Oya Baydar: The Lost Word

The elderly lady is talking incessantly. He looks around to see whom she is addressing, but there is no one.

‘Isn’t that right, sir?’ she asks in a voice with a foreign intonation, strangely accented but refined.

Has she recognized me, I wonder? She has recognized me. She has. God knows she has probably even attended my book-signing sessions. A warm sense of pride and self-satisfaction fleetingly passes through him, the pleasure of the gratification of fame, of being spotted and being considered important. However, he still plays the part of the man who is a little weary of and indifferent to fame, who is beyond this type of worldly gratification and who has had his fill of praise. He does not answer and pretends not to have comprehended that the question is directed towards him. Anyway he does not want to talk to anyone. If only the coach would pull up at the platform and he could put his head down and sleep. He remembers the days when, partly for love and partly for the revolution, he travelled back and forth between Istanbul and Ankara in cheap overnight coaches with their long bonnets. Those were the days of youth, the days of immaturity and innocence. Good days.

It is clear that the woman is determined, that she will persist until she gets an answer. He is angry with himself. Why on earth had he been drawn by a shabby hat and headed in that direction? Ever since a keen young critic referred to me as a ‘writer who can perceive the magic of objects and put it into words’ I feel I have to appear interested in objects. There you have it — a dowdy woman’s hat! Why did I rush over here looking for trouble?

‘You were there, too. We were in Warsaw. No, I think it was Budapest. When we were put on the boats the child was with me. We were escaping across the Danube. I did not want to leave the city, but they made me. I’m telling you, as I was boarding the boat the child was with me. You saw him. Tell them you saw him. They’ll believe you.’

Should he reply? He is light-headed, befuddled, his thoughts scattered. When he drinks alone he loses it completely. There are, in fact, plenty of old friends and a lot of new acquaintances in this city. He could call one of them if he wanted, and they could go for a drink. If he were to get in touch with any of the new friends they would be only too pleased to be seen with the author Ömer Eren. The old ones, you never know — they might have written me off or perhaps they would be happy if I called them. One can’t tell. I have many acquaintances but no friends left. I have used them all up, or I’ve buried them. Literally, I really have buried most of them, the best ones.

The voice of the strange woman interrupts his thoughts. ‘They might not believe you either, but tell them all the same.’

It is obvious that the woman is batty. He racks his brains. Who was evacuated from Hungary across the Danube in 1956? He had listened to such stories from old folk. Damn it! I can’t remember a thing. My memory is deteriorating by the day. I mustn’t drink so much. I must listen to what my wife tells me, I mustn’t go over the limit. Elif always keeps to the limit. The limit? What and whose limit? Elif’s? Why?

‘Just tell them what you saw. That’s enough,’ the woman repeats beseechingly. ‘Tell them, sir.’

Tell them what I saw? Did I see anything? Had I seen anything? Had I told them what I’d seen? Would I have told them even if I had seen anything?

He doesn’t say anything. He must get away from here. He must escape from this woman.

‘They said the child was going to follow. I waited years, but he did not come. How could a tiny child travel those roads alone! When the Wall fell, the Hungarian daughter-in-law hid all the papers and the silver candlesticks, too. Well, perhaps the silver candlesticks stayed in Pest. One shouldn’t put the blame on her. Isn’t that right, sir?’

She gets up and walks towards him, Ömer Eren. He tries to escape, but the woman pulls at his sleeve. He shakes her off. ‘I wasn’t there. I don’t know. I don’t know anything,’ he says as he tries to escape sideways like a crab.

She says, ‘Everyone says, “I wasn’t there”, and “I don’t know”. In that case, who was there? Who knows, and who does remember what happened? Who took the child off the boat? Could it have been the daughter-in-law? She had begun to work for the others after my son was suspended for being a traitor. She, too, could very easily have hidden the silver candlesticks. I did not want to leave the east. I was going to wait there. I wasn’t going to leave the child. He could have found me there. He could have found me. The child doesn’t know these parts at all. He wouldn’t be able to find anyone here.’

The woman returns to her place muttering. He can no longer hear or understand what she’s saying. He is relieved that he’s got rid of the madwoman. Without hurrying, he walks slowly over to the next platform so that she doesn’t notice and follow him. ‘The suspended son, the lost child, the river, the Hungarian daughter-in-law, candlesticks and the rest, the east, the Wall …’ Words blown about in the air and swept along with people in the whirlwind of the age. What has all this got to do with this overweight ordinary old woman? Why shouldn’t it have something to do with her? No one carries what they have experienced on their bodies, on their clothes or on their faces. They carry it in their hearts, their memories and their eccentricities.

The words of the strange woman are lost and become inaudible amid the shouts, cries, the chanting of familiar marches and the general commotion. At first he doesn’t understand where the uproar is coming from.

He looks over to where the noise is emanating. A coach, with a large flag hung at the front and its windows adorned with paper flags displaying the star and crescent, is pulling up at Platform 3. It has a banner stretched the length of one side on which is written, ‘Our soldier is the greatest soldier’. Thirty or forty boys walk in step towards the bus carrying young men on their shoulders, youths like themselves. Flushed with excitement, their serious faces with wispy moustaches look quite tense under the dim yellow lights. Mesmerized by their voices they make the sign of the wolf’s head with hands raised and eyes almost popping out of their sockets. It is one of the familiar send-off ceremonies for soldiers that everyone is used to. Everything damned normal in the everyday flow of life. Everything moves in a frightening circle of desperation and absurdity that causes more and more pain.

A night coach terminal — they used to call them bus stations; a woman who had escaped across the Danube by barge and is still on the run — who knows why and where to — was it the Second World War or the Hungarian Uprising? And the boy? Was there really a boy? Here other boys are yelling with all their might: boys rending their throats and the night with cries of ‘Love or leave’, ‘Death to the leader of the separatists’, ‘The flag will not be flowered’, ‘Our homeland will not be divided’ and ‘Our soldiers are the greatest soldiers.’ Children of another place, another time and another cause … Child actors who take parts in all the tragedies played out on the world’s stage but who always remain extras.

What am I doing here? I’m tired, I’m exhausted and I’m drunk. What’s more, I’ve lost the word. I cannot write any longer. I don’t like myself. I’m at war with myself. And now the idea of going to Istanbul by coach doesn’t seem that great. It is as repugnant to his tired spirit as it is to his body that is well into its fifties. A drunken decision made on a bad night drinking alone. Suppose I go back to the hotel and zonk out … Then tomorrow I’ll return to Istanbul like a lamb on the first plane with a free seat. There’s no need to catch the first plane. What urgent business do I have? What is there waiting for me in Istanbul apart from Elif? In any case, she’s busy with her experiments, her students and those scientific articles that she writes for foreign journals. Waiting is the job of unemployed people, and Elif is always up to her eyes in work.