Silent House Read Online Free Page B

much, I realized I had married a child who could be led astray by three books. Later, in the middle of the night, I came out of my room, it was hot, I said, Let me get something to drink, I saw a light in his room and I went there, quietly opened the door, and there was Selâhattin with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands, crying. A harsh light fell on his face from the lamp that was almost burned out. The skull he always kept on his desk was staring at him as he wept. I pulled the door shut quietly, I went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water, and I thought, Well, he’s a child, a child.
    I get out of the bed slowly and sit at the table and stare at the water pitcher. How does the water manage to stay in there without moving, I wonder, as though astonished at this, as though a pitcher of water is something miraculous. Once I placed a glass over a bee and imprisoned it. When I was bored I would get out of bed and look at it. It wandered around in the glass for two days until it understood that there was no way out and then it decided that there was nothing to do but sit in a corner motionless and wait and wait, not knowing what it was waiting for. When I got tired of it, fed up, really, I opened the shutters before sliding the glass over to the edge of the table and lifting it up so the bee could fly away, but the stupid creature didn’t fly away! It just stayed there on the tabletop. I called Recep and told him to swat it with something. But ripping off a piece of newspaper, he carefully picked up the bee and let it go out the window. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’s just like them.
    I fill the glass with water. I drink it little by little. Finished! What should I do now? I get back into bed, prop my head against the pillow, and think about when this house was built. Selâhattin used to take me by the hand and show me around: Here’s where my examining room will be, here’s the dining room, here’s the European kitchen; I’m having a separate room built for each of the kids, because everyoneshould be able to shut himself up and develop his own personality, yes, Fatma, I want three kids. And see, I’m not having bars put on the window—what an ugly idea! Are women birds or animals? We’re all free, if you want you can up and leave me, we’re putting in shutters and we’re going to have windows just as Europeans do, and don’t say over there and over here anymore, Fatma, that extension isn’t a window seat, it’s called a balcony. It’s a window that opens onto freedom, isn’t it a beautiful view? Istanbul must be over there, underneath those clouds, Fatma, fifty kilometers, it’s a good thing we got off the train at Gebze, time passes quickly, and I don’t think they’ll be able to put up with this idiot government much longer, maybe even before the house is finished the Unionists will fall and we’ll go right back to Istanbul, Fatma.
    Later, the house was finished, and my son Doğan was born, and another war had broken out, but the idiot Unionist government was still in power and Selâhattin was telling me, Why don’t you go to Istanbul, Fatma. Talat didn’t exile you, just me, why don’t you go, you’ll see your mother, see your father. You’ll go see Sukru Pasha’s daughters, do some shopping, get some new things to wear, and at least you can dress up and show your mother all that stuff you’ve made bent over the sewing machine here, pumping away at the pedal from morning till late at night, ruining those beautiful eyes of yours. Fatma, why don’t you go? But I said, No, we’ll go together, Selâhattin, when they’re thrown out, we’ll go together, but they never were. Then one day I saw it in the paper—Selâhattin’s papers came three days late, but he no longer jumped on them right away as he used to. He didn’t even pay attention to the war news from Palestine, Galicia, and Gallipoli, and some days, when he’d forgotten even to scan the headlines after