by Ayfer Tunç
Fidan felt that she had to speak, to tell him something, and so she made up a little story: she was a lawyer, and the brothers of a man she’d had thrown into prison were after her, and just as they were about to kill her, she’d thrown herself off the train.
Eşber believed this at once. The ever snowy TV set whose sound he had to content himself with had taught him there was a large and complicated world outside. Out there, there were crowds of people. A merciless battle raged, like his war with the wolves. The traces of fear on the face of the slim, beautiful woman who said her name was Fidan were proof of this too. He asked a heap of questions about the world beyond the mountains. He was trying to understand a different kind of savagery. Fidan answered in a soft voice that caressed his spirit, and she told him a lot of things about crowded cities, reinforcing her dark story. The good quality cigarettes in her bag ran out that night; she smoked Eşber’s cheaper cigarettes and quickly got used to them.
Late in the night she heard the sound of the wolves. The addicts of this deadly game arrived one by one and surrounded the house, while the hens clucked in fear. Eşber kept his composure as the wolves howled. He told her that there was nothing to be frightened of; he eschewed the game that the wolves longed for. Then he left Fidan in the warm, cosy room with the roaring stove, rolled out a bed for himself and went to sleep in the room where the hens were.
Eşber believed that night he’d been blessed with a divine gift, and slept in peace. As for Fidan; she contemplated all night long. She had informed on the men pursuing her. She could stay in this strange house for a long time, until they were caught, and they all believed that she was dead; she could wipe out traces of her own life, and thenshe could think about what she needed to do when she returned to her own city. She lay, pressing her hand against the wall hanging of deer and staring at the darkness. She was petrified with the terror of the days of constantly running away, and the possibility of coming face to face with death at any moment. Just then, the terrifying sounds of the wolves were like an innocent song compared with the feeling of brutality she had in the city.
She awoke in the morning to see Eşber filling up the stove. The sallow-faced man had been up a long time, had made tea and was waiting for his guest to wake up, keeping his own movements as quiet as possible. They breakfasted on village bread and village cheese. Then Eşber pointed out the signal box to her from the window. That’s where he would be. There was nothing to be frightened of. He wanted her to tell him if there was anything she wanted. He could order it from the engine drivers.
Fidan passed the day in high spirits. For the first time in a long period she experienced peace. She slept all day on the couch and whenever she woke up she couldn’t believe she was alive.
On the following days it kept snowing and stopping. The times that it snowed were more than the times that it stopped. Sometimes it turned Eşber into a snowman before he’d even taken two paces towards the two square-metre signal box to wave a flag at the passing trains, and sometimes it mixed with the sunrays, and made the mountaintops look as if they had been sprinkled with gold dust. Fidan never left the house; she threw wood on the stove that Eşber filled to the brim and lit every morning, and staring at the wall hanging of deer, she thought about herself and her future. Even if she was bored just sitting there, she made herself believe that this hiding was essential in order for her to survive. She lit and blew out Eşber’s matches one by one as she convinced herself of this.
The long conversations they held every evening had gradually driven the yellow hue from Eşber’s face. A curious joy filled him and made him forget the wolves. He felt an unfamiliar attachment to life. He no longer needed the wolves in order to exist. A woman talking, smiling, eating every evening had filled his house, life and mind. He’d begun to take an interest in his wages. Now he talked more with the engine drivers of the trains that slowed down to a crawl as they approached the signal box, asking them to bring newspapers, books, good quality tea and cigarettes. He had changed. He always used to drag his feet home as if heading to a fatal loneliness; now he went home overflowing with the desire to live. In his hut, while waiting for a train that was to change points, he’d stare at the house seen from the window and he’d remember a woman was sitting there, and this feeling would exhilarate him.
He’d think about Fidan’s hair that scattered sunlight, the dimple that appeared in only one cheek when she smiled, and her hands as white as snow. He would feel an emptiness in his breast, an emptiness that he thought would fill only if he pressed her sweet-smelling hair to it. This emptiness within him was the motivation that drove him to the irrepressible joy that the even drivers noticed, and it was the reason for him feeling a deep ache from the knowledge that he could not hug her warm blonde head.
At times, the knowledge that a woman was living in his house unbeknownst to everyone drove him to an incomprehensible exuberance. He got excited as though this fact was a terrific secret that interested the whole world, and not to shout this woman’s existence to the mountains and not to tell anyone this incredible thing was like a heavy weight which crushed him. Sometimes he had the impression that the merry voice of a woman filling his nights and the white, slim fingers that burnt his skin like fire when they touched it by accident, were not real, that all this was a fabrication of his mind as it slowly dyed in the face of the blinding whiteness. He’d run to the house from the hut to test this reality time and again, and when he arrived breathless, he’d be confronted with Fidan’s eyes asking why he had come; then he’d just stand at the door, bewildered and without an answer, like a sleepwalker who had awoken from a deep sleep.
In the course of a single day, he would pass through a whole range of mental states. Now he no longer waited for spring, although it was just around the corner. It seemed that winter spring had come to his house in an unexpected form, in any case. He had no idea how to make this unexpected spring happy; too shy to ask her what she wanted, he followed her every move all night long, hoping to understand what she desired.
This heart that was used to being silent, trapped as if shut in a box, opened up and spoke without stopping. Eşber’s speech did not follow a sequence, but jumped from one subject to another. He passed from the daughter of his sister, living in a distant, but warm small town, who could not say her r’s, to the noise made by the snow as it melted, and while talking about the habits of the engine drivers, the low wages in line with village expectations, or the deliciousness of the ewe’s cheese of a nearby village, he’d suddenly jump to the flocks of birds descending on the mountains, the sounds dispersing the silence and the spirit of the mountains. This leaping about and these weird descriptions scared Fidan.
That wasn’t all that scared her. She had begun to see love in Eşber’s eyes. She saw that while she spoke he didn’t listen to her, but was engrossed in her eyes, her hands and her body; that he’d grown strange; that whenever she swallowed a bite it was as if he was swallowing a bite, and whenever she took a drag it was as if Eşber was smoking a cigarette. The fear she’d forgotten took on a different aspect and slowly seeped inside her.
One night she asked the whereabouts of the small town. Eşber pointed with his hand in a vague direction and said, ‘Behind those mountains…’ the tone of his voice tinged with the morbid superiority of having described an unattainable peak. The expression dominating his face was so strange and scary that Fidan never repeated this question she’d asked innocently, and to which she received no answer; so she never learnt behind which mountain the small town lay.
Many long nights and days went by with more sound and words than this dismal house had ever heard.
Fidan decided it was now time to go. Never mind those on her tail: it was enough of this interminable whiteness, of the unremitting snow that made her believe it would swallow the house and the wolves that wandered around every night and in whose sounds she had begun to sense a call for blood, Eşber’s obsession was increasingly becoming more morbid, and the days that passed a
ll seemed exactly the same and had begun to frighten her almost as much as the sinister men following her. She sensed Eşber would not be content with gazing at her passionately, but want her to share his life. This was living another life, wearing a dress not her own. That last night all she could think about was this. And because she didn’t sleep, she noticed how much wilder the sounds of the wolves were than she’d previously thought.
The next morning, Eşber came into the room to brew the tea, and went white as a sheet upon seeing Fidan holding the bag that was on her shoulder when she threw herself from the train and wearing the blue coat that had filled him with an indescribable joy as it flapped against his knees while he was carrying her.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, ‘Why have you got dressed?’
‘I should go now,’ said Fidan, trying to sweeten her voice as much as possible,
‘I’m so grateful to you for everything. But I’ve stayed long enough. My parents will be looking for me. They must be worried about me. Could you put me on the train?’
‘No,’ said Eşber. ‘No, it’s just not possible, you can’t go.’
‘Why not?’
Eşber reached out, pulled Fidan’s bag and hurled it onto the couch.
‘You came to me…’ he said, staring as if he couldn’t believe what was happening.
He really couldn’t believe it. Fidan was a spring sent to him, something that belonged to him, appearing in front of him like a miracle sent to eliminate his pathetic loneliness, to fill his silent hours, his empty days. It wasn’t possible for him to endure her going just like that, to put her on the train with his own hands.
‘Aren’t you comfortable here?’ he asked, his face bewildered, his voice that was as mild as could be,
The expression on his face was akin to that of a well-intentioned master addressing his slave, a master who reserves all rights of disposal: sweet and innocent, but equally merciless.
Fidan realised at that moment that this was the beginning of a tremendous battle between them, one that would only end with death. She went weak at the knees, her body, that had stood erect while those terrible men pursued her, forever resisting and rushing from house to house, street to street, spending each night under a different roof and enduring this relentless race for days dissolved in an instant when confronted with this mild, calm question, and collapsed to the ground.
The first thing she did was to shut up. She sensed the futility of trying to persuade this man, whose mind the mountains and snow had virtually sucked up and then left to his own devices, and so she wouldn’t say anything. She was frightened that a word sticking in his mind like a needle could drive this man, this dervish of a strange world, crazy. She’d fallen into his hands; Eşber was lord of this eternal whiteness. That night, the following night and the nights after, she remained silent. Eşber talked. This man, who had long since finished talking about himself, and whose face had gradually regained its original sallowness since the day Fidan announced she wanted to leave, related one by one whatever remained in his mind from the calendar leaves, whatever the railway employees from large crowded cities told him, and whatever he’d heard on the television he listened to, and which opened his dreams to distant places. But whatever he did, he couldn’t make Fidan laugh, or bring back the dimple on her cheek that he so wanted to touch or even kiss, and this ate his heart out.
One day, Fidan came out of the house and just stood under the snow. It was as though she had fallen into a white labyrinth with no signs on it. Where was east? In which direction was west and how could one get to the town? She could not find the answers to these questions and realised to what extent she was a real prisoner. As she surrendered her whole self to nature to find a way out, perhaps by feel or by smell, her nose in the air, Eşber watched her through the signal box window steamed up by his breath, a sickly smile heightening the pitiful expression on his face. From now on, the point of his life was to protect this spring that had come to him unseasonably, and hang onto it to eternity. He never took his eyes off the door of the house; if Fidan came out, he suddenly appeared beside her; he ordered presents and fresh fruit for her and, even though he could get nothing in return, he was content with things continuing in this manner.
Fidan had realised daytime trains would be of no use; it was a night-time train that attracted her attention. This unassuming train would come quietly as midnight approached, its growls softly seeping into the house, and the lights of the passenger carriages were reflected as fast-moving images in the windows covered by the night. Because that was the only night-time train, Eşber would make way for it in the evening and then come home. The train climbed up a gentle slope to the snow-covered plain and slowed down to a crawl as it passed Eşber’s house. Fidan felt her deliverance lay with this train, but she just couldn’t find the way to board it and leave.
It was a particularly harsh winter night, despite spring being just around the corner. The cooking stove was making short work of the logs of wood and the windows were covered with a thin sheet of ice. A silence had fallen on Eşber. He was peeling oranges he’d ordered from the engine drivers in thin strips, as if threatening Fidan for her silence. He had the air of a master coming to the end of his tether. His state of mind had begun to scare Fidan.
She heard the howling of the wolves as she waited for the sound of the train that came silently, and passing through the mountains went on to crowded, brightly lit towns where safety lay. They were descending from the mountains again. Fidan thought for a moment that they were free. They could run for hours after a train if they wanted, or die if they wanted. She sighed. Eşber, on the other hand, was beginning to chafe at this never-ending silence. When he heard the howling of the wolves he got up and opened the window, startling Fidan. The room felt like it was filled with air full of broken pieces of ice. Fidan shivered from the cold and the savage howling. Eşber took his rifle down from the wall, the one he took with him every day when he went to the signal box, and waited for the wolves to surround the house, to approach. The hens had begun to cluck frantically again, terrified of the imminent danger. Eşber was leaning out of the window and shouting at the wolves, attracting their attention and preparing for the game that he hadn’t played since Fidan’s arrival, and that he very much missed. The wolves gathered by the window. Their sound was unnerving. Fidan was trembling from head to foot. She was scared to death and didn’t know what to do. Eşber raised his rifle and took aim at the eye of a wolf, but just as he was about to fire Fidan cried, ‘Don’t!’ and threw herself at him. The rifle went off and a very thin spark trailed skywards. The wolves scattered.
This word that came from Fidan’s mouth for the first time in days stunned Eşber. He felt pain as if he’d hurt her, threw down the rifle and stared at her, distraught. It threw him into an odd state that he could not comprehend. He sank to the ground and began to stare at Fidan without taking his eyes off her. He seemed to be waiting for an order from her. He looked weird and pathetic.
Fidan shut her eyes and two images appeared in her mind. In one were the wolves: eyes gleaming like steel, with powerful jaws and sharp claws, and howls that sent shudders down her spine, and Eşber stood in the other. This was such a daunting picture; he was staring at her from the signal box window, the tick in his right cheekbone making his sickly smile even more terrifying.
She heard the sound of the train climbing the slope between the subsiding howls of the wolves. She thought about the passengers in those compartments, wrapping their foul-smelling cheese in their thin flat bread and eating it; their vacant eyes fixed on a distant point, smoking cigarettes slowly and seeing their own sad faces in the windows. When it was morning they’d be getting off in a bright, crowded city, and, shouldering their loads, they’d scatter into the city’s mud-covered arteries and mingle with the crowds to take their places on the stages that life had prepared for them. Even if dark-faced men existed there in that life, a hope of escape could always be found. This was to walk freely, even toward
s the danger of death that awaited her. All this crossed her mind in a very short space of time and she opened her eyes and looked at Eşber. Eşber was sitting as though mesmerised.
Sensing that this mesmerised moment was not going to last long, she suddenly jumped up. She had on a thin jumper and only socks on her feet. With tremendous courage and strength she opened the door and threw herself outside. It was snowing, snow that soon would turn to a blizzard, as the train that would take her to life advanced reluctantly. She began to run through the snow, sinking every step of the way. She heard the sounds of the wolves, which strangely didn’t frighten her. As if the wolf whose eye she’d saved just now would protect her from all danger.
She saw the train passing in front of the house and was running to reach this miraculous means of transportation that scattered sparks from its wheels, to this iron heap emitting growls, but the snow in which she sank to her knees was holding her back. She heard Eşber’s voice echoing in the darkness of the night. Not a voice but a blood-curdling wail. He was saying, ‘Don’t go!’ He was calling her.
She had got to the door of the train, and managed to reach up and open it, but she just could not get on. She could only run alongside the moving carriages. She felt Eşber was getting very close, could almost feel his breath, but didn’t dare look behind her. Then she felt a hand grab her jumper and drag her down as if dragging her to death. She knew she’d die if she didn’t board the train. Despite Eşber’s powerful hands still tugging at her jumper, she managed to leap on board, and grab the steel handle of the train door with all the strength in her frozen hands. Snow was filling her eyes, and the icy wind created by the train was overpowering her.
