How I love examinations! But don’t misunderstand me. Not taking them, but giving them… Being an examiner is the sweetest of life’s drudgeries. During examination time, my soul changes, my feelings change, my thoughts change. In fact, you won’t believe this, my health changes. A strange vitality comes to my body, I begin to breathe well and digest well. My joy increases. My strength grows. My cheeks and lips redden. My appetite sharpens and I get hungry four times a day. If I spent my entire life in permanent examination duty, in an examination scene, I’m sure I would live two hundred years. In my opinion, one shouldn’t send a patient to change air or anything. One should make him an examiner. The health and well-being that open and pure seas, clean and cool shaded forests, blue and cloudless skies, hot and bright suns, endless and peaceful rests cannot give, examination duty gives him in a week. Examining cures anemia, tuberculosis, bronchitis, common cold, fever, rheumatism, however many chronic diseases there are, perhaps even gout, even cancer. If you’re smiling and think I’m joking, no. I’m telling the truth. Look, why? No matter how corrupted we humans become, in the darkest and most invisible depths of our spirituality, the sinister spark that nature has placed will never go out and will flare up again at every opportunity. This spark is the desire for tyranny and oppression. Look carefully at life. You will see nothing but tyranny and oppression. The superior oppresses his subordinate, the farmer his assistant, the merchant his naive customer, the bank its debtor, the shepherd his sheep, the coachman his horses. He crushes them as he wishes. The strong is always on top of the weak. Always pecks at him, if he doesn’t kill him, he makes him grovel. Why does the hunter wander in deserted fields, under harsh winds? Why does he sweat? Why does he tire? Isn’t it to tyrannize poor birds, to kill them?
Doctors call hunting “the king of sports.” Because the body’s benefit doesn’t remain only with the grace of open air and movement. Our natural inclination, our desire for tyranny and oppression is also satisfied.
For examiners, examinations are also a hunt. Such a hunt that there’s no danger of getting tired, running, sweating, catching cold, getting a cough… An excellent gymnastics of oppression! A student, pale from fear, with a pallid face, white lips, dark and thin eyebrows furrowed, weak and delicate, enters with shy and hesitant steps. The examiners are like happy and carefree executioners who never feel the final and indescribable excitement of those innocent ones to be hanged. They chat, they talk. They drink cigarettes, coffee, and especially lemonade. The student is afraid as if they’re going to take his life, why is he so afraid? I don’t know. This fear frightened even Napoleon Bonaparte, who frightened the world, so much, so much that…
Just last hunting season—I mean examination time—I was an examiner at one of the high schools. In the middle of a large, curtainless, red-painted room, we were examining the first class in French. I was as happy and cheerful as a lucky hunter who kills many quails in the cool and pure plains of autumn. To each child who entered, I was asking grammar rules that didn’t exist, tending toward Gallicism, writing incomprehensible examples, upsetting them, confusing them, breaking their grades.
Ah, those despairing eyes, those tragic looks of the yellowed student who doesn’t answer, whose voice and lips tremble… In these looks, the suddenly flaring mourning of an entire universe, an entire lost life, an entire shattered happiness slowly fades.
From my excitement I couldn’t stay still, I was talking and laughing with the other examiners. A short, pleasant, fat student entered. The teacher introduced him as being among the intelligent and very hardworking ones. I liked his manner. And I don’t know why, I didn’t want to oppress this child.
“Very well, you ask!” I said and picked up the topic about dictionaries that I had opened with the examiner next to me a while ago. This aged, thin teacher with graying yellow hair, learned and writer, with a hunchback and glasses. He had been teaching French for eighteen years. He preferred Littré to Larousse and found it very suitable for schools. I, distracted and indifferent, was leafing through Gazier’s classic dictionary on the table. On the last page there were book advertisements. The sentence “Dictionnaire des idées suggérées par les mots” caught my eye. I hadn’t seen this book. Strange! How could that be? Didn’t every word already suggest an idea to us? Then how could a dictionary of ideas be made? The skinny and elderly examiner explained how besides the meanings of each word, what special ideas it brings to our minds, the reasons for this, its philosophy. The other teacher, a young and appetited examiner from among us, was interrogating his fat, brave, cheerful and free student, writing on the blackboard:
Gargouille Gargouillement
Gargouiller Gargouillis
asking the meaning of these things, having examples given.
The face of the examiner I was talking to was bloodless enough to remind one of death, his cheeks were sunken, his mouth was colorless. If his clothes weren’t clean and proper, he would be thought a poor man who had been hungry for months, unable to find bread to eat. He continued.
“Yes, besides this, every word brings to life a different and special idea, a memory in everyone. And there are such words that for a person are an entire history, an entire life, an entire symbol.”
“Like what?…” I asked.
“How can I explain,” he said, “for example, that word Gargouillement we see on the blackboard? It reminds me in one moment of all the calamities of my broken, miserable, penniless and weary life. When I hear this word, I feel a deep despair, an indescribable excitement, an inexpressible pain.”
I smiled.
“Exaggeration, exaggeration… To whomever it may be, what else can the word ‘gurgling’ remind them of besides its meaning?”
He fixed on me the gaze that glowed with an artificial life behind the transparent lenses of his glasses. “Then listen,” he said, “let me tell you the effect of this ill-omened word on me. Then you’ll admit I’m right in my despair, you’ll see I’m not exaggerating at all.”
Then with the powerless movements of his yellow, large hands he lit a cigarette and with a light and muffled voice that only I could hear, slowly whispered his story.
“Twenty years ago… I had just graduated from the Sultani. I was handsome, knowledgeable, beautiful, a Western-style young man. I had only one fault: Poverty… My father, always drowning in debt up to his neck, was a spendthrift and debt-ridden official. We didn’t even have a house. We were moving from rental to rental. Like every poor young man who received a good education, I too became convinced of, believed in the truth that ‘happiness is nothing but wealth.’ Happiness was a right for humans. Right was power. And the materialized symbol of power in life was only money. What couldn’t be done with money? Good food, good times, good places, good women… Everything, everything came to us with money, left us along with money. After leaving school, my only thought became searching for a way to become rich. There was no hope of inheritance from near or far. Commerce and enterprise weren’t our business either. In Turkiye there were two doors from which happiness, that is, fortune, would come; either father or wife… I got used to wearing the latest fashion clothes, to wearing glasses even though I saw very well. Glasses were fashionable then. I began to wander here and there. I searched, I searched. Finally, one of my mother’s relatives found what I was looking for. The daughter of one of our former sultan Abdülhamit Khan’s servants… Her father, who was some kind of official, had died a few years before. His properties and estates exceeding ninety thousand liras had remained to this only daughter. A terrible bargain… I immediately asked for her hand. They investigated. Before giving their word, they wanted to see me once. We arranged Bonmarche. It was a Sunday. The girl got out of her four-horse carriage with her nanny and another elderly lady. I saw her and fainted. She was beautiful and elegant enough to make one not think of her wealth. Just like a tulip… She also liked me. Less than a month passed before we had the wedding. My mother-in-law had sent me five hundred liras in banknotes as a gift. Just imagine how I dressed up. Finally, on a rainy and cool autumn day… I was entering the palanquin. The mansion in Nişantaşı was practically a palace. I can’t forget the wet view from the windows that day, the illuminated shadows of the magnificent and secluded divanhanes. This angel bringing me ninety thousand liras of happiness was scattering the captive lights of a beauty unreal from reality in white clothes, as if illuminating the island drowned in grandeur, silk, gold thread, and gilt even more. Let’s not prolong it. Night came. Beyond the thick windows and closed shutters, I was hearing the rattling resembling the secret footsteps of a violent rain. My wife was so beautiful that when talking with her, I was forgetting the ‘ninety thousand liras.’ The hours passed very quickly. No need to tell. Like every genteel wedding night, we spoke in French. We talked about literature. She played piano. We spoke of music.
‘Do you like Mozart?’ ‘Yes, and Wagner?’ ‘Oh especially Verdi! That piece of his…’
And so on… Finally we came to the bedside. She stayed in the small toilet cabin next door. I was feeling cold. I didn’t wait, I didn’t think it would be rude. I got into the soft bed that was all silk. I was getting impatient. Waiting for my wife was bothering me. Cold sweat began to flow from my forehead. I was looking around where I lay. Across from me, in front of the large mirror, stood a clock with a statue. I was waiting, getting bored, feeling like I was suffocating. I felt ill. My wife came out of the toilet room. She had a long and bright nightgown on her back. She turned off the lamp with the blue and large lampshade. She quietly got into bed. As soon as the lamp went out, I saw the large clock in front of the mirror. This was a rock, from a night candle placed behind it, a cloudy light was flowing like a cascade. I didn’t know what to do? What would I say? She had gotten into my bed. I extended my hand. I touched her arms. They were like ice. I suddenly trembled; a gurgling echoed from under the covers. I pulled my hand back. My throat began to hurt, my temples began to burn. My nerves were tense. A nervous delusion… As if under this covers was a dirty and wet animal like a lizard, snake, frog. When my wife turned toward me, this gurgling cried out again… I began to tremble…
When she saw I felt ill, the poor thing said, ‘I caught cold today.’ Her stomach was gurgling. Oh my God, how disgusting, how terrible this gurgling seemed to me. I didn’t answer. I pulled back. The gurgling wasn’t stopping, filling the inside of the silk and clean bed at irregular intervals. I couldn’t stand it, I got up. I fled to the armchair in the far corner of the room.
‘Are you unwell?’ she asked. I couldn’t answer. I was biting my handkerchief, looking at the cascade of the clock’s shining light. She got up. She went out. And came with a tiny liqueur bottle in her hand. She drank a glass.
‘Shall I give you some too? You’ll warm up. There’s a lot of humidity,’ she said. I still couldn’t answer. It was as if my tongue was tied. I was going through a terrible and nervous crisis. She looked at me. She lay in bed. I don’t know how much later. With an offended, shy voice she said, ‘Won’t you come and lie down?’ I still couldn’t answer. Then she got up. She took her nightgown behind her. She went out. I must have dozed off toward morning in the armchair where I was sitting. I woke up to knocking on the door. A servant girl was bringing breakfast. I hastily dressed. I was remembering the crisis I went through at night and blushing. My face was burning. Now what would I say? I couldn’t say anything. I passed to the selamlik side. I went outside. When I came to the mansion in the evening, the servants took me to the room. A little later I was all alone at the table.
‘Where is the lady?’ I asked.
The servant girl answered, ‘She’s unwell, her head hurts.’ That night I slept alone. I couldn’t sleep. What a dangerous impropriety I had committed. The more I thought, the more I understood, I was confused about what to do. In the morning, to the girl bringing breakfast, I said, ‘I want to see the young lady, to ask after her health. Inform her.’
The girl said, ‘The elder lady will come to see you now,’ and went out. I dressed quickly. I waited, watching the gilded ceilings of the magnificent room.
My mother-in-law, a noble, tall Circassian woman… Slowly entered. I bowed, in a very bad and hissing Circassian accent she said, ‘God forbid, sir,’ ‘sit down. I have something to say to you. Both short and final…’
I was astonished. Ah, this final word was as terrible as it was not short. This treacherous and harsh woman, opening her blue and large eyes on me like a bird of prey, said in broken words that her daughter didn’t want me, that I shouldn’t come to the house again, that they were giving up the marriage, that if I didn’t divorce her, tomorrow she would go to the palace and appear before his presence, that she would have me exiled to Fezzan. I refused.
‘God forbid, sir,’ I said, ‘how can I not want her? I worship the young lady with all my soul.’
The Circassian woman stood up. In an even harsher and more incorrect Turkish than before, she repeated what she had said.
‘You ran away from my daughter’s bed. She has ninety thousand liras, there’s no one as beautiful as her in the palaces. If I raise my hand, not fifty, fifty thousand millions will come…’ she was saying, foaming and advancing on me. A little more and she would have beaten me. I was driven out like a mangy dog. And of course I divorced. Otherwise going to Fezzan was the least of it.
After that, life became a hell for me. Think, ninety thousand liras… And a very beautiful woman…
Although all happiness had completely fallen into my hands, because of the rudeness called ‘nervousness,’ I lost it within twenty-four hours. If I hadn’t been affected in such an illogical and inappropriate way by the gurgling of an ordinary stomach, which was nothing but a little cold, would I be like this now? Would I rack my brain for one mecidiye an hour? This cursed word reminds me in one moment of the palace of happiness I missed. It makes me desperate again. It refreshes my pains. It awakens my sorrows…”
His yellow and thin face had now taken on a strange color, as if it had turned purple. Throwing his still unfinished cigarette into the tray, he got up quickly. He angrily threw out the fat student. As the astonished child was going out with hesitant steps, looking at each of us separately, he had stuck three zeros to the ruler he grabbed from the table. The poor thing was probably taking revenge on his fate. Then he turned to the board, with nervous haste began to erase the:
Gargouille Gargouillement Gargouiller Gargouillis
words and examples whose view he couldn’t tolerate. The teacher and examiners all wanted to object in one voice: “But this child had answered very well. And he’s hardworking too…”
I also laughed. And as if consoling the teacher, I stroked his shoulder saying, “It’s okay… He’ll stay for makeup. He’ll study more. He’ll ripen his knowledge, is it unjust to give zero to a hardworking student?” The teacher who gave the zero was still erasing the blackboard like a madman who would strangle someone accidentally, sneezing from the chalk dust that flew up and went into his nose.
Ömer Seyfettin
