The New Life by Orhan Pamuk Read Free Book Online Page A

this that I began to repeat the same process every night until the early hours in the morning.
    I no longer attended classes. I paced the hallways like someone who’s a fugitive from his own soul, often not concerned in the slightest where and when classes were being held; not allowing myself a moment’s peace, I scoured the canteen, then the library, the classrooms, only to end up back at the canteen, and each time I observed that Janan was present in none of these places a deep ache in my viscera made me suffer intensely.
    As time went by, I became used to the ache and succeeded in living with it and, to a certain extent, I even held it at bay. Perhaps walking at full speed or smoking was of some help, but even more crucial was finding small ways to distract myself, such as a story someone related, the purple-colored new drawing pen, the fragility of the trees seen through a window, a new visage encountered by chance in the street. These things could relieve me even if only briefly from sensing the pain of frustration and loneliness that radiated from my belly through my whole body. Whenever I went into some spot where I might chance upon Janan, such as the canteen, I would not immediately exhaust all the possibilities by scanning the place precipitously, but I would first glance over to a corner where some girls in blue jeans smoking cigarettes were talking away, and in the meantime I would fantasize that Janan was sitting somewhere just beyond or behind me. I would soon come to believe the fantasy so thoroughly that I was loath to turn and look behind me for fear she would vanish; instead, I would take my time surveying the space between those students standing in front of the cashier and those sitting at the table where, not long before, Janan had set the book down in front of me, thereby gaining a few more moments of happiness in the warmth of Janan’s presence stirring just behind me, and coming to believe in my vision all the more. Yet, when I turned my head and saw that neither Janan nor a sign of her presence was anywhere around, the vision coursing like a sweet substance through my veins yielded up to a poison that seared my stomach.
    I had heard and read so many times that love is such sweet torment. It was during this period that I so often came across this kind of bunk mostly in books on palmistry, or in the home and lifestyle pages in the paper, right next to the horoscopes, pictures of salads, and recipes for face creams. Because of the leaden ache in the pit of my stomach, the miserable loneliness and jealousy I felt had severed me so thoroughly from humanity and rendered me so totally without hope that I resorted not only to astrology and the like for relief but also to blind faith in certain signs, such as: if the number of stairs leading up was odd, then Janan was upstairs; if the first person out the door was female, it meant I would see Janan that day; if the train departed at the count of seven, she would find me and we would talk; if I was the first one off the ferry, today was the day she would come.
    I was the first person off the ferry. I didn’t step on the cracks in the sidewalk. I calculated correctly that there were an odd number of bottle caps on the café floor. I had tea with an apprentice welder who wore a matching purple sweater and overcoat. I was lucky enough to be able to spell her name with the letters on the license plates of the first five taxicabs that I encountered. I was successful going in one end of the Karaköy underground passage and out the other, holding my breath. I counted up to nine thousand without losing my place while I stared at the windows of their place in Nişantaşı. I discarded friends who weren’t aware that not only did her name mean soulmate but it also signified God. Taking the cue from the fact that our names rhymed, I had our wedding invitations printed in my imagination, adorning them with a smart rhyme like the ones that come