Snow (51 page)

Blue lit another Marlboro. “When a man is so happy that he is willing to share his happiness with someone about to be executed, it is a gift from God. Let’s imagine I agreed to your proposals and fled the city to save your happiness, and Kadife found a way to take part in the play using some trickery that saved her honor and also secured her sister’s hope for happiness. What guarantee do I have that these people will keep their word and let me go?”

“I knew you would ask this!” cried Ka. He paused for a moment. He brought his finger to his lips and signaled to Blue to stay quiet and watch. He undid the buttons of his jacket and made a great show of turning off the tape recorder taped to his chest. “I’ll be your guarantor, and they can release you first,” he said. “Kadife can wait before going onstage until she hears of your release and that you have gone back into hiding. But to get Kadife to agree, you will need to write her a letter saying you’ve approved the plan—I need to deliver it to her personally.” He was making all this up as he went along. “And if you would tell me how this release should happen and where they should leave you,” he whispered, “I’ll make sure they do as you ask. And then you can stay underground until the roads have opened again. You can trust me on this; you have my guarantee.”

Blue handed Ka a piece of paper. “Put it in writing: In securing my consent for Kadife to go onstage and bare her head without staining her honor, and to ensure that I am able to leave Kars in one piece, you, Ka, have undertaken to act as mediator and guarantor. If you don’t keep your word, if this turns out to be a trap, what sort of punishment should the guarantor expect?”

“Whatever they do to you, they must also do to me!” Ka said.

“OK, write that down.”

Now Ka gave Blue a sheet of paper. “I’d like you to write that you have agreed to my plan, that I have your permission to relay the plan to Kadife, and that the final decision is up to her. If Kadife agrees, she must make a written statement to this effect and sign it with the understanding that she must not bare her head until you have been freed in a suitable way. Write all that down. But when it comes to the time and place of your release, I’d rather not be involved. It would be better if you chose someone you trusted. I’d recommend Fazıl, blood brother of the dead boy, Necip.”

“Is that the boy who was sending love letters to Kadife?”

“That was Necip, the one who died. He was a very special person, a gift from God,” said Ka. “But Fazıl’s just as good-hearted.”

“If you say so, I believe you,” said Blue, and turning to the sheet before him, he began to write.

Blue was done first. When Ka finished writing out his own guarantee, he detected a contemptuous half smile flashing across Blue’s face, but he wasn’t bothered. He’d set things in motion, he’d removed all the obstacles, he and Ipek were now free to leave the city, and he could hardly contain his joy. They exchanged papers in silence. When Blue folded Ka’s statement and put it in his pocket without bothering to read it, Ka followed suit; and then, making sure Blue could see what he was doing, he switched the tape recorder back on.

There was a silence. Ka repeated the last thing he had said before turning off the tape recorder. “I knew you would ask this,” he said. “But unless the two sides can establish some sort of trust, no agreement is possible. You’ll just have to trust the state to keep its word.” 

They looked into each other’s eyes and smiled. Afterward, he would return to this moment many times, and each time he would feel great remorse; happiness had blinded him to the fury in Blue’s eyes; looking back, he often thought that if he’d sensed this fury, he might never have asked the question:

“Will Kadife agree to this plan?”

“She’ll agree to it,” whispered Blue, his eyes still bright with rage.

There was another short silence.

“Seeing that you aim to make a contract with me that binds me to life, you might as well tell me more about this great happiness of yours.”

“I’ve never loved anyone like this in my entire life,” said Ka. His words sounded credulous and clumsy, but still he said them. “For me, there’s only one chance for happiness, and that’s Ipek."

“And how do you define happiness?”

“Happiness is finding another world to live in, a world where you can forget all this poverty and tyranny. Happiness is holding someone in your arms and knowing you hold the whole world.” He was going to say more, but Blue jumped to his feet.

At this moment the poem Ka would later call “Chess” came rushing into his head. He took a quick look at Blue and then, having left him standing there, took out the notebook in his pocket and began to write. As he jotted down the lines of the poem, which was about happiness and power, wisdom and greed, Blue peered over his shoulder, curious to know what was going on. Ka could sense Blue’s eyes on him, and that image too found its way into his poem. It was as if the hand that was writing belonged to someone else. Ka knew Blue wouldn’t be able to see it, but that did not stop his wishing Blue could know that Ka’s hand was in thrall to a higher power. It was not to be: Blue sat on the edge of the bed, gloomily smoking in the manner of condemned men the world over.

On an impulse he would spend much time trying (and failing) to understand afterward, Ka found himself opening his heart to Blue yet again.

“Before I got here, I hadn’t written a poem in years,” he said. “But since coming to Kars, all the roads on which poetry travels have reopened. I attribute this to the love of God I’ve felt here.”

“I don’t want to destroy your illusions, but your love for God comes out of Western romantic novels,” said Blue. “In a place like this, if you worship God as a European, you’re bound to be a laughingstock. Then you cannot even believe you believe. You don’t belong to this country; you’re not even a Turk anymore. First try to be like everyone else. Then try to believe in God.”

Ka could feel Blue’s hatred. He gathered up a few of the sheets on the table and, announcing that he had to go see Sunay and Kadife without any further delay, pounded on the cell door. When it opened, he turned back to Blue and asked him if he had a special message for Kadife.

Blue smiled. “Be careful,” he said. “Don’t let anyone kill you.” 

You’re Not Really Going to Die, Sir, Are You?

bargaining in which life vies with theater, and art with politics

As the MIT operatives upstairs cut through the tape and slowly unwound the bandage with which they had attached the tape recorder to his chest, Ka tried to ingratiate himself by assuming their scornful air of efficiency and making fun of Blue. This may explain why he was not preoccupied with Blue’s show of aggression downstairs.

He sent the driver of the army truck back to the hotel with instructions to wait. Flanked by military guards, he walked from one end of the garrison to the other. The officers’ quarters looked out over a large snow-covered courtyard where a number of boys were throwing snowballs among the poplar trees. Waiting there was a girl in a red and white wool coat that reminded Ka of the one he’d worn in the third year of primary school; a little farther away, two of her friends were making a snowman. The air was crystalline. The grueling storm was over, and it was beginning to feel a little warmer.

Back at the hotel, he went straight to see Ipek. She was in the kitchen, dressed in a smock, the one all lycée girls in Turkey wore once upon a time, and over it an apron. As he gazed at her with happy eyes, he longed to throw his arms around her, but there were other people in the room, so he held himself back and instead told her of the morning’s developments. Things were going well, he said, not just for them but also for Kadife. He said that while the newspaper had in fact been circulated without amendment, he was no longer worried about being shot. There was much more to say, but just then Zahide came into the kitchen to make a request on behalf of the two soldiers guarding the door; she asked Ipek to invite them inside and give them some tea. In the few moments left to them, Ipek arranged to continue their conversation upstairs.

In his room, Ka hung up his coat and sat staring at the ceiling as he waited for Ipek. With so much to discuss, Ka knew she would be there soon, and without feigning reluctance, but it wasn’t long before he fell prey to a dark pessimism. First he imagined that Ipek had been delayed because she’d run into her father; then he began to worry that because of the trouble she didn’t want to be with him. The old ache returned, spreading out from his stomach like a poison. If this was what others called love pangs, they held no promise of happiness. He was only too aware that, as his love for Ipek deepened, these dark panics descended on him all the faster. But was he right to assume that these attacks, these fearsome fantasies of deception and heartbreak, had anything to do with what others called love? He seemed alone in describing the experience as misery and defeat; unable even to imagine bragging about it as everyone else bragged of love, he could only suppose that his own feelings were abnormal, and this is what bothered him most. Even in the torment of paranoid theories (Ipek was not coming; Ipek didn’t really want to come; all three of them—Kadife, Turgut Bey, and Ipek—were having a secret meeting, discussing Ka as an enemy outsider and plotting to be rid of him), a part of him knew these fantasies to be pathological; so, for example, when his stomach began to ache at the terrible visions before his eyes of Ipek as another man’s lover, another region of his brain would repeat assurances that these were but a symptom of his sickness. Sometimes, to relieve the pain and to erase the evil scenes intruding on his thoughts (in the worst one, Ipek refused even to see Ka, much less go to Frankfurt with him), he would by force of sheer will take refuge in reason, the one part of his mind that love had not thrown off balance. Of course she loves me, he would tell himself; if she didn’t, why would she be looking so ecstatic? With such thoughtful focus, his evil anxieties would float away, but before long a new worry would inevitably come flying in to undo again his precarious inner peace.

He heard footsteps in the corridor. It couldn’t be Ipek, he told himself; it was someone else to tell him that Ipek wasn’t coming. And so, when he opened the door to find Ipek there, he was radiating hostility as well as joy. He had been waiting for twelve long minutes. His consolation was to see that Ipek had made herself up and was wearing lipstick.

“I’ve spoken to my father, and I’ve told him I’m going to Germany,” she said.

Ka was still so much in thrall to the dark images in his head that his first response was disappointment; he couldn’t give Ipek his full attention. This failure to show any pleasure at her news planted some doubts in her own mind—or, more to the point, a disillusionment that proposed a way out. She still knew that Ka was madly in love and already bound to her like a hapless five-year-old who can’t bear to be apart from his mother. She also knew that he wanted to take her to Germany not merely to share his happy home in Frankfurt; his far greater hope was that, when they were far away from all these eyes in Kars, he would know for sure that he possessed her absolutely.

“Darling, is something bothering you?”

In later years, when racked with pangs of love, Ka would recall a thousand times how softly and sweetly Ipek had asked this question. For now he replied by telling her about the terrible thoughts that had been running through his head. One by one he recounted them for her: the dreaded abandonment, the worst scenes of horror that had played before his eyes.

“If love pangs cause you such dread, I can’t help thinking there was a woman earlier in your life who hurt you very badly.”

“I’ve known a bit of suffering in my life, but already I’m terrified of how much you could hurt me.”

“I’m not going to hurt you at all,” said Ipek. “I’m in love with you; I’m going back to Germany with you. Everything will be fine.” 

She threw her arms around Ka, embracing him with all her strength, and they made love with such ease Ka could hardly believe it. Now he felt no urge to be rough with her; instead, he took pleasure in the strong but tender embrace, glorying in the whiteness of her delicate skin, but they were both aware that their lovemaking was neither as deep nor as intense as the night before.

Ka’s mind was on his mediation plans. He believed that if, for once in his life, he could be happy, and if, by using his head, he could manage to get out of Kars not just in one piece but with his lover on his arm, that happiness might last forever. He had been thinking this for some time, as he smiled and gazed out the window, when to his great surprise he realized another poem was beckoning. He wrote it down very fast, just as it came, as Ipek watched in loving admiration. He would later recite this poem, called “Love,” at six readings in Germany. Those who heard it told me that, although apparently concerned with the familiar tension between peace and isolation, or security and fear, and special relations with a woman (though only one listener thought to ask afterward who this woman might be), the poem in fact emanated from the darkest, most incomprehensible part of Ka’s being. As for the notes Ka later made, these were mostly explicit remembrances of Ipek, and how he missed her, and scattered remarks about how she dressed and moved. (It may be because I’d read these notes so many times that Ipek made such a strong impression on me on our first meeting.)

Ipek dressed quickly and left; she had to say goodbye to her sister. But a moment later, Kadife was at his door. Seeing her eyes larger than ever, and her evident anxiety, Ka assured her she had nothing to fear and in particular that no one had laid a hand on Blue. He then told her he’d come to see what a very brave man Blue was by the difficulty he had had in persuading him to agree to the plan.

Then all at once a lie he had sketched out in advance occurred to him in glorious detail. He began by saying that the hardest part had been convincing Blue that Kadife would agree to the plan. He said Blue had been worried that Kadife might be offended, and he couldn’t agree before having talked it over with her; here Kadife raised an eyebrow, so Ka retreated a bit, giving his lie a more truthful ring by expressing doubt that Blue had spoken those words in absolute sincerity. Then, not merely to keep the lie afloat but also to help Kadife save face, he added that Blue’s reluctance (in other words, the respect he showed for a woman’s feelings) was a positive thing—especially for him.