by Orhan Pamuk
Time which flowed as if under the compulsion of timepieces came to a stop at a certain point, the semitransparent membrane in which I was being enveloped was torn open, and Janan sat up in bed. All of a sudden we found ourselves hotly discussing bus attendants who were really auxiliary bus drivers; one of them had once said that someday he was going to commandeer the driver’s seat and drive the bus to a yet unexplored land. And then there was the one who said, help yourselves to the chewing gum, provided for our valued passengers with the compliments of the bus company; and then unable to hold his tongue, he had added, but don’t chew too much, brother, because the gum is laced with opium so that the passengers will sleep like babies, thinking their peaceful sleep is due to good shock absorbers, the skill of the driver who never passes on the right, and the superiority of our vehicles and our bus company. Then how about the one we came across on two different bus lines, Janan, do you remember what he said?—it was so good to laugh! Brother, he said, the first time I laid eyes on you both I just knew you had eloped together, now I see from your ring that you two got hitched, sister, congratulations.
Will you marry me? We had seen so many scenes come alive with the brilliance of these words: when the lovers are walking under the trees, arms around each other, or when they are under a lamppost, or in a car—in the back seat, naturally—or on the bridge that spans the Bosphorus, or in the rain produced under the influence of foreign films, or when the boy and the girl are suddenly left alone by the charming uncle or friends whose intentions are good, or when the rich guy pops the question to the seductive female as he goes splash into the swimming pool: Will you marry me? Since I had never seen a scene in a sick room where the girl with the beautiful neck gets asked the question, I didn’t believe my words could awaken in Janan a feeling as magical as those in the movies. Besides, my mind was on a dauntless mosquito that was working the room.
I looked at the time and got anxious. I checked her temperature and became worried. Let me see your tongue, I said; she stuck it out; it was pink and came to a point. I leaned over her and took her tongue in my mouth. We remained like that for a while, Angel.
“Don’t, dear heart,” she said. “You are very sweet, but let’s not.”
She fell asleep. I lay down next to her, hanging on the edge of the bed, and began counting her breaths. Later, as the day was about to break, I was thinking a lot of things and then thinking again: I’ll say to her, Janan, I’d do anything for you, Janan, don’t you understand how much I love you … Stuff like that which always had the same gist. For a while I thought I’d make up some lie and drag her back to the buses, but I already knew approximately where I had to go; besides, after becoming acquainted with Doctor Fine’s merciless watches and spending a night in this room with Janan, I was aware that I had begun to be afraid of death.
You know it all too well, Angel, the poor kid was lying next to his beloved, listening to her breathing until daybreak, gazing at Janan’s regular but distinctive chin, her arms showing out of the nightgown Rosebud had loaned her, her hair spreading on the pillow, and the mulberry tree gradually becoming resplendent with daylight.
Then everything speeded up. There was clattering in the house, footsteps cautiously going by our door, the sound of a window being slammed in the wind that had started up again, the mooing of a cow, the growl of a car, a cough, and a knock on our door. A clean-shaven middle-aged person with a large medical bag, looking more like a doctor than anything else, entered the room followed by a whiff of toasted bread. His lips were gory red as if he had recently been sucking blood, and there was an ugly sore on the side of his mouth. I was gripped by a fantasy that he was going to strip Janan, who was burning with fever, and use those lips to kiss her neck and back. He was taking his stethoscope out of his hateful bag when I snatched my Walther from where I had concealed it and left the house without paying any attention to the worried mother of the house standing by the door.
Before anyone could see me I rushed out to the terrain with which Doctor Fine had acquainted me. In a deserted spot surrounded by poplars where I was sure that I would neither be observed nor the wind bear any tales, I took out my gun and fired rounds in rapid succession. That was how I used up some of the rounds that had been Doctor Fine’s gift, doing a short target practice which was not only curtailed by its parsimony, it was so inept that it was pitiful. I had not managed to hit the trunk of the poplar I had aimed at, not even in one out of three shots at four paces. I remember being somewhat hesitant, helplessly trying to pull my thoughts together as I observed the hurried clouds that arrived from the north. The sorrows of young Walther …
Up ahead there was a rocky outcrop that was high enough to afford a partial overview of Doctor Fine’s estate. I climbed up there, sat down, and instead of being lost in patrician thoughts contemplating the vastness and the wealth of the landscape, I wondered in what miserable place my own life would end. A long time went by but none of the angels, books, muses, and wise peasants who in times of dire distress come to the aid of prophets, film stars, saints, and political leaders put in an appearance on my behalf.
There was no help for it but to return to the mansion. The gory-lipped mad doctor had already drunk my Janan’s blood with relish and was now sitting with the mother and drinking the tea made by the rosy daughters. When he saw me, his eyes gleamed at the prospect of giving me advice.
“Young man!” he began. My wife had caught a cold, she was suffering from the flu; more important, she was on the verge of a serious debilitation due to fatigue, neglect, and lack of sleep. What was I up to, getting her so dead tired? How was it that I treated her so roughly? The mother and the daughters eyed the newlywed young husband with disapprobation.
“I gave her some heavy-duty medicine,” said the doctor. “She is not to stir out of bed for an entire week.”
A whole week! I was thinking to myself that seven days were more than enough for me, when the quack, having had his tea and stuffed a couple of almond macaroons in his face, was finally ready to get the hell out. Janan was asleep in bed, so I removed a few of the paraphernalia I thought I might need, the notes I had taken in the archives, and the money. I kissed Janan on the neck. I left the room with the haste of a volunteer on his way to save his country. I told Rosebud and her mother that I had some urgent business that could not wait and a responsibility that I could not shirk. I entrusted my wife to them. They said they would look after her as if she were the bride of their own son. I indicated with special insistence that I would be back within five days, and without looking back, not even once, to see the land of witches, phantoms, and bandits I was leaving behind me, without even a glance at the grave of the young man from Kayseri who was interred there in lieu of Doctor Fine’s son, I made my way to town and the bus terminal.
12
On the road again! Hey there, you old terminals, you rickety buses, you sad voyagers, hello! You know how it goes, when you are deprived of the rituals of some commonplace habit you have become addicted to without even being aware that you have a habit, you are gripped by the sorrow of a feeling that life is not what it used to be. I had assumed I would be free of this sorrow riding on an old Magirus bus that carried me away from the town of Çatık which was under Doctor Fine’s clandestine reign, and toward the rest of civilization. After all, here I was on a bus at last, albeit one that was coughing, sneezing, and out of breath like an old geezer moaning up the mountain roads. Yet in the heart of the storybook land I left behind Janan was burning with a fever in the room where she lay, and in the same room was the mosquito I hadn’t managed to dispatch, lying low, waiting for nightfall. I went over my papers and plans once more, so that I might conclude my business as soon as possible and return victoriously to start my new life.
Around midnight when I opened my eyes between sleep and wakefulness and removed my head from the vibrating window of yet another bus, I had the happy thought that it might be here perhaps that I would first come face to face with you, O Angel. Yet how d
istant from me was the inspiration that unites the purity of spirit with the magic of the unique moment. I knew it would not be soon that I saw you out of some bus window. Flowing past were dark plains, gruesome ravines, rivers the color of quicksilver, deserted gas stations, and billboards with missing letters advertising cigarettes or cologne, but all that was on my mind were evil schemes, selfish thoughts, death, and the book; I neither saw the pomegranate-color light on the video screen which might have fueled my imagination, nor heard the heartrending snores of the restless butcher who was returning home after the daily massacre at the slaughterhouse.
In the mountain town of Alacaelli, where around daybreak the bus dropped me off, the season had skipped autumn, let alone the end of summer, and it was already winter. In the tiny coffeehouse where I went to wait for the government offices to open, the boy who washed the glasses, made the tea, and who did not seem to have any forehead since his hairline began almost at his eyebrows, asked me if I was one of the folks who came to hear the Sheikh. Just to pass the time, I told him yes. He favored me with strong tea and treated himself to the pleasure of sharing with me that, aside from the miracles the Sheikh performed, such as curing the sick or bestowing fecundity on barren women, his real talent was for bending a fork by just laying eyes on it, or opening a Pepsi-Cola bottle by simply touching the cap.
When I left the coffeehouse, winter was gone, autumn had again been skipped, and a hot and fly-infested summer day was already in progress. Like someone mature and steadfast who solves problems by immediately tackling them, I went directly to the post office, and feeling a vague excitement, I carefully looked over the sleepy male and female clerks reading the newspaper at their desks or smoking and drinking tea, leaning on the counters. The sisterly-looking female clerk I thought was a likely candidate turned out to be a real witch, making me sweat bullets before she would tell me Mr. Mehmet Buldum had just left to deliver the mail—what relation did you say you were? Why don’t you wait here? But, sir, these are working hours, could you come later? I was forced to say I was an army buddy who had come all the way from Istanbul and I had considerable influence at the Postal Service General Directorate. By then, Mehmet Buldum, who had left—just now, a little while ago, presently—had found enough time to vanish into the neighborhoods and streets where I ran around hopelessly, getting the names of streets confused.
Even so, questioning everyone and anyone—Hello there, has Mehmet the mailman been here yet?—I kept getting lost in the narrow streets of the main neighborhood. A calico cat was lazily licking itself in the sun. A youngish and kind of pretty matron, who was out on the balcony airing out the sheets, quilts, and pillows, exchanged stares with some municipal workers who had climbed up a ladder they had leaned against a power pole. I saw a child with black eyes; he knew at once that I was a stranger. “What’s up?” he said with a cocky air. If Janan were with me, she would immediately make friends with this smarty-pants and start up a witty banter, and I would be left to reflect that the reason I was so head over heels in love with her was not only because she was so beautiful, so irresistible, so mysterious, but because she would just as soon talk to this kid.
I sat down at a sidewalk table that belonged to the Emerald Coffeehouse across the street from the post office, which was placed under a chestnut tree, facing the Atatürk statue. A little while later I found myself reading the Alacaelli Post: the local pharmacy had brought in from Istanbul a new drug against constipation, sold under the trademark of Stlops; the coach snagged from the Bolu Sport soccer team had arrived in town to train the Alacaelli Brick Youth Sport, who considered themselves serious contenders for the coming season. So there is a brick works in town, I was thinking to myself, when I saw Mehmet Buldum enter the town hall huffing and puffing, a sizable mail pouch slung across his shoulders, and I was greatly disappointed. This heavy-footed and dog-weary Mehmet was nothing like the Mehmet that Janan could not get out of her mind.
My work here was done, and considering that there was many a youthful Mehmet waiting for me on my list, I ought to leave this peaceful place alone and quick get out of town. But the devil made me wait for Mehmet Buldum to come out of the town hall.
He was walking across the street to the shady sidewalk with the rapid and short stride of the postman when I stopped him, addressing him by name, and while he looked at me in bewilderment, I hugged and kissed him, chiding him for still not recognizing his dearest army buddy. He sat down with me at the table out of a feeling of guilt, and falling for my merciless sport of “at least come up with my name,” he started making useless guesses. I stopped him sharply a while later, and offering him the pseudonym I made up on the spot, I made it known to him that there were important people I knew in the Postal Service Directorate. He was the true-blue sort of friend, it seems; he wasn’t even interested in the possibility of moving up the ranks in the Postal Service. He was so tired and sweating blood carrying the heavy mailbag in the heat, he eyed with gratitude the bottle of ice-cold soda pop the waiter brought and swiftly opened, but he wished to escape as soon as possible this dubious army buddy and the shame that not remembering the guy in the least had brought upon him. Perhaps it was due to the lack of sleep, but I felt a clear sense of revenge that sweetly went to my head.
“I hear you’ve read a book!” I said, taking a sip of my tea with high seriousness. “I hear you have been reading this book, is that right? I hear sometimes you don’t care who sees you reading it.”
His face went ashen. He had understood the subject all too well.
“Where did you get that book?”
But he was able to recover quickly. He had accompanied a relative to a hospital in Istanbul, where he had seen the book in a sidewalk stall, and fooled by the title which made him think it was a book on health care, he had bought it; but then he couldn’t bear to throw it away, so he had given it to the relative in the hospital.
We paused for a while. A sparrow lighted on one of the two extra chairs at the table and then hopped to the next.
I studied the mailman, whose name was written on his pocket in small careful letters. He was about my age, perhaps a little older. He had come across the same book that had taken my life off track and turned my world upside down, and he had felt the impact, had a jolt—the exact nature of which I did not know, or I couldn’t decide whether I cared to know or not. We had something in common that had made us into either fellow victims or winners, and this fact irritated me.
Having noticed that he didn’t underestimate the subject by tossing it aside laconically as he had done with the cap of the soda pop, I felt the book had a special place in his heart. What kind of a man was he? His hands were extraordinarily beautiful, with long refined fingers. His skin could almost be called delicate; he had a sensitive face, and almond-shaped eyes that signaled he was growing somewhat cross and apprehensive. Could it be said that he had been snared by the book like me? Had his whole world also been changed? Did he drown in sorrow some nights too when the book made him feel so miserably alone in the world?
“Anyway,” I said. “I am so glad, my friend, but it’s time for my bus.”
Forgive my crudeness, Angel, for I suddenly felt I was capable of doing something that was not part of my plan. I might have shown the misery of my own heart to him as if exposing a wound, just to get this man to lay bare his soul. It wasn’t because I hated the rituals of sincerity that end up with getting drunk together, sadness, tears, and a feeling of brotherhood that’s not entirely convincing—in fact, I like doing it with guys from the neighborhood in some dingy tavern—it was because I did not wish to think about anything but Janan. I wanted to be alone as soon as possible to distract myself with dreams of the happy connubial life Janan and I could one day attain. I had just risen from the table when my army buddy said, “There is no bus scheduled to leave at this time from anywhere around this town.”
Take that! He was no fool! Pleased to have hit the nail on the head, he was stroking the pop bottle with his pretty hands.<
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I couldn’t decide whether I should pull out my gun and put holes through his delicate skin, or become his best friend, his confidant, his fate mate. Perhaps I might settle on a middle course, such as shooting him in the shoulder, only to regret it and rush him to the hospital; and then at night, his shoulder in bandages, we would open and read one by one all the letters in his mailbag, having a madly entertaining time.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said finally. I left the money to pay for the bill on the table with a jaunty air. Then I turned and left. I don’t know from what film I had pinched this gesture, but it hadn’t played too badly.
I walked rapidly like a man who means business, a go-getter; he was probably watching me walk away. I went around the Atatürk statue and up the shady narrow sidewalk, and toward the bus terminal. Terminal is just a figure of speech. If there were a bus unlucky enough to have to spend the night in the miserable town of Alacaelli—my mailman friend had called it a “city”—I didn’t think there would even be some sort of hut to shelter the bus from the snow and the rain. A proud man who was condemned to sell tickets in a closet of a room for the rest of his life was pleased to tell me there was no bus before noon. Naturally, I did not bother telling him that his bald head was exactly the same color orange as the legs of the beauty on the Goodyear Tire calendar behind him.
Why am I so angry, I kept asking; why have I become so ill-tempered? Tell me why, O Angel, whoever you are, wherever you come from, tell me! Take care of me, at least, warn me not to go off half-cocked with anger; let me set things right as best I can, taking care of the world’s ills and misfortunes like some family man intent on protecting his nest; let me reunite with my Janan who is burning with a fever.
But the anger inside me knew no bounds. Was this what happened to every twenty-three-year-old youth who began carrying around a Walther?
