by Ayfer Tunç
His wife was the daughter of a not very wealthy family living in a little house on the winding road that descended to the coast. They’d meet every morning as he accompanied his father to the office. His father, who read something into their meetings, said one day in a voice that was surprisingly not angry, but still authoritative, ‘Shall we ask for the hand of this girl?’ He blushed bright red, not because he was embarrassed by love, but because his father had said something like this to him for the first time. The rest went like a dream.
There was an elaborate wedding, and for the first time in his life he went without his father on a trip, with his wife. The top storey of the house was allocated to them. Everything was fine despite his father. He loved his wife, but he always wanted to love her even more. When he didn’t go to the office, they were always together. His wife did not complain about this. He lived a dream life.
One morning, Semavi Bey saw his father hadn’t come down to breakfast. He realised what had happened. An insatiable joy filled him like the sun suddenly coming out on a rainy day. At last it had happened. At last the man he thought he’d never be rid of was no longer. Throughout the week following his father’s death, full of religious ceremonies, of the crocodile tears of distant relatives, he had difficulty in disguising his joy. He had gained absolute freedom. There was no longer that cruel figure shaping his life, dividing and ordering his hours, bumping into his days, causing an uproar, interfering with everything: his appearance, his demeanour, his fantasies, or his lust and longing for his wife.
To his wife, when she asked why he wasn’t going to work, he’d reply, ‘My work is loving you. Every moment I’m away from you gives me pain.’ At first she found this natural; she also enjoyed having breakfast with Semavi Bey, lazily reading the paper and going out for a stroll. They spent a few years in this manner. Together they sold the possessions left by his father, together they went shopping or for a stroll. But then this began to irritate his wife.
Semavi Bey wouldn’t leave her for a moment. He couldn’t stand not touching her, not seeing her face. At night he’d wake up frequently and look to see if she was still beside him. He was overwhelmed by the fear that his wife would leave and not return. Yet his wife, who had grown up without a father and had lost her mother, had nowhere to go even if she wanted to. He didn’t leave his wife alone anywhere, not even in the house. She was about to lose her mind.
‘One hour!’ she begged. ‘Leave me for one little hour, please…’ Semavi Bey couldn’t understand it. What harm did it do to her? What else was he doing but loving her? His wife was worn out from sobbing, from begging for hours to be able to go somewhere and wander around on her own. She was tired of falling asleep on her bed and finding her husband stroking her hair when she awoke. Occasionally Semavi Bey decided to give his wife some peace, but then he would fall into a panic thinking that she’d leave and never return.
It was one of the last nights of a long, cold winter. The whole city was waiting for spring as though it were waiting to recover from an illness. Semavi Bey had taken his wife out all day; he had tried to entertain her, but he had failed to make her face smile, her face remained darkened by an odd feeling of captivity. They were in the sitting room on the upper floor that overlooked the magnificent view of the Bosphorus. Semavi Bey’s wife was punishing him with silence. She was watching the television with vacant eyes and acting as though she didn’t hear Semavi Bey’s words of love.
Then there was another power cut, a frequent occurrence in those days. His wife got up to light the oil lamp. As she lit it she asked, ‘Semavi do you really love me?’ This question could have driven Semavi Bey mad. What else did he do? He’d devoted his life and his future to loving his wife. ‘Are you never going to let me go?’ asked his wife. ‘Not even a day, not even an hour?’ Semavi Bey found this question ridiculous. After laughing at length he replied, ‘Never, not even for a second.’
He could remember that last, long gaze of his wife’s. He saw a terrible anger, a desperate rebellion rising from all the cells in her body, growing all of a sudden and settling in her eyes. He saw sparks erupting from his wife’s beautiful eyes like a penetrating scream as if the last bit of her strength had been exhausted. The fine-fingered hands that could not be free of this yoke of love went limp and the oil lamp fell on the floor and broke. At first, the flames licked her clothes then climbed quickly, and in a flash enveloped her once beautiful body that seemed withered as though all the blood had drained from it.
The bath attendant finished the newspaper he was reading and stretched himself out lazily. He was hungry. He looked at his watch and decided that it was better to eat now, before the frozen labourers poured in. They’d arrive in twos and threes, chatting and singing songs as they washed and got thoroughly warm. While he was thinking how the best place to get warm in such weather was the bathhouse, the man inside suddenly crossed his mind. He’d not heard a peep out of him for hours. He got up at once and called inside from the cool room, ‘Uncle, do you want a scrub?’ The only sound he could hear was the dripping water; so he put on his clogs and entered. Then he saw the outstretched body of Semavi Bey stretched out on the marble slab in the centre of the bath. He approached and stared at this fine face twisted with a tragic smile, ‘Psst, uncle,’ he prodded the shoulder, ‘Wake up…’
But Semavi Bey was sleeping so soundly that he clearly had no intention of waking up.
THE SNOW TRAVELLER
Day had broken long ago. The mountains, on whose peaks black clouds settled, sparkled under a cold blue as if signalling the imminent end to the night’s pause from the interminable snow of the past few days. A feeble beam of sunlight preparing to warm other parts of the world shone coldly on the railway track that seemed to come from time immemorial and go on to eternity, disrupting and shattering this innocuous, pristine state of nature.
One or two trains that passed during the night had crushed the snow on the railway tracks and turned them into ice. The light reflected from the rails filled the windows of Eşber’s desolate, gloomy, two-roomed lodgings, situated a little way from the small town forgotten among the mountains. About a hundred paces from the tin-roofed house, the signal box stood in the shadow of a massive, leaden cloud that would soon cover the whole sky.
Eşber threw a thick log of oak into the cooking stove that rendered this gloomy room completely mournful, and closed the doors of the stove tightly. He placed the large metal jug that he’d filled with ice-cold water on top. The embers inside the stove would burn the log, the water in the jug would heat up, and when Eşber, returned home in the evening, following his snow-covered footprints as if they still existed, he would wash his face and hands with hot water and sit with his back against the wall hanging that depicted drinking deer. He’d take his cigarette packet, his glue and his matches burnt at the end, spend the night with his mind focused on the sounds of the wolves, and the following day he would begin another day just like the previous one.
He’d continue to live in his own troubled, narrow circle, despite the railway which wound along the banks of wild rivers that only showed when the snows melted and passed through deep valleys reaching out to completely different lives. He’d carry on as if there was nothing beyond these steep mountains that enclosed his horizon and the whole world consisted of the belongings and the unrefined, crude feelings that determined his life.
Before putting on his leather jacket, his hat and his gloves, he tore off a leaf of the calendar and read the prayer times, one of the prophet’s hadiths on sedition, names to give children yet to be born, the meal for the day, and a short summary of the battle of Uhud, and did not commit a single line to memory. The paper that he held in his hand was not just an ordinary leaf from a calendar, but a document that sustained him by showing how many days were left until spring and reminding him that time was passing. Spring was not a dream. This piece of paper not only told him that to reach spring there were too many days to be counted in haste, but also proved the existence of spr
ing.
Here on the leaf of the calendar that he held in his hand, the presence of a long, hard winter was recorded; a winter too long to pass by getting up and going to bed, cooking lentil soup, collecting burnt matches and making houses out of them. Too long for sitting in the signal box and making telephone calls about delayed trains, waving green-red flags at them that in all their glory spoilt the whiteness stretching to eternity. And too long for exchanging greetings with the engine drivers; asking them for newspapers, ordering salt, sugar and matches; falling asleep at night in front of a constantly snowy TV set; placing a huge bowl in the middle of the room and washing in it; taking his mirror and razor outside for a shave when the rays of the sun suddenly filtered through the snow-laden clouds; brewing tea and drinking it, growing potatoes and cabbage in the garden, feeding chickens, shovelling snow; walking to the small town on market days and buying cheese and village bread; speaking only three or four words a day. These exhausting winters that he’d survived for years made his life resemble a grave illness, to a wavering on the edge of death.
He shut the door that he never felt the need to lock since there was no one nearby, and went out. He smiled when he saw the tracks of the wolves he heard wandering around his house during the night. The snow that had begun again at daybreak had stopped towards morning; it hadn’t yet covered the tracks of the wolves that clawed the door, going berserk with the smell of the three hens that he kept in the spare room of the two-roomed house.
Thank goodness there were wolves in his life. In their eyes he saw savage gleams, while from their healthy, white teeth the blood trickled after their hunt. The struggle between him and them had gradually become a reason for living; it had become a strange game that could only end in blood. He felt for his rifle and remembered the brutality in their bright eyes.
The greatest consolation of this deadly loneliness that ate into his soul like a malignant tumour and turned his face, once young and clear, into a rusty yellow; the thing that transformed life into a game, was this relationship with the wolves. Loneliness gave him unbearable headaches. That’s why he took opium when he could find it, and at times like these, like an acrobat walking on a tightrope over a chasm, he’d allow the wolves to get close to him. He enjoyed how they surrounded his house and threatened his life to which, since beginning to spend it in a signal box, he could ascribe no meaning. The hens clucked frantically, frightened by the howling that rent the nights when the madly hungry wolves came down from the mountains; their pitiful clucking drove the wolves even madder, and Eşber took great pleasure in opening his window and firing his rifle at the bright eye of a wolf that had come within claw range. In the mornings of such nights he’d find bloody wolf tracks in the snow. Nature bestowed on him just one colour for the best part of the year: white. This was akin to blindness. Yet the bloody tracks left by a wolf shot in the eye, and the howls that tore and shattered the silence reminded him of his existence. He’d think he didn’t exist in this silent whiteness if it weren’t for the wolves.
As he walked over to the signal box thinking of the wolves he suddenly spotted the dark blue about to be lost in the snow. It didn’t look anything like the blueness that dominated the sky on spring mornings, or on summer evenings after the sun’s redness had disappeared. It could be said perhaps to resemble the blue of matches when they first burst into flame. He couldn’t believe his eyes. This blueness he saw in the distance between the forgotten mountains was like the present he’d never received. He went towards the blue that was gently fading under the newly falling snow, took it tenderly in his arms as though taking a budgerigar in the palm of his hand, and walked not to the signal box but towards his home, as the dark blue material flapping against his legs filled him with an indescribable delight.
Then night fell and quickly advanced. Darkness enveloped the surroundings like a mirror reflecting the sad faces of those living in pitiful conditions in small towns and in distant villages among the mountains. It was Fidan whom Eşber had taken in his arms and saved from freezing by bringing her home that morning. Now covered with a woollen blanket, she lay lost in an untroubled and tranquil sleep, watched over and heedless of the passing trains. The howling of the wolves could be heard in the distance. Not that Eşber heard them; for he was waiting for this woman to wake up, this woman with the purest and most beautiful face he’d ever seen.
Fidan suddenly awoke. A mortal fear passed over her face. Then she quickly glanced at the room with a feeling that was a mixture of terror and bewilderment. She saw the wall hanging depicting deer, the steam rising from the lentil soup boiling on the stove, the murmuring TV set, the house of burnt matches on top of it and Eşber who sat at the end of her bed smiling at her.
There was nothing in this smile to evoke a feeling of alarm, or a desire to run away and escape. Quite the contrary, it was innocent, sad and rather bashful. It never occurred to her that this smile would take her from one hell to another; she simply felt a strange relief and began to cry.
Unaware that she’d been pursued by fear for months, Eşber waited for her choking crying to cease, and then whispered, ‘Don’t be afraid, miss. You have nothing to fear from me.’ These words calmed her down; she stretched out her right hand to the wall hanging and touched the deer. Crying, she thought about the morning that had seemed to be the climax of the dark months she’d spent.
She was still afraid when she got on the train that flung her to this strange house among the mountains. But she’d mistaken the music of the train, that began slowly and gradually speeded up, for good news of her own deliverance. Even sharing her com -part ment with the family with defeated and offended expressions on their faces and baskets and plastic bags stuffed with bundles, had given her an inner peace and a sense of confidence. She would go far away, very far. At the other side of this large country covered with snow, a safe fraternal house would enfold her, and the fear that had hounded her for months would melt away like a piece of ice falling on the stove that heated everything in that house.
She had accumulated a dirty past at a young age, and the fear of death had confronted her at the end of the blind alley she’d entered in order to reach a wonderful, grand life as soon as possible. All night long, half asleep and half awake, she’d thought about what she had suffered; at times she’d awoken in terror, at others she’d visualised her deliverance in between bouts of sleep, and that she’d taken a step towards a safe life. Despite all this broken sleep, however, she’d failed to notice that the large family filling the compartment had got off. So when she found herself utterly alone in the very stuffy compartment in the morning, she was terrified. Defenceless and scared to death.
The men after her were dark and real, in contrast to the infinite whiteness that the train cleaved as it advanced. Their ways were dark. Determined to make her pay a heavy price for attempting to bite off more than she could chew. She’d wandered about the train in the hope of finding another family to shelter with, like the one whose presence had given her security all night, making her feel just a little, safer. But there was no one else on the train except a horde of men twisting their greasy moustaches with their thick stubby fingers and undisguised lust shining in their eyes.
They were many. Realising the safe haven she sought would elude her on this intrepid train courageously travelling to the country’s forgotten lands, she’d panicked. She decided she’d go and sit in a compartment that was the most crowded with the men whose lusty stares frightened and overwhelmed her, but whose sheer numbers would protect her.
And that’s when it all came to a head.
She didn’t know the man whose gun dazzled her with its gleam; she’d never seen him before, but it didn’t take her long to realise that he’d been sent by one of those pursuing her, and that he’d been assigned to ambush her. This man, who had closed in on her step by step in a short space of time, was instantly recog -nisable as one of them: his camel coat thrown over his shoulders, his black eyebrows like a long, thick stroke on his narrow, pro
jecting forehead. This man with his bearing, his style, his unhurried and arrogantly springy walk, and, most important of all, his eyes that seemed to bear no expression, but in which, as he got closer, one could read a lust for brutality – such a man could only be on this train in pursuit of her.
Then two things happened simultaneously: he pulled the trigger and she opened the door to fling herself out. As she rolled in the soft snow, she heard the sound of another shot mingling with the train’s melody, and closed her eyes in peace. Even if she died it no longer mattered. She hadn’t fallen into ‘their’ hands. If she had died at that moment, it would have been a very quiet and peaceful departure towards death.
Now, in this strange room, where she felt her stiff body relaxed utterly and jelly-like, she was crying with relief; unable to believe she’d returned from the brink of death. She could not stop her tears as she ate the bowl of soup Eşber offered.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You saved my life.’
Eşber didn’t answer. He gazed with a gentle, shy smile that contrasted with the savageness surrounding this house of breeze blocks and stone, wattle and daub. In his world, life was something that was frequently saved. He saved his own life yet again in every game with the wolves. That’s why it wasn’t something worth thanking. Fidan ate her soup, wiped her eyes and looked at the heart-warming white teeth of this sallow-faced man who’d saved her life. She was now sure that she was safe. Eşber brewed some tea, sat cross-legged on the same chair, and gazed at her face with an expression that asked her what she was doing by the railway line. The small town was quite some distance, nowhere near the railway and, even if it had been, trains wouldn’t stop at this tiny little town that lived quietly among the mountains. Whatever had made the woman in the blue coat set off on a path that led to his gloomy, mournful house?
