by Orhan Pamuk
“Calm down,” said my mother. “It’s time to go to sleep.”
2.
I was at school, and it was just after lunch. The whole class was lined up two by two, and we were going back to that stinking cafeteria to have our inoculations. Some children were crying; others were waiting in nervous anticipation. When a whiff of iodine floated up the stairs, my heart began to race. I stepped out of line and went over to the teacher standing at the head of the stairs. The whole class passed us noisily.
“Yes?” said the teacher. “What is it?”
I took out the piece of paper my father had signed and gave it to the teacher. She read it with a frown. “Your father’s not a doctor, you know,” she said. She paused to think. “Go upstairs. Wait in Room Two-A.”
There were six or seven children in 2-A who like me had been excused. One was staring in terror out the window. Cries of panic came floating down the corridor; a fat boy with glasses was munching on pumpkin seeds and reading a Kinova comic book. The door opened and in came thin, gaunt Deputy Headmaster Seyfi Bey.
“Probably some of you are genuinely ill, and if you are, we won’t take you downstairs,” he said. “But I have this to say to those of you who’ve lied to get excused. One day you will grow up, serve our country, and maybe even die for it. Today it’s just an injection you’re running away from—but if you try something like this when you grow up, and if you don’t have a genuine excuse, you’ll be guilty of treason. Shame on you!”
There was a long silence. I looked at Atatürk’s picture, and tears came to my eyes.
Later, we slipped unnoticed back to our classrooms. The children who’d had their inoculations started coming back: Some had their sleeves rolled up, some had tears in their eyes, some scuffled in with very long faces.
“Children living close by can go home,” said the teacher. “Children with no one to pick them up must wait until the last bell. Don’t punch one another on the arm! Tomorrow there’s no school.”
Everyone started shouting. Some were holding their arms as they left the building; others stopped to show the janitor, Hilmi Efendi, the iodine tracks on their arms.
When I got out to the street, I slung my bag over my shoulder and began to run. A horse cart had blocked traffic in front of Karabet’s butcher shop, so I weaved between the cars to get to our building on the other side. I ran past Hayri’s fabric shop and Salih’s florist shop. Our janitor, Hazim Efendi, let me in.
“What are you doing here all alone at this hour?” he asked.
“They gave us our inoculations today. They let us out early.”
“Where’s your brother? Did you come back alone?”
“I crossed the streetcar lines by myself. Tomorrow we have the day off.”
“Your mother’s out,” he said. “Go up to your grandmother’s.”
“I’m ill,” I said. “I want to go to our house. Open the door for me.”
He took a key off the wall and we got into the lift. By the time we had reached our floor, his cigarette had filled the whole cage with smoke that burned my eyes. He opened our door. “Don’t play with the electrical sockets,” he said, as he pulled the door closed.
There was no one at home, but I still shouted out, “Is anyone here, anyone home? Isn’t there anyone home?” I threw down my bag, opened up my brother’s drawer, and began to look at the film ticket collection he’d never shown me. Then I had a good long look at the pictures of football matches that he’d cut out of newspapers and glued into a book. I could tell from the footsteps that it wasn’t my mother coming in now, it was my father. I put my brother’s tickets and his scrapbook back where they belonged, carefully, so he wouldn’t know I’d been looking at them.
My father was in his bedroom; he’d opened up his wardrobe and was looking inside.
“You’re home already, are you?”
“No, I’m in Paris,” I said, the way they did at school.
“Didn’t you go to school today?”
“Today they gave us our inoculations.”
“Isn’t your brother here?” he asked. “All right then, go to your room and show me how quiet you can be.”
I did as he asked. I pressed my forehead against the window and looked outside. From the sounds coming from the hallway I could tell that my father had taken one of the suitcases out of the cupboard there. He went back into his room and began to take his jackets and his trousers out of the wardrobe; I could tell from the rattling of the hangers. He began to open and close the drawers where he kept his shirts, his socks, and his underpants. I listened to him put them all into the suitcase. He went into the bathroom and came out again. He snapped the suitcase latches shut and turned the lock. He came to join me in my room.
“So what have you been up to in here?”
“I’ve been looking out the window.”
“Come here, let’s look out the window together.”
He took me on his lap, and for a long time we looked out the window together. The tips of the tall cypress tree that stood between us and the apartment building opposite began to sway in the wind. I liked the way my father smelled.
“I’m going far away,” he said. He kissed me. “Don’t tell your mother. I’ll tell her myself later.”
“Are you going by plane?”
“Yes,” he said, “to Paris. Don’t tell this to anyone either.” He took a huge two-and-a-half-lira coin from his pocket and gave it to me, and then he kissed me again. “And don’t say you saw me here.”
I put the money right into my pocket. When my father had lifted me from his lap and picked up his suitcase, I said, “Don’t go, Daddy.” He kissed me one more time, and then he left.
I watched him from the window. He walked straight to Alaaddin’s store, and then he stopped a passing taxi. Before he got in, he looked up at our apartment one more time and waved. I waved back, and he took off.
I looked at the empty avenue for a long, long time. A streetcar passed, and then the water seller’s horse cart. I rang the bell and called Hazim Efendi.
“Did you ring the bell?” he said, when he got to the door. “Don’t play with the bell.”
“Take this two-and-a-half-lira coin,” I said, “go to Alaaddin’s shop, and buy me ten chewing gums from the Famous People series. Don’t forget to bring back the fifty kuruş change.”
“Did your father give you this money?” he asked. “Let’s hope your mother doesn’t get angry.”
I said nothing, and he left. I stood at the window and watched him go into Alaaddin’s shop. He came out a little later. On his way back, he ran into the janitor from the Marmara Apartments across the way, and they stopped to chat.
When he came back, he gave me the change. I immediately ripped open the chewing gum: three more Fevzi Çakmaks, one Atatürk, and one each of Leonardo da Vinci and Süleyman the Magnificent, Churchill, General Franco, and one more number 21, the Greta Garbo that my brother still didn’t have. So now I had 183 pictures in all. But to complete the full set of 100, I still needed 26 more.
I was admiring my first 91, which showed the plane in which Lindbergh had crossed the Atlantic, when I heard a key in the door. My mother! I quickly gathered up the gum wrappers that I had thrown on the floor and put them in the bin.
“We had our inoculations today, so I came home early,” I said. “Typhoid, typhus, tetanus.”
“Where’s your brother?”
“His class hadn’t had their inoculations yet,” I said. “They sent us home. I crossed the avenue all by myself.”
“Does your arm hurt?”
I said nothing. A little later, my brother came home. His arm was hurting. He lay down on his bed, resting on his other arm, and looked miserable as he fell asleep. It was very dark out by the time he woke up. “Mummy, it hurts a lot,” he said.
“You might have a fever later on,” my mother said, as she was ironing in the other room. “Ali, is your arm hurting too? Lie down, keep still.”
We went to bed and kept sti
ll. After sleeping for a little my brother woke up and began to read the sports page, and then he told me it was because of me that we’d left the match early yesterday, and because we’d left early our team had missed four goals.
“Even if we hadn’t left, we might not have made those goals,” I said.
“What?”
After dozing a little longer, my brother offered me six Fevzi Çakmaks, four Atatürks, and three other cards I already had in exchange for one Greta Garbo, and I turned him down.
“Shall we play Tops or Bottoms?” he asked me.
“Okay, let’s play.”
You press the whole stack between the palms of your hands. You ask, “Tops or Bottoms?” If he says Bottoms, you look at the bottom picture, let’s say number 68, Rita Hayworth. Now let’s say it’s number 18, Dante the Poet, on top. If it is, then Bottoms wins and you give him the picture you like the least, the one you already have the most of. Field Marshal Fevzi Çakmak pictures passed back and forth between us until it was evening and time for supper.
“One of you go upstairs and take a look,” said my mother. “Maybe your father’s come back.”
We both went upstairs. My uncle was sitting, smoking, with my grandmother; my father wasn’t there. We listened to the news on the radio, we read the sports page. When my grandmother sat down to eat, we went downstairs.
“What kept you?” said my mother. “You didn’t eat anything up there, did you? Why don’t I give you your lentil soup now. You can eat it very slowly until your father gets home.”
“Isn’t there any toasted bread?” my brother asked.
While we were silently eating our soup, our mother watched us. From the way she held her head and the way her eyes darted away from us, I knew she was listening for the lift. When we finished our soup, she asked, “Would you like some more?” She glanced into the pot. “Why don’t I have mine before it gets cold,” she said. But instead she went to the window and looked down at Nişantaşi Square; she stood there looking for some time. Then she turned around, came back to the table, and began to eat her soup. My brother and I were discussing yesterday’s match.
“Be quiet! Isn’t that the lift?”
We fell quiet and listened carefully. It wasn’t the lift. A streetcar broke the silence, shaking the table, the glasses, the pitcher, and the water inside it. When we were eating our oranges, we all definitely heard the lift. It came closer and closer, but it didn’t stop at our floor; it went right up to my grandmother’s. “It went all the way up,” said my mother.
After we had finished eating, my mother said, “Take your plates to the kitchen. Leave your father’s plate where it is.” We cleared the table. My father’s clean plate sat alone on the empty table for a long time.
My mother went over to the window that looked down at the police station; she stood there looking for a long time. Then suddenly she made up her mind. Gathering up my father’s knife and fork and empty plate, she took them into the kitchen. “I’m going upstairs to your grandmother’s,” she said. “Please don’t get into a fight while I’m gone.”
My brother and I went back to our game of Tops or Bottoms.
“Tops,” I said, for the first time.
He revealed the top card: number 34, Koca Yusuf, the world-famous wrestler. He pulled out the card from the bottom of the stack: number 50, Atatürk. “You lose. Give me a card.”
We played for a long time and he kept on winning. Soon he had taken nineteen of my twenty Fevzi Çakmaks and two of my Atatürks.
“I’m not playing anymore,” I said, getting angry. “I’m going upstairs. To Mummy.”
“Mummy will get angry.”
“Coward! Are you afraid of being home all alone?”
My grandmother’s door was open as usual. Supper was over. Bekir, the cook, was washing the dishes; my uncle and my grandmother were sitting across from each other. My mother was at the window looking down on Nişantaşi Square.
“Come,” she said, still looking out the window. I moved straight into the empty space that seemed to be reserved just for me. Leaning against her, I too looked down at Nişantaşi Square. My mother put her hand on my head and gently stroked my hair.
“Your father came home early this afternoon, I hear. You saw him.”
“Yes.”
“He took his suitcase and left. Hazim Efendi saw him.”
“Yes.”
“Did he tell you where he was going, darling?”
“No,” I said. “He gave me two and a half lira.”
Down in the street, everything—the dark stores along the avenue, the car lights, the little empty space in the middle where the traffic policemen stood, the wet cobblestones, the letters on the advertising boards that hung from the trees—everything was lonely and sad. It began to rain, and my mother passed her fingers slowly through my hair.
That was when I noticed that the radio that sat between my grandmother’s chair and my uncle’s—the radio that was always on—was silent. A chill passed through me.
“Don’t stand there like that, my girl,” my grandmother said then.
My brother had come upstairs.
“Go to the kitchen, you two,” said my uncle. “Bekir!” he called. “Make these boys a ball; they can play football in the hallway.”
In the kitchen, Bekir had finished the dishes. “Sit down over there,” he said. He went out to the glass-enclosed balcony that my grandmother had turned into a greenhouse and brought back a pile of newspapers that he began to crumple into a ball. When it was as big as a fist, he asked, “Is this good enough?”
“Wrap a few more sheets around it,” said my brother.
While Bekir was wrapping a few more sheets of newsprint around the ball, I looked through the doorway to watch my mother, my grandmother, and my uncle on the other side. With a rope he took from a drawer, Bekir bound the paper ball until it was as round as it could be. To soften its sharp edges, he wiped it lightly with a damp rag and then he compressed it again. My brother couldn’t resist touching it.
“Wow. It’s hard as a rock.”
“Put your finger down there for me.” My brother carefully placed his finger on the spot where the last knot was to be tied. Bekir tied the knot and the ball was done. He tossed it into the air and we began to kick it around.
“Play in the hallway,” said Bekir. “If you play in here, you’ll break something.”
For a long time we gave our game everything we had. I was pretending to be Lefter from Fenerbahçe, and I twisted and turned like he did. Whenever I did a wall pass, I ran into my brother’s bad arm. He hit me, too, but it didn’t hurt. We were both perspiring, the ball was falling to pieces, and I was winning five to three when I hit his bad arm very hard. He threw himself down on the floor and began to cry.
“When my arm gets better I’m going to kill you!” he said, as he lay there.
He was angry because he’d lost. I left the hallway for the sitting room; my grandmother, my mother, and my uncle had all gone into the study. My grandmother was dialing the phone.
“Hello, my girl,” she said then, in the same voice she used when she called my mother the same thing. “Is that Yeşilköy Airport? Listen, my girl, we want to make an inquiry about a passenger who flew out to Europe earlier today.” She gave my father’s name and twisted the phone cord around her finger while she waited. “Bring me my cigarettes,” she said then to my uncle. When my uncle had left the room, she took the receiver away from her ear.
“Please, my girl, tell us,” my grandmother said to my mother. “You would know. Is there another woman?”
I couldn’t hear my mother’s answer. My grandmother was looking at her as if she hadn’t said a thing. Then the person at the other end of the line said something and she got angry. “They’re not going to tell us,” she said, when my uncle returned with a cigarette and an ashtray.
My mother saw my uncle looking at me, and that was when she noticed I was there. Taking me by the arm, she pulled me back into the hallwa
y. When she’d felt my back and the nape of my neck, she saw how much I’d perspired, but she didn’t get angry at me.
“Mummy, my arm hurts,” said my brother.
“You two go downstairs now, I’ll put you both to bed.”
Downstairs on our floor, the three of us were silent for a long time. Before I went to bed I padded into the kitchen in my pajamas for a glass of water, and then I went into the sitting room. My mother was smoking in front of the window, and at first she didn’t hear me.
“You’ll catch cold in those bare feet,” she said. “Is your brother in bed?”
“He’s asleep. Mummy, I’m going to tell you something.” I waited for my mother to make room for me at the window. When she had opened up that sweet space for me, I sidled into it. “Daddy went to Paris,” I said. “And you know what suitcase he took?”
She said nothing. In the silence of the night, we watched the rainy street for a very long time.
3.
My other grandmother’s house was next to Şişli Mosque and the end of the streetcar line. Now the square is full of minibus and municipal bus stops, and high ugly buildings and department stores plastered with signs, and offices whose workers spill out onto the pavements at lunchtime and look like ants, but in those days it was at the edge of the European city. It took us fifteen minutes to walk from our house to the wide cobblestone square, and as we walked hand in hand with my mother under the linden and mulberry trees, we felt as if we had come to the countryside.
My other grandmother lived in a four-story stone and concrete house that looked like a matchbox turned on its side; it faced Istanbul to the west and in the back the mulberry groves in the hills. After her husband died and her three daughters were married, my grandmother had taken to living in a single room of this house, which was crammed with wardrobes, tables, trays, pianos, and other furniture. My aunt would cook her food and bring it over or pack it in a metal container and have her driver deliver it for her. It wasn’t just that my grandmother would not leave her room to go two flights down to the kitchen to cook; she didn’t even go into the other rooms of the house, which were covered with a thick blanket of dust and silky cobwebs. Like her own mother, who had spent her last years alone in a great wooden mansion, my grandmother had succumbed to a mysterious solitary disease and would not even permit a caretaker or a daily cleaner.