Authors: Orhan Pamuk
“I am so far away,” said a voice. “I am so far away that I always am among you. Listen to me in the sound of your own inner voice. Move your lips in keeping with mine.”
I mumbled, trying to sound natural, like some unfortunate recording artist dubbing someone else's botched-up translation into the sound track.
“Time cannot be endured,” I said, speaking in that voice, “as Janan sleeps, as morning approaches. But I could still grit my teeth and bear it.”
Then there was a silence. It seemed as if I could see what was in my mind on the screen; it was immaterial therefore whether my eyes were open or closed since the images in my mind and in the world outside were identical. Presently I spoke again.
“God created the universe when he wished to see the reflection of his own infinite attributes, re-creating his own image which he beheld in his mirror. So the Moon, which frightens us when it shines into the forest, materialized over the images that we see so abundantly on the TV and movie screen such as the morning on the steppe, the brilliant sky, spanking-clean water washing rocky shores. The Moon was all alone back then in the dark sky like a television set that plays for itself in the living room when the power comes back on while the family is fast asleep in the night. The Moon and all of creation existed back then, but there was no one to see them. Like an unreflecting mirror which is devoid of silver backing, things were devoid of spirit. You know what it is like, having watched so much of it. Now take another look at this spiritless universe so it may serve you as a lesson.”
“There, boss!” said the fellow with the drill. “That's exactly when the bomb goes off!”
I surmised from their conversation that they had placed a bomb in the television set. Could I have been mistaken? No, I was right; it was some sort of image bomb which would explode when the angel's dazzling radiance appeared on the screen. I knew I was right because along with the curiosity I had for the technical details of an image bomb, a feeling of guilt vexed my mind. On the other hand, I kept thinking, “It must be thus.” Maybe it would go like this: In the morning when the dealers were totally lost in the magical images on the screen and involved in discussions about the angel, light, and time, the bomb would explode nice and warm as in traffic accidents; and time, having welled up in these people who were dying to live, to fight, and to conspire, would violently expand over the scene and freeze the frame. I realized then that I did not want to die of a bomb or a heart attack, but in an actual traffic accident. Perhaps I thought the angel might appear to me at the moment of impact and whisper in my ear the secret of life. When, oh when, O Angel?
I could still see some images on the screen. Some sort of light that was perhaps devoid of color, or perhaps it was the angel, but I couldn't tell for sure. Being able to see the aftermath of a bomb was like reviewing life after death. I was so excited about taking advantage of this unique opportunity that I caught myself providing the words for the image on the screen. Was I only repeating what someone else had said? Or was it a moment of fellow feeling as in the union of souls in the great beyond? Here is what we were saying:
“When God blew his soul into the creation, Adam's eye beheld it. We then saw matter in its true guise, yes, just like children might, but not in the unreflecting mirror that we see now. We were such joyful children back then, naming what we saw and seeing what we named! Back then, time was time, hazard was hazard, and life was life. It was a state of true happiness, but Satan was displeased by our happiness; and he who is Satan conceived of the Great Conspiracy. One of the pawns of the Great Conspirator was a man named Gutenberg, known to be a printer and emulated by many, who reproduced words in a manner that outstripped the production of the industrious hand, the patient finger, the fastidious pen; and words, words, words broke loose like a strand of beads and scattered far and yonder. Like hungry and frenzied cockroaches, words invaded the wrapping on bars of soap, on cartons of eggs, on our doors and out in the street. So words and matter, which had formerly been inseparable, now turned against each other. And when asked by moonlight what is time, life, grief, fate, pain, we were confused like a student who stays up all night before an exam learning his lessons by rote, although we had once known the answers in our hearts. Time, said a fool, is a noise. Accident, said another, is fate. Life, a third said, is a book. We were confused, as you see, waiting for the angel to whisper the right answer in our ears.”
“Ali, my son,” interrupted the man in the purple chair, “do you believe in God?”
I thought it over.
“My Janan awaits me,” I said, “in a hotel room.”
“God is everyone's
janan,
” he said, “so go unite with your beloved. But get a shave in the morning. At the Venus Barbershop.”
I went out into the warm summer's night. Like an accident, I said to myself, the bomb is also a mirage; you never know when it will appear. Miserable losers that we were, it was obvious that we had lost the gamble called history; now we were reduced to bombing each other for centuries to come, hoping to convince ourselves that we are winners and get a taste of victory, blowing up our souls and our bodies to high heaven with bombs we place in gear housings, in volumes of the Koran, and in boxes of candy made for the love of God, books, history, and the world. I was just thinking that it was not such a bad scenario when I saw Janan's light.
I went in the hotel and up to the room. Mom, I was really drunk. I lay down next to my Janan and fell asleep, believing I had her in my arms.
When I woke in the morning, I watched my Janan sleeping beside me. Her face had the same anxiety and attentiveness with which she watched the video screen when she was sitting on a bus; she had raised her chestnut-colored eyebrows as if in anticipation of an astonishing dream sequence. The faucet in the sink was still dripping. A dusty ray of sunlight seeped in through the curtains, becoming honey-colored where it fell on her legs, and Janan mumbled a question in her sleep. When she turned over, I left the room quietly.
I felt the cool morning on my forehead on my way to the barbershop called Venus, where I saw the man I met last night, the same man who had stepped on Janan's cigarette. He was getting a shave, his face foaming with lather. I smelled the shaving cream when I sat down to wait, it was with apprehension that I recognized the smell. Our eyes met in the mirror, and we smiled at each other. Obviously this was the man who would conduct us to Doctor Fine.
On the way to doctor fine, Janan sat in the back of the '61 Chevrolet with fins, petulantly fanning herself with a copy of the
Güdül Post
like a haughty Spanish princess, while I sat up front taking account of ghostly villages, wornout bridges, and weary towns. Our driver who smelled of OP shaving cream was not talkative, he liked to fool with the radio listening to the same news over again and weather reports that contradicted each other. Rain showers were predicted for Central Anatolia, or not. There were scattered torrential rainstorms in parts of the Aegean region, or it was partly cloudy, or it was sunny. We traveled for six hours under partially cloudy skies, driving through ominous downpours that arrived out of pirate films and the land of fairy tales. After a final shower that battered the roof of the Chevrolet mercilessly, we suddenly found ourselves in a storybook place that was totally different.
The gloomy rhythm of the windshield wipers had come to an end. The sun in this geometrically conceived land was brilliant and it was setting in the butterfly vent of the left window. Crystal-clear, lucid, and tranquil realm, relinquish to us your secrets! The trees with raindrops on their leaves were perceptibly trees. Birds and butterflies crossed our path like calm and collected birds and butterflies without any intention of flying into the windshield. I was about to ask where the storybook giant was lurking in this place that existed outside of time. Behind what tree were the pink dwarves and the purple witch? I was about to point out the absence of signs or lettering anywhere, when a truck with a bumper sticker that said “Think before you pass” glided by smoothly on the shimmering highway. We passed through a small town, then turned left and drove into a gravel road; we climbed hills, went by a lost village or two obliterated by the dusk, caught glimpses of dark woods, and finally stopped in front of Doctor Fine's domicile.
It was a wood structure that looked like one of those provincial mansions that get converted into inns with names like Welcome Palace, Celestial Palace, Pleasure Palace, or Comfort Palace when the big family that lived there is dissolved due to death, misfortune, or migration, but there were no signs of local fire engines being kept around this place, nor any dusty tractors, or some restaurant called the City Grill. Only solitude. There were four windows upstairs instead of the customary six in mansions such as these, and the light in the third window cast an orange glow on the lower branches of the three plane trees in the front of the house. The silhouette of a mulberry tree was just visible in the dark. There was movement in the curtains, a window banging, footsteps, a bell; shadows shifted, the door was opened, and the person who welcomed us was Doctor Fine himself.
He was tall, good-looking, in his late sixties or early seventies, and he wore glasses. He had the kind of face you could not remember later in your room whether it was bespectacled, as you cannot remember if some men you know quite well wear mustaches or not. He had great presence. Later in our room, Janan said, “I am scared,” but she seemed to me more curious than frightened.
We ate dinner with the whole family at a very long table by the light of kerosene lamps that cast long shadows. He had three daughters. The youngest daughter, called Rosebud, was dreamy and content but still unmarried although it was high time she were. The middle daughter, Rosabelle, seemed closer to her doctor husband, who sat across from me breathing noisily through his nose, than to her father. And the eldest, beautiful Rosamund, had been divorced for some time, as I gleaned from the conversation of her two well-behaved daughters, who were six and seven. The mother of the three rosy daughters was a small woman who practiced emotional extortion; not only her eyes but her whole demeanor said: Watch it, should you displease me, I shall burst into tears. At the other end of the table sat a lawyer from townâI didn't catch what townâwho told a story concerning a land dispute that pivoted on partisanship, politics, bribery, and death, and he was quite pleased when Doctor Fine fulfilled his expectations by listening to his story with curiosity, his eyes approving the lawyer although they deplored the events. Sitting next to me was one of those old men who's happy to be spending the last years of his life witnessing the lively state of affairs in the bosom of a large family that is powerful and well-respected. It was not clear what relation the old man was to the family, but he augmented his happiness with a small transistor radio he had placed next to his plate. He put his ear several times right on the radio to listenâperhaps he was hard of hearingâand then he turned toward Doctor Fine and me, smiling to reveal his false teeth and saying, “No news from Güdül!” Then, as if it were a natural conclusion to his statement, he added, “The doctor loves philosophical discussions, and he adores young individuals like you. It is amazing though how much you look like his son!”
A lengthy silence ensued. I thought the mother would burst into tears, and I recognÃzed irritation flashing in Doctor Fine's eyes. A grandfather clock somewhere outside the dining room struck nine, reminding us that time and life are transitory.
It slowly dawned on me as I ran my eyes over the table, the room and the objects, the people and the food that there were signs and traces right here among us in the mansion of some dream or else of a deeply felt life and memories. During those long evenings Janan and I spent on a bus, after the attendant slipped a second videotape into the machine at the insistence of some of the more enthusiastic passengers, for a few minutes we would be seized by an enchantment that was weary and hesitant, or a feeling of irresolution that was sharp but aimless, abandoning ourselves to a game we couldn't quite perceive the meaning of in terms of its contingency and necessity; and confused to be reliving the same moment in a different seat and from a different vantage point, we felt we were about to discover the secret of the concealed and incalculable geometry called life; and just as we were eagerly figuring out the deep meaning behind the tree shadows, the dim image of the man with the gun, the video-red apples, and the mechanical sounds on the screen, we would realize that, goodness, we had already seen this movie!
The same feeling stayed with me even after dinner. For a while we listened to the old fellow's radio, which was tuned to the same radio theater hour that I never missed in my childhood. Rosebud brought us sweets from a bygone era, Lion brand coconut candies and New Life Caramels in a silver dish that was identical to the one at Uncle Rıfkı's. Rosabelle offered us coffee, and the mother inquired if we wished for anything else. On the side tables and on the shelves of the mirror-backed breakfront there were copies of the photo romances that are sold all over the country. And whether Doctor Fine was drinking his coffee or winding the clock on the wall, he was the very picture of the fine and affectionate father in the model family on National Lottery tickets. The signs of a certain patriarchal refinement and a logical order that could not easily be named were infused in all the objects that graced the room, such as curtains which had borders embroidered with carnations and tulips, old-fashioned kerosene stoves and kerosene lamps which were as moribund as the light they cast. Doctor Fine took me by the hand to show me the barometer on the wall, asking me to tap thrice on the fine and delicate crystal face. When I tapped it and the needle moved, he said paternally, “Tomorrow the weather will be rough again.”