by Orhan Pamuk
For a while, neither sister spoke.
“He told you that Blue doesn’t want you going onstage, didn’t he?” said Ïpek.
Kadife shot her sister a look of warning that their father could hear her. Both girls glanced at him and saw that, even through the tears still streaming from his eyes, he was paying close attention.
“You won’t mind, will you, Father dear, if we leave you for a moment to have a word alone as sisters?”
“When you two put your heads together, you always know so much more than I do,” said Turgut Bey. He left the room without closing the door behind him.
“Have you thought this through, Kadife?” said Ïpek.
“I have thought it through.”
“I’m sure you have,” said Ïpek. “But do you realize you may never see him again?”
“Maybe not,” said Kadife carefully. “But I’m very angry at him, too.”
Kadife’s affair with Blue had been full of ups and downs, arguments that gave way to peace offerings that led to jealous fits, and Ïpek thought back to the couple’s long secret history with some despair. How many years had it been? She wasn’t quite sure, particularly as she was trying not to think about how long Blue had been seeing both of them. She thought lovingly of Ka. Thanks to him she’d be able to forget Blue.
“Ka is very jealous of Blue,” Kadife said. “And he’s madly in love with you.”
“I’ve found it hard to believe he could be head over heels after such a short time,” said Ïpek, “but now I believe it.”
“Go with him to Germany.”
“As soon as we get home, I’m going to pack my suitcase,” said Ïpek. “Do you really think Ka and I can be happy in Germany?”
“Yes, I do,” said Kadife. “But stop telling Ka about your past. He already knows too much, and he can guess a great deal more.”
Ïpek hated it when her younger sister spoke so condescendingly, like some seasoned woman of the world. So she said, “You’re talking as if you have no intention of coming home after this play is over.”
“Of course I’m coming home,” said Kadife, “but I thought you were leaving right away.”
“Do you have any idea where Ka might have gone?”
As they looked into each other’s eyes, Ïpek sensed that they both feared the same thing.
“Let’s go,” said Kadife. “It’s time for me to put on my makeup.”
“The thing that makes me happier than seeing you take off that scarf is seeing the last of that purple raincoat,” said Ïpek.
The raincoat in question reached all the way to the ground, and now Kadife did a defiant little two-step that sent its hem flying upward. When they saw that Turgut Bey, who’d been watching from the door, was now finally smiling, the two sisters threw their arms around each other and exchanged kisses.
He must have resigned himself to Kadife’s going onstage, for this time he neither cried nor offered advice. His performance was done. He embraced his younger daughter with a kiss on both cheeks and started with Ïpek through the packed auditorium.
On their way out the bustling entrance and back to the hotel, Ïpek kept her eyes peeled for Ka; seeing no sign of him, she began to search for someone who might know his whereabouts, but there was no one to be found on the city’s pavements who could help her. As she would tell me, “Just as Ka could find any reason for pessimism, I spent the next forty-five minutes coming up with idiotic reasons for optimism.”
Once home, Turgut Bey made straight for the television, and as he sat hypnotized by the endless announcements about the live broadcast, Ïpek prepared her suitcase. Whenever she began to wonder where Ka was, she’d try to focus instead on the happiness awaiting them in Germany and on picking out the clothes and other things she wanted to take with her. Then she started to pack another suitcase with the things she’d already excluded on the theory that there were “probably things of far higher quality in Germany,” and as she rummaged through her stockings and underwear, wondering whether she might find to her dismay nothing quite like them for sale there, something told her to take a look outside. Entering the courtyard was the army truck that had been ferrying Ka around the city.
She went downstairs and saw her father was at the door. A clean-shaven, hook-nosed official she’d never seen before said, “Turgut Yιldιz,” and pressed a sealed envelope into his hands.
With an ashen face and trembling hands, Turgut Bey opened the envelope to find a door key. Seeing that the letter also enclosed was addressed to his daughter, he handed it to Ïpek.
As a matter of self-defense, but also to ensure that whatever I was to write about Ka would reflect all available facts, Ïpek decided to let me see the letter when we met four years later.
Thursday, 8:00 P.M.
Turgut Bey:
If I might ask you to use this key to let Ïpek out of my room and then to pass this letter on to her, it would be best for all of us, sir. I offer my apologies.
Respectfully yours,
Ka
My darling, I was unable to change Kadife’s mind. The soldiers have brought me to headquarters for my own protection. The track to Erzurum has reopened, and they are forcing me to take the first train, which leaves at half past nine. You’ll need to pack my bag as well as yours and come at once. The army truck will pick you up at a quarter past nine. On no account should you go out on the streets. Come to me! I love you very much. We are going to be very happy.
The hook-nosed man said they’d be back after nine and left.
“Are you going?” Turgut Bey asked.
“I’m still worried about what’s happened to him,” said Ïpek.
“The soldiers are protecting him; nothing can happen to him. Are you going to leave us and go?”
“I think I can be happy with him,” said Ïpek. “Even Kadife said so.”
In her hand was a document certifying her future happiness, and now, as she read it again, she began to cry, but she wasn’t quite sure why.
“Perhaps it was because I dreaded leaving my father and my sister,” she would tell me four years later. At the time I believed my intense interest in every detail of Ïpek’s feelings stemmed from my need to hear her story. Then she said, “And perhaps I was worried about the other thing in my mind.”
When Ïpek had managed to stop crying, she and her father went to her room to make a final check of the things she would take with her, and then to Ka’s room to put all his belongings into his large cherry-colored valise. Father and daughter were both hopeful now; they were telling each other that, fingers crossed, Kadife would soon complete her course, and then she and Turgut Bey would come to visit Ïpek in Frankfurt.
When the bags were packed, they went downstairs and huddled in front of the television to watch Kadife.
“I hope it’s a short play so you can know this business is over and done with before you get on the train!” said Turgut Bey.
They stopped talking and nestled against each other just as they did when they watched Marianna, but Ïpek could not concentrate on what she was seeing. Years later, all she could remember of the first twenty-five minutes was Kadife coming onstage in a head scarf and a long bright-red dress, and her line, “Whatever you want, Father dear.” Sensing my sincere curiosity as to her thoughts at that moment, she added, “Of course my mind was elsewhere.” Over and over, I asked her where particularly that might have been, but she would allow only that her thoughts were on the journey she was about to make with Ka.
Later her mind would be gripped by fears but she could never admit to herself what those fears were, much less manage to articulate them for me. With the windows of her mind blown open, everything but the television set looked very far away; she felt like a traveler who returns from a long journey to find that during her absence her house has changed in mysterious ways—every room much smaller than she remembered, and every stick of furniture much more worn. As she looked around her, everything—the cushions, the table, even folds in the curtains—surpris
ed her. Faced with the chance to go to an utterly foreign place, she could now see her own home through the eyes of a stranger; that, she told me, is how she felt. And this careful account of hers given to me at the New Life Pastry Shop was, in her view, clear proof that she was still planning to set out for Frankfurt with Ka that evening.
When the bell rang, Ïpek ran to the hotel entrance. The army truck that was to take her to the station had come early. Swallowing her fear, she told the official at the door that she’d be ready in a moment. She ran straight back to her father, sat down beside him, and embraced him with all her strength.
“Is the truck here already?” asked Turgut Bey. “If your bag is packed, we still have some time.”
Ïpek spent the next few minutes staring blankly at Sunay on the screen. Unable to keep still, she ran off to her room, and after packing the slippers and her little sewing kit with the mirror that she’d inadvertently left by the window, she sat for a few minutes on the edge of the bed, crying.
According to her recollection, by the time she went downstairs she was in no doubt as to her decision to leave Kars with Ka. Now rid of the lingering hesitations that had been poisoning her mind, she was at peace again, determined to spend her last minutes at home watching television with her father.
When Cavit the receptionist told her that there was someone at the door, Ïpek was not unduly concerned. Turgut Bey asked her to get him a Coke from the refrigerator, and she brought it with two glasses so they could share it.
Ïpek said she would never forget Fazιl’s face as he stood there waiting at the kitchen door. It was clear from his expression that something terrible had happened, and so it was that Ïpek felt for the first time that Fazιl was a member of their family, someone very close to her.
“They’ve killed Blue and Hande!” said Fazιl. Breathless, he gulped down half the glass of water that Zahide had given him. “Only Blue could have dissuaded her.”
Ïpek watched motionless as Fazιl cried a bit. In a dazed voice that seemed to come from deep inside him, he explained that Blue had gone into hiding with Hande, and a group of soldiers had raided the premises and killed them. He was sure someone had tipped them off: If not, they’d never have sent so many troops. And, no, there was no chance Fazιl had been followed: By the time he got there, everything was over and done with, and Fazιl watched with a number of children from the surrounding houses as the army searchlight shone on Blue’s body.
“May I stay here?” Fazιl asked. “I don’t want to go anywhere else.”
Ïpek took out another glass so he, too, could share the Coke. In her distraction, she couldn’t find the bottle opener; she kept looking in the wrong drawers and searching cupboards where she ought to have known it couldn’t be. She suddenly thought of the flowery blouse she’d been wearing the day she met Blue and then remembered having packed it in her suitcase. She took Fazιl inside and sat him down on the chair by the kitchen where Ka, after getting so drunk on Wednesday night, had sat down to write his poem. Then, like an invalid suddenly relieved of the pain shooting through her body, she relaxed; leaving the boy to watch Kadife and sip his Coke, she went to the other end of the room and gave the second glass to her father.
She went up to her room and stood there for a minute in the dark. She stopped by Ka’s room to pick up his cherry-colored valise, and then she went out into the street. She walked in the cold over to the official standing by the army truck and told him she had decided not to leave the city.
“We can still make the train,” said the official, trying to be helpful.
“I’ve changed my mind. I’m not going, but thank you. Please give this bag to Ka Bey.”
She went back inside, and as she sat down next to her father they heard the army truck revving its engine.
“I sent them off,” Ïpek told her father. “I’m not going.”
Turgut Bey put his arms around her. For a while, they watched the play on television, but without taking in a single thing. The first act was just coming to an end when Ïpek said, “Let’s go see Kadife! I’ve got something to tell her.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The Main Reason Women Commit Suicide Is to Save Their Pride
THE FINAL ACT
It was very late in the day when Sunay decided to change the title of the drama originally inspired by Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy but which in its final form showed many other influences; in fact, it was only during the last half hour of the relentless promotional campaign that the television announcers began referring to The Tragedy in Kars. The revision came too late for those already in the theater. Many had been brought in by military bus; others had seen the play advertised and came to show their faith in a strong army; a fair number didn’t care how catastrophic the result, as long as they had the chance to see it with their own eyes (there were already rumors that the “live broadcast” was really a tape shipped in from America); there were the city officials as well, whose presence had been ordered (this time they’d decided not to bring their families). Hardly any of these people were aware of the new title, but even those who were could little fathom the content and, like the rest of the city, had a hard time following the action.
Four years after its first and last performance, I found a videotape of The Tragedy in Kars in the Kars Border Television archives. The first half is almost impossible to summarize. I could make out a blood feud in some “backward, impoverished, and benighted” town, but when its inhabitants started killing one another, I had no notion of what it was that they’d been unable to share, nor could the murderers or their victims offer a clue as to the reason for so much bloodshed. Only Sunay raged against the backwardness of blood feuds and of people who allowed themselves to be drawn into them; he debated the matter with his wife and a younger woman who seemed to understand him better (this was Kadife). Though he was a rich and enlightened member of the ruling elite, Sunay’s character enjoyed dancing and joking with the poorest villagers and, indeed, engaged them in erudite discussions of the meaning of life, as well as regaling them with scenes from Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, and Brecht, if only to furnish the promised “play within the play.” He also offered an assortment of short soliloquies on such matters as city traffic, table manners, the special traits Turks and Muslims will never give up, the glories of the French Revolution, the virtues of cooking, condoms, and raki, and the way fancy prostitutes belly dance. These discussions, no more than his subsequent exposés of adulterated brands of shampoo and cosmetics, shed little light on the bloody scenes they interrupted, and as one outburst followed another, it grew harder to imagine that they conformed to any logic at all.
But the wild series of improvisations was somehow still worth watching, if only for the passion of Sunay’s performance. Whenever the action began to drag, whenever he sensed the people of Kars losing interest, Sunay could always find something to bring them back under his spell; he would fly into a fury and, borrowing a fine theatrical pose from one of the most illustrious roles of his career, he would rail against those who had brought the people low; with tragic abandon he would then pace the stage recounting youthful memories and quoting Montaigne on friendship as he mused on the quintessential loneliness of Atatürk. His face was wet with perspiration. During my visit to Kars, I was able to meet with Nuriye Hanιm, the teacher who loved literature and history and had been so enthralled by Sunay’s performance on the night of the revolution; she told me that everyone in the front row for the second performance could smell the raki fumes. Still, she insisted Sunay wasn’t drunk; she preferred enthusiastic. But others in her row more than confirmed this so-called enthusiasm. It was a disparate group: Many were middle-aged officials who’d risked their lives to get as close to this great man as decorum allowed. Some were widows, others perhaps best described as young admirers of Atatürk—and they had already seen these images hundreds of times. There were also a few hungry for adventure, so to speak, or at least interested in power. But they all spoke of the light shining in
Sunay’s eyes, radiating in all directions; it was dangerous, they said, to stare into those eyes for more than a few seconds.
I would one day have corroborating testimony from one of the religious high school boys who’d been piled into a military transport and frog-marched to the National Theater. His name was Mesut (he’d been the one opposed to burying atheists and believers in the same cemetery). He confirmed how Sunay held them all spellbound. We can only assume he had no ax to grind because, after four years with a small Islamist group based in Erzurum, he had lost faith in armed struggle and returned to Kars to work in a teahouse. He told me it was very difficult for the other religious high school boys to speak openly about their attraction to Sunay. Perhaps it had to do with Sunay’s absolute power, the thing to which they also aspired. It may be that they were relieved by the many restrictions he’d imposed on their movements, which made it impossible to take stupid risks like inciting a riot. “Whenever the army steps in, most people are secretly thankful,” he told me, and then confessed that his classmates had been most impressed by Sunay’s courage. There he was, the most powerful man in the city, unafraid to stride onto the stage and bare his soul to the teeming multitudes.
Watching the Kars Border Television archive videotape of the evening’s performance, I was struck by the silence in the hall; it was as if the audience had left behind the struggles that defined them—the tussle of fathers and sons, the skirmishes between the guilty and the powerful—to sink into a collective terror; and I was not immune to the power of that shimmering fiction that any citizen of an oppressive and aggressively nationalistic country will understand only too well: the magical unity conjured by the word we. In Sunay’s eyes, it was as if there were not a single outsider in the hall: all were inextricably bound by the same hopeless story.
