THE FIRST MURDER

I am a man who has always lived in pain! This sense of distress has been with me for as long as I can remember. I was perhaps just short of four years old. Ever since that day the evils I envisage have been enough for me to writhe in this infinite sense of hellish distress, let alone the terrible deeds I have committed.  I have not forgotten any of the incidents that made me sad. It’s as if my recollections only stand for sorrow.

Right, I wonder if I had yet turned four? I don’t remember anything before then. How does conscience fall upon our heads like a lightning but doesn’t burn us? Tolstoy remembers bathing when he was just nine months old! His initial feeling is one of contentment!¹ My first memory is of great distress. My earliest recollection is being on a steamboat operated by the Şirket-i Hayriye².[2] The image is right before my eyes to this day: It’s as if I was born in that very moment. I am in my mother’s embrace. She is merrily chatting to a young, bright blond lady, they are smoking their cigarettes. My mother has hers clasped by a slim, silver cigarette holder and I want it. She says:

- Take it but don’t put it in your mouth!

She gives me the cigarette holder, and throws her cigarette in the sea. It must have been summer. A very bright and sunny day. My mother is gently swaying a hand fan with blue feathers as she continues talking.  I slide off her knee. She holds me by the arms and sits me down next to her. I put my finger through the ring of the little silver cigarette holder and place its tip in my mouth and bite down, all concealed from my mother’s sight. The blonde lady she’s talking to is wearing a blue burqa. I am dressed in white. My head is hatless, my hair is thick, perhaps even a bit messy. As my mother tries to fix my hair, I look up. There’s a palm-sized shadow flittering on the side of the awning, glittering like sand under the sun.

-Look, look! I say.

My mother looks up.

- A bird, she responds.

When I reach for the bird, she says:

-You can’t hold it.

I keep insisting. My mother uses her umbrella to strike under it but the shadow doesn’t flinch.

- Oh but it hasn’t flown away!

- I wonder what it is?

[1] Translator’s Note: According to Leo Tolstoy’s “First Recollections” one of his earliest memories is that of being swaddled, unable to free himself and being highly distressed. Later in the text, he mentions his pleasurable experience of being in the tub. Tolstoy does state that he cannot remember which of these recollections come first but “being a nine month old infant” is not mentioned anywhere in the text. I am not sure about Ömer Seyfettin’s source material for this statement. However,  that which is recounted by Ömer Seyfettin in this instance was not explicitly stated by Tolstoy.

[2] T.N: Şirket-i Hayriye was a 19th century Istanbul ferryboat company founded to serve the Bosphorus Strait.

- It must be a chick...

She turns to the lady next to her again but I keep nagging:

- Mother, I want the bird!

Just then my mother lays her fan aside and stands up. She holds me from under my armpits, lifts me out towards the sky like a small ball and says:

-  Just grab him quickly, okay?

My eyes are blinded by the light as my head nears the canvas awning. I reach out with my hands and grab hold of it. A white bird. My mother takes it from me and kisses it, the blonde lady follows suit. I too kiss it.

- Oh poor thing, it’s still a chick.

- A gull chick.

- Perhaps he can’t fly.

- He’ll drown if he falls in the sea.

Other women chime in on the conversation, they exclaim, “He won’t survive!” My mother caresses the white bird at great length while repeating “Oh you poor thing, oh you poor thing” and then she places him on my lap. She says:

- Let’s take him home, perhaps he’ll live. But, my dear boy, never squeeze him.

- I won’t.

- Hold him just like that.

She places a slim cigarette into her silver holder and continues her conversation with the same lady sitting next to her. The feathers of the little bird are so white... I touch them... I can feel the bones in his wings. His feet are red. He doesn’t make any effort to get away, he’s startled. His eyes are very round. There is a distinct mark on the corner of his red beak as if he ate something yellow that left a stain. He tries to extend his neck to look around him. In that moment, I lift my eyes up to my mother. She’s still talking to the lady next to her, they are laughing together. They are not talking about me. Then I slowly hold the white bird’s stretched out slender neck. I begin to squeeze it with all my strength. He attempts to open his wings. I hold them down with my other hand. His coral feet dig into my knees. I keep on squeezing, squeezing, squeezing. I hold him so hard that I could have cracked my clenched teeth, he can’t utter a sound. His little yellow-lined beak trembles, slowly opening and closing. His pointy pink tongue droops. His round eyes first grow larger, then wane and go out. Suddenly I open my tightly closed hands . The lifeless body of the little white bird falls on the floor, “pop!”

My mother turns around and leans forward. She takes the warm body of the innocent bird into her hands. “Oh no, he’s dead!” She glares at me:

- What have you done?

- ...

- Did you squeeze him?

- ...

- Tell me!

-....

I don’t respond. Instead I begin to cry my lungs out. The blonde lady takes the carrion of the white bird from my mother:

- Oh, how sinful!

- Poor little bird.

Other women chime in again. The stout old lady sitting across from us heralds my murder.

- He suffocated it, I saw it with my own eyes. What a cruel kid...

My mother turns pale, her voice is trembling:

- Oh, you heartless boy!

She looks at me bitterly. I cry even louder. I cry so hard... No one can quiten me. I still don’t remember when, where and how I stopped crying. It’s as though I cried infinitely.

It has now been over thirty years since this murder that I committed when I barely knew myself. To this day, whenever I see a seagull perched on the deck of a steamboat I lose all my joy in an instant. I want to cry like a child. A profound sense of pain grows larger and larger in my heart, and sends pangs deep into my chest.

To this day, my dear mother’s endless scolding continues to echo in my ears, “Oh, you heartless boy!”