Hello Ester (Evening, Day 16)

Yes, I'm beginning with a ‘hello’, although this will be my last letter to you.

And no, I do not expect an answer, nor do I wish to alter or influence the course of your life. I just hope you understand. After I have written the last line of this letter and the last full stop is in place, I shan't be sending you any more. However, I shall never say goodbye to you. I may write ‘goodbye joy’ or ‘goodbye happiness’ or even ‘goodbye hope’ but my pen shall not write the words ‘goodbye Ester’. Not because there is a chance we may be reunited but because I shall take this halflived love of ours and this endless longing and this profound pain of mine to the grave. I am quite certain that I will never sit at this desk again. I have written enough, recounted enough and narrated enough. Any subsequent word will just cheapen life. It will render what we have been through ordinary and will stain the sanctity of my love for you. Nevertheless, I should get to the point. As one of our famous critics once wrote, the sentimentality of the novelist is an insufferable thing …

I woke up in serious pain this morning, a result of our little tête-à-tête with Mehmed Esad in the Ferah Theatre yesterday. When I looked at my body in the bathroom mirror, it was covered in bruises. Well, I suppose we're not as young as we used to be and our fighting days have long since been over. But there were so many questions racing around in my head that I quickly got dressed and rushed out of the Pera Palas to the hospital in Cerrahpaşa to see my old buddy Fuad, whom I no longer trusted in the slightest.

Although his left shoulder was heavily bandaged, he was in good spirits and he greeted me cheerfully. There was not a trace of guilt or remorse in his demeanour. Not a trace. He even had the nerve to tease me.

‘Well, well, Şehsuvar, old boy, you're here early. I knew you'd come but I must say, I wasn't expecting you here so soon.’ He then turned to the agent in the black leather jacket sitting next to his bed (and who'd most probably been there the whole night).