With a Desire, Fearlessly

‍

Leaving my pale green shadow behind, I took a dive in the water. The sun descends slowly from the hills of the town. The sand slips from beneath my feet. My stomach is full of the carnival of what I ate this morning. Neither the roar of the music stops nor does the crowd on the beach seem to diminish. Where did I fall from to end up here? I will swim for an hour, then head to the beachside restaurant, order two meatballs and a large beer to go with them. The day is fading, but the music still hasn't stopped. The sea is churning in my stomach. I just can't bring myself to let go in the water. It's not that I want to swim, it's as if I'm trying to wash away the dirt clinging to my skin and I am washing so fiercely! I spread my arms wide and bury my head in front. Then I beat my heels against my buttocks. As I stand up and wait, the waves crash against my chest, throwing me back. The sea doesn't want me. Yet I am not as afraid of it as I used to be. I pluck up my courage and take a strong stroke. A shadow of a smile falls from the corners of my mouth. I take another stroke, this time a little heavier. I clench my teeth. I keep reminding myself that I've forgotten my fear, it's overflowing inside me. Women, men, boys in the sea are hugging, touching, making love, playing. And here I am, at my age, causing a storm just to take three strokes. Finally, I surrender to the water. But it doesn't give up. What's happening, are you slowing down? Fear envelops my body once more. It melts on my tongue like bitter candy. I get out of the water. Then a nursery rhyme I used to say as a child slips through my teeth. Two water sprites came out of the water, one male water sprite, the other female water sprite.

That summer, my wife and I went on a tour of Europe. One evening, while looking at her friends' holiday photos on her phone and sighing, Aylin had mapped out a similar route for us. “First a bit of France, then Spain, and finally Portugal!” Since I didn't have a regular job—screenwriting has no set hours or schedule—there was no need to ask my opinion on the dates. She packed my suitcase too, stuffing it full of everything she wanted me to wear. The ties that suited me best, jackets that made my shoulders look broader and my waist look slimmer, some vertically striped, some dark-coloured, some brightening up the outfit, some weighing it down, a few Bermuda shorts I didn't know when I had bought, two or three pairs of linen trousers, watches, perfumes, creams, swimsuits and a bunch of bracelets I didn't need... The bracelets that matched the watches Aylin gave me whenever she felt like it, for some reason, remain intact in a corner of my memory, filled with fragments of memories. She would always plant an uncomfortably long kiss on my cheek each time she tied them to my wrist, warning me never to take them off. Even if I muttered, “Do men wear these things too?” between my teeth, I would silence myself before she could hear. After a while, perhaps feeling a little embarrassed, I also started buying her small gifts to the extent of my imagination. Sparkling earrings, shawls in her favourite colours, scarves, blouses, heavy but expensive perfumes were her favourites. Even if I was careless sometimes, she didn't mind. In fact, she was so exaggeratedly happy with everything I gave her that I unconsciously grew fond of the strings she tied around my wrist. I suppose that's why I could never bring myself to ask him why he insisted I never remove those leather cords, which gripped my skin tightly, grew heavy as ingots over time, and seemed to tear my arm from my body, even in fifty-degree heat. The moment I thought about speaking, a heavy, sour taste rose from my stomach to my mouth. When I was silent, his voice became an unbearable roar that completely covered my ears. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but I couldn't get up from where I was sitting either. “Oh Engin, shall we eat lots of nata in Portugal? Let's go to that famous train station too! Let's stay in Porto one night and drink wine. Then let's go up to that bridge in the middle of the city and watch the houses and tiny people on the shore! What can I say... Shall we have arroz de cabidela? Ha ha ha, I'm joking, darling, I won’t eat blood, don't worry. Even if you wanted to, my stomach couldn't handle it. Look, I read somewhere recently that it's because of the influence of African culture. It's made from pig, cow or chicken blood, did you know that? Oh, what's wrong with you, what's happening to you?” When the nausea started to sting the tip of my nose, I couldn't take it anymore and ran to the bathroom. Everything inside me was pouring out in a desperate scream. While I was retching, Aylin was banging on the door with all her might, as if trying to drown out my voice. “Engin, are you okay?” I looked in the mirror. I think I looked fine. Only perhaps a little distant from myself. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen this face, with its sunken cheeks and chalky complexion. It was as if I was seeing my drooping eyelids and my forehead, with its increasingly deep lines, for the first time. Aylin was screaming like crazy. “Did something happen?” Running my hands over my face, I repeated the same question: “Did something happen?” Something had definitely happened. But I didn't know what. “Darling, open the door, what's wrong?” I couldn't tear my hands away from my face in the mirror. My dark circles, the blotchy skin on my forehead, my greying beard... “Engin!” Finally coming to my senses, I frantically turned on the tap. The sound of the water drowned out my own voice. “Nothing's wrong. I'm just a bit cold. Go ahead. I'll be out in a minute.”

An hour later, I emerged from my hiding place and collapsed into the chair opposite her, my face saying, “I'm fine”. I must have been quite convincing, because Aylin picked up where she left off without hesitation. “I'm so glad we're going south!” She was happy. I secretly enjoyed her cheerfulness. Her giggles were very sweet amidst all the careless words she strung together. “People are warm there now. Just think, even here, southerners are always more civilised, more cordial. The warm climate definitely has a positive effect on human nature!” I wasn't looking for desert heat, sparkling beaches, fine sand, or friendly companions like she was. Aylin loved mingling with people wherever she went, chatting and greeting them. I preferred to hide from the sun and sleep during the day, and when evening came, I preferred to walk alone, think, pass through empty streets, and watch unfamiliar people and buildings. She wanted to go everywhere together. I couldn't even choose my socks for hours. For her, making a decision took only half a second. From the first day of our trip to the very last moment, she wore sunglasses that completely covered her face, carried a flowery bag that she mostly made me carry while walking, and wore high-heeled shoes that hurt her feet the longer she stood in them. Even though she didn't think she looked like it, she was shouting, I'm a tourist! From the outside, she looked like a calm, happy woman wandering around, observing her surroundings. Then suddenly, a mood would come over her, and she would turn into a whiny young girl complaining about the gaps she couldn't fill. Once the sun appeared in Spain, it never disappeared, and Aylin had been wanting to go to the nudist beach under the rocks for days. Finding a place more interesting than she desired was the only way to keep her occupied, so I made endless plans without tiring. We had visited all the museums, exhibition halls, theatres, even the street markets beyond the sandy desert roads in the country. But Spain was such a hot and joyless place that at the end of the day, the conversation inevitably circled back to the nudist beach. To her. Here's the way. Here are your feet. Here is the beach. Go. I couldn't say it. She was so sure that I couldn't refuse her, that I would endure a world not made for me just because she wanted it, that she added a touch of insistence to every sentence she uttered. Most of the time, I didn't hear her anymore, or perhaps even if I did, I didn't listen. When she said, “Let's go in here,” I just shook my head. As soon as she said, “Let's eat this,” I pushed her into the first restaurant I saw. “Let's get this” and “Let's do that” were things I usually pretended not to understand. When she brought up the nudist beach, that magic phrase always came out of my mouth: “We'll go tomorrow.” The next day, I would make other plans and try to make her forget about the beach, at least managing to keep her occupied until the sun went down. But days later, when I no longer had the strength or desire to deceive her, and she asked the same question again with great resistance – “Shall we go to Playa de los Muertos?” – I gave up the fight. We walked for about an hour under the sun that drenched our backs, made our hair roots and the backs of our necks sweat, and arrived at the beach Aylin was so eager to see. The whiskies I’d downed in the lobby to get a drop of courage flowing through my veins were boiling in my brain in the forty-five-degree heat. I knew there were no toilets or changing rooms on the beach. I would either have to play hide-and-seek, sit in a corner with my face turning purple, or, as Aylin wanted, expose myself completely and be humiliated in front of everyone. In the end, I would give in to her insistent demands and spend the whole day in the water with her. People were lying carelessly on the rocks and on the sand. But I couldn't escape the burdens weighing down my body, just as Aylin said. We settled down next to a young man lying on his back, asleep. His penis was so magnificent that any little courage I had to take off my clothes vanished in an instant. Aylin deftly slipped off her clothes. Strangely, even though it was the first time I had seen my wife's body completely naked in front of so many people, I didn't feel uncomfortable. I carefully examined her breasts, which opened towards the middle and darkened at the very tip. I felt the taste of the pink rings between red and brown on the tip of my tongue and the smell in my throat. She had quite firm and full breasts for a woman of that age. Sometimes, when I remembered this in the middle of the street, I would smile to myself, straighten my shoulders and feel proud. Her hips widened and sagged like a ripe pear. And what about her thighs, had they always been this thick? Her shoulders had always been a little narrow, but the flabby skin jiggling under her arms was probably a recent development. I was surprised and saddened that I hadn't noticed these details before. I couldn't remember the last time I had even thought about looking at her. Was it because she was always in front of my eyes that I had become blind to her, or was she like an object I didn't want to keep but couldn't bring myself to throw away? Aylin, unaware of my thoughts, had her arms outstretched, battling the waves. The sun was setting over us, dripping onto us drop by drop. When my eyes were dazzled, my head dropped forward like a basket. At that moment, I saw the feet of a woman walking with her legs spread wide, swaying from side to side. With each step, new gasps filled her chest, constricted by the heat and humidity. As she brought the bottle to her mouth and drank eagerly, half the water trickled down between her enormous breasts and onto the ground. She quickly walked away and disappeared, but my eyes lingered on her for a while afterwards. If the man next to me hadn't coughed exaggeratedly and startled me, I might have stared longer at the void she left behind. When I turned my head, the man smiled and winked, offering a warm greeting beneath his reproachful gaze. Then he pointed at my wrist and asked the time. After staring blankly at his face, I replied in my broken Spanish without taking my eyes off him: “Two thirty.” My nerves were shot. I was about to cry. At the same time, I wanted to laugh out loud. I was hiding from my wife, lying next to a naked man on a corner of the beach. I smiled, imagining how Aylin would tell this to everyone like a joke when we returned home. But the real joke would begin when I jumped into the water completely naked, even though I couldn't swim. Seconds after entering, I would start flailing in fear of drowning, be pulled out of the water naked by a crowd of strangers, and then listen to Aylin's jokes, or worse, her complaints, for days or even years about why I had hidden from her all this time that I couldn't swim. The air was so stifling that I wanted to jump in the water to cool off and shed my burdens at least as much as my wife wanted me to. But I just couldn't overcome my fear and surrender to what was expected of me. Although I had thought about taking swimming lessons many times before, it had never occurred to me to ask a young man probably at least ten years younger than me how to swim. Now, in the middle of this desert, I was uselessly complaining to myself about not facing my fear. If I hadn't felt the eyes of the person next to me on me, who knows how long I would have continued to grumble to myself. When he saw that I was looking at him too, I think he asked if there was a problem. Or rather, I guessed that's what he said in my I can't speak but I understand level of Spanish. I tried to explain that there was no problem, as if I were obliged to reassure a stranger I would probably never see again. I waved my arms to dispel any doubts, trying to convince him by shouting. My brain seemed to be melting in that hellish heat and pouring out of my mouth. If I left now, could I escape all my burdens as easily as taking off the shorts I was wearing? What would I gain by turning my back on this curious stranger, abandoning my wife of ten years on the beach, walking against the wind for once in my life? I wanted to know. But lying on the towel and letting the sun burn my skin as much as it wanted seemed easier. Familiar faces, cities, my family, my bracelets were scorching before my eyes and pouring down on me one by one. I was surprised to realise how resistant I was to the heat, to Aylin and the bracelets, and of course to this guy. I turned and looked at him, then at myself. Staying clothed on a nudist beach was no small feat. Perhaps I was braver than I thought. Thinking about this, I couldn't help myself and began to laugh, stifling my voice. The man next to me was probably looking at me and laughing too. I was embarrassed. But I also liked imagining how brave I was. I jumped up suddenly. The man next to me shot me a look that said, “Sit down where you are.” With a familiar nervousness, I immediately did as he said. Warm beads of sweat ran down my back. Soon after, I changed my mind and stood up again. This idiot I didn't even know was telling me what to do? I shrugged my shoulders and walked past the big-headed, short child, swaying as I made my way towards the exit. The sun beat down on my head, salty sweat dripping from my eyelids to my eyelashes, and finally into my eyes. Leaving everything behind brought a little relief, but it felt like a hole had opened in my heart that would never close. As I shrank into the distance, what I left behind continued to grow inside me, a huge void. When I finally decided to turn back, I realised I hadn't taken my things with me and smiled. My phone, wallet, shirt, sunglasses had been left where I sat. I dragged my feet and walked under the same sun once more. When I returned, Aylin was sprawled out on the towel sunbathing, and that guy had turned his head towards her, dozing sweetly. Neither of them cared about my absence. I was absent from their whispered conversations, their glances, their eyes never leaving each other. There was only the distance of a hand between them. The man kept opening his eyes, letting his gaze wander over my wife. Thinking I should feel uncomfortable, I frowned. I uttered angry words befitting someone expressing discomfort.

“What's going on here, Aylin?”

“Cover yourself up, Aylin.”

“Pull yourself together, Aylin.”

I wasn't sure if it was working, but I was glad I was behaving as the circumstances demanded. My wife either really was asleep or didn't take what I said seriously, because she didn't answer. After a while, without lifting her head, she went somewhere. Then, she asked where I was going without looking up. I quickly replied, “To find a toilet.” When she asked if I would come back for the water, I said of course I would. Had I trudged all that way just to melt in the heat? But first, I needed to go to the toilet. Unfortunately, I hadn't considered that there was no toilet on the beach. I was desperate. I was so overwhelmed that if I stayed any longer, I would have had to relieve myself right there. I had to leave the beach urgently, find a place where I could relax, and empty myself. Aylin showed understanding, telling me not to be late. Out of necessity, she created a gap between us, or perhaps she closed a gap. This time, as I walked briskly towards the exit with my things, I kept looking back to see if she had understood something. But she was sprawled out on her towel, finding peace in the circle of people around her, enjoying the sun dripping onto her body. Meanwhile, the warmth between my legs slowly trickled down into my slippers, and an indescribable sense of relief flowed through me.

‍

‍

‍