Silent House (46 page)

Fatma Finds Consolation in Holding a Book

I
was lying in my bed waiting for them. I was waiting with my head resting on the pillow, thinking that when they came to kiss my hand before going back to Istanbul, we would talk, I would say things, and they would listen to me, when all that noise coming from downstairs suddenly stopped. I couldn’t hear footsteps going from one room to the other, I couldn’t hear the rattling when they shut the doors and opened the windows, I could hear nothing of those conversations echoing on the stairs and the ceiling, and I was afraid.

I got up from the bed, took my cane, and tapped on the floor a few times, but the sneaky dwarf pretended not to hear me. After tapping the cane a few more times, I thought maybe I could shame him in front of the others, because he couldn’t well pretend not to hear me if they did, so I slowly got out of my room, and from the top of the stairs I started again:

“Recep, Recep, quick, come upstairs.”

But there was not a sound downstairs.

What a strange, frightening thing this silence is. I quickly went
back to my room, my legs went wobbly as I pushed open the shutters and looked down to the garden: somebody was running frantically to the car, it was Metin, and when he got in and took off, dear God, I was full of anxious confusion. I stayed there thinking the worst, but not for long, because very soon, he rushed back and to my surprise a woman got out of the car with him and they went inside together. When I saw the bag in her hand and her long scarf, I recognized the woman: it was the lady pharmacist, who, when they think I’m sick, comes with that huge bag, more suitable for a man to carry, and chats sweetly to coax me into letting her stick me with her poison needles: Fatma Hanim, you have a fever, it’s a needless strain on your heart, let me give you a shot of penicillin, just relax, why are you afraid, why, you’re a doctor’s wife yourself, and everyone here only wants the best for you. Those were the words that would most arouse my suspicion, and in the end, after I’d cried a little, they would give up and let me be with my temperature, and then I would think: They want to poison your body because they couldn’t poison your mind, Fatma, be careful.

I was careful, waiting in fear. But nothing happened. The footsteps I was expecting never came up the stairs; nothing broke the silence downstairs. After waiting a little longer, I heard some noises coming from the kitchen door, and I ran to the window again. The pharmacy woman with her bag was going, this time by herself: this pretty lady, rather young and lively, was walking in an odd way in the garden, and as I was watching her, just a few steps before the garden gate she stopped to pull something from her bag and, setting the bag down, unfolded a big handkerchief, and she started to cry, wiping her nose with it. I felt such pity for the pretty woman, tell me, what did they say to you, tell me, but she collected herself, and after wiping her eyes one last time, she took up her bag again and left. As she was going out the garden gate she turned for a second to look at the house, but she didn’t see me.

Out of curiosity, I just stayed on there at the window. When I couldn’t stand it anymore I got furious at them, go now, begone from
my thoughts, and leave me alone! But they still didn’t come, and there was not a peep from downstairs. I went over to my bed. Don’t worry, Fatma, soon enough that unpleasant noise will start up again, in just a little while, that wild hilarity, so inconsiderate. I got into my bed and thought: They’ll be up in a little while, after they galumph up the stairs, Faruk, Nilgün, and Metin will come into my room, and I’ll feel that familiar mixture of irritation and jealousy and peace of mind as they bend down to kiss my hand and I am reminded: what strange hair they have—not from our side! We’re going, Grandmother, we’re going, they’ll say, but we’ll come again soon. Grandmother, you’re looking really well, you’ll be fine, just take good care of yourself, don’t make us worry, okay, we’re going. Then there’ll be silence for a moment and I’ll watch as they stare at me: attentively, lovingly, pityingly, and with a strange kind of gladness. That’s when I’ll know they’re thinking about my death, and how death might even suit me, and because I have no use for their pity, I may even try to make some kind of joke then, as long as they don’t annoy me by telling me to be more tolerant. Perhaps I’ll say, Would anyone like a taste of this cane to remember me by, or Mind your manners, children, or I’ll take you by the ears and nail you to the wall, but it was really no use, these wisecracks wouldn’t so much as make them smile, and after a moment of not reacting, they’d take their cue to mouth the same lifeless empty words of farewell that they’ve memorized:

“Well, we’re going, Grandmother, whom do you want to say hello to in Istanbul?”

No matter how many times I hear it, somehow this question always stirs my feelings, as if I wasn’t expecting it. I’ll remember Istanbul, which I left seventy years ago, it’s a pity actually because I know they’re up to the necks in sin there, just wallowing in it, but still, sometimes I’m just curious. On cold winter nights, especially when the dwarf hasn’t lit the stove properly, and I’m chilled to the bone, even I would like, just for a while, to be there with them, in a cheerful room, well lit and warm, I dream of that, but, no, I’ll have none of their sinfulness! In the end, if I just can’t banish that warm
and cheerful room from my mind, I’ll get out of my bed, open my closet, and take out the box where I keep them all, together with the broken sewing-machine needles and bobbins and the old electric bills, right beside my jewelry box, I’ll take them out and look at them: Oh, what a pity, you’ve all died, they announced it to the whole world afterward, and I clipped them out of the newspapers and kept them, look: Death notice, Semiha Esen, daughter of the late Halil Cemil Bey, former general director of the administration of the sugar factories; Death notice, member of our Administrative Council (they should have been glad of that least), Murruvet Hanimefendi; and the stupidest one of all: Death notice, Nihal Abla, only child of Adnan Bey, one of the old moneyed people, of course I remember, look, you married a tobacco merchant, had three children and, God bless them, eleven grandchildren, but you really loved Behlul, while he was in love with that immoral Bihter, don’t even think of it, Fatma, look there’s this last one, it must be ten years now: Death notice, Nigân Isikci Hanimefendi, daughter of the late Sükrü Pasha, minister of foundations and ambassador to France, sister of the late Türkân and Sükran, ooh, Nigân, when I read that you have gone back to God, standing here alone in the middle of the room, I realize that I have nobody left in Istanbul and I think, You all endured that hell Selâhattin described in his encyclopedia and that he wished more than anything to descend upon the earth, you all sank into the ugly sins of Istanbul, to die and be buried among concrete apartment houses, factory smokestacks, plastic smells, and sewer pipes—just awful! When I think of this I feel the strange peace of a little pang of fear, and I go back to bed seeking the warmth of the quilt on the cold winter night, and tired by thoughts, I want to sleep, to forget. I have no one to say hello to in Istanbul.

Let them come and ask anyway, this time I’ll give them the answer straight off without being surprised and stirred, but there’s still not a sound downstairs. I got out of my bed, looked at the clock on the table: ten in the morning! Where were they? I went and stuck my head out the window; the car was sitting there where Metin had
left it, and it was then I realized: I couldn’t even hear the noise of the cricket that hadn’t budged from where it had been sitting outside the kitchen door for weeks: I’m afraid of silence! Then I thought about the pharmacist lady who had come a little while ago—what could she have wanted?—and then again about what the dwarf could be telling them. I went straight out of room to the top of the stairs and knocked with my cane on the floor:

“Recep, Recep, come up here right away!”

But this time I knew that he wasn’t going to come, that I was tapping with my cane on the floor for nothing and straining my old voice to no end, but I called out anyway, and as I did I had a strange feeling and I shivered: as though they had all gone without telling me and they were never going to come back, they’d left, and I was there in the house all alone! It was a frightening thought, and to forget it I called out downstairs again, but only to have that strange feeling all the more. As though there was no one left in the world, not a bird, not a shameless dog, not so much as an insect to remind us with its buzzing about the heat and the time of day: time had stopped, and only I remained, with my panicked voice calling out again downstairs for nothing, and my cane knocking again and again on the floor, and still it seemed there was no one to hear me: only empty armchairs, tables slowly accumulating dust, closed doors, hopeless furniture that creaked all on its own, death as you described it, Selâhattin! My God, I was scared, thinking that my thoughts would freeze like the furniture, that I would become as colorless and odorless as a piece of ice, stuck here for eternity never to feel anything. Then I suddenly thought of going downstairs to reunite with time and motion, and so I forced myself, making it to the fourth step down, before I got dizzy. I stopped in fear: There are still fifteen steps, you can’t make it, Fatma, you’ll fall! Slowly, anxiously, I went back up the steps, turning my back to that terrifying silence, hoping to lift my spirits and to forget: They’ll come along now to kiss your hand, Fatma, don’t worry.

When I got to my door I was no longer afraid, but I wasn’t in good spirits either: Selâhattin’s picture on the wall was giving me a
frightening look, but I couldn’t feel anything, as though now I had lost the senses of smell, of taste, and of touch. I took seven more little steps, got to my bed, sat on the edge, not letting myself go until I’d managed to lean back against the headboard, and from there, as I stared at the carpet, I thought of how useless were these endlessly recurring thoughts of mine, and I was annoyed: I was trapped in the void with only my pointless thoughts. Then I stretched out on the bed, and as my head touched the pillow, I thought, Is it time, are they coming now, are they coming through the door to kiss my hand, good-bye, Grandmother, good-bye, but still there was not the slightest sound from the stairs or down below, and because I was afraid of worrying, I told myself I was not yet ready for this ceremony, it would have to wait as I prepared myself, cutting time into equal pieces, like an orange, just as I did on silent lonely winter nights. So I pulled my quilt up over myself and waited.

While I was waiting I knew I would find something to brood about. But what? I wanted my mind to reveal itself to me like a glove turned inside out: So that’s what you’re really like, Fatma, I’d tell myself in the end, the exterior form that the mirror shows is the opposite of what I’m like inside! Let me be astonished, let me forget, let me wonder: it’s my exterior that they come time and again to look at, the thing they bring downstairs for dinner and whose hand they’ll kiss in a little while; sometimes I wonder what my interior actually is. A heart that goes pitter-patter and thoughts that glide by like little paper boats on flowing water, and what else? A strange thing! Sometimes lying there between sleep and wakefulness, I confuse them, and I marvel with a sweet excitement: it’s as though my outside has become my inside and my inside my outside, and in the dark I can’t figure out which one I am. My hand reaches out like a silent cat and turns on the light, I touch the cold iron bars of the bed, but the cold iron only leaves me in a cold winter night: where am I? Sometimes you can’t even tell anymore. If a person can live in the same house for seventy years and still be confused, then this thing that we call life, and imagine we have used up, must be such a strange and incomprehensible
thing that no one can even know what their own life is. You stand there waiting and on it goes from place to place, no one knows why, and as it goes, you have many thoughts about where it’s been and where it’s headed; then just as you speak these strange thoughts, which aren’t right or wrong, and lead to no conclusion, you look, and the journey ends here, Fatma, okay, this is where you get off! First one foot, then the other, I get out of the carriage. I take two steps, then step back and look at the carriage. Was this the thing that brought us here, swaying all the way? Well, I guess that was it. So at the end that’s how I’ll think: that was it, it wasn’t the most pleasant trip, I didn’t understand a thing, but I still want to start it all over again. But one is not allowed! Come on, they say, we’re here now, on the other side, you can’t get back on again. And as the driver snaps his whip and the carriage draws away I want to cry, looking at it from behind: So that means I can’t start again, Mother, there’s no next time! But in my rebellious way I think that people have to be able to start over, just as I believed that a little girl has to be able to stay an innocent child her whole life long if she wants to, and that’s when I remember Nigân, Türkân, and Şükran and the books they read and that trip back I took with my mother and I am cheered up, in a bittersweet way.