Silent House Read online

  I lifted my head from the pillow in terror and looked around the room. The same old world, the world that still exists, only my room and my furniture were sound asleep. I was in a sweat. I wanted to see someone, to talk to someone, to touch them. Then I heard the rattling around downstairs and I was curious. It was 3:00 a.m. I quickly got up and ran to the window: Recep’s light was still on. The sneaky dwarf, the servant’s bastard! I thought of that cold winter night, their miserable hovel, the overturned chairs, broken windows and plates, the disgusting rags. Where’s my cane? I took it and banged it on the floor, and then I banged it again. I called out.

  “Recep, Recep, quick, come up here!”

  I went outside my room, over to the top of the stairs.

  “Recep, Recep, I’m speaking to you, where are you?”

  From there I could see shadows down below, dancing on the wall: I know you’re there. I yelled again and finally saw a familiar silhouette.

  “I’m coming, Madam, I’m coming,” and the shadow grew smaller until the dwarf appeared. “What’s the matter!” he said. “What do you need?”

  He wasn’t coming up.

  “Why aren’t you asleep at this hour?” I said. “What are you doing down there?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “We’re just sitting around.”

  “At this hour?” I said. “Don’t lie, I always know. What are you telling them down there?”

  “I’m not telling them anything. What’s wrong? Have you been thinking about things again? Don’t think about them! If you can’t sleep, pick up your newspaper, go through your closet, see if your clothes are in order, eat some fruit, just don’t start thinking about those things all over again!”

  “You let me worry about it!” I said. “Tell them to come upstairs.”

  “There’s only Nilgün Hanim,” he said. “Faruk Bey and Metin aren’t here.”

  “Not here? Bring me down, let me see. What have you told them?”

  “What would you expect me to tell them, Madam? I don’t understand!”

  As he made his way upstairs, I thought he was coming to help me, but he went into my room.

  “Don’t make a mess of things,” I said. “What are you doing?”

  The dwarf was just standing there, looking. I came in behind him, and suddenly he turned around and took me by the arm; it surprised me, but all right. Holding me, he brought me over to the bed: he tucked me in, spreading the warm quilt over me, so I felt like a little girl again, innocent, and I forgot about everything.

  As I lay there he said on the way out, “You took only one bite out of your peach. These are the best peaches, but you don’t like them. Shall I bring up an apricot?”

  When I didn’t answer, he left, and I was there alone: with the same ceiling overhead, the same floor under the bedposts, the same water in the pitcher, and the same glass, brush, cologne, plate, and clock resting on the same table, I stretched out in my bed, thinking, How strange it is, this thing we call time, and with that I took fright, realizing that I would again be thinking about what Selâhattin had discovered that night. The devil continued on his way:

  “Can you reckon the enormity of this discovery, Fatma? Tonight, I’ve identified the invisible line dividing them and us! No, East and West aren’t separated by clothing, machines, houses, furniture, prophets, and governments. All of these are mere consequences; what separates us from them is that simple little truth: they have discovered the bottomless pit of Nothingness, whereas as we remain unaware of this terrible truth. To think that this inconceivable gulf is all due to this tiny discovery makes my head spin! How could it be that for a thousand years not a single person in the East has thought of it. If you think of all the time and the lives that have been lost under this misconception, even you can see, Fatma, the dimensions of what it has cost us. Still, I have faith in the future! Because, now, tonight, I have taken the first step, crossing the line that could have been crossed at any time for centuries now; tonight, I, Selâhattin Darvinoğlu, have become the first in the East to discover death! Why are you staring blankly. Of course, because only someone who truly comprehends darkness can truly see the light, only someone who comprehends death knows the meaning of existence. I think of death, therefore I exist. No! Because actually, those insensible Easterners also exist, you and your knitting exist, too, only none of you knows a thing about death! So to be perfectly accurate, I should say: I think of death, therefore I’m a Westerner! I suppose that makes me the first person of the East to become one! Do you understand, Fatma?” I didn’t answer, and he shouted, “Dear God, you’re as blind as all the others!” Then he staggered two steps toward the window half weeping, and for a moment I had the very strange impression that he would open it and jump out into the storm, flap his wings and for a little while remain aloft on the joy of his discovery until, realizing the truth, he fell to the ground and died. But Selâhattin stayed inside the room and only looked out from the closed dark windows in hatred and despair as though he could see the whole country and what he called the East. “Poor blind creatures! They’re asleep. They’ve gone to bed, wrapped in their quilts, buried in the tranquil sleep of their idiocy, snoring away. The whole East just sleeps! Slaves! I will teach them about death and deliver them from this slavery. But first I’ll free you, Fatma, listen to me, understand and tell me that you’re afraid of death!” And so he started to beg, just as he had when he tried to get me to say that there is no God, twisting words and bending my fingers back as he listed what he called the proofs: I didn’t believe. When he got fed up and stopped talking, he sat on the chair in front of me, staring aimlessly at the table as the wind continued to slap the shutters against the house. He looked at the clock on the wall next to me with a start, and it scared me, too, because I imagined he had seen a scorpion or a snake, but then he shouted: “We have to catch up! Faster!” Taking the clock from the wall and throwing it on my bed, which was still made up, he continued shouting: “Between us and them, there’s maybe a thousand years difference, but we have to catch up, Fatma, so I can’t delay in publishing this article and setting our poor people right. Poor fools! They live out their days in blind contentment, without the slightest doubt about anything, unaware that they have only this life! I’ll bring them all to their knees with the fear of death! They’ll get to learn their true nature; they’ll learn a proper fear of themselves, and a proper disgust! Have you ever seen a Muslim with an honest self-loathing, have you ever met an Easterner capable of being disgusted with himself? They ask nothing of themselves, they bow their heads without even knowing to what, and they view anyone who seeks anything more as either perverted or crazy! I’m going to teach them to fear not solitude but death, Fatma. Then they’ll actually prefer the deep anguish of loneliness to the foolish peace of mind bestowed by the crowd! Then they’ll see they don’t have to place themselves at the center of the universe! Then they’ll no longer take pride in remaining exactly the same people all their lives, but instead they’ll feel ashamed; they’ll question themselves and not in the eyes of God but according to their own lights! This is all going to happen, Fatma, I’m going to wake them from that peaceful foolish dream that’s lasted for thousands of years!” Eventually, he quieted down, as though exhausted by his own rage. I was waiting for him to leave me to the solitude of the night so that I could go back to a nice sleep.

  When the noise downstairs reached my ears again, I lifted my head from the warmth of my pillow. I could hear the dwarf shuffling around the house as if he were inside my own head. What are you doing, dwarf, what are you telling them? I heard the bang of the garden gate, and I was frightened when I recognized the footsteps in the garden: Metin! Where were you at this hour? I heard him rattling the kitchen door open, but he didn’t come upstairs. I thought: They’re down there, they’re all down there, and the dwarf is telling them everything. I shuddered and said, Where’s my cane, I’ll catch them all in the act, but I didn’t get out of my bed. I heard his footsteps coming up the stairs. Metin knocked
and came into my room. “How are you, Grandmother?” he said. How odd! “Are you okay?” I didn’t answer, I didn’t look at him. “Everything’s fine, Grandmother, nothing to worry about, nothing’s going to happen to you.” Then I understood: drunk! Like his grandfather! I squeezed my eyes shut. “Don’t go to sleep, Grandmother! I have something I want to say to you!” Don’t tell me! “Don’t go to sleep now!” I’m sleeping and I feel my soft bed beneath me. “Let’s knock this old house down, Grandmother!” I knew it. “Let’s knock the house down and have them build a nice big apartment building in its place. The developer will let us have half of it. It would be good for all of us. You don’t know what’s going on.” Right, I don’t know anything! “We all need money, Grandmother! The way things are going, soon we won’t be able to cover the kitchen expenses for this place.” Our kitchen, I was thinking: When I was little our kitchen smelled of cloves and cinnamon. “If we don’t do something soon, you and Recep will just starve here. The others can’t face up to this stuff, Grandmother. Faruk’s drunk every day now. Nilgün is a Communist, did you know that?” I smelled the scent of cinnamon; I didn’t know, but I knew that if you want to be loved it’s better not to know it all. “Please, won’t you answer me! This is for your own good! Don’t you hear me?” I don’t hear you, because I’m not here, I’m asleep and I remember: we boiled jam, drank lemonade, ate sherbet. “Answer me, Grandmother, please, answer me!” Then I paid a visit to Sükrü Pasha’s daughters: Hello, Türkân, Sükran, Nigân, hello! “Don’t you want that? Wouldn’t it be better to live in a nice new heated apartment than to be cold and hungry in this decrepit old house?” He comes over to the edge of the bed and rocks the headboard with the brass balls to get my attention. “Wake up, Grandmother, come on, open your eyes, answer me!” I’m not opening them, and still the bed is rocking: Then we got in the horse carriage to pay our visit. Tiki-taka, tiki-taka. “They’re convinced that you don’t want to tear down this house! But they need money, too. Why do you think Faruk’s wife left him? People don’t care about anything but money anymore, Grandmother!” He won’t stop rocking the bed. Tiki-taka, the carriage rocked along. The sweeping horsetails … “Grandmother, answer me …” They brushed away the flies. “If you don’t answer me, I won’t let you sleep!” I remembered, I remembered, I remembered. “I need money, too, more than any of them, do you understand? Because I”—my God, he sat down on the edge of the bed—”I just can’t be happy as they are with so little. I hate this country of idiots! I want to go to America. I need money. Do you understand?” His mouth reeked of alcohol, and turning my head in disgust I understood. “Now, Grandmother, all you have to do is tell me that you want this, too, and I’ll tell the rest. Say, yes, Grandmother!” I didn’t say it. “Why won’t you say it? Because you’re hanging on to your memories? We’ll move all your furniture into the new apartment! Your wardrobe, your trunks, your sewing machine, your dishes, we’ll take it all. Grandmother, you’ll be happy, too, do you understand?” What I understood was how beautiful the winter nights were when no one was around: when the silence of the night was mine alone, as I lay there with everything completely still! “We’ll hang that picture of Grandfather that’s on the wall now. Your room will be exactly the same as this one. Come on, please, give me an answer!” I didn’t! I was afraid when I felt his cold hand on my shoulder. His weepy voice came close, he was begging with his alcoholic breath, and I remembered: There’s no paradise, there’s no hell, your corpse will stay there all alone in the icy darkness of the earth. Your eyes will fill with earth, the maggots will eat away your insides, your flesh will decay. “Grandmother, I’m begging!” Ants will run around in your brain, slugs will crawl through your lungs, worms will writhe inside of your heart. “Why are you still alive when my mother and father are dead?” he said at a point of despair. “Is that right?” I thought, They’ve tricked him, too. The dwarf downstairs is telling them everything! He didn’t say anything else. He was crying, and at one point, I thought his hand was going for my throat! I thought of my own grave, seeing him stretch out on the edge of my bed, still crying. I was filled with disgust. Hard as it is for me to get out of my bed, I managed it. I put on my slippers and grabbing my cane made my way out of the room and stopped to call down from the top of the stairs.

  “Recep, Recep, come up here, quick!”

  30

  Recep Tries to Take Care of Everyone

  When I heard Madam call out, I jumped up right away from where Nilgün and I were sitting. I found Madam at the top of the stairs.

  “Hurry up, Recep!” she was shouting. “What’s going on in this house? Tell me this instant!”

  “Nothing,” I said, out of breath.

  “Nothing, you say! This one’s gone completely insane. Take a look!”

  With the tip of her cane, she pointed inside her room, as though there were a dead mouse there. Metin was lying facedown on her bed, his face buried in the embroidered pillow, sobbing and heaving.

  “He was going to kill me!” said Madam. “What’s going on in this house, Recep? Don’t think you can keep things from me.”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Metin Bey, is this any way to carry on, come on, get up.”

  “ ‘Nothing,’ you say. Someone put him up to this. Take me downstairs now!”

  “Metin had a little too much to drink, Madam! That’s all. He’s young, he drinks, but he’s not used to it. So you see what happened. Weren’t his father and his grandfather just like this?”

  “That’s enough out of you!” she said.