by Ahmet Altan
Every time he touched the keys, something went missing from his life and something was added to his life; no one, perhaps not even himself, knew what he thought and what he felt when he played the piano, but in those sounds they heard death, loss, betrayal, pleading, struggling, courage, fear, hope, and hopelessness, they heard a person and his entire life; during those strange days Hikmet Bey managed to turn himself into sound, into music.
Toward the end of September he woke one morning feeling worn out and exhausted, while Dilevser was talking to him about Balzac, he interrupted her.
“Dilevser, if you’ll forgive my presumption, may I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Will you marry me?”
Dilevser went over to the open window, looked outside, then turned around.
“Yes.”
What they said during this brief conversation surprised both of them, in their surprise they resumed talking about Balzac as if they hadn’t just been talking about something else.
This quick, silent conversation between them, which would have been difficult to notice, exploded in the mansion with a great noise. It was as if everyone in the mansion had heard the words “Will you marry me?” with their own ears, there were excited whispers, laughter, rumors spread immediately.
Then everyone in the mansion turned and looked at Hediye.
Hediye went pale, her face trembled, her eyes closed for a moment, when she opened her eyes again there was no emotion on her face, she was standing by the wall where she always stood.
That day Hikmet Bey passed her a few times, but he couldn’t find the courage to talk to her. He thought they could talk that night, he would console her, he would tell her that he was going to buy a house for her and take care of her for the rest of her life. Hediye stood where she stood every day as if nothing had happened; there was no bitterness or pain on her face, once, when he was passing her, Hikmet Bey smiled at the woman, and she smiled back. This smile made Hikmet Bey think that Hediye would not be affected very much, that she would not suffer as much as he’d feared.
When dinner was being prepared, they noticed that the girl was nowhere to be seen, they sent one of the servants to her room to check.
Hediye had undressed completely and was lying under the quilt.
There was no sign of death on her sad face, she died as she’d lived, in silence, without ever becoming ugly. They never knew when or how she’d found the poison, or where she’d hidden it.
She didn’t leave behind a note or a letter.
Hikmet Bey was the only one who saw the white silk dress she’d worn the first night they met folded neatly on the bed.
The letter that became an ache that was never soothed for Hikmet Bey, that he carried everywhere he went, that made him rebel and ask, “Oh God, is there no joy without sorrow,” was nothing more than a white dress.
24
A crescent moon thinner than any Osman had ever seen appeared in the sky like a golden eyelash.
From the window of the old mansion, he looked at that crescent moon and felt the movement of his fragile and transparent dead.
He knew that Hikmet Bey was happy with Dilevser, but that for the rest of his life he never forgot Hediye.
He knew that the uprising in the city had been put down, that it had ended, but he also knew that the city would see new uprisings, coups, assassinations, wars, occupations, and disasters.
He saw the lies of the living and the reality of the dead.
He was seized by a feeling, as if it was a sorrow he’d inherited from his own past.
Sheikh Efendi said, “We’re all helpless, we all suffer, the Lord carries all of our pain for us, he suffers for all of us, he is the one who heals the pain, he is the one who offers consolation, I would like to suffer as much as he did, to feel the pain of all humanity, then I would have been able to bandage the wounds as he does, I could stop the pain, but no slave can suffer as much as his God. I think that the lack of remedies and consolation lies in the lack of pain.”
When Osman asked him if he needed to suffer more, Cevat Bey had a different answer.
“A person’s consolation is people, my boy, people find pain, and they find consolation, but people don’t give themselves a chance to find the remedy.”
Sula laughed at all of this, without raising her voice too much, she asked Osman in her playful, flirtatious voice, “What are they saying? What are they saying?”
His dead spoke beneath the very thin crescent moon.
They each had a story, a pain they complained about, a way to offer consolation.
Only Hediye was silent.
She was silent in death just as she’d been throughout her life.
She was like a white silk dress among the dead.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ahmet Altan, one of today’s most important Turkish writers and journalists, was arrested in September 2016 and is serving a life sentence on false charges. An advocate for Kurdish and Armenian minorities and a strong voice of dissent in his country, his arrest and conviction received widespread international criticism. Altan is the author of ten novels—all bestsellers in Turkey—and seven books of essays. In 2009, he received the Freedom and Future of the Media Prize from the Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig, and in 2011 he was awarded the International Hrant Dink Award.
