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By The Seaside
By Faruk Ulay
Translated from the Turkish by Meryem Duver and Nat Gertler
I was walking on the shortest day of the year.
I was by the seaside.
The sun had set shortly after it rose.
Actually, it had risen as if it was setting.
Without warming or illuminating, it had run quickly from left to right.
The seaside was in the twilight.
It was a little after the sun had set.
It was cold.
My feet, waist, face, and especially ears were very cold.
I was cold.
My left hand was also cold.
I was holding a tiny hand in my right hand.
It was warm.
One hand of each of us was warm.
We were walking.
We were by the seaside.
I didn't know her name.
I was hesitant to ask.
I was scared that she would slip away from my hand.
We were walking as if we weren't aware of each other.
I had her hand.
She wasn't pulling it away.
She wasn't talking either.
She was walking in accordance with my steps.
We were like two suns who had lost their rays.
We were walking from left to right.
We weren't going so fast as to set.
We were by an ocean as large as a lake.
It was as if we were by the seaside.
The waves were crashing on the shore in a strange way.
They were like a big kid.
They were exactly like the hand in my hand.
I called her Wave.
I didn't call her name.
I kept it inside for now.
I warmed inside of me with her name.
The foamy water awakened in my belly split into two, half of it went to
my
feet and the other half struck my ears.
I got warm.
My hand holding her hand sweated.
Only that part of me got sweaty.
She wasn't pulling her hand away.
Her name was Wave.
She was a body of water which stayed where it struck.
We were walking.
It wasn't daubed with incongruous colors anymore.
I wouldn't know she was next to me if I wasn't holding her hand.
Darkness had melted her face.
She didn't have her body and her legs.
She didn't have her steps in accordance with mine, nor her right hand.
Her left hand?
It was still in my hand.
It was in my palm.
It was warm.
She wasn't pulling it away.
She knew that I wasn't going to let it go.
She couldn't pull her hand away.
She was walking next to me.
She was walking as if I wasn't there.
I wasn't able to see her.
I couldn't hear the sound she made walking on the sand.
I wasn't able to speak.
The only thing I knew about her was her name.
And I had given it to her.
She didn't know that I knew her name.
She was just holding my hand.
We were walking.
The longest night of the year was upon us.
The night had grown into an intense darkness.
The sun had set as if it were never to rise again.
It had stayed under the earth for a long time.
And it looked like it was going to stay longer.
The darkness was ice-cold.
I wasn't cold.
I was trying to warm up a hand that was frozen.
It was still in my hand.
It was in my right palm.
It was her left hand.
How warm she was at the sunset.
But now she was cold.
She was like night.
She didn't want to walk.
At least she didn't want to walk with me.
Maybe that's why she was cold.
I trusted my intuitions.
I assumed they were going to remain intuitions.
I believed she was cold because she didn't want to walk with me.
I wanted to caress her hand, warm it up by rubbing it and end her
feeling
cold.
I was hesitant to open my hand that held her hand.
I was frightened she was going to slip away from my hand.
She was cold.
By an ocean that looked like a dark lake, she was walking reluctantly
to
some place she couldn't see.
I was at the end of the same night.
The day was breaking.
The sun was getting ready to rise.
Ahead of me was getting light.
The sea was the color of silver.
I was by the same shore.
Nothing was changed.
Except from my being on the second shortest day of the year, everything
was
the same.
The sun rose in a way of setting, as it had yesterday.
It was going to set in a trice without warming or lighting up.
I knew it.
I had lived this day before.
How was I going to live it again?
I opened my hand and looked at my palm.
Her hand wasn't there.
She wasn't there, either.
She wasn't walking with me.
She wasn't talking.
Actually, she had never talked.
She acted as if she were walking with me.
She didn't even do that.
She didn't do anything.
She didn't pull her hand away, either.
She had never had a hand.
I gave up walking.
I let go of myself.
To the sand.
I didn't fall.
I could, but I didn't.
I got hung up on the nails of the wind awakened by the rising of the
sun.
I got whirled like sand.
I never fell.
I didn't feel cold.
I flew.
I only flew.
I flew away from the seaside I arrived walking.
I was two people when I came, I disappeared when I left.
Read the original Turkish version.
Faruk Ulay was born in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1957. He received a B.A. in
graphic design in Istanbul, then spent four years in London, England
for
postgraduate studies in visual communications. He moved to the United
States in 1982 and currently lives, works, and writes in Pasadena,
California.
His first collection of stories Kopuk Baglantilar (Broken
Connections)
was published in 1984. A book of experimental texts and cyphers
Yazilamamis Bir Tarih Kitabi I'in Dipnotlar (Footnotes for an
Unwritten
History Book) and a novel Iti (Impulse) were published in 1995. A
second
collection of stories and another book of experimental texts will be
published in the spring of 1998 in Turkey. His short stories and essays
appear regularly in various Turkish literary and cultural journals.
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