Fındık, the titular character of Sait Faik Abasıyanık‘s short story, is the kind of dog you can find anywhere: one of those common strays who are nonetheless elevated by virtue of their sheer adorableness, endearing themselves to the local residents. He’s also a perfect litmus test for human character, exposing those who would scold a dog for merely approaching them. Despite such treatment, Fındık remains trusting and friendly. That is, until he encounters the Poison Man, a self-important garbage collector who is charged with culling the village’s canine population. Translated from the Turkish by Will Washburn, “Fındık” examines themes of moral responsibility, human-animal bonds, and the rationalizations people use to justify cruelty toward the downtrodden—but also, what spurs them to defy those rationalizations.
Fındık is pals with everyone in our village, young and old, who doesn’t have too high an opinion of themselves. Colored like a tabby cat, Fındık (his name means “hazelnut”) is the bastard offspring of a wolf-dog and a hunting dog. As a love-child, he ought to be beautiful, but in fact he isn’t. If you don’t give him a pat on the head when he approaches you, wagging his big thick tail and blinking his brown eyes, then you’re a strange one indeed. To reject an animal that approaches you with such a need for affection, you’d have to have never been in love in your life, never cared about anything, never known what it means to have a soft heart. You might hold that such people don’t exist. And yet how many times, with my own eyes, have I seen Fındık approach people—not just for a piece of bread, but in need of a simple pat—and be shooed off. So I’m unable to change my opinion of humanity.
It’s a well-known fact that, with the onset of summer, dogs catch a nasty microbial illness from each other. Around that time, the city busies itself with killing off every dog in sight. People hide all the dogs in their area. The municipality pays one-and-a-half lira per dog, and a bunch of dog-killers set off on their rounds.
In our village, we call this person the “Poison Man.” You should see this Poison Man: he’s an odd one. To be sure, not everyone who does that job is abnormal. But becoming a killer, an Angel of Death, inevitably alters a person’s condition, their character, their gaze, their walk. Or maybe it doesn’t alter them; maybe we only think it does. You know that play, So It Is (If You Think So)? Well, if we think the Poison Man is abnormal—then so he is. He might as well be the Düsseldorf Monster. That’s the fellow who used to carry a gleaming metal chain with a knife attached to one end, which he’d use to ensnare little children, take them behind the bushes, and kill them.
The Poison Man said: “Come, Fındık. Come, you rascal. Come, boy, come. Here you go. How’re you doing? Have some meat, boy.” Fındık poked his nose at the meat, took it between his teeth, and gently shook his head. Was it the Poison Man’s incompetence, or was Fındık just incredibly smart? Who knows. If you ask me, our Poison Man is the best in the business.
His eyes are bulging. His fingers are stubby and totally round, like oar pins. His nose is crooked. His teeth are rotten, his mouth a black hole. Only one thing about him is unusual for a Poison Man: he’s self-important. He wears a tie. He dresses quite neatly. Sure, his pants have obviously been pressed beneath his mattress, but they’re still pressed! Sure, his tie has a tacky yellow-green pattern, but at least he wears a tie!
The Poison Man had long reasoned that since he was merely following orders, he was without sin in God’s eyes. On Judgement Day, when God summons the executioners before Him, He’s unlikely to ask them, “Why did you hang that man?” It’s society that’s to blame; the burden of sin is on all of us. If a man’s been hanged unjustly, then it’s on the judge.
The district governor had said to him, “There’s an outbreak of rabies among the dogs. I’m putting you in charge of killing them”; he’d never said, “You’ll lose your job otherwise.” He was the chief garbageman: he’d been given this job to do, and he had to do it. He was no different from an executioner. So he wasn’t the one who’d have to answer for these dogs. Only the district governor would. In order to inflate his superior’s bill on Judgement Day, the Poison Man took pains to act with the utmost professionalism; sometimes he’d flee before he could witness the death throes of a dog that had trusted him so much. But Fındık wasn’t cooperating. The dog would hesitantly take the meat between his teeth and shake it back and forth. Then he’d fling aside the precious bit of steak, tuck his tail between his legs, and dart off like lightning. Another poisoned bit of meat would be tossed to him, but as soon as Fındık saw the chief garbageman, he’d run away as if he’d seen a ghost, a witch, a ghoul. Yet he was a sociable animal. It was clear from the way he used to approach that other garbageman, Mehmet, and lick his hands. All of a sudden, the Poison Man started to think. A dog like Fındık wouldn’t realize the meat was poisoned even if he were human, even if he were a doctor; even a chemist wouldn’t notice. No, he’d need a whole chemistry lab to analyze it. So Fındık couldn’t know the meat was poisoned. Maybe he smelled something we humans couldn’t, but the Poison Man could just add a bit of pepper or spice or garlic and Fındık would swallow it.
He doubted Fındık had an innate gift for reading people. Why wasn’t Fındık eating the meat, then? He’d eat anything children handed him, no matter how smelly or dirty. Something else was going on with the dog; deep down, he was catching on to something. But why? “Fındık’s suspicious of me…he doesn’t like me…he’s afraid of me,” the Poison Man thought. You know how some animals sense an earthquake coming way in advance? The Poison Man remembered that time there’d been a total solar eclipse. He’d been feeding a couple of chickens at the time. Even as the eclipse entered its initial phase—when humans could only see it with dark glasses—how the chickens had started squawking! Just like them, Fındık was acting odd. It was as if the chief garbageman had said to Fındık, “I’m the sun entering an eclipse…I’m like an earthquake that’ll start shaking in five minutes.” All right—he needed to give this job to his subordinate Mehmet.
Mehmet came from the same village as his tie-wearing boss. The Poison Man said to him:
“Dammit, Mehmet, this Fındık won’t take the poison! The district governor was very clear: I need to finish him off. ‘I’ll have you fired,’ he said. ‘He won’t take it from me,’ I said. ‘Then give the job to someone else,’ he said. You’re going to do it, Mehmet. If you don’t, I’ll send you packing. I don’t give a damn.”
At that, Mehmet the Garbageman became lost in thought. How could he ever kill Fındık? Or how could he ever return to his village? As things stood, the latter option was impossible. He didn’t own a foot of land there. He’d have to work for someone else, under the hot sun, half-starved. His family back in the village were able to get by with the money he earned here, and he could nap in the trees’ cool shade, looking out to sea. At some houses they even gave him food. In the winter, he’d saved up a lot of money from fishing. At this rate, it would only be another ten years before he’d have a field where he could plant and harvest his own crops, a field with four or five walnut trees. He was only fifty years old. If he gritted his teeth, then ten years later he’d have one and a half hectares of land and four walnut trees. The summer before, on a visit back home, he’d discussed all this with his sister…Would he return to his village, or kill Fındık?
He took the poisoned meatball from his boss, and walked over to Fındık.
“Come, Fındık,” he said.
His boss watched from beneath the pine tree. Fındık, wagging his tail all the way from his belly, came closer and closer. Mehmet opened his palm.
“Here you are, Fındık,” he said.
All of a sudden—and no one will ever know what was going through his mind in that moment—he squeezed his palm shut, as though it were right in Fındık’s mouth…and threw the poisoned meatball into the sea.
Afterwards, he made his way back to the shacks where the garbagemen lodged. He began packing. Seeing him crouched down gathering his things, his boss, the Poison Man, gave him a kick in the side.
Translated from the Turkish by Will Washburn
Sait Faik Abasıyanık (1906-1954), or “Sait Faik” as he is commonly known, is one of Turkey’s most admired writers of short fiction. Faik was born in Adapazarı, Turkey, moving to Istanbul with his family in 1924; he completed his secondary education in Istanbul and Bursa and attended Istanbul University, later continuing his studies in Switzerland and France. Upon his return to Turkey in 1935, he worked for a time as a Turkish teacher while writing short stories for various periodicals. In addition to his short fiction, Faik produced numerous translations from French and authored two novels and a collection of poems.
Will Washburn (b. 1977) grew up in Brooklyn, New York, graduating from Hunter College High School and earning a BA in classics from Columbia University. A former long-time resident of Turkey, he lived in Istanbul for 14 years between 2003 and 2024, working first as an EFL teacher and then as a translator. His translations from Turkish have previously appeared in Asymptote, Exchanges, Turkoslavia, and Words Without Borders.
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