by Orhan Pamuk
But the car still glided on for a while all by itself. As it slowly pulled away, it was like watching some terrifying ship silently slip its moorings. The rain had let up, too. And as I looked at the car going off by itself it occurred to me that God was separating the two of us in order to spare me the punishment He would deliver, but a little farther on the car stopped. The sky lit up in a flash, and I saw Metin get out.
“Where are you?” he bellowed. “Come here, you have to push it!”
I didn’t budge.
“Thief!” he shouted into the darkness. “Shameless thief. Run away, go ahead, run!”
I stood where I was for a minute, shivering from the cold. Then I ran over to his side.
“Aren’t you afraid of God?” I shouted.
“If you are, why do you steal?” he shouted.
“I am!” I said. “But you, you look up at Him and curse. You’ll be punished one day.”
“Ignorant fool!” he said. “You were afraid of the lightning just now, weren’t you? A little lightning, and you’re afraid of every tree’s shadow, the cemetery, the rain and the storm, aren’t you? At your age! What grade are you in? Ignoramus! Let me tell you: there is no God! Neither here nor in the West. Got it? Now, come on, push this thing. I tell you I’ll give you two thousand liras.”
“Where are you going to go?” I said. “To your house?”
“I’ll take you, too,” he said, “or wherever you want to go, if this car would just slide down the hill!”
I pushed, Nilgün. He got into the car, still cursing, but not in anger, now more like the wagon driver, out of habit.
As the car started moving a little faster, I thought how the incline of the hill would soon become steep, and then the car would be going nicely on its own, which made me think: Poor Metin, he is just as sick and tired of everything as I am! I’ll get in the car, and he’ll turn on the heat, and we’ll warm up. Then we’ll pick you up and go off somewhere far away, maybe to another country … When the car started to go down the hill, the motor didn’t make a sound, and all you could hear was the strange whisper of the tires on the wet asphalt. At that point I ran and caught up to him to jump into the car, but the door was locked.
“Open up!” I said. “Open it, Metin, the door is locked! Open it and take me, too! Will you stop!” But he seemed not to hear me. I ran next to him as far as I could, pounding on the window, gasping as if I were drowning, but before you knew it, that hunk of plastic had passed me by and was gone. I continued running after it still, shouting, but it didn’t stop, and Metin wouldn’t stop it. I kept on after the car as the headlights softly illuminated the gardens and orchards, and it swayed and swerved around the turns, all the way down until it was lost to sight. Then I stopped and stared.
My teeth were chattering at the cold. I realized: Your record, Nilgün, I left it there, all the way on the other side of the hill. I turned around and ran back the way I came, hoping it would warm me up, but it was no use, because my shirt was sticking to my body. My feet were trudging through little streams of water. When I got to where I thought I had left the record and I couldn’t find it, I started to run around frantically. I shivered when the sky rumbled and lit up, not because I was afraid but because I was cold. When I was out of breath I could feel the pain in my back again. All that running, bending down, and standing up, shivering, and searching, but there was no record.
I forget now how many times I ran up and down that hill until I found the record a little after the sun came up. Just as I felt myself about to faint from exhaustion and the cold, I realized that one of the shadows that I’d been sure wasn’t what I was looking for was in fact the stupid record and notebook, and it seemed as if somebody was playing a dirty trick on me, hiding things for the pleasure of watching me crawl around like a slave. I felt like digging the heel of my shoe into that idiotic American cover on the “Best of Elvis” and saying, To hell with all of them! But it had turned to mush from the rain anyway. So I didn’t crush it, I’ll bring it to you!
Halil’s garbage truck was the first vehicle to climb the hill; the beautiful rosy light of the rising sun was behind it. Leaving the main road, I went into the orchard and came out onto the cemetery road, which I followed to the end of the wall until I got onto the goat path I used to take with my mother when I was little. There was a favorite hiding place of mine here, among the almond and fig trees.
I gathered sticks and branches, though it was hard to find any dry ones. So I pulled a few pages out of Faruk’s stupid notebook, and I was able to start a fire. No one would see the hazy blue smoke that rose up. I took off my shirt and pants, just about walked into the fire in my sneakers and stood there. It felt good to warm up. I looked at my body with pleasure, naked in the red flames: I’m not afraid of anything! My dick hanging above the flames; I looked at how it hung there. It was like looking at some other man’s body: tanned by the sun, strong like steel, taut like an archer’s bow! I thought: I’m a man, I can do anything, you’ve been warned! It seemed that even if the hair on my legs caught fire, nothing could happen to me. In a little while I stepped away from the fire to feed the flames, and as I was looking around for branches and brush, a cool wind blew and made my butt shiver, and I thought: I’m not a woman that I should be afraid. After the flames roared back to life and I stepped back into the fire, I thought of all the things I was capable of, and more, of death, fear, fire, foreign countries, weapons, wretched souls, slaves, the flag, the nation, the devil, hell.
Then I held the mushy cardboard record sleeve to the flames and dried it out. I dried my clothes, too, and put them on, before finding a dry corner in which to stretch out.
I fell asleep right away. When I woke up I knew I had been dreaming but I couldn’t remember what the dream was about. Something hot, I guess. The sun was high in the sky. I jumped up and started running. It might be too late!
As I raced down the hill past our house with your record in my hand, the Sunday beach crowd whizzed past me in their disgusting cars. Nobody seemed to be at the house, neither my mother nor my father. Anyway, they had pulled the curtains. Tahsin’s family was busy gathering the cherries before they could get all wormy after the rain. When I got down into the neighborhood I broke the five hundred liras; all the stores were open around here on Sundays. I asked for tea and toast, and while I ate I took the combs out of my pocket to look at them: one green and one red. God sees everything.
I would tell her the whole story, not holding back anything. You’ll realize what kind of man I am, Nilgün. You’ll say, You are not like the others, I’m not afraid. Take a look at me, will you, I can do what I like, I have the rest of the five hundred liras in my pocket, I’m my own master, a gentleman. You there, going to the beach, with your inflatable balls, your bags, and weird sandals on your feet, you with your husbands and children beside you! You look, but you don’t see, you think, but you don’t know! They don’t realize who I am, they don’t know who I’m going to be, because they’re worse than blind, this disgusting crowd, going to the beach, seeking pleasure! If I’m the one who has to straighten all of them out, so be it. Look at me: I have a factory! A whip in my hand! I’m a gentleman.
Looking through the barbed wire at the beach, I didn’t see you in the crowd, Nilgün. Mustafa hadn’t shown up either.
So I left the beach, heading toward your house. A gentleman is calling, the dwarf will say, he’d like to see you, Nilgün Hanim. Really, a proper gentleman, you say, very well then, Recep Efendi, show him into the salon, I’ll be right there. As I walked I kept looking around on the chance you had already left the house, but our paths didn’t cross, my lady. When I got to your garden gate, there was no sign of the car, and I preferred to forget who had pushed it uphill in the rain all night, like an idiot and a blind slave. Where was the Anadol? I passed through the gate, but being a gentleman and not wishing to disturb anyone, I didn’t go over to the main entrance up the stairs but out back to the kitchen door. I recognized the shadow of the fig, t
he stones of the wall. Like a dream.
I knocked on the kitchen door, waited a little: Are you the servant of the house, Recep Efendi, I’ll say, this record and this green comb, I believe, belong to a young lady who lives here, I used to know her somewhat, but anyway, that’s not important now, I’ve only come to drop these off, I have no other purpose. After a while, I knocked again; still no answer: Uncle Recep must have gone to the market, he wasn’t at home. Maybe nobody was home! As in a dream, yes! My hair stood on end!
When I pushed on the handle, the door slowly opened. I went into the kitchen silent as a cat. I knew that smell of cooking oil. I didn’t see anyone, and because I had my sneakers on, nobody heard me climbing up the stairs that twisted upward beside the large earthenware water jar. I felt like a ghost haunting someone’s dream, and I was thinking it was because I hadn’t really slept, but when I smelled the cooking oil, I thought, So this is what such houses smell like inside, like a real house! I’m really here.
When I got upstairs, I slowly opened one of the doors. Looking inside, I recognized that disgusting shape right away: Metin asleep with the sheet over his head! I thought how he owed me two thousand liras and how he had said there was no God. I could strangle him and nobody would know. But then I thought for a second: they’d find my fingerprints. So I quietly shut the door and went in the open door of the room on the other side of the hall.
I realized from the bottle on the table and the huge pair of pants thrown on the unmade bed: this was Faruk’s room. I got right out of there, and when, without thinking first, I opened the next door, I shuddered because it seemed to me I saw my father on the wall. How strange: my father with a beard; he seemed to be staring out of the frame at me in anger and disappointment, as if saying, Oh, what a shame, you’re a total idiot. I was very nervous at that moment. But when I heard the old woman’s voice with the rattle in it, I understood who the picture on the wall and the room belonged to.
“Who’s that?”
I froze, but when I saw her completely wrinkled face and huge ears buried in the crumpled sheets, I shut the door right away.
“Recep, is that you, Recep?”
I silently ran down the hall to the last room, and as I waited trembling by the door I heard that voice again.
“Recep, is that you? I’m talking to you, Recep, answer me!”
I went right in, and suddenly I was astonished, Nilgün, my lady, to find myself in the room that was obviously yours! I pulled back the covers from the empty bed and breathed in your scent, then hurriedly made it up again when I heard that ancient voice still calling, as if to keep me from moving on to your closet.
“Who’s there? Who’s there, Recep?”
I took your nightie out from under the pillow and gave it a sniff. It smelled of lavender and Nilgün. Then after I’d folded it up to look as if I hadn’t smelled it, tucking it back under the pillow, I thought, Why don’t I just leave the record and the combs here? Yes, right on your bed, Nilgün, is where I should leave them. When you find the combs you’ll understand: how I’ve been following you for so many days, how I love you. But I didn’t leave them, because I had the thought that that would mean everything was finished. Then I decided, let me end it, but it was too late.
“Recep, I’m talking to you, Recep!”
I had to leave the room immediately, because I understood from the heavy rattling that the grandmother must be trying to get out of bed. As I twisted quickly down the spiral stairs I heard her door open behind me and a cane pounding on the carpet hard enough to put a hole in it.
“Recep, I’m talking to you, Recep.”
I turned around and went into the kitchen, stopping just as I was about to fly out the door. I can’t go without doing something … There was a pot over a low flame on the stove. I turned the knob until the flame shot all the way up. I did the same with the other knob and went out thinking, I should have done more.
Telling myself not to pay any attention to anybody, I walked quickly, and when I came to the beach, just as I thought, this time through the barbed wire I saw you, Nilgün Hanimefendi, there in the crowd. Let me give you the record and comb and put an end to all this! I’m not afraid of anyone. She was drying off. She must have just come out of the water. Mustafa still hadn’t come.
I waited a little before going to the shop. There were other customers.
“Give me a Cumhuriyet,” I said.
“Sorry!” said the shopkeeper with a deep red face. “We don’t sell it anymore.”
I didn’t say anything. After a little while, Nilgün Hanimefendi, you came in from the beach and asked, as you did every morning, “A Cumhuriyet, please.”
But again the shopkeeper said, “Sorry. We don’t sell it anymore.”
“Why?” said Nilgün. “You had it yesterday.”
The shopkeeper indicated me with the tip of his nose, and you looked at me: we looked at each other. Did you understand at that moment? Did you understand the kind of man I am? Now, I thought, I can explain everything to you patiently and without rushing, like a gentleman. I went outside, and with the record and the comb at the ready, I waited. A little later you came out, too. Now I’ll explain, and you’ll understand everything.
“Can we talk a little?” I said.
She stopped and looked at me for a second with surprise, oh, that beautiful face! I thought she was going to say something, but she just walked away as if she had seen the devil. I ran after her, not even thinking about who might be around.
“Please stop, Nilgün!” I said. “Listen to me for once!”
She stopped. When I saw her face up close I was even more astonished. What a strange color were her eyes!
“Fine,” she said. “Tell me what you have to say right now.”
It was as if I had forgotten everything: nothing came to mind, as if we had just met and had nothing to say.
“This record is yours, isn’t it?” I said. I held it out to her, but she didn’t even look at it!
“No,” she said. “It’s not.”
“It’s yours, this record is yours, Nilgün! Take a good look. You can’t tell because it’s a little sooty! It got wet and I had to dry it.”
She bent her head down and looked. “No, this isn’t mine!” she said. “You must have me confused with somebody else.”
And off she went again. I ran after her and grabbed her arm.
“Let go!” she yelled.
“Why do you all lie to me?”
“Let go!”
“Why are you running away from me? You can’t even say hello! Can you tell me what harm I’ve ever done you? If it hadn’t been for me, do you know what they would have done to you by now?”
“They who?”
“How can you lie to my face? As if you have no idea. Do you or do you not read Cumhuriyet?”
Instead of giving me a straight answer, she cast her eyes hopelessly around, as if looking for somebody who might help her. Still holding her by the arm, I made a last attempt, gentle and polite as I could.
“I love you, do you know that?”
Suddenly she slipped out of my grip and tried to run off, but halfheartedly, as if she didn’t really believe she could get away. I ran two steps after her, and like a cat reaching for a wounded mouse, I firmly but kindly grabbed her wrists, so delicate, in the middle of the crowd. Stop a minute. It was easier than I could have imagined. She was shaking. I wanted to kiss her, but being a gentleman, I wasn’t going to take advantage of her now just because she realized what she had done wrong. I know how to control myself. Look, nobody in this crowd is rushing to help you, because they know you’re in the wrong. So, tell me, little lady, why were you running away from me, tell me, what were you and the others all scheming about in secret, say it so that everybody in the crowd can hear, so that nobody can misunderstand and accuse me of being involved in anything. I was wondering if Mustafa was anywhere near. Then just as I was waiting to hear what she would say, so that once and for all everyone would stop making
up things about me, and this endless nightmare would finally be over, she suddenly started shrieking:
“You crazy fascist, leave me alone!”
And by that she confessed that she was in fact working together with the others. At first I was really surprised, but then I recognized it was my job to give her the punishment she deserved, and so right then and there I started hitting her again and again.
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