by Orhan Pamuk
Your moon appears step by step at night Naili
Is this not worth suffering worlds of pain
He was saying, Of course you understand, that it is Naili’s seventeenth-century Ottoman poem, but after he’d recited it, the fatso looked so satisfied you’d have thought it was his own, and he started reciting again:
So intoxicated was I that I could not comprehend what was the world
Who am I, who is that the wine server, what is the elixir of dawn
Whose that is, I don’t know, he said, it’s from Evliya’s Travels, said Ceylan smiling kindly at the unlidded Ottoman alcohol vat before her and ready to hear more when I said, Faruk, could I have the car keys, we’re leaving, Sure, he said, on one condition, the lovely lady will answer one question for me, yes, I couldn’t comprehend what was the world, please, could you tell us, Ceylan Hanim, it is Ceylan, isn’t it, such a beautiful name, Ceylan, tell us please what then is the world, all these things around us, the trees and the sky and the stars and the empty bottles on the table before us, yes, what do you say, he said, and Ceylan looking at him with a sweet, familiar way, said nothing in words but with a look, You would know better than I do, and trying to change the subject so my drunken brother wouldn’t get embarrassed, I said, Wow, Grandmother’s light is still on, and for a moment we all turned and looked up, before I said, Come on, Ceylan, let’s go, and we got into that piece of Plexiglas junk and as I started the engine, and as we pulled away from the garden that smelled of the graveyard, the decrepit old house, my stupefied fat brother, I wondered with a shudder what Ceylan must think of me, because she was surely saying, Only somebody with a house, car, and family like this would attack a girl on a deserted beach in the middle of the night, but please, no, Ceylan, I can explain everything, but there’s no time, see, we’re already nearly to Turan’s, but no, you have to listen to me, and I veered off turning the car toward the hill, and when Ceylan asked where we were going, I said, Let’s get a little air and she didn’t protest, so off we went, and I repeated that I had to explain, but because I didn’t know where to start, my foot started pressing on the gas, and as we zoom downhill, I’m thinking, and still I’m racking my brain when we get to the hill, and we head down and I still haven’t started talking, but by now my foot is pressing down so hard that the Anadol begins to shudder, but Ceylan doesn’t say anything, and going around the curve the rear wheels skid, but Ceylan still doesn’t speak, and we came to the Istanbul-Ankara road, with vehicles coming and going, just to say something I said, Should we have some fun with one of them, and Ceylan said, Let’s go back now, you’re very drunk, and I thought, Okay, you want to get away from me, but at least listen for a little, I want to explain things to you, I’ll tell you, you’ll understand I’m a good person, even though I’m not rich, I know what people like you think, and the rules you live by, I’m just like any of you, Ceylan, but when I got ready to confess it all seemed horribly crude and insincere, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do except to step on the gas, okay, then, at least see that I’m not some bastard, because people like that are afraid to die, and, look, I’m not afraid, I’m doing one hundred thirty in this crappy car. Are you afraid that we might die, and I stepped on the gas even more, and soon, when we start downhill, we’ll fly off the road and be killed, and when my friends in the dormitory set up a poker tournament in my memory, they better use some of the money they win off the rich boys to buy a marble gravestone for me, and I pressed harder still, but Ceylan still was keeping quiet, and I thought that the end really was very near, when oh my God, I saw people strolling down the middle of the road as if they were walking on the seashore, so I slammed on the brake and the car came about like a boat and started to slide, so that we were coming right at them, and they all ran for cover, still holding some cans, and the car skidded on before entering a field where it smacked into something, and once the engine died we could hear the crickets. Ceylan, I said, are you all right, were you scared, and she said, No, but we almost ran over them, and they came running toward us, furious, and when I saw the paint cans in their hands, the kind for spraying slogans on the walls, I decided I better not get into something here with a bunch of terrorists, so I tried to restart the car, and luckily it worked on the second try, but as I was maneuvering to get back on the road, those three hoodlums came up to the car and started to curse at us, and I said, Lock your door, and one of those fools must have bumped into us because he cried out, and they all started to pound on the back of the car, but too late, you idiots, we were on the road and we were out of there, though not entirely, because up ahead, we saw there were still others writing on a wall:
Yeni Mahalle will be the graveyard of Communists
and
We will free the Slave Turks of Central Asia
Good for you, at least you’re not Communists, but I didn’t want to tangle with nationalists either, so we fled quickly, and I said, Were you afraid, and Ceylan said No, and I wanted to talk over what we’d just been through, but she was giving only one-word answers, so we were quiet on the road back, and when I finally parked the car in front of Turan’s, Ceylan immediately jumped out and ran off, so I went to have a look, nothing much had happened to the car, if my brother had spent some of his monthly salary on changing the bald tires instead of blowing it all on bottles of raki, we wouldn’t have been in this fix in the first place. I went inside to find them all spread out, lounging in the armchairs, on the couches, on the floor, half passed out, wrecked, as if they were all waiting for something, like death. Meticulously taking the cherry pits from his mouth, Mehmet, as though it were the last meaningful action to be taken in the world, was concentrating on throwing them at Turgay’s head, and Turgay, sprawled on the wet floor, was doggedly cursing each pit that hit him and sighing hopelessly, while Zeynep was asleep, Fafa was buried deep in a fashion magazine, her eyes looking frozen, and Hülya was planting kisses on Turan’s head as he lay there snoring; the others were listening to Ceylan with a cigarette in her hand tell about our adventure, when, lifting her head from the magazine, Fafa said, Come on, the sun is coming up, come on, let’s do something.
22
Hasan Does His Duty
Did you get the license plate?” said Mustafa.
“It was a white Anadol,” said Serdar. “I’d know it if I saw it again.”
“Did you get a look at the people inside?”
“A girl and a guy,” said Yasar.
“Could you see their faces?” said Mustafa.
Nobody said anything, so I didn’t either; I had recognized Metin, but I couldn’t tell: Were you the other one or not, Nilgün? You could have killed us, and at this hour of the morning!… But I refuse to think about it anymore. I’m continuing to do my job, writing slogans on the walls in huge letters, while Serdar, Mustafa, and the new guys just sit there smoking cigarettes and cursing. But look at me, I’m still at it, bravely writing what we nationalists will do if the Communists ever dare come around here: we’ll make this place their grave!
“Okay, enough for now, gentlemen,” Mustafa said after a little while. “We’ll pick up again tomorrow night.” He was quiet for a second and then said to me, “Good! You did a good job! But you’d better be there tomorrow morning! I want to see what you do to that girl …”
After everyone split up, I walked home reading the things we had written on the walls, and still wondering: Were you next to Metin in the car, Nilgün? Where could she have been coming from? Maybe her grandmother is sick. She was out trying to find medicine with Metin … Was that it? Anyway I’ll ask you tomorrow morning.
It was light out now, but when I got home the lamp was still burning. Thanks, Dad. He’d locked the window and the door and was fast asleep, not in his bed, but all by himself on the couch again, and actually I felt sorry for him, my poor crippled dad. I tapped on the window.
He’d barely gotten up to let me in before he started to yell and scream, so much that I thought he was going to hit me again, but no, he on
ly went on about life’s hardships and the importance of a high school diploma; he never hits me when he’s on these topics. As I listened I lowered my head, hoping he would quiet down, but it didn’t do any good. I can’t believe that after working all night, on top of everything else that has happened to me, I have to listen to you now: so I went inside, got a handful of cherries from the fridge, and I was eating them when suddenly, God, he tried to take a swipe at me, and though I pulled away quickly, he managed to nail my hand, sending pits and cherries all over the floor. He was still talking as I bent down to pick them up and when he realized I wasn’t listening he started to plead: Son, son, why don’t you study, etc. At that point I felt sorry for him again and a bit ashamed, but what was I supposed to do? Then he smacked me on my shoulder, and I got mad again.
“If you hit me once more I’m going to leave home,” I said.
“Go on, get out!” he said. “Next time I’m not opening the window!”
“Fine,” I said. “I earn my own money anyway.”
“Don’t lie!” he said. “What are you doing in the street at this hour?” When my mother came from inside, he said, “This one’s running away from home! He’s never coming back.”
His voice trembled, the way it would when someone’s about to cry, like the howl of a lonely old dog with no master. My mother signaled me to go inside, and I went in without saying anything. My father went on for a while, screaming and shouting, and when he stopped they talked. Finally, they turned out the lights and it was quiet.
As for me, with the sun already peeking at the edge of my window, I went to my bed without bothering to get undressed. I just lay down like that, looking at the ceiling, a crack in the ceiling that would drip when there was heavy rain, leaving a stain there. I used to think that stain on the ceiling looked like an eagle, like this old eagle with its wings spread that would come and carry me away while I slept, and then I would no longer be a boy but turned into a girl!
I’ll go find her on the beach at nine thirty, I’ll say, Hi, Nilgün, do you recognize me, but she still doesn’t answer, Look you’re sulking, I’ll say. But we don’t have a lot of time, because unfortunately we’re in danger, I’ll say, you misunderstood me, I can explain, and I’ll tell her everything, how they want me to tell her off, to rip the newspaper from her hands and shred it to pieces, Please, Nilgün, let them see that they don’t have to do any of this, I say all that, and then Nilgün can go over to Mustafa, who’s watching us from nearby, she can tell him herself what kind of person she is, and Mustafa will get embarrassed and maybe then Nilgün will understand that I love her and maybe she won’t get mad and maybe even be happy, because in life anything’s possible, you never know …
I was still looking at the wings of the stain on the ceiling. Yes, I’d say an eagle, or sometimes a kite. Water would drip out of it. But not in the old days, because my father still hadn’t built this room yet.
But back then I wasn’t so ashamed that our house was small, that my father sold lottery tickets, and my uncle was a dwarf house servant. I can’t say I wasn’t ashamed at all, because we still didn’t have a well, and when I used to go with my mother to the fountain I was afraid that you would see us, Nilgün, because you had started to go hunting with Metin, and at that time we were such good friends that, remember, it was in the fall, when the people in those Besevler, the Five Houses that had just been built, each exactly like the others, before the vines had grown all over them, when the owners and everyone else had gone back to Istanbul, one day at the beginning of September, you were still here and you came to my house with Metin, Faruk’s old air rifle on your shoulder, and you said, Let’s go hunt crows, you were all sweaty because you had climbed up the hill, and my mother gave you water, clean water, in the new Pasabahçe shatterproof glasses, and you drank it with pleasure, Nilgün, but Metin didn’t, maybe because he thought our glasses were dirty, or because he thought our water was, then my mother said, If you like, go pick some grapes, children, the vineyard wasn’t ours, she said, to answer Metin’s question, but never mind, it’s our neighbor’s, what’s the problem, go and have some, she said, but the two of you wouldn’t go, and when I offered to go and pick some and bring them to you, you said, No, because they’re not ours, but at least you drank from our new glass, Nilgün, Metin wouldn’t even do that, because we were poor and my mother wore a head scarf.
The sun climbed higher and I could hear the birds start chirping in the trees. I was thinking, What’s Mustafa up to, is he in bed, did he go to sleep, or is he waiting, too?
Someday not too far in the future, maybe another fifteen years, not more, I’ll be working in my office, at my factory, when my secretary—no, not some slave as in the West, more of an assistant, a good Muslim girl—comes in and says, There are some nationalist volunteers outside who’d like to see you, their names are Mustafa and Serdar, and I say, Let me finish my work, and then after that, I make them wait awhile, and when my work is done, I push the new automatic intercom button, and I say, I can see them now, show them in, then Mustafa and Serdar speak to me all embarrassed and uncomfortable, Of course, I understand, I say, you’re asking for help, fine, I’ll take 10 million invitations from you, but I’m not taking them because I’m against communism and atheism, it’s that I feel sorry for you, because I have no fear of Communists, I’m honest, I’ve never cheated people in business, and every year I give my tithe and my poor tax without fail, I’ve made my workers junior partners, they like me because I’m a good man, why should they get involved with Communists and unions, they know as well as I do that this factory provides an income for all of us, they know that there’s no difference between them and me, why don’t you join us in breaking the fast at the iftar I’m giving for them tonight, I’m very close to them, there are seven thousand workers under me, and when I say that, Mustafa and Serdar would be so amazed, they’d realize then what kind of person I am!