I didn’t see more interest from my wife, my children, generally from the household; but I knew I had no right to expect this. The feeling of unnecessariness I had first felt in Berlin on that strange New Year’s Day had settled in me completely. What need did these people have for me? Could I be endured for five or ten kuruş of bread money? People needed not each other’s material help and money, but their love and interest. After this wasn’t there, the true name of being a family head was “to feed various strangers.” I longed for this to end as soon as possible and for the moment when they would need me in no way. My whole life gradually took the form of longingly waiting for this day still very far away.
I was almost like a prisoner waiting for his day to be completed. Days had value only in terms of bringing me close to this fate. Like a plant, without complaint, without consciousness, without will, I was living and going on. My feelings had gradually become numb. I wasn’t affected by anything, wasn’t happy about anything.
There was no possibility I could be angry at people, because the most valuable, the best, the dearest of people had done me the greatest evil; could something else be expected from the others? There was also no possibility I could love people and approach them again; because I had been deceived in the person I believed most, trusted most. Could I trust others?
Thus years would certainly pass, the day I waited for would come and everything would end. I wanted nothing else. Life had played me a bad trick. Very well; here I was, finding fault neither in myself nor in others, accepting events as they were and enduring silently.
But there was no need for this to continue. I was bored, simply bored. I had no other complaint.
One day… That is, yesterday, Saturday, at midday, I had come home and undressed. My wife said various things were needed: “Tomorrow the shops are closed; go to the market once more even though it’s tiring!” she said. Reluctantly I got dressed. I walked to Hale. The surroundings were rather hot. On the streets there were many wandering aimlessly and seeking a bit of evening coolness in the dusty air.
After finishing shopping, I too squeezed the packages under my arm and walked toward the statue. I wanted to return home not by the usual crooked streets but by the asphalt road, even if wandering a bit. The big clock swinging before one of the shops was showing six. I suddenly felt grabbed by the arm. A woman’s voice was almost shouting near my ear:
“Herr Raif!” she was saying.
I was badly surprised by this German address. I would almost have shaken from fear and fled. The woman had grabbed me very tightly:
“No, I’m not mistaken, you’re really Herr Raif! Goodness, can a person change this much!” she was shouting and passersby were looking at us.
I slowly raised my head. Before even seeing her face, from her tremendous body, I had understood who it was. Her voice too hadn’t changed at all:
“Ah, Frau van Tiedemann, who would think to see you in Ankara?” I said.
“No, not Frau van Tiedemann… Just Frau Döppke! I sacrificed one van for a husband, but I’m not very damaged!”
“Congratulations… so…”
“Yes yes, as you guess… Very little time after you returned, we too left the pension… Naturally together… We went to Prague…”
As soon as she said Prague, my insides stung. This time there was no possibility of restraining the thing I had been trying not to bring to mind since a while ago. But why would I ask? She had no news of my relationship with Maria; what meaning would she give my question? Wouldn’t she ask how I knew her? Then the things she would say… Wouldn’t it be better not to learn these at all? After so many years had passed between—exactly ten years, even a bit more—what use was learning?..
I noticed we were still standing in the middle of the street and:
“Come, let’s sit somewhere; we have things to ask each other… I’m still astonished to see you in Ankara!” I said.
“Yes, it would be so nice to sit somewhere, but our train time is coming; less than an hour remains… Let’s not miss it… If I had known you were in Ankara, I would certainly have searched for you. We came last night. We’re leaving this evening too…”
I only now saw that beside the woman was a yellow-faced, quiet girl child about eight or nine years old.
I laughed:
“Your daughter?” I said!
“No,” she said, “my relative!.. My son is finishing law studies!”
“Are you still recommending books to him?”
She couldn’t remember for a while, then laughing:
“Yes, you’re right, but he doesn’t listen to my recommendations anymore. He was still very small then… About twelve years old… Oh my God, how quickly years pass!..”
“Yes… But you haven’t changed at all!”
“You too!”
I remembered she had been more sincere a moment ago and didn’t raise my voice.
We were walking downward. I absolutely didn’t know how to begin the things I would ask about Maria Puder; I kept wandering in unnecessary subjects that didn’t concern me.
“You still haven’t said why you came to Ankara!”
“Ah, yes, look, let me tell you this precisely… We didn’t come to Ankara; we’re passing through Ankara… We stopped by while passing.”
She agreed to sit for five minutes in a lemonade shop and continued her story there:
“My husband is now in Baghdad… You know, he’s a colonial merchant!”
“But Baghdad isn’t a German colony, I think!”
“I know, dear… But my husband has expertise on warm country products. He does business on dates in Baghdad!”
“Was he doing date trade in Cameroon too?”
The woman looked at my face as if to say “You’re very inappropriate”:
“I don’t know; write him a letter and ask! He doesn’t involve women in trade affairs!”
“Where are you going now!”
“To Berlin… Both to visit the country; and also…” she showed the pale-faced child sitting beside her:
“And also for this child… Because she’s a bit thin, she spent the winter with us. Now I’m taking her back.”
“So you go back and forth to Berlin frequently!”
“Twice a year!”
“Herr Döppke’s affairs seem to be going well!”
She laughed and flirted.
I still couldn’t ask. Now I myself had noticed that this hesitation came not from not knowing how to ask, but from fearing what I would learn. But wasn’t everything equal for me? There was no living feeling inside me. Why was I afraid? Maria too could have found another Herr Döppke for herself. Perhaps she was still single and running from man to man, searching for a “man to believe in.” She would certainly have forgotten even the lines of my face.
When I thought, I too couldn’t remember her face, and for the first time in ten years, I noticed that neither did I have a picture of her, nor she of me… I was left in astonishment. How had we not thought of this when separating?
Come on, let’s say we had supposed we would meet very quickly and had trusted the power of our memories, but what should I say to noticing this only now? Hadn’t I felt the need to bring her face before my eyes?
I remembered that in the first months I had kept all the lines of her face in my memory and lived her in my imagination at every moment without any difficulty… Then… When I understood everything had ended, I had carefully avoided seeing and imagining this face. I knew I couldn’t bear this. The face of her, the Madonna in a Fur Coat, even if only in my imagination, was powerful and effective enough to make me lose all my calm.
Only now, when wanting to remember all the old days and memories once more, certain I wouldn’t feel any excitement, I had searched for her face but couldn’t find it… And I didn’t even have a picture of her…
What need was there?
Frau Döppke looked at her watch and got up. We walked together toward the station. The woman was very pleased with Ankara and Turkey:
“I haven’t seen a country where foreigners are so respected!” she was saying. “Even Switzerland, although owing its prosperity to foreign tourists, isn’t like this. The people look at every foreigner almost as if they’ve entered their house by force… Whereas in Turkey everyone is as if waiting for an opportunity to do a convenience for a foreigner; then I like Ankara very much!”
The old woman was talking constantly. The little girl was going five or ten steps ahead, touching the trees at the edge of the road with her hand. After approaching the station quite a bit, with a final decision but trying to appear as indifferent as possible, I began speaking:
“Do you have many relatives in Berlin?”
“No, not very many… I’m originally from Prague, from Czech Germans… My first husband was also Dutch.. Why did you ask?”
“When I was there, I had seen a woman who said she was your relative…”
“Where?”
“In Berlin… I had encountered her by chance at a painting exhibition… I think she was a painter…”
The woman suddenly became interested:
“Well… Then?” she said.
I, hesitating:
“Then… I don’t know… We had talked once or something… She had a beautiful painting… By that occasion…”
“Do you remember her name?”
“I think it would be Puder… That’s right, Maria Puder! Her signature was under the painting… It was also written in the catalog…”
The woman wasn’t answering. I pulled myself together again:
“Do you know her?” I said.
“Yes, why did she tell you she was my relative?”
“I don’t know… I think I had talked about the pension where I stayed, and she said I have a relative there… Or in another way… I can’t remember now of course… This was ten years ago!”
“Yes… Not a short time… Her mother had told me that her daughter was once friends with a Turk and talked about him all day, so I was curious if it was you. But isn’t it strange, the woman had never once seen this Turk her daughter admired… She had gone to Prague that year; she had learned there from her daughter that the Turkish student had left Berlin!..”
We had come to the station. The woman walked toward the train. I was afraid that if we changed the subject, we couldn’t return to the same topic again and I couldn’t learn what I really wanted. For this reason, I looked into her eyes, waiting with great interest for her to continue speaking.
After dismissing the hotel porter who had placed her belongings in the wagon, the woman turned to me:
“Why are you asking?” she said. “You were saying you knew Maria very little!”
“Yes… But she must have left a very strong impression on me… I had liked her painting very much…”
“She was a good painter!”
With an anxiety that suddenly appeared inside me but whose nature I couldn’t understand, I asked:
“Did you say she was a painter? Not now?”
The woman, looking around, searched for the little girl; seeing she had entered and sat in the wagon, bending her head toward me:
“Of course not…” she said. “Because she’s no longer living!”
“How?”
I heard this word come from my mouth like a whistle. Those around us turned and looked, and the child in the compartment extended her head from the window and looked me over in astonishment.
The woman’s eyes were wandering carefully over me:
“Why are you so surprised?” she said. “Why did you turn pale? You said you knew her very little?”
“Even so,” I said, “a completely unexpected death!”
“Yes… But it’s not a new thing… Perhaps it’s been ten years…”
“Ten years? Impossible…”
After the woman looked me over again, she pulled me aside a bit:
“I see that Maria Puder’s death concerns you. Let me briefly tell you,” she said. “About two weeks after you left the pension to return to Turkey, we too got up with Herr Döppke and went to our relatives who owned a farm around Prague. There we encountered this Maria Puder and her mother. The relationship between her mother and me wasn’t very good, but we didn’t dwell on this there. Maria was very thin and weak; she was saying she had gone through a serious illness in Berlin. After a while, they returned to Berlin again. The girl had pulled herself together quite a bit. We too got up and went to East Prussia, my husband’s original country… When we came to Berlin in winter, we heard Maria Puder had died at the start of October. Of course I forgot the estrangement and such and immediately searched for her mother. She was very wretched; she had almost become like sixty years old. Whereas at that time she was only about forty-five or forty-six years old. According to what she told us, after leaving Prague Maria had felt some changes in herself; she had gone to the doctor; it turned out she was pregnant. At first she was very pleased with this, but despite all her mother’s insistence, she hadn’t said who the child was from. She kept saying ‘You’ll learn later!’ and talking about a journey she would make soon. Toward the end of pregnancy her health began to deteriorate; the doctors found the birth dangerous; despite the rather advanced situation, they wanted to intervene; Maria absolutely didn’t agree to the child being touched; then she suddenly got very bad and was hospitalized. Apparently there was a lot of albumin… The illness she had gone through before had also shaken her body… Before birth she completely lost consciousness several times. The doctors intervened and took the child and kept it alive; despite this, Maria continued having fits and a week later died in a coma state. She couldn’t say anything. She absolutely didn’t suppose she would die. Even in the last moments she was conscious, she would say incomprehensible things to her mother like: ‘When you learn you’ll be astonished; but then you too will be pleased!’ and wouldn’t give the man’s name at all. Her mother remembers that before going to Prague, her daughter often talked to her about a Turk. But she had neither seen his face nor knew his name… The child stayed in hospitals and care homes until four years old; then her grandmother took her. A somewhat thin and quiet girl; but very charming… Don’t you find her so?”
I felt a weakness as if I would fall right where I was. My head was spinning; despite this I was standing upright and laughing:
“This girl?” I said and showed the wagon window with my head.
“Yes… Isn’t she cute? She’s so well-behaved and quiet!.. Who knows how much her grandmother will see of her!”
While the woman was saying these things, she kept looking at my face. In her eyes was a flash I could almost call hostile.
The train was about to leave. She jumped into the wagon.
After a bit, both appeared side by side at the window. The child was watching the station and occasionally me with an indifferent smile. The old and fat woman wasn’t releasing me from the circle of her eyes at all.
The train moved. I waved my hand to them. I noticed Frau Döppke was laughing traitorously.
The child had withdrawn inside…
All these things happened yesterday evening. As I write these lines, a bit more than twenty-four hours have passed.
Last night I couldn’t sleep even a second. Lying on my back in bed, I kept thinking of the child on the train. I was as if seeing her head moving with the train’s shakings. A child’s head with abundant hair… I didn’t know the color of her eyes, her hair, or even her name. I hadn’t paid attention to her at all. Although she stood beside me, one step away, I hadn’t once looked at her face with curiosity. When separating, I hadn’t even squeezed her hand. Nothing, oh my God, I knew nothing about my own daughter. The woman had certainly sensed many things… Why had she looked at me so traitorously? She had certainly guessed something… And took my daughter and left… Now they’re on the road… When the wheels jump from one rail to another, my daughter’s sleeping head shakes slightly…
I was constantly thinking of them. But finally I couldn’t bear more and the image I wanted to keep far from my head slowly, silently stood before my eyes: Maria Puder, my Madonna in a Fur Coat, was standing across from me with the thin curve at the corner of her lips and the deep gaze of her black eyes. On her face was no resentment, reproach. Perhaps a bit of astonishment, but more with interest and compassion she was looking at me. Whereas I didn’t have the courage to meet her gaze. Ten years, exactly ten years, with all the brokenness of my poor soul, I had been angry at a dead person, had held a dead person guilty… Could a greater insult be done to her memory? For ten years I had suspected without any hesitation, without thinking I could be committing injustice, the person who was the foundation, purpose, reason of my life.
I had imagined the most unthinkable things about her and hadn’t once stopped and said, perhaps there’s also a reason for her doing this and leaving me. Whereas among the reasons was the biggest, the most irresistible: death. I was going mad from my shame. I was writhing with the sad and useless remorse felt toward a dead person. Even if I tried to give penance for the rest of my life, kneeling, for the crime I committed against her memory, I sensed I still wouldn’t succeed in this, that loading the heaviest of faults onto the most innocent of people—the betrayal of leaving a loving heart on its face—would never be forgiven.
Just a few hours ago, because I didn’t have a photograph of her, I had thought I couldn’t remember her face. Whereas at this moment I was seeing her much more vividly, in detail than when I had seen her alive. Exactly as in the painting, somewhat sad, somewhat self-sufficient. Her face was paler, her eyes blacker. Her lower lip was extending toward me; her mouth was preparing to say “Ah, Raif!” She was living more than ever… So she had died ten years ago! While I was waiting for her, while preparing my house to receive her, she had died. Without telling anyone anything, to not make me writhe in impossibilities, to not put me in distress, she had died taking all her secret together.
Now I understood the true reason for the anger I felt toward her for ten years, for taking myself into an insurmountable wall against my surroundings: For ten years, with an undiminishing love, I had continued loving her. I hadn’t allowed anyone but her to enter inside me. But now I loved her more than ever. I was extending my arms to the image across from me; I wanted to take her hands again into my palms and warm them. The life we spent together, that four or five months, was before my eyes in all detail. I remembered every point, every word spoken between us. Starting from seeing her picture at the exhibition, I was living once more listening to her song at the Atlantik, her approaching beside me, botanical garden walks, our sitting across from each other in her room, her illness. Memories rich enough to fill a life from top to bottom were more vivid, more effective than in reality because they were squeezed into such a short time.
These were showing me that for ten years I hadn’t lived even a moment; that all my movements, thoughts, feelings were as far from me as if they belonged to a stranger far from me. The actual “me” had lived only about three or four months in my life approaching thirty-five years; then I had been buried and remained in the depths of a meaningless identity having no connection with me.
Last night, while in bed facing Maria, I understood that carrying this body, this head having no relationship with me, would from now on be more difficult for me. I would feed these as if feeding a stranger, would drag them from place to place and always watch with pity and contempt. Again last night I understood that after that woman left my life, everything lost its reality; I had died with her, perhaps even before.
The household went out early today, all together to walk around. I stayed home, making my indisposition an excuse. Since morning I’ve been writing these things. The surroundings have begun to darken. They still haven’t come. But in a bit they’ll rush in laughing and shouting. What’s my relationship with them? After souls aren’t together, what do all the ties between express? For years I haven’t said a single word to anyone. Whereas how much I need to talk. To be forced to drown everything inside—isn’t this nothing but being closed in a grave alive? Ah Maria, why can’t we sit at a window edge and talk with you? Why can’t we walk silently side by side on windy autumn evenings and listen to our souls talking? Why aren’t you beside me?
For ten years perhaps I’ve fled from everyone for nothing, have been unjust in not believing in people. If I had searched, perhaps I could have found someone like you. If I had learned everything then, perhaps I would get used to it with time, would try to find you in others. But after this everything’s finished. After committing the truly big and unforgivable injustice toward you, I don’t want to fix anything. Based on a wrong judgment I passed about you, I held all people guilty; I fled from them. Today I understand the truth; but I’m forced to condemn my breath to eternal loneliness. Life is a gamble played only once; I lost it. I can’t play a second time… Now for me a life worse than before will begin. Again like a machine I’ll shop in the evenings. I’ll meet with people whose who and what they are I’m not curious about and listen to their words. Was there any possibility for my life to be otherwise? I don’t think so. If chance hadn’t put you before me, I would have lived and gone on in the same way, but unaware of everything. You taught me that in the world another kind of life also exists, that I too have a soul. If you couldn’t carry this to the end, it’s not your fault… I thank you for the few months you gave me the possibility to truly live. Aren’t such a few months worth several lifetimes?.. The child you left behind as a part of your body, our daughter, will wander in distant places, unaware a father of hers exists on earth… Our roads met once. But I know nothing about her. Neither her name nor where she is. Despite this, I’ll always follow her in my imagination. In my head I’ll invent a life course for her and walk beside her. I’ll try to fill the loneliness of my coming years by imagining how she grew up, how she went to school, how she laughed and how she thought. Outside there are noises. Our people must have returned. I want to keep writing. But what need is there? What happened from writing this much? Tomorrow I must buy another notebook for our girl and put this away and hide it. I must hide everything, everything, especially my soul in places it will never be found…
Raif efendi’s notebook was ending here. On the other pages was no note, no record. As if he had reflected the soul he hid with great fear outside, onto this notebook’s pages, for one time only; after that he had again withdrawn into himself and been silent for years.
Morning was coming. To keep the promise I had given, putting the notebook in my pocket, I went to the patient’s house. The panic I encountered when the door opened, the crying coming from inside, told me everything. I paused and waited for a moment indecisively. I didn’t want to leave without seeing Raif efendi one last time. But I felt I couldn’t bear this, that I couldn’t see this person whose most living parts of life I had watched throughout a night, even lived together, suddenly become a meaningless pile. I slowly went out to the street. Raif efendi’s death hadn’t affected me that much. Inside me was a feeling not as if I had lost him but as if I had actually found him now.
Last evening he had said to me: “We couldn’t sit and talk properly!” I no longer thought this way. Last evening I had talked with him at length. As he was leaving this world, he was entering my life in a way more vivid than would be granted to any other person. From now on I would always find him beside me.
I sat at Raif efendi’s empty desk at the company and, putting the black-covered notebook before me, began reading once more.
