K*a*r_Ç*i*ç*e*k*l*e*r*i

ve bebek doğmuştu.
.................................................James Arthur BALDWİN

Çeviren= Remzi ŞANLI

It was on the 28th of July,which I believe wasa Wednesday, that I visited
my father for the first time during his ilness and for the last time in his life.
The moment I saw him I knew why I put off this visit so long. I had tald my mother that Idid not want to see him because I hated him.But this was not true. It was only that I hated him and I wanted to hold on to this hatred.Idid not want to look on him as a ruin: It was not a ruin I hated. I imagine that
one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense,once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.

We travelled out to him, his older sister and myself,to what seemed to be the very end of very Long Island. It was hot and dusty and we wrangled, my aunt and I, all the way out,over trhe fact that I had recently begun to smoke and,as she said,to give myself airs. But I knew that she wrangled with me because she could not bear to face the fact of her brother's dying. Neither
could I endure the reality of her despair, her unstated bafflement as to what had happened to time she fell into a heavy reveire.Covertly,I watched her face which was the face of an old woman; It had fallen in, the eyes were sunken and lightless; Soon she would be dying too...

In my childhood-it had not been so so long ago- I had thought her beautiful
She had been quick-witted and quick-moving and very generous with all the children and each of her visits had been an event.At one time one of my brothers and myself had thought of running away to live with her. Now she cold no longer produce out of her handbag some unexpected and yet familiar
delight. She made me feel pity and revulsion and fear. It was awfull to relize that she no longer caused me to feel affection. The closer we came to the hospital the more querrulous she became, and the same time, naturally,
grow more dependent on me.Between pity and guilt and fear I began to feel that there was another me trapped in my skull like a jack-inthe box who might escape my control at any moment and fill the air with screaming.

She began to cry the moment we entered the room and she saw him lying there,all shrieveled and still, like a little black monkey. The great,gleaming
apparatus which fed him and would have compelled him to be still even if he had been able to move brought to mind,beneficence,but torture; the tubes
entering his arm made me think of pictures Ihad seen when a child,of Gulliver, tied down by the pygmies on that ısland.My aunt wept,there was a whistling sound in my father's throat,nothing was said; He cold not speak.
I wanted to take his hand, to say something.But I do not know what I could have said,even if he could have heard me. he was not really in that room with us, he had at last really embarked on his journey,and though my aunt told me that he said he was going to meet Jesus, I did not hear anything except that whistling in his throat. The doctor came back and we left, into that unbarable train again,and home. In the morning came the telegram saying that he was dead. Then the house was suddenly full of relatives.friends,hysteria,and confussion and I quickly left my mother and the children to the care of those impressive woman, who,in Negro communities at least, outomatically appear at times of bereavement armed with lotions, proverbs. and patience,and an ability to cook. I went downtoon. By the time I returned later same day,my mother had been carried to the hospital and the baby had been born...


.........................................................JAMES ARTHUR BALDWIN