by Orhan Pamuk
“Come on, Metin Bey!” I said. “Come, let me put you in your own bed!”
As he dragged himself to his feet, he paused to look at his grandfather’s portrait on the wall. When I got him into his own room he looked like he was about to cry again.
“Why did they die so young? Would you tell me why, Recep?”
As I was helping him out of his clothes so he could get to bed, I started to explain to him about God’s will when he suddenly pushed me away.
“Never mind, I can do it myself. God? You stupid dwarf!” But instead of getting undressed he pulled something out of his suitcase, and he announced in a funny voice that he was going to the bathroom. I heard Madam calling.
“Take me downstairs, Recep. I want to see for myself what’s going on.”
“There’s nothing going on, Madam,” I said. “Nilgün Hanim is reading, Faruk Bey’s gone out.”
“Where would he go at this hour? What did you tell them? I want the truth!”
“It is the truth, Madam. Come, let me put you to bed,” I said, leading the way into her room.
“Don’t tell me there isn’t something going on in this house. And don’t go into my room and disturb things!” she said, following me in.
“Come on, Madam, get into your bed, before you exhaust yourself,” I said. Then hearing Metin cry out, I was frightened and ran into the hallway immediately.
Metin was downstairs, staggering like a drunk, cradling his arm. “Oh, Recep, look, look what happened!” he said looking tenderly, like a child, at the blood dripping from his wrist. There was a cut, but not a deep one, thank God, more of a scratch. Suddenly his fear and my presence reminded him of everyday life, and he seemed regretful.
“Do you think the pharmacy is still open now?” he said.
“It is,” I said. “But let me press some cotton on that first, Metin Bey!” And as I was about to go fetch it, Nilgün called over to us without lifting her head from the book.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing!” said Metin. “I cut my hand.”
He was pressing on the cut with the cotton I’d brought him when Nilgün came over for a look.
“It’s not your hand, it’s your wrist,” she said. “But it doesn’t look bad. How did you manage that?”
“It isn’t bad, is it?” said Metin.
“What else is in that closet, Recep?” said Nilgün, curious about the place where I kept the cotton.
“So, you agree, it’s nothing, right?” said Metin. “But I better go to the pharmacy anyway.”
“Oh, just odds and ends, küçükhanim,” I said.
“Not any of my father’s or my grandfather’s old papers? I’ve always wanted a look at what they were writing.”
I held my tongue for a moment, but then I just came out with it, I don’t know why: “Miss, they were writing that there is no God.”
This amused Nilgün. A pretty smile came to her face. “And how do you know?” she said. “I suppose they told you?”
I closed the closet. When I heard Madam calling again, I went upstairs to put her back into bed again and assure her that there was absolutely nothing going on she had to worry about. She asked me to change the water in her pitcher. By the time I’d brought her fresh water up and come back down, Nilgün was coughing again. Then I heard some noise at the kitchen door. It was Faruk Bey having trouble getting in.
“It wasn’t locked,” I said as I opened the door for him.
“Every light in the house is on,” he said, blowing strong raki vapors into my face. “What’s happened?”
“We’re waiting for you, Faruk Bey,” I said.
“What’s it got to do with me?” he said. “Why didn’t you take a taxi to Istanbul? I just went to see some belly dancing.”
“If you’re wondering about Nilgün Hanim, she’s fine,” I said.
“She is?” he said, a little surprised, and then he said, “I knew she’d be. She’s fine, isn’t she?”
“Yes. Aren’t you going to come inside?”
First, he turned, looking into the darkness at the dim lamp on the other side of the garden gate, as though he wanted to go out there one last time. Then he came in, opened the icebox, and pulled out the bottle. He took two sudden steps backward, as though the weight of the bottle in his hand had made him lose his balance, and collapsed into my chair. He was gasping, like someone with asthma.
“You’re destroying yourself, Faruk Bey,” I said. “Nobody drinks this much.”
“I know,” he said, hugging the bottle the way a little girl might hold her doll.
“Shall I make you some soup? I’ve got bouillon.”
By the time I brought the soup Metin had returned with a thin little piece of tape on his wrist.
“The pharmacist asked about you, Nilgün!” he said. “She couldn’t believe it when she heard you didn’t go to the hospital.”
“Yes,” said Faruk. “It’s not too late. We can still go.”
“Relax, nothing’s going to happen,” said Nilgün. “Where were you this evening?”
“I went to see the belly-dance show, together with all the idiotic tourists in their fezzes.”
“Was it good?” said Nilgün, cheerfully.
He didn’t answer, only saying, “I wonder what could have happened to my notebook? I had some really good notes in it.”
“Look at you,” said Metin. “You’re practically asleep, and now because of you—”
“Because of me? Look, Metin, do you want to go back to Istanbul? But here or there, I don’t see what difference it makes for you!”
“You’re both drunk. Nobody’s in any condition to drive anywhere,” said Nilgün.
“I can drive fine!” Metin shouted.
“No, we’re just going to stay here tonight, the three of us together, the way it used to be,” said Nilgün.
“How did it used to be?” Faruk said. “It’s just another story!” He was quiet for a moment, then he added, “Stories are just stories, they have no rhyme or reason …”
“That’s not true! I tell you every time. There is a reason for them.”
“For God’s sake. You really never tire of repeating yourself.”
“That’s enough!” said Metin.
“I wonder what we’d be like if we’d been born to a Western family,” said Faruk. “A French family, for example! Would Metin be happy then, I wonder?”
“No,” said Nilgün, with a teasing smile. “He wants America.”
“Is that true, Metin?”
“I said quiet!” said Metin. “I’m trying to sleep.”
“Metin Bey, don’t sleep there,” I said. “You’ll catch a cold.”
“You stay out of it.”
“Should I bring you some soup, too?”
“Fine, bring it!” said Metin with a sigh.
When I came back upstairs from the kitchen, Faruk Bey was stretched out, too, on the other couch. He was staring at the ceiling as he chatted with Nilgün, and they were both laughing. Metin was looking at a record he was holding.
“This is great!” said Nilgün. “Just like being in the dorm.”
I started to say, “Don’t you think you should all go upstairs and get to bed,” when I heard Madam call out.
It took me awhile to calm her and get her back into bed. She still wanted to go downstairs; I gave her a peach. By the time I’d finally closed her door and returned to the others, Faruk Bey was fast asleep, making a strange rasping noise that came from deep inside, like some old person who had been through too much.
“What time is it?” whispered Nilgün.
“It’s three thirty,” I said. “Are you going to sleep here, too?”
“Yes.”
So I went upstairs, and from their rooms, one by one, I collected their bedclothes and brought them downstairs. Nilgün thanked me. I covered Faruk Bey, too.
“I don’t want it,” said Metin, still looking blankly at the cover of the record in his hand, as though he were watchin
g television. When I got close I saw it was the record from the morning. “Turn out the lights,” he said.
Since Nilgün didn’t say anything I went over and turned out the single bulb that was hanging from the ceiling, but I could still see them. The raw light of the streetlamp was shining in through the shutters and striking the bodies of the three of them lying there, revealing Faruk Bey in his troubled, defeated sleep but also reminding me that so long as there is even a little light and the world isn’t in total darkness, a person mustn’t be frightened. Then I heard the sharp and insistent chirping of a cricket, not in the garden, but very close by, and it was almost as if I wanted to be afraid, but I couldn’t be. As I continued watching, and every once in a while one of them stirred slightly from that sleep of the three of them in the same room under the quilt of the darkness and the steady, peaceful snoring, I thought, It must be beautiful to be like this. Because like this, even though you’re asleep, even on a cold winter night, you’re not shivering all alone! It’s as if your mother or father or both of them are in the room upstairs or the one next door, listening to you rustle, waiting for you, and this thought alone is enough to let you lose yourself in the soft goose down of sleep. It was then I thought of Hasan and how he must be shivering alone now. How could you have done it, my boy? Why? I watched their forms move slightly, and I thought, I’ll sit here until morning, knowing I should be afraid but feeling unable to be.
“Recep, are you still there?” said Nilgün.
“Yes, little lady?”
“Why didn’t you go to bed?”
“I was just going to.”
“Go lie down, Recep. There’s nothing wrong with me.”
I went to the kitchen and drank some milk and ate some yogurt before finally going to bed, but I didn’t fall asleep right away. Turning in my bed, I thought about how the three of them, siblings, were asleep up there together in the same room, then death came to mind, then Selâhattin before he died. Oh, my son, he said, what a shame I couldn’t see to an education for you and Ismail. It was of course partly my fault: that imbecile they brought you to in the village and passed off to you as your father, he let you rot in ignorance. I closed my eyes when Fatma sent you there, he said, I was weak, I didn’t want to cross her while she was still paying the expenses for my important scientific studies, the bread you eat is from her, too, and the pain you suffer, he said, but still I was heartbroken that those idiots in the village brainwashed you with fear. Unfortunately, I am no longer able to raise you up to be free men who think for themselves and make their own decisions, it’s too late, not just because the tree is bent when it’s young, as they say, but also because I now have one foot in the grave, and it’s not enough that I educate and save just one or two boys anymore when there are millions of poor Muslims chained in the dungeons of darkness, millions of poor benighted slaves waiting for the light of my book! Time is so short! Good-bye, my poor thing, my silent child, let me at least give you some final advice, listen to me, Recep: be open-minded and free, and only trust to your own intelligence, do you understand? I was silent, hanging my head, and I thought: Words! Pluck the fruit of knowledge from the tree in paradise, Recep, take it without fear, maybe you will writhe in pain, but you’ll be free, and when everyone is free the true paradise will be established, the real paradise on this earth where you will have nothing to fear. Words, I was thinking, a bunch of sounds, that are said and then vanish into the air … I fell asleep thinking of them.
Long after sunrise, I woke up to the sound of someone tapping on my window. It was Ismail. I opened the door right away. We gave each other a look full of fear and guilt. “Hasan hasn’t been here, has he?” he said in a tearful voice.
“No,” I said. “Come inside, Ismail.”
He came into the kitchen and stood there carefully, as if he were afraid of breaking something. We were silent for a bit.
“Did you hear what he did, Recep?” he said.
I didn’t say anything but went inside and took off my pajamas, and as I was putting on my shirt and pants, I heard him saying, as if to himself: “I let him do everything he wanted. He didn’t want to be a helper in the barbershop. Fine, I said, then study. But he wouldn’t study either. Then I find out he’s going around with these nationalists, people saw them, they said they go all the way to Pendik, they collect money by force from the shopkeepers!”
Then he fell silent. I thought he was going to cry, but when I returned to the kitchen he wasn’t crying. “What are they saying?” he said. “The people upstairs. How’s Nilgün?”
“Last night she said, ‘I’m fine,’ now she’s sleeping,” I said. “But they didn’t take her to the hospital. They should have taken her.”
Ismail seemed pleased. “Maybe it wasn’t so bad that they had to go to the hospital,” he said. “Maybe he didn’t hit her that much.”
“I saw it, Ismail,” I said. “I saw how he beat her!”
He slumped down on the little stool, ashamed, and again I thought he would cry, but he just sat there. A little later, when I heard movement upstairs, I put the water on for tea and went up to Madam.
“Good morning,” I said. “Do you want to have breakfast downstairs or here?” I opened the shutter.
“Here,” she said. “Call them in, let me see them.”
“They’re all asleep,” I said, but when I went downstairs I saw that Nilgün was up, and in a red dress, and when I asked, she said, “I’m fine, Recep. Nothing wrong with me.”
But her face didn’t say that. One eye was completely closed, the cuts had scabs on them, and they seemed to be more swollen and had turned purple.
“You’re going straight to the hospital!” I said.
“Is my brother up yet?”
I went downstairs. Ismail was still sitting where I’d left him. I brewed the tea. A little later he said, “The gendarmes came to the house yesterday. Don’t hide him, they said. Why should I hide him, I said, I’ll punish him before the state does, I said.” He was quiet, waiting for me to say something. “What are they saying?” he said. When he got no answer he lit a cigarette. “Where will I find him?” I was cutting bread to make toast. “He has friends, they say he goes to the coffeehouse,” he said. “He did this to be like them. He doesn’t know anything!” I felt that he was looking at me as I kept cutting the bread.
When I went upstairs Faruk was awake, too, and talking. Nilgün was happily listening.
“That’s how I found myself in the arms of the muse of history!” Faruk Bey was saying. “She was hugging me like a motherly aunt: ‘So, now, I’ll tell you the secret of history.’ ”
Nilgün giggled.
Faruk continued, “But what a dream! I woke up, but it wasn’t really like waking up. You know how you want to wake up, but you feel yourself in the abyss of sleep. Look, I found this thing crushed in my pocket!”
“Ohh,” said Nilgün. “A fez!”
“The tourists were wearing them at the belly-dancing show last night, but I have no idea how it got into my pocket. How did it even fit in there?”
“Should I give you your breakfast right away?” I said.
“Yes, Recep,” they said.
Knowing they would want to get back to Istanbul before the mob of vendors and the heavy traffic, I went down to the kitchen, put the bread on the stove, and boiled some eggs. I was bringing the tray up when Ismail said, “Maybe you know, Recep. You spend your life in this kitchen, but maybe you know more than anybody. More than me, for sure!”
I thought for a second. “I know as much as you do, Ismail!” I said. I told him I had seen the boy smoking. Ismail looked surprised, as if he had been betrayed. Then, sounding more hopeful, he said, “Where would he go? Someday he’ll turn up again. And with all that’s been going on around here every day, so many people dying, they will forget about this.” I didn’t answer but went upstairs.
“They’re up, Madam.” I said. “They’re waiting for you downstairs. Come, why don’t you go down and have breakfast
with them on their last day.”
“I told you to call them!” she said. “I have things to say. I don’t want them falling for your lies.”
I went downstairs without saying a word. I was setting the table. Faruk and Nilgün were laughing together. Metin, who was now up, too, was sitting silently. When I went down to the kitchen, Ismail said, “Hasan hasn’t been home for two nights. Did you know?”
“I didn’t know,” I said. “Was he out on the night it rained, too?”
“Out,” he said. “The roof was leaking, the water was carrying everything in the house away. We sat there the whole night and waited, but he never came.”
“When the rain started he must have ducked inside somewhere and stayed there,” I said.
He eyed me carefully, saying, “And you’re sure he didn’t come here?”
“He never came here, Ismail!” I said, even though the gas that someone had left on did cross my mind. I took the tea, toast, and eggs upstairs.
“Do you want milk, Nilgün Hanim?”
“No,” she said.
I wish I had just boiled the milk and put it in front of her. I went down to the kitchen, “Come on, Ismail,” I said. “Why don’t you drink your tea?” I put a breakfast service in front of him and cut some bread. I took Madam’s tray upstairs.
“Why aren’t they coming up?” said Madam. “Didn’t you tell them that I asked for them?”
“I told them, Madam … They’re having their breakfast now. But before they go, they’ll come up and kiss your hand, of course.”
She lifted her head from the pillow with a quick cunning movement. “What did you tell them last night?” she said. “Tell me now, I don’t want any lies!”
“I have no idea what it is you want me to tell you!” I left her tray and went downstairs.
“If I could at least find my notebook,” said Faruk Bey.
“Where was the last place you saw it?”
“In the car. Then Metin took the car, but he didn’t see it.”
“You didn’t see it?” said Nilgün.
They both looked at Metin, who was sitting there like a child who had just been slapped but forbidden to cry: he had bread in his hand, but he sat there just staring at it for a long time,