The Black Book (27 page)
Authors: Orhan Pamuk
“Do you have difficulty being yourself?”
Expecting something strange, a joke we could share later—that an entertainment was about to break loose—a small crowd had gathered around my desk: younger journalists I’d taken under my wing, the loud and fat soccer correspondent who kept everyone in stitches. So, in answer to the question put to me, I came up with one of my “witticisms,” which had come to be expected of me in situations like this. The barber, after listening to the putdown as if it were the very response he thought I would make, asked his second question.
“Is there a way a man can be only himself?”
This time he made his query as if he were inquiring on behalf of someone else and not to satisfy his own curiosity. Obviously he’d prepared the question ahead of time and committed it to memory. The effect of my initial joke was still in the air; and other people, hearing the merriment, had joined us. Under the circumstances, what could be more natural than nailing a second joke on the head instead of holding forth on the ontological question of man’s being himself? On top of that, a second joke would aggrandize the first, making it even more impressive, turning it into an elegant story that could be repeated in my absence. After the second joke was cracked, which I cannot remember now, the barber said, “I just knew it!” and he left.
Since our people appreciate double entendres only if the second meaning is insulting or derogatory, I paid no attention to the barber’s thin skin. I can even say that I looked down on him as I would on the enthusiastic reader who, upon recognizing your columnist in the public urinal, inquires, as he buttons up his fly, about the meaning of life or if yours truly has faith in God.
But as time went by … Misconstruing the half-finished sentence, the readers who think I regretted my insolence (that I thought the barber’s question was moot, or that I even had nightmares about him one night and woke up with guilt feelings), those readers haven’t yet come to know me. I didn’t even think of the barber, except once. And the one time I did think of him, my chain of thought didn’t start with the barber. What came to my mind was the continuum of an idea I’d first had years ago. In fact, at the beginning, it could hardly be called an idea. It was more like a refrain stuck in my mind since childhood which had suddenly surfaced in my ears—no, more like out of the depths of my soul: “I must be myself. I must be myself. I must be myself.”
At the end of a day spent in crowds and among relatives and co-workers, before going to bed at midnight, I sat in the old armchair in the other room, my feet propped on a stool, as I smoked and stared at the ceiling. The incessant chatter of the people I listened to all day, their noise, their demands, had all come together into a single tone that reverberated like a nasty and tiresome headache, or even like a sinister toothache. The old refrain that I can’t call an “idea” began at first in response to this reverberation like—how to say it—a countertone. To shield me from the relentless noise of the crowds, it offered up a reminder of the way to my inner voice, my own peace, my own happiness, and even my very own smell: “You must be yourself. You must be yourself. You must be yourself.”
It was then at midnight that I realized how pleased I was to live far away from all the crowds and the muck of that revolting disorder which “they” (the imam sermonizing on Friday, teachers, my aunt, my father, politicians, all of them) consider “Life,” desiring that I immerse myself, that we all immerse ourselves in it. I was so pleased to roam in the garden of my own dreams, and not in their plain and tasteless tales, that I even regarded my poor legs, stretched from the armchair to the stool, with affection, and I examined with tolerance my ugly hand that brought back and forth to my mouth the cigarette whose smoke I blew at the ceiling. For the first time in so many years I was able to be myself! For the first time in so many years I was able to love myself because I could be myself. Stronger than the refrain of the village idiot who repeats the same word as he goes by each stone along the wall of the mosque, more concentrated than the effort of an old passenger who counts the telegraph poles out of the window of a moving train, this feeling turned into a kind of force enveloping with its fury and impatience not only me but also the pitiful old room in which I sat—enveloping all “reality.” It was with this force that I repeated these words, not as a refrain but with a felicitous anger.
I must be myself, I repeated, without paying any attention to them, their voices, smells, desires, their love, their hate. If I can’t be myself, then I become who they want me to be, and I cannot bear the person they want me to be; and rather than be that intolerable person they want me to be, I thought, it would be better that I be nothing at all, or not be.
In my youth, when I visited my uncle’s and my aunt’s, I became the person who was thought of as someone who “works as a journalist, which is too bad, but he works hard at it, and if he keeps on working like this, chances are he will succeed someday.” And when, after working for years to escape being that person, I entered as a grown man the apartment building in which my father too lived now with his new wife, I became the person who “worked hard and after many years was somewhat successful.” And what’s worse, unable to see myself any other way, I let this person I didn’t like cling to my flesh like an ugly skin, and before long I caught myself speaking not my own words but the words of this person; when I returned home at night, just to torture myself I reminded myself of how I’d spoken the words of this person I didn’t care for, repeating trite sentences like “I touched on this subject in my long article this week,” “I considered this problem in my latest Sunday article,” “This coming Tuesday, I will delve into that too, in my long article,” until I thought I’d drown in my own unhappiness—when, at last, I could be somewhat myself.
My entire life was full of these sorts of horrible memories. In the armchair where I sat stretching my legs, I recalled the times, one by one, that I was not myself, just to revel in my present state of selfhood.
I recalled how, just because my “comrades-in-arms” had decided on the first day of my military service just what kind of a person I was, I’d spent my entire army days as “someone who didn’t give up joking around even in the worst of times.” Because I had once imagined that in the eyes of the idle crowd who stood smoking during the five-minute intermission at the trashy movies I then frequented—not to kill time but just to sit alone in the dark—I must appear as “a valuable young man destined to do worthwhile work,” I would behave, I remembered, as if I were “an absentminded young man deep in meaningful, even sacred, contemplation.” In those days when we planned a military coup and were deeply involved in dreaming of a future when we’d be at the helm of the state, I remember behaving like a patriotic person who loved his people so greatly that he couldn’t sleep nights, lest the coup be delayed, thereby prolonging the suffering of the people. I recalled how at the whorehouses I surreptitiously frequented, I pretended to be a lovelorn soul who’d recently gone through a terrible and impossible love affair because the whores gave such guys a better time. I’d walk by police stations (in case I hadn’t already had the presence of mind to change sidewalks) trying to appear like an ordinary good citizen. I’d pretend to have great fun playing bingo at my grandmother’s, where I went just because I didn’t have the courage to spend New Year’s Eve alone. I recalled how, when talking to attractive women, instead of being myself I pretended to be someone who thought of nothing but (assuming this was what they wanted) matrimony and responsibility, or that I was someone who had no time for anything but the struggle to save our country, or that I was a sensitive person sick and tired of the general lack of empathy and understanding in our land, or, to put it in banal terms, that I was a closet poet. And at the end (yes, at the very end), I recalled how at my barber’s, where I went every two months, I was not myself but the impersonator of my self who was the subtotal of all these personages I impersonated.
Actually, I went to the barber’s to loosen up (another barber, of course, than the one at the beginning). But as the barber and I looked in the mirror together, we saw there, along with the hair that was to be cut, this head that carries the hair, the shoulders, the trunk; and I sensed at once that the person whom we watched in the mirror sitting in the chair was not “I” but somebody else. This head that the barber held in his hands as he asked, “How much off the front?”, the neck that carried the head, the shoulders, and the trunk weren’t mine, but belonged to Jelal Bey, Columnist. I had indeed no connection to this man! Such an obvious fact that I thought the barber would notice it, but he didn’t seem to catch on. What’s more, as if to rub it in that I was not me but “the Columnist,” he asked me the sort of questions columnists get asked, like: “If war broke out, could we whip the Greeks?” “Is it true that the prime minister’s wife is a slut?” “Are greengrocers responsible for the high prices?” And some mysterious power the origin of which I cannot discern would not let me answer these questions myself. But the columnist I watched in the mirror with utter amazement would answer for me, murmuring with his usual pedantic air something like: “Peace is a good thing.” “Prices won’t go down, you know, just because some people are strung up.”
I hated this columnist who thought he knew everything, who knew it when he didn’t know it, and who’d pedantically taught himself to accept his shortcomings and excesses. I even hated the barber who, with each of his questions, turned me that much more into Jelal the Columnist … And it was then, as I was recollecting my bad times, that I remembered the other barber, the one who came into the newsroom to ask his strange questions.
At that point, late at night, as I sat in my own armchair that made me myself, my legs stretched out on the stool, listening to the new fury in the old refrain that reminded me of my bad moments, “Yes sir, barber,” I said to myself, “they won’t allow a man to be himself; they won’t let him; they won’t ever.” But these words, which I spoke with the same rhythm and anger as the old refrain, managed only to settle me deeper into the tranquility I so wanted. That’s when I discerned an order that I’ve spoken of before in these columns and that my most faithful readers will detect—a meaning and even a “mysterious symmetry,” if I may say so, in the complete story of the visit to the newsroom of that barber, the memory of whom was refreshed through the mediation of another barber. It was a sign indicative of my future: After a long day’s night, a man’s being left alone to sit in his own armchair and be himself is like a traveler’s coming home after a long and adventurous journey.
Whenever I cast a restorative gaze on the past, I seem to perceive a throng perambulating in the dark.
—
AHMET RASIM
The storytellers did not disperse when they came out of the nightclub but stood around under the flakes of snow that fell sporadically, staring at each other in anticipation of some new entertainment which was not as yet determined, riveted to the scene like people who have witnessed a fire, or a shooting, just in case it breaks out again. “But it’s not the sort of place that’s open to everyone, İskender Bey,” said the bald guy, who’d already donned a huge fedora. “They cannot possibly accommodate a crowd this large. I’d like to take only the Brits. They might as well get an eyeful of yet another aspect of our country.” Then he turned to Galip. “Of course, you too may come along…” They took off toward Tepebaşı, joined by two more who could not be gotten rid of like the others, a woman who was an antiques dealer and a middle-aged architect with a mustache stiff as a brush.
They were going past the American Consulate when the man with the fedora asked, “Were you ever in Jelal Bey’s apartments in Nişantaşı and in Şişli?” “What for?” said Galip, scrutinizing the man’s face which he did not find expressive. “It’s just that İskender Bey said you are Jelal Salik’s nephew. Don’t you ever look him up? Wouldn’t it be dandy if he were the one to acquaint the Brits with the situation in our country? Look, at last the world shows some interest in us!” “For sure,” said Galip. “Do you happen to have his addresses?” the fedora hat said. “No,” Galip said, “he gives his addresses out to no one.” “Is it true that he uses those apartments for trysts with women?” “No,” Galip said. “Forgive me,” said the man; “it’s just gossip. Tongues will wag! You can’t shut people up. Especially about someone who is a legend in his own time like Jelal Bey. I know him well.” “That so?” “Yes, it is. Once he had me come up to one of his places in Nişantaşı.” “Where was it?” Galip asked. “The place is long gone,” the man said, “a two-story stone house where he complained one afternoon about being lonely. He told me to look him up whenever I felt like it.” “But he wants to be left alone,” Galip said. “Perhaps you don’t know him very well,” said the man. “A voice inside me tells me he needs my help. You sure you don’t know his address at all?” “Not at all,” Galip said, “but it’s not for nothing that people identify with him.” “An extraordinary personality!” the fedora hat said, summarizing the situation. That’s how they embarked on a discussion of Jelal’s latest pieces.
When they heard a night watchman’s whistle, which was more appropriate to a slum than one of the well-lit streets that led to the subway, they all turned and looked at the snowy sidewalks in the narrow street lit by purple neon, and when they turned into one of the streets that went up to the Galata Tower, Galip had the sensation that the upper stories of the buildings on either side of the street drew together slowly like the curtains at a movie theater. The red lights on top of the Tower were lit to indicate that it was going to snow tomorrow. It was two in the morning. Somewhere close by, the metal roll-down shutter of a store made a great deal of noise as it was lowered.
Skirting the Tower, they entered an alley Galip had never seen before and walked along a dark sidewalk where a sheet of ice had formed. The man with the fedora knocked on the dilapidated door of a small two-story house. A bit later, a light went on above, a window opened, and a blue-tinged head poked out. “It’s me, open the door,” said the man with the fedora. “We have some visitors from England.” He turned around to cast an embarrassed smile at the Brits.
