I didn't go in. I sat on one of the chairs in the hallway and placed the paper-wrapped package in front of me. Even though Mihriye Hanım came out several times, I was ashamed to hand her this pitiful object. While someone inside was fighting for his life, offering a dirty towel and an old fork to one of his relatives seemed completely improper. I stood up and paced around the large table in the middle. When I saw myself in the buffet mirror, I was rather startled. I had turned deathly pale. My heart began to race. No matter who it was, a person struggling on the great bridge between life and death was a terrible thing. Then I thought: with his closest ones—his wife, daughters, relatives—right there, I had no right to show more concern and emotion than they did.
At that moment, my eye caught the slightly open door of the guest room. I stepped closer and peered in. I saw Raif Efendi's brothers-in-law, Cihat and Vedad. They were sitting side by side on a sofa, smoking. It was obvious they were writhing with terrible boredom and annoyed with themselves for not being able to leave the house. Nurten was sitting in an armchair, her head resting on her arm; she was either crying or sleeping.
A little further on, Raif Efendi's sister-in-law Ferhunde had settled her two children on her lap and was saying something to keep them from making noise, but everything about her showed how inexperienced she was at soothing children.
The patient's door opened and the doctor came out, followed by Nurettin Bey. Despite all his indifference, he seemed annoyed.
"Don't leave his side," he was saying, "and if he has a crisis, give him those injections."
Nurettin Bey frowned and asked, "Is it dangerous?"
The doctor gave the answer every colleague gives in such situations: "Hard to say!" And to avoid further questions, especially being pestered by the patient's wife, he quickly put on his coat and hat, took the three silver liras that Nurettin Bey had already prepared in his palm with a grimace, and left the house.
I crept slowly to the patient's door. I looked inside. Mihriye Hanım and Neclâ were staring with great curiosity at the man lying before them with his eyes closed. When the young girl saw me, she beckoned with a nod. Now she and her mother wanted to see what effect the patient's condition would have on me. Noticing this, I tried with all my might to control myself. I shook my head slightly, as if relieved by what I saw. Then, turning to the women who were almost huddling together on my left, I said with a forced smile, "Nothing to worry about, I'm sure... He'll pull through, God willing."
The patient opened his eyes a crack and looked at me for a while as if he didn't recognize me. Then, with great effort, he turned his head toward his wife and daughter, muttered a few incomprehensible words, made some grimaces, and gestured.
Neclâ leaned in. "Did you want something, Daddy?"
"Come on, you two go out for a bit." His voice was very faint and broken.
Mihriye Hanım signaled to us. But seeing this, the patient reached his hand out from under the blanket and grabbed my wrist. "You stay!" he said. The women were a bit surprised. Neclâ murmured, "Daddy, don't uncover your arm!..." Raif Efendi shook his head quickly, as if to say "I know, I know!" and gestured again for them to leave. Both women looked at my face with questioning eyes and left the room.
Then Raif Efendi pointed to the package in my hand, which I had completely forgotten. "Did you bring everything?"
At first I looked at his face, not understanding. Was all this ceremony just to ask that? The patient was still looking at my face, and his eyes were shining as if with great curiosity.
Only at that moment did I remember that notorious black-covered notebook. I had never once opened it or wondered what was inside. It had never even occurred to me that Raif Efendi would have a notebook of that kind.
I quickly opened the package and put the towel and other things on a chair behind the door. Then I took the notebook and showed it to Raif Efendi. "Is this what you wanted?"
He nodded "Yes."
I slowly flipped through the pages. I felt an irresistible curiosity growing inside me. On the single-ruled pages were large, irregular letters in lines that seemed hastily written. I glanced at the first page; there was no heading. On the right side was the date June 20, 1933, and right below it these lines: "Yesterday a strange thing happened to me, and it made me relive a series of events from ten years ago..." I couldn't read the rest. Raif Efendi had uncovered his arm again and was holding my hand.
"Don't read!" he said, and gesturing with his head toward the opposite side of the room, he murmured, "Throw it over there!"
I looked where he indicated. I saw the iron stove, its red eyes glowing behind the mica windows.
"Into the stove?"
"Yes."
At that moment, my curiosity increased even more. It was impossible for me to destroy Raif Efendi's notebook with my own hands.
"Absolutely not, Raif Bey!" I said. "Isn't it a shame? Is it right to burn a notebook that has been your companion for so long, for no reason?"
"There's no need!" he said, and again gestured toward the stove with his head. "No need anymore!"
I realized it was impossible to talk him out of this idea. He had probably poured the soul he had hidden from everyone into this notebook, and now he wanted it to go with him.
A boundless compassion and an endless interest in the fate of this man—who wanted to leave nothing of himself to others and who carried his solitude with him even as he walked toward death—awakened inside me.
"I understand you, Raif Bey!" I said. "Yes, I understand perfectly. You are right to be possessive of everything about yourself from people. Your wanting to burn this notebook is also right... But could you postpone it for a while, just for one day?"
His eyes asked "Why?" as he looked at my face.
To continue what I had started and to try one last resort, I moved closer to him and tried to gather all the interest and affection I felt for him into my eyes.
"Would you not leave this notebook with me for one night, just tonight? We've been friends for so long, and you've never told me anything about yourself... Don't you think it's natural for me to be curious about you? Do you really feel you have to hide from me too? You are the most valuable person in the world to me... And despite that, do you want to leave me saying that in your eyes I'm as worthless as anyone else?"
My eyes had filled with tears. My chest trembling, I continued. It was as if at that moment I was pouring out all the reproaches that had accumulated in my soul against this man who had avoided letting me get close to him for months.
"Perhaps you are right to withdraw your trust from people. But aren't there exceptions? Can't there be? Don't forget that you are one of those people yourself... In the end, what you're doing might just be meaningless selfishness."
Remembering that these were not things to say to a seriously ill man, I fell silent. He was silent too. Finally, with a last effort, I said: "Raif Bey, you must understand me too! I am only at the beginning of the road that you are at the end of. I want to learn about people, especially to know what people have done to you..."
The patient shook his head violently, cutting me off. He was muttering something; I leaned in, feeling his breath on my face. "No, no!" he was saying. "People haven't done anything to me... Nothing at all... It was always me... Always me..."
Suddenly he fell silent and his chin dropped to his chest. He was breathing faster. This scene had clearly tired him out. I too began to feel great mental fatigue. I was thinking of throwing the notebook into the stove and running out. The patient opened his eyes again.
"No one is to blame... Not even me!..." He couldn't continue. He was coughing. Finally, pointing at the notebook with his eyes, he said: "Read it, you'll see!"
As if I had been waiting for this, I immediately put the black-covered notebook into my pocket.
"I'll bring it tomorrow morning and burn it right in front of you!" I said.
The patient, with an attitude completely different from his earlier fussiness, shrugged his shoulders as if to say, "Do whatever you want."
I realized that he had already severed his connection with this notebook, which surely contained the most important parts of his life. I kissed his hand to say goodbye. When I tried to straighten up, he didn't let me go; he pulled me toward him and kissed me first on the forehead, then on the cheeks. When I raised my head, I saw tears streaming from his eyes toward his temples. Raif Efendi made no attempt to hide or wipe them away; he just looked at me without blinking. I couldn't hold back either and started to cry—one of those silent, sobbingless cries that only occur in extraordinary, genuine sorrow. I knew it would be hard to part from him. But I hadn't imagined it would be this terrible, this painful.
Raif Efendi moved his lips again. In a barely audible voice he said, "We never got to talk properly, my child... What a pity!" And he closed his eyes.
We had already said goodbye to each other... To avoid showing my face to those waiting at the door, I almost ran through the hallway and dashed out into the street. A cold wind dried my cheeks on the way. I kept muttering, "What a pity... What a pity!..."
When I got to the hotel, I found my friend asleep. I got into bed, turned on the small lamp by the bedside, and immediately began reading Raif Efendi's black-covered school notebook:
June 20, 1933
Yesterday a strange thing happened to me, and it made me relive a series of events from ten years ago. I know that these memories, which I thought I had forgotten and left behind, will never leave me now... What treacherous coincidence brought them across my path yesterday, rousing me from the deep sleep I had been sunk into for years, from the numb apathy I had gradually grown accustomed to? If I said I'll go mad or die, I'd be lying. People get used to and endure things they think they can't bear very quickly. I too will go on living... But how will I live!... What an unbearable torture my life will be from now on!... But I will endure... Just as I have until now...
Only one thing I can no longer bear: I cannot keep everything locked up in my head alone. I want to speak, to tell something, many things... To whom?... Is there really another person in this whole wide world who walks as utterly alone as I do? To whom can I tell anything? I don't remember having said anything to anyone in ten years. I have fled from everyone in vain, pushed all people away from me in vain; but could I act differently from now on? There is no possibility of change anymore... No need either. So it was meant to be. If only I could speak... If only I could pour out what's inside me to just one person... Even if I truly wanted to, it's impossible to find such a person now... I don't have the strength to look anymore... Even if I did, I wouldn't look... Anyway, why did I take this notebook? If I had even a tiny hope, would I have taken up this writing business, which I despise more than anything in the world? A person must inevitably unburden himself... If yesterday's event hadn't happened... Ah, if only I hadn't learned everything yesterday... Now my old, perhaps peaceful life would have continued...
Yesterday while walking down the street, I ran into two people. I was seeing one for the first time, and the other was perhaps one of the people in the world most distant from me. Would it ever have occurred to me that they could have such a tremendous impact on my life?
But since I have decided to write, I must tell everything calmly and from the beginning... In that case, I need to go back a few years, even ten, twelve years... Maybe even fifteen... But I will write without getting bored... Perhaps by burying the truly terrible parts among meaningless details, I can escape their effect. Perhaps what I write won't be as painful as what I've lived, and I'll feel some relief. Perhaps I'll see that many things are more insignificant and simpler than I thought, and I'll be ashamed of my own excitement... Perhaps...
My father was from Havran. I was born and grew up there. I received my primary education there, and then for a while I commuted to the Edremit junior high school, about an hour away. In the last years of the Great War, I was conscripted at age nineteen; but while I was still in training camp, the armistice was declared. I returned to the town. I went back to junior high school but didn't finish. Actually, I had little desire for schooling. The year that had passed and the chaotic situation prevailing in the region at that time had cooled my interest in education.
After the armistice, all ties had loosened; there was neither a proper government nor any definite idea or objective. Some regions were occupied by foreign forces, and a host of suddenly emerging bands, under various names, were active—sometimes forming fronts against the enemy, sometimes looting villages. A rebel chief whose name was on everyone's lips as a hero one day would be announced a week later as having been suppressed, his corpse hanging in the square in front of the Konak in Edremit. In such an era, it was hardly appealing to lock oneself within four walls and read Ottoman history or moral essays. However, my father, who was among the fairly well-off in the district, had somehow gotten it into his head to educate me. Seeing many of my peers donning crossed bandoliers and shouldering Mausers to join the bands, and that some were killed by the enemy and some by bandits, he began to worry about my fate. Indeed, I too didn't want to remain idle and was secretly preparing. But just then, the occupation forces came to the town, and all my heroic aspirations were doomed to be smothered inside me.
I wandered around like a vagabond for a few months. Most of my friends had disappeared. My father decided to send me to Istanbul. He didn't know where I should go either; he just said, "Find a school, study!" Even though I had always been a somewhat clumsy and shy child, this statement from my father was enough to show how little he knew his son. Still, I felt secret desires in certain directions. There was one subject at school where I had earned my teachers' approval: I drew fairly well. The idea of entering the School of Fine Arts in Istanbul occasionally crossed my mind and made me build sweet daydreams. I had been a quiet child since childhood, living more in a world of imagination than in reality. There was a timidness in my nature that went as far as being nonsensical, which often led people to misunderstand me and take me for a fool, upsetting me. Nothing frightened me as much as having to correct someone's opinion of me. Even when my classmates' misdeeds were always blamed on me, I never dared to defend myself with even a single word; when I got home, I would hide in a corner and cry. I remember my mother and especially my father often saying to me, "Hey, you were supposed to be a girl but you were born wrong!" My greatest pleasure was to sit alone in the garden or by the stream and lose myself in daydreams. These daydreams were so bold and expansive that they contrasted greatly with my actual behavior: I would imagine myself like the heroes in the countless translated novels I read, rampaging around with my retinue who obeyed every word without hesitation, kidnapping a girl named Fahriye—who lived a block away and stirred sweet, indistinct desires in me—by wearing a mask and twin pistols at my waist, and taking her to my magnificent cave in the mountains. I would imagine how she would first be scared and struggle, then how amazed she would be when she saw the trembling people before me and the unparalleled riches in the cave, and finally how she would scream with uncontrollable joy and throw herself around my neck when I uncovered my face. Sometimes, like great explorers, I would travel through Africa and have unprecedented adventures among cannibals; sometimes I would become a famous painter and tour Europe. All the books I read—Michel Zevaco, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas, Ahmet Mithat Efendi, Vecihi Bey—had etched themselves indelibly into my mind.
My father would get angry at me for reading so much, sometimes taking my novels and throwing them away, sometimes not allowing light in my room at night. But when he saw that I found a way around everything—reading The Mysteries of Paris or Les Misérables in a trance by the light of a small makeshift lamp with a wick—he gave up his pressure. I read everything that came into my hands, and I fell under the influence of everything I read, whether it was the adventures of Monsieur Lecoq or the history of Murat Bey.
In an old Roman history book, I read about a delegate named Mucius Scaevola who, while conducting peace negotiations with the enemy, in response to the threat that he would be killed if he didn't accept the offered terms, stuck his arm into the fire beside him and burned it up to the elbow, calmly continuing the negotiations to show that he could not be intimidated by such threats. I was seized by the desire to put my own hand into a fire in the same way and test the same fortitude in myself, and I burned my fingers quite badly. The image of that man, enduring the greatest pain while maintaining a smile on his face, has never left me. At one time, I also tried to write, even to scribble small poems, but I quickly gave it up: the fear of letting whatever was inside me out in any form whatsoever, this senseless and unnecessary timidity, prevented me from writing. I only continued drawing. That activity didn't seem to me like giving something from inside; it seemed like merely taking the outside and reflecting it onto paper, a kind of mediation. Indeed, when I realized that wasn't the case, I gave that up too... Always because of that fear...
In Istanbul, at the School of Fine Arts, I learned on my own, without anyone's help, that painting too is a form of expression, an inner expression, and I stopped attending school. Besides, the teachers didn't find much in me. Out of the things I scribbled at home or in the studio, I could only show the most meaningless ones; I carefully hid and was ashamed to reveal any drawings that expressed anything about me, that contained anything of me. If by chance one of them fell into someone else's hands, I would become as flustered as a woman caught naked and exposed, turn bright red, and run away.
I wandered around Istanbul for a long time, not knowing what to do. It was the armistice years; the city had become more shameless and chaotic than I could bear. I asked my father for money to return to Havran. About ten days later, I received a long letter. My father was resorting to one last measure to make a useful man out of me.
He had heard somewhere that due to the devaluation of currency in Germany, foreigners could live very cheaply, even for less than in Istanbul, and he told me to go there and learn "soap-making, especially fine soap-making," informing me that he was sending some money for travel and other expenses. I was extraordinarily happy. Not because I had any enthusiasm for these crafts, but because the opportunity to see Europe—which had come to life before my eyes in a thousand forms since childhood and had been the subject of many of my dreams—had presented itself so unexpectedly. In his letter, my father said: "If you learn this trade in a year or two and come back, we'll expand and improve the soap factory here, and I'll put you in charge; then, entering business life, you'll be happy and prosperous thanks to your golden bracelet." But I wasn't even thinking about that side of things...
I expected that I would learn a foreign language, read books in that language, and, most importantly, find in this "Europe" the people I had so far only encountered in novels. After all, wasn't my aloofness from my surroundings, my wildness, also due to my not finding in my environment the people I had met and come to embrace in books?
I prepared within a week and set off by train via Bulgaria to Berlin. I didn't know any language. Thanks to the five or ten words I had memorized from a phrasebook during the four-day journey, I managed to find the boarding house whose address I had written in my notebook while still in Istanbul.