by Orhan Pamuk
The avenue was pretty crowded. Cars waiting in front of the ice-cream shop and groups of three or four walking together tied up the traffic. I looked presentable in my tie and jacket but I can’t stand crowds like that; I turned off into a side street. The kids were playing hide-and-seek between the cars on the narrow streets in the blue light coming from the televisions. When I was little I used to think that I would be good at this game, but I never had the courage to join in with them like Ismail. But if I had played I would have hidden myself best of all, maybe here, in the ruins of the caravanserai that my mother said had had plague or, for example, in the village, in the haystack, and if I never came out, then who would they have made fun of, I wondered, but my mother would have looked for me, she would have said, Ismail, where’s your brother? And Ismail would have pulled on his nose and said, How would I know, as I stayed hidden listening to them, whispering, I live in secret, all by myself, Mother, where no one can see me, only my mother would then start to cry so much that I’d come out, saying, Look, here I am, I’m not hiding anymore, see, I’m not hiding anymore, Mother, and my mother would have said, Why were you hiding, my son, and I would have thought, Maybe she’s right, what use is hiding, what’s to be gained living in secret? I would have forgotten for a moment.
I saw them as they moved quickly down the avenue. Sitki Bey, grown up and married, with his wife, and he even had a kid as tall as I was. He recognized me, smiled, and paused.
“Hello, Recep Efendi,” he said. “How are you?”
I always waited for them to talk first.
“Hello, Sitki Bey,” I said. “I’m fine, thank you.”
I shook hands with him. Not with his wife. The children were staring in fear and curiosity.
“Sweetie, Recep Bey’s been living here in Cennethisar longer than just about anybody else.”
His wife nodded with a smile. I was happy, proud of being one of the old-timers here.
“How’s Grandma?”
“Oh,” I said, “Madam always complains, but she’s fine.”
“How many years has it been?” he said. “Where is Faruk?”
“They’re coming tomorrow,” I said.
He started explaining to his wife that Faruk Bey was his childhood friend. Then without shaking hands, just nodding, we said good-bye and parted. Now he was talking to his wife about his childhood and about me, how I took them to the well when they were little and showed them how to fish for mullet, and then the kid would finally ask his question: “Daddy, why is that man so small?” I used to say: Because my mother gave birth before she got married. But Sitki Bey got married, Faruk Bey got married, and they had no kids at all. But because my mother had done just the opposite, Madam sent her, along with us, to the village. Before she sent us, there were words and she threatened us all with her cane, and my mother pleaded, Don’t do that, Madam, what fault of the children’s is it? Sometimes, I think I heard those words, on that terrible day …
In the well-lit street of the movie theater, I heard the music they play before the film starts. I looked at still shots from the film that was showing: Let’s Meet in Paradise. It’s an old film: in one scene, Hülya Koçyiğit and Ediz Hun are in each other’s arms, then Ediz is in prison, then Hülya is singing a song, but you’d never be able to tell what order these things happened in until you’d seen the film. This probably occurred to them when they put the pictures up; it gets people interested. I went to the ticket window, One please. The woman pulled off a ticket and rose a little from her seat so as to hold it out to me
“Is the film any good?” I asked.
She hadn’t seen it. Sometimes, out of the blue, I just want to talk to someone like this. I took my seat and waited.
When first they meet, the girl is a singer and doesn’t like him, but the next day, when the guy saves her from those villains, she likes him and then realizes she loves him, but her father is against their getting married. Then the guy goes to prison. I didn’t go out with the crowd at the intermission. When it started again, the girl marries the son of the nightclub owner, but they don’t have any kids and they don’t do anything about it either. Eventually, the husband runs off after a bad woman and Ediz escapes from prison. In a house near the Istanbul Bridge, he meets Hülya Koçyiğit, who sings a song. The song left me in a strange mood. At the end, she wants to free herself from the lousy husband, and since he’s met his own punishment anyway, we figure out that they are going to get married. Her father is looking at them warmly from behind as they are walking arm in arm on the road, walking, getting smaller and smaller and THE END.
After the lights came up, and everybody was filing out, buzzing about the film, I wanted to talk about it with someone, too. It was ten after eleven. Madam would be waiting, but I didn’t want to return home.
I walked toward the beach over to the hill. Maybe Kemal Bey, the pharmacist, would be on duty and not feeling sleepy. I’ll barge in, we’ll talk, I’ll tell him things, he’ll listen to me, lost in thought, staring into the lights of the food stand across the way at the kids shouting at one another and racing their cars. When I saw that the pharmacy lights were on, I was happy. He hadn’t gone to bed. I opened the door and the bell rang. Oh God, it wasn’t Kemal Bey but his wife.
“Hello,” I said and paused. “I need an aspirin.”
“A box or one tablet,” said the wife.
“Two tablets. I have a headache. I’m a little bored … Kemal Bey …,” I said, but she wasn’t listening. She had her scissors out and was cutting the individual aspirin packets.
“Did Kemal Bey already go out for the morning fish?” I said.
“Kemal’s asleep upstairs.”
I looked at the ceiling for a minute and considered that, just two inches above it, my friend lay sleeping. If he happened to stir, I would tell him about my evening. He might have something to say about those kids at the coffeehouse, but then again he might not, he might simply stare out in that bewildered way, so thoughtful, as I talked, as we talked. I took the change his wife set out with her little white hands. Then I looked around and saw lying there right on the couch one of those photo novels for all to see. Nice lady! I said good night and left without troubling her further; the bell jingled again. The streets were emptier, and the children playing hide-and-seek had gone home.
As I latched the garden gate behind me, I saw Madam’s light through the shutters: she could never sleep before I went to bed. I went in through the kitchen door and locked it behind me, too, and as I slowly climbed up the stairs I wondered, Were there steps in the dwarves’ house in Üsküdar? Which paper was it, I would go and get from the store tomorrow, Do you have yesterday’s Tercüman, our Faruk Bey is looking for it, I’d say. He’s a historian, he is interested in the ‘History Corner …’
“I’m here, Madam,” I said, finding her lying in bed.
“Well done,” she said. “You finally managed to find your way home.”
“The film was over late, what was I supposed to do?”
“Did you make sure of the doors?”
“I closed them,” I said. “Do you want anything before I’m sound asleep in bed?”
“They are coming tomorrow, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve made up their beds and prepared their rooms.”
“Okay,” she said. “Close my door tight.”
Downstairs, I went right to bed and to sleep.
2
Grandmother Waits in Bed
I listen to him going down the stairs one by one. What does he do in the streets until all hours? I wonder. Don’t think about it, Fatma, you’ll only get disgusted. But still, I wonder. Did he shut the doors tight, that sneaky dwarf? He couldn’t care less! He’ll get right into bed to prove he’s a born servant, snore all night long. Sleep that untroubled, carefree sleep of a servant, and leave me to the night. I think that sleep will come for me, too, and I’ll forget, but I wait all alone and I realize that I’m waiting in vain.
Selâhattin used
to say that sleep is a chemical phenomenon, one day they’ll discover its formula just as they discovered that H2O is the formula for water. Oh, not our fools, of course, unfortunately it’ll be the Europeans again who find it, and then no one will have to put on funny pajamas and sleep between these useless sheets and under ridiculous flowered quilts and lie there until morning just because he’s tired. At that time, all we’ll have to do is to put three drops from a bottle into a glass of water every evening and then drink it, and it will make us as fit and fresh as if we had just woken up in the morning from a deep sleep. Think of all the things we could do with those extra hours, Fatma, think of it!
I don’t have to think about it, Selâhattin, I know. I stare at the ceiling, I stare and stare and wait for some thought to carry me away, but it doesn’t happen. If I could drink wine or raki, maybe I could sleep like you, but I don’t want that kind of ugly sleep. You used to drink two bottles: I drink to clear my mind and relieve my exhaustion from working on the encyclopedia, Fatma, it’s not for pleasure. Then you would doze off, snoring with your mouth open until the smell of raki would drive me away in disgust. Cold woman, poor thing, you’re like ice, you have no spirit! If you had a glass now and again, you’d understand! Come on, have a drink, Fatma, I’m ordering you, don’t you believe you have to do what your husband tells you. Of course, you believe it, that’s what they taught you, well, then, I’m ordering you: Drink, let the sin be mine, come on, drink, Fatma, set your mind free. It’s your husband who wants it, come on, oh God! She’s making me beg. I’m sick of this loneliness, please, Fatma, have one drink, or you’ll be disobeying your husband.
No, I wouldn’t fall for a lie in the form of a serpent. I never drank, except once. I was overcome with curiosity. When nobody at all was around. A taste like salt, lemon, and poison on the tip of my tongue. At that moment I was terrified. I was sorry. I rinsed my mouth out right away, I emptied out the glass and rinsed it over and over and I began to feel I would be dizzy. I sat down so I wouldn’t fall on the floor, my God, I was afraid I would become an alcoholic like him, too, but nothing happened. Then I understood and relaxed. The devil couldn’t get near me.
I’m staring at the ceiling. I still can’t get to sleep, might as well get up. I get up, open the shutter quietly, because the mosquitoes don’t bother me. I peek out the shutters a little; the wind has died down, a still night. Even the fig tree isn’t rustling. Recep’s light is off. Just as I figured: right to sleep, since he has nothing to think about, the dwarf. Cook the food, do my little handful of laundry and the shopping, and even then he gets rotten peaches, and afterward, he prowls around the streets for hours.
I can’t see the sea, but I think of how far it extends and how much farther it could go. The big, wide world! Noisy motorboats and those rowboats you get into with nothing on, but they smell nice, I like them. I hear the cricket. It’s only moved a foot in a week. Then again, I haven’t moved even that much. I used to think the world was a beautiful place; I was a child, a fool. I close the shutters and fasten the bolt: let the world stay out there.
I sit down on the chair slowly, looking at the tabletop. Things in silence. A half-full pitcher, the water in it standing motionless. When I want to drink I remove the glass cover, fill it, listening to and watching the water flow; the glass tinkles; the water runs; cool air rises; it’s unique; it fascinates me. I’m fascinated, but I don’t drink. Not yet. You have to be careful using up the things that make the time pass. I look at my hairbrush and see my hairs caught in it. I pick it up and begin to clean it out. The weak thin hairs of my ninety years. They’re falling out one by one. Time, I whisper, what they call our years; we shed them that way, too. I stop and set the brush down. It lies there like an insect on its back, revolting me. If I leave everything this way and nobody touches it for a thousand years, that’s how it will stay for a thousand years. Things on top of a table, a key or a water pitcher. How strange; everything in its place, without moving! Then my thoughts would freeze too, colorless and odorless and just sitting there, like a piece of ice.
But tomorrow they’ll come and I’ll think again. Hello, hello, how are you, they’ll kiss my hand, many happy returns, how are you, Grandmother, how are you, how are you, Grandmother? I’ll take a look at them. Don’t all talk at once, come here and let me have a look at you, come close, tell me, what have you been doing? I know I’ll be asking to be fooled, and I’ll listen blankly to a few lines of deception! Well, is that all, haven’t you anything more to say to your grandmother? They’ll look at one another, talk among themselves, I’ll hear and understand. Then they’ll start to shout. Don’t shout, don’t shout, thank God my ears can still hear. Excuse me, Grandmother, it’s just that our other grandmother doesn’t hear well. I’m not your mother’s mother, I’m your father’s mother. Excuse me, Granny, excuse me! All right, all right, tell me something, that other grandmother of yours, what’s she like? They’ll suddenly get confused and become quiet. What is our other grandmother like? Then I’ll realize that they haven’t learned how to see or understand yet, that’s all right, I’ll ask them again but just as I’m about to ask them, I see that they’ve forgotten all about it. They’re not interested in me or my room or what I’m asking, but in their own thoughts, as I am in mine even now.
I reach out and pick an apricot from the plate. I eat it, waiting. It does no good. Here I am, in the midst of things, not thoughts. I look at the table. It’s five to twelve. Next to the clock is the bottle of cologne, next to that the newspaper, and then my handkerchief. They stay that way. I look at them, my eyes travel across them and examine the surfaces to see if they have something more to say to me, but they have reminded me of so much already that they have nothing left to say. Just a bottle of cologne, a newspaper, a handkerchief, a key, and a clock; it ticks and no one, not even Selâhattin, knows what time is. One moment and then another right behind it, each smaller and smaller, my thoughts going from here to there, but don’t get stuck in one of those thoughts, wiggle away, jump outside, quick come over here, outside of time and this room. I eat another apricot, but I don’t go outside: I look at the things even more, and it seems I try to busy myself until I am fed up with the same old things. If I weren’t there, if no one were there, these things would stay this way forever and then no one could possibly think he didn’t know what life was. No one!
No, I am not distracted by these things. I got up from the chair, went to the bathroom, washed my face, and I went back, ignoring the spiderweb that hung down from the corner where it was. When you turn the switch, the lamp hanging from the ceiling goes off, only the one by the head of my bed stays on, and I get into bed. It’s warm out, but I can’t do without a quilt, what could I do, something to snuggle up in, get under, and hide inside. I put my head down on the pillow, I wait and I know that sleep will not come right away. The weak light of the lamp strikes the ceiling; I listen to the cricket. Hot summer nights!
But it seems the summers used to be hotter. We drank lemonade and had sherbet. Not in the street, though, not from the men in white aprons; my mother would say, We’ll make it at home, where it’s clean, Fatma, as we were coming back from the market, nothing new in the shops. We would wait for my father in the evening, he would come and talk and we would listen; he smelled of tobacco and coughed when he spoke. Once he said, Fatma, there’s a doctor who wants you. I said nothing! I was quiet, and my father didn’t say anything, but the next day again, and I was only fifteen years old, my mother said, “Look, Fatma, they say he’s a doctor,” and I thought: How strange, I wonder when he could have seen me. I was afraid and didn’t ask, but I thought again, Doctor? Egghead? Then my father added: They say he has a good future, Fatma, I asked all around, hardworking and maybe a little greedy, but an honorable and clever man, think on it. I was silent. It was very hot, we were having sherbet. Well, I don’t know. Finally, I said, “All right,” and then my father made me stand in front of him: My girl, you’re going forth from your father’s house, get that thro
ugh your head. He was telling me not to ask too many questions; curiosity is for cats, okay, Father, I know. And let me tell you again, my girl, don’t do that with your hand, look, and stop biting your fingernails, how old are you now. Okay, Daddy, I won’t ask, yes, but: I didn’t ask.
I didn’t ask. It had been four years, and we still didn’t have a child. Fault of the air in Istanbul, I later understood. One summer evening, Selâhattin came straight to me instead of going to his library and he said, “We’re not going to live in Istanbul anymore, Fatma!” I didn’t ask, “Why, Selâhattin?” but he told me anyway, jumping around like a gangly kid. We’re not going to live in Istanbul anymore, Fatma, because Talat Pasha called me today and this is what he said: Dr. Selâhattin, you will no longer live in Istanbul, and you will have nothing to do with politics! That’s what he said to me, the son of a bitch. You’ve done what I said not to do, you think you’re such a hero, the Pasha said, well, I guess you wouldn’t like it if I sent you off with the others on the first ship to the prison in Sinop, but what should I do, you’ve been a lot of trouble, you’ve got yourself involved in the party, but you seem like a sensible man, be reasonable, you’re married, a doctor, you’ve got a good profession, you can make enough money to live comfortably anywhere in the world, how’s your French, my friend? Goddamn him! Do you understand, Fatma, these Unionists are going off the deep end, they can’t stand freedom, how are they different from Abdülhamit? Okay, Talat Pasha, if I accept your invitation and pack up my things right away, don’t think that it’s because I’m afraid of the dungeon in Sinop: no! It’s because I know I can still give you the answer you deserve from Paris, but not from the corner of a dungeon. We’re going to Paris, Fatma, sell one of your diamonds or rings. If you don’t want to, okay, I still have some property left from my father, or we can go to Salonica instead of Europe, why should we leave the country, we’ll go to Damascus, look at Dr. Reza, he went to Alexandria and writes that he’s earning a lot there, where are my letters, I can’t find them, didn’t I tell you not to touch things on my desk, and God, there’s Berlin, too, but did you ever hear of Geneva, they’ve become worse than Abdülhamit, well, don’t just stand there staring at me dumbfounded, get the bags and trunks ready, a freedom fighter’s wife has to be strong, doesn’t she, there’s nothing to fear. I was silent, didn’t say a thing, you know best, and I listened as Selâhattin, talking all the while, told me what they were able to do to Abdülhamit from Paris, how he was going to take care of this lot from Paris, too, how the day would come when we would come back in victory by train from Paris! Then he said, no, not Damascus, he said Izmir, and in the evening he was saying Trebizond would do, We have to sell whatever we have, Fatma, are you ready for sacrifice? I want to give all my strength to the struggle, that’s why, don’t say anything in front of the maids and servants, Fatma, the walls have ears, but Mr. Talat, you didn’t even have to tell me to go: I wouldn’t stay in this whorehouse called Istanbul a moment longer anyway, but, Fatma, where should we go, say something, I was silent and thinking, He’s really just a child. Yes, the devil could only fool a child that much, I realized I had married a child who could be led astray by three books. Later, in the middle of the night, I came out of my room, it was hot, I said, Let me get something to drink, I saw a light in his room and I went there, quietly opened the door, and there was Selâhattin with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands, crying. A harsh light fell on his face from the lamp that was almost burned out. The skull he always kept on his desk was staring at him as he wept. I pulled the door shut quietly, I went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water, and I thought, Well, he’s a child, a child.
