A Useless Man

In the Rain

I shouldn’t have done it. But I did. I was so impolite. It wasn’t anything really. But I still feel ashamed. This is how it happened:

I had drunk four or five glasses of beer. The rain outside was beyond belief. People were huddling under the eaves. But then it stopped raining quite so fiercely; the streams, rivers, and estuaries on the windowpane were gone and the muddy water running down from the top of the street was calmer and more solemn. People in a rush to get home leapt out onto the street. I suppose some of them even enjoyed being out in the rain. I suppose I must have been one of them. I was wearing a waterproof jacket. Water seeped through all the same. But never mind! I was drunk on five beers and bursting with goodwill, and I threw myself out onto the street to face the rain. I said to myself, why wait at this tram stop right in front of me. I’ll walk up to the next one. The raindrops falling upon me were large and crystal clear. I could just imagine them falling on dirt roads and meadows far away. The air was rich with the smell of earth and ozone. Steam swirled up off the backs of animals. I could see villagers and barefoot, bald-headed children walking along a dirt road. A young girl suddenly leapt out from under a mulberry tree, her mouth still wet with rain. A young man behind her was holding her back.

“It’s clearing, it’s clearing, the clouds are breaking.”

The young girl:

“We’re already late …”

A thin river coursed down the tramway rails. The things we think of when we’re drunk: how fast a piece of garbage was freewheeling down that river in the rails. Safe travels!

A drunk is a delightful fool.

I have always noticed how people are most hauntingly beautiful in thunderstorms and in the snow. You know how the farsighted blink their eyes when they try to make out people no one else would even see. They are beautiful as they struggle to see each other in the rain, and I am the object of their myopic attention …

I remembered a line from The Idiot, which I had recently read. C’est la beauté qui sauvera le monde.

Perhaps it’s the rain that makes a person beautiful in our eyes. Perhaps it’s the rain that makes us fall in love. This strange line from The Idiot has been knocking about in my head for days. Beauty will save the world. True in so many ways …

Love, violence, literature, indignity, vulgarity, elegance, good and evil, none of it will save the world. Every day we take another step toward pain and sorrow. The insight of a fool: “Beauty will save the world.”

And so the role of literature on this earth: It is that thing seeking beauty. Women wear make-up to look beautiful. That man over there sports a moustache to look handsome. Will that kid keep the same face until he’s fifty? He won’t, but it’ll evolve until he’s a hundred. People in good health look so beautiful, even when their faces are disfigured. But the beauty of the sick only lasts three or four days.

But what’s the point in proving that idea from The Idiot? Let’s just say it’s true. Because a gloriously beautiful girl just hurried past. And then I did something I had never done before in my life. I picked up the pace. Rain was falling over her blond hair. For a moment I saw a glimmer on her hair. Then the light disappeared.

It was as if the rain was seeping into a strange and fragrant sponge. And if only I could have been one of those old poets just then. If only I could have said I was the comb in her hair, and the kohl around her eyes, and a slave to a lock of hair … but having said all this, allow me one last confession: I write bad poems. The Rain in Your Hair.

Then she stopped to buy a French magazine at a tobacconist’s. I felt the need to speak French. I find it intolerable to even think of two Turks, or any two citizens of the Turkish Republic, speaking French together, especially in a place like Beyoğlu. Sometimes I even find it revolting and rude. Nevertheless, I began in French:

“Don’t turn around. I only want to talk to you. Don’t turn around and look at me. Think of a man who has had a few glasses of beer. He wants to say something to a complete stranger, someone he has suddenly found incredibly beautiful. Keep this in mind as you listen. If you turn around you’ll be disappointed. You’ll say I’m a fool. You’ll take one look at my dirty raincoat and this miserable hat and you’ll mock me. But imagine my face without turning around. Indeed, you might even put me in a suit made by the tailor of your choice. Then maybe I’ll look like one of those characters in the movies, and there’s no harm in that — I find them beautiful from time to time.”

I stopped for a minute. Or what I mean to say is, I couldn’t go on. We both kept walking. First she seemed about to turn around and look at me. I couldn’t see her face. But I sensed she was smiling and that she had suddenly made the decision not to turn around. I slowed down a little. The rain was pelting down now. I started again:

“I just threw together what I was going to say. But now I can’t remember anything, and since you’re not turning around I’ll say whatever comes to mind. It’s like this: I love a girl. She looks like you, or maybe not. But that’s not the point. She doesn’t love me at all. But that’s not the point either. Who could I find to talk to in this rain? Who would listen? Everyone’s buried in their papers, or drinking rakı at a table with friends. Everyone has something to say. But who’ll sit and listen to me? And if someone did, I’d only feel ashamed the next day after having confessed everything. But I could tell you everything: how I love her and how she doesn’t love me. You’ll never see my face. We wouldn’t even recognize each other if we met again. You’re the most beautiful friend this rain could have given me. Now I’m not even thinking of my lover. Your friendship is enough. But don’t take this as a declaration of love! No! I’m just telling you how I feel. But then again, I don’t want you to think you aren’t worthy of someone’s love. You’re more beautiful than she is, more beautiful than the rain. Pretending to listen to me like this is true friendship and devotion.

“You know the kind of man who follows women around and tries to chat them up. It just doesn’t work — well, sometimes, perhaps. But not for me. I’m not a man like that. I’ve never done such a thing in my life. Maybe ten years from now, on another rainy day, I’ll have four or five glasses of beer, and I’ll make the same mistake.”

She slowed down, and seemed confused. I felt even more self-conscious.

“Sweet mademoiselle, you should forgive even a man who follows a woman around. He has something to say, or maybe, like me, he has nothing to say; he has followed a strange and beautiful creature only to say that he has nothing to say. That’s what I have to say, little mademoiselle!” And here I threw in a line right from Baudelaire, “ ‘The world is beautiful despite it all.’ Oh what beautiful rain! Oh what a beautiful lover! The pain of her not loving me smarts. But it smacks of something special. Drunkenness rattles you, makes you feel alive. What beautiful rain. Oh, it’s icy cold! And you’re so beautiful: this tender girl who listened to me in the rain. I love you as much as I love her. What a world!”

Then in Turkish:

“Damn, what a world!”

Suddenly she quickened her step, and, in front of an apartment building in Taksim, she raised her hand and waved without turning her head. And, slipping through the front door, she was gone.

I was as happy as a child shaking a tambourine for the first time.