Chapter 2

THE NEXT DAY I FELL IN LOVE. LOVE WAS EVERY BIT AS devastating as the light that surged from the book into my face, proving to me how substantially my life had already gone off the track.

As soon as I woke up in the morning, I reviewed all that had happened to me on the previous day and knew at once that the new realm which had opened before me was not just a momentary reverie but as real as my own torso and my limbs. Finding others who were in the same predicament as myself was of the utmost necessity to save myself from the feeling of unbearable loneliness that beset me in the new world into which I was projected.

It had snowed in the night, and snow had accumulated on the windowsills, the sidewalks, and the rooftops. In the chilly white light from outside, the open book on the table appeared sparer and more innocent than it was, which gave it a more ominous character.

Even so, I succeeded in having breakfast with my mother as usual, savoring the smell of toast, thumbing through the morning edition of Milliyet, glancing at Jelal Salik's column. As if nothing were out of the ordinary, I had some of the cheese and smiled into my mother's good-natured face. The clatter of cups, spoons, and the teakettle, the noise of the citrus truck in the street were telling me to trust in the normal flow of life, but I wasn't deceived. When I stepped outside, I was so sure the world had been utterly transformed that I was not embarrassed to be wearing my dead father's worn and cumbersome overcoat.

I walked to the station and got on the train; I got off the train and boarded the ferry; at Karaköy I leapt out on the landing; I elbowed my way up the stairs, got on the bus and arrived at Taksim Square; on my way to the university, I stopped briefly and watched some gypsies hawking flowers on the sidewalk. How could I trust life to continue as in the past? Or forget I had ever read the book? For a moment the prospect before me seemed so terrifying that I felt like running away.

At the lecture session on stress mechanics, I solemnly copied down the schemata, the figures and formulas on the blackboard. When the bald-headed professor was not writing something on the board, I folded my arms on my chest and listened to his mellow voice. Was I really listening? Or just pretending to listen like anybody else, playing the part of a student in the department of civil engineering at the Technical University? I couldn't say. But a while later, when I sensed that the familiar old world was intolerably hopeless, my heart began to beat fast, my head began to swim as if a drug were coursing through my veins, and I was thrilled with the power that surged from the book, spreading gradually from its locus in my neck throughout my entire body. The new world had already annulled all existence and transformed the present into the past. Things I saw, things I touched were all pathetically old.

Two days before, when I first laid eyes on the book, it was in the hands of a girl from architecture. She was getting something at the canteen in the lower level and needed to find her wallet, but because she was carrying something else in her other hand, she was unable to rummage through her bag. The object in her hand was a book and, in an effort to free her hand, she was forced to put the book down just for a moment on the table where I was sitting; and I had, just for a moment, stared at the book placed on my table. That was all there was to the coincidence that had changed my life. On my way home that afternoon, when I saw another copy of it among the old tomes, pamphlets, volumes of poetry and divination, love stories and political thrillers being sold in a sidewalk stall, I had bought the book.

The moment the noon bell buzzed, most of the other students hurried up the stairs to get in the cafeteria line, but I just sat there at my desk. Then I wandered through the halls, went down to the canteen, passed through courtyards, strolled down colonnaded galleries, went into empty classrooms; I looked through windows to see snow-laden trees in the park across the way, and had some water in the bathroom. I walked and walked, up and down all over Taskısla Hall. The girl was nowhere to be seen, but I was not worried.

After the noon hour, the hallways got even more crowded. I walked the corridors all through the school of architecture, I went into the drafting rooms, I watched coin games being played on the tables; I sat in a corner and, putting together a newspaper that had fallen apart, I read it. I took to the corridors once more, went up and down staircases, listened to conversations about soccer, politics, and what was on TV last night. I joined a group making light of some movie star's decision to have a child, I offered around my lighter and cigarettes; someone was telling a joke, I listened to it and, what's more, while I did all this, I provided good-natured replies to whoever stopped and asked me if I had seen so-and-so. The times I didn't manage to find a couple of friends to josh around with, or windows to look out of, or a destination to walk to, I walked briskly with great determination in some direction or other, as if I had something very important on my mind and was in an awful hurry. But since I had no particular goal, should I find myself at the library entrance, or up the staircase, or run into someone who asked for a cigarette, I changed direction, blended into the throng, or stopped to light up. I was just about to look at a newly posted announcement on a bulletin board when my heart began to pound, then my heart took off and left me helpless. There she was, the girl in whose hand I had seen the book; moving away from me in the crowd, but walking away ever so slowly as in a dream, she seemed, for some reason, to beckon me to her. I lost my head, I was no longer myself, I just knew it, I let myself follow her.

She was wearing a dress that was pale but not white, it was the lightest of shades to which I could assign no color. I caught up with her before she reached the staircase, and when I caught a glimpse of her up close, the radiance of her face was quite as powerful as the light that the book emanated, but ever so gentle. I was in this world, breathing at the threshold of the new life. The longer I beheld her radiance, the more I understood my heart would no longer heed me.

I told her I had read the book. I told her I'd read the book after seeing it in her hand. I had my own world before reading the book, I said, but after reading the book, I now had another world. We had to talk, I said, for I was left entirely on my own.

"I have a class now," she said.

My heart missed a couple of beats. Perhaps the girl had guessed my bewilderment; she thought it over for a moment.

"All right," she said, making up her mind. "Let's find a free classroom and talk."

We found a classroom on the second floor that was not in use. My legs trembled as I walked in. I couldn't figure out how to tell her I was aware of the world that the book promised me, considering that the book had spoken to me in whispers, opening up as if yielding a secret. The girl said her name was Janan, and I told her mine.

"Why are you so drawn to the book?" she asked.

I had a notion to say, Angel, because you have read it. But how did I come up with this angel business anyway? My mind was in confusion. My mind is always getting confused, Angel, but could it be that someone will help me?

"My whole life was changed after reading the book," I said. "The room, the house, the world where I live ceased to be mine, making me feel I have no domicile. I first saw the book in your hand; so you too must have read it. Tell me about the world you traveled to and back. Tell me what I must do to set foot in that world. Give me an explanation as to why we are still here. Tell me how the new world can be as familiar as my home and yet my home as strange as the new world."

Who knows how much longer I would have gone on in this vein, chapter and verse, but my eyes seemed to be momentarily dazzled. The snowy light of the winter afternoon was so consistent and clear outside that the windows of the little chalk-laden classroom seemed to be made of ice. I looked at her, afraid to look in her face.

"What would you be willing to do to reach the world in the book?" she asked.

Her face was pale, her hair light brown, her gaze gentle; if she was of this world, she seemed to have been drawn from memory; if she was from the future, then she was the harbinger of dread and sorrow. I gazed at her without being aware of gazing, as if I were fearful that if I looked at her too intently the situation would become real.

"I would do anything," I said.

She gazed at me sweetly, a hint of a smile on her lips. How must you act when a phenomenally beautiful and charming girl gazes at you like that? How to hold the matches, light a cigarette, look out the window, talk to her, confront her, take a breath? They never teach these things in the classroom. People like me writhe in pain fecklessly, trying to conceal the pounding of their hearts.

"What do you mean by anything?" she asked me.

"Everything," I said and fell silent, listening to my heartbeats.

I don't know why but I suddenly had an image of long journeys that seemed endless, the deluges of myth and legend, labyrinthine streets that vanish, sad trees, muddy rivers, gardens, countries. If I were to embrace her one day, I must venture forth to these places.

"Would...