stand. What with his coat and his beard and the looks that hung from the faces of the passersby, he actually did the comb-seller some good: An idle throng of the unemployed stopped to look at him; the porters saddled down with their heavy loads found it just the right spot to rest. The comb-seller made a handful of sales, but no one got too close at first because of the still, expressionless manner with which the man in the overcoat stood there. They tried out a few foreign words on him. “This man isn’t a tourist,” someone said, “he’s just acting like one.” Another tested him with a string of profanity, spoken in one of the more common foreign tongues. He made no response. A lotto-ticket peddler noticed he had a pack of American cigarettes in his pocket and said, “Not a tourist, my ass — this guy is English.” They cursed at him in that language too. Then they touched him and tugged at the coat skirt until they realized he was a living thing, and he quickly walked away.
It was a long bridge. He stopped near some of the other curbside vendors for a while, one of them a kid in a flat cap selling filtered cigarettes. The kid had him take his place so he could go for a piss. He sold five packs of cigarettes and three boxes of matches while he was gone. When the kid returned, he lit two cigarettes from his own table and gave him one. They reclined against the railing, silently watching the men fishing off the bridge. He undid the top two buttons of his coat, but it didn’t make him any cooler. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the wide collar. Turning his eyes towards the end of the bridge, he saw that the streets there receded into darkness. He buttoned up his coat, gestured vaguely and walked off.
He made his way up a narrow street; it was shaded by tall buildings and lined with shops that spilled over with all sorts of fabric, clothing, salesmen. He stood in the path of the passing customers, staring at himself in a store window. After a while, he noticed someone watching him from behind the window display inside; it was the fat store owner looking him up and down with tiny, anxious eyes. A smile spread over the owner’s round face, he squinted and vanished.
“Over here,” he said from the door, holding it open with his fat frame. “Where’d you find that coat?” The man in the overcoat looked at him but didn’t answer. Then a different man came up the street and grabbed his arm. “Hey mister!” he said. He seemed to be explaining something, but it was in a language he didn’t understand. This man tried bolstering his words with his hands, even his arms, in an effort to describe what he was asking, but none of it did any good. He had a suitcase on the ground. He opened it, took out some shirts wrapped in plastic and thrust them into his arms. Then he poked one of the coat’s big buttons. “You, tourist,” he said. “You bring shirts to France, Germany. No money. To sell.” Still uncertain as to whether he’d been understood, the man left him near the display window and ran over to the corner. The fat shop owner waited at the door, curious as to what would happen next. A moment later, a young man in red pants and a floral-patterned shirt, from which his chest hair sprang up like the spiny stems of a blackthorn bush, stood in front of him looking at the shirts. “How much?” he said. The man in the overcoat stared blankly in his face. The itinerant salesman at the street corner stomped his foot. “Goddamn junky,” he muttered. “He’s deaf!” he called out and stood next to this young, hirsute customer of his so he wouldn’t run off. “They’re a hundred lira.” “Expensive,” the young man said. The salesman scowled at the man in the overcoat, hesitated, then brought his ear close to his mouth. “Eighty lira,” he said, “I know his language.” And with the salesman’s intercession, the man in the overcoat appeared to silently haggle over the price of the shirt until it sold for sixty lira. In a little over an hour all the shirts were gone. The salesman put a ten-lira bill in the pocket of his coat, said, “Goodbye,” and shook his limp hand.
“Incredible!” the fat store owner shouted. “Come inside for a while.” Then he paused and thought to himself: “Ah yes—he doesn’t understand.” He tried what the salesman with the suitcase had done: “You, come; store here,” and without bothering to wait, he grabbed his arm and pulled him inside. The owner wandered around for a while with his salesclerk, puzzling over how to use him. “The guy just stands there like a manikin,” he said, “I can’t just put a bolt of fabric in his arms and expect him to sell it!” They paced back and forth. “Manikin,” the fat store owner said again, nothing else came to mind. He and the salesclerk kept muttering the word, “Manikin, manikin,” and it wasn’t until sometime later that they realized they could use him as one. “A live manikin!” they shouted again and again. Delighted with themselves, they pushed him towards the display window they wanted him to stand in (since he otherwise wouldn’t do what they told him to), but as they helped him step up into it the salesclerk pointed to his feet. “They’re filthy,” he warned his boss, “his pants too.” They pulled him back down. Then they wrapped his shoes and pant-cuffs in white linen, and since the overcoat didn’t quite cover his lower legs he looked like a mummy in a museum. They took his arms and lifted him back into the display window. “He can’t just stand there like a bump on a log,” the salesclerk said, “he needs a more elegant pose.” They thought this over. “Spread his arms so he fills out the window,” the boss said. “He’ll get tired and move them around too much,” the salesclerk said. They decided to tie his arms to the ceiling with nylon string. They extended one of his arms forward, tied it up and fastened it to a nail above the display window, then placed his other arm on a shelf they’d cleared.
The people outside watched them through the window as they worked. Soon, there was a crowd. “Is it alive,” some of them said, “or is it a puppet?” The salesclerk stood at the door. “Step right up to the shop with the live manikin!” he shouted. “Come in and see our varieties of cooling fabric. Here, our Live Swedish Manikin, who took a great deal of sacrifice to import from the arctic regions, endures this heat only by wearing our lightweight fabrics. See how his huge overcoat doesn’t cause him to sweat. Like a bird soaring through the sky, he advertises our fabrics in the liveliest, most authentic manner. ‘Swaddling Fabric,’ it’s called, found only in our store. Beware of imitation products and manikins. Good luck finding it anywhere else!”
The crowd began to force its way inside for a closer look. One woman lifted her crying child to her shoulders and wedged her way through, while another followed her in to finger his coat and see if it was made of the same material the store sold. They were especially interested in the fabric. They spread the flared skirt, revealing the rips at his knees. As the crowd thinned, the boss held the skirt open while the salesclerk wrapped more linen around his legs. They liked this look so much they pinned the skirt to the wall with more nylon string, so that it now resembled a fan. The man in the overcoat took up the entire display. There was nothing else in the window but him. With that, they draped some fabric from his shoulders and arms.
Business went swimmingly until lunch. When they sat down at the counter and opened their mess kits, the boss said, “He should have something too or he’s going to collapse.” The salesclerk went to the display window, untied him and set him loose. They pulled a stool up and spooned some haricot beans and macaroni into one of the mess kit tops. The man in the overcoat ate with two small pieces of bread like a fork, before drinking a little water with his hand from the faucet at the back of the store. Then he sat on the floor and leaned against the counter. They gave him a cigarette. He must have aroused a certain amount of respect because the boss lit it for him. He clapped him on the shoulder and turned to the salesclerk. “He came in handy, didn’t he?” he laughed. “Are you tired?” the salesclerk asked, looking at his boss. It was difficult to make conversation. He wouldn’t respond. Then he straightened up slowly, stood to his feet and headed towards the door. “Where are you going?” the boss cried. “Is it that bad? At least you’re making money!” He didn’t stop. They ran after him, stuffing money into his pockets. The boss had forgotten to remove all the needles, but the man in the overcoat shuffled quickly away, with string still dangling from his arms and white cloth still wrapped around his feet. As he turned the corner, a small piece of fabric fell from his shoulder to the ground.
He eventually stopped at the bottom of a steep hill and sat on the curb. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and looked around. Up the street he noticed a sign for a bus stop affixed to a utility pole. He stood up, walked several steps and stopped. The white cloth the salesclerk wrapped around his feet had begun to unravel. He pulled the string from his waist and stretched it out on the sidewalk. Then he picked up a nearby rock, ground the string in half with it and tied the two pieces over his cloth wrappings. Near the bus stop he paused again, this time to hike up his pants, pinching them from the outside of his coat. Just then a yogurt-seller walked by. Steering his shoulder yoke towards the open door of an old house behind the bus stop, he struck him with one of his scale pans. The man in the overcoat stumbled and peered through the doorway at the yogurt-seller, who disappeared into a dim courtyard inside. Then a head popped up from beneath the house, as if it were rising straight up from the sidewalk. The man in the overcoat gawked at its thick-framed glasses and tangled, greasy black hair. He noticed a little gap in the sidewalk and the handful of subterranean steps that lead to a half-basement. The bespectacled head rose up higher and became a man; a weathered old man with a number of belts hanging from his dark arms. The beggar in the overcoat reached for one of the chestnut-colored belts. He unbuttoned his coat. But his pants didn’t have any loops to slip the belt through, and he couldn’t pull them up any higher because of all the wrappings and the string wound around the cuffs. He looked helplessly at the belt-maker. Then they both looked at the belt. The belt-maker went back down the hole he’d just come out of. He was gone for a while, but he reappeared with a chain of big safety pins, which they used to fasten the waist of his pants to the inside of his overcoat. “There, you can wrap your belt around the outside,” he laughed. “It’ll look even swankier.” That’s what they did. The man in the overcoat took a bill from his pocket and held it out. The belt-maker looked at the money, then he took it and went into the next door bakkal. He came back with a bottle of cheap wine, a small can of tomato paste and some change, which he handed back. Then he set the wine and tomato paste on the sidewalk above the steps; after a few swigs, he offered the bottle to the man in the overcoat. When he saw he wouldn’t take it, the belt-maker disappeared underground and returned with an empty tin can, its edge smoothed so it wouldn’t cut his mouth. He filled the can with wine. They sat against the wall and drank together, their feet hanging above the steps that descended into the hole. At one point a bus passed. They finished the wine before the next one arrived. They boarded it together. The belt-maker paid their fare and got off at the top of the hill, two stops before the man in the overcoat.
The unafraid children — which is to say, all of them — grabbed his coat skirt and spun him around. “He’s got safety pins on his stomach.” “His hands are all tied up.” “Careful, he might be from the loony bin.”
Alone now on the rear deck of the bus, he made his way to the front. He’d nearly gotten to the driver when the bus suddenly braked, and he fell into one of the rear-facing front seats. The man across from him smiled. At first, the man in the overcoat didn’t pay any attention to him, but then he wouldn’t stop smiling. Flustered, he fixed his belt; the man kept smiling. He checked his collar, his coat skirt and the string around his wrappings — no, it hadn’t come undone. With nothing about his appearance out of place, he cheered up a little and gave the man a friendly glance. But then he realized the man wasn’t even looking at him, he was listening to music. A thin wire ran from his left ear to his pocket, where he carried a little radio no one else on the bus was aware of but them.
He got off at a broad city square. A diminutive shoe-shiner set his valet box down beside his feet. “Shall we get rid of some of that dust, abi?” he said. The man in the overcoat cautiously placed his foot on the box and the shoe-shiner went to work, meticulously brushing at the dirt between the linen wrappings. Afterwards, he bought some dried corn, spread his arms and scattered it for the pigeons. Two boys sat on top of the park entrance wall watching him. “Take a look at this,” said the one in a flat cap, “he looks like a statue.” “Or a crucifix,” said the other, and they both laughed.
At the park gate, he drank a bottle of soda water — cold enough to “make all thirty-two of your teeth go numb,” as the water vendors liked to say. He sat on one of the park benches in the shade and listened to an old man unburden himself of his troubles, but he could barely understand him, the man had lost his teeth. All the well-groomed and respectable people seemed to have gone somewhere else to relax, so he didn’t strike anyone at the park as particularly strange. Eventually, the old man asked him to help him to the bus stop. He gave him his arm, and as they left the park people began to follow him again. At first, it was only some children. But once they reached the bus stop, it had grown into a crowd. “God damn these foreigners,” said one man, who wore an enormous black mustache that covered half his face and his shirt untucked. “And to think they live in this country for free.” A chauffeur stood nearby, leaning against the door of his car eating some sort of greasy, ground beef pastry while he waited for his client. “And that, my friend, is why the value of our money keeps falling,” he agreed. The old man tugged at his arm. “Take me across the street,” he said. A taxi swerved and brushed them as it went by, even though they’d given it the right of way. They looked at the driver, who stretched his head out the window and yelled, “What are you looking at?” As they stepped back from the busy street they bumped into the crowd. The old man wouldn’t stop tugging at his overcoat, and all the traffic made it impossible to reach the other side. After a few more tries, they retreated to the curb. “They’re all drug addicts — I hope they get hit, the good-for-nothings,” someone said. The chauffeur and the man with the mustache each lit a cigarette. “Look,” said a woman to her husband, “the kids stuck a paper tail on his behind.” They laughed, the children had trapped him between the parked cars along the curb, now he couldn’t find the old man. The crowd grew. “His feet are bandaged.” “I hope he’s not a leper.” They suddenly pushed one another backwards. The unafraid children — which is to say, all of them — grabbed his coat skirt and spun him around. “He’s got safety pins on his stomach.” “His hands are all tied up.” “Careful, he might be from the loony bin.” “He’s nuts, look at that belt around his overcoat.” “That’s a ladies’ overcoat!” “Is he a woman?” “What do you mean ‘woman,’ he’s sick in the head.” “Someone call the police.” He lifted his eyes to avoid their stares. He saw a man up ahead filming them all from a bridge. “Hey, they’re shooting a movie!” someone said. They all looked towards the bridge. Taking advantage of this brief distraction, the man in the overcoat turned his back and quickly walked away. Then he began to run.
He saw a train barreling across the distance. He ran towards it, climbed over a wire fence and fell and cut his hand. He eventually reached some train tracks. He followed them all the way to the station, where he collapsed on the platform, breathless and drenched in sweat. He tried to stand but he stepped on his coat skirt and fell. He leaned against the wall of the women’s toilet. Several trains came and went, and the station became deserted. He walked over to the ticket window. The clerk took one look at this speechless man’s face and handed him a second-class ticket.
On the yellow plank floor of the train, he journeyed with all the people who were tired like him, and dirty like him, and indifferent, just like himself, to the world they’d been forced to live in. They smoked together, even though there was a placard forbidding it — he on a cigarette they’d generously given him. Then he got off at a station that looked out onto the sea.
He passed through a gate with a sign that said “Public Beach” over it. After wandering along the sand for a while, he found a chair vacated by an old woman who’d been knitting something out of wool. At first, he only caught the attention of a handful of teenagers playing ball. They nudged each other and pointed at him, then they threw the ball at his head. He tried to avoid it and toppled over in his chair to the sand. They surrounded him. He winced at the wall of naked legs and closed his eyes. “He’s got epilepsy,” one of them said. “And his feet are bandaged,” said a pug-nosed girl stepping back. “He must have it bad.” The crowd grew, the people in the back pushed towards the front to get a better look, the ring around him tightened three rows deep. He couldn’t get to his feet. At the back was a tall boy with a mustache. “This man is ill, and you’re suffocating him,” he said, splitting the crowd. He pushed the people aside, but their places were quickly snatched up and the break in the ring immediately repaired itself. The crowd wouldn’t budge, it was as if their feet had been staked into the sand. Nor did they speak. They only stared at the man in the overcoat. “Raise his legs,” someone shouted from the back, “and get him water.” A guard had been watching nearby, debating whether to assist this apparently half-drowned man, but on hearing these words he finally pushed his way to the middle of the crowd. The scorching sand and overcoat and belt and wrappings were practically roasting him. He sat there, pre-vented by the crowd from getting any air. He didn’t even bother to wipe the sweat from his face. The guard deemed the situation an inappropriate one: “You may not occupy the beach in that attire,” he warned. “Get that coat off!” shouted a hairy, sand-plastered silhouette in the front. A gloomy-looking youth turned to the person nearby and said, “He’s probably got nothing on underneath.” “I read something like that somewhere.” “Leave here at once,” the security guard insisted. “You have no right to disturb the public peace.” The tall boy with a mustache came to his defense. “He can sit here with his clothes on, he isn’t disturbing anyone.” “But it’s a woman’s overcoat! He’s a pervert!” someone shouted. “Leave!” the guard said, and he grabbed him by the arm to haul him up. “He’ll leave on his own,” the tall boy said, “let go of his arm.” Then the man in the white overcoat stood and walked into the crowd, which suddenly parted, leaving a space wide enough for him to pass through. The sweat stung his eyes; his face was burned. His wrappings unraveled from his legs as he walked. “Not the water!” the guard ran after him, but the tall boy stepped in his way, and they were swallowed up from behind by the scrambling crowd.
The water passed his feet, and the skirt of his overcoat bunched up around his ankles. The guard broke away from the crowd, but he couldn’t go any farther, not with his uniform on. The white overcoat billowed out now over the surface of the water, then grew heavy and sank. “Stop!” the boy with the mustache shouted. “Forget him, abi,” they said, “he won’t go that far out.” The water was shallow at first, but once the overcoat was completely submerged he quickly drifted away from shore. He had gone too far. They were wrong.
The tall boy with the mustache didn’t think he would walk out over his head. He suddenly dove into the water, but it was too late, he couldn’t reach him. He’d never seen anything like this before. Then some people volunteered to help. Nothing came of their search. By the time the boy got out of the water, he was panting for breath. He sat on the beach, shielded his mouth and spat at the sand: “What a story,” he said.
From Waiting for the Fear by Oğuz Atay
Copyright © 1984 by İletişim; Translation copyright © 2024 by Ralph Hubbell
✺ Published in “Issue 19: Fiction” of The Dial
