Silent House (19 page)

A ship carrying wheat had disappeared after docking in Karamürsel. It had never reached Istanbul nor had anyone shown up with news of its whereabouts. I decided that the ship had sunk somewhere on those rocks off Tuzla and that none of the crewmen knew how to swim. Then I read the trial transcript concerning Dursun’s son Abdullah, who asked for the return of the four linens consigned to the dyers Kadri and Mehmet to be dyed, but I didn’t write anything. I couldn’t understand why Abdullah would want them back undyed. The pickler Ibrahim Sofu had sold three pickled cucumbers for one
akçe
on Shaban 19, 991 (September 7, 1583), a simple matter yet nevertheless one resulting in a complaint and court proceedings. Three days after this event, with no apparent connection, thirteen
akçe
’s worth of beef sold by Mehmet the butcher was found to be one hundred forty dirhams short, a grievance entered in the records and also in my notebook. I wondered what my colleagues on the faculty would think if they found this notebook; they couldn’t possibly think that I had just made all this stuff up, which would really make them worry. If I could only find a good story, then they’d
be completely astonished. My man Budak, who started out selling wine and climbed his way up, he’d be the ideal protagonist. I put my mind to thinking up a suitably grand title for such a story, a story I could fancy up with a heap of footnotes and document numbers: “A Prototype of the Nobility: Koca Budak of Gebze”! Not bad! If only it were Budak Pasha instead of just Budak, it would be even better. Perhaps he eventually became a pasha. Maybe I would write a paper explaining how he became a pasha, by way of sketching a general portrait of the first quarter of the sixteenth century. But when I thought about all the boring details I would have to include, my enthusiasm wilted; for a moment I thought I would weep, another effect of the beer, I thought, but surely its effect had worn off by then. Well, what could I do but keep reading.

I reread the arrest orders for the cavalry soldier Tahir, son of Mehmet, who had taken up banditry. I read the orders prescribing steps to be taken to prevent animals of the neighboring villages
from grazing in the orchard of Ethem Pasha, and about Nurettin, thought to have died of the plague, but who, it was alleged, had actually been beaten to death by his wife’s father. But I wrote down none of it. Instead I copied in full a long list of market prices. Then I read that Ömer’s son Pir Ahmet promised in the presence of the attorney Sheikh Fethullah that he would pay his debt to Mehmet the
hamam
owner within eight days. Following that: the report of how Musa’s son Hizir’s mouth smelled of wine. I might have laughed had I drunk a little more beer. For a long while I continued reading through the court records very intently but without forming any particular thoughts or taking notes. I read as though I were looking for something, as though I were right on the heels of something. Finally I stopped when my eyes got tired, and I noticed that the sun was shining through the basement window.

Why did I become a historian? After my mother died in the spring, my father gave up his position as district administrator before he was eligible for a pension and settled in Cennethisar. I spent that summer there going through his books and walking in the gardens and along the seashore thinking about what I had read. I told people who asked if I was going to be a doctor that, yes, my grandfather was a doctor, too. But then just like that, I went off in the fall and signed up for history. How many are there like me who chose history for their occupation so willfully? Selma used to say that my foolish pride and the haughtiness inherent in my personality were the cause of idiocies I commit. But she wasn’t displeased that I was a historian. I guess my father didn’t like it; when he heard that I had registered for history he started drinking. Then again, he was already drinking anyway, something my grandmother would constantly scold him for. She herself wasn’t too pleased with my chosen profession. When I thought of Grandmother, I thought of the house and Nilgün; it was nearly five. I no longer felt the effect of the beer. A little later when I could take no more pleasure in reading I got up and left without waiting for Riza.

I
popped the last bite of the watermelon into my mouth and got right up from the dining table.

“Where’s this one going off to now without finishing his meal?” said Grandmother.

“Grandmother,” said Nilgün, “he even finished his watermelon.”

“Take the car if you want,” said Faruk.

“If I need it, I’ll come get it,” I said.

“Don’t feel obliged. I don’t want you to be embarrassed driving my broken-down Anadol around here.”

Nilgün laughed out loud. I didn’t say anything. I went upstairs to get my key and my wallet, which gave me a feeling of superiority and security because it contained fourteen thousand liras, all the money I’d made working for a month in the summer heat. Giving a last buff to those moccasins I liked so much and throwing the green sweater my uncle had brought from London over my shoulders, I was on my way out the kitchen door when I saw Recep.

“Where are you going without eating your eggplant, boss?”

“I ate everything, even the watermelon.”

“Bravo!”

Walking out the garden gate I could still hear Nilgün and Faruk laughing. They’ll be at it all night long, I thought: one of them setting himself up for the other to laugh at and then a little later the other returning the favor, on and on like that, they’ll sit under the dim light of the lamp for hours, deciding that the whole world is unjust, idiotic, and stupid while forgetting about all the stupid things they do, and if Nilgün hasn’t gone to bed by the time Faruk has polished off a small bottle of
raki
, he may start pouring his heart out to her about the wife he lost, so probably when I get back tonight I’ll find him shitfaced at the table, and I’ll wonder where a guy like that gets off giving me grief every time he lends me his crummy car. If you’re so smart, how did you lose that smart, pretty wife of yours? Here they are sitting on a piece of land worth at least 5 million, but the plates they’re eating off are all chipped, the knives and forks don’t match, for a salt cellar they use an old medicine bottle the dwarf poked holes in with a rusty nail, while poor Grandmother, ninety years old, is spitting all over the place the entire time she eats and saying not a word … I walked all the way to Ceylan’s and found her mother and father watching television, just like poor people with no other entertainment. So I went down to the shore looking for them and, sure enough, everybody from earlier in the day was there, with the sole exception of the gardener who watered the garden from morning till night and must have been handcuffed to the end of the hose. I sat and listened:

“In a little while when my parents go to bed we can watch a video.”

“Oh, come on, you mean we are going to be stuck here all evening?”

“I want to dance,” said Gülnur, swaying to some imaginary music.

“We were going to play poker,” said Fikret.

“Let’s go to Camlica and get tea.”

“Fifty kilometers!”

“We could go to a Turkish movie and make fun of it.”

As the lighthouse on the island blinked on and off in the distance I watched its reflection in the still water and I breathed in the scent of the jasmine and the girls’ perfume that was hanging in the air. I thought about how I loved Ceylan, but some feeling I couldn’t figure out kept her at a distance. Just as I’d planned all night long in bed, I knew I had to explain myself to her, but when I thought about it, this “me” that I was going to tell her about seemed like it never really existed.
The thing I called me was like a box within a box; it was like there was always something else inside it, maybe if I kept looking I could finally find my real self and express it, but every new box I opened had, instead of a real, true Metin that I could show to Ceylan, just another box hiding him. Then I thought: Love makes a person deceitful, but I had also thought that believing I was in love would relieve me of always feeling two-faced. Oh, if this waiting would just end! But I knew that I wasn’t even sure what I was waiting for. Just to calm myself down I decided to list, one by one, all my good points. It didn’t do any good.

I caught up with the others, who had come to a decision. We got into the cars, making quite a racket, and went off to the disco at the hotel. There was no one there except for some stupid tourists. The others made fun of the tourists who had the whole world to take a vacation in and wound up coming to this ridiculous nowhere place.

We got out on the floor, and I danced with Ceylan, but nothing happened. She asked me to calculate twenty-seven times thirteen and then seventy-nine times eighty-one, and when I did it she laughed, but I could tell she wasn’t impressed, and when the fast music started she said “I’m bored” and went to sit down. I went upstairs, and after groping along the silent carpeted corridors I found the amazingly clean toilet. When I saw myself in the mirror I thought, Goddamn it, all of this is because I believe I’m in love with a girl; I was disgusted with myself. Einstein probably wasn’t like this when he was eighteen. John D. Rockefeller probably wasn’t either. Then I took my
time thinking how it would be when I was rich: I’d buy a newspaper in Turkey with the money I made in America, but I wouldn’t drive it into the ground like our rich idiots, I’d get the hang of running a paper and live a life like Citizen Kane, I’d be kind of a mythic guy living by himself, but I’d also want to be president of the Fenerbahçe Club. When I was rich, I would forget all the grotesque stuff and pretensions that I hated about rich people, but thinking of Ceylan got me sidetracked. I smelled the place on my shirt where she had touched me when we were dancing. Coming out of the toilet, I met the others on the stairs, we were off to somewhere else, we got into the cars.

In Fikret’s Alfa Romeo there were knobs, indicators, signals, gauges, and blinking colored lights, just like a cockpit. I was just staring at them when Turgay’s car got really close, just before we got on the Istanbul-Ankara road. There someone decided the three cars should race as far as the Göztepe intersection. We zoomed beside the trucks and buses, under the pedestrian overpasses, past the gas stations, factories, coffeehouses, and people who’d stopped to watch us from the roadside, others getting some air on their balconies, repairmen, strikers, watermelon peddlers, and the guys running buffet stands and restaurants. Fikret kept honking the horn, especially when something exciting made everyone yell at once. At one red light, instead of braking Fikret dove into a side street barreling toward an Anadol at full speed, before pulling over to the side at the last second. “Jerk!” he said.

“We passed them,” shouted Ceylan. “We passed all of them, step on it, Fikret!”

“Guys, I want to have fun, not die,” said Zeynep.

“Why, do you want to get married?”

“This an Alfa Romeo. You have to know how to treat it right!”

We won the race and then turned to Suadiye and got onto Baghdad Avenue. I really like that street because it doesn’t try to hide how disgusting it is; it openly proclaims that everything on it is fake! The repulsive marble of the apartment buildings, the ugly Plexiglas shop-windows,
the hideous chandeliers hanging from the ceilings, the fluorescent glare in the pastry shops! I like all the disgusting things that are fine just being themselves. What’s wrong with a little honest vulgarity? If I had a Mercedes I’d certainly try to pick up one of these girls on the sidewalk. But don’t worry: I love you, Ceylan, sometimes I even love life! We parked the cars and went into another disco, one that doesn’t say it on the door; it says
CLUB
, but anybody who gives them two hundred fifty liras at the door can get in.

Demis Roussos was singing, and I danced with Ceylan, but we didn’t say much and it didn’t feel right. She seemed bored, distracted, even sad, and as she stared right past me, as if she were by herself, at that moment, for some reason, I felt sorry for her and I thought how I could really love her.