The Gaze (30 page)

‘Sometimes it happens to me too. I want to take pictures of everything. Sometimes it does one good to put an intermediary between the one who’s seeing and the one who’s being seen,’ he said. ‘Do you know what the interesting thing about it is, we believe that God does the same thing. He always sees, and we’re always being seen, isn’t that so? And God puts an intermediary between himself and what he sees. Prophets, for instance, or angels…Azarael, for instance, or Gabriel… As for us, we’re afraid both of being seen and of what we can’t see. We wait for a sign so we can say it has appeared. That’s also why we give so much importance to miracles. We want to see miracles. Indeed, as I think to myself sometimes, it’s as if our entire existence, as well as our non-existence, is founded on seeing and being seen.’

He fell silent. A faint smile remained on his lips. Then he brought his face close to mine and whispered as if he were telling me a secret. ‘Do you know, sometimes we get our deepest wounds through our eyes.’

I looked at him in surprise.

That day we wandered around together the whole day.

That day while we wandered around together all day, when we were seen together for the first and last time, I didn’t want to miss even a single memory of him. In order to remember the bow-legged manner in which he walked as he tried to match his pace to mine, his squat legs, his ill-proportioned hands, the way he found something to say about every subject, the thoughtfulness with which he spoke and explained, the way he squinted his eyes before he started a sentence, the way he used gestures to emphasise what he had said when he had finished a sentence, his indifference to children taller than himself who pointed him out to their mothers or indeed anyone who threw his being a dwarf in his face, the way he didn’t judge people’s coarseness, his loneliness, his insensitivity, the way he held his head high, his strangeness, the way he was on display in exactly the same way I was, and because I was on display like he was, I took pictures of him all day that day.

I took perhaps more than a hundred photographs. More than a hundred times I looked through the viewfinder, and tried to see him in different states, to see what his days and his nights were like, and how he was when he couldn’t sleep or when he’d just woken. I watched how as he enthusiastically explained something, it came alive in his eyes, and as it came alive in his eyes, he explained it with enthusiasm, sometimes like this and sometimes like that, his unquenchable curiosity, his lack of restraint, his absent-mindedness, his ill-temper. Finally, when the film in his bag was finished, he grasped my wrist.

‘Aren’t you hungry? I’m very hungry.’

Then I came to my senses. Who knew how many hours we’d been wandering around and I not only hadn’t I eaten anything but the thought of food hadn’t even crossed my mind. I smiled shyly.

When we entered the restaurant, B-C preceded me and held the door open. As if we didn’t look strange enough together, I didn’t see the sense in doing amusing things that would attract attention. I passed through the door feeling shy and embarrassed. The moment we were inside, I saw the first bus-boy to notice us nudge the bus-boy next to him. It had begun. Just as I’d guessed it would. One by one every head in the place turned towards us, and conversations stopped, and people started whispering. All I wanted was to sit down at the nearest table, as soon as possible. But B-C didn’t like any of the tables, and continued strolling about, knowing that everyone was watching us. By the time he chose a table, I’d long since turned bright red and broken into a sweat.

While B-C drank one beer after another with amazing speed, I ate my fried mussels as slowly and as daintily as possible. I felt too shy to raise my head and look around. I couldn’t make the effort to look into the waiter’s face, or to make eye contact with anyone.

‘Why do you have such a strange name?’ I said finally when I’d calmed down a bit and was able to speak.

‘It’s not my real name, of course. When I was small, the children used to call me ‘itty bitty’. Later I used to say my name was ‘bee-tee’. You know, I really thought this was a real name. Then I decided to make this name that had stuck to me a little different. Instead of ‘bee-tee’ I said ‘B-C’. I know it’s strange, but…I’m so accustomed to it, I wouldn’t even turn around if someone called me by my real name. I like B-C. They’re also the second and third letters of the alphabet. They look good side-by-side. As if I’m Two and Three. I’m searching for One. The preceding number was lacking something, it wasn’t completed, and it’s as if that’s why I am the way I am…I’m in the process of creating myself. What happened? Why are you so surprised? Does this seem like nonsense to you?’

For a moment I couldn’t speak or breathe. It was as if something clicked within me, but I couldn’t tell if it was a good thing or a bad thing. Suddenly, unable to explain even to myself why I’d become so irritable, I snapped, ‘Yes, I think it’s complete nonsense.’

‘You could be right! But don’t take numbers lightly. Don’t forget that numbers have
jinns
. Numbers
jinns
have torches on their waists, and brooms in their hands, and each one is as small as a flea, their tongues are twisted, and their eyes spin…’While he was saying these strange things, he was playing his fingers like puppets and twisting the shape of his face. I watched him in amazement. Despite the fact that it was always moving, there was a stillness and calm about his face. He suddenly stopped talking and looked around as if he were bored. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and print these photographs.’

‘Where?’

‘Home! The Hayalifener Apartments.’

At first I liked the name of the Hayalifener Apartments, and when I saw the building I liked it for itself. The building was on one of the two sides of Istanbul, in a neighbourhood where morally upright families and freethinking single people frequently lived side-by-side, at the top of a steep hill that was difficult to ascend and descend. His flat was on the top floor, and there wasn’t a useable elevator. B-C, in front, skipped up the steps; I followed, wheezing. To climb these stairs after that long, steep hill, the pain from the chafing of my legs was growing stronger with each step. I was in agony, and my chest was tight. At least B-C didn’t say anything about my condition, or ask depressing questions. Instead of asking questions he didn’t stop explaining; he talked away without waiting for approval. Perhaps I was more attracted to the way he spoke than to what he was saying. As he talked, I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

‘Whenever I’m curious about a person, I cut them out of the frame in which they belong and put them into a background that’s least like them. To do this gives me a lot of ideas about people. Let’s say a woman is walking towards me. Young, and a bit flighty. I’ll take her out of the place where she belongs and put her in a time and place that would be strangest to her, into a frame that’s as far as possible from her own, and then I watch. Or let’s say a man is walking towards me. Young, and a bit slack. I’ll try to find a frame that’s least like him. When I put him in this frame he’ll look completely different to me. In the picture that belongs to him, he’s either strong or weak, either handsome or ugly, either unique or ordinary. But in a picture that doesn’t belong to him, he tends to lose his role. And then when you look, you see that he’s really not so strong, or not so weak. Neither that ugly nor that handsome. You should try it. Put people in the photograph in which they’re least likely to fit, and then take a look at them.’

I looked at him lovingly.

‘What about me, then? What’s the picture into which I’m least likely to fit?’

He looked at me lovingly.

‘Most probably above the clouds. For someone as fat as you the sky has to be the most unlikely place.’

I nodded my head. I had fallen in love.

From that moment on I didn’t part from him. B-C was a land I somehow couldn’t reach because I had delayed so much. It was as if, after years of being stuck, of believing that in this state I couldn’t love anyone and no one could love me, a door had opened in front of me at a completely unexpected moment and from a completely unexpected direction. Once over the threshold, we tumbled together into a world of passion. I could have cut my dwarf lover a giant’s shadow without hesitation; with him I could go anywhere and return from anywhere without thinking of what lay beyond.

Nevertheless, I had to think, we had to think. Because we didn’t suit each other. That is, I wasn’t one of those women who, because they are so short, still look like little round balls despite all their weight…It wasn’t just my girth, but because I was also taller than normal, when I stood next to B-C both my height and my weight made for a terrifying contrast. When we were side-by-side we looked so out of place that we couldn’t even bring up the subject of not going out together. If we went around holding hands and smiling at each other in the streets like other lovers, everyone who saw us would die laughing. As my eighty centimetre lover tried to match his pace to my hundred and thirty-two kilo body, people would point us out to each other and watch us. Without feeling it necessary to suppress the mocking smiles on their lips, they would wonder whether or not we made love. They would find us so amusing they wouldn’t be able to take their eyes off us. They wouldn’t be able to stop talking about the contrast between the fat lady and the dwarf for days.

B-C and I had both been the objects of people’s stares for a long time. But now that we had come together, if we even held hands we wouldn’t just be objects of curiosity, we would also be the source of a great deal of amusement. We were strange enough separately, but together we were not only strange but comic. We weren’t pleasing to the eye.

For this reason, there was nothing like the Hayalifener Apartments. Here life was private; safe from abusive stares. Of course the neighbour-ladies’ eyes were always on us, but once we were inside there was nothing to worry about. I was comfortable here, I was at ease. I wasn’t thinking about returning to the house where I lived with my family. I do know how much my family loved me, and I didn’t want to mix their love with pity. I was tired of them being distressed about me. For years my mother and father had been struggling to behave as if we were a happy family and that nothing had gone wrong, but I was tired of seeing the pain in their eyes that they would never speak of. Leaving their house was going to be good for me.

So I gathered my things together and moved to the Hayalifener Apartments. I felt that here I could be free both of the body that enclosed me and of the kinds of looks that made me uncomfortable. Indeed it happened from time to time that I didn’t even think about how I looked. I who for years had looked at myself and the world around me through the lenses of my body was now momentarily able to take these glasses off. On top of that, as I gained the ability to see through my body and into myself, I discovered new aspects of myself. When B-C looked at me with love, I was able to see myself and the world around me with completely new eyes. Most of the time, I did my utmost to see through his eyes, and to understand what he saw and how he saw it. I saw neither intimacy nor rejection in his eyes. Life was liveable, I was loveable when I looked into B-C’s eyes.

But now, having read the Dictionary of Gazes, everything looked different again to my eyes. Now I understood that at first I had been the source of this detestable dictionary, its substance, and that later I had become one item among many. That windy day we’d met on the ferry, B-C had gone out with his camera to find something interesting to look at, and had encountered me. In those days he’d probably become bored with whatever he’d been doing and was looking for something new to occupy himself with but didn’t quite know what he wanted to do. He went out looking. Then he met me. He found in me the inspiration for a new project; or more accurately, he found it in the way our relationship was kept hidden from the sight of others. Once he’d started working on the Dictionary of Gazes, I stopped being the inspiration and became material; my dreams, my memories and my anxieties. When he’d finished observing me and found what he was looking for, I might have been the most interesting item in the Dictionary of Gazes. I was the fatty whose childhood he was going to research.