Snow

by Tezer OZLÜ

Translated by Figen BINGÜL from Turkish

The evening had arrived after long lingering. The night of the same evening turned out to be very deep, dark, extraordinarily dark. I remember us walking under the trees for a moment. Then they jumped into the water, those next to me. Maybe that's why I returned home. I don't know. I don't remember. There's an armchair at home, which I sit on every day. I look through the window at an uneven wall, a quince tree, the piles of dirt and dried weed. Even at night I almost see them. Because I know this house and its garden very well.

When I go inside, it's pitch dark everywhere. I lean against the main door and wait so that my eyes can get used to the dark. My eyes don't get used to it. It's impossible to tell anything apart. Everything is impossible. I am trying to find things by using my hands.

There is nothing. Suddenly a candle is glowing in the living room. And it's not giving any light, this candle. I'm taking a step towards the living room. And wherever I turn, I'm seeing the little flames of the bright candles that don't give any light. The floor is starting to shake suddenly. The candles, the house, and I are trembling and wailing. Through this tremor suddenly a mouse appears. I am very scared of mice. Have been since my childhood. (Suddenly this is coming to my mind). The mouse, with its head raised towards me, is jumping motionless.

It has black eyes on both sides of its head. (Suddenly it passes through my mind that this one is very different from the mice I have seen in the past, in my childhood). I have never seen a mouse this gray, with eyes bigger than its head. And while I am thinking about this, wherever I turn my eyes it becomes full of mice. Countless burning dark candles, and everywhere countless black-eyed gray mice. And I am spinning among these while swaying. I am very scared. I recall that there was a door behind me. I turn around immediately. I am going to open the door and get out to the street. Just at that instant, wouldn't a black-eyed mouse, unbelievably big, as big as my head, which has been standing in the middle of the door, jump on my chest? In fact, it pierces its claws into my chest, and as I am trying to get it loose, it sinks deeper into me.

Iwas screaming. Both of my hands were on my chest. As if I wanted to rip something off my chest. The day was just about to break. I was afraid to fall asleep again. Our house in the provinces was on a road leading uphill. It had an extremely large hall with, yet again, very large rooms on all four sides of the hall. We used to retreat into one of these rooms during the winter months. It was warm only there. But when I got sleepy, my mother would send me to the room right across from this room that we lived in. Upon my leaving the warm and stuffy room, the hall would come towards me as a cold, scary, dark enormity.

As soon as I entered the room across the hall, I would look under the bed, then get in, sink in it as I pulled the covers to my head. Then, at that moment, I would start getting frightened, sweating. I don't recall if I was thinking. But I know in what utter loneliness each one of us slept in that big house. My granny lay on her deathbed for a long time. Her bed was right across from mine. I was growing up. She was dying.

At those times, when I lay down, I would think about when she would die. In fact, I wanted her to die. She had to die. Because her body was melting away. She had shrunk. Her skin was hanging off her bones. As soon as I got up in the mornings, I would slip into her bed. I believe that this was before her terminal illness. I would find her long awakened, having put her round glasses on. Under the glasses, tears would dribble onto the two cheeks.

Are you crying? I would say.

No, my eyes are watery, she would say.

Well, because they are so accustomed to tears, that's why, I would say. I had thought that the depression in this big house that one encountered, immediately after waking up in the morning, could make one cry. And the fear, before lying down at night.

One day, when I entered the kitchen that was in a dark alcove of the hall (just when I was at the door), I saw my granny --waiting-- with her tummy uncovered, holding a knife against her tummy. I, too, waited at the threshold for a while. But, she was standing still. Not even her hand was trembling. She wasn't doing anything. I wasn't doing anything, either. She didn't see me. I was seeing her.

Why had I come to the kitchen? I forgot. Then, I went to her.

What are you doing? I said.

I am killing myself, she said.

I didn't understand anything. I don't recall if I seized the knife from her hand or not. But she did not kill herself. That I know. One day she had run away from home again. This happened up at the mountain pasture where we used to go for summers, when we had been living in another city. There, there was a lake and an apple tree in front of our house. All day, we would climb the trees and eat apples. And at night my mother would take a basket in front of her, peel the apples one by one, and feed us. We were all tired of apples. There, my granny ran away from home. We went out to look for her. I went out alone. And I found her far away, in a pit near the big horse chestnut tree. She had put her scarf over her head. She had her round glasses on. She was looking at me, not seeing me, was not talking to me. Her very slender face had turned pale. I drew near her, frightened. No I was not frightened. I was glad that I had found her. I really had thought she had gone to places where I could not find her. Her standing in the pit like this surprised me.

Why did you get into the pit? I said.

I will lose myself, will go all the way behind those mountains, while saying these things, she pointed to the far away Bozdaglar. I didn't understand at all what it meant to lose oneself wandering in the mountains. I donÌt recall if we returned home together or not. But I remember her death very well. They wanted to operate on her at the hospital where we put her. She resisted this. (Whom did I hear this from? Back then, they wouldnÌt allow me in the hospital because I was very little.).

She died. I didnÌt comprehend her death at all. Neither was I scared. But, while I was looking down at the street from a high-up floor of a house, I knew down there it was she who had been away in the hearse. A woman was forcing me to play with toys. Anyway, do I comprehend other peopleÌs death now?

My own death?

For a year I stayed alone with my mother in the provinces. Then, we would sleep together. The city would remain under snow for a long time. And in that huge house, how lonely we were in the sleep we slept together. I grew up without comprehending my death. One day I was stuck dangling by one arm from the balcony of a high house. My body was hanging out onto the street. Crowded and empty, the street. Down there my grannyÌs hearse was moving. I was scared to direct my eyes downward. Every effort that I make to get inside the balcony with one hand is turning into a danger of falling down in the depth of the street. I can neither get in, nor fall down to the street. Is this a dream? Am I thinking that this is a dream when IÌm dangling into the void? I recall wondering if this was a dream or not. But I donÌt remember if I woke up from this dream or not. I donÌt know. WeÌre lying down together, my mother and I. They wake us up at dawn with a knock at the door. The janitor of the school has come. She, crying, wants us to go with her.

Nobody had passed through the high snow yet.

They go ahead of me.

I, behind them.

now comes up to their knees.

To my shoulder.

Where is that woman taking us?

When we return home my mother is sad again. And again I donÌt understand anything. My mother screams that I fell down from the window, and hearing her voice, I am falling down.

Will I find myself in my motherÌs arms when I wake up?

Or in a completely different emptiness?

_ . _

**The original of this story, "Kar," takes place in the collection of Tezer Ozlü's stories titled Eski Bahce-Eski Sevgi, published by Yapi Kredi Yayinlari in Istanbul in 1993. (http://www.ykykultur.com.tr/yky/).

W orks Cited
* Güney, Serdar. "Gercek Bir Devrimci: Tezer Ozlü" (A Real Revolutionist: Tezer Ozlü). Cumhuriyet Kitap. 20 February 2003.