…I became angry. I tried to think without feeling. I began to wonder why Efser did this to me. My curiosity was overcoming my rage… After an eight-month painful separation, I decided to divorce her gently. I would understand everything now. And probably after fulfilling her desire for divorce, it would be possible to reunite and reconcile again. Alas! Who was angry? And who needed to reconcile? One morning I sent her a blank visiting card. Three days later I received a long letter from her. She was explaining the reasons for her betrayal. Here, my dear historian friend, I’m writing this letter to you verbatim. Please read it carefully.
**
Sir,
Today we find ourselves completely strangers to each other. With the divorce, all our common destinies, our mutual duties have failed. Although repeating the memories of our life together is so detestable as to make my hair stand on end, the sense of duty still compels me to endure this suffering. I will fulfill my last promise. A promise made is a duty to me. I will explain to you the reasons for my action, my affair with Bidar. You know that when Bidar came to us, he was as shy as a girl, as noble as an angel, as pure and upright as a villager. He was a living picture, a symbol of the moral and honorable young man I had imagined. I began to love him like a little brother, like a revered child of God. His innocence, his honesty, his moral purity awakened in me a deep feeling of worship. Whereas you were a man who had suffered moral bankruptcy, corrupted, lost everything but bestiality, ruined and unbearable. Just as black stands out clearly next to white, next to Bidar your rotten spirituality appeared like a putrid and plague-ridden filthy ruin. I had suddenly awakened as it were. I wanted to see, to know your soul. This soul was definitely not a human soul. You had no religion, feeling, morality, virtue, capacity for emotion, spiritual sensibility… This was a pig’s soul. It valued only lust and bestiality. Your human form had added a second darkness to this dark soul: this was arrogance and selfishness. I paid attention to your excessive inclination toward me. I watched, analyzed, studied, observed, and understood that it was definitely not love. Your excessive inclination was nothing but savage pleasure arising purely from lust and the pride of possessing me exclusively. Your actions, your conversations, your ideas—in short, everything about you was immoral. I was going to endure all of this, try to correct you, and console myself saying “My fate! My fate!” But that night… But your extremely shameful immorality that night… I don’t think you need to think “Which night?” Remember well. Ah, my heart is still beating. My hands are turning yellow, I feel my face blushing. Yes, you committed an act toward me that couldn’t be deemed appropriate even for the most common, most shameless, most brazen woman. You committed a maddening violation. I was convinced that Bidar had no intentional role in this crime… Ah, I was struck in my heart, in my soul… But I hid my pain, my unbearable heartache with great courage. And I decided to take revenge on you. All your spiritual and material essence was selfishness and lust. By showing you that I was having an affair with someone else, I would wound the first, and by separating from you forever, I would destroy the second. I acted accordingly. Bidar undoubtedly couldn’t enter our room by himself. You must have brought him and encouraged this terrible immorality. I was convinced of this. An incident that once left a deep mark, a detestable memory in my mind served as my plan. This was the story of Candaules. I took Herodotus’s history from our library. I read this incident perhaps a hundred times more. Candaules’s immorality and arrogance was exactly like yours. Even the settings were similar. As if you wanted to replay this obscene play thousands of years later. I was the one destroyed. The right to complete the second act of this play, whose first scene, first act you played, fell to me. And I needed an actor, a partner in revenge. This could only be Bidar. While I was thinking how I would deceive him and trying to suggest my intention to you, you, unaware of everything, with your usual adjectives—you know, those words used only for ice cream, a meal, a dessert—would praise me, saying “Ah my dear Efser, how exquisite, how delicious you are!” drowning me in your flood of bestiality. One day you weren’t there. I caught Bidar alone. I took him to our room. He was hesitating to enter, saying “let’s sit in the living room.” With a meaningful smile I said that the bedroom and living room weren’t very different during the day, but at night there must be a big difference. He couldn’t answer. If I opened the matter to him directly, he would deny it, perhaps not consent to this joint revenge. I took Herodotus’s history standing in the window.
“I’m going to read you something, but will you promise to listen carefully, with very great attention?” I asked. Somewhat hesitant: “I promise!” he said. We sat on the sofa. I asked again that he pay extreme attention. I opened the twentieth page and began to read, pronouncing the words with excessive clarity, pausing meaningfully at the ends of sentences. What I read was only a page and a half. I’m translating this page and a half to you verbatim, letter by letter:
“8- This ruler was so infatuated with his wife that he thought her the most beautiful woman in the world. To one of his officers to whom he entrusted his most important secrets and whom he loved very much, Gyges the son of Dascylus, subject to his violent passion, he would describe his wife’s beauty with exaggeration. A short time later, Candaules (he couldn’t avoid disaster) delivered this speech to Gyges:
‘It seems to me that you don’t believe what I say about my wife’s beauty. Eyes are quicker to trust than ears. Try by any means to see her naked.’
Gyges cried out, ‘What unreasonable words! Your Majesty! Haven’t you thought about this? Ordering a slave to see his queen stark naked! Have you forgotten that when a woman removes her clothes, she removes her modesty with them? Among the fundamental principles of morality and decency you must follow, the most important is that a man should not look at a woman who doesn’t belong to him. I am sincerely confident that you possess the most beautiful of all women. But I beg you, don’t demand such a shameful thing from me.’
9- Gyges was thus refusing the king’s proposal, fearing that disaster would befall him.
The king said, ‘Be assured Gyges, don’t fear your king (this proposal is not a trap for you), nor the queen. She won’t do you any harm. I’ll arrange it so that she won’t even know you saw her. I’ll place you in our bedroom, behind the open door. The queen will follow me shortly. There’s a place in the entrance where she’ll put her clothes as she undresses. Thus you’ll be able to see her completely. When she moves from where she undressed toward the bed, her back will be turned toward you, so slip out unseen during this time.’
10- Gyges couldn’t escape this proposal and remained ready to obey. Candaules took him to his room at bedtime. The queen didn’t delay in coming. Gyges saw her undressing. As she turned her back to go to bed, he slipped quietly outside. But the queen saw Gyges as he was leaving. She understood what her husband had done. She digested this act in silence. And deciding to take revenge on Candaules, she pretended not to know anything. For among the Lydians, as among all barbarous peoples, being seen naked is the greatest disgrace, even for a man.
11- The queen remained calm without revealing her thoughts. But in the morning she secured the agreement of her most loyal officers and summoned Gyges. Gyges, not suspecting the queen knew of the matter, came obediently as always.
When he entered her presence, this queen said to him: ‘Gyges, here are two paths, one of which I permit you to follow. Decide now. Either kill Candaules and obtain my hand in marriage and the throne of Lydia, or a swift death will henceforth prevent you, for a small respect for Candaules’s rights, from looking at what is forbidden. One of you two must be destroyed: either he who gave you this advice, insulting propriety, or you who saw me naked!’
Gyges stood somewhat speechless. Then he begged for forgiveness from such a choice. Seeing that he couldn’t satisfy the queen, that he must either kill his master or destroy himself, he chose his own life.
He said to the queen, ‘Since you force me, against my will, to kill my master, teach me how I will raise my hand against him.’
‘You will attack him in the same place where he showed me to you stark naked, you will attack while he sleeps.’
12- The queen thus caught Gyges. He had no way to escape. Either he had to destroy himself or Candaules. At nightfall the queen brought him there, behind the door, with a dagger in his hand. Candaules had not yet fallen asleep. Gyges stabbed him and seized his wife and throne…”
I closed the book and put it beside me. I looked at Bidar’s face. He was pale as death, trembling. I consoled him.
“There’s no fault in you,” I said; “you’re distressed for nothing. The fault is entirely Candaules’s.”
Bidar said nothing. He stood distracted for a bit. Then suddenly kneeling, he fell at my feet and began to beg for forgiveness. I took his hands. I raised him. I sat him next to me.
“You be quiet and permit me,” I began to cry. Through the profusely flowing tears, between successive sobs, I asked: “Will Gyges take my revenge?”
Poor naive Bidar turned completely pale. I thought he would die. His lips were trembling: “Oh, is it possible, blood, blood, a murder,” he was saying. I began to tell, wiping my tears with the back of my hand, how my moral soul had been wounded. I was talking, talking, sobbing with excessive pain and excitement. I said that if revenge weren’t taken on Candaules, I truly couldn’t do anything to him, but I would definitely kill myself, and I convinced him. There was no need to have you killed for revenge. It was sufficient to punish your immorality. This would begin with a blow to your arrogance first. Then divorce, then marriage with Bidar… You had no throne to sit on. In short, I deceived Bidar. A very innocent affair began between us. This was true love. It absolutely didn’t resemble your bestial inclination. As if we were living inside a sweet and valuable anthology of poems. We were thinking of revenge and trying to determine the bitter hour that would be very delicious for me. As I wrote above, I borrowed my revenge plan from Herodotus’s book. Only, Bidar, like Gyges, wouldn’t kill you. He would appear to be in illegitimate contact with me, kissing me—in the French sense. And we would show you this state like a crime caught in the act, mercilessly wounding your arrogance. This happened. Then, in the doubt you fell into—no, not doubt, in the certainty—I would ensure the divorce by making you suffer for a while. This also happened. You may wait for our marriage. Know this too: until today Bidar hasn’t laid a hand on me. You saw him lying with me in bed. But this was a staged tableau. In fact, so staged that to make it more eventful and intriguing, that night as we went out, I had forcibly given you your revolver. However, I had removed the fulminate from its cartridges during the day. None of the bullets you shot at Bidar caught fire. You remember, don’t you?… In short, my purpose was to calm my internal and burning anger arising from your vulgarity, your immorality, to take revenge on you. Not shamelessness, following my carnal desires, love, etc… I absolutely don’t accept shamelessness! If I had any aptitude for living shamelessly, I would have lived with you. I was a very honorable woman and will always remain honorable. The bedroom tableau I showed you to wound your bestial feelings in response to the violation you committed against me and to ensure my divorce was in reality Platonic. You didn’t understand. Nevertheless, the man you saw in my bed that night will tomorrow be my legitimate husband. Now your most filthy and pessimistic certainty—I don’t say suspicion, because that belongs to the intelligent—an immoral and inappropriate evil suspicion, a meaningless slander will never exceed that degree.
Efser Bidar
After reading this letter, I was completely dazed with astonishment and anger. The pain inside me was growing and producing a more poisonous effect. I was completely defeated: I was wounded to the degree that I couldn’t move, couldn’t even show slaughtered movements. I immediately took that ominous Herodotus’s history. I was seeing this book for the first time in my life. I opened the twentieth page. I read. What similarity! Oh, this was exactly, exactly my action! I too, like poor Candaules, wanted to show her unparalleled beauty to a second witness, to satisfy my extraordinary infatuation.
But she… that barbarous creature considered this a crime. She took revenge. True, she didn’t have me killed. I wish she had… I wouldn’t suffer so much; my pain and torment would remain only the temporary pain of a dagger and death for one or two minutes like Candaules’s. Whereas the dagger of revenge struck at me was more terrible than Candaules’s fate. I was left alive and helpless. Although my only fault was worshipping excessively, I see that that body belongs to Gyges. Yes, a month after this letter they married Bidar. Years passed. But I still, every morning when I wake, every night when I go to bed, imagining the Efser I lost and their marital chamber, feel countless and poisonous daggers planted in my soul, in the depths of my feeling. Like the legendary supernatural fire described by holy books of the hells that doesn’t kill but burns and scorches for centuries, these daggers kill me daily without killing me, make me writhe, make me struggle.
I want to forget, to remain indifferent to the past, to give no importance. But is it possible?… There can be no more innocent delusion than desiring victory over our feelings, our thoughts. The more I want to forget, the more I think of Efser and Bidar. What intensifies my despair most is my certainty that I have no fault. What did I do? I involuntarily repeated, without knowing, an incident of passion and love expressed by someone else thousands of years ago. One of the endless events filling the cavity of the past, the womb of the night of history, repeated in my case. Ah, tell me, is there any fault of mine, any crime that can be considered intentional? How could I prevent this eternal repetition? In the past there were barbarous and savage peoples with inappropriate beliefs not based on any right or nature, like ours, but there were also those like Indian and Greek civilizations who didn’t insult man’s natural impulses. They didn’t consider nakedness a disgrace, didn’t consider the reproductive act—which is the most noble, most essential phase of species preservation—a shameful crime to be carefully hidden, but openly sanctified and praised it; with a very unjust classification, they didn’t deem some of our organs—which have no difference from each other—acceptable and praiseworthy and others defective and condemnable. On the contrary, they honored the organs directly producing the reproductive act and hung their pictures on fields, gardens, temples, dwellings like a symbol of fertility and productivity. How far we are today from these natural and civilized days… Now we live in savagery and imagination, under the pressure of successive social violations composed of invented and theoretical lies and contrary to nature.
An involuntary natural repetition is considered an unforgivable crime. Our civilization, with a general and common care, is going toward an artificial savagery, ignorance, darkness. I too am a living martyr of this ignorance. Now, my dear historian, you understand how sincerely I share your idea that “History is an eternal repetition!” and how right I am to share it!… Now permit me not to prolong my words. Let me be silent. That is, let me mourn the inconsolable griefs of natural civilization, deceased nature, those who think correctly and freely, the poor wretches suffering from conscientious slavery, especially my poor self, inside this dark and civilized grave-environment completely devoid of the fresh air of truth under the grave of ignorance and inertia that cruel hands like Isagoge and its likes established over nature and freedom of thought in the name of “logic and morality”…
Ömer Seyfettin
