Sins & Innocents

by Sonmez, Burhan;

  I knew there was a small graveyard attached to the church but until today I had never thought to go and explore it.

  The left side of the road was lined with trees. I walked slowly along the narrow path.

  In one house I heard an alarm clock go off four times.

  I saw the man sitting at the window. He stared at me with the look of old men who know the fate of the seasons. His long hair floated down to his shoulders, like dead leaves.

  I walked towards the church. I reached the first graves.

  I knew Wittgenstein was buried there.

  Wittgenstein, who bore death on his forehead like an angry scar, did not choose suicide like his brothers. Fixated as he was with the other world during his lifetime, he waited for his appointed time to come.

  On the right, two men were digging a grave. I greeted them.

  “Do you know where Wittgenstein’s grave is?”

  The freshly dug earth was soft, ready to receive the newly dead. I remembered Ancient İsmail’s fear in the darkness of Haymana Plain all those years ago at the sight of a freshly dug grave.

  “Was he buried here recently?” asked one of the men.

  “He’s been dead for over fifty years.”

  The hands of the other gravedigger holding the spade had turned red with cold. His bones protruded.

  “Was he a philosopher?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  But that’s not what Wittgenstein wanted to be known as. Sometimes he was a communist, sometimes a racist and sometimes an Italian prisoner of war. He believed he was a great sinner and used to say that God, whom he likened to an evil judge, would never spare him.

  The gravediggers didn’t know that. They were busy digging graves for dead bodies in this garden where every soul would end up eventually.

  “Yes, he was a philosopher,” I confirmed.

  The gravediggers stopped working for a moment. They stuck their spades into the soil.

  “A woman was asking about that same grave this morning,” said the older one.

  I wondered if it might have been Feruzeh. Last night when Azita was telling me to go and visit the dead I thought of this grave. But I didn’t remember mentioning it to Feruzeh.

  “What did she look like?” I asked.

  “She was a middle-aged lady in a white coat holding a bunch of roses.”

  A row of freshly dug graves were waiting expectantly, like hungry children.

  “Are you a philosopher as well?” asked the younger gravedigger.

  My foot slipped, I narrowly missed falling into the grave. They just managed to grab my arms and pull me back.

  “Don’t rush to go to your grave.”

  We laughed as though we were at a fun fair instead of a graveyard.

  The last time I had been to a graveyard was to bury a friend. The old people weeping in the rain while various young people chanted slogans reminded me of a black and white film. That morning when we had gone to collect his body from the morgue, I had looked at the complexion that young girls had loved so much, but all the rosy colour was drained from his face. It was impossible to count his wounds. Bullet holes were planted all over his body like kisses, from the centre of his forehead to his feet.

  “I’d quite like to live a bit longer,” I said.

  “Who for? For yourself or for your children?” asked the older gravedigger.

  “I don’t have any children.”

  “You live for yourself then.”

  “Some of my friends died young. I want to live for them.”

  “That’s not how philosophers talk,” said the young gravedigger. “I could tell you weren’t a philosopher.”

  “Can’t philosophers have dead friends then?” protested the older gravedigger.

  “They don’t think of the dead as part of life.”

  “Oh, and you reckon philosophers think of anything other than death?”

  “They worry about death,” said the young gravedigger. “But they don’t care about the dead.”

  “How can you talk like that before you’ve had a single beer?”

  “If you buy the beers tonight I’ll show you.”

  “Why don’t you come with us mate, we’re going to The Eagle tonight,” the older gravedigger said to me.

  “All right but I won’t have beer, I’ll have something else.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t you get it? He’s a Muslim,” said the young gravedigger.

  “I’ve got loads of Muslim friends; they drink more than I do,” said the older gravedigger.

  “Then they pray all night.”

  We laughed.

  I didn’t tell them I had drunk wine last night. Neither did I mention that fog had obscured the bridge between myself and God. Wittgenstein had said that what we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. I accepted the cigarette that the older gravedigger offered me. I drew the pleasure of smoking in a graveyard in the cold into my lungs. I coughed.

  “Is this philosopher of yours a Muslim?” asked the older gravedigger.

  “No,” I said.

  “How can you have a Muslim philosopher?” asked the younger gravedigger.

  The older gravedigger grew serious: “That’s taking the joke too far.”

  “I’m not joking, I’m telling the truth. Have you ever heard of a Muslim philosopher?”

  The older gravedigger paused and thought for a while.

  I looked at the younger gravedigger.

  “You name me a Christian philosopher and I’ll name you a Muslim one.”

  We each took a drag from our cigarette.

  A few drops of rain fell.

  “I hope we don’t get caught in the rain,” said the younger gravedigger.

  “Don’t change the subject,” said the older gravedigger.

  “I can’t think of the names of any philosophers,” said the younger gravedigger. “You’re a Christian, you help me.”

  The older gravedigger scratched his head. He looked at the open grave. “I know a philosopher,” he said. “The Pope.”

  They tittered with laughter like children. I thanked them for the cigarette.

  “I’d better go and look for Wittgenstein,” I said.

  “The old graves are on the other side of the church,” said the older gravedigger.

  “What do you want to find him for?” asked the younger gravedigger. “All graves are the same.”

  “What do you mean?” asked the older gravedigger.

  “Each dead body is separate, but the souls of the dead all join together.”

  “All right, the beer’s on me tonight. That was impressive.”

  “Cheers.”

  “But because our two souls are joined together I can drink yours.”

  “Not while we’re alive,” said the younger gravedigger. “Our souls can’t join together before our bodies have died.”

  “Where did you get that from?”

  “My granddad started talking like that when he got dementia.”

  “He must have been getting ready to die then,” said the older gravedigger.

  When I was at university my friends and I used to play a game called “Who’s the best dead person?” We would name three characteristics. We would start off with a film, a goodbye letter or a word we heard in the street. The characteristics would change every day and we would have to find dead people to suit them. We would say Deniz, Spartacus or Leyla. Death’s eternity had shrouded them all in a shared destiny. We too were ready to die, but we didn’t know which of us would be the first to join that caravan. “I’ll buy you a beer tonight,” I said to the younger gravedigger.

  “And I’ll do you a favour in return.”

  “Just learn a few philosophers’ names, that will be enough,” I said.

  “All right, deal.”

  Anyone would think the two gravediggers were digging holes for sapling trees instead of for dead bodies. Contact with the soil and the time spent with it brought a freshness to their hearts. Wittgens
tein, who knew that, gave up teaching to work in a churchyard as a gardener.

  We became absorbed in the peace emanating from the stones, the trees and the gravestones. There was silence. Then a harsh wind blew past us.

  The gravediggers told me their names, I introduced myself and we parted after arranging to meet in the evening.

  “The dead are good for all eternity,” I said as I walked away. “When we are with them we will see the eternity inside ourselves.”

  “Hey,” said the younger gravedigger. “Are you a philosopher or what?”

  “You can decide that tonight over a beer.”

  “Don’t worry about sinning mate, you have a drink too. Drunks are as innocent as the dead.”

  I had no intention of spoiling the taste of the wine I had drunk from Feruzeh’s glass last night.

  The rain suddenly grew heavier.

  I opened my umbrella.

  I examined each of the gravestones behind the church in turn. I wandered amongst carved marble, plain gravestones and Celtic crosses.

  The graves of young people and children rubbed shoulders with the graves of the old. Death was the same distance away from everyone.

  Some gravestones were worn, some overturned, the writing on them no longer legible.

  The graveyard was overrun with weeds. I reached the wall on the west side with great difficulty.

  As I turned to look at the church I saw the woman in the white coat by the gravestones. She was crouched beside a grave in the downpour.

  I knew I had found Wittgenstein.

  I coughed gently.

  The woman in the white coat raised her head and looked at me.

  “Are you dead or alive?” she said.

  “Alive.”

  “How can I believe you?”

  “Do the dead cough?”

  “Your voice is deep and hazy.”

  “That’s because it’s cold. I don’t think the dead carry umbrellas either.”

  The rain had soaked her hair. The hem of her coat was buried in the mud.

  I crouched beside her and put my umbrella over her head.

  “I’m certain you’re not dead,” I said.

  “How?”

  “You’re cold. Your hands are shaking with cold.”

  “It wasn’t easy to find this grave,” she said.

  It wasn’t at all easy to find. There was no gravestone above it, just a flat stone lying on the ground. It was covered with mud and pine needles.

  The red roses strewn over it were soaked, like the woman’s hair.

  At the head of the grave was a tiny ladder the size of an outstretched hand, which had been placed there by unknown scholars. Several coins were scattered around it.

  “You’re all wet. If you stay here any longer you’ll get ill,” I said.

  Black clouds and rain cloaked the sky.

  “My pain hasn’t gone away yet,” said the woman.

  “What are you hoping will make your pain go away? The rain, or Wittgenstein?”

  She picked up a rose from the grave and held it in the palm of her hand.

  It was clear that tears were pouring down her face along with the rain.

  “My husband left me yesterday,” she said.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Catching cold at Wittgenstein’s grave won’t do you any good,” I said.

  “Do you believe in fate?” she asked.

  “Only in matters of love.”

  “I’m sure you must be right.”

  “Did Wittgenstein believe in fate?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Why are you here then?”

  “Perhaps Wittgenstein who knows about today, will know about tomorrow too.”

  “Is that possible?” I asked.

  “Yesterday was our wedding anniversary. I was getting some books down from the bookshelf so I could choose a poem and I dropped one on the floor. I read the line on the open page: ‘It is a hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow, and this means we do not know whether it will rise.’ I looked at the cover; it was Wittgenstein’s philosophy book. I’d bought my husband a lovely card. I quoted those words and added: ‘I can’t be sure of the sun but I’m certain of our love.’”

  The woman’s voice was trembling.

  “Last night my husband didn’t come home,” she continued. “His phone was switched off. It was only later that I saw the letter he had left on his desk. It said he was in love with someone else, that he’d been meaning to tell me for ages but didn’t know how to do it. I looked in the wardrobe; he’d taken all his clothes too.”

  She crushed the rose in her hand and started sobbing.

  “Pain too has a limited life, dear lady; you’ll feel better soon,” I said.

  She took my arm and laid her head on my shoulder.

  Azita was right in saying the dead were good for all eternity.

  The dead didn’t know what evil was, they didn’t hurt anybody, but lovers did.

  “I’m dead too now. My life is over,” said the woman.

  “When I was little my aunty got sick,” I said. “She used to tell the children who went to see her that she would be dead soon. ‘You have a long life ahead of you, make the best of it,’ she said. The following day there was a storm and one of the children was carried away by a flood. My aunt is still alive.”

  “I’m that child carried away by the flood.”

  “You shouldn’t make such sweeping statements about yourself when you’re not even sure if the sun will rise tomorrow.”

  She raised her head and looked at me.

  I smiled. She tried to smile too but her eyes, worn out with crying, wouldn’t let her.

  “Shall I read you a poem?” I said.

  “I always carry my book around with me now.” She took Wittgenstein’s Tractatus out of her coat pocket. “Read me something from this.”

  “You’re like Wittgenstein,” I said.

  “Really?”

  I saw her eyes light up for the first time.

  “He found a book when he was in the war and he too carried it everywhere with him.”

  “A poetry book?”

  “No. Tolstoy’s The Gospel in Brief.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Wittgenstein found it in a bookshop during the First World War. Because of the war that was the only book left in the bookshop. Wittgenstein interpreted it as a sign of fate. He wouldn’t be parted from the book, it was like God was inside those words.”

  “I thought he was an atheist.”

  “He was when he was going to war.”

  “He changed in the war then …”

  “I’ll tell you the story of a soldier who didn’t believe in God,” I continued. “About a hundred years ago, when the Greek army that invaded us was defeated they left many dead and prisoners of war behind. Some soldiers asked the villagers to shelter them so they wouldn’t be taken prisoner. One of them stayed in our village and changed his name. Although the Muslim villagers accepted him they made fun of him for being a Christian. One day the soldier couldn’t stand it anymore. ‘Don’t mock me,’ he said, ‘I’m not a Christian, I don’t believe in God.’ No one had ever seen such fear in a village that had existed for many centuries, not even when the enemy invaded. For days everyone locked themselves in their houses. Eventually they came out and said to the soldier, ‘Christianity is fine too, only don’t be Godless.’”

  The rain suddenly stopped.

  “I believe in God,” she said.

  “In that case He will help you.”

  “You’re very optimistic …”

  “Look, it’s stopped raining. That’s a good sign,” I said.

  I folded my umbrella. Above us the sky opened like a giant window.

  “What does Wittgenstein’s book say?” she said.

  I opened a page at random. I read the first sentence that caught my eye.

  “The world of the happy man is a different one from that of t
he unhappy man.”

  The rain had tired us out. We breathed deeply.

  “This morning I wanted to die here, but now I want to be healed,” she said.

  “You will be healed.”

  I took my handkerchief out of my pocket and dried the woman’s face. She was like a helpless child. Her hands were trembling.

  “Why did you come here? Are you unhappy too?”

  “I came to listen to the eternal breath of the dead,” I said.

  “Why?”

  The sky that was leaden only a few moments ago was starting to clear.

  “The clouds are clearing,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “The rain got tired …”

  “Not that, I was asking what brought you to this graveyard.”

  “When you’re inside a situation you can’t understand it completely. To see all of it you have to step outside it.”

  “And this is outside it?”

  “I think so.”

  “The dead are outside of life and you came here to understand life, is that right?”

  “Being with the dead makes us more aware of life, not death,” I said. “We can’t attain the meaning of existence without getting close to non-existence.”

  “Can the dead attain?”

  “I hope so …”

  “What if they can’t?”

  “Then we will have missed our chance of understanding this world.”

  “Is that why people know themselves less than anyone else?” she said. “Because we can’t look at ourselves from the outside …”

  “We tend to understand others better than we understand ourselves. Knowing ourselves is only possible through the eyes of other people anyway. Other people are our mirrors,” I said.

  “And we’re each other’s mirrors too now, aren’t we?”

  “The real reason we’re here is to see the mirror that we can both look into at the same time.”

  “Which mirror?”

  “The one under this gravestone.”

  We both looked at the gravestone in front of us.

  “What a magical thing death is,” said the woman.

  I started to feel dizzy. My eyes became blurred.

  “Death isn’t the opposite of life, but its mirror,” I said.

  “I realized …” she said calmly.

  “Everyone realizes it but they can’t form it into an idea.”

  “Not that; what I mean is that when you arrived I realized you were dead. You speak like part of the other world.”