Snow

by Orhan Pamuk

Much later, it would occur to Ka that he had cut short the happiest moment of his life because he couldn’t bear to be so happy. But in the beginning, as he lay in bed with Ïpek’s arms around him, he didn’t even know how happy he was; he felt at peace with the world, and this sense of peace seemed so natural that he had a hard time remembering why so much of his life up until this point had been sorrow and tumult. The peace he felt was like the silence that presaged a poem, but on those times before a poem came to him he would see the meaning of life stripped bare, a vision that also brought him joy. There was no such moment of enlightenment in this happy memory of Ïpek; it had about it a simple childish purity, like that of a child with the words to explain the meaning of the world on the very tip of his tongue. One by one, he recalled the facts about snow he had read in the library that afternoon; he had gone to prepare himself just in case another poem on the subject came to him. But his head was empty of poetry.