by Orhan Pamuk
19
Recep Serves the Quiet Dinner Table
They are sitting at the table, in the pale light of the lamp, eating hungrily. First Nilgün talks to Faruk, they laugh together, then Metin Bey gets up before even swallowing the last bite in his mouth, not even answering Madam with a nod when she asks where he’s going, and leaves the others to keep up the conversation with her: How are you, Grandmother. And since there isn’t anything that hasn’t been said, they say, Come on, tomorrow let’s take you for a ride in the car, they’ve built apartments everywhere, new houses, roads, bridges, let’s go have a look at them, Grandmother, they say, but Madam is quiet, sometimes she mutters something, but they can’t make out any words, since she is looking down at her napkin, as though finding fault with what she is chewing, as though she’s astonished that they still haven’t figured out their grandmother isn’t capable of any reaction except disgust. At that point they realize, as I do, that it’s better to be quiet, but then they forget and start annoying her again, before remembering that they shouldn’t, and now they start to whisper among themselves.
“You’re drinking a lot again, Faruk!” said Nilgün.
“What are you whispering about?” said Madam.
“Nothing,” said Nilgün. “Why aren’t you eating your eggplant, Grandmother? Recep baked it fresh tonight, didn’t you, Recep?”
“Yes, miss,” I said.
Madam frowned to show her disgust, and her face stayed that way, out of habit; the face of an old person who had forgotten why she was annoyed but determined never to forget that she was obliged to be … They fell quiet, and I was waiting two or three feet away, behind the table. No sound but that of the knives and forks under the pale light the sleepy moths kept circling: at that hour, the garden fell quiet too, a few crickets, some rustling trees, and in the distance, all summer long, on the other side of the garden wall, the holiday makers with their cars, ice cream, and the colored lamps hung on trees … In the winter they, too, would be gone, and the silent darkness of the trees on the other side of the walls would make my hair stand on end so I’d want to scream, but I can’t, or I’d even like to talk to Madam, but she won’t, so I’m quiet and I look at her wondering how a person can live like that without talking, and her hands creep slowly like spiders across the tabletop terrifying me. In the old days Doğan Bey kept silent, too, head bowed, intimidated, like a child; she would belittle him. Even longer ago, Selâhattin Bey, his thundering more feeble than intimidating, would spew his curses, as he struggled to fill his lungs with air … This country, this damn country!…
“Recep!”
She said she wanted fruit. I took away the dirty dishes and served the watermelon I had prepared for them. They ate it without speaking, then I went down to the kitchen to heat up some water for the washing up, before going back upstairs to find them still eating in silence. Maybe they finally understood that words are useless, or maybe they didn’t want to waste their breath like people in the coffeehouses. But there are times when words can touch people, too, that I know. Somebody says hello, he listens to you tell about your life, then he tells you about his, and you listen to him, and in this way we each see our life through another’s eyes. Nilgün ate the watermelon seeds, just like her mother.
Madam turned her head toward me: “Untie me!”
“Why don’t you stay a little longer, Grandmother,” Faruk Bey said.
“It’s all right, Recep, I’ll take her up …,” Nilgün was saying. But when Madam’s napkin was untied, she stood up and leaned on me.
We went up the steps. At the ninth we rested.
“Faruk was drinking again, wasn’t he?” she said.
“No, Madam,” I said. “What gave you that idea?”
“Don’t stick up for them,” she said, and she raised her hand with the cane in it as if she were going to whip a naughty child, but not at me. Then we continued on our way.
“Eighteen, nineteen, thank goodness!” she said and went into her room; I put her to bed, and when I asked, she said she didn’t want fruit.
“Close the door!”
Downstairs, Faruk Bey had taken out the bottle he had hidden and put it on the table, and they were talking.
“Strange thoughts are going through my mind,” he said.
“Like the ones you tell me about every night?” said Nilgün.
“Yes, but I haven’t told you everything!” said Faruk Bey.
“Fine, play your word games,” said Nilgün.
Faruk Bey looked hurt. “I think my head is like a walnut with worms crawling around inside!” he finally said.
“What?” said Nilgün.
“Yes,” said Faruk Bey. “I feel like I have worms crawling around in my brain.”
I took the last of the dirty plates down to the kitchen and started washing up. These worms get into your intestines, Selâhattin Bey would tell us, if you eat raw meat, or go around barefoot, worms, you understand? We had just come from our village, we didn’t understand. My mother had died. Doğan Bey felt sorry for us and brought us here: Recep, you help my mother with the housework; Ismail, you stay with him, downstairs, you can have this room, and eventually I’m going to do something for you both, why should you have to pay for the sins of those two? I kept quiet … Recep, would you also keep an eye on my father, he drinks a lot, okay? I was quiet again, I couldn’t even say, Fine, Doğan Bey. Then he left us here and went off to the military. Madam kept complaining while I was learning about the kitchen, and every once in a while Selâhattin Bey would come in and ask, So, Recep, how is life in your village? Tell me, what do they do there? Is there a mosque, do you go to prayers? And in your opinion, how do earthquakes happen? What causes the seasons? Are you afraid of me, son, don’t be afraid, I’m your father, how old are you, do you know, you don’t even know your age, you’re thirteen, your brother Ismail is twelve, I don’t blame you for being afraid and holding your tongue, I wasn’t able to take care of you, I know, I had to send you to the village, to those fools, but I was obliged to do it, I’m writing a long book, it contains all the knowledge of the world, have you ever heard of something called an encyclopedia? Ah, what a shame, but where would you have heard of such a thing, anyway, don’t be scared, tell me, how did your mother die, what a good woman, she had the particular beauty of our people, did she tell you everything, she didn’t? Fine, but if Fatma does anything mean to you, come up to my study and tell me, and don’t be afraid. I wasn’t afraid. I washed the dishes, I worked for forty years … I caught myself daydreaming. When I finished the dishes and put them away, I was tired, I took off my apron and sat down, Let me relax a little, I said, but then I remembered the coffee, so I got up and went outside to where they were. They were still talking.
“I don’t understand how you can spend the whole day looking at things written down on documents in the archives, only to come home and spend the evening thinking about things that exist only in your mind!” said Nilgün.
“And what would you have me think about?” said Faruk Bey.
“Look at actual facts,” said Nilgün. “At what’s happening, at the causes …”
“Facts are written down on paper, too …”
“Sure they are, but they correspond to things in the real world, don’t they?”
“They do.”
“Well, that’s what you should write!”
“But when I read these facts they’re not in the outside world, they’re inside my head. I have to write what’s in my mind. And in my mind there are worms.”
“That’s crazy!” said Nilgün.
They couldn’t agree. They fell quiet looking at the garden. They seemed a little sad, somehow pained, but at the same time perplexed. As though they were looking at their own thoughts and not seeing what they were actually looking at, not seeing the plants of the garden, the fig trees, and the hiding places of the crickets. But what can you see in thoughts? Pain, grief, hope, curiosity, longing, all those things stay with you to the end and your mind
will wear itself out if you don’t put something else in there, where did I hear that, your mind will be like two millstones with no grist between them. Then: you go crazy! Dr. Selâhattin was a perfectly ordinary doctor until he got involved in politics; he was exiled from Istanbul, he buried himself in books and went insane. What liars, old gossips, no, he wasn’t crazy, I saw him with my own eyes, what wrong did he do except settling down to drink after dinner and occasionally overdoing it, otherwise he’d sit all day at his desk and write. Afterward once in a while he’d come and talk to me. The world is like the apple from that forbidden tree, he told me one day, it is only because you believe in lies and are afraid that you don’t pick it and eat it; pick the fruit of the tree of knowledge and eat it, my son, look, I’ve picked it and I’ve become a free man, the whole world is yours for the taking, would you at least answer me? I was afraid and I remained quiet. I knew myself. And I was afraid of the devil … I got the idea to take a little walk, maybe go to the coffeehouse.
“What kind of worms,” said Nilgün, by now exasperated.
“A whole load of unrelated facts. They won’t stop squirming around my mind after all this reading and thinking.”
“And you claim they are unrelated,” said Nilgün.
“I can’t establish relationships with any conviction,” said Faruk. “Anyway I believe that they should arise naturally from the facts themselves, without my butting in, but it doesn’t happen. As soon as I think I see a causal link, I immediately sense that this is something my own mind has just imposed. At that moment, events start to resemble horrible worms. They jump around between the folds of my brain as though they were hanging in the void …”
“Well, why do you think that’s so?” said Nilgün.
“Perhaps I’m getting old.”
They stopped talking. It seemed as though they were content to disagree with each other. When two people across from each other fall silent, that silence sometimes says more than if the two were talking. I sometimes think it would be nice to have a friend I could be silent with.
“Faruk Bey,” I said. “I’m going to the coffeehouse. Do you want anything?”
“What’s that?” he said. “No, no thanks, Recep.”
I went down into the garden, I felt the coolness of the plants and as soon as I went out the gate I realized that I wasn’t going to the coffeehouse. The Friday-night crowd would be there, and I couldn’t face that again. I just kept walking and got beyond the coffeehouse without anyone seeing me, even Ismail, who was selling lottery tickets. Slipping past the lit-up windows I went out on the breakwater, which was deserted, and I sat down by the water, looking at the reflection of the colored lights strung up on the trees, adrift in thought. When I’d sat long enough, I went up the hill as far as the pharmacy: Kemal Bey was sitting behind his counter, gazing at the people across the way, relaxing and talking loudly as they had their sandwiches in the light of the buffet. He didn’t see me. Better not disturb him! I came back home very quickly; without seeing anyone or saying hello to a soul. After I closed the garden gate behind me I saw them beyond the din and the trees, under the little pale lamp of the balcony: one was at the head of the table, the other had moved a little away from it, leaning back and balancing on a chair’s rear legs, which could barely support the weight; brother and sister, perfectly still, as if afraid to make a move or a sound and maybe a little out of not wanting to arouse the accusing expression of the old woman who was lurking behind the open shutters upstairs. Then for a moment, as she closed the window, Madam’s shadow appeared clearly; it seemed she had the cane in her hand, and then the shadow, cruel and pitiless, briefly fell on the garden. I silently climbed up the balcony steps.
“Sleep well!” I said. “I’m going to bed.”
“Of course,” said Nilgün. “You go to bed, Recep, I’ll clean up the table tomorrow morning.”
“Better not wait. It’ll attract the cats,” said Faruk. “Toward morning, they come right up to the house, never mind that I’m sitting here, the shameless things.”
I went down to the kitchen, took some apricots from the cupboard, and some cherries left over from yesterday; I washed them and brought them upstairs arranged on a plate.
“Madam, your fruit.”
She didn’t say anything. I left it on the table and closed the door. I went downstairs and washed myself before going to my room. Sometimes I notice that I have a smell. I put on my pajamas, turned out the light, then quietly opened the window and got into bed; I waited for morning, with my head on the pillow.
I’ll head out early and take a walk. I’ll go to the market, maybe I’ll see Hasan again, or somebody else, and we’ll talk, maybe they’ll listen to me! If only I were more of a talker! Then they would listen. Faruk Bey, I would say then, you drink too much. If you keep on like this, like your father, like your grandfather, God forbid, you’ll die from a bleeding stomach! It seems fresh to me: Rasim died, I’m going to the funeral tomorrow; we’ll go up the hill behind the coffin in the noon heat. I’ll see Ismail, Hello, brother, he’ll say, why don’t you ever stop by? Always the same words! I remember when our mother and my father, the father we had in the village, took Ismail and me to the doctor. The doctor said that being a dwarf came from being beaten at an early age, then he added, Make sure they get sunshine. Let the little one’s leg get some sun, it might correct itself. Fine, but what about his big brother, said my mother. I was listening carefully. He’s not going to change now, said the doctor. He’ll always be small, but have him take these pills, they might do some good. I swallowed the pills, but they didn’t do any good. I thought for a little bit about Madam and her cane and her cruelty, but don’t think about it, Recep! Then I thought about that beautiful woman, the one who every morning at nine thirty would come to the store, and later I’d see her at the butcher’s, too. I don’t see her these days. Tall, thin, dark haired! She smells nice, even at the butcher’s. I wanted to talk to her: Don’t you have a manservant, my lady, you’re doing your own shopping, isn’t your husband rich? How pretty she looks when she watches the machine grind up the meat for her. My mother was raven haired, too. My poor mother! And we turned out like this. Look at me, still in this house. You’re thinking too much: don’t think, sleep. I yawned, without a sound, and I was startled by the silence: strange! Like winter nights. On winter nights when it’s cold and I get scared I tell myself a story. Try to think of one! Something from the newspaper? No, one of the stories my mother told: Once upon a time, there was a sultan who had no children. I used to think, as my mother was telling the story, didn’t he even have children like us, this sultan? Oh, the poor sultan, I felt sorry for him, and I loved my mother, Ismail, and myself even more. Our room, our things … If only I had a book like my mother’s fables, if it had big letters, I would read and read, I would fall asleep thinking about them.
20
Hasan Feels the Pressure of Peers
After dinner, when my father went off to the casino to sell his tickets, I left the house, too, without saying anything to my mother. When I got to the coffeehouse everyone was already there, including two new guys. Mustafa was explaining things to them. I sat down without drawing attention to myself and listened: So, said Mustafa, two superpowers, America and the Soviets, want to divide up the world, and that Jew Marx lies when he says that what makes the world go round is what he called the class struggle, it’s nationalism and the most extreme nationalists are the Russians and the Europeans. Then he told them that the center of the world was the Middle East and the key to the Middle East was Turkey. It was the superpowers, he explained, that had started the argument over “Are you first a Muslim or a Turk?” using their agents to divide us. These agents are all around, they’ve infiltrated everywhere, he said, and unfortunately, they might even be among us. There was a nervous quiet for a little while, after which Mustafa told them how we used to be united and that unity terrified them to the point of throwing up blood, those treacherous, slanderous, imperialist Europeans, with t
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