Yet another truth silently came to light: that illegitimate baby had been born crippled. As a result of the X-rays that were taken because of her injured back, my grandma’s baby, that detritus of rape, had been born a freak of nature. I don’t know if she knew she was pregnant when those X-rays were taken, or if she even cared. “Otherwise,” she said, tears in her eyes as she lay on her deathbed, “I never would’ve let my mother deliver him in the toilet.”
As for what she said when she read our fortunes: Truths that cannot be uttered! Dark clouds, woes of the heart, a young woman wasting away from sadness, her mother by her side, and what is this? A train station perhaps, a wandering crowd of people filling a room. Who are these people? Your enemies?
That’s how life is. Composed of things that can’t be explained. A composed heart.
Yes. I feel a little bit better. Who knows, perhaps it’s because I showered.
As Yunus told me to do, I put my dirty clothes in a bag. I was still in the bathroom. But, as you’ve seen, the mind goes where it will. My only reality just then was the bathroom filled with steam so thick I could hardly see.
The mirror fogged up. My hands were barely visible.
I like taking hot showers. “That girl liked hot water, the girl who was always bathed by her grandmother in the hammam.” I had a poem with a line like that. I was going to put on the clean clothes that Yunus left for me. I thought, Where did he get them? All I was wearing was a hotel robe. White, soft. I was like a snowball. It was thick and fluffy.
As my grandma was breathing her last at home, how did she appear to me in the mosque garden, how was she able to talk to me? Is it possible for someone to be in two places at the same time?
“She’s really starting to lose it, and she’s going to get worse.”
That was my aunt Hülya’s prophecy about me. She whispered it, hissing like a snake. Everyone was confused, and rightly so. The nonsense in my life was piling up. The time I collapsed on the sidewalk while following after my father and mother in Nişantaşı—that was included on the list. Once a person becomes ill in the mind or spirit, doesn’t everything in the world become a sign of madness, no matter how trivial or slight?
Then there were signs from the present. Dangerous signs. The door of the hotel room opened and closed. Someone came into the room. Immediately I looked at the bathroom door, hoping to find a lock. Because locks save lives. It was my grandma who taught me to be wary and watchful. The lock was on the outside of the door. Fuck!
16
HELP
“In the very first sentence of your novel, you state what you’re going to write about.”
She actually said that I “declare up front” what I’m going to write about, but I didn’t want to use the word “declare” here because it strikes me as a particularly cold and colorless word.
“But are you sure that’s what you’re really writing about?”
I pondered the question of whether I could be as dispassionate as Özlem Hanım. Soon enough, Derin and Pembe would come up with a definitive solution. They paid a visit to the administration with a complaint: “Is this a writing seminar or a class on literature? If it’s a class, it’s not working. We need to be getting ready for university, not hearing our classmates’ novels critiqued for ages.”
Özlem Hanım was given a mild warning: “The follow-up evaluations of the writing competition have been going on for quite a while now, wouldn’t you say?”
Özlem Hanım, a complaint has been filed against you. You really bit the dick now!
It hadn’t happened yet, but I was excited at the possibility that it might.
“But wouldn’t you say, teacher, that it really is hard to find those two emotions in real life?”
“Are you sure that’s what your novel is about? Or are you intentionally misleading your readers? Is this some kind of trap to lure people in to read your book?”
“No. The novel really is about those two things.”
“You’re wrong. It’s a failed attempt at writing about the past through other people’s lives. The story of a girl who talks about everyone but herself.”
“Maybe by talking about others, she’s actually talking about herself?”
Either Pembe or Derin—or perhaps it was both of them—jumped into the debate at that point. Pembe gave me a sly wink as Özlem Hanım was erasing the whiteboard.
“Listen up, class. Don’t try to write about the past. Others before you have done a thorough job of that already.”
“In that case, let’s not bother writing at all.”
As I made that shallow declaration out of desperation, I was chewing the end of my pen, trying to appear nonchalant. I was aware that I looked like a primary school student, but I didn’t know what else to do. The death blow was imminent. Just wait, here it comes: “If you ask me,” she said, “you shouldn’t even bother trying to write.”
I had the urge to say, “I have no further questions, Your Honor.” That’s how things should have stood; the conversation shouldn’t have gone on, nor should it have started anew at any other point in time.
“I’m willing to concede that what I wrote didn’t really work. The main character did something ridiculous, and it seems like she did it as a prank. But she says that she was suffering. There’s a lot of repetition. What I mean to say is that, yes, it’s complex. Still, I thought that structuring the narrative in a way that reflects her inner world in all its vivacity might be a sign of mastery.”
“Mastery?”
Özlem Hanım smirked. The light of the whiteboard was illuminating that fucking sneer on her face.
I give up, Özlem Hanım, are you happy now?
“You had it coming!” That was one of Derin’s outbursts of anger. She’d scribbled those words in her notebook and held it up for me to see. They were looking at me in disappointment. Not just Derin and Pembe, but the whole class, with the exception of that smart-aleck girl who wrote the winning novel. I’d held out for as long as I could, but in the end, I backed down. Like my mother who wept as the man she loved walked away, like my grandma taking one step closer to death, like my father who moved to Bodrum, like my aunt who wore herself out trying to find a job.
“Let’s put an end to this conversation for good and pick up where we left off.”
I burst into tears. I couldn’t help it. Accepting defeat was the hardest thing in the world.
“I’d like to say just one last thing.”
“Go on, we’re listening.”
As they say, revenge is a dish best served cold. Özlem Hanım was dragging out the process of wiping the whiteboard clean. What she was doing, in fact, was erasing the traces of Monsieur Pierre. She wiped away what he’d written about Proust. In Search of Lost Time. How Proust had given himself over to living in the past. Then she went on to write out the primitive contents of her lesson for the day. In the meantime, I was busy putting into words what I wanted to say with the meticulousness of trying to extract pearls from my mouth without swallowing any of them.
“Freedom and love are two of the most likely yet most improbable things in the world. They have the greatest chances of being realized, but they are experienced the least. While they are the most difficult things to experience, what could be easier than obtaining either of them? If you flee, you taste freedom. Even a stupid bird can manage that. Sorry, birds.”
At that point in my monologue, I looked out the window at some birds that were taking flight with a simple flutter of their wings. So easy. In one of her blog posts, Pembe wrote, “Today’s the birthday of a friend of mine who has such a big heart that she once even apologized to birds.” Of course, it’s open to debate who was bighearted. “She also wrote a novel with impressive care and enthusiasm that brought into being a lost world. It’s a novel about us youth and our times.” I’d been moved by what she’d written. Later, however, I’d come to realize that she’d only said those things because it was my birthday and she wanted to make me feel good. Yes, in those da
ys I was still trying to offer up what I’d written to people who walked all over me.
As you saw, I was ranting in one of Özlem Hanım’s fucking never-ending classes, vainly trying to make a point. Ah, poor me: “While it seemed like I was writing about something else, I was actually talking about freedom and love. Precisely because, most of the time, people don’t know what they’re actually experiencing. They may not even be aware of the true existence of love, much less freedom. That’s what I was thinking as I wrote the book.”
Then I fell silent.
Özlem Hanım replied, “Believe me when I say that Proust did that long before, and he did it much better than you. So, everyone, let’s say ‘bonjour’ to that particular giant in French and world literature, because for the next three months, you’re going to be spending day and night studying the works of Proust.”
As if she had the knowledge to teach us about Proust! I knew that all she’d manage to do was sound off about his influence on Turkish literature—and barely scratch the surface at that, using someone else’s notes or an old thesis that had been written on the subject. Monsieur Pierre had been scheduled to teach the class before he left. No one could beat Özlem Hanım in making sweeping claims. The bitch.
If you can cry, it means you have a heart. I looked out the window of the classroom. What I saw there was like what I saw when I looked out the window of the hotel: a wall covered in ivy, trees shedding leaves one by one, and some birds.
If only someone hadn’t started to come into the room, filling me with terror, I would’ve gone on looking out at the view as I stood there, combing my wet hair, feeling peaceful, enchanted, and in awe of the scene before me. Instead, I was hiding behind the bathroom door, as scared as a mouse. I decided that if they tried to open it, I would fight back with all my might.
Who had come into the room?
They were harmless.
Two lovers.
I could hear them talking inside.
It was a little escapade.
Tittering, the woman said, “If we get caught, you’ll have hell to pay.”
“No one will catch us.”
No one can catch lovers.
Soon enough, I heard some moans and squeals of pleasure. I even heard the sound of them hurriedly pulling off their clothes. I surmised that both of them worked at the hotel. Maybe twenty, twenty-five years old. I wondered which of them was more in love. Which of them was willing to pay the heavier price.
Their lovemaking was quite steamy. As my grandmother would say, and so would her daughter, “Love is in the air, and so are her legs!”
Even I was starting to get wet. To tell the truth, I was imagining being in bed with Yunus. I closed my eyes and leaned against the bathroom wall, which was just as wet as me, thinking about what it would be like if we kissed. If we tumbled into bed, kissing. If his red beard stubble brushed against my cheeks, and then my breasts . . .
When cornered, the mind breaks free. Just now, mine had done the same with the sound of the couple’s lovemaking, giving itself over to imaginings. And now it is trying to be saved from making embarrassing pornographic confessions. But it can’t! One day, Pembe, Derin, and I were sitting together during the protests at Gezi. My aunt had brought us doner kebabs, filled with pickles, and some bottles of beer as well, of course. There was a romantic couple staying in the tent next to ours. The boyfriend was an excellent guitar player, and the girlfriend had an amazing voice. Inspired by all the sweetness around us, I asked my friends for the first and only time: “Do you read the things I write?”
I had started a blog, which is where I posted my writing. To use yet another old-time word, the postings I made were “compendious” versions of my novel. But their mouths were full at the moment, so they didn’t reply. That was the moment when my heart started to crack around the edges. Derin and Pembe were always a single unit, and I was an addendum. But that’s not the issue at hand here. I was stuck in a bathroom, and you know what happened to my grandma when those men dragged her off to the bathroom . . .
But let’s move on. “Skip ad,” as websites say.
The couple inside had wrapped up their business.
I could hear them laughing together, as happy as turtledoves.
Then the girl said, “Are you leaving already?”
“What, do you want me to do something else?”
It was clear. The girl was the one who was more in love. The guy was now grouchy, and if he was in the habit of peeing after sex, I was done for. I sensed that he had paused in front of the bathroom door. As if the door had suddenly become transparent, I felt that he was reaching for the doorknob. I’d say that I didn’t just feel it, I saw it, but I know you won’t believe me. Just as the blind are able to see with their emotions, I am able to see as well. I mentioned that before. You’ll break my heart if you forget the things I tell you. Then you too will be among those who have broken my heart.
But he didn’t open the bathroom door because, at that moment, someone knocked on the room door and then opened it. The new arrival was Yunus. Maybe he’d gotten worried about me. Naturally, he was surprised to see his co-worker in the room. But when he heard the gasp of the girl who was now hurriedly getting dressed, he realized what had happened. The guy snapped, “Is a guest coming? If so, stall them.”
Yunus replied, “No, no. It’s just that the air conditioner in this room is broken.”
Slamming the door in Yunus’s face, he said, “I know, asshole. That’s why we crashed this room. Get back to work. We’ll be out in a minute.”
Tears in her voice, the girl asked, “Why did you give us away?”
“You moron, do you think he didn’t realize that I’d brought a girl here?”
No, he wasn’t in love with her.
The door of the room opened again. Maybe the guy was checking the hallway to make sure Yunus was gone. In the meantime, I imagined the girl tucking her blouse into her skirt and then putting on her shoes, and as she tossed her long, wavy hair, her mouth was half-open out of nervousness, exhaustion, and fear. She may have even tried to take hold of his hand, as if they were jumping ship as it sank beneath them. He merely asked, “Did you put everything back in its place?”
“I made the bed.”
“And you’re on the pill, right?”
“I told you I was.”
Of course, as he would have had to pull out otherwise. And that would’ve meant that they would have tissues to clean up his love goo, which in turn they may have opted to throw away in the bathroom. Meaning that they would’ve seen me. So I was grateful to the girl who was on the pill. As for me, I hadn’t used any protection and it was sheer luck I hadn’t gotten pregnant. But I did tell my ex-boyfriend I was, all so that he’d come back to me. Details of a shattered love story from the past. When the time comes for me to write about myself, I’ll talk about it.
The lovers left.
My imprisonment was over.
And then?
Yunus came. We laughed about what had happened. He took a package of marshmallows from the cabinet, and we ate them. Yunus had no concerns about me taking all the food and drinks I wanted, except for the alcohol.
“Otherwise, it’ll go to waste.”
The cola tasted terrible, which meant that within a mere week, my sense of taste had changed. The romantic moment I had envisaged with Yunus didn’t happen. Why? Because Yunus was trying to help me. His behavior reflected that mission he had taken on himself. If his regular job was to lug around suitcases, his duties involving me included nothing except for looking after my well-being.
“Put your dirty clothes in the hamper. I’ll have the laundry crew wash them.”
It proved difficult for me to part with my dirty clothes. Among the things he’d left for me was a pair of disposable panties, the kind given to airline passengers whose luggage has been lost. My own were with my other clothes in the hamper. My size 34B bra and cotton panties with thick trim. My jeans, T-shirt, and hoodie, as well as my socks. I
enjoyed smelling clean, but I was convinced that I should have already given up on any concerns about my physical cleanliness.
Like someone who has no other place on earth to hide, I was about to return to where I belonged, to the treetops. Yunus was worried. I think that he was concerned because he himself had caught a couple using the room, something that was off-limits to employees. As we left, I regretted that I hadn’t used the computer to check my social media accounts and also that I hadn’t called my mother. But even if I had, what would’ve changed? Nothing at all. I got the feeling that another girl was living out my life at home, having picked up right where I’d left off. Rather, that was how I wanted things to be.
As we quickly made our way down the corridor of the hotel, I glanced again at the old photographs on the wall, which struck me as being rather odd and reminded me of my grandma. I recalled our family photos in all their detail; I already talked about the one of my grandma using a stick to draw out the plans for the new place on the plot she’d gotten by trading with someone for her old land: “The kitchen will go here, this will be the entrance, and here is the living room.” Because she hadn’t been able to draw out her own destiny in that way, she’d tried to control everything and everyone around her. It wasn’t for nothing that I’d said a secret can be a bomb that hits a house. Her secret had leveled her home. It was obvious why she’d traded her place for another in the neighborhood; she wanted to escape her memories, but didn’t have the courage to go very far away. Otherwise, long ago she would’ve packed up and left without a single look back. It must have been such a torment for her to go on living year in and year out in the same house where those horrific events had taken place. The house was going to be torn down, which gave her the opportunity to leave. And she took it, preferring to give up that astounding view of the city for shrugging off those memories. When we were interviewing her for that school project, she said, “If I close my eyes, I can still see that view.” That was it, nothing more.
The Girl in the Tree Page 20
