Silent House Read online

  I was ticked off. I’m not afraid of anyone. I went outside and looked up and down the track, but there was nothing coming or going. Some other smart alecks were sitting on the bench where I had been sitting. I thought of going over and making them get up, saying I was just sitting here, but it didn’t seem worth it right now, the whole crowd waiting for the train might have ganged up on me. As I looked around to see if there was anyplace else to sit, I suddenly got scared: the gendarmes were looking at me.

  “Buddy, do you have the time?” said one of them.

  “Me?” I said. “Yeah, I have the time.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Time?” I said. “It’s five after eight.”

  They didn’t say anything, just went off talking together. I kept on walking, but where was I going? Anyway I spotted an empty bench, so I sat down. Then like the people going to work, I lit my cigarette and opened my newspaper and concentrated on my reading. After finishing with the domestic news, I read the international news as well, paying close attention, like some important guy with a wife, kids, and responsibilities, interests to look after; I said to myself, If Brezhnev and Carter have secretly agreed to carve up Turkey, nothing could stop them. I was saying, Maybe they are the ones who sent the pope to Turkey, too, when somebody sat next to me, and I got scared.

  I looked at him from the corner of my eye, without lowering my paper. He had huge, wrinkled hands, thick fingers, resting in a tired way on pants that were even more worn than mine. I looked at his face and understood: he was a poor old worker, sagging from work. I felt sorry for him. In a few years, assuming you don’t die, you’ll retire, and your life will have been for nothing. But he seemed completely unaware, not complaining, just staring at the people on the other side of the tracks, pretty cheerful, actually. Then I thought, Is he up to something, maybe he and they are in on this together, maybe all of them, everybody waiting in the station, are just playing with me. I shivered. But then the old worker let out such a yawn that I realized he was just a complete fool. What am I afraid of? They should be afraid of me! When I thought of that, I relaxed.

  At that point it occurred to me that I could tell him everything, this old guy, maybe he even knew my father from somewhere—my dad really gets around—that’s right, I’m the son of that crippled lottery-ticket seller, and now I’m going off to Istanbul. To Üsküdar! I could even tell him about Nilgün and about our guys and what they thought of me, But look, that newspaper you’re holding has nothing about it yet, you know, sometimes it seems to me that all of this, all our country’s sorrows, are on account of some bastards who just enjoy playing with us, but one day I’m going to do something, I’m going to take the fun out of their games. I don’t know yet what it is that I’m going to do, but you’re all going to be amazed, you understand? This newspaper here will write all about it then, these fools waiting for the train, happy because they have a job to go to every morning, who ignore everything that’s going on, they will understand then, they’ll be shocked, they’ll even be afraid of me, and they’ll think, We didn’t know all this, everything, was so pointless, and we had no idea. When that day comes, the television will talk about me, too, not just the newspapers, they’ll understand, you’ll all understand.

  The train was coming; I folded the newspaper carefully and calmly got to my feet. Then I took a look at Faruk’s notebook filled with his handwriting, even read a little! What nonsense! History is for slaves, stories for people who are half asleep, fables for stupid children; history is for fools, pathetic creatures, cowards! I couldn’t even be bothered to rip it up. I just threw it into the trash bin next to the bench. Then, just like people who don’t think about the things they do, just like everybody, I dropped my cigarette butt casually on the ground, and I crushed it without thinking, just the way you do. The doors of the cars opened: hundreds of faces looking out at me. They go off to work in the morning, they come home from work at night, so they can go back to work in the morning and come home at night again, poor jerks, they don’t know, they don’t know! But they’ll learn! I’ll teach them, but not just yet, I thought; for now, okay, I’ll be like one of you who has a job to go to in the morning, look, I’m just like all of you, I’m getting on the crowded train, I’m joining you.

  The inside of the car crawling with people was humid and hot. Watch out for me from now on! Be afraid!

  32

  Fatma Finds Consolation in Holding a Book

  I was lying in my bed waiting for them. I was waiting with my head resting on the pillow, thinking that when they came to kiss my hand before going back to Istanbul, we would talk, I would say things, and they would listen to me, when all that noise coming from downstairs suddenly stopped. I couldn’t hear footsteps going from one room to the other, I couldn’t hear the rattling when they shut the doors and opened the windows, I could hear nothing of those conversations echoing on the stairs and the ceiling, and I was afraid.

  I got up from the bed, took my cane, and tapped on the floor a few times, but the sneaky dwarf pretended not to hear me. After tapping the cane a few more times, I thought maybe I could shame him in front of the others, because he couldn’t well pretend not to hear me if they did, so I slowly got out of my room, and from the top of the stairs I started again:

  “Recep, Recep, quick, come upstairs.”

  But there was not a sound downstairs.

  What a strange, frightening thing this silence is. I quickly went back to my room, my legs went wobbly as I pushed open the shutters and looked down to the garden: somebody was running frantically to the car, it was Metin, and when he got in and took off, dear God, I was full of anxious confusion. I stayed there thinking the worst, but not for long, because very soon, he rushed back and to my surprise a woman got out of the car with him and they went inside together. When I saw the bag in her hand and her long scarf, I recognized the woman: it was the lady pharmacist, who, when they think I’m sick, comes with that huge bag, more suitable for a man to carry, and chats sweetly to coax me into letting her stick me with her poison needles: Fatma Hanim, you have a fever, it’s a needless strain on your heart, let me give you a shot of penicillin, just relax, why are you afraid, why, you’re a doctor’s wife yourself, and everyone here only wants the best for you. Those were the words that would most arouse my suspicion, and in the end, after I’d cried a little, they would give up and let me be with my temperature, and then I would think: They want to poison your body because they couldn’t poison your mind, Fatma, be careful.

  I was careful, waiting in fear. But nothing happened. The footsteps I was expecting never came up the stairs; nothing broke the silence downstairs. After waiting a little longer, I heard some noises coming from the kitchen door, and I ran to the window again. The pharmacy woman with her bag was going, this time by herself: this pretty lady, rather young and lively, was walking in an odd way in the garden, and as I was watching her, just a few steps before the garden gate she stopped to pull something from her bag and, setting the bag down, unfolded a big handkerchief, and she started to cry, wiping her nose with it. I felt such pity for the pretty woman, tell me, what did they say to you, tell me, but she collected herself, and after wiping her eyes one last time, she took up her bag again and left. As she was going out the garden gate she turned for a second to look at the house, but she didn’t see me.

  Out of curiosity, I just stayed on there at the window. When I couldn’t stand it anymore I got furious at them, go now, begone from my thoughts, and leave me alone! But they still didn’t come, and there was not a peep from downstairs. I went over to my bed. Don’t worry, Fatma, soon enough that unpleasant noise will start up again, in just a little while, that wild hilarity, so inconsiderate. I got into my bed and thought: They’ll be up in a little while, after they galumph up the stairs, Faruk, Nilgün, and Metin will come into my room, and I’ll feel that familiar mixture of irritation and jealousy and peace of mind as they bend down to kiss my hand and I am reminded: what strange hair they have—not
from our side! We’re going, Grandmother, we’re going, they’ll say, but we’ll come again soon. Grandmother, you’re looking really well, you’ll be fine, just take good care of yourself, don’t make us worry, okay, we’re going. Then there’ll be silence for a moment and I’ll watch as they stare at me: attentively, lovingly, pityingly, and with a strange kind of gladness. That’s when I’ll know they’re thinking about my death, and how death might even suit me, and because I have no use for their pity, I may even try to make some kind of joke then, as long as they don’t annoy me by telling me to be more tolerant. Perhaps I’ll say, Would anyone like a taste of this cane to remember me by, or Mind your manners, children, or I’ll take you by the ears and nail you to the wall, but it was really no use, these wisecracks wouldn’t so much as make them smile, and after a moment of not reacting, they’d take their cue to mouth the same lifeless empty words of farewell that they’ve memorized:

  “Well, we’re going, Grandmother, whom do you want to say hello to in Istanbul?”

  No matter how many times I hear it, somehow this question always stirs my feelings, as if I wasn’t expecting it. I’ll remember Istanbul, which I left seventy years ago, it’s a pity actually because I know they’re up to the necks in sin there, just wallowing in it, but still, sometimes I’m just curious. On cold winter nights, especially when the dwarf hasn’t lit the stove properly, and I’m chilled to the bone, even I would like, just for a while, to be there with them, in a cheerful room, well lit and warm, I dream of that, but, no, I’ll have none of their sinfulness! In the end, if I just can’t banish that warm and cheerful room from my mind, I’ll get out of my bed, open my closet, and take out the box where I keep them all, together with the broken sewing-machine needles and bobbins and the old electric bills, right beside my jewelry box, I’ll take them out and look at them: Oh, what a pity, you’ve all died, they announced it to the whole world afterward, and I clipped them out of the newspapers and kept them, look: Death notice, Semiha Esen, daughter of the late Halil Cemil Bey, former general director of the administration of the sugar factories; Death notice, member of our Administrative Council (they should have been glad of that least), Murruvet Hanimefendi; and the stupidest one of all: Death notice, Nihal Abla, only child of Adnan Bey, one of the old moneyed people, of course I remember, look, you married a tobacco merchant, had three children and, God bless them, eleven grandchildren, but you really loved Behlul, while he was in love with that immoral Bihter, don’t even think of it, Fatma, look there’s this last one, it must be ten years now: Death notice, Nigân Isikci Hanimefendi, daughter of the late Sükrü Pasha, minister of foundations and ambassador to France, sister of the late Türkân and Sükran, ooh, Nigân, when I read that you have gone back to God, standing here alone in the middle of the room, I realize that I have nobody left in Istanbul and I think, You all endured that hell Selâhattin described in his encyclopedia and that he wished more than anything to descend upon the earth, you all sank into the ugly sins of Istanbul, to die and be buried among concrete apartment houses, factory smokestacks, plastic smells, and sewer pipes—just awful! When I think of this I feel the strange peace of a little pang of fear, and I go back to bed seeking the warmth of the quilt on the cold winter night, and tired by thoughts, I want to sleep, to forget. I have no one to say hello to in Istanbul.

  Let them come and ask anyway, this time I’ll give them the answer straight off without being surprised and stirred, but there’s still not a sound downstairs. I got out of my bed, looked at the clock on the table: ten in the morning! Where were they? I went and stuck my head out the window; the car was sitting there where Metin had left it, and it was then I realized: I couldn’t even hear the noise of the cricket that hadn’t budged from where it had been sitting outside the kitchen door for weeks: I’m afraid of silence! Then I thought about the pharmacist lady who had come a little while ago—what could she have wanted?—and then again about what the dwarf could be telling them. I went straight out of room to the top of the stairs and knocked with my cane on the floor:

  “Recep, Recep, come up here right away!”

  But this time I knew that he wasn’t going to come, that I was tapping with my cane on the floor for nothing and straining my old voice to no end, but I called out anyway, and as I did I had a strange feeling and I shivered: as though they had all gone without telling me and they were never going to come back, they’d left, and I was there in the house all alone! It was a frightening thought, and to forget it I called out downstairs again, but only to have that strange feeling all the more. As though there was no one left in the world, not a bird, not a shameless dog, not so much as an insect to remind us with its buzzing about the heat and the time of day: time had stopped, and only I remained, with my panicked voice calling out again downstairs for nothing, and my cane knocking again and again on the floor, and still it seemed there was no one to hear me: only empty armchairs, tables slowly accumulating dust, closed doors, hopeless furniture that creaked all on its own, death as you described it, Selâhattin! My God, I was scared, thinking that my thoughts would freeze like the furniture, that I would become as colorless and odorless as a piece of ice, stuck here for eternity never to feel anything. Then I suddenly thought of going downstairs to reunite with time and motion, and so I forced myself, making it to the fourth step down, before I got dizzy. I stopped in fear: There are still fifteen steps, you can’t make it, Fatma, you’ll fall! Slowly, anxiously, I went back up the steps, turning my back to that terrifying silence, hoping to lift my spirits and to forget: They’ll come along now to kiss your hand, Fatma, don’t worry.

  When I got to my door I was no longer afraid, but I wasn’t in good spirits either: Selâhattin’s picture on the wall was giving me a frightening look, but I couldn’t feel anything, as though now I had lost the senses of smell, of taste, and of touch. I took seven more little steps, got to my bed, sat on the edge, not letting myself go until I’d managed to lean back against the headboard, and from there, as I stared at the carpet, I thought of how useless were these endlessly recurring thoughts of mine, and I was annoyed: I was trapped in the void with only my pointless thoughts. Then I stretched out on the bed, and as my head touched the pillow, I thought, Is it time, are they coming now, are they coming through the door to kiss my hand, good-bye, Grandmother, good-bye, but still there was not the slightest sound from the stairs or down below, and because I was afraid of worrying, I told myself I was not yet ready for this ceremony, it would have to wait as I prepared myself, cutting time into equal pieces, like an orange, just as I did on silent lonely winter nights. So I pulled my quilt up over myself and waited.

  While I was waiting I knew I would find something to brood about. But what? I wanted my mind to reveal itself to me like a glove turned inside out: So that’s what you’re really like, Fatma, I’d tell myself in the end, the exterior form that the mirror shows is the opposite of what I’m like inside! Let me be astonished, let me forget, let me wonder: it’s my exterior that they come time and again to look at, the thing they bring downstairs for dinner and whose hand they’ll kiss in a little while; sometimes I wonder what my interior actually is. A heart that goes pitter-patter and thoughts that glide by like little paper boats on flowing water, and what else? A strange thing! Sometimes lying there between sleep and wakefulness, I confuse them, and I marvel with a sweet excitement: it’s as though my outside has become my inside and my inside my outside, and in the dark I can’t figure out which one I am. My hand reaches out like a silent cat and turns on the light, I touch the cold iron bars of the bed, but the cold iron only leaves me in a cold winter night: where am I? Sometimes you can’t even tell anymore. If a person can live in the same house for seventy years and still be confused, then this thing that we call life, and imagine we have used up, must be such a strange and incomprehensible thing that no one can even know what their own life is. You stand there waiting and on it goes from place to place, no one knows why, and as it goes, you have many thoughts about where it’s been
and where it’s headed; then just as you speak these strange thoughts, which aren’t right or wrong, and lead to no conclusion, you look, and the journey ends here, Fatma, okay, this is where you get off! First one foot, then the other, I get out of the carriage. I take two steps, then step back and look at the carriage. Was this the thing that brought us here, swaying all the way? Well, I guess that was it. So at the end that’s how I’ll think: that was it, it wasn’t the most pleasant trip, I didn’t understand a thing, but I still want to start it all over again. But one is not allowed! Come on, they say, we’re here now, on the other side, you can’t get back on again. And as the driver snaps his whip and the carriage draws away I want to cry, looking at it from behind: So that means I can’t start again, Mother, there’s no next time! But in my rebellious way I think that people have to be able to start over, just as I believed that a little girl has to be able to stay an innocent child her whole life long if she wants to, and that’s when I remember Nigân, Türkân, and Şükran and the books they read and that trip back I took with my mother and I am cheered up, in a bittersweet way.

  That morning my mother took me to Sükrü Pasha’s, and before turning me over to them, she said in the carriage as she did every time, Look, Fatma, when I come to pick you up in the evening, please don’t start to cry again, or this will be the last time, but I quickly forgot what my mother had said as I played all day with Nigân, Türkân, and Sükran, admiring them, thinking how much smarter and prettier than I they were, because they played the piano so beautifully and could mimic not only the lame driver but even their father, and him so perfectly that I was startled and only dared to laugh along with them much later; in the afternoon they recited poems, and having gone to France, they knew French, but later, they’d pull out novels translated into Turkish and read from them, passing the book from hand to hand, and it was so nice just to listen that when I suddenly saw my mother in front of me, I began to cry, realizing that it was time to go home, and though my mother would give me a very stern look, I still wouldn’t remember what she had told me that morning in the carriage, and besides I wasn’t crying just because it was time to go home but also because my mother had given me such a stern look, so that Sükran, Nigân, and Türkân’s mother felt sorry for me and said, Girls, bring her some candy, and as my mother said, Madam, I’m so embarrassed, their mother insisted it was nothing, and Nigân brought the candy in the silver bowl, and as everybody looked on waiting for me to stop crying, I didn’t reach out and take one, but rather said, That’s not what I want, to which they answered, But what is it that you want, and my mother replied, That’s enough now, Fatma, but I, gathering all my courage, said, I want that book, but because, through my tears, I couldn’t even say which one, Sükran asked her mother to let her bring them all, and then, as my mother said, Madam, I don’t believe she can read these books and besides she doesn’t even like to read, I was glancing at the covers of the books out of the corner of my eye, The Count of Monte Cristo, Xavier de Montépin, and Paul de Kock were there, but the one I wanted was Robinson Crusoe, which they’d read to me after lunch, and when I asked for it, my mother was so ashamed, but their mother, said, Fine, my girl, you can borrow it, but don’t lose it, it’s Sükrü Pasha’s, and then I was quiet and I left quietly, sitting in the carriage with the book in my hand.