“Talk to the doctors, let them discharge me now,” she said. Then, as if saying something ordinary, she murmured:
“You look after me better!”
Without answering, I burst outside. The specialist wanted her to stay a few more days. We agreed. Finally, on the twenty-fifth day, I wrapped her in her fur, entered her arm and brought her down the stairs. I brought her home in a taxi; while taking her upstairs, the driver too helped by holding one of her arms; despite this, when I undressed her and put her in bed, she was in an exhausted state.
From this moment on, I truly looked after her alone. An elderly woman would come until noon, clean the house, light a large porcelain stove, cook a pot of invalid food. Despite all my insistence, Maria didn’t agree to her mother being called. Writing letters with trembling hand: “I’m fine, enjoy yourself and spend the winter there.”
“If she comes, she won’t help me, because she herself needs help… She’ll worry for nothing, will upset me too!” she was saying. Then again with that manner of not giving importance, she was murmuring:
“You’re looking after me, after all! Or are you tired, fed up?”
But saying this, she wasn’t smiling, wasn’t joking. Besides, since her illness she had hardly laughed at all. Only on the first day I saw her in the hospital had she greeted me with a smile; after that she had maintained a stubborn seriousness. When requesting something, when thanking, when talking about any matter, she was always serious and thoughtful. At night I would wait at her bedside until late; in the morning I would come early. Later, bringing a rather large divan from the other rooms and her mother’s bedcovers, I began sleeping in the same room. The incident that passed between us on the morning of New Year’s Day—actually, it wasn’t permissible to call this an incident—that small conversation had not been mentioned even with a word. Everything—my visits to the hospital, my taking her and bringing her home, our life here—was considered so natural as not to need discussing. We both avoided the slightest allusion to these matters. But it was certain she was thinking some things. While I was wandering around doing various tasks in the room, while reading books to her aloud, I felt her eyes constantly following me, staying on me without ever tiring. It was as if she was searching for something in me. One day, in the evening under the light of the lamp, I was reading her Jacob Wassermann’s long story “The Never-Kissed Mouth.” Here was mentioned a teacher who had never been loved by anyone in his life and had aged waiting for a love, a human love, although not admitting it even to himself.
The poor man’s spiritual loneliness, the hopes born only inside himself and dying again quickly without being sensed by anyone, were depicted with a skillful pen. After the story ended, Maria was silent for a long time, closing her eyes. Then she turned to me, in an indifferent voice:
“You didn’t tell me what you did in the days we didn’t see each other after New Year’s!” she said.
“I did nothing!” I answered.
“Really?”
“I don’t know…”
There was silence again. She was touching this subject for the first time. But I wasn’t surprised. In fact, I noticed I had been waiting for this question for a long time. But instead of answering, I fed her her dinner. Then I covered her nicely, sat at her bedside again and:
“Should I read something?” I said.
“As you know!”
After dinner, I had made it a habit to put her to sleep by reading the most boring things possible. I hesitated for a moment:
“If you want, I’ll tell you what I did in the five days after New Year’s; you’ll fall asleep faster!” I said.
She didn’t laugh at this joke of mine; didn’t answer either; only nodded her head as if saying “Speak.” Slowly, pausing occasionally to collect my memory, I began. I told how I left home, where I went, what I saw and thought at Wannsee, how at night I wandered on the road where she would pass and then around her house, finally, on the last evening, when I learned she was in the hospital, how I ran there and waited outside until morning.
My voice was very calm. I was as unemotional as if narrating events belonging to someone else. I was dwelling on details, pouring out what went through me, trying to remember and analyze one by one. She too wasn’t moving at all. She had closed her eyes. She was motionless enough to make one think she was asleep. Despite this, I was continuing. It was as if I was repeating all this more to myself. I was saying my feelings, the nature of which I myself couldn’t yet understand, as they were, arguing about them, moving to other things without reaching a conclusion. Only once, when telling that I wanted to say goodbye to her on the telephone, she opened her eyes, looked at my face carefully, closed them again. Not a single line of her face was moving.
I wasn’t hiding anything, didn’t see the need for this. Because I had no purpose. The events I lived in seemed foreign to me, like memories from which long years had passed. A distance had formed between me and them. For this reason, in my judgments both about myself and about her, far from every kind of secret thought and calculation, I was almost merciless. None of the piles of convincing sentences that had attacked my head on the nights I waited for her on the roads came to my mind, and I wasn’t searching for them. Inside me was no interest other than a simple “need to narrate.” I was valuing events not in terms of their proportion to me, but in terms of their own importance. And she, although not making even the smallest movement, was listening to me with all her attention.
I felt this very well. When telling what I thought while watching her at the hospital bedside, how I imagined her as dead, she blinked her eyes a few times… That’s all…
After finishing my words, I was silent. She too was silent. We remained like this perhaps ten minutes. Finally she turned her head to me, opened her eyes, for the first time in a long time smiled faintly (or I thought so), and in a very calm voice:
“Shouldn’t we sleep now?” she said.
I got up from my place; I arranged the place where I would sleep; I undressed and turned off the electricity; but I couldn’t sleep until late.
I understood from the inaudibility of her breathing that she too was awake. Although heaviness slowly descended on my eyes, I waited for the beginning of this regular and soft breath rustle I had become accustomed to hearing every evening. I was making effort not to lose consciousness and was constantly moving. Despite this, I was the first to fall.
In the morning I opened my eyes early. The room was still dark. Very little light was seeping through the curtains. I couldn’t find the sound I was waiting for again: her breathing. In the room was a silence frightening to people. It was as if we were both waiting with all the tension of our souls. Many things were accumulating inside both of us. I felt this almost in a material way. At the same time I had fallen into tremendous curiosity: I wonder when she woke up? Or didn’t she sleep at all, I was saying… Despite all our motionlessness, an air was filling the inside of the room that our thoughts circling around each other were spreading.
I slowly raised my head; my eyes accustomed to the darkness noticed Maria was leaning her back against a pillow and looking at me. “Good morning!” I said and went outside and washed my face. When I entered the room again, the sick woman was in the same position. I opened the curtains. I removed the night lamp. I arranged the couch where I had slept. I opened the door for the maid and helped Maria drink her milk.
I was doing all these things with almost no talking. Every day I was getting up the same way, occupying myself with the same tasks, going to the soap factory until noon, and in the afternoon, by reading her newspapers or books, by talking about what I saw and heard outside, I was finding evening. Was it necessary for it to be like this, or wasn’t it? I didn’t know. Everything had taken this path by itself and I was only being subject. Inside me was no desire. I wasn’t thinking of either the past or the future; I only knew the moments I was living. My soul was calm like a windless and wrinkleless sea.
After shaving and dressing, I asked Maria’s permission to go:
“Where are you going?” she said.
I was astonished:
“Don’t you know?” I said. “To the factory!”
“Can’t you not go today?”
“I can, but why?”
“I don’t know… I want you to stay beside me all day!”
I counted this as a sickness caprice; but I didn’t answer. I began leafing through the morning newspapers the maid had left at the edge of the bed.
In Maria’s state was a strange panic, almost a disturbance. Putting the newspapers aside, I went and sat beside her and put my hand on her forehead:
“How are you today?”
“I’m fine… Very fine…”
Although she made no movement, I understood she didn’t want me to remove my hand from her face. I felt my fingers sticking to her cheeks, her forehead. As if all her will had gathered in her skin.
In a voice trying to appear as indifferent as possible:
“So you’re very fine!” I said. “Well, why didn’t you sleep at all last night?”
She was surprised for a moment. A redness spread from her neck toward her cheeks. It was understood she was struggling not to answer this question. Suddenly she closed her eyes; as if feeling great weakness, her head leaned back; in a barely audible voice:
“Ah Raif,” she said.
“What’s the matter?”
She pulled herself together a bit. Breathing quickly:
“Nothing!” she said. “I don’t want you to leave my side today… Do you know why? I think the things you told yesterday evening will attack my head as soon as you leave, won’t leave me in peace even for a minute…”
“If I had known, I wouldn’t have told!” I said.
Shaking her head, she answered:
“No, I don’t mean it like that… I’m not saying it for myself… I can no longer trust you! I’m afraid of leaving you alone… Yes, last night I hardly slept at all. I thought of you all the time. What you did after leaving me, how you wandered around the hospital, I saw in all detail, even with the parts you didn’t tell… That’s why I can no longer leave you alone! I’m afraid… Not just for today… I’ll never separate you from my side again!..”
Small beads of sweat had appeared on her forehead. I slowly wiped them. At this time I felt a warm wetness in my palm. I looked at her face in astonishment. She was smiling; for the first time in a long time, she was smiling openly, cleanly; but from the corners of her eyes toward her cheeks, tears were seeping. I grabbed her head with both hands at once and laid it on my arm. Now she was laughing more, more comfortably; but the tears had multiplied in the same proportion. She wasn’t making the slightest sound; her chest wasn’t shaking with any sob. I couldn’t imagine one could cry this comfortably, in this much calm in the world. I held her hands standing like two small white birds on the white bedcover and began playing with them. I was curling her fingers, opening them again, and making her hand into a fist, squeezing it in my palm. On the inside of her hand were thin lines like a leaf’s veins.
I slowly left her head on the pillow:
“You’ll tire!” I said. Her eyes shone:
“No, no!” she said, clinging to my arm. Then as if talking to herself:
“Now I know what was lacking between us!” she said. “This deficiency belonged not to you but to me… I was lacking belief… Because I absolutely couldn’t believe you loved me this much, I was thinking I wasn’t in love with you… I understand this now. So people have taken from me the ability to believe… But now I believe… You made me believe… I love you… Not like mad, but very sanely I love you… I want you… Inside me is a tremendous desire… If only I were well!.. When will I get well, I wonder?..”
I didn’t answer; rubbing my face to the corner of her eyes, I dried her tears.
After this, until she recovered and got up, I never left her side. When I was forced to leave her for an hour or two to buy food and fruit or to stop by the pension and change laundry, time seemed terribly long to me. While holding her by the arm and sitting her on a couch, or leaving a thin cardigan on her back, I felt the endless happiness of having dedicated my life to another person. Sitting across from each other before the window, we would watch outside for hours, not talk about anything, only occasionally look at each other and laugh; her illness and my happiness had made us childish. A few weeks later she gained a bit more strength. In good weather we began going out into the street together and walking for half an hour or so.
Before going out, I would prepare her carefully; because coughing seized her when she bent down, I would even put on her stockings. Then I would pass her fur coat onto her back, bring her down the stairs slowly!.. And we would rest a bit on a bench about a hundred fifty meters beyond the house. From there we would go to the edge of one of the ponds in the Tiergarten, watch the mossy waters and swans.
And one day everything ended… It ended in such a simple, such a definite way that for me it wasn’t possible to understand the magnitude of the matter at first moment… I was only a bit surprised, fairly upset; but I never thought this event would have such a big, such unchangeable effect on my life.
In recent days I was hesitating to go to the pension. Despite having paid for my room in advance, my not stopping by there at all was causing the landlords to treat me a bit coldly. One day Frau Heppner said:
“If you’ve moved elsewhere, let us know so we can inform the police. Otherwise they hold us responsible!”
I wanted to pass the matter off with a joke:
“Is it possible for me to leave you?” I said and entered my room. This room where I had lived for more than a year, my belongings most of which I had brought from Turkey, the books thrown here and there, all seemed completely foreign to me. Opening my trunks, I took some things I needed, wrapped them in a newspaper. At this time the maid girl entered:
“There’s a telegram for you; it’s been waiting for three days!” she said and extended a folded paper.
At first I understood nothing. I absolutely couldn’t take the telegram from the maid’s hand. No, this paper couldn’t have any connection with me… I hoped I could push away a disaster circling around me by not learning what was inside it.
The maid looked at me in astonishment; seeing I made no movement, she left the telegram on the table and left. I jumped from my place; this time, so whatever would happen would happen as soon as possible, I quickly opened the telegram.
It was from my brother-in-law. “Your father died. I wired travel money. Come immediately!” it said. That was all. Four or five simple words whose meaning was very clear… Despite this, I looked at the paper in my hand for a long time. I read each word one by one and several times. Then I got up, squeezed the package I had just prepared under my arm, went outside.
What had happened? I saw nothing around me had changed. Everything was as it was when I had come a moment ago. There was no difference either in me or in the objects surrounding me. Maria was certainly waiting for me at the window. Despite this, I was no longer the “me” of half an hour ago. Thousands of kilometers away, a person had ceased to live; although this event had occurred days, perhaps even weeks before, neither I nor Maria had sensed anything. There was no difference between the days. But suddenly, a paper the size of a palm was turning everything upside down, taking me from this world and carrying me there, reminding me I belonged not here but to the distant places the telegram came from.
I understood very well how mistaken I had been in supposing the life surrounding me here for several months was real, in pinning hope on its continuation. On the other hand, I was still struggling not to accept this reality. This shouldn’t have been like this. Being born in any place and being the son of any man wasn’t this important. What was truly important was attaining this rare happiness in this world where two people finding each other was so difficult. The other side was all details. These had to arrange themselves, had to conform to the main big point, to the reality of having found each other.
But I knew very well this wouldn’t be so. I was seeing that our life was the plaything of various unimportant details, because actual life consisted of details. The logic of our logic and life’s logic never fit each other. A woman could look outside from the train window; at this time a piece of coal could enter her eye; she could rub this without giving importance, and this tiny incident could blind one of the world’s most beautiful eyes. Or a tile, moving from its place with a light wind, could shatter a head the era envied. Just as it doesn’t occur to us to think which is important—the eye or the piece of coal, the tile or the head—and just as we’re forced to accept all these without any reflection, we were forced to endure with the same resignation life’s many other kinds of caprices.
Was it really like this? In the world there were incidents whose advance couldn’t be prevented and we couldn’t understand their causes and logic—this was true; but there were some illogics and wrongnesses that, although supposedly modeled on nature, it was very possible not to do. For example, what were the things binding me to Havran? Three or five olive groves, a few soap factories, a few relatives I was never curious to know. Whereas here I was bound with all my life, with all my living parts. Then why couldn’t I stay here? Very simple: the affairs in Havran would be left upside down, my brothers-in-law wouldn’t send me money, and I would struggle here unable to do anything. Additionally, there were many other things: passports, embassies, residence permits… There was no possibility of understanding how necessary these were for human lives, but certainly they were important enough to give direction to my life.
When I explained the matter to Maria Puder, she was silent for a while. On her face was a strange smile; she was looking ahead as if to say “Didn’t I say so?” If I poured out everything going through my soul, I thought I would be ridiculous; I was trying to maintain my composure with tremendous effort. Only several times I said:
“What should I do? What should I do?”
“What will you do? Of course you’ll go… For a while I’ll go too. In any case, I won’t be able to work much longer. I’ll stay in Prague with my mother. Country life there is certainly good for my health. I’ll spend the spring there.”
Her talking about projects belonging to herself, leaving me aside, seemed a bit strange to me. She was looking me over with occasional evasive glances.
“When will you go?” she said.
“I don’t know? I should leave when I receive the travel money…”
“Perhaps I’ll go earlier…”
“Oh?!..”
My astonishment made her laugh:
“You’re still a child, Raif!” she said. “To show panic and excitement in matters that can’t be prevented is childishness. Besides, we still have time; we’ll think and decide many things…”
I went outside again to put my small affairs in order, to cut my connection with the pension. When I saw Maria almost ready for travel in the evening, I was thoroughly astonished.
“What need is there to waste time for nothing?” she said. “I’ll go as soon as possible and leave you free to complete your travel preparations. Then… What do I know… I decided to leave Berlin before you, that’s all… I don’t know the reason myself…”
“As you wish!..”
We didn’t talk about anything else. We didn’t touch with even a small word on the things we intended to think about and decide.
The next day, she left by evening train. We didn’t go out at all in the afternoon. We sat across from each other before the window and watched outside. We recorded each other’s addresses in our notebooks. So her letters could find me, in each of my letters I would send an envelope with my own address written on it. Because neither was it possible for her to write Arabic letters, nor for our postal clerks in Havran to read Latin letters.
For about an hour we talked about the weather and such, that this year’s winter had lasted long, that although we had come to the end of February, snow still hadn’t left the surroundings. It was quite obvious she wanted time to pass as soon as possible. Whereas I, however absurd it was, wished the time we were side by side would stop, would never end.
Despite this, the things we talked about were astonishingly unnecessary. Occasionally we would look at each other and smile confusedly. When the time came to go to the station, we almost took deep breaths. After this, time passed terribly fast. When she settled her belongings, she insisted on descending to the platform with me, not staying in the compartment. Twenty minutes full of the same meaningless smiles seemed to me as short as one second.
A thousand and one kinds of things were passing through my mind. But rather than squeeze these into such a narrow time, I preferred not to say them at all. Whereas since yesterday it was possible to say very many things. Why were we separating so flatly?
During the last few minutes, Maria Puder seemed to have lost her calm a bit. When I determined this, I was pleased: seeing her leave without shaking at all would certainly upset me very much. She was constantly holding and releasing my hand:
“How meaningless?.. Why are you going, really?” she was complaining.
“Actually you’re the one going; I’m still here!” I said.
She appeared not to notice these words of mine. She held my arm.
“Raif… Now I’m going!” she said.
“Yes… I know!”
The train’s departure time had come. An official was closing the wagon door. Maria Puder jumped onto the stair step, then bending toward me, in a soft voice but word by word:
“Now I’m going. But whenever you call, I’ll come…” she said.
At first I didn’t understand what she meant. She too paused for a moment and added:
“Wherever you call, I’ll come!”
This time I had understood. I lunged to cling to and kiss her hands. Maria had entered inside; the train had moved silently. For a while I ran beside the window where she was, then I slowed down, waving my hand:
“I’ll call… I’ll certainly call!” I shouted.
She nodded her head, laughing. Her face and gaze showed she believed me.
Inside me was the distress of a conversation left half-finished. Why hadn’t we touched on this point since yesterday? Why had we talked about settling trunks, the pleasures of travel, this year’s winter, but hadn’t even approached things truly belonging to ourselves? But perhaps this was better. What was there to talk about at length? Wouldn’t all end in the same conclusion? Maria had found the best way… Certainly… A proposal and an acceptance… Short, without argument and without calculation! There could be no more beautiful separation than this. A bunch of beautiful words I kept in my head, burning about why I couldn’t tell her, were very helpless and colorless beside this.
Now I seemed to understand why she had set out on travel before me. After I left, Berlin would certainly be very boring for her in the first days. Even I, although I couldn’t open my eyes from running after travel preparations, passport, ticket, visa affairs, felt strange when passing through the streets we had walked together. Whereas now there was nothing to be upset about.
As soon as I returned to Turkey and put my affairs a bit in order, I would call her. That’s all… My great skill in dreaming had shown itself this time too immediately. I was seeing before my eyes the place of the beautiful mansion I would have built around Havran and the hills and forests I would take and show her around.
Four days later, I returned to Turkey via Poland and Romania. This journey, in fact many years following it, have no particularity to be written… I began thinking about the event that turned me to Turkey only after boarding the ship in Constanța. So my father had died. I felt great shame for actually realizing this so late. True, there was no reason for me to love my father with true affection; between him and me a foreignness had always remained, and if someone asked me: “Was your father a good man?” I couldn’t find an answer to give. Because I didn’t know him enough to have an idea about his goodness and badness.
My father was almost nonexistent for me as a “human”; he was only the appearance in human form of an abstract concept they called “Father.” The hairless-headed, round and gray-bearded man who entered home silently in the evenings, frowning, considering neither us nor my mother worthy of address, and the person I saw at Havuzlu coffeehouse drinking ayran, opening his chest, laughing and cursing while playing backgammon were, in my opinion, completely separate from each other… How I wished this second one could be my father…
Yet even in that state, as soon as he saw me, his face would immediately become serious:
“What are you wandering around here for?..” he would shout: “Go on, go to the coffeehouse oven, drink a sherbet and return to the neighborhood, play there!”
Even when I grew up, when I went to military service and returned, his treatment toward me didn’t change. In fact, for some reason, the more I thought I was becoming sensible, the more I seemed to become smaller in his eyes. This time he was looking somewhat contemptuously at my personal ideas and observations I put forward every other moment. His complying with my every wish in recent times was a sign he didn’t give me enough importance to condescend to argue.
Despite all this, there was nothing in my head that would tarnish his memory. I would feel not his emptiness but his absence. As I approached Havran, more melancholy descended into me. It was difficult for me to imagine our house and the whole town without him.
There’s no need to tell these things at length. In fact, I would prefer not to talk at all about the ten years following these days, but for understanding some points, at least a few pages must be devoted to these days, which are the most meaningless period of my life. In Havran I wasn’t at all welcomed well. My brothers-in-law as if mocking me, my sisters completely foreign, my mother more wretched than before. Our house was closed; my mother had moved beside my elder brother-in-law. Because he didn’t make me such an offer, I began living alone in the huge house with an old servant woman. When I wanted to take my father’s affairs into my hands, I learned he had divided the inheritance before his death. I absolutely couldn’t properly learn from my brothers-in-law what the properties falling to me were. The two soap factories weren’t mentioned at all; it turned out these had been sold by my father a while ago, moreover to one of my brothers-in-law. Their price, in fact generally the cash monies and gold coins rumored to be quite abundant with my father, weren’t around. My mother wasn’t aware of anything. When I asked:
“What do I know, my child! The late one certainly left without informing where he buried them. Your uncles never left his side in his last days… Would it occur to him he would die?.. It’s obvious he didn’t say where the burial was… What should we do now? If we went to a fortune-teller at least… They know everything!” she was saying.
Indeed, after this my mother didn’t leave a fortune-teller unvisited around Havran. With their advice, not a tree root remained unexcavated in the olive groves, not a wall edge remained undug in the house. She spent the five or ten pieces of gold remaining in her possession for this purpose. My sisters too were going to fortune-tellers together but weren’t approaching expenses much; I was especially aware they were inwardly laughing at my brothers-in-law’s burial searches that had no end.
Because harvest season had passed, there was no possibility of getting anything from the olive groves. By selling the next years’ harvest of some of these, I obtained a few kuruş. My purpose was to get through this summer somehow, at the start of the coming autumn, as soon as olive season began, to make all my effort to fix my situation and immediately bring Maria Puder.
After coming to Turkey, we corresponded frequently. In these muddy spring and suffocating summer days when I was occupied with a bunch of absurd affairs, what gave me a bit of relief were her letters and the hours I wrote letters to her. About a month after I came, she had returned to Berlin with her mother. I was sending my letters to Potsdam Square post office; she herself would go and get them from there. In mid-summer she had once written some strange things. She was informing me she had very beautiful news to give me, but would tell this only when she came and in person. (I had written I hoped to call her in autumn!) After this, although I asked repeatedly in many letters, she didn’t write what this good news was. She kept saying “Wait, you’ll learn when I come!”
Yes, I waited; not only until autumn but exactly ten years I waited… And I learned this “beautiful” news exactly ten years later… I learned it just yesterday evening… But let’s leave this now and tell everything in order.
All summer, boots on my feet, a horse under me, I wandered the olive groves in mountains and hills. I was seeing with astonishment that my father, for some reason, had left me the most barren, most roadless, most stunted places. In contrast, the olive groves in the plain, watered and close to town, whose each tree gave more than half a sack of harvest, had been left to my sisters, that is, to my brothers-in-law. I understood that most of the trees in the places I wandered had begun to go wild because for years they hadn’t been pruned and cleaned, that in my father’s time no one had bothered to come and take harvest from these mountaintops.
Taking advantage of my father’s illness, my mother’s wretchedness and my sisters’ cowardice, quite a few schemes seemed to have been turned in my absence. But I hoped to fix everything by working tirelessly; I was taking new courage and enthusiasm from each letter coming from Maria.
At the start of October, exactly when olive affairs were beginning to heat up and I was thinking of calling her, suddenly the letters stopped coming. I had had the house repaired; among much household goods I had ordered from Istanbul, naturally amid the insults and astonishment of all Havran people, primarily my relatives, I had brought a bathtub and had it installed there after laying tiles in the old washroom.
Because I hadn’t yet divulged the reason for this to anyone, everyone was attributing this action of mine to dandyism, to superficial European imitation, to know-it-all-ness. Especially a man like me who hadn’t yet put his affairs into some order giving the few kuruş that came into his hand by borrowing or selling harvest to a mirrored cabinet and bathtub was outright madness. I was inwardly laughing at these accusations. There was no possibility they could understand me. I absolutely wasn’t obliged to give explanations either.
But Maria’s not writing me back although fifteen or twenty days had passed put me badly in panic. My mind ready to doubt, to obsess, began making me writhe with a thousand and one kinds of possibilities. When I couldn’t get answers to the letters I wrote one after another, I fell completely into despair. Besides, the interval between her last letters had gradually opened and pages seemed gradually to fill with less and more difficulty… I poured all her letters before me and read them one by one. In those written in recent months were a bit of confusion, things wanting to hide, and evasive, secretive expressions not very fitting to the always-open Maria. In fact, there were times I hesitated whether she wanted me to call her as soon as possible or was afraid of my calling and upset she would be forced to go back on her word. Now I was deriving various meanings from every line, from every half-finished expression, from every joke, and I was going mad.
Everything I wrote went to waste and all my fears came true. I never again received news from Maria Puder and couldn’t hear her name… Only yesterday… But we haven’t gotten there yet… A month later, the last letters I had sent came back with the notation “returned to sender because not collected from post office.” Then I cut my hope from everything. When I think how much I changed in a few days, I’m astonished even today. I noticed I had become dregs, as if something giving me the ability to move, see, hear, feel, think, in short to live, had been pulled and taken from inside me.
This time I wasn’t like the days following New Year’s Eve night either. Then I had never been this hopeless. The consciousness of being close to her, the thought of going and talking with her, convincing her, had never left me. But now I was completely helpless. This tremendous distance between was tying my hands and arms. I was shutting myself in the house, wandering from room to room, reading her letters and my returned letters again and again, dwelling on points that had escaped my eye until then and laughing bitterly.
My interest in my affairs, in fact generally in myself, had suddenly decreased, had become almost nonexistent. I left the tasks of shaking the olives, gathering them, taking them to the factory and extracting oil in the hands of this person and that. Even if sometimes I pulled on my boots and went out to the countryside, I preferred to wander in parts where I would see no human face; I would come home at midnight, lie down on the cushion and after a few hours of sleep, the next morning I would wake with a bitter feeling saying “why am I still living?”
The empty, purposeless, aimless days before I met Maria Puder had begun again, in a much more torturous state than before. There was one difference: the place of my ignorance that made me suppose life consisted of this was now taken by the torment of having learned once that one could also live differently in the world. I was no longer aware of my surroundings at all. I felt there was no possibility I could take pleasure from anything.
For a while, a short while, that woman had freed me from my usual helpless, indolent state, had taught me I was a man, or rather human, that even inside me were parts suitable for living, that the world might not be as meaningless as supposed. But as soon as I lost the connection between her and me, as soon as I escaped from her influence, I had returned to my old state. I understood now how much I needed her. I wasn’t a person who could walk alone in life. I always needed a support like her. It wasn’t possible for me to live deprived of these. Despite this I lived… But, here’s the result in the open… If it’s permissible to call this living, I lived…
I never again received news from Maria. The pension owner in Berlin, in her answer, was informing that Frau van Tiedemann was no longer staying with them, and for this reason she couldn’t give the information I wanted. Who else could I ask? When they returned from Prague with her mother, she had written they had moved to a new house. But I didn’t know the address. When I thought how few people I had met during the nearly two years I stayed in Germany, I was astonished. I hadn’t gone anywhere but Berlin; I knew the city up to its dead-end streets more or less. I hadn’t left a museum, painting gallery, botanical and zoological garden, forest and lake unvisited. Despite this, of the millions of people living in this city, I had spoken with only a few, had known only one.
Perhaps even this was enough. One person was certainly sufficient for one person. But when even that wasn’t there? When everything turned out to be a dream, a deceptive dream, a complete delusion, what could be done? This time I had lost the ability to believe and hope. Such a distrust, such a bitterness toward people had appeared inside me that even I was sometimes afraid of this.
Whoever it was, I was considering everyone I came in contact with as an enemy, at least as a harmful creature. As years passed, this feeling intensified rather than losing its power. The doubt I felt toward people rose to the degree of hatred. I fled from those wanting to approach me. I was most afraid of the people I found closest to myself or thought I would find. “After even she did this!..” I was saying… What she had done wasn’t known; and mainly for this reason my imagination was dwelling on the worst possibilities and passing the heaviest judgments. That’s right… At a moment of separation, the easiest solution not to keep a word given with the enthusiasm of a simple excitement was to cut the relationship completely without any argument. Letters aren’t collected from the post office… Answers aren’t given… Things supposed to exist would disappear in a moment. Who knows what new adventure, what close and more reasonable happiness was now opening its arms to her. Leaving this and throwing herself into an unknown life, into an adventure whose outcome was unknown, by clinging to a word said to a naive child partly to please him—this wasn’t work her always-functioning head would accept.
But why, although I thought all these things so subtly, could I absolutely not adapt myself to events? Why was I so hesitant to step onto every new road appearing before me in life; why was I meeting every approaching person with anxiety, as if they were coming to do me evil? Sometimes I would forget myself for a while; it would happen that I found aspects close to myself in a person. But that terrible judgment settled in my head in a dead-end way would immediately show itself; “Don’t forget, don’t forget, don’t forget that she was closer to you… Despite that, she did this…” it was inviting me to reality. If I saw any person had approached me up to one step and fell into hopes, I would immediately pull myself together: “No, no, she had approached me much more… There was no longer even distance between us… But here’s the end!” I was saying.
Not to believe, to be unable to believe… Every day, every moment I felt how terrible this was. All the moves I made to escape from this feeling went to waste… I got married… On that very day, I understood my wife was more distant from me than everyone. I had children… I loved them, but knowing they could never give me what I had lost in life…
My affairs never gave me interest. Like a machine, I worked without knowing what I was doing. I was knowingly deceived and even felt a kind of pleasure from this. I was made a fool by my brothers-in-law and didn’t care. My debts, my debts’ interest and marriage expenses took and carried away the few pieces of property remaining in my possession. The olive groves weren’t worth money. Those with money had become accustomed to buying property from abandoned estates for nothing. A tree root that could give seven or eight liras of harvest per year couldn’t find a customer for half a lira. My brothers-in-law paid my debts and took my olive groves purely to save me from my difficult situation and not to give opportunity for the family’s fortune to be scattered… I had nothing left but the ruined fourteen-room house and a few pieces of our furniture. My wife’s father was still alive and was an official in Balıkesir; through his mediation I became an employee at a company in the provincial center. I stayed for years. As the family burden increased, my connection with life decreased; my effort that should have increased was completely disappearing. My father-in-law died and my sister-in-law and mother-in-law fell on my head. There was no possibility of supporting all of them with the forty liras I received. A distant relative of my wife had me hired in Ankara, at the bank where I now work. Because I knew languages, despite my meekness, he hoped I would advance quickly. It didn’t turn out at all as he expected. Wherever I was, my presence and absence were equal for those around me. Everywhere many opportunities would appear; many people were giving me brief hopes to spend the love I knew existed in my soul in excess, to begin living again. But I absolutely couldn’t free myself from that doubt. I had believed in one single person in the world. I had believed so much that being deceived in this had no longer left in me the power to believe.
I wasn’t angry at her. I felt there was no possibility of being angry at her, being upset at her, thinking against her. But I had broken once. This brokenness I felt toward the person I trusted most in life had almost spread to all people; because she was for me the symbol of all humanity. Then, although years had passed between, the more I saw how I was still attached to her, the more I felt a greater resentment in my soul. She would have long forgotten me. Who knows who she was living with now, who she was wandering with. In the evenings at home, while listening to the children’s noise, my wife’s slipper sounds washing dishes in the kitchen, plate clatter and my sister-in-law and mother-in-law’s mouth fights, I would close my eyes and imagine where Maria was at this moment. Perhaps again with a person of equal mind she was watching the red-leafed trees of the botanical garden or in a dim exhibition, under the light of the setting sun striking from windows, the immortal works of master brushes. One evening while returning home, I had stopped by the neighborhood grocer, had bought this and that. Just as I was about to leave the door, the radio of the bachelor living for rent in a room of the opposite house began playing Weber’s Oberon opera overture. I almost dropped the packages in my hands. One of the few operas we went to with Maria was this, and I knew she had a special affection for Weber; on the road, she would always whistle its overture. I felt a longing as fresh as if I had separated from her just yesterday. The pain of lost most valuable belongings, fortune, every kind of worldly happiness is forgotten with time. Only missed opportunities never leave the mind and make a person’s insides ache with each remembering. The reason for this is certainly the thought “This might not have been so”—otherwise people are always ready to accept things they consider destined.
