Sufferer’s Grave

“But loneliness is as delusive a belief in the pertinence
of the world as is love: in choosing to feel lonely,
as in choosing to love, one carves a space next to oneself to be
filled by others - a friend, a lover, a toy poodle, a violinist on the radio.” 
― YIYUN LI, Kinder Than Solitude

Translated from Turkish by: Suğra Öncü

–Loneliness is maddening, he groaned. You may go mad with pleasure. The pleasure of pain!

The night had not yet given way to the morning. The curtains were drawn tightly. Fog was everywhere. The bitter cold was like the Angel of Death.

– Now imagine eternal loneliness. Eternal… Loneliness!

After a moment of hesitation, once again:

– Eternal loneliness! This is how God went mad! We were the children of a lonely, mad God in pain. We were equally in pain. We were lonely. That’s what we said. But were we? Didn’t God blow the spirit of life into his creation?

Screeching owls were heard from the hills. Were they screeching because day light hurt their eyes? Outside, a funeral procession came down the street. A coffin on shoulders passed in front of the coffeehouse.

He slumped into the chair next to me.

– God created us. Then he wanted to be alone. So he got rid of us. He had given up on us. At first it was gratifying. It had a scary grandeur. But then… Then his loneliness turned into pain. Pain, pain, pain….

He stared at my face as if he was searching for the impression his words made. But my face was blank and I was lost for any words. There was anger in his eyes. He was angry at God, and he didn’t try to hide it.

– To relieve the burden of his loneliness God began to pull us one by one to his side. Wars, epidemics, poverty, depravity. We were trapped inside the agony of his spirit. God was going mad. God created. God gave life to his creation and then he took it away. Again and again…. God never had enough. God will never have enough. This will never end. God’s madness… The immortality of mortality… God will pull us all to his side, but God is wrong. It will never be enough.

He had a terrible cough. He was coughing as if his lungs would burst. He was a ragged man in his sixties. A freezing winter had settled over him. His firm pale lips broke into a shattered smile. He was a madman. That’s what they said. But was he, really?

He talked persistently:

– Something you create, is it enough for your loneliness? To what extent?

The funeral procession crossed to the other side of the lake, moving towards the graveyard where cypress trees kept their vigil.

– Is what you have created in your mind and what you have been dreaming of, is it enough for your loneliness? If it were, would you dream again? No! There is no end to dreams. Neither to loneliness…

I heard my heart saying, ‘Love is in it, too.’ He must have heard it:

– It never occurred to me.

– It didn’t? Well, it’s time it did.

From then on, the chair I was sitting in seemed too small to carry the burden inside me. I stood to leave, to follow the funeral procession to the graveyard.

***

A woman’s shadow falls on the half open window of a yellow house with damp walls, where magnolia incense burns inside. The curtains part. A two-horse carriage passes the deserted houses where wild weeds grow on their soil roofs. On the corner, a sad orange-colored girl plays a harmonica. A young man with a hangover moves his tobacco-stained lips to say hello. At thirty-five, a golden flurry passes in front me. A broken man walks behind me, swearing without pity for beautiful things. Clouds walk in the sky. It starts drizzling. Growing circles of waves move over the surface of the lake. My feet sink into a bed of leaves. The broken man never stops talking.

– Land of the dead! Graveyard of the lonely!

They had already dug a hole. I volunteer to perform a duty. Picking up the shovel lying on the ground, I begin to help the man throw soil on the grave. At first I feel a secret satisfaction. Then my heart feels like bursting through my chest. The man stops; I turn my gaze to where he is looking. Two people are approaching: a young man in a tweed jacket and an old woman on his arm. It's her, Havin. The dead man’s ex-wife.

How life’s weight and hardship has wiped the freshness off her face. It baffles me. Her whole life seems to be reflected in her eyes, shadowed by their long white lashes. I remembered her hair as pitch dark, all about the night. And now? The thin, ghostly strands showing on her drawn cheeks from underneath her scarf… What has God done to her?

She is like the memory of a dream. I visualize things that once could have happened but never did.

– God shouldn’t have let her be this way, says my inner voice. – He would have done me a big favor. Old thug! Come to your senses!

But still, all those years aren’t enough to suppress the beating of my heart. Those years of her life… It would never be enough. The feeling she awakens in me… That feeling, it is so intense!

She is still far away. She gently puts her hands together in front of her… Are they cold? Right now, I would willingly give away five years of my life just to take those hands to my lips and warm them with my breath. There isn't much left to do anyway. That is my only wish from God. If God makes my wish come true, I won't sit up till morning in coffee houses. I won't drink… That is, not that much…. I'll drink less. And gambling? Never again! When it comes to women…. They don’t come to me anymore, they are gone. It’s been quite a while since I left all that behind… That is, I was going to be a good person. I’m not that bad anyway. I mean no harm. I’m good. So why bargain with God? I’m already good, God must know this. I haven’t given to God any reason not to make my wish come true.

She moves nearer. Grabbing the shovel on the ground, I start lifting the soil again. With every move, I feel a burst of energy. I am in ecstasy. A feeling of satisfaction surges inside me! There, it's done!

A yellow butterfly perches on the tip of her shoe. We seem to be only a few words apart. I raise my head. She looks at my face as if she never knew me at all… as if she doesn't recognize me. Her face reflects the spirit of whiteness in this place. I shiver. The hope inside me gradually vanishes before her eyes. An abyss flings us apart. A howl rises and the ground begins to shake. Heaven and earth tremble. I think that I'm shouting, but nobody turns to see. Nobody hears!

I lower my eyes to the ground. The voice behind me has already died away. Because her lips are sealed in silence. I have a sinking feeling as I think of that man suffering under the ground. The man who never admitted being mad, going mad, just like….

I kneel down, my soul covered by his soil.

Don’t we, I say, don’t we ultimately all bear the spirit of God?

Şeyma Koç was born in a district called Yahyalı, Kayseri in 1994. She completed higher education in Akdeniz University, department of Political Science and Public Administration. Her short stories have been published in several magazines, including Varlık, Evrensel Kültür, Dünyanın Öyküsü, Sincan İstasyonu, Güncel Sanat, Kasaba Sanat, Tmolos Edebiyat, Çıngı, Aşkın E Hali and Bireylikler. Her first short story collection Küllerin Şehveti was released in November, 2015. Her stories have translated to Greek, Kurdish, German and English. Apart from literature, she is actively engaged in NGO projects and workshops concerning the education and the rights of women.

Cinders of the Evening Sun

"Dreams are very important to me.
I have good recall of them and I record them,
and I know I am in a good place to write when my dreams
become big and transpersonal. I am very curious about
the nature of time and the boundaries of our individual selves."
–HILARY MANTEL

Translated from Turkish by: Begüm Berber

An inglourious desire was awakened in me. I jerked myself up from the bed.

-How are you, sir?

A male voice was heard from the street. Who knows to whom this menace question was asked? What a poor soul had that morning, whereas my lips were hurt at one of the nights of that street.

After that night whenever someone asked me how I am, it resonated in me once more as I asked myself: How was I? I was fine. “I am fine” then I say. I believed in this fine lie more and more with each passing day. Nobody cared how I was. They asked it only to be asked. How they were? What is important was that.

I bolted shut the window and sat at the table. The enthusiasm boiling in me, turned into a serenity wrapped with determination just as I picked the pen into my hand. I stared at the blank page and watched it for minutes. Didn’t effected me…wished it had. Oh my, wished it had touched me for once… I belonged to him, to it. Maybe, he knew that, maybe it knew that and was that because? Just occurred to me, the paper is under an oath to like not its very supporters.

Although it was hard, I started to write a letter to him under the haze of my eyes. As soon as I managed to finish it, I was startled. I winced back. Then, instead of putting aside everything that I can afford, I put it in an envelope and throw myself out the street immediately. It was September, The first leaf that falls off of autumn.

I had posted the letter to his business address as usual; he was at home this time, which means I had posted it to his wife. I had calculated it neatly. First, she was going to find out our relationship then a strong fight and she was going to leave him! He would come back to me. Maybe he would be angry at first but certainly… Certainly he would come back. No, No! I didn’t even need to think otherwise.

I returned home in an extreme pace and started to wait as if all these things would happen in a moment and I was no longer allowing myself to leave here. I had already taken my annual leave.

I was on the window sill and the street was under my restriction of limits. The day was heavy as if it is made from lead. The letters that the postman delivered were either from a friend in long distance or from my mother. I couldn’t call him, though my hand was kept slipping towards the phone. I couldn’t place the things within me. I was alone. I was the calling faith of waiting. I was the pain of the faith. I was anxious. I steered the day to fears, the night to hopes… I waited. “He is coming!” I said. On my window sill, I was keeping myself busy with a silence of a shape shifting shadow. “Maybe tomorrow” I said “Maybe the other day…”

In my nights sleepless dreams, I tore the sky with my eyes by which I gave birth to the other day. I swaddled it by the curtains. Warmed on my left breast both its anger and its compassion. However, my window had no news. He wasn’t coming. For weeks there were no calls, not even a word… O! I was the fallacy. The fallacy of the devastating nights.

I wrote another letter incase the first one had gone missing. “Maybe he got it before his wife” I thought and wrote once again. It was apparent that she was kept in a cage by his words, then again… I couldn’t help myself. I had been subjugated by a force beyond my will. I was constantly writing. My loneliness was widening between the narrowing distances of letters. During the dawn and the dusk, I was still standing behind the same bars. I only heard from my mother. The wind was blowing cold. I was finishing up the bottles one after the other. I was like poison! It was like poison whatever I had taken in my mouth. I was throwing up. I was throwing up the fear within me, thinking their togetherness. However, it was obvious that they gave no thought. As a fact, the crimson red circle of the sun was suffocating my heart. Nevertheless, I was living obstinate.

The worst is the – one day more-. Although there was nothing to legitimize my waiting, I was writing the same things over for the 40th time, but this time I was unable to write things until it reaches a closed-end. My pencil became blunt and my palms were sweaty. To mention my fingers, they were trembling as the quivers seen on the surface of a water that is about to be boiled. The tears falling down from my eyes suddenly possessed my neck completely. I had filled with his existence to the point of overflow. I was being suffocated. I opened the window. There was a nipping frost outside. After I hid a deep breath within me and pulled the covers off of my suppressed feelings, I picked up the phone. My heart was if on the other side! How it was pounding! Yet, although I have dialed the number many times, I couldn’t reach him. Then the compass of the road pointed him. To the point of no return, I encouraged the anger and the life in me. I was going!

I arrived at his office with a nervousness, travelling between steps, about that I am going to see him again. They said that he quitted the job about two weeks ago. But why they were telling this as if I had done something bad and with looks angry and waiting for an apology?! Of course I couldn’t stand there and ponder over it. However, I couldn’t help to ask myself when I was walking away with long and heavy steps “Had I done something that necessitates me to be pardoned?”

It was the first time my feet stepped to his door. They couldn’t go further anyway. The house was abandoned. I swore at the void of the windows without curtains! Which shit hole had they gone? Where had they moved? Maybe they had left the city. I had knocked out myself. God knows now which… No! God didn’t know anything. God must have shut of His eyes while all this was happening. Maybe I was okay with this attitude of God. Weird and tired, I returned home.

No matter what I had done, I couldn’t get to the bottom line of the things. They were disappeared. In time, my being late and his untraceable escape felt like liberation. I was feeling that foggy happiness of all liberations carried within and now I got into the everyday routine of the former order. When I got home from work, I was opening the window, even for a short time, I was standing there to watch the state of the street. However, I wasn’t expecting anything. This was how I pay my debt to the window which offered me light in times of faith and torment.

On such a day, despite the harsh cold cauterizing my face, I was watching the street with my elbows leaning on the sill. There were two bus stops. The tram line was in between them. I saw the postman on the corner. When I saw him approaching to our building, I pulled myself in and stood behind the tulle curtain. He stopped after a few more steps. He looked up at my window. At that exact moment, I stuck out my head to look at him. He waved his hand to indicate I had got a mail. “Mother it is” I said. I stuck the letter that he slipped to my hand to my pocket and returned again to the window sill. I wasn’t wrong. It was from my mother. However, there was another letter behind it. That moment my heart pondered at my hands! It was him! He was telling me that I had been writing letters to a dead woman, his wife had a car crash on the fourth day of our break up and that he was writing this letter to me from the station. In the meanwhile, two busses come to stop on each bus stop and take two people staring at each other for minutes. I watch them go. The tram goes by in between them. A bird flies splitting the sky! When the ember that blazed the clouds of the sky is saying its good-byes to the roofs of the city it wondered above, a woman whose face is unknown to me is emptying the cinders of the heater stove on the snow. Her little daughter is pulling her skirt as if she was trying to tell her that she is cold. Suddenly, I don’t know how it happens but the woman tilts her head up and looks at me!

I wonder when I am closing the window;

“If I could turn back in time, would I take another road in order not to encounter with him this time? No! I wouldn’t. What was lived has lived with him and some stories are meant to be short.”

As for my little girl, she was still pulling my skirts.

Şeyma Koç was born in a district called Yahyalı, Kayseri in 1994. She completed higher education in Akdeniz University, department of Political Science and Public Administration. Her short stories have been published in several magazines, including Varlık, Evrensel Kültür, Dünyanın Öyküsü, Sincan İstasyonu, Güncel Sanat, Kasaba Sanat, Tmolos Edebiyat, Çıngı, Aşkın E Hali and Bireylikler. Her first short story collection Küllerin Şehveti was released in November, 2015. Her stories have translated to Greek, Kurdish, German and English. Apart from literature, she is actively engaged in NGO projects and workshops concerning the education and the rights of women.