353

Küçük memur odası; girdigini görmedim.
Duvarlar eski, yerler nemli. Tanıdın mı beni?
Ben burada çalışıyorum, müdür birazdan gelir.
Gitmeye meyillisin, ama bu kez bekleyeceksin.
Diyeceklerim var, bilmiyorum. Hatırladın, görüyorum.
Ciddi bir yer burası, standart kelimeler odası.
Kapıdaki başlığı okumadım, ama bu hikayeninki degil.
Sırtını yaslamış, süzüyorsun.
Hatırlarken güzelleştigime sevindim.
Evet, az önce camda beliren patrondu.
'N'apıcaz bu pezevengi' derken seni kastetti.
Seni degil, elindeki kagıtta yazan bir ismi.
Yoksa seni nerden bilsin...
Duydugunu biliyor ama. Utandı.
Arka kapıdan dolaşıp, girene kadar rengi yerine gelir.
Peki, ben ne yapacagım?
Ayaklanmış, odayı adımlarken sen, koşup sarılsam mı?
'Şimdi, bunu duymamış gibi mi yapacagız?'
Yutkunuyorsun.
Biliyorum, ne yapacagını. Hadi beni şaşırt. Yok, şaşırtma.
Yapamıyorum, o kadar istiyorum ki yüzüne dokunmayı.
Sensin işte. Merhaba! Yanagından öpecegim ve her şey geçecek.
Bir bakış atıyorsun, sanki hayata bakar gibi.
Bu ben miyim? Büyük hayal kırıklıgı?
Her seferinde 'gibi' olan ben, bu seferinde bari...
Neyin nesi bu uzaklık? Var olsa, aşılmaz mıydı er geç?
Zaman geçiyor, ellerim sürçüyor, yanagım acıyor,
Hayatın gibi bakıyorsun bana, sarılamıyorum.
Kapının yanında bekliyorum, duraklamıyorsun.

352

on the train
to the rails' rhythm
I counted my troubles

entering the last station
I packed the book
I was pretending to read

kept staring at the cover
thinking how I'm able to see all the troubles
but avoid to accept I have power.

351

"I thought you liked Mondrian."
"I thought so to," said Gomez.
They stopped in front of another picture; Gomez stared at it and tried to remember.
"Have you really got to write about these?" Ritchie asked nervously.
"I haven't got to, no. But Ramon would like me to devote my first article to Mondrian. I suppose he thinks it would strike the high-brow note."
"Watch yourself," said Ritchie. "Don't start off by being too destructive."
"Why not?" asked Gomez, beginning to bristle.
Ritchie's smile spread a gentle irony. "Obviously you don't know the American public. The one thing it can't stomach is to be startled. Start in by making a name for yourself: say simple, sensible things, and say them with charm. And, if you absolutely must attack someone, at least don't pick Mondrian: he's our God."
"Naturally," said Gomez; "Mondrian doesn't pose any questions at all."
Ritchie shook his head and made clucking sound with his tongue several times in sign of disapprobation."
"He poses a lot," he said.
"Yes, but not embarrassing questions."
"Oh," said Ritchie, "you mean questions about sex or the meaning of life or poverty? I was forgetting you studied in Germany. Gründlichkeit, eh?" he said, slapping the other on the back. "Don't you think that is a bit dated?"
Gomez made no reply.
"As I see it," said Ritchie, "it is no part of the painter's business to ask embarrassing questions, Suppose somebody came along and asked me whether I wanted to go to bed with my mother: I would fling him out on his ear, unless he was carrying out a piece of scientific research. I don't see why painters should have the right to ask me questions in public about my complexes. Like everybody else," he added in a conciliatory tone, "I have my troubles. But when I think they're getting me down, I dont' slip off to a museum; I call up a psychoanalyst. People should stick to their jobs: a psychosnslyst gives me confidence because he started off by being psychoanalyzed himself. So long as painters don't do that, they're talking at cross-purposes, and I shall not ask them to make me look at myself."
"What will you ask of them?" Gomez put in, more for the sake of saying something than because he wanted to know. He was looking at the picture with surly hostility. He was thinking: "Transparent as water."
"I ask them for innocence," said Ritchie. "This picture–"
"Well, what about it?"
"It's just seraphic! said Ritchie ecstatically. :We Americans like painting to appeal to happy people or to people who are trying to be happy."
"I'm not happy," said Gomez, "and I would be a bastard id I tried to be, what with all my friends either in prison or shot."
Ritchie clucked his tongue again. "Look," he said, "I know all about your personal troubles. Fascisim, the defeat of the Allies, Spain, your wife, your kid–sure!" But it's a good thing to rise above all that occasionally."
"Not for one single, solitary moment!" Gomez protested. "Not for a single moment!"
Ritchie flushed slightly.
"What did you used to paint, then? he asked in a hurt tone? "Strikes? Massacres? Capitalists in stovepipe hats? Soldiers firing on people?"
Gomez smiled. "You know, I've never much believed in revolutionary art. And at present I don't believe in it at all."
"Well then, we agree, eh?" said Ritchie.
"Perhaps. The trouble is I wonder if I haven't lost my faith in art of any kind."
"And in revolution?" Ritchie asked.
Gomez said nothing. Ritchie smiled again.
"You know, you European intellectuals are really very funny. Where action is concerned, you suffer from an inferiority complex"...

Jean-Paul Sartre, Troubled Sleep

350

349

Human poverty is an enslavement; to eat, a poor man consents to joyless labor, and all labor which is not joyous is mere drudgery, I thought. I would pay one man after another to rest, saying, "Stop working –you hate what you're doing." For each man I desired that leisure without which nothing new can flower –neither vice nor art...
André Gide, The Immoralist

348

I want to be God
without the consequences
...hence human.