Translated from the Turkish by Burcu Alkan
Now I’ve become their plaything.
After all the sounds withdraw begins the fear. There’s someone seated by the window, knitting the time. I can feel her presence even without turning my head her way. I think she’s tired; her movements are slow, the knitting needles are clacking like loose false teeth. I roll from the right to the left. My bones mount on top of one another, rub against each other; limp, as if they may crumple any second. There’s an acrid odour, a yellowish cloud that envelops me, composed of piss, sweat, rheum, and spit. The sheet’s humidity is pervading my body, the slowly rotting flesh. Persevering life. Growing cold. I’m an old man now. Been old for a very long time. Still, the fear is like the heart of a child. I can’t sleep. I hear the sound of the thread. It’s hissing. The ball of yarn is dwindling away. I try to cheer up when allusive sentences come to my mind. Once upon a time, I whisper in the darkness, I used to command the words; now I’ve become their plaything.
The day turns into a pilgrimage.
I’m walking inside the house. Ceaselessly. I mean to do the work that I’d begun but couldn’t complete. Everywhere books, notebooks, folders, tapes, videos, photographs. What was all this recording for? I must put it all in order. But when I turn my back, some other thing comes up, I forget the previous one. Rooms multiply. Those inside the rooms multiply. I shuttle back and forth between the rooms. I walk until my feet ache. The day turns into a pilgrimage.
I’m lost in somebody else’s body.
Today I awoke in somebody else’s body. I looked at his hands first, his fingernails have grown. I called out to the woman. She came out from inside the emptiness. I told the woman. How much I’ve missed speaking in somebody else’s voice. She didn’t understand. While you were asleep, Adem called, she said. I said nothing. In the memory of this new person, there was no information on anyone called Adem. What did he want, I asked, in order to prolong the presence of the woman. The blurry hefty flowery dress white arms spoke: He asked after you. Me. But where am I? I’m lost in somebody else’s body.
The blood of writing.
I close my eyes, they think I’m asleep. They’re walking about the house rustling. In my rooms. Searching. Thieves. Beetles, buzzers, arthropods, hissers, squeakers. I open my eyes, when they realise I’m awake, they immediately scurry around. Under the carpets, in between the wooden floorboards, underneath the doors. I must get up and look around the house. I’m walking holding on to the walls. Once again there’s stormy weather. The boards of the ark are creaking. A drawer full of black, navy, green. They couldn’t find them. I’ll be able to finish the book. I caress them. The ink bottles. The blood of writing.
Now the world is an audible dictionary.
Azalea, geranium, violet. Monstera, rubber and benjamin. Everything boils down to words. Every now and then I lose them. The broadcast is cut off. My circuits are a ghost city buried in darkness. Mute inner darkness. The words have slipped off my tongue, gone. I stand in front of the benjamin and think. These thin branches, these delicate green leaves, a couple of yellow ones fallen on the floor. The domesticated state of autumn. It’s as though, if I place its details one by one into my mind, I will find its word as a whole. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Thankfully there are these little papers. I write down the names of the objects and stick them on. Now the world is an audible dictionary.
The more beautiful what’s forgotten is, the more the emptiness hurts.
The woman is frying fish. The window is open. There’s a light breeze. I turn in to myself. I’m trailing the scent winding through my dark, empty corridors. It’s seeking its memories but all it can find is a turbid emptiness. The drunken ghost is thrashing itself around like mad. I’m watching without feeling anything. What a pitiful effort. Poor ghost, ask yourself: Might what doesn’t exist now have happened at all? A faded tablecloth, rakı glasses, creaky chairs. You can’t comprehend by looking at these. Who knows what kind of a table we sat around. We must have been crowded and merry. The more beautiful what’s forgotten is, the more the emptiness hurts.
Don’t spoil the times when you were yourself.
The room is covered in fog. Objects flicker in and out within the whiteness. I call out. Without knowing to whom. The woman comes. She finds and removes my pen from the milky sea. I write the words that come to my mind on the little yellow papers. I tuck them underneath the bed. In the drawers, inside the socks. Under the plates. I have secret corners. The thieves won’t be able to find them. I hide them. No one will be able to prevent me from finishing my novel. Some people were trying to take these away from me. A while back. Before I began hiding them. The fog is slowly dissipating. An old man appears in the mirror. You don’t remember anything. Burn. You don’t even recognise yourself. Burn it all. Your words are foreign. Burn all you’ve written. Don’t spoil the times when you were yourself.
Murat Gülsoy (born 1967) started his literary career as a publisher and a writer of the bimonthly magazine Hayalet Gemi (Ghost Ship) in 1992. His works explore the metafictional potentials of self-consciousness with ‘page turning’ plots. He also produced interactive hypertext works on internet exploring new ways of narrative. Gülsoy has published 11 books in Turkey so far. Besides short stories, he has three novels addressing modern masters Kafka, Borges, Eco, Stern, Fowles and Orhan Pamuk. He is the recipient of most prestigious national literary awards. Being a writer, he also works as an engineer for biomedical science, as a teacher for creative writing. He was the chairperson of the editorial board of Bogazici University Press (2003-2021). Stehlen Sie dieses Buch is the first book to be translated into German (Literaturca Verlag). His novel, ‘A Week of Kindness in Istanbul’ has been translated to Chinese, Macedonian, Romanian, and Bulgarian.
Burcu Alkan is an Istanbul-born literary scholar, translator and editor based in Berlin. She received her PhD at the University of Manchester, UK in 2009. She has translated both fiction and non-fiction and is well-published on Turkish literature. Her most recent collection, Turkish Literature as World Literature (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021, co-edited with Cimen Gunay-Erkol) is a major work that demonstrates the centrality of Turkish literature in the global literary scene. In addition to her translation work, Dr Alkan specialises in the relationship between psychiatry and literature and she is currently a research fellow of the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin.