Silent House (11 page)

“Come on, Grandmother, it’s getting really hot.”

I want to sit by myself and write the truth, No, I won’t allow it,

“Wait a little bit, Metin Bey …”

you can’t stay here, you have to go out and be part of life, Recep, don’t give him anything to eat, he’s a grown man, he should go out and earn his own living, Please, Mother, you’ll humiliate me

“Someone should clean off the tops of those graves.”

in front of everyone my age, Be quiet, have you no respect, can’t I spend a little time alone with your father, I see the animal filth, too, who would have thought everything would come to this, but I said to him then, Are you drinking, I said, you were silent son, why, you’re still a young man, I’ll get you married again, okay, what will you do here from morning till night, in this place with no one around, you’re silent, aren’t you, oh my Lord, I know, you’ll sit down like your father
and start to write nonsense, you’re silent, aren’t you, oh, son, how can I teach you that you are not responsible for all the crimes and sins and injustice in this world, I’m just a poor ignorant woman, and look, now I have no one, they make fun of me, if you could see the miserable life I’ve had, son, how unlucky I’ve been, how much I cry … I clutched my handkerchief and crumpled it up,

“Enough, Grandmother, enough, don’t cry anymore. We’ll come again …”

my God, I’m so unlucky, they want to take me away, leave me in peace with my son and my departed husband, I want to be alone with them—I want to lie down on the grave, but I don’t, No, Fatma, look, your grandchildren feel sorry for you, they see now how unlucky and miserable I am, they’re right, and in this heat, well, I’m saying the Fatiha prayer one last time at least but when I saw that ugly dwarf standing there staring in stupid arrogance, they don’t leave you alone for a second, the devil is everywhere, as though he’s lying in ambush behind the wall, goading us to annoy one another, okay once more

“Grandmother, you don’t look well, let’s go now.”

Fatiha, when I lift my hands they leave me alone and they lift their hands, too, we pray and pray for the last time, the cars are going by, it’s so hot, it’s a good thing I didn’t put on a sweater underneath, I left it in the closet at the last minute, I locked it in the empty house, God protect us that there be no thief, a person gets so distracted, forgive me, amen, now we’re

“Lean on me, Grandmother!”

going, good-bye, oh, you’re there too, who has a brain left to think with,

GÜL DARVINOĞLU
1922–1964
MAY SHE REST IN PEACE

but they’re making me go and I don’t have the strength to stand on my feet and say another prayer in this heat anyway, when I pray for
them it was the same as if I prayed for you, little, pale, dull girl, but Doğan liked you, he brought you and made you kiss my hand, then he came to my room quietly at night, How are you, Mother, What can I say, son, this weak, pale little girl, I said, I understood right away you wouldn’t live long, having three kids was enough for you, you were worn out, poor thing, you ate from the side of your plate like a cat, one or two mouthfuls, I’d say, can I give you another spoonful, your eyes would widen in hopelessness: this dull little wife, what sin could she have had anyway that she would need my prayer; look, I’m going because they’ve taken me by the arm and

“Are you okay, Grandmother?”

thank God we’re going home now.

J
ust as they were leaving, Grandmother wanted to say one more prayer, and this time only Nilgün lifted her hands to pray with her; Faruk had pulled out a handkerchief the size of a sheet and was mopping his sweat, Uncle Recep was holding Grandmother’s for her, and Metin had stuck his hands in the back pockets of his blue jeans, not even pretending to pray anymore. They quickly finished mumbling through the prayer and as Grandmother started swaying to the left and to the right they took her again by the arms and were leading her off. When they turned their backs to me I lifted my head straight up and from behind the wall and the bushes, and I could see quite easily; it was a funny scene: as they went off, with the fatso giant called Faruk on one side and the dwarf who’s my uncle on the other, their grandmother looked like a scary puppet in clothes too big for her, that strange frightening coat like a black blanket. Still I didn’t laugh and maybe because we were in the cemetery I shivered and I looked at you, Nilgün, and that scarf that looked so nice on you, then I looked at your skinny legs. It was so strange: you’ve grown up, you’re a beautiful girl, but your legs are still like sticks.

Later after you got in the car and left, I came out from where I hid so you wouldn’t get the wrong idea and I went over to look at those silent graves for myself: that’s your grandfather and that’s your mother and father but I only remember your father. When we were playing in the garden, once in a while he would stick his head out the shutters of the room and see us together, but he never said anything about me playing with you. I said the Fatiha prayer for him and stayed there for a while, not doing anything except cooking in the sun and listening to the crickets, and I thought strange things, strange dark things, I shivered, my thoughts got all mixed up, as if I’d smoked a cigarette. Then I left the cemetery, and I was going back to where I left my mathematics open on the table. Because an hour ago when I was sitting at the table, just as I looked out the window, you were going up the hill in your white Anadol and I realized, because your grandmother was with you, where you must be going and then, while I was thinking about the cemetery and the dead, it became even more impossible for me to follow that stupid annoying math and so I said, Why not just go and check them out, I’ll relax after I see what they’re up to in the cemetery, then I’ll come back and work, I said, so I hopped out the window to keep my mother from getting upset over nothing, ran up here, and saw you and now it’s back to the math problem I left.

The dusty road ended, and the asphalt began. Cars were going by, and once or twice I signaled, but people with cars no longer have consciences: they go downhill at top speed, without even seeing me. Then I came to Tahsin’s. He and his mother were picking fruit in the back while his father sat at the stand selling cherries, but it was as if he couldn’t see me, maybe because I wasn’t driving a luxury car at a hundred kilometers an hour and suddenly braking so I could jump out and buy five kilos of cherries at eighty liras a kilo, he didn’t even lift his head and look at me. Yes, I would say that I’m the only one left who can’t think about something besides money, but when I saw Halil’s garbage truck I was happy. They were going downhill, I put up my hand for them to stop, and I got on.

“What’s your dad doing?” he said.

“The lottery,” I said. “What else? He works the trains in the mornings.”

“You?”

“I’m still in school,” I said. “How fast can this thing go?”

“Eighty!” he said. “What are you doing here anyway?”

“I was feeling fed up,” I said. “I took a walk.”

“If you’re already fed up at this age …,” they said, laughing, and braking in front of my house.

“No,” I said. “I’m going all the way down.”

“What’s there?”

“I have a friend there, you don’t know them.”

As we passed the house, I looked at my open window. I’ll be back, I thought, before my father gets home at noon. I got out of the truck as soon as we came into the neighborhood at the bottom of the hill. I walked quickly so that Halil’s guys wouldn’t think I was some kind of useless bum. I went all the way out to the breakwater and sat down a little and looked at the sea, since I was dripping sweat from the heat. A motorboat pulled up at high speed, dropped off a girl on the dock before zooming off again. Looking at that girl, I thought of you, Nilgün. I saw how you lifted up your hands in prayer just a little while ago: It was weird. Just like you were actually talking with Him. It says in the book, there are angels. Then I thought: There’s the devil, too. And other things. I thought about them as though I wanted to be scared, to shiver and feel guilty so I’d run home up the hill, do my math, but I’d be sitting down soon enough anyway, so why not wander around for a while?

When I got to the beach and heard all that noise that just stuns you and saw that mass of flesh, I thought again about guilt, sin, and the devil. A quivering mass of flesh: once in a while a bright beach ball would waft slowly up, as though it wanted to escape all this guilt and sin, but then it would fall down and get lost in the mass of flesh again; the women wouldn’t let it go. I looked some more through the wire fence covered with ivy at the crowd and the women. It’s strange,
sometimes I feel like doing something bad, then I feel ashamed, it’s as if I want to hurt them a little so they’ll notice me: that way, I would have punished them and nobody would give in to the devil and maybe they would only be afraid of me then. It’s a feeling like this: we’re in power and they’re behaving properly because of it. I got embarrassed to have these thoughts, and to forget my embarrassment I thought of you, Nilgün. You’re innocent. I was saying to myself, I’ll look at the crowd for a little while longer, then go back to the math book, when the guy who takes care of the beach said,

“What are you hanging around here for?”

“Is it forbidden?” I said.

“If you’re going in, go over there and get a ticket!” he said. “If you have a bathing suit and money …”

“Take it easy,” I said. “I’m going.”

If you have money, if you have money, how much is it: this was what they prayed now instead of the Fatiha: You’re all so disgusting, sometimes I feel completely alone: Half of them disgusting, half of them idiots. When you think of it you become afraid of the crowd, but thank God our guys are here, when I’m with them I don’t get confused; I know then what’s a crime and what’s a sin, I can tell the difference between good and evil and I’m not afraid: I understand very well what has to be done. Then I thought of how our guys kept teasing me in the coffeehouse last night, calling me the Fox, and I got angry. Fine. I can do those things that have to be done all by myself, gentlemen, I can walk that road alone, because I know. I believe and trust in myself.

I kept on walking and reached your house, Nilgün, without even noticing, I realized it when I saw that old wall covered with moss. The garden gate was closed. I went over and sat down under the chestnut tree on the other side of the road, looked at the windows and doors, and wondered what you were doing inside. Maybe you were eating something, maybe you still had that scarf on your head, maybe you were taking an afternoon nap. I picked up a stick and absentmindedly drew your picture in the sand collected on the side
of the road. Your face is prettier when you’re asleep. When I look at it, I forget all about sin and guilt, and those sinful guilty rashes that I sometimes feel like I’m covered with up to my throat, and I think, What could I have done wrong, I’m not one of them, I believe I’m like you. Then I think: If I sneak into the garden and over by where the tree sticks out and climb up the wall and slip into your room through the open window like a cat and kiss you on your cheek: Who are you? Don’t you recognize me, we played hide-and-seek, I love you, I love you more than all those fine fellows you know could ever possibly love you! Then I lost my temper: I wiped out the face I had drawn on the sand with my foot and just when I got up sick of all these stupid imaginings, I saw:

Nilgün coming out of the house and walking toward the gate.

They get everything wrong, they see everything as bad. I quickly moved off, turning my back to the gate. After I heard your voice I turned around: you had come out of the gate and going where, I wondered. So I followed you.

She had a funny way of walking: like a man. If I ran up and put my hand on your shoulder: Don’t you recognize me, Nilgün, I’m Hasan, you know, we used to play in your garden when we were kids, Metin was there, too, later we went fishing.

She didn’t look back when she turned the corner, just kept on walking: Are you going to the beach, are you going to join them, too? I was annoyed, but I kept following her. She was moving quickly on her stick legs, What’s the hurry, or is somebody waiting for you?