Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

At this point of the story that he has heard hundreds, maybe thousands of times the limpid blue eyes of the child become wide with excitement and fright. ‘Then just as the Princess leaps out, you come to her rescue.’

‘Yes, I pull alongside the rocks beneath the castle in Uncle Jan’s fishing boat. Just as she is about to fall on to the rocks and get smashed to pieces, I catch her in my arms.’

‘Her hair is very long, the colour of my hair. Her eyes are just like my eyes.’

‘Yes, her eyes are just like yours.’

‘And her name is…’

‘And her name is Ulla.’

‘Then you sail out to sea and escape from the Devil. You bring Ulla to the Gasthaus. You love each other very much. Then you get married, and I come along. Then…’

When they reach this point in the story a terrible feeling that is a mixture of longing, grief and despair engulfs Deniz. However, the child doesn’t notice. He has opened his deep blue eyes wide and is waiting for the end of the story that he knows by heart.

‘Then you are born. We name you Bjørn. Princess Ulla is so beautiful and so good that the Devil is in love with her, too. He can’t forget her. He disguises himself as a bad man with weapons and bombs and takes her away from us. He wants to shut her up once more in his castle.’

‘In that tower there, doesn’t he, Daddy?’ The child points with his tiny hand to the remains of the tower in the middle of the ruins.

‘Yes, right there.’

‘But my mother … Tell me, Daddy, what does my mother do then?’

‘Princess Ulla doesn’t … what’s that word, you know, when you put up your hands as if to say “All right, I give up”?’

‘Surrender. You say “doesn’t surrender”. You asked this when you were telling me the story before. Why don’t you learn, Daddy?’

‘Yes, well, Princess Ulla doesn’t surrender to the Devil. She reaches up to the sky and catches a star. And jumping from one star to another…’

‘And there it is, Daddy! Look, over there!’

The child points to the evening star that can just be discerned in the sky which is beginning to turn from milk-grey to grey.

‘Yes, over there, Son.’

‘And what about the Devil?’

The child has got carried away with the excitement of the story and has nestled into his father’s lap with a childish frisson of fear so that he can enjoy even more the pleasure of being frightened.

Deniz strokes his son’s blond locks. ‘And the Devil can’t stand the pain of losing the Princess. He goes to the east far, far away.’

‘He won’t come here ever again, will he?’

‘No, don’t be afraid. He can’t come here.’

‘Is the east really very far away, Daddy?’

‘It’s far, very far.’

‘My grandma, Bestemor, said that you came from the east. She said there are wars in the east and bad men who don’t pray and who cut people’s throats. Did you go to the east to find the Devil and kill him?’

He doesn’t know what to say. He is not happy with this. A child should not be told such things. The child’s grandmother is right — from her point of view. She thinks she has sacrificed her daughter to the cruel violence of the east, to the savages who live there. On this tiny little island that is far even from the west, let alone the east, how can one expect a poor village woman to think otherwise? Nevertheless he gets angry. ‘The east was the land of good people and delightful stories. Then devils came from the west, and they destroyed those good people, the beautiful countries and lovely stories. They destroyed them, wiped them out with bombs and weapons.’

He is angry with himself, but he can’t stop. What am I saying to the boy? Indirect ideological arguments with his grandmother … Goddamnit! ‘Do you remember where the sun sets, Bjørn?’

The boy points to where a faint pale pink on the horizon resists the twilight.

‘Well done. That’s right! Now turn your back to that side. There, you’re looking straight at the east. The sun rises over there.’

‘Then everyone who comes to this island comes from the east, because when I look straight ahead there’s the quay.’

Deniz laughs. So does the boy, and they both brighten up. The boy hugs his father affectionately.

‘I told Bestemor, “Even if my father does come from the east he’s not bad. He’s very, very, very good.” And she said to me, “Your father is different. He is a good foreigner.” What does foreigner mean, Daddy?’

‘It is someone who has come to this island from abroad, from another place, not of this island.’

‘Are there bad foreigners, too?’

‘There are bad foreigners, and there are also bad local people. Come on. Let’s pick up our things and go home.’

As father and son walk down through the ruins of the castle towards the village Deniz thinks about the message left on the Gasthaus’s telephone. ‘Deniz, dear, it’s Elif. I’m in Copenhagen for a meeting. If you are free I would like to come and see you. Call me on my mobile.’

A cold, unfeeling message … She cannot say ‘Mother’ any more; certainly she hasn’t said ‘Mother’ for a long time. And affectionate terms of endearment and pet names have long been forgotten. ‘Deniz, dear, it’s Elif. Deniz, dear …’ My mother says ‘dear’ when addressing people she doesn’t much like, people she looks down on or with whom she feels uncomfortable. In her language ‘dear’ is a treacherous word that masks a lack of love and puts distance between people. So I’ve become ‘dear’, have I? There’s no point in postponing my call. I can leave a very short message on her mobile saying, ‘We are better off like this. Let’s not complicate life.’ Yes, that’s the right thing to do. It’s much better for everyone. So it’s ‘dear’ now, is it? So distant, so foreign…

He used to play games with his mother when he was small. He recalls them with a sharp pain. His favourite game was the stray kitten and its master. These were cherished moments in the mornings when he could climb into the big bed where his mother and father slept together and, purring like a cat, bury his head in his mother’s bosom, feeling her warmth, her closeness; when mother embraced child and stroked him gently like a kitten. Moments of happiness when his mother scratched him on the neck, behind his ears, under his tiny feet, when he never complained even if she tickled him, never said, ‘Stop! Don’t do that!’ He used to be ‘Tiny Kitten’, ‘dear little cat’ and his mother’s ‘kitty’, ‘his mother’s little mouse’. He didn’t remember his mother ever calling him Deniz when he was little. Then a light slap on the kitten’s bottom. ‘Come on. I’ve got to get up and go to work. The kitten should go to the kitchen and drink his milk.’

‘Take me to work with you, Mummy.’

‘I can’t, because my workplace is full of mice. Cats aren’t allowed there.’

Once she had taken him to that magical place. Elif was going to call in at the laboratory and pick up something she had forgotten. From there they were going to the cinema together to see the film ET; another one of those rare happy occasions: going somewhere with his mother!

‘Stay still. Mind you don’t harm the mice, Kitten.’

‘Why do you keep mice here, Mummy Cat?’

‘For my experiments.’

‘What’s an experiment?’

‘Well, for instance, to find a new medicine that will save the lives of sick children or to do something to stop their pain. We first give that medicine to animals. If it’s good for them, if it’s harmless, it can then be given to people. In other words, we experiment on animals.’

‘Why are there mostly mice here?’

‘The structure of mice is close to that of people. That’s why.’