The New Life by Orhan Pamuk Read Free Book Online

and smiling slightly through the melancholy countenance of childhood.
    How antagonistic and bitter was the night outside! How merciless the dismal streets! I realized why bands of stray dogs cram themselves against each other so assiduously in the streets. It was with tenderness that I woke up my mother, who had fallen asleep in front of the TV, touching her on her pallid neck, smelling her, wishing she would hug me. But once I retired into my room, I felt all the more strongly that my real life was about to commence.
    That night I read the book once more, submitting to it, pleading to be swept away. I read it with reverence. New realms, new beings, new images appeared before me. I envisioned clouds of fire, oceans of darkness, purple trees, crimson breakers. Then, as on some spring mornings when the sun comes out immediately after a shower and suddenly I see before my optimistic and confident approach the retreat of the foul apartment buildings, accursed alleys, and moribund casements, the chaotic images in my mind’s eye cleared up, and Love became manifest in a halo of brilliant white, carrying a child in its arms. The child was the girl whose picture I had seen framed on the piano.
    The girl looked at me, smiling; she was perhaps about to say something, or perhaps she had spoken but I had been unable to hear. I felt futile. I was in painful agreement with an inner voice telling me that I would never be part of this beautiful picture; and I was overcome with regret. Then I observed to my deep consternation the two of them rise and, ascending in a curious fashion, vanish.
    The fantasy awakened such terror in my being that, just as I had done the first day when I read the book, I fearfully moved my face away as if to escape the light that surged from the pages. I was agonized to see my body here, in this other life, left dumbstruck in the silence in my room, the peace provided by my table, the stillness of my arms and hands, my belongings, my pack of cigarettes, my scissors, textbooks, curtains, my bed.
    I wished that my body, which was sensible to me through its warmth and pulse, might relinquish this world; yet at the same time I was aware that hearing the noises in the building, the distant cry of the boza vendor, and burning the midnight oil reading a book were tolerable aspects of being present inside this moment. I hearkened only to the sounds of very distant car horns, dogs barking, slight breezes, a couple of people talking in the street (one said, It’s already tomorrow), and the tumult of one of those long freight trains that suddenly overwhelms the noises in the night. A long while later, when everything seemed to dissolve into absolute silence, a specter appeared before my eyes, and I apprehended how deeply the book had permeated my soul. When I again exposed my face to the light that emanated from the book lying open on the table before me, it was as if my soul were the pristine page of a notebook. That must have been how the book’s contents were infused into my soul.
    I reached into a drawer and pulled out an actual notebook, one with quadrille pages for graphs and maps, which I had bought for my statistics course a few weeks before I came across the book but had not yet used. I turned to the first page and inhaled its clean white smell, and taking out my ballpoint pen I began writing all the book imparted to me, sentence by sentence, into the notebook. After writing down each sentence from the book, I went on to the next sentence, and then to the next. When the book started a new paragraph, I too indented a new paragraph, realizing after a while that I had written exactly the same paragraph as in the book. This was how I re-animated everything that the book imparted to me, paragraph by paragraph, but after a while I raised my head to study the book and then the notebook. I’d written what was in the notebook, but the content was exactly the same as what was in the book. I was so delighted with