Endgame, page 30
Then again a short sentence.
‘i want to tell you everything i see … i want to always speak with you … is it strange? … so what …’
I started to detect a strange sadness in her words, an enigmatic restlessness she was avoiding.
‘i’m living a life that belongs to a stranger … i don’t know if i will ever have a life that i’ll be able to call my own, in which i can be myself …
‘you’re right, i can interact with all kinds of people, at every social level … searching for clues that will lead me back to my own life … but i belong to none of them.
‘are there times when you suffer too?’
How many days had we spent at home, how many days since I’d stepped outside, how many days had I lived steeped in this honeydewed dream? Now I don’t know.
Things had changed in those few days.
It was as if we’d come to a door and it was now for us to decide if we were going to open it.
Indeed now I know that I’d already decided to open the door.
I just wanted to enjoy the last few minutes, to be sure, and so that I could fling it open with even greater pleasure.
I was full of a swelling desire to turn everything we experienced at home, all our dreams, into reality and to live in a home that was a little more real.
Because what we experienced in our home was happiness.
Or maybe it was that I believed the recipe for happiness was something like this.
That’s what I believed.
XL
On one of those days when everything in town was quiet, I received a telephone call in the afternoon.
‘Have you finished all my sweets?’ she said, teasingly.
‘All finished,’ I said, but once I heard her voice I was captivated.
‘Do you need any more?’
‘Why, yes I do.’
‘Let me bring some of my tastiest over then,’ said Kamile Hanım. ‘But it’s a little hard for me to get through town at a time like this. It’s tense out there. We have a summer place about an hour outside of town that we never really use. It’s quiet there. No one around. Come and pick up your sweets there.’
‘Okay. When?’
‘Be there in two hours,’ she said.
‘All right.’
Although my mind was filled with thoughts of Zuhal, my body had suddenly surged to life when I heard Kamile’s voice, alluring, and steeped in her crude and selfish desires.
What’s more I knew this would never happen again, that it would come to an end if Zuhal and I started a real life together.
True, I wanted that life with Zuhal, especially during those insane days when we were shut in at home, writing to each other constantly. She had practically taken possession of me, pushed me into another world, making me believe in the perfection of that place.
It’s hard to explain my belief in it.
It is a feeling of warmth, the softness that comes with a woman’s body, which, even when she isn’t there, envelops you, and you feel an unending glow.
It’s a feeling of touch and wholeness that stays with you.
I didn’t want to lose that.
But it wasn’t easy to give up my own life and my solitude. For a long time I’d been happy living that way – I’d become used to a life in which anything could happen. It wouldn’t be easy to forget old habits. I would have to push myself.
It was going to take me time to convince myself that I could love a person more than my time alone, that I could experience the confidence of this solitude when I was with another, that I could lead a life that would allow me to forget the freshness that came from the freedom of solitude. I wanted a woman, I wanted to be with her, I wanted to spend time with her, but my solitude was another woman, someone I loved just as passionately. It was a curious dilemma. To love two different things that could not coexist, to want both at the same time.
I kept imagining that scene in which I would watch her in the kitchen cooking as I whiled away my time in the garden; back then the vision was more appealing than anything in the real world.
I was going to change.
I knew myself well enough to know just how hard it was going to be.
As I set off to meet Kamile Hanım I thought about how it was going to be this last time, a goodbye, the last chance to taste her unrivalled sweets. It was my last journey, one more thrilling adventure inspired by the sin of lust.
It wasn’t easy to understand how this woman on the brink of old age had such a power over me. It was lust, her desire for pure pleasure and her selfishness, and I could only understand it if I worshipped at the altar of her lust.
About an hour’s drive out of town I followed Kamile’s directions and turned off the main road onto a dirt road shaded by palms trees, making my way down to the sea.
There was the house: two floors and the shutters closed, in a garden surrounded by high walls.
The red iron garden gate was open.
I drove in along the gravel driveway and the gate let out a mechanical creak and automatically closed behind me.
Kamile Hanım was already there.
I felt an overwhelming desire to touch her right then.
I’ve met people who say that making love is the same with every woman, but it’s not like that at all. With every woman you enter a different world, making love to them uniquely, because she will ask something remarkable of you and you will rise to the challenge; she will touch you in her own way and this will change your touch. But this is not as easy as it seems, and choosing is distressing because when you decide on this man or that woman you will have to make sacrifices in return, and the weight of the decision can knock you to the floor. The real then is not enough, it will not lead you to make these sacrifices, and so you turn to dreams. Dreams like the dream of watching Zuhal through a window.
It was a beautiful garden.
I crossed a broad veranda to the front door, which was ajar, and as I pushed it open I stopped for a moment to adjust to the darkness inside, a stark contrast to the shimmering daylight.
‘Shut the door,’ Kamile Hanım said.
I shut the door.
The bright light outside streamed through the shutters, casting strips of light on the carpets.
When my eyes finally adjusted, I saw Kamile Hanım.
She had taken off her jacket.
She was sitting in an armchair with her legs crossed.
And her skirt was pulled up over her knees.
Looking at me with that teasing smile on her face, she said, ‘You came for your sweets?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘You’ve come a long way for them.’
‘I would have travelled further.’
She stood up.
‘Come here,’ she said.
I followed her out of the room. The door to the bedroom was open. ‘I changed the sheets. They start to smell of mould otherwise.’
My hands were almost trembling as I undressed her and laid her on the bed.
She’d learned to surrender; she was quick to learn anything for the sake of pleasure.
At first we groped each other like hungry animals, and it took us some time to sink into it.
When it was over, we each lit a cigarette.
‘How are you?’ I asked. We finally had the time for small talk.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Considering the circumstances.’
‘Is it that bad?’
‘Terrible. Mustafa has lost his mind. And he’s driven Raci and Rahmi mad too. He’s shut down Raci Bey’s huge factories, which is unheard of. The boy’s gone insane in his lust for power, lost his head, and there’s no way to reason with him any more. He’s not thinking clearly. If you’re going to challenge someone whose family’s been here for hundreds of years, someone everyone respects and who no one would challenge, well then you’re in for trouble. The boy’s lost his senses. He starts a feud with Raci Bey and he ends up burning down the whole town. But the day will come when Mustafa will have to pay for everything. Anything can happen now. I wanted to send Rahmi to the city but he won’t listen to me and his father’s telling him to stay. Rahmi’s really on edge. I don’t know what I’m going to do, I’m really depressed about it all. Everyone is.’
‘They’re fighting over the treasure?’
She laughed and said, ‘No. That’s a thing of the past. Now the fight’s over who’s got the biggest rod.’
She could be a lot like Sümbül sometimes.
‘They set fire to Mustafa’s olive groves.’
‘Well, whoever did that was an idiot if you ask me. The town is full of olive trees, so burn a few and there’s only more and more to burn. And what does it take to do it? Just a match. You tell some guy to go do it and he does. I mean, forgive me, but these boys have no brains. They’re half-arsed wasters who can’t even sit still, just have to fidget, get up and break something.’
‘What’s going to happen now?’
‘God knows. Most likely Rahmi will appeal to a higher court, but if someone with some sense doesn’t step into the fray and stop all this I don’t know what will happen. In the end I’ll have no choice but to send my kids away. They can’t get to Raci easily, and Rahmi’s become irritable, which is starting to scare me. He needs to get out of town, if only for a short while. Let his father put things back on track, then he can come back. I’ll be much more comfortable once he’s gone. Anyway, I guess I’ll send him away soon. But I tell you, they’ll ask you over for dinner one more time before I can do it. It turns me on, seeing you in public.’
Her leg was up against mine and she put her hand on my stomach. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said. ‘Are you full? Seems you’re more interested in town gossip than my sweets.’
Her breasts, stomach and inner thighs were glimmering in the dim light, fully exposed. She knew how much I loved her body that way, and her casual style.
When we stopped this time the sun was setting.
My telephone beeped as I lit a cigarette.
A new message.
I got up and looked.
It was from Zuhal.
I really miss you. I’m in town. Where are you?
Out of town. But back in a couple of hours.
The phone beeped again.
Where are you?
I didn’t know what to write.
Out of town.
Silence for two minutes as I waited by the phone. Thinking what more I could write as I walked back to bed, the phone beeped again.
How’s Kamile Hanım?
I can’t describe the fear and panic I felt just then; panic was no exaggeration, considering the rush of emotion that seized me.
To this day I don’t know whether Zuhal knew when she sent that message or if she was simply having me on.
But I was swept away in such panic that I suddenly felt we were being watched.
I felt Zuhal was standing there at the garden gate, looking at my car.
She’s fine, I wrote.
Later I would tell her that I was joking, that I assumed she’d be amused by the absurdity of it.
I waited a bit then went back to bed.
Kamile Hanım needed to get home before dark, and I was feeling restless, and so the next session was a little rushed.
I left before she did.
And as I did she gave me a packet of sweets.
‘Here you are then. Are you happy?’
‘Very,’ I said but panicking inside. I knew the feeling wouldn’t pass until I saw Zuhal.
I took a shower once I got home, hoping I would see Zuhal a little later.
I called her on the way.
Her phone was switched off.
I called again and again. In a frenzy, I kept calling. I don’t know how many times but I never got through.
I drove past her house when I got to town.
No lights on inside.
I didn’t know if she was even in town or if she’d left for the city in a fit of anger. Then later it occurred to me that she might be with Mustafa.
Maybe she’d gone to that hotel she never liked.
Sometimes just a word can change the course of your life, everything that lies ahead; nothing was the same after I wrote that word: fine. I was paralysed by the thought that the door to our future would never open again.
I called her all night but she never answered.
Then I waited at home until morning but not a word from her flashed on the screen.
She had suddenly vanished from my life.
I had never thought that just a few words could lead to something so bad, from good to something utterly dark.
At first I thought that her anger would fade over the next few days.
But it never did.
I imagine there was much more than anger.
Something deeper.
Something that could not be repaired.
XLI
A pinkish smoke is emerging in the middle of a dark silhouette, a barely perceptible brightness between the mountains.
This light will bring me to darkness.
We are approaching the end.
There’s no time to escape now.
I have two options: surrender or die.
And I still don’t know which one to choose.
Will I change my mind at the last moment?
Am I afraid?
Will I be afraid?
The initial fear has subsided.
I feel a strange numbness, as if every part of me is slowly separating, and as the parts leave me I feel less and less.
And not only pieces of me but pieces of my life, floating away. It seems that I am ready to bid this world farewell.
From the moment you accept your fate all emotions change, and you no longer want to drag out the farewell.
A strange smile appears on your face, as if you’ve discovered an amusing secret no one knows, and you feel mature and disdainful of those who will remain alive.
I don’t know why I feel this for them.
Perhaps because I’m past the initial fear, the terror, and in time they’ll all have to face it too.
The part that has fallen to me in this epic novel has come to an end.
I am preparing to leave this book.
Is God aware of this?
Or is he somewhere far away in the universe, receiving plaudits for a book that was far better written? Does he even care about this book?
I wonder if this book was nothing but a draft.
Truth is, it gives that feeling.
In the beginning he clearly wasn’t thinking of a draft, but somewhere in the middle he might have said, This isn’t working.
In the beginning there was the appendix he sent to the prophet Moses, in which he proclaims that the heroes of his novels are created in his image.
Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the fowl in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move upon the ground.’
God made human beings in his image. And so humans were created in God’s image.
The Book of Genesis.
Do you remember your own words?
I forget some of the things I’ve written and I wonder if the same happens to you?
I suppose it doesn’t.
Was I created in your image?
Am I a part of you?
Do you know the part of me that was capable of murder?
Doesn’t it bother you?
A murderer forged in your image now sits here on this bench, an image of you that waits for an imminent end.
Indeed they say that something of the author always lives in his heroes.
In some of his books the hero is clearly the author himself.
Bearing in mind that you say ‘All heroes are made in my image’, I must conclude that there is an autobiographical element in your work, for in your book you’re telling your own story.
I wonder if we should call these diaries and not novels, as you follow one day after another. Isn’t it merely the day in a life put down in a diary?
What will you write tonight?
Will you write the section ‘I killed a person’ tonight, or did you write it in advance?
You killed a person tonight.
And because I was made in your image they will take me for a killer and punish me.
Who knows that I was made in your image?
No one would believe me if I said so.
Am I the only one who believes in you?
Is there no one who takes your novel as seriously as me?
Maybe one needs to love literature to believe in you; one needs to know the value of a novel to marvel at your ways; for I know the value of your book.
But it seems that there are times when you falter in your choice of words.
Your heroes might very well come to the wrong conclusion when you say, ‘let them have dominion over all the other creatures on this earth’. To me, one might extract the wrong message here, and indeed people do.
For there is nothing they will not do to have dominion over others.
Simply look at what’s happening in this town: what have they become for this dominion?
Maybe it is a word you never should have used.
Here we are on an infinitesimal planet far from the centre of the universe. Is that why you dashed off this novel without taking any care?
Have you only lingered here a little while because you have more books to come? And so the adventures here on this planet are of little importance?
Is this planet nothing more to you than this miserable little town is to me?
Is it only a place for you to pause while you dash off your first draft?
To impress your readers, you said ‘These heroes are made in my image’ – a crafty way to keep your readers on their toes, dying to know more about the author’s personality.
And so you have a good beginning, a fine entrance.
‘The people in this book are made in my image.’
But what do these images of yours get tangled up in? Do you know?
They delight in everything you have forbidden them to do.
And you delight in breaking all your rules.
You are an author making fun of his readers.
You delight in sowing confusion, pretending to talk about serious matters when you’re just having fun, presenting dramatic twists as if you’re being lighthearted, meddling a little in other people’s minds, having fun while you pretend.
‘i want to tell you everything i see … i want to always speak with you … is it strange? … so what …’
I started to detect a strange sadness in her words, an enigmatic restlessness she was avoiding.
‘i’m living a life that belongs to a stranger … i don’t know if i will ever have a life that i’ll be able to call my own, in which i can be myself …
‘you’re right, i can interact with all kinds of people, at every social level … searching for clues that will lead me back to my own life … but i belong to none of them.
‘are there times when you suffer too?’
How many days had we spent at home, how many days since I’d stepped outside, how many days had I lived steeped in this honeydewed dream? Now I don’t know.
Things had changed in those few days.
It was as if we’d come to a door and it was now for us to decide if we were going to open it.
Indeed now I know that I’d already decided to open the door.
I just wanted to enjoy the last few minutes, to be sure, and so that I could fling it open with even greater pleasure.
I was full of a swelling desire to turn everything we experienced at home, all our dreams, into reality and to live in a home that was a little more real.
Because what we experienced in our home was happiness.
Or maybe it was that I believed the recipe for happiness was something like this.
That’s what I believed.
XL
On one of those days when everything in town was quiet, I received a telephone call in the afternoon.
‘Have you finished all my sweets?’ she said, teasingly.
‘All finished,’ I said, but once I heard her voice I was captivated.
‘Do you need any more?’
‘Why, yes I do.’
‘Let me bring some of my tastiest over then,’ said Kamile Hanım. ‘But it’s a little hard for me to get through town at a time like this. It’s tense out there. We have a summer place about an hour outside of town that we never really use. It’s quiet there. No one around. Come and pick up your sweets there.’
‘Okay. When?’
‘Be there in two hours,’ she said.
‘All right.’
Although my mind was filled with thoughts of Zuhal, my body had suddenly surged to life when I heard Kamile’s voice, alluring, and steeped in her crude and selfish desires.
What’s more I knew this would never happen again, that it would come to an end if Zuhal and I started a real life together.
True, I wanted that life with Zuhal, especially during those insane days when we were shut in at home, writing to each other constantly. She had practically taken possession of me, pushed me into another world, making me believe in the perfection of that place.
It’s hard to explain my belief in it.
It is a feeling of warmth, the softness that comes with a woman’s body, which, even when she isn’t there, envelops you, and you feel an unending glow.
It’s a feeling of touch and wholeness that stays with you.
I didn’t want to lose that.
But it wasn’t easy to give up my own life and my solitude. For a long time I’d been happy living that way – I’d become used to a life in which anything could happen. It wouldn’t be easy to forget old habits. I would have to push myself.
It was going to take me time to convince myself that I could love a person more than my time alone, that I could experience the confidence of this solitude when I was with another, that I could lead a life that would allow me to forget the freshness that came from the freedom of solitude. I wanted a woman, I wanted to be with her, I wanted to spend time with her, but my solitude was another woman, someone I loved just as passionately. It was a curious dilemma. To love two different things that could not coexist, to want both at the same time.
I kept imagining that scene in which I would watch her in the kitchen cooking as I whiled away my time in the garden; back then the vision was more appealing than anything in the real world.
I was going to change.
I knew myself well enough to know just how hard it was going to be.
As I set off to meet Kamile Hanım I thought about how it was going to be this last time, a goodbye, the last chance to taste her unrivalled sweets. It was my last journey, one more thrilling adventure inspired by the sin of lust.
It wasn’t easy to understand how this woman on the brink of old age had such a power over me. It was lust, her desire for pure pleasure and her selfishness, and I could only understand it if I worshipped at the altar of her lust.
About an hour’s drive out of town I followed Kamile’s directions and turned off the main road onto a dirt road shaded by palms trees, making my way down to the sea.
There was the house: two floors and the shutters closed, in a garden surrounded by high walls.
The red iron garden gate was open.
I drove in along the gravel driveway and the gate let out a mechanical creak and automatically closed behind me.
Kamile Hanım was already there.
I felt an overwhelming desire to touch her right then.
I’ve met people who say that making love is the same with every woman, but it’s not like that at all. With every woman you enter a different world, making love to them uniquely, because she will ask something remarkable of you and you will rise to the challenge; she will touch you in her own way and this will change your touch. But this is not as easy as it seems, and choosing is distressing because when you decide on this man or that woman you will have to make sacrifices in return, and the weight of the decision can knock you to the floor. The real then is not enough, it will not lead you to make these sacrifices, and so you turn to dreams. Dreams like the dream of watching Zuhal through a window.
It was a beautiful garden.
I crossed a broad veranda to the front door, which was ajar, and as I pushed it open I stopped for a moment to adjust to the darkness inside, a stark contrast to the shimmering daylight.
‘Shut the door,’ Kamile Hanım said.
I shut the door.
The bright light outside streamed through the shutters, casting strips of light on the carpets.
When my eyes finally adjusted, I saw Kamile Hanım.
She had taken off her jacket.
She was sitting in an armchair with her legs crossed.
And her skirt was pulled up over her knees.
Looking at me with that teasing smile on her face, she said, ‘You came for your sweets?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘You’ve come a long way for them.’
‘I would have travelled further.’
She stood up.
‘Come here,’ she said.
I followed her out of the room. The door to the bedroom was open. ‘I changed the sheets. They start to smell of mould otherwise.’
My hands were almost trembling as I undressed her and laid her on the bed.
She’d learned to surrender; she was quick to learn anything for the sake of pleasure.
At first we groped each other like hungry animals, and it took us some time to sink into it.
When it was over, we each lit a cigarette.
‘How are you?’ I asked. We finally had the time for small talk.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Considering the circumstances.’
‘Is it that bad?’
‘Terrible. Mustafa has lost his mind. And he’s driven Raci and Rahmi mad too. He’s shut down Raci Bey’s huge factories, which is unheard of. The boy’s gone insane in his lust for power, lost his head, and there’s no way to reason with him any more. He’s not thinking clearly. If you’re going to challenge someone whose family’s been here for hundreds of years, someone everyone respects and who no one would challenge, well then you’re in for trouble. The boy’s lost his senses. He starts a feud with Raci Bey and he ends up burning down the whole town. But the day will come when Mustafa will have to pay for everything. Anything can happen now. I wanted to send Rahmi to the city but he won’t listen to me and his father’s telling him to stay. Rahmi’s really on edge. I don’t know what I’m going to do, I’m really depressed about it all. Everyone is.’
‘They’re fighting over the treasure?’
She laughed and said, ‘No. That’s a thing of the past. Now the fight’s over who’s got the biggest rod.’
She could be a lot like Sümbül sometimes.
‘They set fire to Mustafa’s olive groves.’
‘Well, whoever did that was an idiot if you ask me. The town is full of olive trees, so burn a few and there’s only more and more to burn. And what does it take to do it? Just a match. You tell some guy to go do it and he does. I mean, forgive me, but these boys have no brains. They’re half-arsed wasters who can’t even sit still, just have to fidget, get up and break something.’
‘What’s going to happen now?’
‘God knows. Most likely Rahmi will appeal to a higher court, but if someone with some sense doesn’t step into the fray and stop all this I don’t know what will happen. In the end I’ll have no choice but to send my kids away. They can’t get to Raci easily, and Rahmi’s become irritable, which is starting to scare me. He needs to get out of town, if only for a short while. Let his father put things back on track, then he can come back. I’ll be much more comfortable once he’s gone. Anyway, I guess I’ll send him away soon. But I tell you, they’ll ask you over for dinner one more time before I can do it. It turns me on, seeing you in public.’
Her leg was up against mine and she put her hand on my stomach. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said. ‘Are you full? Seems you’re more interested in town gossip than my sweets.’
Her breasts, stomach and inner thighs were glimmering in the dim light, fully exposed. She knew how much I loved her body that way, and her casual style.
When we stopped this time the sun was setting.
My telephone beeped as I lit a cigarette.
A new message.
I got up and looked.
It was from Zuhal.
I really miss you. I’m in town. Where are you?
Out of town. But back in a couple of hours.
The phone beeped again.
Where are you?
I didn’t know what to write.
Out of town.
Silence for two minutes as I waited by the phone. Thinking what more I could write as I walked back to bed, the phone beeped again.
How’s Kamile Hanım?
I can’t describe the fear and panic I felt just then; panic was no exaggeration, considering the rush of emotion that seized me.
To this day I don’t know whether Zuhal knew when she sent that message or if she was simply having me on.
But I was swept away in such panic that I suddenly felt we were being watched.
I felt Zuhal was standing there at the garden gate, looking at my car.
She’s fine, I wrote.
Later I would tell her that I was joking, that I assumed she’d be amused by the absurdity of it.
I waited a bit then went back to bed.
Kamile Hanım needed to get home before dark, and I was feeling restless, and so the next session was a little rushed.
I left before she did.
And as I did she gave me a packet of sweets.
‘Here you are then. Are you happy?’
‘Very,’ I said but panicking inside. I knew the feeling wouldn’t pass until I saw Zuhal.
I took a shower once I got home, hoping I would see Zuhal a little later.
I called her on the way.
Her phone was switched off.
I called again and again. In a frenzy, I kept calling. I don’t know how many times but I never got through.
I drove past her house when I got to town.
No lights on inside.
I didn’t know if she was even in town or if she’d left for the city in a fit of anger. Then later it occurred to me that she might be with Mustafa.
Maybe she’d gone to that hotel she never liked.
Sometimes just a word can change the course of your life, everything that lies ahead; nothing was the same after I wrote that word: fine. I was paralysed by the thought that the door to our future would never open again.
I called her all night but she never answered.
Then I waited at home until morning but not a word from her flashed on the screen.
She had suddenly vanished from my life.
I had never thought that just a few words could lead to something so bad, from good to something utterly dark.
At first I thought that her anger would fade over the next few days.
But it never did.
I imagine there was much more than anger.
Something deeper.
Something that could not be repaired.
XLI
A pinkish smoke is emerging in the middle of a dark silhouette, a barely perceptible brightness between the mountains.
This light will bring me to darkness.
We are approaching the end.
There’s no time to escape now.
I have two options: surrender or die.
And I still don’t know which one to choose.
Will I change my mind at the last moment?
Am I afraid?
Will I be afraid?
The initial fear has subsided.
I feel a strange numbness, as if every part of me is slowly separating, and as the parts leave me I feel less and less.
And not only pieces of me but pieces of my life, floating away. It seems that I am ready to bid this world farewell.
From the moment you accept your fate all emotions change, and you no longer want to drag out the farewell.
A strange smile appears on your face, as if you’ve discovered an amusing secret no one knows, and you feel mature and disdainful of those who will remain alive.
I don’t know why I feel this for them.
Perhaps because I’m past the initial fear, the terror, and in time they’ll all have to face it too.
The part that has fallen to me in this epic novel has come to an end.
I am preparing to leave this book.
Is God aware of this?
Or is he somewhere far away in the universe, receiving plaudits for a book that was far better written? Does he even care about this book?
I wonder if this book was nothing but a draft.
Truth is, it gives that feeling.
In the beginning he clearly wasn’t thinking of a draft, but somewhere in the middle he might have said, This isn’t working.
In the beginning there was the appendix he sent to the prophet Moses, in which he proclaims that the heroes of his novels are created in his image.
Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the fowl in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move upon the ground.’
God made human beings in his image. And so humans were created in God’s image.
The Book of Genesis.
Do you remember your own words?
I forget some of the things I’ve written and I wonder if the same happens to you?
I suppose it doesn’t.
Was I created in your image?
Am I a part of you?
Do you know the part of me that was capable of murder?
Doesn’t it bother you?
A murderer forged in your image now sits here on this bench, an image of you that waits for an imminent end.
Indeed they say that something of the author always lives in his heroes.
In some of his books the hero is clearly the author himself.
Bearing in mind that you say ‘All heroes are made in my image’, I must conclude that there is an autobiographical element in your work, for in your book you’re telling your own story.
I wonder if we should call these diaries and not novels, as you follow one day after another. Isn’t it merely the day in a life put down in a diary?
What will you write tonight?
Will you write the section ‘I killed a person’ tonight, or did you write it in advance?
You killed a person tonight.
And because I was made in your image they will take me for a killer and punish me.
Who knows that I was made in your image?
No one would believe me if I said so.
Am I the only one who believes in you?
Is there no one who takes your novel as seriously as me?
Maybe one needs to love literature to believe in you; one needs to know the value of a novel to marvel at your ways; for I know the value of your book.
But it seems that there are times when you falter in your choice of words.
Your heroes might very well come to the wrong conclusion when you say, ‘let them have dominion over all the other creatures on this earth’. To me, one might extract the wrong message here, and indeed people do.
For there is nothing they will not do to have dominion over others.
Simply look at what’s happening in this town: what have they become for this dominion?
Maybe it is a word you never should have used.
Here we are on an infinitesimal planet far from the centre of the universe. Is that why you dashed off this novel without taking any care?
Have you only lingered here a little while because you have more books to come? And so the adventures here on this planet are of little importance?
Is this planet nothing more to you than this miserable little town is to me?
Is it only a place for you to pause while you dash off your first draft?
To impress your readers, you said ‘These heroes are made in my image’ – a crafty way to keep your readers on their toes, dying to know more about the author’s personality.
And so you have a good beginning, a fine entrance.
‘The people in this book are made in my image.’
But what do these images of yours get tangled up in? Do you know?
They delight in everything you have forbidden them to do.
And you delight in breaking all your rules.
You are an author making fun of his readers.
You delight in sowing confusion, pretending to talk about serious matters when you’re just having fun, presenting dramatic twists as if you’re being lighthearted, meddling a little in other people’s minds, having fun while you pretend.
