Waiting for the Fear by Oguz Atay

Author:Oguz Atay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2024-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

A LETTER

Unsent

Most respected sir,

I loved you the moment we met, so much so that writing you a letter is the only way I can explain everything that’s taken place. I beg you not to regard my candidness as a form of disrespect. In fact, my respect for you is so great that it seemed improper, based on my impression of our surroundings at the time, to burden you with my troubles using a dated vernacular and old-fashioned expressions, and so I’ve located a dictionary and am keeping it close at hand while I write these words, as I consider it a personal duty to speak to you without coming off as a bore. In truth, we aren’t that different in age; like you, I can read and write; nevertheless, the differences between two people can’t possibly be evaluated according to such simple criteria. This I know. I’m struggling with complex feelings and an unfamiliar parlance, forgive me. Of course you are—like that tall friend of yours said, the one with the glasses who always looked like he was laughing even though he never was—“a gracious man” to whose sympathies I should be able to easily appeal. No, I rebel against doing so (my apologies). It seems to me that a legitimately respectable person like you mustn’t content himself with so little. Having gotten somewhat tipsy (again, my apologies) that evening that I spent in your company, I in fact behaved so familiarly with you that . . . the point is, I’d overstepped a boundary and . . . (You understand I can’t go on.) I knew this tailor once . . . (At this point, I should state in advance that I am so determined to write to you with my sincerest feelings that I plan to see this letter through to the end without erasing or correcting a single word; although I wanted to erase the part in those first few lines where . . . At least permit me to leave this last sentence unfinished.) Yes, I knew this drunken tailor once. He was one of these gasbaggers, and he’d stitched me a suit that was way too big. I was quite young at the time and because this—of course, how could you know if you’ve never met him—meddlesome father of mine (dragging me to his tailor as if we were peers) only paid for the stitching, I ended up stuck with an extremely humiliating suit. What’s more, this tailor—who I realize has absolutely no right appearing in a letter meant for you—was drinking a beer when I tried it on. It might as well have been water the way he stuck the bottle between his lips. “I’m a little tipsy, sorry,” he kept saying. It’s because of that man, and the oversized suit I had to wear for years, that I’ve always hated the word “tipsy”; explaining my actions earlier, I myself could have chosen a better word. But as I pointed out above, I

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