by Orhan Pamuk
It’s best that I don’t even talk about the ingenious details of the snooping I did for months and years, nor about the cold-blooded calculations worthy of a murderer, and the colors reminiscent of an unfortunate’s dreams. In essence, Janan was nowhere around, I had no news of her, nor did I come across her trail. I took the course of studies that I’d missed for a semester, and then also completed the next one. Neither I nor Doctor Fine’s minions got back in touch. I had no idea whether they were still busy with their assassinations. Along with Janan they too had absconded from my dreams as well as from my nightmares. Then it was summer; then the new academic year began in the fall, which I completed, and also the one after that. Then I headed off to do my military service.
Two months before I was done with my patriotic duty, I had word that my mother had died. I was granted a furlough and made it to Istanbul in time for the funeral. My mother was interred. After the night I spent at some friends’, I went home; and when I felt the emptiness of the place, I became apprehensive. I was looking at the pots and pans hanging on the kitchen wall when I heard the refrigerator sighing sadly and lamenting through its familiar hum. I had been left all alone in this life. I lay down on my mother’s bed and wept a little, then I turned on the TV and sat across from it like my mom, watching it for quite some time with resignation and some sort of joy of living. Before I went to sleep, I took the book out of its hiding place; I placed it on the desk and I began to read, hoping to be as affected as I was on the day when I had first read it. Although I did not sense a light surging on my face, or feel my body sever itself and pull away from the chair where I sat reading the book, I felt an inner peace.
That is how I began to read the book anew. But I no longer imagined with each new reading that my life was being swept away by a powerful wind toward an unknown realm. I was trying to capture the concealed pattern of a long-settled account, or the finer points of the story, the internal logic which I had not perceived while I was living through it. You do understand, don’t you? Even before I was done with my military duty, I had already become an old man.
And so I devoted myself to other books in the same way. I did not read to assuage the desire for a soul other than the one which coiled inside me at the hour of dusk, or to fan the joy of connecting felicitously with the secret festival taking place in a metaphysical world, or even—oh, I don’t know—to hasten toward a new life within which I might meet up with Janan. I read to face up to my lot in life with wisdom, with sobriety, like a gentleman, as well as to endure Janan’s absence, which I felt profoundly. I harbored no hope that the Angel of Desire would ever offer me a candelabra with seven branches as a consolation prize with which to grace my home with Janan. At times, when I lifted my head from a book I read into the wee hours of the night with some sort of spiritual equilibrium and equanimity, I would become aware of the profound silence in the neighborhood, and that was when suddenly before my eyes appeared the image of Janan sleeping beside me on those bus rides which I had thought would never come to an end.
On one of those trips, which was refreshed in my imagination in full color like a dream of paradise each time I remembered it, I had observed that Janan’s forehead and temples were covered in perspiration and her hair was wet and stuck together due to the air on the bus being unexpectedly hot, and I was dabbing the beads of perspiration with a Kütahya tile-design handkerchief I had bought in the town with the same name, when I perceived in my beloved’s face—thanks to the mauve light from a filling station that was momentarily reflected on us—an expression of intense happiness and surprise. Later, at a rest-stop restaurant, Janan had cheered up sitting in her sweat-drenched State-store-bought print cotton dress and drinking down several glasses of tea, and she was all smiles telling me that she had dreamed of her father placing kisses on her forehead, but a while later she had realized it wasn’t her father but a messenger from a realm created out of light. After she smiled, she often pulled her hair behind her ears with a supple gesture which each time she did it melted a piece of my heart, my soul, my mind before disappearing into the dark night.
I can almost see some of my readers scowling with sorrow, having understood that I am making do with what remains of those nights in my mind, heart, and soul. Patient Reader, sympathetic Reader, sensitive Reader, weep for me if you can, but don’t you forget that the person for whom you expend your tears is none other than an assassin. Or else, if there are mitigating circumstances in the courts of law even for common murderers that call for compassion, empathy, and benevolence, then I wish these to be included in this book with which I am so involved.
Even though I was married some time later, I knew now that everything I would ever do until the end of my life, which I did not think was too distant, would have something great or small to do with Janan. Before getting married and then even years after my bride was easily ensconced in the condominium apartment inherited from my father and vacated by my mother, I went on extended bus trips with the hope of chancing upon Janan. I had ascertained on these trips over the years that the buses gradually became larger and larger, that they took on an antiseptic smell inside, that the hydraulic systems installed in the doors automatically opened and closed them at the touch of a button, that the drivers had peeled off their faded and sweaty shirtsleeves and were now clad in pilot garb with epaulettes, that the tough-guy bus attendants were now so gentrified they shaved every day, that the rest stops were better lighted and fancier and yet they were monotonously all the same, that the highways were now wider and all were paved with asphalt; but I never came across a trace of Janan, let alone Janan herself. It was too much to ask to find her and her trail. But what wouldn’t I have given for some object that came out of those wonderful nights I spent in her company, or an elderly lady with whom we once had tea and conversation, or even a bit of light that I was sure had reflected from her face onto mine! But taking the cue from the new highways which were rife with traffic signs, blinking lights, and merciless billboards, and where the recent paving obscured youthful memories, everything seemed busily anxious to forget us and our memories as soon as possible.
It was following one of these depressing trips that I learned Janan had married and had left the country. Your hero who is married and has a child, who is a good family man and a murderer, was returning home in the evening from his job at the city planning office—his briefcase in his hand, inside the case a Swisslicense chocolate bar for the child, clouds of gloom in his heart, a frozen look of weariness on his face—and he was standing on the crowded Kadıköy ferryboat when he suddenly came face to face with a garrulous classmate from the engineering department. “As to Janan,” the garrulous woman said, recounting all the marriages made by the females in our year; “she married a doctor from Samsun, and they settled down in Germany.” When I shifted my eyes away from the woman to look out of the portholes, hoping to forestall further bad news she might yet impart, I observed that fog had descended over Istanbul and the Bosphorus, which was a rare condition for the city. “Is it fog?” the murderer asked himself. “Or is it the stagnancy of my unfortunate soul?”
It didn’t prove necessary to investigate too long before I found out that Janan’s husband was none other than the handsome doctor with wide shoulders who worked at the Samsun Social Security Hospital, the man who, in total contrast to other readers, had managed to find a sound method of absorbing the book into his system and living in peace and happiness. I even took up drinking to keep my merciless memory from relentlessly reminding me of the worrisome details of the man-to-man conversation on the meaning of the book and life that the doctor and I had many years ago in his consultation room at the hospital; but the drinking did not prove to be too smart.
After the household quieted down and all that remained from the bustle of the day was my daughter’s toy fire truck with two missing wheels, and her blue teddy bear standing on his head to watch television upside down, I would come in with the raki highball I had mixed carefully in the kitchen my
self and I would sit beside the teddy bear courteously, turn on the TV set, turn down the volume, and settling on a series of images that didn’t seem too terribly vulgar, I would watch TV in a fog, attempting to discriminate the colors of the clouds in my head.
Don’t you pity yourself! Don’t believe how unique your identity and your existence is in reality. Don’t complain about how the intense love you feel has not been appreciated. I read a book once upon a time, you know; I fell in love with a girl; I once experienced something profound. They did not understand me … they vanished … what do you suppose they’re doing now? Janan is in Germany … on Bahnhofstrasse … I wonder how she is … the doctor husband … don’t dwell on it. He comes home in the evening … Janan meets him at the door … nice home … new car … and two children … don’t dwell on it … the husband’s a chump. Suppose I am sent to Germany as part of a research delegation, suppose some evening we run into each other at the consulate … well hello … are you happy … I loved you so much back then. And now? I still love you very much … I love you … I’m ready to give up everything … I’ll stay in Germany … I love you so much … I became a murderer for your sake … no don’t say anything … how beautiful you are … Don’t dwell on it. No one can love you as much as me. Do you remember the time when the bus had a flat, when in the middle of the night a drunk wedding party had showed up, and so … Don’t dwell on it.
Sometimes I would drink myself into a stupor, and when I woke up hours later and sat up on the sofa, I would notice that the little blue bear that had been standing on his head was now sitting upright and watching TV, and I would be amazed: During what vulnerable moment had I sat him properly in his chair? And sometimes I would be absentmindedly watching the video clip of a foreign song on the screen, and I would remember having heard one of these songs when Janan and I were sitting together on a bus, our bodies pressing gently on each other, and I felt the warmth of her fragile shoulder on mine: Look at me, look at me sit here and weep, listening to the music we once heard together which has burst into color on TV. Another time, I had heard the child coughing, for some reason, before her mother had, and gathering the wakeful little girl in my arms, I had carried her into the living room, and while she watched the colors on the screen, I began examining with awe her hand that was an impeccable miniature copy of a grownup’s hand, down to the last tiny but amazingly detailed curve of her fingers and fingernails, and I was engaged in reflecting on the book called life, when my daughter said, “The man went pouf!”
We had watched with concern the hopeless face of the unfortunate man down in a pool of blood after a serious beating whose life had gone “pouf.”
Sensitive readers following my adventures should not assume that I had let myself go, that my life too had already gone “pouf,” seeing how I stayed up half the night getting drunk. Like most men who live in this corner of the world, I too had become a broken man before the age of thirty-five, and yet I had been able to pull myself together and, by virtue of reading, to bring some order into my mind.
I read voraciously, not only the book that changed my whole life but other books as well. But when I read, I never attempted to assign some deep meaning to my broken life, or to look for some sort of consolation, not even to search for some beautiful and admirable aspect of sorrow. Can one feel anything but love and admiration for Chekhov, that talented, consumptive, modest Russian? But I feel sad for readers who try giving an esthetic dimension to their broken and sorry lives with sentiment which they call Chekhovian, bragging about their misery in an effort to render it beautiful and sublime; and I despise exploitive writers who make a career out of accommodating these readers’ need for consolation. This is why I have left off reading many a contemporary novel or story halfway through. Ah, the poor man who talks to his horse to alleviate his loneliness! Oh woe, the decrepit nobleman who keeps watering his potted plants which are his only love. Pity the sensitive fellow who sits among his shabby furniture, waiting for something that will never come, say, a letter, or an old flame, or his inconsiderate daughter. The writers who pinch rough drafts of Chekhovian protagonists in order to present them in other lands and climes, exposing to us their wounds and pains, have this message in common: Look at us, look at all the woe and agony we suffer! Look how sensitive, how refined, how special we are! Our anguish has elevated us to a more sensitive and refined state than you. You too want to transform your wretchedness into a triumph, or even into a sense of superiority, don’t you? In that case, trust us, and believe it when we tell you that our pains are more gratifying than life’s ordinary pleasures.
So, Reader, place your faith neither in a character like me, who is not all that sensitive, nor in my anguish and the violence of the story I have to tell; but believe that the world is a cruel place. Besides, this newfangled plaything called the novel, which is the greatest invention of Western culture, is none of our culture’s business. That the reader hears the clumsiness of my voice within these pages is not because I am speaking raucously from a plane which has been polluted by books and vulgarized by gross thoughts; it results rather from the fact that I still have not quite figured out how to inhabit this foreign toy.
This is what I mean to say: I became something of a bookworm from reading so much in order to forget Janan, to comprehend what befell me, to dream the colors of the new life I never achieved, and to pass the time pleasantly and wisely—although not quite so wisely all the time—but I was never carried away by any intellectual pretensions. More important, I never looked down on those who were. I loved reading just as I loved going to the movies, or thumbing through newspapers and magazines. I didn’t do these things to gain some sort of advantage, or as a means to an end, or maybe to think of myself as someone superior, or more knowledgeable, or more profound than others. I could even say that being a bookworm had taught me a kind of humility. I enjoyed reading books but I didn’t like discussing them with anyone else, as I later learned that Uncle Rıfkı had not liked to do. If books awakened in me an urge to talk, the conversation often took place between the voices in my head. Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments sounded out, and I would realize that I could endure this life because of these musicales going on in my head.
Consider, for example, that it occurred to me I could put together an anthology inspired by the music whispered to me on the subject of love in that magnetic and painful stillness that began after my wife and daughter went to sleep, and I was left to view with awe and wonder the kaleidoscopic colors flowing on television as I reflected on Janan, the book that brought us together, the new life, the angel, accident, time. Whatever was said on the subject of love in the papers, books, magazines, on the radio, TV, by columnists, opinion editors, and novelists stuck fast in my brain because my life had gone off the track at a young age on account of love—if you notice, Reader, I am sentient enough not to claim it happened on account of the book.
What is Love?
Love is submitting. Love is the cause of love. Love is understanding. Love is a kind of music. Love and the Gentle Heart are identical. Love is the poetry of sorrow. Love is the tender soul looking in the mirror. Love is evanescent. Love is never having to say you are sorry. Love is a process of crystalization. Love is giving. Love is sharing a stick of gum. You can never tell about Love. Love is an empty word. Love is being reunited with God. Love is bitter. Love is encountering the angel. Love is a vale of tears. Love is waiting for the phone to ring. Love is the whole world. Love is holding hands in the movie theater. Love is intoxicating. Love is a monster. Love is blind. Love is listening to your heart. Love is a sacred silence. Love is the subject of songs. Love is good for the skin.
I acquired these pearls without letting myself be taken over completely by blind faith, but also without being swept away by a cynicism that would leave my soul homeless—that is, exactly the way I view television
, getting duped while being fully aware that I am being duped, or not being duped yet wanting to be duped. So here I am adding my own ideas on the subject which come from my own limited but intense experience.
Love is the urgency to hold fast to another and to be together in the same place. It’s the desire to keep the world out by embracing another. It is the yearning to find a safe harbor for the human soul.
You see, I was not able to say anything new. But still, I did manage to say something! I no longer care if it’s new or not. Contrary to what some pretentious fools think, it’s better to say a couple of words rather than remain silent. What good is it to keep our mouths shut, for heaven’s sake? Why passively watch life grinding down our bodies and souls like a merciless train slowly proceeding to its destination? I knew a man who was about my own age who implied that silence was preferable to struggling against the force of evil that stalks and riddles us with holes. I say implied because he never came out and said it, but sitting at a table like a good boy, he kept writing in a notebook from morning to night someone else’s words in silence. Sometimes I would imagine he was not dead but still kept writing away, and I would fear that his silence might expand inside me into the shape of a gruesome terror.
I had pumped those bullets into his chest and face, but had I really managed to kill him? I had only fired three rounds, and what’s more, I was somewhat blinded by the light from the projecting machine in the dark movie house.
The times I believed he was not dead, I would imagine him still copying the book in his rooms. What an unbearable idea that was! While I tried creating a whole world with which to console myself, what with my well-meaning wife, my sweet daughter, my TV, newspapers, books, my work at City Hall, my co-workers and office mates, gossip, coffee, cigarettes, protecting myself surrounded by concrete objects, he was able to surrender himself resolutely to utter silence. In the middle of the night, I would be thinking of the stillness to which he devoted himself with faith and humility, when I would picture him rewriting the book, and miracle of miracles, I would sense that while he patiently did the same thing over and over at his table, silence would begin speaking to him. The enigma I could not arrive at but intuited through my aspirations and passion existed within that silence and darkness; and as long as the man Janan loved kept writing, I imagined that the authentic whispers in the depths of the night, which were totally inaudible to someone like myself, would acquire a voice of their own.