The walls are very thin, so I can hear it when a needle hits the floor in the next apartment. I don’t have the habit of listening to others, but sometimes it’s appealing. There is nothing to do when I come back from work. I sit in my armchair and stretch my arms down on the sides. I can lay there for hours until my body feels as if it’s melting and adjusting to the shape of the armchair as the weather gets hot. My eyes fixed on the ceiling, I start having dreams of acting in a different story from a different world. I fight with dragons and knights to save the princess, rocking my sword, but it’s not wood like the ones my grand-father made me when I was a kid. I often fall asleep embracing these fantasies which are replaced by a severe back pain in the morning. That night, during this usual task, I was distracted by a noise. I scanned the room looking for Eight like a sleepy owl.
He must have got hungry and turned the place upside down. I squinted at my desk. Everything seemed to be in order. Eight was stretched out on the carpet. He lifted his mustache, nosed around in the room with sleepy eyes, and was the first one to lose interest in the noise. It must have come from the other side of the wall. Eight put his head on his paws and went back to sleep. So did I. The next day I rushed to work as usual; drank half of a cup of coffee, and cut my face while shaving. It’d be interesting if I could give my face a new shape if only the cuts didn’t hurt so much. I was fine with the blood. I enjoyed the red gliding down in the sink. I didn’t have a medicine cabinet. Medicine cabinets seemed like treasure chests to me when I was a child. Ours was made of wood and glass. They were made of different materials in the houses we visited, but all had the crescent on them in common. They usually were hung in bathrooms above the washing machine or in the room which had received the least light. I looked up, amazed, thinking of the colorful pills, cherry flavored cough syrups (almost got me drunk once), and bandages I used to tie my friend’s hands while playing (I was the police and got to arrest and torture my friends, imitating the American movies we watched on TV on Sunday nights). I wiped the cuts on my face with the most sterile things I had, a napkin and lemon cologne. She was sitting on the stairs when I got out of the door with my hand still pressing the napkin to my cheek. She bit her lips, let her weight on her fists. I knew her. She had been living next door for a while. She was married. We ran into one another sometimes and never really said hello. Well, big city neighbors! I had never paid attention to her before. Did she really have big eyes or were they swollen from crying? Why did she sit there with a dull expression? Did she have a problem? Was she scared of something? Why did the light that came through the window choose her face to live? It was impossible to find an answer to my questions on her face that looked like an empty blackboard. She lifted her head as I walked down, passing her, and we made eye contact for a moment. White crows flew screaming in her eyes and it was too late for me to go back home and grab my slingshot. I got out of the building, passing her. I tried not to think of her all day but her vision didn’t leave me. I regretted not talking to her. It’s usually helpful to talk to a stranger. One could avoid talking about her issues to a friend but a stranger is free of risk. He knows his borderline.
When I left work, I set off to my castle on the top of the rocky mountain. My armor had become too heavy. Maybe I’ll see her again, I thought on the bus. Maybe she is still sitting on the stairs. As the bus proceeded on the sticky asphalt in the hot summer night, I thought the world was being pulled by the sun. We were traveling towards whatever the hell was. There must have been about fifty people including the driver. Thirty out of the fifty must have committed an unforgivable sin at least once in their lifetimes. On the other hand was me. I could probably collect their total amount of sins in one pocket. As a result, we didn’t need a visa to hell. They probably would give me a job to stir the boiling cauldrons down there due to my high service to Satan. Yes, I was becoming senile because of the heat and running for a new record of blather. Thank god, the bus had arrived at my stop. I didn’t open the door to the building as I usually would, and touched the cold surface of the steel door for a moment, let my fingers wander on the notch of the key, and entered in the dimness. All that welcomed me were empty stairs and mailboxes full of envelopes and ads. I climbed the stairs to my castle. When I reached my floor, I waited for a few seconds instead of getting in to my apartment. Nothing. I waited for the following days, not knowing what it was that I was waiting for. A sign, a creak of door. But the sign I was waiting for never arrived. I almost started thinking that monstrous husband of hers had killed her and buried the body in the backyard. I wished for a scream, a door slamming, so that I would jump on my horse and save the princess. I climbed the stairs up and down at least twice a day for two weeks, on the pretext of checking my mailbox, but didn’t run into her. I was caught by the janitor of the building once. He was looking at me out of the corner of his eye while sweeping the stairs. I stared at my neighbor’s mailbox pretending to check mine. Emin and Gul Koyuncu. I realized that I hadn’t known the princess’ name.
“What’s up? Are you expecting any important mail?”
I was startled by the janitor’s voice, and answered him in that manner.
“No.”
“You’ve been checking your mailbox too often recently,” he said, not looking at my face.
“Fifty six!” I wanted to say. “Eight times seven is fifty six.” I was back in front of that blackboard again. I remember my teacher roaring “tell your father to see me, I want to have a word with him,” hitting my palm with his ruler. The next day I leaned my ear on the door of the teacher’s office and heard him saying “he couldn’t get the multiplication table into his head in two months. Take this boy to a repairman, at least he could learn how to do a job,” to my father. I ran into the boys’ room when the footsteps drew close. My father beat me up when I got back home. I spent the next summer at Uncle Remzi’s auto repair shop. My brain, that couldn’t memorize the multiplication table, learned all the pieces of a car’s engine, and my hand, which couldn’t hold a pencil, was soaked in grease oil. Two summers passed, my father died and didn’t see my college graduation in Economics.
I took a deep breath when the janitor got pissed off at a chocolate bar wrapper that he found on the floor and left cursing. I was curious about what was in the mailbox. I could see some white in it. It was an envelope. Sealed. Stamped. An envelope! I thought of just checking who it was from and putting it back in the box. I ran my fingers on the black ink printed on it. “Feridun Ardali, Paris/France.” A strange discomfort took over me and I put the envelope back in the box. Who was this Feridun? I walked towards the stairs. I had to get back to my apartment before the janitor came back. I climbed the first stair. Who was this Feridun? The woman was married. Could he be a secret lover? Second stair. Who was this Feridun? I stopped before the third stair. I turned and ran back to the mailbox, quickly checked if there was anyone coming, and tucked the envelope in my pocket. I ran upstairs and reached for my keys in my pocket. My hands were shaky, so I dropped the keys. I picked them up from the floor cursing at myself and got in. Eight ran to the door, his tail erect when he saw me. I kicked him away when he tried to rub himself on my legs which caused him to do a handspring towards the living room. He looked back at me frustrated and surprised. It was the first time I had ever hit him. We had always been good pals, shared secrets and sorrows. Whenever I had a fight with someone from work, I’d put his plastic ball in front of him so he wouldn’t get bored, and began to tell the story. He listened with no objection. I would run to his help whenever he got in trouble with other cats because of a new female in the neighborhood. He got up and walked into another room. And that’s that. Boy, was he proud! I threw my self onto a couch and gave in to sleep.
The following days, I pretended as if nothing happened, and had the same routine. I woke up early, went to work, got back home, finished one of the books from the pile that I had half-read, tried to look smart and intellectual at work, did the crossword in the newspaper on my coffee break, or rather pretended to do it. I did everything to forget about the letter, and I forgot. But the inevitable happened when I was filling the washing machine with my laundry. I found the letter in my pants pocket, knelt down and tore it open. A fault line cracked, and water from an unknown world gulped everything in. I could make a ship from the letter and paddle towards the flow.
Dear Gul,
It was harder to get your address this time. You are in Ankara. It’s a big city. I give up asking the questions you will never answer; I want you to know that. I write anyway. In fact, I know you will throw away this letter without reading, again. But, I write anyway. It’s been long, Gul. I never blamed you. It was an accident. Please come back.
The writer of the letter changed the subject. His wife, Patricia, was pregnant with her second baby. They got Mathilda a guitar. She wasn’t promising but was very motivated. She was going to start taking lessons next week. She was thrilled to hear her aunt played the piano, and announced they would launch concerts together. She tripped on the newly polished floor while singing and dancing and hurt her knee, which caused her to cry for hours. She was fragile like her aunt. The weather was so hot in Paris. Well, so the composer and the woman were siblings. There were three more letters in the next two months and a half. Little girl finally learned a song. She was out of tune most of the time, but the sparkle in her eyes was worth the torment. Patricia had a haircut, got back home with her face red and pulled a face for the last two days because she didn’t like her new hair. By the way, the new baby was a girl, too. The rains would start soon and at that time Paris was at its prettiest. I sometimes thought of replying to the letters in her voice, and then convinced myself it was an overly dramatic and ridiculous act. I hadn’t seen her since the day of our encounter. Then I heard from the janitor they had moved out and were looking for someone to rent the apartment. He was surprised that they didn’t take any of the furniture with them. It had hardly been six months since the couple moved in. If you were to ask Hasan Efendi, there was a hidden catch in this business.
What was it that drew this woman away from her past? I thought of her all the time. I placed her in a bright large room in my imagination. A little girl blessing every tune that comes from the piano as her little fingers hit the keys. She plays Chopin because her mother loved him, and then bows to her mother, father and brother as they applaud.
I read the letters all the time. The life in them became mine. I had birth pains with Patricia, sang with the little girl, and waited with anxiety and hope. I had even started coming up with ideas for a name for the new baby. I spent all my time with my new family.
A night from heaven (it was October, I suppose, I had lost track of time), I heard a car pull over in front of the building. When I opened the curtain, I saw a woman coming out of it. It was her. She was back with the lullaby my mom used to sing. She said something to the driver and he drove away as she closed the door. My heart raced as I tried to think of what to do. Should I go out? What would I tell her? Maybe she didn’t even remember me. Right, why would she remember someone she saw for a few seconds months ago?
I sat out by the door to observe her by pressing my eye on the key hole. High heels echoed on the stairs, like notes to a precious song. I got out when she reached our floor. She stopped in discomfiture staring at my face. How sweet it was to see the expression of a feeling on her face! Discomfiture turned into anxiety, and her pupils started getting bigger. I saw on a documentary that animals showed signs of fear when a hunter came after them. They also produced certain hormones which caused them to give off a smell. The smell of fear. She looked like a deer moving impatiently where she stood and turned her back to me. Eventually she turned her face to door number nine. I had to do something. I had to say something, but wasn’t sure what. Words gathered in my mind like gray clouds, white crows started pecking my eyes.
“Good night,” I said finally.
She turned her back, with her hand still looking for the keys in her bag.
“Good night,” she answered in hesitation. Boy, did she have the eyes of a deer! So fearful, yet ready to run away into the woods with such speed that… Speed of light? No, a physicist had to come up with a new term to express the speed of fear running through the veins of a deer times the hunter’s aggression to hunt her down.
“You are moving out, I think.”
“Yeah, just stopped by to get couple of things,” she answered with the glory of the finally found keys in her hand.
I had to clear the air. “If there is anything I can help with…” I said, trying to convince her of my good neighboring skills.
“That’s fine,” she said smiling for the first time. I had earned her trust. “I’ll take small things,” she added on, in a soft tone, sticking the key into the lock. She was going to get in. She didn’t remember me. I made another move.
“Are you okay?”
“What?”
“I think you don’t remember. We ran into each other a few months ago. You looked bad.”
I was sweating like a horse racing to the finish, but it was no use. I was a loser. They should have shot me down, and made sausage from me.
“Oh, yes,” she said after a moment. Her face lit up. I waited for her to say something else, but she didn’t. She obviously didn’t have the same idea as me about opening up to strangers.
“I’m okay,”
She wanted to get rid of me. I could tell.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
I regretted them as soon as the words came out of my mouth. Now, she was going to know that I had been reading her letters. What would I say? She would yell at me, accuse me of being a thief, even threaten to sue me.
“Did he come here?” she said opening her eyes wide.
“Yes,” I stuttered, as the angel on my left shoulder made another mark in the notebook of my sins.
“What did he tell you?”
She looked like a ten year old girl rather than a woman now.
“Well,” I leaned back on the wall with relief, “He misses you.”
She went back into silence with her eyes fixed on the floor, then invited me in. We walked in the dim hallway through the living room. Everything was the way it was three months ago. I could tell from the silence and dust of the furniture. The newspaper from three months ago in the couch, an ashtray full of cigarettes on the coffee table, an empty jug with a glass, and medicine for ulcers on the table. The curtains were shut. She pointed at an armchair and picked the one across it for herself. I made up a story from the things that I learned from the letters. What I really wanted to talk about was what had driven this woman away from her family. I set traps for her to tell me the story behind this mystery. I was very close to getting her when the doorbell made a sound like a bird singing. She went to get the door, and I heard some whispering, then steps approaching the room. First the husband walked in, then the wife.
“Who’s he?”
His eyes were very small compared to his bulky frame. His face was red with anger.
“My guest,” she answered, “He lives next door.”
“At this hour of the night?”
“Don’t start it again,” she answered him rubbing her forehead as if she had a headache.
“You promised not to do it again, last time!”
He sat on the couch and covered his face with his hands.
“Stop it already.”
I was trying to figure out what was going on as he started crying out loud. Was I to say something? What could I say? I felt as if I was watching a play. It was inappropriate to clap hands before the curtain closed. But I could leave the theatre. Suddenly he got up and grabbed her arm with one hand, and her hair with the other. The words he uttered didn’t make any sense. He sounded more like a dog barking. I tried to save her from him but he pushed me away and lay her down on the floor like a sacrificial animal. She moaned as he hit her in the stomach. I had to do something.
“Stop it dog!”
I grabbed the jug on the table and hit him in the head which caused him to stagger and fall down as I hit him twice. I watched myself hitting him from a distance. He wasn’t me. The man with the jug turned into a monster, the dragons that I had fought with. Flames came out of his mouth. He quit hitting, finally tired, and looked at the woman who was sitting on the floor in a corner.
“I saved you. Come. Let’s get out of here.”
“Maniac. You are a killer!” she screamed for the first time. She pushed him away as if she wanted to send him back to the world he came from for good. He looked at the red of his hands, then to the ceiling as if trying to see God.
