I believe there is nothing more tormenting in this world than to hate oneself! When we sense the baseness, the vileness of a friend whose roles and lies have deceived us for years, we immediately part ways with them. It is the same in love… When we discover a flaw in the body we have worshiped like an idol, we suddenly grow cold, even become enemies with it. But with ourselves… What can we do? Nothing! The ideal of “goodness, truth, beauty” that our moral consciousness has kindled in our soul gradually darkens. When this three-flamed torch of captivity extinguishes, we then fall into a dark desert. We become animals. Yet what a sorrowful existence animality is! A life without foundation, without purpose, without affection, without sanctity! No good, no truth, no beauty… Today, the divine torch in my soul has been extinguished. I am a vagrant, bewildered animal! A melancholic, sorrowful, pessimistic animal! A wretch who has lost the value of humanity! This descent into darkness was not by my will, it was involuntary… I could almost say, “Without my knowledge…”
Fifteen days ago. The night I stayed at my uncle’s mansion… How did it happen? How did I suddenly fall from humanity? How did I tumble from this heaven, which I will never return to for eternity, into this hell? How, how?..
Since the day my uncle’s son Nihat fell as a martyr in Çanakkale, he had put me in his place. Last year, my aunt also died of grief. Now this unfortunate man lives in his palace-like mansion with his servants. I visit him from time to time. My uncle is the most virtuous, most moral person I have known in my life. Unlike his brother, he did not squander the great fortune inherited from his father in places of debauchery; he served the state, spent his life as a district governor, as governor of distant provinces. We modern men cannot even imagine the admiration he feels for poetry and art. To him, divans possess a sacred quality. In the verses of ghazals and qasidas, in their rhymes, a divine secret is hidden. The library he had built at the end of the garden, among the black pines, is like a secret little temple… More than half his day is spent here. He dusts the books, caresses their bindings.
That day, the servant who opened the door said as usual: “The master is in the library, if you wish, please proceed there!” I walked, gazing at the flowerless beds that still remained green beneath the trees that had shed their leaves. The lead-covered dome of the library resembled an unknown minaret. The green-painted iron shutters of the windows were open. I approached the door. A yellow brass key was inserted in the lock beneath the old-style knocker. I knocked gently with my finger; he did not hear; I knocked a bit harder, he thought it was the servant:
“What is it, Mehmet?”
“Not Mehmet, uncle, it’s me…”
“…”
He opened the door. With his snow-white beard and thick gold-rimmed glasses that made his blue, weary eyes appear larger, he resembled a saint risen from his tomb. I kissed his hand.
“Come, let me show you a jewel,” he said.
“Please do.”
I removed my shoes. Just as one enters a mosque… I put on one of the red slippers. My uncle wore a gown made of camel hair. We sat at the crystal table. He handed me the open book.
Again: “A jewel, a jewel. A jewel without equal,” he said.
This jewel resembled a grocer’s ledger fallen in the mud. I feigned excitement.
“Truly exquisite,” I said.
“They brought it yesterday. How much do you think I should buy it for?”
“Two liras.”
He stared me straight in the face:
“You’ve gone mad, son,” he said.
I tried to correct the situation:
“The binding is quite old though… What, were you able to get it for five liras?”
“What five liras!” he exclaimed. “Dafiu’l-gumum, the magnificent collection of Deli Birader. There is not another copy in Istanbul. Perhaps there is not another like it in the entire world! It is possible the handwriting is even Ghazali’s own…”
“How much did you buy it for?”
“One hundred and eighty liras.”
“Very good,” I said.
The devil’s voice, leaving lightning and fires of poison in my soul, said: “Are you a fool? Why are you afraid?”
“I’m afraid.”
“No, don’t be afraid! You won’t press on your uncle’s throat and strangle him like those common murderers.”
“Then what will I do?”
“You’ll do something so that the law cannot find you guilty.”
“How?”
“You’ll steal some typhoid microbes from your friend Sabit the bacteriologist…”
“And then?..”
“You’ll put these microbes in the water your uncle drinks at night. Once he catches typhoid, while the doctors are trying to cure him, you’ll give him water with microbes again as medicine. He’ll certainly die within a week. You’ll cry along with everyone else. You’ll walk in front of his funeral procession. No one will suspect you! On the contrary, they’ll share in your grief and say ‘Our condolences!'”
“Oh!..”
Yes, oh… I suddenly came alive. It was as if I had escaped from under a heavy burden. I opened my eyes. I saw my uncle peeling his pear. I was again unaware of what we were talking about. I heard him say to me:
“I am proud of you.”
Late in the evening, I went up to my room. The murder plan in my mind was expanding on its own. I sat on my bed. The light from the candle burning on my desk moved shapeless shadows on the walls. A hundred thousand liras!.. My eye darted to the wardrobe mirror. I saw my own image there. It was staring at me. Its hair had bristled. Its eyes were bloodshot. Bloodshot like a hyena’s eyes. This image was me. I turned my face away to avoid seeing it.
I didn’t sleep at all that night. I couldn’t look in the mirror to avoid seeing myself. Yes, I was a murderer. I was a criminal. All moral feelings were a lie in my view. Until morning I listened to the echoes of the devil commanding me in my mind:
“Don’t hesitate!”
“No, no, I won’t be able to do it.”
“You will do it!”
“I won’t do it.”
“You’ll lose the hundred thousand liras!”
“Let it go.”
“Are you a fool?”
“…”
“No, I’m not a fool. But…”
Early in the morning I went down to my uncle. The poor old man was drinking his milk in front of the balcony. He greeted me, alas, his pride, with a smile:
“What’s wrong, are you unwell?” he said. “You’ve gone pale.”
“I’m fine.”
“Did you sleep well?”
“Yes,” I said. Then suddenly I began kissing his hands. Tears were probably flowing from my eyes. I was like a criminal repenting over the sacred body he had killed. I was no longer human.
“I have a request from you,” I moaned. My uncle, seeing such unusual behavior from me for the first time, didn’t know what to say. He didn’t sense at all the blow the devil in my head had dealt to my existence, my moral bankruptcy:
“What’s happening to you, son, what’s happening?”
“Nothing! Promise me you’ll do what I ask!”
“Tell me, what do you want?”
“First promise you won’t refuse!”
He withdrew his hands:
“Alright, speak; I promise,” he said.
“I am your heir.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“I want you to bequeath all your fortune to national institutions while you’re still alive.”
“But why?”
“This is what I want.”
“But why?”
“…”
I was going to tell him what I had been thinking all night, how I had planned to kill him with an invisible weapon to get the hundred thousand liras as soon as possible. If I had told him, he would have known my true nature, but perhaps I would be a bit more at ease now. But no, I couldn’t show this courage. I made a veil for my disgusting morality with virtue I didn’t possess. I began to spew lies. Supposedly I was young, I might possibly sell this valuable library, cause it to leave the country. I wanted this important inheritance to remain with the nation:
“Very well,” he said, “let me give my library to the nation. But my other income…”
“I don’t want that either, dear uncle. There are so many sick people, orphans. There are tears to be wiped away, wounds to be bandaged, widows to be consoled, orphans, the destitute!..”
While I was speaking, he was looking at my face with deep wonder, with bewildered admiration. The poor man couldn’t understand what a vile thing the creature before him was. He stood up, embraced me. He kissed my forehead.
“I am proud of you,” he said.
Yes, the ideal of humanity in my soul, those three moral torches, have been extinguished forever. In one night I became a terrible, disgusting murderer. Now I am in a dark desert! I am wretched like an animal! I can never return again to the paradise of humanity, to the paradise of “goodness, truth, beauty.” The poor great old man, whom I deceived for the last time with my lies, like me, will still consider this coward, this wretch who fled in horror from the deed of his true nature, to be “virtuous”; he will say to this wretched being “You are my pride!”
