by Orhan Pamuk
Recep Takes Nilgün Back Home
When I realized that the girl lying there was Nilgün and that it was Hasan who’d beaten her and run off, I let go of my net bags full of groceries and ran and ran until I got to her.
“Are you all right, my girl?”
She was bent over, like a sleeper in bed, with her head in her hands and turned toward the pavement, trembling.
“Nilgün, Nilgün,” I said, holding her by her shoulders.
She was still crying softly. People came out of all the corners where they had hidden and began to crowd around us, curious, timid heads leaning out over the shoulders of those standing in front of them, trying to get a better look and say something, some shouting themselves hoarse with concern. Seeing them all around her, she seemed embarrassed and reached out to me for help to stand up. I saw her bleeding face, and I told her, “Lean on me, dear girl, lean.”
She got up on her feet, leaning on me, and I gave her my handkerchief.
“There’s a taxi,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”
The crowd cleared the way for us to pass. As we were getting into the taxi, somebody ran up with my grocery bags and Nilgün’s bag. Another kid said, “Wait, this is hers,” and gave her a record.
“To the hospital?” said the driver. “Istanbul?”
“I want to go home!” said Nilgün.
“At least let’s stop by the pharmacy!” I said.
She remained quiet the whole way there, still trembling, and every once in a while giving a blank and indifferent look at the handkerchief she was dabbing her eye with to see whether she was still bleeding.
“Hold your head like this!” I said, pulling back her hair.
Once again it wasn’t Kemal Bey in the pharmacy, but his beautiful wife, listening to the radio.
When the woman saw Nilgün, she let out a scream. Then she began to rush around the shop as she peppered us with questions, but Nilgün just sat there in silence. Finally Kemal Bey’s wife was silent, too, and went to work cleaning the cuts on Nilgün’s face with cotton and medicine. I couldn’t look.
“Kemal Bey’s not around?”
“I’m the pharmacist!” his wife said. “What would he do? He’s upstairs. Oh, sweetheart, why did they do this to you?”
Just then the door opened, and in came Kemal Bey. He paused for a moment, and then, looking as if he had always expected something like this would happen, he said, “What happened?”
“They beat me,” said Nilgün.
“My God, what have we come to?” said the lady pharmacist.
“Who is ‘we’?” said Kemal Bey.
“Whoever did this …,” said his wife.
“Hasan,” murmured Nilgün. “He belongs to a nationalist gang.”
“Just be quiet now, you, quiet,” said the woman.
But Kemal Bey heard the word and seemed angered. Looking around he reached toward the radio and yelled at his wife, “Why do you always have this thing turned all the way up?”
With the radio turned off, the shop suddenly seemed empty, and then pain and shame and guilt flooded in.
“Don’t turn it off,” said Nilgün. “Could you turn it back on?”
Kemal Bey did as she asked, and we didn’t speak while the lady finished her task.
“Now straight to the hospital!” she said. “God forbid, there could be internal bleeding.”
“Is my brother at the house, Recep?” said Nilgün.
“Faruk? No,” I said. “He took his car for repairs.”
“Just get into a taxi and go,” said the woman. “Do you have money, Recep?”
“I’ll give you some,” said Kemal Bey.
“No,” said Nilgün. “I want to go home now.” She groaned as she stood up.
“Wait,” said the woman. “Let me give you a shot for the pain.”
When Nilgün didn’t say no, and the pharmacist took her to the back of the shop, Kemal Bey and I were quiet. He was looking out the window at the view he looked at all night long: the window of the snack bar across the street, the Coca-Cola sign, the lamb and the gyro sandwiches. To break the silence, I said, “I came on Monday evening and got aspirin. They said you were asleep. You’d been fishing in the morning.”
“It’s everywhere,” he said. “No matter where you go, it grabs you by the collar.”
“What?”
“Politics.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Then we looked outside for a bit more. The crowd was going down to the beach. When we heard footsteps, I turned and saw Nilgün returning: one of her eyes was half shut and both of her cheeks were completely purple. Kemal Bey’s wife said again that we had to go to the hospital, but Nilgün didn’t want to, and the wife insisted, telling her husband, “Call a taxi,” and then Nilgün said No very forcefully. She took her bag. “We’ll walk; it’ll do me good. Besides it’s just a short way to the house.”
While the husband and wife were still talking, I gathered my groceries and Nilgün’s bag and took her by the arm. She leaned on me easily, as if she had done it many times, like some family custom.
As we opened the door to leave, and the little bell rang, Kemal Bey said, “So, are you a leftist?”
Nilgün nodded yes, and he said, “How did they know?”
“From the newspaper I bought at the store!”
“Oh!” said Kemal, with a look of relief, but then seemed embarrassed, especially when his beautiful wife said:
“I told you not to buy it every day.”
“Be quiet, you!” he said, as if he was done with being embarrassed.
Nilgün and I went outside into the sunshine. We got across the main avenue without anyone noticing us and entered the little street on the other side; we walked past the gardens and the balconies with the colorful bathing suits and towels hanging off them. There were still some people having breakfast, but they paid no attention to us. A teenager on a bicycle stopped to stare, but I think it was because I was a dwarf, not because Nilgün was hurt; I could tell by the look. Then a little girl with swim flippers walked passed us like a duck, and it made Nilgün laugh.
“When I laugh it hurts here,” she said, pointing at her side, and laughed some more. “Didn’t you think that was funny, Recep? You’re always so serious, wearing a tie the way humorless men do. Why don’t you laugh for once?”
When I forced myself to laugh, she said, “Look, you even have teeth!” and I got embarrassed and started laughing for real. But then we fell silent, and her tears and trembling started again.
“Don’t cry, my dear. Come on, don’t.”
“I’m such a fool, a stupid, foolish kid …”
I started to stroke her hair, but then it occurred to me that a person would want to cry in privacy. So I turned away and looked at the street. A child was watching with curiosity and fear from the balcony across the way. He’ll think I made her cry, I thought. When Nilgün stopped she asked for her sunglasses. She put them on and said, “Am I beautiful?” and before I could answer, she said, “Was my mother beautiful? What was my mother like, Recep?”
“You are beautiful, and your mother was beautiful, too.”
“What was my mother like?”
“A good woman,” I said.
“Good in what way?”
She didn’t ask anything from anyone, she wasn’t a burden to anyone, as though she didn’t know why she was alive; like a shadow, like a cat, Madam would say, following her husband around. But she also knew how to laugh, a big laugh, dazzling like the sun, but openhearted. Good, yes: a person wouldn’t be afraid of her.
“Good like you,” I said.
“Am I good?”
“Of course.”
“What was I like when I was little?”
You used to play so nicely in the garden. You two little ones. Faruk was too old to join in. You’d run around under trees; you were full of curiosity. Then he would come out of the house and join you. You didn’t make any difference between him and yourse
lves. I remember once when I was listening from the kitchen window: “Let’s play hide-and-seek. Okay, who will be it? You pick, sister.” And you went “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,” and Hasan interrupted you, saying, “Do you know French, Nilgün?” And you gave him a tender smile.
“You were like that even as a child,” I said.
“Like what, what do you mean?”
Then when dinner was ready I would call upstairs from inside. “Madam, it’s ready,” I would say, and she would open the window and call out, “Nilgün, Metin, come to dinner! Where are you? They’ve gone off somewhere again, Recep, where are they?” And I would say, “They’re over there, Madam, by the fig tree,” and she would cast her eyes around, and then suddenly seeing you through the leaves she would shout, “Oh, with Hasan again! Recep, how many times have I told you not to let that child in here, why does he come here, let him go sit in his father’s house,” and as Madam carried on, the other shutter would open, too, and Doğan Bey would stick his head out of the room where his father had sat working for years, and he would say, “What’s the matter, Mother? What’s the harm if they play together?” And Madam would answer him: “Don’t interfere, just go sit like your father in your room and write down your idiocies, you’re completely unaware, of course, but if these children spend all their time with the children of the servants …”
And Doğan Bey would cut her off, saying, “What’s the harm, Mother? They’re just playing nicely, like sister and brothers.”
“Recep, it’s like pulling teeth to get anything out of you.”
“Excuse me?”
“I asked about my childhood.”
“You and your brother Metin played together very nicely.”
“Brother?” Madam would say, “God forbid! Where did that slander come from? These children have only one brother, who’s making up this gossip that I should have to answer it at eighty years of age?” I would listen and be quiet. Then when each of them went back inside and shut the window I’d go outside and call you in for dinner, and as you went upstairs, he would skulk in some corner alone.
“We played with Hasan, too!” said Nilgün.
“Yes!”
“Do you remember?”
And while you were all upstairs eating—your grandmother, Doğan Bey, you, and Metin, and Faruk, who would appear at the last minute—I would find him in whatever corner he was hiding and say, Psst! Hasan, are you hungry, my boy, okay, then, come and have something. He would follow me, silent and scared, and I’d sit him on my little stool and set in front of him the tray that I still eat from to this day. Then I would go upstairs and bring down the meatball plate, the salad, beans that were just sitting there, as well as the peaches and cherries that even Faruk couldn’t finish, and give him some, and as he ate I asked: What’s your father been doing, Hasan? Nothing, just the lottery. How’s that foot of his, is it giving him much trouble? I don’t know. And how are you, my boy, when do you start going to school? I don’t know. Why, it’s next year, isn’t it, son? He would be quiet and look at me fearfully, as if he’d never seen me before. And after Doğan Bey died and he started school, I’d ask him: What grade will you be in this summer, Hasan? He would be quiet. Third, isn’t it? Eventually, you’ll study and grow up to be a great man! Then what will you do?
Nilgün suddenly staggered on my arm.
“What is it?” I said. “Should we sit down?”
“My side hurts,” she said.
“Should we get a taxi?”
She didn’t reply, so we walked on. We came out onto the main avenue again and passed between the cars parked on the seashore and the Sunday crowd out from Istanbul. As we went in the garden gate I looked and saw that the car was there.
“My brother’s here,” said Nilgün.
“Good,” I said. “You should go to the hospital in Istanbul right away.”
We went in the kitchen door. I was surprised to see I had left the gas on, and one of two burners was lit. It gave me such a fright, and I immediately turned it off. Then I took Nilgün upstairs. Faruk Bey wasn’t there. I set Nilgün down on the couch and was just putting a pillow behind her back when I heard her call from her room.
“I’m here, Madam, I’m here, I’m coming,” I said. I placed a pillow behind Nilgün’s head as well. “Are you okay?” I said. “I’ll send Faruk Bey right now.”
Madam had come out of her room and was planted at the top of the stairs, with her cane in hand.
“Where were you?” she said.
“I was at the market, you know …,” I said.
“And where are you going now?”
“Please just give me a moment,” I said. “If you go into your room, I’ll be right there.”
I knocked on Faruk Bey’s door, but there was no reply, and so I opened it, and without looking I went inside. Faruk Bey was stretched out on his bed reading.
“They were able to fix the car in two shakes,” he said. “I don’t see why Metin got stuck on the road all night.”
“Nilgün Hanim is downstairs,” I said. “She’s waiting for you.”
“Me? Why?”
“Recep,” Madam called out. “What are you doing there?”
“Please,” I said. “Would you just go downstairs, Faruk Bey?”
He seemed a little taken aback and stared me in the face for a moment. Then he put down his book and got up from the bed.
“Why are you standing here, Madam?” I said. “Take my arm and let me put you back in bed. You’ll catch cold here. And you’re tired.”
“Sneak!” she said. “You’re telling another one of your lies. Where did Faruk just go off to?”
I went into Madam’s room through the open door and straightened out her bedclothes.
“What are you looking for there?” she said. “Don’t disturb things.”
“I’m airing it out, Madam,” I said. “I’m not disturbing anything. See for yourself. Come, lie down in your bed,” I said as I opened the shutters.
She lay down, pulled the quilt up to her chin like a small child, and, as though she had forgotten for a second, forgotten to be annoyed and mean, she asked with childish curiosity, “What was there at the market? What did you see?”
I went over and took her pillow and puffed it up.
“There wasn’t anything,” I said. “They have nothing nice anymore.”
“Contrary dwarf!” she said. “I know that perfectly well. That’s not what I’m asking you anyway …”
“I got fresh fruit; do you want me to bring you some?” I said.
She was silent, back to her normal self. I pulled her door closed and went downstairs, where Faruk and Nilgün had been talking all this time.
28
Faruk Watches a Belly Dancer
After she told me about the lady pharmacist and her husband and how she limped home leaning on Recep, I wanted to hear more about how she felt. It was as though she read my mind.
“It’s nothing, Faruk,” she said. “Like getting a vaccination. Afterward, I was only angry at myself. Because I couldn’t manage that idiot …”
“You think he’s actually an idiot?”
“When he was little he wasn’t like that, he was a good kid,” she said. “This year, I started to get the impression that he was foolish and a simpleton. But now I realize that I just let things spin out of control. I shouldn’t have snapped at him. I must have been yelling, even though nobody ran over to help.”
“What do you make of that?”
“I don’t know. Why are you so interested in the morbid details, Faruk?”
“Because I’m like that,” I said.
“No, you’re not,” she said. “You’re just pretending to be. You’ve convinced yourself there is no hope, and for no good reason.”
“Is that so? Well, then enlighten me please: what is this thing you call hope?”
She thought a little. “It’s the thing that keeps a person on his feet, so he doesn’t simply die. As children we wonder, What would happen i
f I died … When I used to think about it, I enjoyed feeling very rebellious. But that fun doesn’t last. The trouble is that if you indulge this curiosity too much, it just becomes unbearable.”
“But it’s not curiosity,” I said. “It’s simply envy. When you think about how things will be after you’re gone, you’re realizing that people will enjoy themselves, be happy, forgetting all about you and going on with their pleasant lives.”
“No,” she said. “Deep down, you are simply curious. You’re pretending not to feel this thing that keeps people from dying, but in fact you do feel it.”
“No!” I said, getting annoyed. “I’m simply not curious, and that’s that.”
“Okay, then,” she said, with a strangely serene confidence, “what keeps sending you to the archives to read all those words in books? You’re acting as if you don’t even know.”
“What else am I supposed to do, just hang around here?” I said.
I still hated myself for harboring hypocrisies inside, but it’s hard to hide from the recognition of someone who knows you well. One can only claim self-understanding to a certain point, and beyond that one is babbling, whether one knows it or not. It was an oddly liberating thought while it lasted.
When Recep came into the room, I said, “Come on, Nilgün! I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“Ooff!” she said, like a child. “I don’t want to.”
“Don’t be foolish! The pharmacist was right. What if there’s bleeding?” said Recep.
“It wasn’t even the man who is the pharmacist, it was only his wife! I feel fine, there’s not going to be any bleeding.”
I tried to get a bit of my own back by suggesting that in this case she was not the best judge of what she was truly feeling, but after some careful reasoning, I realized I was losing the argument: Nilgün was getting sleepy. She stretched out on the couch on which she’d been leaning her head, and closing her eyes, she said, “Faruk, why don’t you tell me a bit of history? Read to me from your notebook.”
“So, you think that will put you to sleep?”
She smiled mischievously, like a little girl settling in to hear a story, and as she lay there, I happily ran off, thinking I knew just the story for her, but when I went up to my room the notebook wasn’t in my bag. I looked in the drawers, the closet, the suitcase, then searched the other rooms, even Grandmother’s, but I couldn’t find it. It occurred to me that in my drunken state I might have left it in the backseat of the car, but it wasn’t there either. By the time I was going back upstairs to check the rooms again, Nilgün was fast asleep. Seeing Recep draw near, I felt guilty not to have taken charge of the situation, and so I went out to the garden. I installed myself on the dainty chaise longue where Nilgün had spent the entire week reading books, and just sat there.