Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

‘Mother!’ he says. ‘Mother Cat … please don’t cry. Look, your kitten is playing with fish. Cats like fish.’ He wants to embrace his mother, to hug her, but he cannot do so. Why is it so hard to overcome the distance, the lack of communication, between them?

Helplessness settles on the table, a heavy silence. Only the roar of the storm and the waves can be heard and the ticking of the cuckoo clock on the wall.

‘I would suggest you leave this place and return to real life. That you get away from this false refuge and return to us, to the world, however cruel, however savage it may be.’

‘Are you really sure you want that, Mother? Are the famous author Ömer Eren and Professor Elif Eren, nominee for Woman Scientist of the Year, prepared to support their son who is disabled when it comes to life?’

Elif senses the reproach in the boy’s voice. Her tears cease to flow. She can’t breathe. The question becomes an iron ball and smashes into her breast. Is she ready to support her son? Her unsuccessful, awkward, defeated son, this unkempt, slovenly, dull, fat man?

‘I don’t know, but I’m ready to pay the price. If you make up your mind and have the courage, both your father and I can try to begin a new life with you. The thing you call happiness is in fact nothing more than a state of lethargy, putting life on hold. And all this talk of “famous author” and “famous professor” is a part of your self-defence mechanism. I cannot remember ever humiliating you or putting on airs.’

She gets more and more angry; the angrier she gets the more the pain diminishes and her fury increases. At the end of the day people always find an excuse for everything they do. Being put down by one’s mother and father is a good excuse much favoured by smart-aleck psychologists, too.

‘Perhaps you did not do any of those things, but while I was with you I had the feeling that you always expected more from me and I could not live up to your expectations. Here no one expects anything from me. I don’t fight with myself. I’m not ashamed of being what I am. I don’t feel anguish because I am what I am. You have to accept me for myself. In your mind, what should your son be? To which peak should he aspire? Well, I don’t know the answer to that. It seems to me that it’s wherever you can get to, wherever you are. Look, Mother, listen to me for once. Accept that I, too, have some ideas of my own. Listen … The storm outside doesn’t pretend to be anything other than it is. The sea is the same; fish, cats, seagulls, these cliffs, in other words nature itself, doesn’t try to be anything other than it is. There is harmony, great harmony. People jeopardize this harmony with their ambitions and destroy it. Putting harmony under pressure results in brutality, war, blood and violence. I want to be a vibration of harmony, not involved in violence and savagery.’

‘We didn’t expect a Nobel Prize from you or for you to be famous or that you would be the head of a business enterprise or that you would end up — I don’t know — powerful or rich. Of course it’s good to be opposed to violence and brutality. But you could have opposed such things not by passive submission, not by running away, but by striving to eliminate the suffering of mankind and working for justice and peace. That’s how you could have lived. You could have been a part of a food programme for starving children in Africa or Médecins Sans Frontières or a green movement or an organization opposing war. You could have had an aim, a cause to fight for. You choose to run away, to hide. You choose to be like that old German, to get buried here on this island — to be the unknown deserter from life. Don’t expect us to applaud, to support this, to be happy about it. You are a pain in my heart — in our hearts — a pain too deep for you to comprehend.’

‘So I have managed to be something: I have become a deep pain. I’m sorry, Mother. But ever since Ulla’s death, since I disappointed you, since I tried to retreat in dreams and untruths, I, too, have known suffering. Suffering seems to ease in a fishing boat battling the waves in the dark. It can’t be felt when I’m fixing these paper fish to the nets or when I’m handing out beer to visitors. When I’m playing with Bjørn and watching him grow day by day it disappears altogether. Suffering stops if you accept it, if you absorb it. Resisting increases suffering. I’m not going to try to resist it because I don’t have the strength. Don’t feel sad for me. Just consider me your lost son if that’s easier for you. I’m telling you this so that you can feel better. I’m fine, Mother. I’m very, very, very well.’

‘I’m very, very, very well.’ This expression he had insisted on since childhood; emphasizing it when he was at his worst, when he had hit rock bottom, accentuating and underlining the words as though he wanted make himself believe them first. Perhaps he really is fine, thinks Elif. And perhaps he is right. Do I — do we — have the monopoly on what is right? Can’t he have his own sense of purpose? Her eye lands again on her son’s clumsily tied knots. Preparing decorations for a fish festival may very well have meaning, bring happiness, make life more enjoyable. Very well, if we are to ask the question plainly, ridding it of any embellishments: So what am I doing? What am I doing other than shutting myself in a laboratory and examining the brains of the little animals I’ve killed and dreaming about the prizes I’m going to win?

Elif wants to believe her son when he says, ‘I’m very, very, very, well’, to be free of guilt, to feel at ease. She wants to be rid of the mental strain and to relax, to be able to ignore her anxieties and feel at ease.

‘Give me another drink and I’ll help you. At this time of night I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep.’

She pulls an armful of fish in front of her. Mother and son work together for the first time in years, leaning over the fishing net spread out on the table. Immersed in their thoughts, they silently attach the colourful fish on to the nets.

When Elif awoke the following day she was amazed to see that the storm that had raged all night had abated. The North Sea was like a millpond, as though the last night’s storm had never occurred. It was almost nine o’clock. Had she overslept? She had gone to bed very late, almost morning. She wasn’t used to strong drink. She had drunk a great deal and had passed out as soon as she lay down. As she collapsed in bed, having been instructed to do so by Deniz before her head fell on the table, she remembered that her son was still beavering away downstairs on those unimportant decorations.

‘You go to bed, Mother. There are only a few fish left to do anyway. I’ll finish them and then get to bed myself.’

Her son’s bearded face looked fatigued. It was the look in his eyes that seemed really tired; a resigned, humble, defeated look. At the end of the night’s long conversation — perhaps the most intimate, longest and friendliest conversation that mother and son had had in their lives — Deniz had asked, ‘What do you think is the recipe for happiness, Mother? Examining changes in the brains of mice? Smiling and signing novels for readers in queues, like my father at book-signing days? Fighting and dying or killing for a cause? Perhaps all of them. Well, I’m happy here. Don’t be upset. Your son is fine.’

But the look in his eyes did not reflect happiness; it reflected defeat, submission, capitulation. My son has found happiness in defeat, because he has not the strength to look for it anywhere else. He has been defeated without fighting at all.

Last night, perhaps under the influence of the drink, perhaps out of desperation, she recalled that she had found peace for an instant by accepting Deniz as he was and that she had asked herself: What is right? What is good? What is happiness? What is the meaning, the value of people’s lives? But now, with the beginning of the new day, all the overwhelming values with their unconditional and acute truths that had been shaken in the night once more proclaimed their sovereignty.