“But I mean, what will actually happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well let’s break it then…”

Don’t you think the time for us to break the seals around our hearts has long since come?

8

Whose Blood Is That
on the Photo?

An August evening. A sweet coolness in the air. Blowing fire out of every nook and cranny throughout the day, the steppes are finally settling down for a cold evening. Now is when you might shiver to the bone if you don’t throw something over your shoulders. Shopkeepers have long since shuttered their shops. Only the coffeehouses and the Civil Servants’ club are still open. A regular in the club, Mithat is wearing a dirty undershirt and waving about a plastic bag as he excitedly tells something to baker Halil, who is sitting in a chair in front of the oven with his legs crossed. It is perfectly clear he isn’t paying attention to Mithat. One of the village minibuses is running late, the driver busy shoving an oversized sofa bed into the back. A harvester sways from side to side as it slowly turns onto a dirt road that winds up into the fields. For him the day has just begun, he will reap until morning.

When I first heard the sound I was in the kitchen cracking an egg. Earlier that evening I was struggling to bring down the temperature of a little boy who had been transferred to the health clinic. In the late hours of the evening his fever finally fell and he seemed somewhat relieved. I hurried off to make something to eat. I was in the kitchen of my bachelor’s residence next to the hospital when I heard that strange cracking. It sounded like a harsh rap on a piece of wood or a little like the popping of one of those cork guns we used to fire during religious holidays. Three or four shots one after the other. I went out onto the balcony and had a good look around. The shots had come from the gas station a little further on from the hospital. I could just barely make out a station wagon speeding down a dirt road. After a moment of silence people dashed over to the station and formed a crowd.

I knew that I would be called over soon so I quickly finished my eggs.

By the time I got there the man was long since dead. A dark, fairly stout, middle-aged man. He was from out of town. Otherwise I would have recognized him. He looked like a farmer from one of the surrounding villages. One of his tractor tires had burst and he had come to the station to have it repaired. His tractor was still up on the hoist, suspended in mid air. When the farmer saw the killer he must have fled to the toilet but didn’t make it. Lying face down on the ground, he was wearing only one shoe. The other had flown off his foot. Blood that had gushed out of the back of his head was already beginning to dry. Bullet holes were clearly marked on the back of his shirt. An inner tube was gently undulating in an old bucket of water next to an air pump. The dead man had found the rupture and had stuck a broken match into the hole. That broken match in a tractor inner tube was the strange, forlorn sign of an unfinished job.