TWENTY-THREE: MEDITATION ON TWO AUTUMNS

The first autumn had begun with longing under the wet chestnut trees along the boulevard. The next, with the ambitions and anxieties of exhausting work, bitter in its spasm, stubborn to the point of madness. Now, serenity has descended again. But I am afraid. I glimpse storm clouds lurking in my soul. All that I have accomplished so far, the slow and painful approach of that being I like to call the hero, might be destroyed. It is of this that I am afraid; my sufferings demand to bear fruit.

Now, autumn torments me even worse, and more deeply. No one can know. Nişka accompanies me whenever I roam far from the city. The fields are growing sere; the forests are turning red. Nişka considers me the best friend a girl could ever have. She has begun to believe that any hope of something more is in vain. This thought has greatly saddened her. But I am closer than ever to her soul, and her soul is sprouting from the seeds of my spirit.

Besides an austere life, begun each morning with the same rigour, and completed after midnight with the determination of one who knows that rest will only truly come with death, I have lived a life known to others. I have published what is the least vivid, original and precious among all my writings. The rest have been strange, agonising, enigmatic confessions. Who would have been willing to print them?

Sensing the approach of heroism, I observed myself with irritatingly demanding care. Nişka kept the same place; my onerous reading continued with the same strictness; cultural gaps were filled by the same method. I kept watch over myself ethically, scientifically, and emotionally. I dwelled in constant brain fever. I wanted to be more than a man. All that I endured, the experiences of the past few years, the unforgiving solitude, the mystery, had hardened my face. My bones had started to align differently. My eyes had changed. The lines, the furrow of my brow, my forehead, all wore a mask. No one could see behind the mask. I had condemned myself, by the mystery that was tearing me apart, to an austere solitude, without end.

I was waiting for a decisive act. Abnegation had been fulfilled. But I was waiting for one more temptation, to confirm it. Only in supreme suffering, would the heroic soul reveal itself. The act might happen randomly or with Nişka’s agreement. But if it did not happen within the next year, before I left, I would be victorious.

The things I am writing about are still so fresh in my mind. If I were to continue, I would not be writing a story, but a diary.

Behold, this is who I am now: a man waiting to make the final leap. Outside, in the fields, and on the streets, it is autumn. Here, in the attic, am I. I care little about the autumn outside so long as I am not yet complete. All my anxieties hitherto have lent me a fear of waiting. I wait in a delirious state. And I am not sure what I am waiting for, just as I was not sure of it two autumns ago.

The title of this chapter is wrong. I shall not be writing a single meditation. This page marks the end of the story of two years of experiences, of longings, and of victories over my weaknesses. I do not know how it will end. Which is to say, I do not know the details; because victory will have to be on my side. The final victory is the only thing that lends meaning and value to certain resolutions. But until such time, I am cursed by the anxiety and the waiting that wash over me day and night.

After the rain, the sky is a stormy blue. The little windows are still beaded with droplets. Soon, I will turn on my lamp. The noise from the street rises to my attic. From my table I see two ragged poplars, far away, in an unknown courtyard. Poplars that have witnessed my adolescence.

I shall not succumb to rhetorical exaltation; I shall not pen encomia to autumn or hint at nostalgias. There is already sadness in me as it is. But perhaps it is the sadness of one who understands.

With tranquil mien, with clenched fists, among books, I wait.