by Orhan Pamuk
Fine, Fatma, as you wish, but what you did was inhuman, you broke the little one’s leg, I don’t know what you did to the big one, he’s bruised all over and acts like he’s suffered a stroke. I’ll put up with all of this but only for the sake of my encyclopedia, sending them off this way, I’ve found a poor old man who is willing to adopt them in exchange for a goodly sum. I’ll have to call Avram the jeweler again soon, well, what can we do, the price of our sins, okay, fine, fine, don’t start that again, you’ve committed no sins, for the price of my sins, then, only from now on don’t ask me why I drink so much, leave me in peace, you go work in your empty kitchen, I’m going upstairs to write the entry on infinity and clocks now, before you bring out any more of my demons, go lock yourself in your room, get into your cold bed, lie there all night like a little owl, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep.
I’m still lying here and I still can’t sleep. When night comes and I’m all alone, then I’ll breathe in the scent of these things, taste them, touch them with my hand, and I’ll think: The water, the pitcher, the keys, the handkerchief, the peach, the cologne, the plate, the table, the clock … They all sit there, just like me, all around me in the quiet emptiness, they creak, they rattle, in the silence of the night, they seem to be purifying themselves of sin, of guilt. It’s then, at night, that time is truly time, and all the objects come closer to me, just as I come closer to myself.
24
Faruk and Nilgün See Everything from Above
In my dream, an old man in a cape was twirling around me and shouting, “Faruk, Faruk!” I gathered he was going to tell me the secret of history, but he was dragging things out to the point that I couldn’t bear the anticipation anymore, and I woke up drenched in sweat. I could hear the noise from the beach now, the sounds of the cars and motorboats coming from over by the garden gate. The long afternoon nap had done no good: I was still exhausted.
I went downstairs and into the kitchen, and as I grabbed hold of the refrigerator door handle in my habitual way, I felt that same sense of anticipation, as if something would happen in my life, something, whatever it was, that would make me forget about the archives, those stories, and history. Opening the door, I looked into the fridge’s gleaming interior as if peering into a jeweler’s window: the sight of the pitchers, bottles in different colors, tomatoes, eggs, cherries, somehow beguiled me and made me forget my cares. But they also seemed to say: No, you can’t be distracted by us anymore; you must find consolation by renouncing the pleasures of the world and cutting yourself off from it. And I wondered: Should I be like my grandfather, like my father, and abandon everything and shut myself up here, go every day to Gebze and sit at the desk devoting myself to a single work, a composition of millions of words, with no beginning and no end? Should I do all that not to change the world but merely to describe how things are?
The cool wind had picked up. The clouds had drawn closer, too. There was going to be a lodos, the strong southerly wind. Seeing Recep’s closed shutters, I concluded he must be asleep in his room. Nilgün was sitting over by the chicken coop with her sandals off, pressing her bare feet against the earth. I wandered around in the garden for a bit, playing with the well and the pump a little, like a bored child, remembering my adolescence. When I started thinking about my wife again, I went upstairs, turned into my room, and randomly opened a volume of Evliya Çelebi’s travels, reading whatever caught my eye.
He was telling of a trip through Western Anatolia in the mid-seventeenth century: he described Akhisar, the town of Marmara, then a small village, and the hot springs of the town. The waters of the hot spring coated a person’s skin like wax and were supposed to be good for leprosy if one drank of them for forty days. Then I read how he’d had one of the pools repaired and cleaned, bathing in it with great pleasure. I reread this part and rather envied Evliya for being able to enjoy himself with no feeling of guilt or sin; I wished I could put myself in his place. He had the date of restoration inscribed on one of the columns around the pool. Later, he went through Gediz on horseback. He wrote of all these things without pause, in an easy and assured rhythm, with the relentless enthusiasm of a drummer striking his instrument in the mehter military band. I closed the book and thought about how he was able to do this, how he could match so nicely what he’d done with what he wrote and how he managed to see himself from the outside, as though looking at someone else. If I tried to do the same thing, for example, and tell my friend these things in a letter, it wouldn’t be nearly as clear or as genial: I’d be intruding myself into things; my confused and guilty mind would cast a veil over the naked reality of everything. What I’d wind up doing and what I’d intended, the things as they are and my judgments of them, they would all get mixed up together, and no matter how painstakingly I pressed my nose against the surfaces of things, I’d never be able to establish as direct and true a relationship as Evliya had.
I opened the book and read some more, about the city of Turgutlu, the city of Nif, and Ulucakli and a nice evening spent there: “We pitched our tents alongside an excellent spring, got ourselves a nice fat lamb, and without a worry or a care, we made kebabs and ate them.” And so: pleasure and good cheer rendered as plain and simple as the natural world. The world is a place to be described and experienced as it is, usually with equanimity, occasionally with gusto or as something bittersweet; but it’s not a place for finding fault or cause for anger while you’re in it.
Maybe sly Evliya was only fooling his readers. Maybe he was actually someone not unlike me except he knew how to write well, an able liar: maybe he sees the trees and birds, houses and walls, no differently than I do, but he can trick you with his literary skill. I couldn’t convince myself one way or the other, but after reading a little more, I decided this was no case of skill alone but rather of intuition and an open mind. Evliya’s awareness of the world, the trees, houses, and people, was utterly different from ours. Then I wondered how this could be, how could Evliya’s mind have developed this way. After I drink a lot and feel really sorry for myself, thinking about my wife, I sometimes call out desperately for someone or something, as if trapped in a nightmare that I can’t wake up from and escape. It was with that sort of despair that I was now asking my question: Can’t I be like him, can’t I make my thoughts, the structure of my brain, like his? Couldn’t I portray the world from start to finish with the same clarity as he does?
I closed the book and tossed it aside. I cheered myself by saying there was no reason I couldn’t do it, or at least devote my life to this ideal with real determination. I could start as he did by describing the world and history from whatever point I first encountered each particular part of it. It would just be a matter of lining up the facts, as he does when he tells who had so many akçe in Manisa, so many fiefs, so many timar holdings, so many troops. All these details are just sitting in the archives anyway, waiting for me. I could transcribe those documents with the same ease that Evliya talked about buildings, traditions, and customs. And I could present them without inserting my own judgments at all, just as he does. I’d add only telling details, as when he tells us some mosque was covered with tiles or with lead. That way, my history would be nothing more than a seamless picture of things, just like Evliya’s voluminous travels. Secure in this knowledge, I could interrupt my endless succession of facts once in a while, as he does, to acknowledge that there are other things in the world and so I’d write at the head of a page
Story
just to let my readers know that my narrative has otherwise been scrubbed clean of those pleasant tales typically offered for people who expect and enjoy them. If someone should bother someday to read my work, which will run significantly longer than Evliya Çelebi’s six thousand pages, he would find there in black and white the whole cloudy mass of history exactly as it exists in my mind, and as in Evliya, natural things, like a tree, a bird, a pebble, will give the reader to feel that behind each description is an equally natural reality. In this way I’ll free myself
at last from the strange worms of history that I feel wandering through the folds of my brain. On that day of liberation, perhaps I’ll finally go swim in the sea with as much pleasure as Evliya found in his pool.
A car was obnoxiously blowing its horn. I quickly got up from the bed and went downstairs and out into the garden. The wind had picked up, the clouds were closer: rain was on the way. I lit a cigarette, walked across the garden, and found myself out on the street walking. Yes, show me now whatever you have to show me, all you walls, windows, cars, balconies, and people cooking on them, beach balls, sandals, inflatable life preservers, flip-flops, bottles, suntan lotions, boxes, shirts, towels, bags, legs, skirts, women, men, children, bugs, show me, show me your dismal faces … I want to press my nose up against every surface and lose myself, forget myself staring anew at the neon lights, at the Plexiglas billboards, at the political slogans, at the televisions, at the corners of shops, at the pictures in the newspaper, at the tawdry advertisements.
A sailboat slowly making its way toward the jetty to escape the southerly wind was gently rocking back and forth in the waves that were not yet big. As it swayed, it seemed unaware of the subconscious that was tossing it about: happy boat! I walked toward the coffeehouse. It was crowded, and outside, the corners of the tablecloths were flapping in the wind, but thanks to the rubber clips put on the edges of the tables, the mothers and fathers and little ones could enjoy their tea and soda pop in peace. Offshore, they were having a hard time taking down the sail, now full of the wind. The white canvas resisted with the fluttering despair of a pigeon’s wing, but to no avail: in the end, they managed to lower it. If I put aside this game called history, what would it matter? Should I sit and have a tea? There was no empty table outside, but going over to the window I could see men playing cards within and empty tables. The card players studied their hands, then put them down as though they had wearied themselves doing this and now needed to relax. One of them picked up the cards he’d laid down and shuffled them. As I absently watched him shuffling, I thought of something. Yes, yes, a deck of cards could solve everything!
On my way home I was thinking like this:
I’ll take all those crimes and robberies, wars and villagers, generals and crooks, that are asleep in the silence of the archives and write each of them down, one by one, on slips of paper the size of playing cards. Then I’ll shuffle that awesome deck consisting of hundreds—no, millions—of cards, just as you shuffle a deck of playing cards, but, of course, with much more difficulty, perhaps using special machines, like those lottery machines in front of notaries, and I’ll place them in the hands of my readers! And I’ll tell them: None of these has any connection with any other, preceding or following, front or back, cause or effect. Come, young reader, this is life and history, read it as you will. Everything that exists is in here, it all simply exists, but there’s no story binding it together. Then the disappointed young reader will ask: No story at all? At that point, appreciating his point of view, I’ll say, You’re right, at this age you do need a story to explain everything just so you can live in peace, otherwise you’d come unhinged. And with that, as if slipping a joker into my deck of millions of cards, I’d write
Story
and begin to gather together the cards in a way that tells a tale. But no sooner have I done that than the young reader peppers me with questions: But what’s the meaning of all of this? What does it add up to? To what conclusion are you leading me? What should we believe? What’s right, what’s wrong? What is life? What should I do?
As I passed by the beach, the sun went in behind the clouds, and the whole mass of people covering the sand suddenly had no purpose for being there. I tried to imagine them stretched out not on the sand but on a glacier, their business being not to sunbathe but rather to warm up the ice sheet, the way hens brood on their eggs. I recognized my intention: to break the chain of causality, to free myself of the moral imperative of necessity. If what they were lying on were ice instead of sand, I could recover my innocence; under such freedom I could do anything, anything was possible if one’s imagination was free. I walked on.
The sun came out again. I went to the store and asked for three bottles of beer. While the clerk was putting the beer into a brown paper bag, I tried to find a resemblance between another customer—a short ugly old man with a big forehead who was waiting there—and Edward G. Robinson. The amazing thing was he really did look like him, from the pointy noise to the little teeth and the mole on his cheek. But he also had the big head, and there was a mustache. So, to ask the question that was central to the hopeless social sciences of a non-Western country: How does the physical construct we have before us differ from the original of which it is a poor copy? The answer could be a bald head and a mustache or, equally, it could be democracy and industry. I came eye to eye with the fake Edward G. Robinson. Suddenly he said what he felt: Sir, do you know how hard it is for me to spend my whole life as a pale copy of someone else! My wife and children look at the real Edward G. Robinson and then criticize me for the ways in which I don’t look enough like him, as though it were my fault. Is it a crime to resemble him somewhat, for God’s sake, tell me, can’t a person just be himself, if that guy hadn’t been a famous actor what would have happened, what fault could they have found with me then? I thought, and I told him that they’d have just found some other famous original and criticized your inadequate resemblance to him. Yes, of course, you’re right, sir, tell me, are you a sociologist or something, or perhaps a professor? An associate professor, actually! Then the aged Edward G. Robinson slowly picked up his cheese and left. I took my bottles; I, too, had had enough for now.
At home, I put the beers in the fridge, but the devil got to me as I was closing the door, and I poured myself a glass of raki, having it on an empty stomach as though it were medicine, and I went to find Nilgün. She was waiting for me so we could go out. Her hair and the pages of her book were fluttering in the wind. I said there was nothing to see in the neighborhood, so we decided to take the car. I went upstairs for the keys, getting my notebook, too, then I picked up the raki bottle, a bottle of water, and some beers from the kitchen, not forgetting the opener. When she saw what I was bringing, Nilgün ran off and got the radio. The car started up with a whine and cough. We made our way slowly through the crowd coming from the beach, and, as we left the neighborhood toward the open spaces, a bolt of lightning flashed very far off. The elegant thunder clap came much later.
“Where should we go?” I said after a while. “To your caravanserai with the plague,” said Nilgün. “Nights of Plague and Nights of Paradise,” I muttered. “Is that a novel you’re reading?” said Nilgün in astonishment. “Do you know,” I said, suddenly more animated, “this whole idea of the plague is getting to me more and more. Last night I remembered having read somewhere that it was plague which allowed Cortez to defeat the Aztecs and take Mexico City with such a small army. When plague broke out in the city, the Aztecs decided that God must be on the side of Cortez.” “That’s great,” said Nilgün. “Now, just uncover our plague, connect it with some other events, and you’ll be on your way.” “But what if there is no such thing.” “Then you won’t be!” “And what do I do then?” “You’ll do what you’ve always done, keep tinkering with history.” “I’m afraid I won’t be able to do that anymore.” “Why do you refuse to believe you could be a good historian?” “Because I know that people can’t be anything in Turkey.” “Nonsense.” “Yes, you better learn that now, that’s how this country is. Give me some of the raki.” “Oh no, you don’t! Look how pretty it is here. Cows and everything. Auntie Cennet’s cows.” “Cows!” I bleated. “I’m surrounded by them every day!” “Seriously, aren’t you just looking for an excuse to give up on yourself?” said Nilgün. “Exactly, so pass the raki!” “But why give up like that?” said Nilgün. “Isn’t that a waste? A man like you?” “Lots of people give up. What’s so wasteful about my case?” “Well, sir, for one thing you’ve spent much more
time studying than they have!” Nilgün said in a teasing voice. “You actually want to say that seriously, but you don’t dare, am I right?” “Actually, yes,” said Nilgün, this time with conviction. “Why should a person give up on himself for nothing?” “It’s not for nothing,” I said. “When I give up on myself I’ll be happy. I’ll be myself then.” “But you are yourself now,” said Nilgün, with a slight hesitation. “Where are you going?” “Up there,” I said, suddenly getting enthusiastic. “Up where?” she said. “Wherever we can have the best view of everything. All of it together …” “All of what?” “Maybe if I can see everything at once …” “Maybe what?” said Nilgün, but I was pensively unresponsive.
