Other Colors

by Orhan Pamuk

  Right now the fish is on the table, but a moment ago there was no one in the room. When I walked in, I saw the fish’s mouth and I could see that the ashtray creature had been waiting in pain for hours in the silence of night. I don’t smoke so I won’t touch it, but even now, as I walk silently through the dark apartment in my bare feet, I know that, before long, I’ll have forgotten all about this poor fish.

  On the carpet is a child’s tricycle; its wheels and its saddle are blue, its basket and its front mudguard are red. The mudguard is only there for decoration, of course: The tricycle was made to be ridden slowly by small children indoors and on balconies and other mud-free surfaces. But still this mudguard gives it an aura of fullness and perfection. It is as if it covers the tricycle’s imperfections, growing and maturing it; by bringing it closer to the idea of a full-sized archetype of bicycle, the mudguard makes it look more serious. But when I have looked more closely at the tricycle, in this silence where nothing moves, I see at once that what binds me to the tricycle and makes it possible for us to have a relationship is that, like all bicycles and tricycles, it has a handlebar. If I am able to look at the tricycle as if at a living being, a living creation, it’s because of the handlebar. The handlebar is the tricycle’s head, its brow, its horns. To find the person in the tricycle, I do the same thing I do with people: First I study the face, or the handlebar. This small lazy tricycle has, like all unhappy tricycles, bowed its head; its handlebar is not facing forward but tilted sideways. As with all sad creatures, its hopes are limited. But it seems at least to be at ease with itself inside its plastic shell, and that helps chase away the misery.

  I enter the dark kitchen in silence. The inside of the refrigerator is as bright and crowded as the boulevard of a distant happy city.

  I take out a beer. Sitting down at the dining table, I solemnly drink it. There, in the silence of the night, a transparent plastic pepper mill is watching me.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When the Furniture Is Talking, How Can You Sleep?

  Some nights when I get out of bed, I cannot understand why the linoleum is like this. Every square has all these lines on it. Why? And every square is different from the others.

  Later, it’s the same with the furnace pipe. It seems to be writhing of its own volition, as if to say, I’m bored. I want to be a furnace for a while, not a pipe.

  The lamp’s looking just as strange. If you can’t see the lightbulb, you can imagine that the light is emanating from its zinc stem and its satin shade. You know, the way light might radiate from a person’s face—something like that. I know this happens to you sometimes too: So, for example, if there were a lightbulb burning inside my skull, somewhere deep inside, between my eyes and my mouth, how beautifully that light would ooze from my pores—you too are capable of such a thought. The light pouring especially from our cheeks and our foreheads: in the evenings, when there is a power cut….

  But you never admit to thinking such things.

  Neither do I. I don’t tell anyone.

  That the empty bottles left in front of the door belong neither to the world nor to one another. That doors, in any event, are never fully closed or open and so give cause for hope.

  That all night long, until morning, the snail shapes in the armchair cover keep muttering, “We twist and turn but no one notices.”

  That somewhere nearby, three inches beneath my feet or inside the ceiling, strange larvae are slowly gnawing through iron and concrete, like termites.

  That the scissors on the table suddenly spring into action to embark on a long-demanded much-dreamed-of cutting spree, attacking anything that comes before them, but that this bloody drama will last no longer than fifteen minutes.

  That the telephone is talking to another telephone, which is why it has fallen silent.

  I don’t talk about these things to anyone. There was a time when I was troubled, even nervous, about not being able to share these hyper-real images with others; no one talks about such things, and so maybe I’m the only one who sees them. The attendant sense of responsibility is more than just a burden. It prompts one to ask why it is that this great secret of life is revealed only to oneself. Why does that ashtray tell only me of its sadness and defeat? Why am I the confessor of the door latch in its misery? Why am I the only one who thinks that by opening the refrigerator I shall come to a world exactly like the one I knew twenty years ago? Why must I alone listen to the seagulls next to that clock and the little creatures rattling at the base of the walls?

  Have you ever looked at the fringe on the carpet? Or the hidden signs in its pattern?

  When the world is shimmering with so many signs and curiosities, how can anyone sleep? I try to calm myself by telling myself that people cannot have so little interest in these signs. In a while, when I’m asleep, I too shall become part of a story.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Giving Up Smoking

  It has been 272 days since I gave up smoking. I think I’m used to it now. My anxiety has abated, and I no longer feel as if a part of my body has been amputated. No, correction: I have not stopped feeling the lack, I’ve not stopped feeling as I’ve been parted from the whole me, it’s just that I’m accustomed now to feeling this way; to put it more accurately, I’ve accepted bitter reality.

  I’m never going to smoke again, ever.

  I say this and then I still have daydreams in which I’m smoking. If I say these are daydreams so secret, so dreadful, that we hide them even from ourselves … do you understand? Anyway, it will be right in the middle of one such daydream, and whatever I am contriving to do at that particular moment, as I watch the film that is my dream slowly approaching its climax, I feel as happy as if I had just lit a cigarette.

  So this was the main purpose of cigarettes in my life: to slow the experience of pleasure and pain, desire and defeat, sadness and joy, the present and the future; and between each frame, to find new roads and shortcuts. When these possibilities disappear, a person feels almost naked. Disarmed and helpless.

  Once I got into a taxi, the driver was chain-smoking, and the inside of the car was thick with magnificent smoke. I began to breathe it in.

  “I beg your pardon,” the man said. He was opening the window.

  “No,” I said, “keep it closed. I’ve given up smoking.”

  I can go for a long time without longing for a cigarette, but when I do, the longing comes from deep inside me.

  I am reminded then of a forgotten self, a self occluded by medicines, fabrications, and health warnings. I want to be that other man, the Orhan I once was, the smoking man, who was so much better at fighting the Devil.

  The question when I remember my old self is not whether I should at once light up a cigarette. I no longer feel the chemical craving of the early days. I just miss my old self, the way I might miss a dear friend, a face; all I want is to return to the man I once was. I feel as if I’ve been forced to wear clothes I haven’t chosen, as if they have made me into a man I never wished to be. If I smoked, I would again feel the intensity of the night, the terrors of the man I once thought I was.

  When I long to return to my old self, I remember that in those days I had vague intimations of immortality. In the old days, time did not flow; at times when I smoked, I’d sometimes feel such happiness, or such intense despair, that I’d think everything would remain unchanged. As I blithely smoked my cigarette, the world stood in place.

  Then I began to fear death. That smoking man could drop dead at any moment; the papers were entirely convincing on this point. To stay alive, I had to dismiss the smoker and become someone else. This I succeeded in doing. Now the self I abandoned has joined forces with the Devil to call me back to the days when time never moved and no one died.

  His call does not frighten me.

  Because, as you can see, writing—if you’re happy with it—undoes all sorrows.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Seagull in the Rain

  Concerning the Seagull on the Roof Opposit
e My Desk

  The seagull is standing on the roof, in the rain, as if nothing has happened. It is as if it’s not raining at all; the seagull is just standing there, as still as ever. Or else the seagull is a great philosopher, too great to take offense. There it stands. On the roof. It’s raining. It’s as if that seagull standing there is thinking, I know, I know, it’s raining; but there’s not much I can do about that. Or: Yes, it’s raining, but what importance does that have? Or maybe something like this: By now I’ve accustomed myself to rain; it doesn’t make much of a difference.

  I’m not saying they’re very tough, these seagulls. I watch them through the window, I watch them when I’m trying to write, when I’m pacing up and down the room; even seagulls can get panicky about things beyond their own lives.

  One had babies. Two little gray balls of squeaky clean wool, just a bit frantic and silly. They’d venture across the once-red tiles now whitened by the lime in their own droppings and their mother’s, veering left and then right, and then they would stop somewhere and rest. You couldn’t really call it rest, though; they just came to a stop. They exist, nothing more. Seagulls, like most humans and most other creatures, spend most of their time doing nothing, just standing there. You could call this a form of waiting. To stand in this world waiting: for the next meal, for death, for sleep. I don’t know how they die.

  The babies can’t stand straight, either. A wind is ruffling their feathers, ruffling their entire bodies. Then they stop again; again they stop. Behind them the city keeps moving; below them the ships, the cars, the trees all aquiver.

  The anxious mother I was talking about—from time to time she finds something somewhere and brings it back to her children to eat. There’s quite a commotion then: a burst of activity, industry, panic. The macaroni-like organs of a dead fish—pull, pull, let’s see if you can pull that—is parceled out and eaten. After the meal, silence. The seagulls stand on the roof and do nothing. Together we wait. In the sky are leaden clouds.

  But still there is something that has escaped my notice. Something that suddenly came to me as I paced in front of the window: A seagull’s life is not simple. How many of them there are! Seagulls boding evil, standing on every roof, silently thinking about something of which I know nothing. Thinking treacherous thoughts, I would say.

  How did I come to understand this? Once, I noticed they were all gazing at the yellow light of dawn, that faint yellow light. First a wind came, and then a yellow rain. As that yellow rain was slowly falling, all the seagulls turned their backs on me, and as they gabbled among themselves it was clear that they were waiting for something. Down below, in the city, people were racing for shelter in houses and cars; above, the seagulls were waiting, straight and silent. I thought then that I understood them.

  Sometimes, the seagulls take flight all together to rise slowly into the air. When they do, their fluttering wings sound like rainfall.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A Seagull Lies Dying on the Shore

  This Is Another Seagull

  A seagull lies dying on the shore. Alone. Its beak is resting on the pebbles. Its eyes are sad and sick. The waves beat against the nearby rocks. The wind ruffles feathers that look dead already. Then the seagull’s eyes begin to follow me. It’s early in the morning; the wind is cool. Above, life goes on; in the sky are other seagulls. The dying seagull is a baby.

  Seeing me, the seagull suddenly tries to get up. The legs under its body quiver hopelessly. Its chest pushes forward, but it can’t raise its beak from the pebbles. As it struggles, a meaning forms in its eyes. Just then, it falls back onto the pebbles, spreading out now into an attitude of death. The meaning in its eyes is lost among the clouds and the waves. There’s no doubt now. The seagull is dying.

  I don’t know why it’s dying. Its feathers are graying and unkempt. All this season, I have, as always, watched a great many baby seagulls growing up, trying to fly. Yesterday, after two brushes with the wind and the waves, one took to the air with great joy, with the cutting, fearless arcs that seagulls trace across the sky when they first master it. This baby, I noticed later, had a broken wing. It seemed as if it was not just its wing but its entire body that was broken.

  To die in the coolness of a summer morning, as the other seagulls on your hill sing with joy and anger—that must be hard. But it’s as if the seagull is not dying so much as being saved from life. Maybe there were things it felt, things it wanted, but very little came its way, or nothing. What can a seagull think, what can it feel? Around its eyes is a sorrow that calls to mind an old man who is ready for death. To die is to crawl under some sort of quilt, or so it seems. Let it be, let it be so I might go, it seems to say.

  Even now, I am glad that I am closer to it than the impudent seagulls wheeling above us. I came to this lonely shore to enter the sea; I’m in a hurry, caught up in my own thoughts, and in my hand is a towel. Now I’ve stopped to look at the seagull. Silently, respectfully. In the pebbles beneath my bare feet, a whole world. It’s not the broken wings that make me feel the seagull’s death but its eyes.

  Once upon a time, it saw so much, noticed so much; you know this. In the space of one season it has become as tired as an old man, and perhaps it is sorry to be this tired. Slowly it leaves all things behind. I can’t be sure, but maybe it is this seagull that the other seagulls in the sky are cawing about. Perhaps the sound of the sea makes death easier.

  Later, much later, six hours later, when I returned to the pebble beach, the seagull was dead. It had spread one wing as if to fly, and turned on its side, opening one eye as wide as it could to stare blankly at the sun. There were no other seagulls flying near its hill.

  I ran into the cool sea as if nothing had happened.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  To Be Happy

  Is it vulgar to be happy? I’ve often wondered about this. Now I think about it all the time. Even though I have often said that people who are capable of happiness are evil and stupid, from time to time, I think this too: No, to be happy is not rude, and it takes brains.

  When I go to the seaside with my four-year-old daughter, Rüya, I become the happiest man in the world. What does the happiest man in the world want most? He wants, of course, to carry on being the happiest man in the world. This is why he knows how important it is to do the same things every time. And that’s what we do, always the same things.

  1. First I tell her: Today we’re going to the seaside, at such and such a time. Then Rüya tries to draw that time nearer. But her concept of time is a bit confused. So for example she’ll suddenly come to my side and say, “Isn’t it time yet?”

  “No.”

  “Will it be time in five minutes?”

  “No, it will be time in two and a half hours.”

  Five minutes later, she may come back to ask in all innocence, “Daddy, are we going to the seaside now?” Or later, in a voice designed to trick me, Rüya will ask, “So shall we go now?”

  2. It seems as if the time will never come, but then it does. Rüya is now in her swimsuit and sitting in her four-wheeled Safa children’s wagon. Inside it are towels, more swimsuits, and a silly straw bag that I shift to her lap before I pull the wagon forward in the usual way.

  3. As we go down the cobblestone alleyway, Rüya opens her mouth to say Aaaaah. As the cobblestones rattle the wagon, this changes to Aa-aa-aaaah. The stones are making Rüya sing! Hearing it, we both laugh.

  4. Down the small and featureless path to the beach. When we leave the wagon next to the steps leading down to the beach, Rüya always says, “Robbers never come here.”

  5. We quickly spread out our things on the stones, undress, and go knee-deep into the sea. Then I say, “It’s calm now, but don’t ever go too far. Let me take a swim, and when I come back we can play. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  6. I set off for a swim, leaving my thoughts behind. When I stop, I look back at the shore to see Rüya, who in her swimsuit now looks like a red stain, and I think how much I love he
r. I feel like laughing here in the water. She is paddling near the shore.

  7. I go back. When I reach the shore we play: (A) kicking; (B) splashing; © Daddy squirting water from his mouth; (D) pretending to swim; (E) throwing stones into the sea; (F) conversation with the talking cave; (G) come on, no chickening out, now swim, and all our other favorite games and rituals, and when we’ve played them all we play them again.

  8. “Your lips are purple, you’re cold.” “No, I’m not.” “You’re cold, we’re getting out.” This goes on for some time, and after the arguments are over we get out, and while we dry Rüya and change her swimsuit—

  9. Suddenly she springs from my arms and runs naked across the beach, laughing as she goes. As I try to run across the stones in my bare feet, I limp, and this makes naked Rüya laugh all the more. “Look, if I put my shoes on, I can catch you,” I say. I do just this, as she screams.

  10. On the way back, while I’m pulling Rüya’s wagon, we’re both tired and happy. We’re thinking about life, and about the sea behind us, and we don’t say a word.