I Letter from Madame Asime to Hasan
First you loved me, you begged, you pleaded; my love was almost a lukewarm response to your passion. Finally you married me. I was rich. I had horses and carriages. All of today’s young men wanted me. You obtained what everyone wanted. You were happy. And I was faithful to you. Then how it happened, you suddenly changed. You cooled toward me. You avoided seeing me and finally you divorced me… When you receive this letter, don’t think I’m begging you. But I’m curious! Why don’t you want me? What’s wrong with me? Or what am I missing?… Just this year I came first in the beauty competition among Kadıköy women. My education is first-rate… I’m rich too… Then why don’t you want me? Even if you found someone more beautiful than me, I’m sure you won’t find anyone richer than me. Then why? Why don’t you want me?
Asime
II Letter from Hasan to Madame Asime
Yes, beautiful woman, I loved you. But what does loving mean? Do you know?… Loving is something different for everyone. Just like temperaments and types are different… Some look at eyebrows and eyes, some at skin, some at hands and feet, some at fatness or thinness, some at darkness or whiteness, some at stature, some at hips. However, I… look at profiles. It’s been my habit since school: When talking to someone, I search for what profile they have—for example, when talking to a man with a dog profile, I liken his words to barking. However many people there are in the world, they all have an animal profile. When crossing the bridge, sitting at a crowded café, I pay attention to everyone’s face. I haven’t yet encountered anyone without a profile. All animals dressed in human clothing, wearing human masks… A herd of dogs, oxen, goats, storks, horses, donkeys, owls, eagles, chickens, parrots, bees, pigeons, crows, fish, bears, geese, tigers, etc… The physiognomy theories I read with pure and innocent curiosity as a child have so influenced my imagination that I feel like I’m inside a living album showing La Fontaine’s fables. For example, a friend of mine is coming from across the way—at first glance, his tall red fez, his checkered suit, his shiny tie… the tip of his nose is pointed, his arms are raised and puffed up… boastful and brave… When I look from the side, I see what he is and say to myself, “Ah, here’s a rooster…” He comes, takes my hand, looking at his red face, his fez resembling a rose exactly. His voice is sharp and his notes are long. He constantly crows. I leave him, encounter another. His chin and mouth are flat. His legs are splayed. He speaks slowly and laughs stretching his cheeks.
“Duck, duck…” I say. As he quacks, I search for his wings and tail, pleased and confident with my discovery, and indeed I find them on him too. The profiles of famous people, great writers, ministers, deputies, high officials are memorized by me. Because I know their profiles, I tell everyone exactly what new ministers will do in their positions of power.
In fact, my friends say to me, “If you’d come earlier, you’d have been a prophet…” They think I have miraculous powers. No, no, I only recognize profiles. A man with a donkey profile definitely acts donkey-like; a man with a lion profile definitely acts lion-like. Whatever animal’s profile a man has, he definitely has that animal’s morals too. In a man with an ox profile there can never be cunning, trickery, intelligence. Someone with a donkey profile is stubborn, that is, in polite terms, persevering. Someone with a bee profile stings; someone with a dog profile makes noise, shows his teeth. Someone with a tiger profile crushes and knows no mercy; someone with a parrot profile doesn’t stop, imitates; someone with a dove profile doesn’t stop, plays a comedy of love and affection; someone with a fox profile deceives everyone; someone with a pig profile eats and drinks, looks after his pleasure.
Women too are all animals like men. They too definitely have an animal’s profile. A fat woman with huge breasts, absent-minded and heavy, is completely a cow. A thin, moody, dark, ugly woman with only beautiful eyes is a goat. The most beautiful are those with robin, canary, guinea fowl profiles. None of these three profiles exist in you. It was last summer. We first encountered each other in Fener. I immediately searched for your profile, but I couldn’t find it.
“Ah, what could it be?” I was saying, and the more I looked at your face and couldn’t find it, the more I began to love you. Since you didn’t have an animal profile, then you were human, a woman… Because you had no profile, there was no animal morality, no animal nature in you. Sometimes I’d fall into doubt again: “I’m mistaken, she also has a profile, but I can’t see it, I can’t notice it…” I was saying. Before our marriage, during the days of affection, you probably thought my long gazes into your face were love crises. No, I was always searching for your profile and couldn’t liken you to anything. When I couldn’t find your profile, I loved you. And probably you loved me too… What a pleasant six months we spent. You naturally remember. But one morning… Ah, I wish I hadn’t gotten up before you… I had gotten up early and sat by the window. You were still lying down.
“What laziness…” I said. You sat up, got dressed. And sat in the bed. The air was a bit cool; the burning stove hadn’t yet heated the room. Suddenly my heart began to beat. I felt like I was suffocating. With the toes of your right foot, you grabbed one of your purple socks that had fallen on your slippers. You lifted it up and put it on sitting in bed. You were extending your left foot to pick up the other sock from the floor. I turned my face away not to see. Yes, beautiful woman, you were using the toes of your foot exactly like a hand.
“In the middle of the twentieth century,” I was saying, “so many hundreds of thousands of years after creation or evolution…”
And I was trembling. I got sick. You didn’t know at all what the blow was that laid me low. When we lay down, you’d grab and pull your wrinkled nightgown with your toes. And when I sensed this, I’d clench my teeth and start trembling again. You still didn’t understand: “The air is probably cold, you’re chilly…” you were saying. Again one morning you’d sat in the armchair in front of the stove; you had no socks on your feet. Again my heart began to beat. With your toes you were opening the stove’s still-unheated lid, looking without moving, closing it again. Then again one day your beloved cat was playing with your feet. You hadn’t yet put on your socks. My heart jumped. But I clenched my teeth. I looked—the toes of your feet were long. And a bit too long. With these long toes you were holding the cat by its arms, lifting it into the air like a small child. You were using your feet almost like your hands, in fact better than your hands.
I raised my eyes to your face. And at that moment I saw the profile I’d searched for so much but couldn’t find. You were a monkey… Your forehead was narrow and your mouth protruded forward a bit. Your beautiful and shining skin couldn’t completely cover this monkey skeleton. Especially your feet! Oh my God… They were exactly a monkey’s third and fourth hands. If you tried a bit harder, not only could you pick up your socks from the floor, open the stove lid, arrange your blanket and nightgown, hold the cat and lift it into the air—with these long and unevolved toes of your feet, you could even eat food, even play the piano. At that time I became afraid of you. I never got into bed with you again. I imagined myself in a virgin forest; I felt like I’d married a prehistoric creature, a simian.
In the twentieth century, I fled from a creature with prehistoric organs in her body, who uses her feet as hands like today’s monkeys, an unevolved being—that is, from you. I distanced myself.
Now place one of these feet you use like hands on your heart. And judge like that. Am I not right not to love you anymore?…
III Telegram from Madame Asime to Hasan – Most urgent –
I tore up your letter without reading it, I detest you. Don’t you dare send another letter. Otherwise things will get bad…
Ömer Seyfettin
