Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

The child stares at the woman with eyes full of wonder and surprise. ‘What did you say to her, Daddy? How did you speak like that?’

‘I introduced you to her. I spoke Turkish.’

‘Doesn’t she speak our language? Is she a foreigner, too?’

‘Yes, she’s a foreigner as well — but a good foreigner. She doesn’t know our language. Why should she?’

‘Yes, but how will I speak to her?’

‘Grandsons and grandmothers get along in any language.’

As they walk along the road with the sea on one side and the row of pastel-coloured houses on the other, Elif says, ‘It’s been more than twenty years since we came here. Who would have guessed?’

Who would have guessed that we … That we what? That we would lose our son? Does the word ‘lose’ fit here? ‘Bury’? No, no…

The little boy with curly hair the colour of straw and huge blue eyes pulls her by the hand and tries to tell her something.

‘He says that he was waiting for Princess Ulla, but, all the same, he’s happy that you came.’

‘And who is Princess Ulla? Is she the heroine of a fairytale? Do children still read classic children’s stories here? That’s nice!’ She pulls herself together. ‘Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t remember. I’m so sorry.’

‘There’s no need to apologize, Mother.’

There is a need to apologize. Elif knows there is, even if nobody else does. She must apologize for her lack of love and understanding, for her self-absorption. I would have understood if he had just said ‘Ulla’. I didn’t understand because I couldn’t think of her as a princess; she was far from resembling the beautiful princesses in fairytales. When we met for the first time I was full of such strange feelings that I didn’t know what to do, how to act. She was a plump Nordic girl, far from elegant, with straw-coloured hair and eyes that were a lighter blue than the boy’s, almost grey. When I put my hand on her shoulder out of politeness — instead of hugging and kissing her — I realized that she was trembling. We were at the door of our apartment in Bebek. We hadn’t gone out to the airport to meet out son and daughter-in-law. I had watched them from the balcony as they emerged from a taxi and crossed the road to the apartment building, both walking with the same awkward turkey-like gait. I saw their their unfashionable casual clothes, their old rucksacks and their neglected appearance. I didn’t open the door before the bell rang. I took my time, partly out of anger — a reaction — but also because I didn’t know how to act.

Instead of hugging and kissing, Elif settles for a distant touch, a pat on the shoulder, and she feels the girl trembling like a trapped rabbit, a mouse petrified with fear. The girl is trembling with emotion, the fear of not being able to please, of being disliked. She is overwhelmed by the magnificent door of the apartment and the entrance with its marble floors, brass decorations and house plants; and she is frightened of the reaction that will be shown by the famous writer Ömer Eren and the respected woman of science Professor Elif Eren. She feels alone and powerless in this world of assured adults, in this foreign country to which Deniz has dragged her. The expression on her homely doll’s face shows that she is about to burst into tears at any moment.

Elif feels the girl’s fear, panic and loneliness at the tips of her fingers. When I take them into my hand laboratory animals tremble like this, too, from helplessness and the fear of death. And I end their tremors with a death blow, a thin needle or sometimes with a scalpel that doesn’t kill immediately, and the tremors continue for minutes. That subtle feeling of guilt hits her every time; that imminent death smell, the senseless regret … They say one gets used to it, that it becomes a routine procedure, like swatting flies, but I haven’t been able to get used to it. I still carry on though. I kill them lovingly, gently stroking the soft fur of my dear little animals, without letting on to anyone, even to myself.

She suddenly hugs the girl and kisses her on both cheeks. She is surprised at what she has done.

Ulla dissolves into tears. She shakes with small sobs as they trickle down her cheeks. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she repeats in the little English she knows.

Apologetically Deniz says, ‘She’s exhausted from the journey with all the excitement … Ulla has been extremely tense. It’ll pass when she’s rested.’ Elif notices that her son is pale, too. With his careless growth of beard, his cheekbones pink with excitement and his lustreless eyes that seem to have sunk with the weight he’s gained, his is a familiar face from far away and long ago. A bad caricature of her son’s comely fine features…

If the poor girl hadn’t trembled like that at their first meeting Elif wouldn’t have felt so guilty. After all, she is the most innocent among us, she thought to herself. Two scarred children who have escaped the cruel world of adults and taken refuge in each other, awkward, vulnerable, craving love and recognition … That was why Elif’s heart melted and she wanted to console them, take them under her wing. The reason for her excessive sentimentality was the heart-rending ill-defined remorse she felt when she asked herself if she hadn’t played a part in what had happened. Yet her affection and her understanding had lasted only for a short time. The anger she felt towards her son for his lack of courage and success, for causing them so many disappointments and making them feel they had lost him, got the upper hand. He had disappeared into another world, condemned himself to a life of misery, buried himself alive and turned down the bright future they had prepared for him. Ulla’s presence — and now also a child — was tightening the chains on his shackles, making the situation irresolvable.

That day as they tried to talk to each other half in English, half in German and through Deniz’s efforts to translate, the poor girl, who was obviously not a great conversationalist, stretched her linguistic abilities to the limit and asked the question redolent of so many second-rate domestic film dramas.

‘Do you think I’ve ruined your son’s life?’

Ömer, fearing his wife would say something callous, quickly intervened. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘On the contrary, we must thank you. Our son was going through a difficult period. You were there for him.’ Did he really think that, or was it just a trite sentiment uttered to save the situation, to ease the tension?

Elif couldn’t help saying, ‘Wasn’t it too soon to have a baby? Have you considered how difficult it might be to raise a child, especially in the tiny community in which you live?’

‘It depends what you expect from a child,’ Deniz responded. ‘What a child means to the parents. Are they an object for the realization of their ambitions, for the satisfaction of their own egos? Or do you want to create a person whose happiness will bring joy, whose values and choices will be respected?’

The sarcastic tone in his voice, the ill-concealed revenge and bitterness, did not escape anyone, even Ulla who didn’t understand what had been said.

Sensing that something was going awry, she regarded her husband with fearful eyes. ‘Bjørn is already two years old,’ she said. ‘It’s not at all difficult. He gives us joy and happiness.’

‘He is a very easy child, and we don’t pressurize him or force him in any way. He gets on very well with his grandmother, too. He won’t upset her while we’re away, I’m sure of that.’

‘I wish you had brought him along so that we could have seen him.’

‘It would have been difficult. You aren’t used to children, Mother. And also you’ve lots of work.’

They closed the subject and talked about things in general. Then they sat down at the table. The home help, who was a good cook, had been told to make not only Turkish dishes but ones their Norwegian daughter-in-law would like, including fish. It was observed, however, that Ulla did not touch any of the dishes that had been prepared with so much care, and she was deemed the girl with no table manners.