Before UK author Benjamin Wood published his acclaimed second novel The Ecliptic in July 2015, we sent him to Istanbul as a writer-in-residence. Below are 'field notes' for his novel, along with a commentary as to how he stylised his experiences. Sections with comments are indicated by asterisks.
Heybeliada
Scenting me, the dogs rushed to the fence. They rutted their heads against the chain-links, biting at the space between the wires. They snarled and barked and stood up on their hind legs, scratching hard. The fence shook with their weight. It seemed to give a little*. I was coming down the track with the momentum of the slope, and yet I could not walk fast enough, could not break into a run, could not turn back. I was close enough to hear the texture of each dog’s throat, to sense the straining of their muscles.
There was a phone in my pocket without any signal. Rooftops jutted from the pines all round me, birds flashed overhead, but I was utterly alone. I had not seen a human face since I had left the tourist strip down by the ferry dock. The February sun was yellow-bright now and the breeze was softer on this side of the island. The fenced-off yard was in an envelope of gloom — it had an eerie weather of its own — and the dogs clamoured in this murk like fish in stagnant water.
Up ahead — no more than fifty yards away — the road appeared to curve and level out. I thought I saw the dark blue welter of the sea not far beyond it. So I went on, my chest starting to tighten. I was aware, by then, that I’d told no one of my whereabouts. If these dogs escaped the yard and mauled me, it would take hours, most likely days, for anyone to find me; I would bleed out on the dirt track on a thinly populated island far from home with an unsent text* still hanging in my outbox, saying: 'Heading off on one last research trip to Heybeliada. Call you when I’m back. x B x' Instead, as I went by, the dogs stayed penned inside the yard. Their voices weakened, died away. My heartbeat slowed. I followed the track around the bend, past a boarded-up house whose rotted decking hung over a junkpile of a beach that faced onto the rolling Marmara. A sudden peace flushed through me. The shushing of the sea was all I heard. To the left of me, two muddy horses grazed on the balding turf of a football field, the shadows of the goalposts slung over their backs*.
I kept on walking. Fifty yards, a hundred, to a beach club that was closed for winter. Empty jetties reached into the water, bounced upon the waves. Plastic chairs were stacked up in white rows. Parasols were piled like bonfire wood. Not a soul to see for miles.
I watched a ferry slide across the bay and out of view, then carried on, up the sloping road towards the denser forest. When suddenly I felt a tremor in the ground beneath me, heard a rumble as pronounced as city traffic. The horses had been spooked. They were running frantically in circles: round and round the football field, a blur of white. The dogs were chasing after them. There was so much barking, so much hoofing, that the noises seemed to cancel themselves out*.
Soon, the horses changed direction and came bounding up the track. A spray of dust and dirt around their legs, and five black dogs* not far behind. They did not seem to view me as an obstacle. I was standing on the road with nowhere to go. The dogs kept chasing and the horses gathered speed, until there was just the beach club in between us. I would have to climb a tree and hang there till the danger passed. What else could I do?
Right then, there came a whistling from afar, and the dogs stopped and skidded. After a beat, the horses slowed. They calmly wandered off the track, snickering, shaking their tails. The dogs were trotting back towards the boarded house, where a man ushered them away.
I waited on that road for what must have been an hour. There were still parts of the island that I wanted to see, details that I needed to commit to memory*. I had thought, before the dogs and horses, that the island was so placid and unthreatening. Now I felt a lot more vulnerable. I decided to go back. As I approached the house where the road curved, I saw the man loitering outside the gate. His dogs were nowhere to be seen. He was staring out into the bay, and did not acknowledge me at all, so I walked on. But a few strides further up the track, I heard him call to me in Turkish. He did not sound angry, just insistent. I turned and said to him the only Turkish phrase that I had memorised: 'Anlamiyorum!' ('I don’t understand!'). He was right up behind me now, barely an arm’s length. One side of his face was ridged with scars and he was wearing a polo-shirt with finger-streaks of oil across the belly*. But he was smiling at me, warmly. 'Do you like?' he said, gesturing at the house.
'Evet,' I said. 'Yes.'
'Maybe you can buy?'
'I’d like that,' I said. 'But I doubt I could afford it*.'
He seemed to get my meaning, and gave a heavy shrug. Muttering to himself* in Turkish, he went off towards the house. The dogs were safely tethered in the yard as I strode by. They did not make a sound.
Commentary
'It seemed to give a little.' - As soon as memories are written down, they are altered. Truth softens under the author’s magnification, becomes a malleable material. I can’t remember whether this fence 'gave' or not, but it’s a reasonable extension of what comes before, and it adds a stronger note of danger to the events described — a danger I felt strongly in the moment, but which has lessened greatly in the two years that have passed. This is a real memory of a true experience, yet I have stylised it with the intention of lending it immediacy and presence. Without this heightening and shaping of the action, it would be a formless anecdote.
'an unsent text' - In fact, I sent this message to my wife (then fiancée) earlier that morning, before I’d left to catch the ferry, and it was safely received. Positioning it here allows me to increase the drama of the moment as well as to bury a little exposition. It is a real text, but I’ve re-ordered it in the timeline of events. See Aristotle's Poetics: 'The arrangement of the incidents is what I mean by plot.'
'over their backs.' - More stylisation. Who can really say if there were shadows on the horses’ backs? It seems reasonable, and I like the sense of poetry it provides. Are you going to refute what I claim to have seen with my own eyes, or absorb this falsehood because it benefits your experience of the story? If I hadn’t pointed this out, would you have questioned it at all?
'cancel themselves out' - Stylised. When I think back to this moment, it seems to play out in an alarming silence, but it is logical to assume that the noise
here was considerable.
'five black dogs' - There might only have been three of them, in fact, but 'five black dogs' has much better cadence and a nicer aesthetic.
'commit to memory' - I was writing a novel set on Heybeliada, after all. As it turned out, much of this experience would later be reformed into the
final section of The Ecliptic, pp 421-425.
'oil across the belly' - I can’t remember what his face looked like, or quite recall how much of it was scarred, so I have tried to let the phrase 'ridged with scars' do the work of conjuring a sense of his appearance. I am reluctant to describe him beyond this, given that his features have entirely dropped out of my memory. His polo shirt had grey and white stripes, as I recall, but I don’t think this particular detail is significant enough to include. It’s the author’s job to decide what to leave out, and this choice is always an act of stylisation, no matter if he or she is writing memoir or fiction.
'doubt I could afford it' - This dialogue is by no means verbatim. Who can remember the exact words they spoke two years ago without the aid of an
amanuensis?
'Muttering to himself' - I’m doing the man a disservice here, probably. He didn’t go off 'muttering to himself in Turkish' at all. In fact, he continued his discussion with me in Turkish for a few more minutes, and I nodded at him without comprehension until he gave me a kindly thumbs-up and walked away. It would extend the scene too far to include the rest of my exchange with him, if you could even call it that, so I have pared the moment back and re-shaped it. This entire episode on the island has been amplified in the act of committing my experience to the page. I may have pushed a little hard to eke out the drama, such is my tendency. Apologies for that. Or not, depending on your viewpoint.
Benjamin Wood is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London. You can hear him in conversation with Rachel Cusk at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 19 August 2015.
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