Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

It is then that they see an old man sitting in a rocking-chair next to the stove in the corner with a hand-knitted woollen blanket on his knees. ‘Everyone has gone,’ he says in German. ‘They’ve all gone to church — to the service. I cannot walk very far. In any case, if I could, I would rather go to the bar than the church.’

His language is formal and bookish, strictly observing the complicated grammatical rules of German. He laughs, making a funny hiccupping noise. ‘The rooms are upstairs, and the keys are in the doors. You can stay where you like because there are no other guests. If you are hungry that’s too bad. There’s cheese, coffee and cake … That’s all.’

‘You speak excellent German.’

‘I was German once upon a time. Language is the country that a person has lost.’

‘Language is a person’s country,’ repeats Ömer in German.

‘His lost country!’ insists the old man. Then with his right arm extended in a Nazi salute he continues in a cynical high-pitched and tremulous voice, ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles…’

He utters an expletive that sounds like a bit like ‘fuck’. It is obviously a swear word.

‘Stand to attention, ladies and gentlemen. Here you have the unknown deserter. Deutschland, Deutschland über alles! The only way not to be an unknown soldier is to be an unknown deserter.’ He laughs again in the same strange way. ‘There are memorials to the unknown soldier in all the countries of the world, but for some reason there is not a single memorial to the unknown deserter.’

‘Which war?’ asks Ömer, feigning interest. He recalls the Unknown Soldier Memorial at Potsdamm in Berlin and that it was made by a Turkish sculptor. He had heard that someone, possibly a neo-Nazi, had destroyed it.

‘That’s not significant. Wars never end. I’m the deserter of all the wars in the world.’

As they emerge from the kitchen to find a room and rest for a while or at least put the child to bed, the old man calls after them, ‘The rooms are chilly. Light the fire to warm the place up so that the child doesn’t get cold. Perhaps they’ll bring you something to drink when they return from the service. If anyone comes back, that is. Do you have anything to drink on you? Alcohol? I mean alcohol.’

Ömer opens his case and holds out the brandy bottle that they have brought along for emergencies.

‘There are glasses over there in the cupboard,’ says the man without getting up. ‘Cut a piece of cake for the boy while you’re at it.’

Ömer takes three small glasses from the worm-eaten wooden cupboard and fills them with brandy. The three of them drain their glasses in one go. He leaves the bottle on the coffee table next to the man.

‘We’ll be off early in the morning. We’re going further north.’

‘They come, stay one night and then leave early.

I don’t know where they go when they leave. Is there any place to flee?

There’s nowhere else to go other than to yourself.

The violence of the age will find you everywhere.

Everyone’s last refuge is their own island.

I’ve been here for a thousand years; unknown and a deserter.’

Even with their lack of German they realize that the old man is murmuring lines of verse.

‘I’ve been here for a thousand years; unknown and a deserter,’ repeats the man.

‘That sounds like a poem,’ says Ömer.

‘Yes, it is. A poem that thousands of people read once upon a time. This is because I’m a poet deserter or a deserting poet.’

Without feeling the need to pour the remaining drink into a glass, he empties the brandy dregs straight into his mouth from the bottle.

Was the island real? Or was it a mirage, a nightmare? That piece of land, that island of invisible occupants surrounded by a sea as calm as a man-made lake in a season when the storms in the North Sea are at their wildest, where not a single soul wandered its streets, where no one seemed to live in the pink, indigo-blue, pale-green and candy-yellow houses with the light filtering through the windows, where no one was to be seen other than the ghost of a village woman carrying baskets and a thousand-year-old deserter whose legs could not carry him; the imposing fortress with the open sea extending to eternity and the freezing wind that made one shudder when one climbed the ruined ramparts; the room with its wooden ceilings where they tried to get warm by huddling together in bed in a small guesthouse where no one greeted them, showed them their rooms nor gave them their keys. The old man, the unknown deserter … Were they actually real?

When they awoke in the morning the sea and the sky were a deep blue. The man had fallen asleep in the rocking-chair where he had sat all night. Perhaps he had passed out. The bottle of spirits on the small table beside him was empty. There was fresh coffee in a pot on the stove, hot milk in a jug and buns, a cheese platter, salted fish and the cake from the previous evening on the kitchen counter. They had breakfast while they waited for someone to offer them a bill. The child liked the milk and cake, Ömer the salted fish and sweet sauce and Elif appreciated the coffee. The old man was in a deep sleep. Still there was no one else around. They left some money on the counter and left. Everything was normal and ordinary on the island, now stripped of its creepy and mysterious darkness and clothed in a blue light. The boat that was to take them to the opposite shore was tied to the quay. The woman with the baskets on her arms was there once more. There was no one on the road, at the quay or in the square.

‘Who would awake at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning!’ said Ömer, feeling a need to rationalize the strange quiet.

The child wanted to go up to the Devil’s fortress and see the Devil in his castle.

‘Look, there’s no one in the village. Even the Devil has gone on Christmas holiday.’

‘Perhaps everyone has gone to the castle to wish the Devil a merry Christmas,’ said the boy. ‘Even if you don’t let me, I’ll come here when I’m grown up and meet the Devil.’

‘All right. You do that. Now let’s get aboard this boat before it’s too late and cross to the other side. Let’s see if our car is in its place.’

Elif held the little boy’s small hand tightly. The child had not worn his gloves, and his hands were like ice and his tiny nose red with the cold. She put her arms round her son with a surging wave of love that felt as though it would pierce her breast.

Now, in the laboratory with a dull ache in her breast and a dead white mouse in the palm of her hand, she is thinking about that small, remote island back then. The island of the unknown deserter and crazy old poet. The island of her fugitive son …

When I said on the phone, ‘I’m going east’, Elif had said, ‘And I’m going west.’ She did not ask where and why. As usual she did not say, ‘I’ve missed you. You’ve been away a long time’, or any similar sentiment. There was neither disappointment in her voice, nor anger, nor reproach. At most there was apprehension at not being able to understand why I was calling at the crack of dawn.

Even when I went on about us drifting apart her voice didn’t change. She has bottled it up, I know; she doesn’t easily show her feelings. Yet I had wanted to tell her something quite different. Those words were a lament for what we had lost; the mortification I felt about us taking separate paths. I had to express this somehow. It was the reaction to the effects of time that dulled, gnawed at and ruined everything. I felt I needed to express reproach, regret, but I couldn’t find the right words.

Ömer still loved his wife, after all those years. To be able to convince his circle of friends that he was far removed from the behaviour of the average male he had convinced himself that he loved his wife of thirty years as much as ever. Ömer Eren, surrounded by a host of admirers, most of them women, at book-promotion launches, openings of exhibitions and at meetings where he was expected to make an appearance, at celebrations and in places frequented by intellectuals, had to love his wife as much as ever to prove that he hadn’t changed, and that his heart and his soul were as they had been in the days of faith and innocence. He needed to prove that despite being a famous, widely read author — being termed a ‘bestselling author’ made his blood boil — he was atypical of his sex in terms of his behaviour. So often when a man becomes rich or famous the first thing he does is divorce his wife. Other relationships, other women, other men, long separations, taking refuge in a small seaside town off the beaten track with the excuse that he was writing a book, those surreptitious holidays, retreats … They were like the garnish for the main course that came to the table after the hors d’oeuvre and the appetizers. Even though he didn’t much care to contemplate on such matters, whenever he did the image of a roasted turkey on a large platter appeared before his eyes — a turkey, the essential part of the New Year table, decorated with a tasty garnish that enhanced its appeal and savour.