Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

The boy, waiting for his mother, Princess Ulla, who, in the fairytale world that his father has created, has managed to escape from the Devil’s Castle, is drawing circles with his car in a corner of the square, letting out squeals of joy. If only I knew Bjørn’s language; if only we had a common language. If I knew the island’s language perhaps I would be able to understand the secret of the peace that Deniz finds here. Ömer had written, ‘Language is like a key; it opens the secrets of a foreign country, of a person you don’t know, of a heart.’ Perhaps he is looking for the key word, too, in the places he visits.

It occurs to her that she must leave. I must go before Deniz returns. I must go before seeing him step on to the quay carrying the biggest fish like a triumphant commander, with the ridiculous welcoming ceremony and his counting all this absurdity as happiness, before witnessing yet again his defeat — our defeat.

Trying not to attract attention, she walks quietly with pensive steps in front of the green, pink and yellow wooden houses towards the Gasthaus. She does not notice that two of the skinheads on motor cycles who have congregated in front of the drinks stall, knocking back bottles of beer not always available in these parts, have separated from the group and followed her.

The door is not locked. It was not locked either all those years ago they arrived on a dark winter’s day when evening fell early. Do these people feel so secure? So far away from evil … Suddenly she gets angry, annoyed. When one half of the world is a bloodbath, when bombs are raining down on people, when violence, death and tyranny are erupting, this indifference, this devil-may-care selfishness, this stupid local festival seems insane! Don’t they live in this world? They’ve retreated to this blasted Devil’s Island; catch fish, swallow it raw, down beer and come forward and dance in time to the music. Keep your doors unlocked and open, brag that nothing bad will happen here, lord it over the real world, the world in which there is evil!

No one is in the house. The bearded grandfather with a pipe who seems to have sprung from a Van Gogh portrait of a sailor is at the fairground. The grandmother must have gone out, too. That is good. I will not have to try to explain my sudden departure to anyone. And in what language would I try to explain? I’ll leave a note for Deniz and I’ll write that I’ll come again and so on. He’ll be happy anyway for the tense atmosphere to lift and for life to return to its natural course.

She goes upstairs to the room she stayed in that night and collects her bag and her jacket. As she glances around the room for the last time, in case she has forgotten something, she becomes angry again. This stupid island, that stupid girl that went and died, these peasants ignorant of the world, my stupid son burying himself alive in this grave having pushed away the opportunities presented to him with the back of his hand … However much I appear to understand him so as not to upset him, I really don’t understand him at all. I just repeat all this stuff and nonsense, without believing any of it, those cliched philosophies for living derived from television culture; ‘as long as you’re happy’, ‘if you’re happy that’s fine’, and so on ad nauseam. But it’s not enough. It’s really not enough! The happiness of swine should not be adequate for human beings.

A little while ago, while she was talking to Deniz at the square by the quay, she was calm, understanding, as she watched little Bjørn’s joy that warmed her heart and made her eyes mist. Now she is becoming more and more furious. Like a safety valve, her anger prevents her from becoming emotional, bowing to the inevitable. Why am I angry with them because they don’t lock their doors, because they feel secure, because they are not frightened and because really little things make them happy? Don’t we all long for a world when locks are unnecessary and doors can be let open? Damn it! Why should tranquillity be such a bad thing? Must people invariably live on tenterhooks, be constantly stressed because of uninished work, with the burden of duties unaccomplished? Her mind is now totally confused. She sinks on to the bed unhappy with herself and her negative thoughts and her unwarranted anger that acts as a safety valve for pain.

We were here, on this bed. Ömer, little Deniz and I were trying to get warm by huddling up to one another in the damp December chill. In the middle of winter one would have expected the weather to have been even colder. However, we knew that the shores of the North Sea were more temperate than the interior, at least seven or eight degrees warmer. I had cuddled Deniz and was trying to warm his tiny feet. He used to like sleeping in our bed; however, generally, so as not to break the family rules — largely to make sure he didn’t become a spoilt brat — he wasn’t allowed to. That night when he heard that we were going to sleep together, he was delighted. He had jumped up and down on the bed; this bed…

This bed, this house … Places, houses, rooms and beds remain. You can visit a place, an area again, you can return. Objects remain. You find objects where you left them. The place is still in its original position. Objects withstand time. What about time … What about the me of twenty years ago? Us …?

Just as I have returned to this room I should like to return to that time. To that December night of so many years ago. To that night when Ömer and I could not reach each other because Deniz lay between us, when we passionately tried to touch each other, when we made love with our legs and our toes, when we got warm with the heat of desire that enveloped our bodies and when we felt warm inside with the love we felt for our tiny beautiful son lying between us. Not to begin again but to be able to experience and appreciate times of happiness more slowly, to be better equipped to understand the value of beauty, to be able to grasp that all this is not at all commonplace — that it has been bestowed. To be able to stop for a moment and ask: What am I doing? — while irresponsibly and dissolutely wasting the future day by day and year by year. To be able to prevent the monster of tedium shredding and engulfing our love, our son, the things we shared, our common values.

Elif, sitting on the bed of twenty years ago with her aching head between her hands, is attempting to fit twenty years into a few seconds. She is trying to catch the fireball that Deniz has perhaps unintentionally thrown into the ring. ‘What is the meaning of success? At what cost? Sacrificing what? How many little lives has your success cost?’

Then she had been furious with Deniz. She had thought he had been taking the pain of his failure, his weakness, his defeat, out on me, on her and Ömer. Now she turns the question over and over in her mind. What is the meaning of all the things I’ve done? She realizes that she has never asked such a question. What need was there to ask, the meaning was in my work itself.

Was it really like that?

Mice would utter a feeble little ‘eek’ before dying; people not used to it do not even hear it. Then you cut them open, look at the microscope screen, take notes, form equations and write formulas. The little bodies remain there before they are disinfected and thrown into a special rubbish bin. The human equivalent of ‘eek’ is more distinct in the scenes of war and violence to be viewed daily on television screens. People ‘eek’ more loudly. Which important meaning did I grasp, which value did I create, in cutting up these tiny animals? How have the lives of these small mammals contributed to making the world a better, more habitable, tolerable place? She knows all the classic answers. In her paper that received much applause and praise at the symposium the day before she arrived on the island she had asked these questions herself and she had answered them herself. Now she thinks that the questions and answers were cliches and that she had answered none of the questions and, furthermore, that she had not really asked them. My aim was to present a high-flown text and secure my place in scientific circles, to rise step by step to an elevated position in the hierarchy and to honours. Even if no one else knows this, I do.