Madonna in a Fur Coat

by Sabahattin Ali

My soul was like a glassy, windless sea.

That’s why I can’t leave you alone anymore! I’m afraid…and I’m not just talking about today…I shall never let you out of my sight, ever!”

I love you…not madly, but I love you with a clear mind…I want you…such an overwhelming desire…

“I am leaving. But I will come whenever you call for me…”

“I will go anywhere!”

“I shall call for you…Have no doubt! I shall!” She nodded with a smile. I could tell from her expression that she believed me.

I could not move, or see, or feel, or think: what had given me strength to live had been swept away, leaving only my shadow.

Waking in the morning to a terrible ache in my heart, I would wonder why I was still alive.

My days were just as empty and aimless as before, but also more painful. Because there was a difference: I had believed, in my ignorance, that there was nothing more to life than this. I was suffering now because I knew that there was another way to live. I no longer took any notice of my surroundings. The joys of life were forever closed to me.

But from the moment we lost touch, I lost the benefit of her influence. I went back to my old ways. Now I understood just how desperately I needed her. I was not the sort of man who could walk through life alone. I needed her at my side. I could not live without her support. Yet somehow I carried on living…as you can see…If this can be called living, then that is what I did…

Yet in a city of millions I had spoken to only a handful of people and only really come to know one.

Even on our wedding day, I knew that my wife was more distant from me than anyone else in the world. We had children…I loved them, always knowing that they would never restore to me what I’d lost…

As my family responsibilities grew, I became steadily more detached from the world. I had utterly lost the will to connect.

Many different people gave me a fleeting hope that I might start my life over, drawing on my heart’s abundant reserves.

The pain of losing something precious — whether earthly happiness or material wealth — can be forgotten over time. But our missed opportunities never leave us, and every time they come back to haunt us, we ache.

How could I feel anger toward people? The one I had deemed most precious, splendid, and beloved had served me up the cruelest fate, so how could I expect anything else from the others? I could no longer love, or risk any form of intimacy, for I had been deceived by the one person I’d trusted and believed absolutely. After that, how could I trust anyone again?

dear God, I knew absolutely nothing at all about my own daughter.

For ten years I had wrongly and unequivocally doubted the person who was my life, my soul, my reason for living, without once considering that I might be doing her an injustice.

If I were to spend the rest of my life in supplication, seeking forgiveness for having murdered her memory, I fear I would not succeed — for the greatest betrayal, the greatest sin we can commit against the most blameless, is to abandon a loving heart, and for that I shall never be forgiven.

These memories were rich enough to fill an entire lifetime. Compressed into such a short space of time, they were all the greater and more vibrant than anything real could ever be.

I might be nearly thirty-five years of age, but the real me had only ever been alive during those four or five months ten years ago: since then I had been buried deep inside an alien shell, signifying nothing.

I have held the whole world in contempt, on account of having misjudged you; I have shut myself away. Now I can see the truth. All the same, I have no choice but to condemn myself to everlasting solitude. Life is a game that is played only once, and I lost. There is no second chance…

Thank you for giving me the chance to be truly alive.

I shall hide it all away in a place no one will ever find. Everything, everything. But especially my soul.