Silent House (10 page)

feel is sorrow, but listen to what they’re saying, my God, here’s the house of the cripple, your bastard, but I’m not looking, do they know that, I

“Recep, how is Ismail?”

know and listen

“Fine. Selling lottery tickets.”

carefully, no, you don’t hear, Fatma, I

“How’s his foot?”

just have to save myself and my husband and my son from sin, does

“Same as always, Faruk Bey. He limps.”

anyone know I had anything to do with this, did he

“How’s Hasan?”

go and tell them, that dwarf, knowing they’re so interested in equality, like their father and grandfather …

“His marks are terrible. He failed English and mathematics. And he has no job.”

Let’s see, they’ll say, well, Grandmother, then that makes them our uncles, we had no idea, for shame, Fatma, don’t think about it, is that why you’ve come here today—but we still aren’t there, I start to put my handkerchief to my eyes, imagine, on this sad day for me they’re sitting in the car chatting about this and that, as though we were out for a ride, a long time ago, about the only time we ever did, we had gotten a one-horse cart, and Selâhattin and I went up the hill
tiki-taka, tiki-taka:
What a good idea, Fatma, I never seem to find time for things like this because I’m always working on the encyclopedia, if only we had brought a bottle of wine along and some
hard-boiled eggs, we could go and sit somewhere in the country, but just to get some fresh air, some nature, not to stuff ourselves for no reason, the way the Turks do, doesn’t the sea look beautiful from here, in Europe they call this a picnic, they do everything in moderation, Fatma, God willing we’ll be like that one day, our sons won’t see it but maybe our grandchildren, both boys and girls, God willing,

“We’re here, Grandmother, we’re here, look!”

in those days when science is ascendant our grandchildren will live happily in our nation that will be no different from the European nations, my grandchildren, they’ll come to my grave, yours, too … and when the motor stops my heart jumps, it’s so quiet here, the crickets in the heat, death at the age of ninety, they get out and open the door.

“Give me your hand, Grandmother.”

This plastic thing is harder to get out of than a horse-drawn carriage. God help us, if I fall I’ll die on the spot and they’ll bury me at once, maybe they’d like that,

“Easy does it, take my arm, lean on me, Grandmother!”

or maybe they’ll be sad, forgive me, why am I even thinking like that now? I get out, we walk among the gravestones with one of them on each arm, moving slowly, God, forgive me, these gravestones just give me the creeps,

“Are you okay, Grandmother?”

slowly in the heat, with nobody, this burnt smell of the dried weeds, me, too, one day, I’d be

“Where was it?”

among them, the graves—But don’t think of that now, Fatma,

“It’s this way, Faruk Bey!”

look, he’s still talking, the dwarf, to prove he knows where they are buried better than his own grandchildren, because I’m his son, too, is that what you mean, but when the others see their father’s and real mother’s

“Here it is!”

grave …

“We’re here Grandmother!”

My heart, I’m going to cry now, yes, you’re here, you poor things, let go of my arms, leave me alone with them, I wipe my eyes and when I see you all here, my Lord, why didn’t you take me, too, as though, for shame, I know anyway, I never once gave in to the devil, but I didn’t come here to accuse you, I’m going to cry now … I wiped my nose and when I held my breath for a second I heard the crickets and put my handkerchief in my pocket. I lifted up my hands and prayed and prayed to God that you might rest in peace, and when my prayer was done, I lifted my head and saw that at least they had lifted up their hands in prayer, too, good, Nilgün had covered her head nicely, but I hated the way that dwarf liked to show off—God, please forgive him, but I can’t stand to see someone so proud of being a bastard, as though he loves you more than any of the rest of us, Selâhattin, who do you think you are fooling, I wish I had brought my cane, where did I leave it, did they close the doors, but I didn’t come here to think about this, I came to think about you, here under this lonely gravestone, oh, did you ever think that one day I would come here and read on a stone placed on top of you:

DOCTOR SELÂHATTIN DARVINOĞLU
1881–1942
MAY HIS SOUL REST IN PEACE

I just read it, oh, Selâhattin, and you stopped believing anyway, and that’s why your soul is suffering the torments of hell, dear God, I don’t want to think about it, but is it my fault, how many times did I tell him to say he was sorry, and didn’t you make fun of me: Foolish woman, stupid woman, they brainwashed you just like everybody else, there is no God, no hereafter, the other world is a terrible lie they made up to keep us in line in this world, there’s no proof of God except that scholastic nonsense, there are only phenomena, and we can know them and the relationships among them, and so my duty is to explain to the whole East that there is no God, are you listening,
Fatma, for shame, don’t think of it, I want to think of you as in those early days, when you still hadn’t given in to the devil, not just in death and fond memories, but you really were a child, though, as my father said, you had a brilliant future, didn’t she just sit there quietly in his office, she did, otherwise God knows what he might have done to those poor sick people, even totally uncovered European ladies with painted faces would come and shut themselves up in there, and their husbands came, too, I would be uncomfortable in the next room, don’t think of that, Fatma, yes, yes, maybe everything happened because of them, just when we had settled in, and we had one or two regular customers, patients, that is, because they were hard to come by, and about that I think you were right, Selâhattin, a bunch of sleepyheads from some remote village that nobody cared about, who spent their time dozing with the fishermen in the corners of a coffeehouse at some abandoned dock on the seashore, who never got sick in this clean air, who wouldn’t know it if they had, and who wouldn’t come if they did know it, who would come anyway, a few families, a few stupid villagers, but in spite of this you became known and people came all the way from Izmit, the most from Gebze, some came by boat from Tuzla, and just as he started to make money, he began to abuse his patients, God, I was listening from the next room: What did you put on this cut, First we put tobacco, doctor, then we bound it in dried dung, Those are just old folk remedies, there’s something called science now, well, what’s the matter with this child, He’s had a fever for five days, doctor, Why didn’t you bring him earlier, Didn’t you see the windstorm on the sea, doctor, Well, you almost killed the kid, What can we do if it’s God’s will, What God, there is no God, God is dead—My God, ask forgiveness, Selâhattin, What forgiveness, foolish woman, don’t you talk nonsense, too, like those stupid villagers, I’m ashamed of you, I’m going to make all these people grow up but I can’t even put two thoughts in my own wife’s head, you’re such an idiot, at least realize how stupid you are and believe in me; But you’re going to lose all your patients, Selâhattin, when I say that, I listen from the next
room, he’s so stubborn he loses control, listen to the poor woman who’s come all this way with her husband to get some medicine: She should uncover herself, he says, irritating me, you’re her husband, you stupid villager, you tell her, she won’t uncover herself, fine, I’m not examining her, get out, I’m not going to give in to your primitive idiocies, Please, doctor, give us some medicine, No, if your wife doesn’t uncover herself there’s no medicine or anything else, no, get out, they misled you all with this lie of God, for shame … If only you could keep it to yourself, Selâhattin, or at least not talk to them like that, no I’m not afraid of anyone, but look, who knows what they’re saying behind my back, they say this doctor is an atheist, don’t go to him, he’s the devil himself, didn’t you see the skull on his desk, his office is filled with books, he has strange charms for casting spells, lenses that can turn a flea into a camel, pipes with smoke coming out the end, there are dead turtles pinned to boards there, don’t go, who in their right mind would submit to this godless man if they didn’t have to, this guy could, God forbid, make a healthy person sick, anybody who crosses his threshold runs into an evil spirit, not long ago he told a patient who had come all the way from Yarimca, You look like a sensible person, I like you, take these papers and read them in your village coffeehouse, I’ve written about what you have to do to fight typhus and tuberculosis, he said, I also wrote that there’s no God, go and maybe at least your village will wake up, he said, anyway if I could send someone sensible like you to every village to gather the villagers together every evening in the coffeehouse and read an article from my encyclopedia for an hour, this country would be liberated, but first, oh, I have to finish the encyclopedia and it keeps dragging on, damn it, and there’s no money, Fatma, your diamonds, your rings, your jewelry box, did they close the gate tight, they didn’t, of course, because patients no longer came aside from a few hopeless cases no longer afraid of anything, and some other poor souls who regretted it as soon as they entered the garden but who were afraid to turn back and anger the devil, but you paid no attention, Selâhattin, maybe because of my diamonds, The patients don’t come anymore,
and it’s good that they don’t, because when I see these fools I get irritated and depressed, it’s so hard to believe that these animals will ever make something of themselves, the other day while we were talking I asked one of them what is the sum of the interior angles of a triangle and, of course, I knew, the poor villager who had never heard of a triangle in his life wouldn’t know the answer, but I got a pencil and paper and explained it to him, let me see how good they are at mathematics, I said, but it’s not the fault of these poor things, Fatma, the government never reached them to give them a good education, my God, I spent forever explaining, trying to make him understand, but the poor fool just sat there looking blankly at me, scared as well, oh, you foolish woman, just the way you’re looking at me now, as though you’d just seen the devil, poor creature, I’m your husband, you know, and, yes, you are a devil, Selâhattin, look now, you’re in hell, with the demons in the fires of hell, the burning cauldrons, or is death the way you said it was, I’ve discovered death, Fatma, he said, listen to me, this is more important than anything else, it’s so terrible now, death—I couldn’t bear it, thinking about him there in the grave, I was afraid and

“Are you all right, Grandmother?”

I got dizzy all of a sudden, I thought I would fall down, but don’t worry, Selâhattin, even if you don’t want me to

“Why don’t you sit down for a minute over there and relax, Grandmother!”

I’ll pray for your soul, be quiet, they were quiet, and I heard a car going by on the road, then the crickets and it was over, amen, and I took out my handkerchief and dabbed my eyes and then I went over, you’re the one who’s always really in my mind, son, but first let me get your father out of that place, I said, my poor, dumb, unlucky boy,

DISTRICT ADMINISTRATOR DOĞAN DARVINOĞLU
1915–1967
MAY HE REST IN PEACE

okay, I’m praying, my hopeless, unfortunate, bitter, unhappy, orphan boy, I’m praying for you, amen, you’re here, too, oh my God, for a moment I felt as if you hadn’t died, and where was my handkerchief, by the time I reached it, I’d begun to sob,

“Grandmother, Grandmother, don’t cry!”

trembling, if they hadn’t come over to me I think I would have thrown myself down on the earth, dear God, how unlucky I was, that I should be coming here to my own son’s grave, what have I done for you to punish me like this, forgive me, but I did what I could, would I ever have wanted it to be like this, son, my Doğan, didn’t I tell you so many, so many times that the best thing you can do in life is not to turn out like your father, didn’t I send you away to boarding schools so you wouldn’t see him and take him as your model, my boy, and even when we didn’t have money anymore, in those days, I never let on to you that the only things keeping us going were the diamonds, jewels, and rings in the box that your dear grandfather and grandmother gave me as a dowry, and I sent you to the finest schools, you’d come late on Saturday afternoons, your drunken father wouldn’t go to the station to pick you up, not only failing to earn a penny himself but trying his best to squeeze money out of me so he could print those crazy writings that were just all curses from beginning to end, but, at least on cold winter nights, I could say to myself that my son is studying in a French school, and then one day I looked and, ah, instead of becoming an engineer or a businessman like the others, you signed up there, Are you going to be a politician, I know, if you want you could even become prime minister, but isn’t it a shame that someone like you … Mother, this country can only be straightened out through politics, Is it up to you, my brainless son, to straighten it out, but by the time I said that, in those days when he came for his vacation exhausted and worried, dear God, I’m so unlucky he’s learned to pace anxiously back and forth, exactly like his father, and look, you’re already smoking at your age, what’s all this melancholy, son, and when you said for the sake of the country, didn’t I fill your
pockets with money thinking maybe you’d straighten out, go to Istanbul and enjoy yourself, take out some girls, and don’t think about all this, just relax, and without letting your father know, didn’t I give you my pink pearls and tell you to take them to Istanbul and sell them and enjoy yourself, and then with that insignificant colorless little girl, how would I know that you would just marry her right off and bring her home, didn’t I tell you to experience life, at least stick to the job, maybe they’d make you a minister, don’t settle for being a district administrator, look, it’s almost your turn to be a governor, son, didn’t I tell you, No, Mother, I can’t take it anymore, they’re all disgusting, horrible, Oh, my poor boy, why don’t you just go back and forth to work like everybody else, but I know I said one day, I was angry, It’s because you’re lazy and cowardly, just like your father, you don’t have the courage to live and be among other people, it’s easier to vilify them and hate them, No, Mother, you don’t know, they’re all disgusting, I can’t even take being a district administrator anymore, they do all these things to the miserable villagers, to the poor wretches, they oppress them, and my wife is dead, let their aunts take care of the kids, I’m going to resign and come here to live, please don’t bother me, I’ve been thinking about this for years, me in this quiet corner,