"She said, 'Don't make coffee—he doesn't drink it!'"
The fact that he'd made me his confidant in this act—done to avoid seeing a repeat of something that weighed heavily on him—only bound me closer to him.
We still hadn't spoken a word about it. But by now I'd stopped being surprised. His silent, noiseless way of living, his endurance, the way he looked at human weakness with compassion and at people's rudeness with amusement—wasn't that enough of an expression? When we walked together, didn't I feel with all my strength that the person beside me was a human being? During those days I understood why people don't necessarily need speech to seek each other out, find each other, and see into each other's hearts; why some poets are always searching for someone to walk beside them in silence before the beauty of nature. Even though I didn't know exactly what I was learning from this man who walked beside me without opening his mouth, who worked in front of me without making a sound, I was certain I was learning far more than I could have from someone who had taught me for years.
I could sense that he was pleased with me too. That timid, shy manner he'd shown toward everyone—and toward me when we first met—was gone. Only some days he would suddenly turn wild; his eyes would lose all expression, grow small, and when spoken to he'd answer in a slow voice that forbade any intimacy. On such days he'd also neglect his translation work, often putting his pen aside and staring at the papers in front of him for hours. I could sense that he had withdrawn behind all distances and times, and that he wouldn't let anyone in there—I never tried to approach. But a worry filled me: I'd noticed that, by a strange coincidence, Raif Efendi's illnesses usually followed such days. I learned the reason very quickly, but very sadly. However, I'll tell everything in order.
One day in mid-February, Raif Efendi didn't come to the office again. When I stopped by his house in the evening, his wife Mihriye Hanım opened the door.
"Come in, it's you?" she said. "He just fell asleep a little while ago... If you want, I'll wake him up!"
"No, don't disturb him... How is he?" I said.
The woman led me into the guest room. "He has a fever. This time he's also complaining of pain." Then she added in a complaining voice: "Oh, my son, he doesn't take any care of himself either... He's not a child... For no reason at all, he suddenly gets upset... I don't know what happens... He won't sit and talk with anyone... He just goes off on his own... And then he ends up like this, laid up in bed..."
At that moment, Raif Efendi's voice was heard from the next room. The woman hurried over there. I was astonished. Was it possible that this man—who took such care of his health, who didn't know how to protect himself enough with woolen vests and scarves—would ever be careless?
Mihriye Hanım came back again. "He woke up when the door knocked. Come in!" she said.
This time I found Raif Efendi in somewhat worse condition. His complexion was very pale, his breathing very rapid. His usual childish smile struck me more as a grimace that strained the muscles of his face. His eyes, too, behind his glasses, seemed to have retreated deeper.
"What happened to you again, Raif Bey? Get well soon!" I said.
"Thank you!"
His voice was slightly hoarse. When he coughed, his chest shook badly and rattled.
To satisfy my curiosity quickly, I asked: "How did you catch cold? It must be a cold..."
He stared at the white cover of his bed for a long time. The small iron stove squeezed between his children's and his wife's white beds had made the room overly warm. Yet despite that, the man in front of me seemed cold. Pulling his blanket up to his throat, he said: "Yes, I guess I caught a cold. I went out a bit last night after dinner..."
"Did you go somewhere?"
"No... I just wanted to take a little walk... I don't know... I guess I felt restless..."
That he said he felt restless about anything surprised me.
"I walked a bit too far... I went toward the agricultural institutes... I came as far as the bottom of the Keçiören hill... I must have walked fast or something... I got hot... I opened my coat... The wind was blowing... It was also spitting a little snow... I must have caught cold..."
Walking for hours at night, in snow and wind, on lonely roads, with his chest bare, was not something one would expect from Raif Efendi.
"Were you troubled about something?" I said.
He answered anxiously: "No, not at all... It happens sometimes... I feel like walking alone at night. Who knows, maybe the noise at home bothers me..."
Then, as if afraid he'd said too much, he added quickly: "I guess that's how it is as you get older... The family's not to blame!"
Outside, noise and loud talking started again. The older daughter, returning from school, came in and kissed her father's cheeks.
"How are you, daddy?"
Then she turned to me and shook my hand. "Sir, it's always like this... Sometimes it comes into his head: 'I'm going to a coffeehouse,' he says, and then he catches cold either there or on the way, and he gets sick... It's happened so many times... I don't know what's in that coffeehouse!"
She shrugged off her coat, threw it over a chair, and immediately went out. She seemed used to Raif Efendi's behavior and didn't pay it much attention.
I looked at the patient's face. He had turned his eyes to me, and there was no explanation, no surprise in them. I wasn't wondering why he'd lied to his family, but why he'd told me the truth—and I felt a little proud of that. The pride of being closer to a person than others are.
As I went out and headed home, I became lost in thought. Was Raif Efendi really just a simple, empty man? It was certain he had no goal, no passion in life, and felt no interest even toward the people closest to him... So what did he want? Wasn't it this very emptiness inside, this purposelessness of his life, that drove him out into the streets at night?
At that moment, I saw I had reached the front of the hotel where I was staying. I shared a room with a friend—a room that barely fit two beds. It was past eight. Not feeling like eating, I thought about going up to my room and reading a bit, but I gave up immediately: at this hour, the gramophone in the coffeehouse downstairs was blasting at full volume, and the Syrian bar artist who slept in the room next to ours was singing the shrillest of her Arabic songs while getting dressed to go to work. I turned and walked along the muddy-edged asphalt toward Keçiören. First, on both sides of the road, there were car repair shops and low, ramshackle coffeehouses. Then, on the right, houses climbing up the hill; on the left, slightly lower, gardens with trees that had shed their leaves. I turned up my collar. A fast, damp wind was blowing. Inside me was a tremendous urge to walk and run—the kind I only felt when drunk. I felt I could go on for hours, for days. I had forgotten to look around and had gone quite far. The wind had grown stronger, almost pushing me in the chest, and struggling against that force gave me pleasure.
Suddenly I thought: why had I come here? Nothing... No reason... I had just walked without deciding. The trees on both sides of the road groaned in the wind, and clouds raced across the sky at great speed. The black, rocky hills ahead were still faintly lit, and the clouds grazing them seemed to leave bits of themselves behind. I closed my eyes and walked on, breathing in the damp air. The question I had cast from my mind reappeared: why had I come here? The wind was very much like last night's wind; maybe soon it would start spitting snow... Last night another man had walked here—his glasses fogged, his hat in his hand, his chest bare—almost running... The wind had slipped through his short, sparse hair, cooling his head—who knows how feverish it was? What was inside that head? What had dragged that head, that sick, aged body, here? I wanted to imagine how Raif Efendi had walked into that dark, cold night, what expression his face had worn. Now I understood why I'd come here: I thought I could see him and what passed through his mind better from here. But I saw nothing except the wind trying to blow off my hat, the moaning trees, and the clouds that shifted into many shapes as they raced by. To be in the place where he lived was not to live as he did... To think so, you'd have to be as naive and heedless as I was.
I hurried back to the hotel. The gramophone from the coffeehouse and the Syrian woman's song had stopped. My friend was lying on his bed reading. He glanced sideways at me.
"What, coming back from a rendezvous?" he said.
How well people understood each other... And here I was, in this state, trying to analyze another person's mind, to see his smooth or tangled soul. Even the simplest, most wretched, even the most foolish man in the world possesses a soul so tremendous and complex that it would astonish anyone!... Why do we avoid understanding this so much, and think of this creature called man as one of the easiest things to understand and judge? Why, when we refrain from commenting on the qualities of a cheese we see for the first time, do we pass a final judgment on the first person we meet and move on with peace of mind?
I couldn't sleep for a long time. Raif Efendi lay in his white-covered bed, feverish, breathing in the air filled with the scents of his daughters' young bodies and his wife's tired limbs. His eyes were closed, and his soul—who knows where, where it was wandering?...
This time, Raif Efendi's illness lasted a bit longer. It didn't seem like the usual simple cold. The old doctor brought by Nurettin Bey recommended mustard plasters and prescribed cough medicine. I stopped by every two or three evenings, and each time I found him a little more deteriorated. But he himself didn't seem too alarmed or to take the illness seriously. Perhaps he was afraid of worrying the household. The states of Mihriye Hanım and Necla were truly worrisome. The woman, who seemed to have forgotten even how to think after years of housework, went in and out of the patient's room in great confusion, dropping towels or plates while applying mustard plasters to his back, always forgetting something inside or out, and searching endlessly. I can still see her running around in her worn, heelless slippers on her bare feet, and I still feel her gaze—sticking to everyone she met as if begging for help. Necla, though not as frantic as her mother, was deeply distressed. In the last few days she hadn't been going to school, staying to wait for her father. When I came in the evenings to check on the patient, I noticed from her red, swollen eyes that she'd been crying a little earlier. But all this seemed to bother Raif Efendi even more. During our moments alone, he complained about it, once even muttering:
"What's gotten into them? Are we about to die?" he said. "So what if we died? What's it to them? What am I to them?" Then, in a more bitter and merciless tone, he added: "I'm nothing to them... I've never been anything... We've lived in the same house for years... They never wondered who this man is... Now they're afraid I'll go away..."
"For heaven's sake, Raif Bey," I said. "What kind of talk is that? Sure, they're a bit too worried, but it's not right to interpret it that way... They're your wife and daughter!"
"Yes, my wife and daughter... But that's all."
He turned his head away. I hadn't understood his last words and hesitated to ask further.
Nurettin Bey brought an internist to calm the family. After a long examination, the man said the illness was pneumonia, and seeing the bewilderment of those around him, he said: "No, no, it's not that serious... Thank God, his constitution is strong, his heart is sound—he'll get through it. Just need to be careful... Don't let him catch cold. In fact, it would be better if you took him to the hospital."
When Mihriye Hanım heard the word "hospital," she completely lost control. Collapsing onto one of the chairs in the hall, she began to wail. Nurettin Bey, as if his dignity had been offended, wrinkled his face and said: "What do you mean? He'll certainly be taken care of better at home than in a hospital!"
The doctor shrugged and left.
Raif Efendi first wanted to go to the hospital, saying, "At least there I can rest my head." It was obvious from everything that he wanted to be alone, but when he saw how strongly the family rejected the idea, he stopped insisting. With a hopeless smile on his face, he murmured: "They wouldn't leave me alone there either."
One day—I still remember—on a Friday evening, I sat on the chair by Raif Efendi's bedside, watching him breathe, his chest rattling, without saying a word. There was no one else in the room. A large pocket watch sitting on the nightstand among the medicine bottles filled the room with a metallic sound. The patient opened his sunken eyes.
"I'm a little better today," he said.
"Of course... It can't go on like this forever..."
Then, with a tone that was almost hurt, he asked: "Yes, but how much longer will it go on?"
I understood the true meaning of his question and was horrified. The weariness in his voice showed what he meant.
"What's wrong, Raif Bey?" I said.
He fixed his eyes on mine and insisted: "Yes, but what's the use? Isn't it enough already?"
Just then, Mihriye Hanım came in. Leaning toward me, she said: "He's better today! Please God, he'll pull through this one too."
Then she turned to her husband: "On Sunday we'll wash laundry... If you could have that towel of yours brought over by this gentleman."
Raif Efendi nodded in agreement. The woman looked for something in the cupboard, took it, and went out again. The slight improvement in the patient's condition had swept away all her worry and excitement. Now her head was full of household troubles, cooking and laundry, as before. Like all simple people, she passed quickly from grief to joy, from excitement to calm, and like all women, she forgot everything quickly. There was a sad, deep smile in Raif Efendi's eyes. He pointed with his head toward his jacket hanging at the foot of the bed.
"There should be a key in my right pocket. Take it and open the top drawer of my desk. Bring me the towel my wife mentioned... Sorry for the trouble," he said.
"I'll bring it tomorrow evening."
He stared at the ceiling and was silent for a long time. Suddenly he turned his head to me: "Bring everything that's in that drawer," he said. "Whatever's there... I think my wife senses that I won't be going back to the office again... Our journey is elsewhere now..."
His head sank back into the pillow.
The next evening, before leaving the office, I went to Raif Efendi's desk. There were three drawers stacked on the right side. First I opened the lower ones; one was completely empty, the other had some papers and translation drafts. As I inserted the key into the top drawer, I shivered: I now realized I was sitting in the chair where Raif Efendi had sat for years, repeating a motion he made several times a day. I pulled the drawer open hastily. It seemed empty. Only in a corner were a rather dirty towel, a piece of soap wrapped in newspaper, a lunch box, a fork, and a spiral knife—a Singer-brand pocketknife. I quickly wrapped them in paper. I pushed the drawer back in and stood up, but then I thought there might be something left at the back, so I pulled it out again and felt inside with my hand. Indeed, at the very back, there was something like a notebook. I took that too, put it with the other items, and hurried out. As long as I stayed in that room, the thought wouldn't leave my mind that Raif Efendi might never sit in that chair again, never open that drawer again.
At the house, I was met with another great commotion. Necla opened the door, and when she saw me, she shook her head: "Don't ask, don't ask!" I had become almost like a member of the family, and the household no longer considered me a stranger. The young girl said: "Father has gotten worse again! He had two episodes today. We were very scared. My brother-in-law brought a doctor; he's with him now... Giving him an injection..." And she immediately disappeared into the patient's room.