The Blacksmith's Daughter

II

Gül sees her father throw the spoon, she hears it hit the wall, but she doesn't see the plaster crumbling to the floor. Only at that moment is it clear to her that something has happened. Only when she sees her father's reaction does she get an inkling of what she's just said means. The neighbour's words didn't change her world, but the blacksmith and the spoon do. Gül runs into the room where Melike has been sleeping and locks the door behind her.

The tears must have been flowing before, but only now does she cry out loud. Perhaps she knows it from stories and imitates it, perhaps it simply comes out of her - she wails and weeps out words: 'Mummy, you're not dead, are you? You're just playing, aren't you? You will come back, won't you Mummy? Don't leave me alone, Mummy, we'll bake bread together again, Mummy, I love baking bread with you. You're just playing, aren't you, Mummy? Please don't go away, Mummy!

'Please stay, Mummy.

'Mummy!'

The door handle jiggles and Zeliha says: 'Gül, sweetie, open the door, will you?'

But Gül won't even think of it. She has lain down on the unmade bed, drawn up her legs and is hugging the pillow. The smell and the damp sheets don't register with her. And she only takes vague notice, through her tears, of everyone taking turns to knock on the door and try to calm her down. Gül lies there and cries. She's not going to open the door, she's going to stay in this room until her mother comes back.

She doesn't know how long she's been in the room when someone starts fiddling with the window frame. A little later, a boy wriggles in through the small window. To begin with, she thinks it's Recep and stops crying.

But it's one of the neighbours' boys from the summer house; one who laughed at her because she had a village accent. Gül turns her back on him and goes on crying as he unlocks the door. She's still crying when her grandmother picks her up and carries her out of the room.

She doesn't stop until she sees her father.

He's crying.

Gül has never seen her father cry.

The blacksmith is still sitting right where he took the spoon from her earlier, staring at the floor and crying so quietly it can barely be heard. He's sitting cross-legged, staring at the floor, and the sound of the tears dripping off his chin onto the cloth is louder than he is.

People are bustling around the house, but Gül doesn't know where Melike and Sibel are. She sees Auntie Hülya and Uncle Yücel, she sees neighbours and people she's never seen before. She has stopped crying and she thinks: I have to be a big girl, I have to look after Melike and Sibel.

'Where are my sisters?' she asks Auntie Hülya.

'They're at the neighbours. We'll go back to our house in a minute, alright?'

'Is Daddy coming too?'

'No, he's staying here.'

Auntie Hülya speaks calmly, but her eyes are red and swollen.

'I want Daddy to come too.'

'He'll come later,' Hülya says. 'We're taking a coach to our house now, and I'll make bread and butter with sugar for you and Melike, shall I?'

Lots of people come into the house, stay for a short while and then leave again - they have unfamiliar faces, but they all give Gül sad, pitying looks, and Gül keeps hearing the same phrases from their lips: Poor children, may the Lord give them strength, half-orphaned. And she hears the whispered words: Istanbul, uncle, Sibel, Gül.

Auntie Hülya takes the children to her house; there's bread with butter and sugar. Gül eats hers, but Melike holds her slice at an angle, trying to make the sugar spill onto the floor. Soon ants appear, which Melike squishes with her foot. Finally, when no one is looking, she slaps her slice on the wall, where it sticks.

When it gets dark, her father is still not there, and whenever Gül asks for him, she's told that Timur will be there by the time she wakes up in the morning.

Gül can't get to sleep. Just as she feels herself drifting off, she hears the sound of the spoon on the wall. She sees her father's face before her and she understands a little and she understands nothing.

Her mum is never coming back.

Unless she wishes really, really hard. As hard as she can. Her mum will be able to feel it; she'll feel Gül longing for her so keenly, feel her unshakeable will, and then Fatma will return. Gül will go to sleep now, and when she wakes up in the morning her mother will be back. She wouldn't do this to her, she wouldn't just disappear. Now, she'll pull the covers over her head and count to a hundred without making any mistakes, and in the morning, her mother will be there again.

Only once she's counted all the way to the end does Gül hear the front door open and, moments later, she hears Uncle Yücel's voice, a whisper. Perhaps her father has come back after all. Softly, she opens the door and creeps towards the room where the petroleum lamp is burning. The door stands open a crack, and Gül sees that Auntie Hülya is crying and Uncle Yücel is readying his shisha pipe, as he says: 'He's stubborn, but I think it would've been best for the children. He's got it into his head that he's going to keep them. We could talk our tongues dry and he still wouldn't change his mind. We should have waited before we suggested it, we should have waited a day or two.'

Yücel sighs and lights his shisha pipe, it bubbles. He takes a few short drags then inhales deeply to let his lungs savour that this difficult day is over. As he exhales and leans back, he spots Gül.

'What are you doing there? Can't you sleep, little one?' he asks, not getting up, and Hülya, who has been sitting with her back to Gül, jumps up and looks at her. At least, Gül thinks Hülya is looking at her, but her aunt's squint is so severe that she can never be quite sure.

'Come on, I'll take you back to bed. Did you have a bad dream? Come along, I'll sing you another lullaby.'

Gül lets herself be scooped up and taken back to bed. Her aunt's soft voice sings her to sleep.

Two days later, she sees her father again, at last. Two days later, Fatma is buried. They don't lay the body out at home; the blacksmith's wife is taken straight from the hospital to the graveyard. Like someone without a home to go to.

But many people come to mourn with them; she was well-liked, and nobody who knew her and who has heard of her death has stayed away. It is one of the longest funeral processions the little town has ever seen. The men are at the graveyard while the women have gathered at Zeliha's. Hülya has brought Gül and Melike, leaving Sibel with her husband because the baby has a fever and is crying. Everyone thinks she has caught typhoid too and will die soon. Gül listens to what Auntie Hülya and her grandmother are discussing while she plays on the floor with Melike.

'He won't give up the children,' Zeliha says. 'What else can I do? I pleaded with him so sweetly, for hours on end. He won't listen to me. You'll keep these children over my dead body, I said, but he's so stubborn, worse than his father. So I had another idea. Do you know Arzu, the coachman Faruk's daughter?'

'The young woman with three brothers, the ones who live over by the yellow mosque?'

'Yes, her. I'm sure her father would give her to us.'

'Why? Why should he? Why should he marry his daughter to a widower? Just because Timur has a bit of money? Why would Faruk give his daughter to someone with three little children to raise?'

Zeliha shakes her head slowly.

'Don't you know the story?'

Hülya knits her brow quizzically.

'She's already been married, surely you know that.'

'No,' Hülya says.

'They married her off when she was 14 and then' - Zeliha glances down at the children, who don't seem to be listening - 'then it turned out he couldn't get it up. Faruk took her back and told them: If you can find a way of curing your son, then I'll be happy to give her back, but until then she stays with me.'

'So, she's still.?'

Zeliha nods.

'I'll go straight over to the coachman tomorrow evening.'

'It'd be good for the children, at least they'd have a mother.'

A little later,...