At dinner there was plum compote. The small and yellow grains were so delicious that… I was eating hurriedly, but removing the pits regularly. Finally I filled my spoon with the four remaining at the bottom of the bowl. I brought them all at once to my mouth. They all melted in one bite. The pits, more sour and cooler than themselves, remained on my tongue. I slowly put them on the plate before me. These were three pits… However, I had put four plum grains in my mouth. To myself I said: “I wonder if I swallowed one without knowing?” No… I would definitely have felt this. Then one of the plums was without a pit! While drinking my coffee I thought, is there such a thing as a pitless plum? At night in bed I couldn’t sleep and decided that I had swallowed this treacherous pit that came out missing from my mouth…
**
This treacherous pit was indigestible. It could be the cause of a person’s death. No, not could be—would be. It would go to the appendix, stay there and cause terrible inflammation. Inflammation of the appendix: Appendicitis!… Before my eyes came surgical operation tables, shining scalpels, chloroform bottles, the half-visible shadows of operators in white gowns resembling wealthy butchers, and I was feeling a violent pain over my left groin. But how quickly, my God! Feeling the need to console myself: “This is delusion, this is delusion!” I was saying, trying to sleep. In the morning I found my belly a bit swollen. The top of my left groin hurt so badly that I didn’t even dare touch it with my hand.
**
I didn’t eat. I went out. I thought. Walking was probably harmful. I got in a carriage. I got off at Sirkeci. I was going to my friend ‘S…’s clinic to have this clear pain I was feeling diagnosed and to prepare for surgery. “Oh,” I was saying, “one should carry the blind intestine not in the abdomen but in a box in one’s pocket!” By chance I looked into the restaurant I was passing. The surgeon was there. He was talking with a dark man sitting next to him and eating a large plate of cherries. I went in. “Ah, doctor, I need you greatly!” I said. He laughed, “Sit down, let me finish this,” he said, “we’ll go out together.” I sat. He was eating and telling the person next to him something about olive oils. But there were no pits at all on the table. Strange! I looked under the table—they weren’t there either. I paid attention. The doctor wasn’t removing the pits of any of the cherries he was throwing into his mouth by the handful.
**
The large plate was finished. It was perhaps more than an okka. The doctor’s terrible ugliness—with a small and long head, narrow forehead, extremely large mouth—was somewhat mitigated by the redness of his cheeks, the brightness of his round eyes. He lit a cigarette. I had no doubt he was watching the cloudy water in the empty plate containing cherry stems. He leaned back. I was looking at his bulging belly. Yes, inside this round barrel of flesh there were at least half an okka of pits. I asked: “Dear doctor! What did you do with your cherry pits?”
“Ooh, mon cher!… I swallowed them!” he said. With a huge and oval giant smile spreading across his entire face, showing his crooked and as irregular as possible teeth, he added: “If I remove the cherry pit, I don’t understand its flavor at all. I’ve been accustomed this way since childhood…”
“But aren’t you afraid of appendicitis at all?…”
“What appendicitis? My dear, that’s an old theory. Does appendicitis ever come from cherry pits?… It used to be thought so. Now it’s completely understood that what causes appendix inflammation is not pits and such…”
To refute these words that the indifferent doctor said with such certainty, it was quite sufficient to tell my suffering. Immediately getting up…
But strange!… Suddenly I felt that my belly was extraordinarily hungry, that my pants belt had loosened, and that there was no pain or ache left over my left groin. And undoubtedly neglecting the doctor who was waiting for an important answer from me, I shouted to the waiter: “Will you bring me cherries too, Spiro?…”
Ömer Seyfettin
