Free Silent House by Orhan Pamuk

Nilgün. “When does she wake up?”
    “She’s been awake for a long time,” I said. I looked at my watch: eight thirty.
    “Hey, Recep!” said Nilgün. “I got the paper from the grocer. I’ll get it in the morning from now on.”
    “Whatever you wish,” I said, going upstairs.
    “What’s the point?” Faruk said. “What do you gain by reading how many people killed how many other people, how many were nationalist, how many were Marxist, how many of them weren’t on either side?”
    I headed upstairs. You have no ideas, Recep! Death! I think aboutthe hereafter, and I’m afraid, because a person is naturally curious. The source of all knowledge is curiosity, said Selâhattin Bey, you understand, Recep? Upstairs, I tapped on the door.
    “Who’s there?” she said.
    “It’s me, Madam.”
    She had opened the closet and was rooting through it. She made as if to close the door.
    “What is it?” she said. “What are they shouting about downstairs?”
    “They’re waiting for you to come for breakfast.”
    “Is that why they’re yelling at one another?”
    The old smell from the closet spread out in the room. As I smelled it, I was remembering.
    “No,” I said, “they’re only kidding around.”
    “At the table, first thing in the morning?”
    “If you’re concerned, I’ll say something, Madam,” I said. “But Faruk isn’t drinking. People don’t drink at this hour.”
    “Don’t cover for them!” she said. “And don’t lie to me! I can tell right away.”
    “I’m not lying,” I said. “They’re waiting for you to come for breakfast.” She was still looking inside the closet. “Shall I bring you down?”
    “No!”
    “Will you eat in bed? I can bring up the tray.”
    “Bring it up,” she said. “Tell them to be ready.”
    “They are ready.”
    “Fine. Close the door.”
    Every year before visiting the graveyard she rummaged through the closet as if she were going to find something she’d never seen or worn before, but in the end she wound up wearing that same awful heavy coat. I went to the kitchen to fetch her some bread.
    “So what’s the count?” Faruk was saying to Nilgün. “How many killed yesterday in street shootings?”
    “Total of seventeen,” Nilgün read aloud, then remarked, “Half of them right-wingers and half leftists, I guess.”
    “Your grandmother says she’s not coming down to breakfast,” I said. “I’ll go ahead and serve yours.”
    “Why isn’t she coming down?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “She’s going through her closet … Nilgün Hanim, you’re sitting in a wet bathing suit, you’ll catch a cold. Go up and change and then read the paper …”
    “Look, she didn’t even hear you,” said Faruk. “She’s mesmerized reading about the dying and the dead. She’s still young enough to believe the papers.”
    Nilgün looked up and gave me a smile as I went down to the kitchen. I turned the bread over and prepared Madam’s tray. Madam reads the paper to see if anyone she knows has died, not some young agitator ripped to pierces from bullets and bombs, but some old person who’s died in bed. Sometimes she would get annoyed, complaining that ever since Atatürk made everyone take a new name it was chaos, because she couldn’t keep track of the families she knew. Sometimes she would clip the death announcements just to make fun of the infernal, made-up surname—What does that name even mean? My father was the one who’d given us our family name and it was Karatash—Blackstone. It was very clear what it meant. But it was true, a name like theirs, Darvinoğlu, who could understand it? I tapped on the door and went in. Madam was still scouring the closet.
    “Leave it there,” she said.
    “Eat it right away!” I said. “Don’t let the milk get cold.”
    “Okay, okay!” she said. “Now shut the door!”
    When I remembered the bread, I ran downstairs. At least it hadn’t burned. I put Nilgün Hanim’s egg and the other