by Orhan Pamuk
CHAPTER TWELVE
My Wristwatches
I began to wear my first wristwatch in 1965, when I was twelve. Then, in 1970, I got rid of it; by then it was too old. It wasn’t a fancy brand, just an ordinary one. In 1970 I bought an Omega, and I used it until 1983. This, my third watch, is an Omega too. It’s not very old; my wife bought it for me at the end of 1983, a few months after The Silent House was published.
A watch feels like part of my body. When I write it sits on my desk, and I look at it a little nervously. Before I sit down to write, when I take it off and set it on the table, I feel like someone who has taken off his shirt to play football. Like a boxer preparing for a match—especially if I put my watch on the table after coming in from the street. For me it is a gesture that denotes a preparation for battle. In the same way, when I’m leaving the house—if after working for five or six hours things have gone well, if I’ve been able to write successfully—I very much like putting my watch back on, so much so that doing it gives me the pleasure of achievement, of work completed. I rise from my table quickly; as soon as I’ve put my key and my money into my pocket I walk straight out. I don’t wait to put on my watch; my watch will be in my hand; it’s when I’ve reached the pavement, when I’m walking down the street, that I put on my watch. For me this is a great pleasure. All these things are merged in my mind with having struggled and prevailed.
I’ve never caught myself thinking, How quickly time passed!
I’ll look at the face of the watch and it will seem as if the hour and the minute hands have arrived at the place where they were meant to be, but I don’t think of this as an idea or even as a particle of time. This is why I shall never buy a digital watch. Digital watches represent those particles of time as numbers, whereas the face of my watch is a mysterious icon. I love to look at it. The face of time; in some way it conjures up that metaphysical conceit, or something close to it.
My most beautiful watch is the oldest one, the one I’m most used to. I feel attached to my watch as an object. This metaphysical affinity, this sense of enchantment, goes back to my first days of watch-wearing, in middle school. But later it became linked in my mind with school bells, and so it has remained for many years.
I take an optimistic view of time. As a rule, if a chore takes me 12 minutes, I think I can do it in 9. Or if a chore takes 23 minutes, I can do in 17. But even if I can’t, I don’t get discouraged.
When I go to bed I take off my watch and put it somewhere near me. The first thing I do when I wake up is to reach out and look at it. My watch is like a very close friend. I don’t even like changing the straps when they get worn; they carry the scent of my skin.
In the old days I would begin to write around twelve o’clock and work until evening. But my real writing time was between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. I would go to bed at four.
Until my daughter was born, I would work nights, right through to morning. During these hours when everyone was asleep, my watch face would watch me. Then this routine changed. From 1996, I got into the habit of waking at five and working until seven. Then I would wake up my wife and my daughter, and after eating breakfast with them, I’d take my daughter to school.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I’m Not Going to School
I’m not going to school. Because I’m sleepy. I’m cold. No one likes me at school.
I’m not going to school. Because there are two children there. They’re bigger than me. They’re stronger than me. When I go past them, they stick out their arms and block my way. I’m afraid.
I’m afraid. I’m not going to school. At school, time just stops. Everything gets left outside. Outside the school door.
My room at home, for example. Also my mother, my father, my toys, and the birds on the balcony. When I’m at school and I think about them, I want to cry. I look out the window. In the sky outside, there are clouds.
I’m not going to school. Because I don’t like anything there.
The other day I did a picture of a tree. The teacher said, “That’s really a tree, well done.” I did another one. This one had no leaves either.
Then one of those children came over and made fun of me.
I’m not going to school. When I go to bed at night, and I think about going to school the next day, I feel terrible. I say, “I’m not going to school.” They say, “How can you say that? Everyone goes to school.”
Everyone? So let everyone go, then. What’s going to happen if I stay home? I went yesterday, didn’t I? How about if I don’t go tomorrow, and then go the day after that?
If only I were at home in my bed. Or in my room. If only I were anywhere but that school.
I’m not going to school, I’m sick. Can’t you see? The moment someone says school I feel sick, I get a stomachache. I can’t even drink that milk.
I’m not going to drink that milk, I’m not going to eat anything, and I’m not going to school either. I’m so upset. No one likes me. There are those two children. They stick out their arms and block my way.
I went to the teacher. The teacher said, “Why are you following me?” I’ll tell you something if you promise not to get mad. I’m always following the teacher, and the teacher is always saying, “Don’t follow me.”
I’m not going to school, ever again. Why? Because I just don’t want to go to school, that’s why.
When it’s recess I don’t want to go outside, either. Just when everyone’s forgotten me, then it’s recess. Then everything gets all mixed up, everyone starts running.
The teacher gives me a nasty look, and she doesn’t look too good to start with. I don’t want to go to school. There’s one child who likes me, he’s the only one who looks at me nicely. Don’t tell anyone, but I don’t like that child either.
I just sit down and stay there. I feel so lonely. Tears run down my cheeks. I don’t like school at all.
I don’t want to go to school, I say. Then it’s morning and they take me to school. I can’t even smile, I look straight in front of me, I want to cry. I climb up the hill with a bag on my back that is as big as a soldier’s, and I keep my eyes on my little feet as they climb the hill. Everything’s so heavy: the bag on my back, the hot milk in my stomach. I want to cry.
I walk into school. The black metal garden gate closes behind me. I cry, “Mommy, look, you left me inside.”
Then I go into my classroom and sit down. I want to become one of those clouds outside.
Erasers, notebooks, and pens: Feed them to the hens!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Rüya and Us
1. Every morning we go to school together: one eye on the watch, one eye on the bag, the door, the road. In the car, we always do the same things: (A) wave at the dogs in the little park; (B) knock back and forth as the car accelerates around a corner; © say, “To the right and down the hill, Mr. Driver!” casting a sidelong glance at each other and laughing; (D) laughing when we say, “To the right and down the hill, Mr. Driver!” because he knows exactly where we’re going, as we always take taxis from the same taxi stand; (E) get out of the taxi and walk hand in hand.
2. After I have hung her bag on her shoulder, kissed her, and led her into school, I watch her from behind. I have memorized the way Rüya walks, and I love watching her walk into school. I know she knows I’m watching her. It is as if her knowing I’m watching makes us both feel secure. First there is a world she enters and explores every day, and then there is the world we two share. When I watch her, and she turns around to watch me, we keep our world going. But then she breaks into a run and enters a new life where my eyes cannot go.
3. Let me brag a little: My daughter is intelligent and knows what she likes. She insists without a moment’s hesitation that I tell the best stories, and on weekend mornings she lies down next to me and demands her due. Because she knows who she is, she knows what she wants. “It should be a witch again, she should escape from prison but she shouldn’t go blind and she shouldn’t grow old, and in the end she shouldn’t
catch the little child.” She doesn’t want me skipping the parts she likes. She tells me which parts she doesn’t like while I’m still telling the story. This is why telling her a story means both writing it and reading it as the child who wrote it.
4. As with all intimate relationships, ours is a power struggle. Who will decide: (A) which channel to watch on television; (B) what time is bedtime; © what game will be played or not played, and how this decision, and many other similar decisions, discussions, disputes, tricks, sweet deceptions, bouts of tears, rebukes, sulks, reconciliations, and acts of contrition will be resolved after long political negotiations. All this effort makes us tired and happy, but in the end it accumulates and becomes the history of the relationship, the friendship. You come to an understanding, because you’re not going to give up on each other. You think about each other, and when you’re parted you remember each other’s smell. When she’s gone I miss the smell of her hair terribly. When I’m gone, she smells my pajamas.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When Rüya Is Sad
Do you know what, darling? When you’re this sad, I’m sad too. I feel as if there is this instinct buried somewhere deep inside me—in my body, my soul—well, somewhere: When I see you sad, I get sad. It’s as if some computer inside me says, WHEN YOU SEE THAT RÜYA IS SAD YOU GET SAD TOO.
I can get sad for no reason, too, and just as suddenly. I can be in the middle of an ordinary day, tending to the refrigerator or the paper or my mind or my hair. My mind goes off on a tangent: this life … but let’s stop for a moment. I look at Rüya, and her face is dark and clouded; she’s curled up on the divan, just lying there—what’s made her so unhappy?—watching the world from the corner of her eye and her father watching her watch the world.
In one hand is a blue rabbit.
On her other hand she is resting her unhappy face.
I walk back to the kitchen, to rummage through the drawers of the refrigerator and my mind. What could it be? I wonder. Does she have a stomachache? Or maybe she is discovering the taste of her melancholy. Let her be, let her be sad, let her lose herself in solitude and her own smell. The first aim of an intelligent person is to achieve unhappiness when everyone around her is happy. So I once thought. I like it when people say Borgesian things: “Indeed, I try whenever possible to be as unhappy as all young people.” That’s good, but beware, she’s not a young person yet; she’s a child.
Silence.
I open the refrigerator, pick up a huge bright-red apple, and bite into it as hard as I can. I leave the kitchen. She’s still lying there in a ball. I pause to think.
Make an approach. Say, Come, let’s play dice, and, Where’s the box? Find the box and, as you open it, ask each other, What color are you going to be? I’m green. Okay, then I’ll be red. Then throw the dice, count the squares, and make sure she wins. If she starts wanting to win, if she starts enjoying herself, she’ll brighten up and say,
I’m winning!
So take the lead then. Win every game.
Sometimes I get fed up, I think, Let me win, even if it’s just once; let this girl learn how to lose.
It doesn’t work. She throws away the dice. She overturns the game board. She goes off to sulk in the corner.
Why don’t I suggest a game of Stay Off the Floor? You can go from the table to the dining chairs, from the dining chairs to armchairs, the divan, the other table, the side of the radiator. You can touch the floor, but if you get caught with your foot on the floor, you’re It. But don’t try to jump too far.
The best game is Chase. All around the house, around the table, from room to room, around the dining chairs, while the television drones on about the latest paradises, coups, rebellions, and beauty contests, and the dollar, and the stock exchange; and look at us, see how we’re chasing each other and paying no attention to you and all your nonsense? As we run about madly, overturning baskets, knocking over lamps, crushing castles of newspaper piles, coupons, and cardboard, starting to sweat, shouting, but without knowing what exactly we’re shouting about; we sometimes take off our clothes. If only you knew how fast we can run over chocolate wrappers, coloring books, broken toys, old newspapers, discarded water bottles, slippers, and boxes.
But I couldn’t even do this.
I sat in a corner and watched the color of dirt settling quietly over the roar of the city. The television was on, but there was no sound, none at all. One of those seagulls was walking slowly across the roof; I recognized it from its patter. The two of us gazed out the window without speaking for the longest time, I in my chair and Rüya on the divan, and we both—Rüya sadly and I with joy—thought about how beautiful it was.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The View
I was going to talk about the world and the things inside it.
Why I began here, I cannot say. It was a hot day, my five-year-old daughter, Rüya, and I were out on Heybeliada, and later we went for a ride in a horse-drawn carriage. I sat facing backward and my daughter sat facing me. She was looking at the road ahead. We rode past gardens full of trees and flowers, low walls, wooden houses, vegetable patches. As the carriage lurched this way and that, I watched my daughter’s face, seeking in her expressions some sense of what she saw in the world around her.
Things: objects, trees, and walls; posters, notices, streets, and cats. Asphalt. Heat. Had it ever been this hot?
Then we started up the hill; the horses were straining and the driver cracked his whip. The carriage slowed down. I looked at a house. As the world flowed past us, it was as if my daughter and I saw exactly the same things. One by one we looked at them: a leaf, a rubbish bin, a ball, a horse, a child. But also: the greenness of the leaf, the redness of the rubbish bin, the bounce of the ball, the horse’s expression, the child’s face. Then each of these things slipped away; we weren’t really looking at them anyway; our eyes kept moving. We weren’t really looking at any part of this hot afternoon world. It was slipping past us, this flimsy world that seemed to be evaporating before our eyes. It was almost as if we were drifting off ourselves! We see things and we don’t. The world is bathed in the color of heat, and in our minds we can see this too.
We passed the forest, but even here it wasn’t cool. It seemed to be radiating heat. When the road grew steeper, the horses slowed down again. We listened to the cicadas. The carriage was moving very slowly now, and just as the road seemed about to disappear into the trees, we saw the view.
“Brrrs,” said the driver, to stop the horses. “Let them rest,” he said.
We looked at the view. We were at the edge of a cliff. Beneath us there were rocks, the sea, and, rising out of the steam, the other islands. What a beautiful blue the sea was, with the sun sparkling on its surface: Everything was where it should be, gleaming and immaculate. Before us was a perfectly formed world. Rüya and I admired it in silence.
The driver lit a cigarette; we could smell the smoke.
Why was it so beautiful, this view of the world? Perhaps because we could see it all. Perhaps because if we fell off the edge we would die. Perhaps because nothing looks bad from a distance. Perhaps because we’d never seen it from this height. So what were we doing here, in this world?
“Is it beautiful?” I asked Rüya. “What makes it beautiful?”
“If we fell off the edge, would we die?”
“Yes, we’d die.”
For a moment she gazed fearfully at the cliff. Then she got bored. The cliff, the sea, the rocks: They never changed, never moved. Boring. A dog appeared. “A dog!” we both said. It was wagging its tail and moving. We both turned to admire him, and neither of us looked at the view again.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
What I Know About Dogs
This was a mud-colored dog, nothing out of the ordinary. It was wagging its tail. Its eyes were sad. It didn’t sniff us the way curious dogs do. It used its mournful eyes to try to get to know us. When it had done so, it stuck its wet nose into the carriage.
Silence. Rüya was sc
ared. She pulled back her legs and looked at me.
“Don’t be afraid,” I whispered. I shifted from my seat to Rüya’s.
The dog drew back too. Together we examined him carefully. A four-legged creature. What must it be like to be a dog? I closed my eyes. As I began to think about what it must be like to be a dog, I tried to recall all the things I knew about dogs.
1. Recently an engineer friend of mine was telling me how he’d sold a Sivas Kangal to some Americans. The dog pictured in the brochure he then showed me was a strong, handsome, upright Kangal, and the caption said, “Hello, I’m a Turkish Kangal. My average height is [this many centimeters], I’m [this number of] years old, I’m this intelligent, and this is my breeding. A while back, a friend of ours went missing, but we followed the scent for four hundred miles until we found its owner. So that’s how clever and loyal we are,” et cetera.
2. Turkish dogs in comics, and dogs who have been translated into Turkish, say hav! But dogs in foreign comic books say woof!
That was as much as I could come up with about dogs. I tried, but I could think of nothing more. I must have seen tens of thousands of dogs in my lifetime, but nothing else came to mind. Except, of course, that dogs have pointed teeth and growl.
“Daddy, what are you doing?” Rüya asked. “Don’t close your eyes like that, I’m bored.”
I opened my eyes. “Driver,” I said, “where is this dog from?”
“Where’s the dog?” he asked, and I showed him. “Those dogs are heading for the dump just ahead,” the driver said.
The dog looked straight in front of him, as if he knew we were talking about him.
