Boratin watches the women at the opposite table. He remembers the beautiful one. (She is telling a story. Her slender fingers are making graceful gestures in the air.) Boratin saw her on Yüksek Kaldırım going into a secondhand book dealer’s. She was with a man who looked like her twin, the two of them were identical. The two siblings examined an antique book at the book dealer’s. (The woman is a university lecturer. She’s telling her friends about an important manuscript that she’s teaching in class. Her voice is so animated that it carries all the way over to the eavesdropping Boratin. She is complaining about the students’ lack of interest in such an old, rare book. The woman beside her laughs, they’re too busy looking at you to pay any attention to the book, she says.) When Boratin saw the woman in the street, it wasn’t her beauty that had struck him. He listened to her conversation with her brother and wanted to see the inside of the secondhand book dealer’s. (Even now it’s not the woman’s beauty he recognizes, but the posture of her neck, the slight tilt of her head.) You’ve wandered off Boratin, says Bek, are you all right? I’m fine, but if I carry on drinking at the same pace as you, I’ll soon be bleary-eyed. Aren’t you bleary-eyed already, you haven’t taken your eyes off that woman for the past few minutes. (The woman rests her elbow on the table and continues to talk.) I know that woman, says Boratin. Bek grins broadly. Beauty can unlock even the mind’s padlocks, he says. It’s not like that, says Boratin, I saw her on the first day I went out with you, going towards Galata Tower. No, says Bek, I think you know her from before, but you’re getting the time mixed up. Didn’t you say yourself that you get your times mixed up? Listen to me Bek, I saw that woman going into a secondhand book dealer’s. I just eavesdropped, she’s telling her friends about the antique books. (Apart from one or two, says the woman, students don’t get excited about new discoveries.) Bek laughs. You’re drunk, he says. You’re drunk more like, replies Boratin. I readily admit I’m drunk, says Bek, you admit it too. No, says Boratin, I’m starting to feel a bit dizzy, but I’m not drunk yet. In that case, we’d better carry on drinking, says Bek. They take a sip from their drinks. Shoulder to shoulder, they gaze at the woman. Boratin watches the letters and words pouring from her lips. As for Bek, he sees birds with vaporous wings gliding from those pink lips. He sighs. Was she by herself when you saw her before, he asks. No, she was with her twin brother. Her twin, says Bek, you mean you’re that certain…. I’ll just go and find out if it’s true, I’ll be right back. How are you planning on finding out? Watch, says Bek. Steadying himself with his hands, he stands up. His steps are precarious. He sways over to the women’s table. He greets them. The women smile back at him. They pull up a chair and invite him to join them. Bek thanks them. He points out Boratin to the beautiful woman. He says something to her. The beautiful woman looks at Boratin, she remains silent for a while. Then she leans over and whispers in Bek’s ear. She turns and looks at Boratin again. With a faint smile on her lips. Bek leaves their table. He returns as unsteadily as he went. He wheezes as he sits down. He closes his eyes. Was I right? asks Boratin. Bek opens his eyes. He stares vacantly. Why don’t we have a drink, he says, as though talking to himself. He reaches his hand out towards the table. Boratin pushes the glass in front of him away. That’s enough for tonight, you’ve had too much, I think we should leave, he says. But we’ve only just started, says Bek. No we haven’t, says Boratin. He stands up. He picks up his jacket from behind the chair and puts it over his shoulders. Just then Effendi calls out to the others. Hey folks, he says, one of you take Bek home and I’ll take Boratin. Boratin says, There’s no need. I can go by myself, it would be better if you took Bek. Are you sure Boratin, will you be all right going by yourself? Yes, I’m fine. One or two people stand up with them, the others look as though they’re planning on spending most of the night there. As Boratin is saying goodbye, the jacket on his shoulders slips and falls off. He bends down to pick it up. He feels giddy. One knee stays rooted to the ground. He’s too dizzy to stand up. He grabs a chair. Hayala comes and takes his arm. She helps him stand up. Are you all right? she says. Yes, I think so. I’ll take you home Boratin, you can’t go by yourself.
12
Hayala returns from the kitchen carrying two coffee cups. She sits down beside me on the sofa. This will sober you up, she says. I take a sip from the coffee. Thank you. In the tavern I didn’t realize I’d had too much. I was listening, watching and eating and drinking the whole time. I thought I would be able to make it home by myself. But then suddenly I felt dizzy. Towards the end you were trying to keep up with Bek, says Hayala. You were knocking them back one after the other, like him. How are you feeling? I feel better now I’m home. I don’t feel dizzy anymore. Perhaps it was the crowd that made me dizzy. It’s tiring talking to so many people at once. Did I find it tiring in the past as well, looking at each face in turn, connecting faces with voices and then keeping a mental record of each connection? No Boratin, you weren’t like that before. You didn’t have any complaints about yourself, none that I heard of anyway. Hayala, I can only talk to one person at a time. Any more and it wears me out. The people at that table are my friends, but I found it too intense to mingle with that crowd. The longer I sat there the more desperately I wanted to get up and leave. Maybe that’s why I overdid the rakı towards the end. I’m used to being at home in the evenings, it felt strange being out for the first time. I feel safe in this living room. I prefer pacing up and down the corridor and going backwards and forwards from the bedroom to the kitchen to being out. Today I left the kitchen in a bit of a mess when I went out. Were you able to find the coffee okay? No problem. Your house is as tidy as it always is Boratin. Anyone who comes here always finds everything in the right place. Who knows for how many generations the armchairs, cupboards, and paintings have sat in exactly the same spot without moving. The boys teased you when you rented this place. They said you’re fifty years older than you look. And you replied, I’ll have you know, you note-scribblers, that actually I’m not fifty, but a hundred years older. You were into old guitars, old books, old furniture. You probably still are. Your tastes won’t have changed just because your memory has. I don’t know, Hayala. Sometimes I like this sofa, and sometimes I hate it. I might spend all day lying on it one day, and then not even feel like perching on the end the next. Sometimes I can’t take my eyes off that chandelier, and at others its crystals get on my nerves for days. Look at the guitars. They’re so beautifully made, every one of them is a work of art. They have soft, curved lines, they’re long. There are as many tunes between the guitar magnets and the tuning keys as there are trees in a wood. My mood changes so quickly, the guitars might suddenly seem worthless to me. Who knows, one night I might get it into my head to throw them out onto the rubbish heap in the street. Hayala smiles. If you do decide to throw them out, phone me. I’ll take your stuff to my own rubbish heap.
I pick up the address book from the coffee table beside us and hand it to Hayala. Have I got your number? I ask her. Holding her coffee cup in one hand, Hayala puts the address book on her lap, flicks through the pages, and finds her name. Here it is, she says. No one has address books anymore Boratin, everyone puts their numbers on their phone. You only ever see address books like these in old movies. Although I must say, I can’t think of anything more fitting for the old phone in this house than an address book with yellowed pages. Hayala, I say, have I ever treated you badly? Hayala pauses for a moment. She takes a sip of coffee. She hugs the address book to her chest. She looks at me in a way she hasn’t looked before. She is either looking at me as a stranger for the first time, or seeing that I’ve gone back to being my old self. Right now I’m further away from her than ever before, and at the same time closer. She’ll either walk out without saying a word, or talk nonstop until morning. Boratin, she says, what’s going on in that head of yours, why did you ask me that? I’m scared, I say. I’m scared of voicing what I feel. When my mind drifts into the past I find myself in front of a white wall. It’s pointless t
rying to trace the movements of my life on a stark white wall. There isn’t a line, or a shadow. Only blankness. When I gaze at it I realize after a while that actually I am that blankness. Why? I say. Who did I hurt in the past, and how? I think. When my telephone rings, or when I meet someone new, I imagine that person is going to talk to me about all my past wrongs. Perhaps I’m not guilty of any wrongdoing, or maybe everyone has taken pity on me and is waiting for me to recover before reminding me. Hayala places her hand on my arm. Don’t be afraid of me Boratin, she says. You’ve never done me any wrong. Quite the opposite, you’ve been good to me. Whenever there were any disagreements in the group, you always supported me. Last year I was on the point of leaving and you were the one who persuaded me to stay. When I wasn’t able to pay my rent and I owed the landlord several months, you stepped in and helped me out. I don’t believe you would ever do anything to hurt anyone. If anyone ever claims that you have, the first thing you should think is that it’s not you who’s to blame, but them. Hayala removes her hand from my arm. Her gaze still fixed on me, she waits for me to speak. Sometimes, I say, I meet someone’s eye in the street. In that brief look I see someone I know. Someone who’s angry with me. I’m afraid. When I was meeting all our friends in Theodora’s Tavern I searched for that look in every one of them. You were sitting opposite me. Our eyes met a few times. Towards the end, I noticed that unsettling stare on your face too. Boratin, says Hayala, that stare that you say you noticed is full of kind thoughts towards you. People don’t just love you, they feel indebted to you. You’ve touched all of our lives in some way, you’ve given all of us a part of yourself. That feeling of guilt you have comes from not knowing about your past. You blame yourself for losing your memory. You may be right Hayala, but I can’t stop those thoughts from invading my head. Every time I go out, I feel the urge to be kind to people who need help. As if the outside world is waiting for me. That urge comes at the same time as the feeling of fear. And then I think the urge to be kind stems from wanting to redeem myself for all my past wrongs. Hayala takes the cup out of my hand. You’ve let your coffee get cold, I’ll bring you another one, she says. She comes back a moment later with two fresh coffees. Boratin, she says, you used to make outlandish remarks like that about music too, and come out with things that would never occur to anyone else. It’s good that you haven’t lost the habit. During rehearsals you would stop us in the middle of a song and go into a long explanation of why we needed to change the rhythm of that particular bit. You would talk about the groans of slaves in North America, the curses of beggars in Istanbul, and the elation of young lovers. You would quote from books. You would tell us where the spirit of our music came from and say how it would cry out to the heavens as you beat time. We would put down our instruments and settle in a corner in preparation for what we knew would be a lengthy discourse. It might sound as though all this was ages ago, but actually it was only a few weeks ago. You waxed lyrical for hours on the day you showed us the cover of that Submarine album on the wall there. I look at where Hayala is pointing. At the album covers, at the singers’ names. The crystal lights from the chandelier twinkle on the bodies of the guitars. There is a different sound on each string, climbing up the guitars’ frets as though going upstairs. I know those sounds are twitching there, even though I can’t hear them.
Hayala, I say, I spend hours every day gazing at this wall and these guitars. I browse through my record collection searching for something that will make me feel good. I read the album covers. I try to find something in the lyrics that reaches out to me. I’m looking for the same thing now, as I look at the wall and the records. What’s that Boratin, what are you looking for? I don’t know, I won’t know what I’m looking for until I’ve found it. Contrary to what everyone thinks, my mind isn’t empty, it’s overloaded. I’m not just afraid of what’s gone from my mind, I’m afraid of what’s left in it too. For example, I think about the oldest known fact. I must have read it in a book somewhere; the oldest known form of the universe, of existence, in other words, was in the shape of a small ball. Then there was a big bang and the universe came to be, time began. I want to know about what existed before that. I realize how absurd that is. But then I say to myself, what if it isn’t absurd. I don’t know what to think. You tell me Hayala, what would you do if you were in my position? Hayala pauses for a few seconds before answering. I would probably take the advice of my friends and family, she says. I would learn to wait and not to fret. Instead of thinking about the past I would dream about the future. What are your dreams Boratin? My dreams? I don’t know if I even have any dreams. I think for a moment. Once again a white wall swims before my eyes. A wall going from one end of the horizon to the other stretches ahead of me. One can get used to the dark, it’s everywhere, but endless whiteness is hard. Boratin, says Hayala, make a wish, and we’ll call it your dream. What do you want to achieve in life? First of all, I say, I want to achieve relaxed, deep, uninterrupted sleep. I want to wake up without a headache. Not being afraid of the past is part of that too. I’m afraid of my past. I have no idea what might come out of it. I’ll wake up one morning to find that everything I’ve lost has come back into my head while I’ve been asleep. Just like in the old days. I’ll find out why I wanted to die. But what if the discovery drives me mad and makes me want to commit suicide again…. At the same moment the things I want the most turn into the things I want the least. The things you call dreams join together in fragments and turn into a horrendous fear inside me. Some nights I want to punch the mirror. I stand in front of it and stare at the face there. That face knows me and calls to me to uncover the secrets it hides inside itself. The road that leads from my face to the face in the mirror is so long that I don’t dare enter the convoluted, damp passages inside it. In bed I pull the quilt up over my head. I count. From zero to the beginning. Minus forty-one, minus forty-two, minus forty-three. There is no beginning, the numbers are never-ending. What would you do in that situation? Hayala looks at me through hazy eyes. She takes the coffee cup out of my hand and puts it on the floor. She touches my cheek. She leans over and kisses my lips. Her face is half a breath away from mine. Are you afraid of this too? she asks. Yes, I am. Hayala draws back slightly. We’ve never kissed before, she says. Her hands are trembling. To stop the trembling she raises her hands to her forehead and smoothes her hair. Hayala, I say, I’ve never kissed anyone. My body is as empty as my mind. In the past there was someone called Boratin, who went out and about and lived his life happily. He caressed women. I have no idea what his life was like. I’m afraid of him and of the things he did. What is this? Hayala draws near again. She enfolds her fingers around my neck, like a bird’s wings. Let yourself go, she says, let yourself go to me. She presses her lips against mine.
Labyrinth Page 7
