When a woman pleased me in any way, the first thing I would do was flee from her. When I came face to face, I would fear that my every movement, every glance would reveal my secret; I would become the world’s most wretched person with a shame impossible to describe, almost suffocating. I don’t remember ever looking carefully into any woman’s eyes in my life, not even my mother’s. Recently, especially during the time I was in Istanbul, I had intended to fight this meaningless shame, had tried to be free with some young girls I met through friends. But the moment I saw the slightest interest from them, all my intentions and decisions would fly away. I was never an innocent person: in times when I was alone, I would live scenes with these women who came alive in my head that wouldn’t even occur to the most skilled lovers; I would feel the intoxicating pressure of hot and throbbing lips in my mouth, several times stronger than it could be in reality.
But this picture in a fur coat that I had seen in the exhibition had enveloped me to a degree that wouldn’t allow me even to touch her in imagination. Let alone imagining a love scene with her, I couldn’t even think of sitting face to face like two friends. In contrast, the desire to go and watch that painting, to lose myself for hours in those eyes I was certain weren’t looking at me, was gradually increasing. Throwing my coat on my back, I took the road to the exhibition again; and this state continued for days.
Every day, always in the afternoon, I would go there, walking in the corridors as if looking at the paintings, slowly but with great impatience, forcibly restraining my steps that wanted to reach their true goal; plunging into contemplation of the “Madonna in a Fur Coat” before which I stood as if it had randomly caught my eye, I would wait there until the doors closed. I had noticed that the exhibition guards and many painters who were there every day had now memorized me. As soon as I entered, a smile would play on their faces and their eyes would follow this strange painting enthusiast for a long time. In recent days I had also given up the role I tried to play before other paintings. I would go directly before the woman in a fur coat, sitting on one of the benches there and turning my eyes now to what was before me, now, when they tired of looking, ahead of me.
It was certain that this state of mine would arouse the curiosity of those at the exhibition. Indeed, one day what I feared happened to me. A young woman I had encountered several times in the hall, whom I understood from her conversations with long-haired, black-dressed painters with huge neckties to be a painter herself, approached me:
“Are you very curious about this painting?” she said. “You watch it every day!”
I quickly raised my eyes and immediately lowered them. The rather bold and somewhat mocking smile of the person across from me had affected me badly.
The long-nosed shoes standing a step before me were looking at my face as if waiting for an answer. The legs shooting out from under her short skirt, which I couldn’t deny were truly shapely, were stretching slightly from time to time, creating a sweet wave spreading under the stocking to her round kneecaps. Seeing she had no intention of leaving without getting an answer from me:
“Yes!” I said, “It’s a beautiful painting…” Then, I don’t know why, feeling the need to tell a lie, to give a kind of explanation, I murmured:
“It looks very much like my mother…”
“Ah, so that’s why you come and look for hours like this!”
“Yes!”
“Is your mother dead?”
“No!”
She waited as if wanting me to continue speaking. I, with my head still down, added:
“She’s very far away!”
“Oh!.. Where?”
“In Turkey!”
“Are you Turkish?”
“Yes!”
“I had understood you were foreign!”
She gave a light laugh. In a very free manner, she sat beside me. When she crossed her legs one over the other, her skirt opened up to behind her kneecaps, and I noticed heat rushing to my face as always. This state of mine seemed to amuse the person beside me even more. She asked again:
“Don’t you have a picture of your mother?”
The woman’s unnecessary curiosity was bothering me. I noticed she was doing this purely for mockery. The other painters were looking at us from afar and were certainly smirking.
“I do but… This is different!” I said.
“Oh!.. So this is different.”
And immediately she gave a small laugh.
I made a motion to get up and flee. The woman, noticing this:
“Don’t be disturbed, I’m going… I’m leaving you alone with your mother!” she said.
She got up, walked a few steps. Then suddenly stopping, she approached me again; in a serious, even somewhat sad manner nothing like what she’d spoken before:
“Would you really want to have a mother like this?” she said.
“Yes… And how I would want it!”
“Oh!..”
Turning her back, she moved away with quick and young steps. I raised my head and looked. Her bobbed hair was bouncing above the nape of her neck, and because she had put her hands in her jacket pockets, her narrow suit was gripping her body very tightly.
When I thought about how I had given away my lie with my last sentence, I fell into great confusion. I immediately got up from my place and burst into the street without daring to turn my eyes around.
Inside me was a feeling as if bidding farewell to a person I had met and gotten used to on a journey but was forced to part from too quickly. I knew I could no longer set foot in this exhibition. People, people who understood nothing from each other, were making me flee from here too.
As soon as I returned to the pension, thinking the old meaningless days would begin again, that at dinner I would listen to plans for Germany’s salvation or complaints of middle-class people who had lost their fortunes because of inflation, that in my room I would plunge into Turgenev’s or Theodor Storm’s stories, I realized how my life had begun to take on meaning in these last two weeks and what it meant to lose this. A possibility, a possibility I didn’t even dare to consider the existence of, had drawn close to my empty and meaninglessly flowing life and then, suddenly, as sudden and causeless as it came, had withdrawn and gone. I was only understanding this now. Since I knew myself, I had spent all my days, without my knowledge and without admitting it to myself, searching for a person, and because of this I had fled from all other people. That painting had convinced me, even for a while, that it was possible to find this person I was seeking, that I was even very close to her, had awakened a hope in me that could never be put to sleep again. That’s why this time the disappointment I fell into was proportionately great. I fled my surroundings even more, hid inside myself even more. I was thinking of writing to my father and telling him I wanted to return now. But if he asked “What did you learn in Europe?” what would I answer? I decided to stay a few more months, to learn enough “perfumed soap-making” during this period to please him. I applied again to the same Swedish firm and, despite being received somewhat more coldly, began attending the factory regularly. I was carefully noting in a notebook the formulas and methods I learned, trying to read books written about this profession.
The Dutch widow at the pension, Frau Tiedemann, had also advanced her friendship with me. She would give me children’s novels she bought for her ten-year-old son who was at boarding school, have me read them, ask my opinion. Some evenings after dinner she would come to my room with a meaningless excuse, sit and chat for a long time. Usually she would try to learn what adventures I had with German girls; when I told her the truth, she would wave her index finger with a knowing smile meaning “you sly dog you!” and narrow her eyes. One day she had suggested we walk together in the afternoon; returning home in the evening, she had insisted on taking me into a beer hall. Without realizing it, we had drunk until late. Although I had drunk beer from time to time since coming here, I had never been like that evening. At one point I remember feeling the whole hall begin to spin above my head and losing myself, sprawling into Frau Tiedemann’s lap. When I came to myself after a while, I saw the good-hearted widow woman wiping my face with a handkerchief she had waiters dampen. Let’s go home immediately, I said. The woman insisted on paying the bill herself. When we went outside, I noticed she was swaying no less than me. In each other’s arms, we were advancing, bumping into passersby.
Since the time was approaching midnight, the streets weren’t very crowded. At one place, a strange incident occurred while crossing to the other side of the street: when we were crossing to the opposite sidewalk, Frau Tiedemann’s foot caught on the curb; the somewhat plump woman, wanting to hold onto me to avoid falling, probably because she was taller than me, ended up wrapping around my neck. But this time, although her balance had returned, she wasn’t letting me go; she was squeezing me tighter in her arms.
I don’t know if it was the effect of drunkenness or what, but I too had forgotten timidity and such, had embraced her tightly. Suddenly I felt this thirty-five-year-old woman’s hungry lips on my face. Although her breath was somewhat hot, this overflowing demonstration of affection spread inside me like a heavy but beautiful smell. Several people passing around us laughed and offered congratulations. At that moment my eyes caught on a woman coming toward us from under the electric pole about ten steps ahead. I felt my entire body begin to tremble with an indescribable excitement. The woman still clinging to me, noticing this, was becoming even more heated, drowning my hair in kisses. But I was now trying to free myself and wanting to look at the woman approaching us. It was her. The face I saw for a moment had flashed like lightning in my foggy head. This, inside wildcat fur, with her pale face, black eyes, and longish nose, was exactly the painting I had seen in the exhibition, the “Madonna in a Fur Coat.” She was walking with that peculiar sad and weary expression on her face, as if unaware of her surroundings. When she saw us, she was astonished for a second, and at this moment our gazes met. I saw something resembling a smile pass through her eyes.
I shook as if I had been whipped on the back of my neck. Despite my drunkenness, I understood very well the disaster of encountering her for the first time in such a state and what it meant for her to pass her first judgment on me with such a smile. I finally freed myself from the old woman’s arms. I immediately wanted to run and catch up with the “Madonna in a Fur Coat.” I went to the corner, not knowing what I would do, what I would say. She had disappeared. I looked around for minutes; there was no one. Frau Tiedemann had come beside me again, asking: “What happened to you? Tell me, what happened to you?”
Taking my arm, she dragged me toward home.
On the road she was pressing my arm to her body, leaning toward my face. Her hot breath had now begun to seem unbearably heavy to me… Despite this, I wasn’t resisting. I had never been accustomed to resisting anyone in my life. All I could do was flee, and I couldn’t do that now either. The woman would catch me before I went three steps. At the same time, that coincidence from a moment ago had made me dizzy. Because my drunkenness was decreasing, I was trying to think coherently and wanted to remember the eyes that had looked at my face and smiled a few minutes ago. But all of this now seemed like a dream to me. No, I hadn’t seen her. I couldn’t have encountered her in such a situation. All of this was nightmares born of the woman beside me embracing me, kissing me, and circulating her breath on my face… I wanted to get home immediately, throw myself on my bed, fall asleep at once, and escape from meaningless delusions.
But the woman had no intention of letting me go. As we approached home, her movements were taking a more passionate form; her arm, strengthened by unassuaged passions, was squeezing me tighter.
On the stairs she threw herself on my neck again; I escaped with a nimble movement and shot upstairs. She was running after me, shaking the stairs with her large body and breathing as if choking.
As I was trying to insert the key into my room door, from the other end of the corridor, the former colonial merchant Herr Döppke appeared.
He was walking slowly. I understood he had stayed up until this time waiting for us, and I took a deep breath; everyone in the pension knew he harbored certain sweet hopes toward this widow woman who was in rather comfortable circumstances and in the full fiery age of her womanhood. In fact, it was said that the woman wasn’t very foreign to these sincere feelings either, that she had certain definite plans to bind with soft ties this old bachelor who, despite passing fifty, maintained his vigor. When the two friends encountered each other in the corridor, they paused for a while. I immediately entered my room and locked the door from inside. Outside, a conversation in whispers began and continued for a long time.
It was understood that questions asked cautiously were answered without hurting, and that these explanations had a softening effect on ears determined to believe. After a bit, footsteps and whispers moved toward the other end of the corridor and disappeared.
As soon as I got into bed, I had fallen asleep. Toward morning I saw distressing dreams; the woman in a fur coat appeared before me in various forms, making me writhe with that terrible and crushing smile. I wanted to tell her something, to explain something, to give an explanation, but couldn’t succeed. The sharp expression of her black eyes locked my jaws. The more I saw myself condemned by her with an unchanging judgment, the more I writhed, falling into deep despair. I had awakened before it was even light outside. My head ached. I tried to read something by lighting the lamp. Lines were vanishing before my eyes, and in the middle of the white pages, in mists, two black eyes laughing with silent and inner laughter at my wretchedness were appearing. Although I knew that only a vision had appeared to my eyes last evening, I couldn’t calm down. I got up, dressed, and went out into the street. It was a cold, damp Berlin morning. On the streets there was no one but children leaving milk, butter, and small breads at houses with small hand carts. At corners, a few police were struggling to tear off and rip up revolutionary proclamations pasted on walls during the night. Following the canal’s edge, I walked to the Tiergarten. On the still water, two swans were gliding, motionless as toys. In the forest, the meadows and benches were soaking wet. On one of these benches were a crumpled newspaper and several hairpins from being sat on. Seeing these, I remembered my state last evening. Frau Tiedemann must have dropped quite a few hairpins at the beer hall and on the roads too, and now probably, sleeping a comfortable sleep beside her elderly room neighbor Herr Döppke, she wasn’t thinking she needed to get up before the maids woke in the morning and pass to her own room.
I went to the factory earlier than usual and greeted the doorkeeper very warmly. I had resolved to throw myself into work with both hands and escape in this way from the distressing delusions born of idleness. Beside soap cauldrons into which rose essence was being poured, I took long notes in my notebook. I recorded which factories’ products the presses stamping the soaps were. I was already seeing myself as the manager of the large and modern soap factory I would establish in Havran, imagining how pink, egg-shaped soaps bearing the stamp “Mehmet Raif Havran,” in soft and fragrant papers, would spread throughout Turkey.
Toward noon I noticed my distress had decreased and I had begun to see life somewhat rosily. I understood how I had upset myself with meaningless things, found all the fault in my daydreaming, in withdrawing into myself and creating delusions. But I would change now. I would also reduce reading outside professional books. What reason was there for an aristocrat’s son like me not to be happy?
My father’s olive groves, two factories and a soap factory in Havran were waiting for me. If I also bought my sisters’ shares, who were both married to wealthy husbands, I would live as a respected merchant of my country. The enemy had been driven from the homeland; the national army had liberated Havran. My father was enthusiastic in his letters, lining up patriotic sentences one after another. Even we here had tasted the excitement of victory by holding a large gathering at the embassy. From time to time, departing from my usual silence, I would give advice to Herr Döppke and the unemployed officers beside him on how Germany would be saved, based on what I knew about the Anatolian movement… So there was nothing to be distressed about. Why was a meaningless painting—even if it were meaningful, what would it matter—a novel based on imaginary events, playing a role in my life… No, I would change completely now…
Despite this, when evening came and it grew dark, a causeless melancholy descended on me. I decided to eat dinner outside so as not to encounter Frau Tiedemann at the table, and drank two double beers. But despite all my efforts, my daytime optimism wasn’t returning. It was as if there were something constantly being squeezed and crushed around my heart. Hoping I would escape this bad state of mind if I walked in the open air, I quickly paid the bill. Outside, a fine rain was falling and the sky was overcast. It was possible to watch the red reflection of the city’s abundant lights in the low clouds above us. I came to the wide and long avenue they called Kurfürstendamm. Here the sky took on a completely bright quality; even the raindrops pouring from hundreds of meters above were being painted orange. Both sides of the avenue were covered with cafés, cinemas, theaters. On the sidewalks, people strolled without breaking their lines despite the rain. I was walking slowly, thinking about meaningless things with no connection to each other. As if I wanted to push away an idea insisting on coming into my head.
I was reading every sign, examining every light advertisement. I went back and forth several times like this on this avenue stretching for kilometers. Then turning right, I walked toward Wittenberg Square. Here, on the sidewalks before the big store they called Ka De We, some young men who had put red boots on their feet and painted their faces like women were walking around, looking at passersby with inviting eyes. I took out my watch. It was past eleven. So time had advanced this much. My steps suddenly quickened; I took the road to Nollendorf Square, which was close to them. This time I knew very well where I was going. Last evening I had encountered the “Madonna in a Fur Coat” there and at exactly this time. The square was empty. Before the big theater building on the south side, a policeman was walking. I entered the street coming from across and came to the place where Frau van Tiedemann and I had stood wrapped around each other one night before. As if the person I was seeking would suddenly appear, I fixed my eyes under the electric pole ahead. Although I had convinced myself so much that what I saw last night was a vision, a delusion of my drunk head, now here I was waiting for her, that woman, perhaps that vision. The building I had constructed since morning was blown away by winds. I was again as before, distant from the world and always a plaything of my imaginings and inner world.
Just at that moment I saw a person crossing from the middle of the square toward the street where I was. Hiding in the doorway of one of the houses there, I began to wait. When I extended my head and looked, I recognized the woman in a fur coat approaching this way with short and hard steps. This time there was no possibility of my being mistaken. I wasn’t drunk. The dry sounds her shoes made were hitting and echoing off the houses on both sides of the deserted street. My heart began to ache as if being crushed and to beat with tremendous speed.
