The Building

The Building I agree: reading someone else's diary is unethical. But believe me, if you were the one who read the diary I'm about to tell you about, you'd have a much bigger problem than ethics. Let's go back to the day I found it. Even if the real estate agent hadn't pushed me into renting this place, it would have been impossible to find a better one with my finances. I was starting a new life, and until I found a job I'd have to live off what was left in my account. Besides, passing up a furnished apartment this cheap would have been stupidity. The landlord wanted the rent in cash (probably to dodge taxes, the agent said), and since he lived abroad he wouldn't be back for two months. I said fine. Under those conditions, finding a place at all felt like the best thing that could happen to a person. I warmed to the apartment the moment I walked in. Two bedrooms and a living room, cozy, lived-in, arranged with the kind of care that makes you relax your shoulders without noticing. It had everything I'd need; I wouldn't have to buy a thing. I opened closets, pulled drawers, poked around. All of them were empty, except one. That was where I found the diary. And yes, I shouldn't have read it. Still. Admit it. If you found an ownerless diary and a pair of binoculars, you'd read the diary. That's exactly what I did. At first I only skimmed, letting my eyes slide over the pages. It began with scraps: meaningful lines, nonsense, doodles, half-thoughts. Then the entries settled into dates. July 15, 2019 My mother called. It's been a long time since I last spoke to her, and I sent the call to voicemail again. I wonder if her hair has turned gray. She's suffered so much because of us, poor woman. I was in the middle of feeling sorry when my package arrived. Bushman P50X50 Professional. 50x magnification, central focusing, 50 mm objective lens. There are better ones, but they're too expensive; this will do. I tried it immediately. I watched the street for a while: the avenue, the people, the sky. Not great for stargazing, I realized, but I could see birds in the trees. Birds don't come close to the windows here. July 16, 2019 Today I looked at the building down the road, next to the neighborhood office. I hadn't planned to, but I got stuck on a woman leaving in a tiny skirt. A taxi pulled up and took her. She climbed in and was gone. After she disappeared I studied the building. Six apartments, all the curtains flung wide open because it's hot and no one here can afford air conditioning. I saw only one child in the whole place. Then two middle-aged women appeared at the windows on the second floor, apartments three and four. Nothing moved in the others. I got bored. I watched the neighborhood office for a while, too. People went in and out, probably to get proof of residence, to document the soulless walls they live inside. How empty. July 17, 2019 I stayed in bed all day, crying. I only got up once to pee. When I saw the bruised shadows under my eyes in the mirror, I frightened myself. Then I crawled back into bed and cried some more. And then I saw him: the bastard across the way, the man who must be the father of the only child I'd spotted. He beat his wife. I saw it all: the child, the woman, the fists. He came home near dawn. The child was asleep in the woman's arms. He kicked her awake. She whispered, "Don't. Please don't. The child is sleeping. Damn you, don't hit me!" He hit her anyway, without mercy. She cried and cried. I was too small to save her. July 20, 2019 My head has been pounding for two days. I don't even have clean sweatpants left. I need to do laundry, but I can't bring myself to. I do nothing but watch the building across the street. That building has become almost my entire life. How strange: I haven't met a single person in my own building. I don't know any of them. None of them know me. But the building across the street? I know them all. Apartment three is a complete scumbag. On top of everything, he cheats on his wife, and not even discreetly. It's with the neighbor across the hall. Today he went over there while his wife was home alone. I saw it with my own eyes. I watched. Apartment four: a married couple, no kids. The husband clearly works himself to the bone; he always walks like he's dragging the day behind him. A gentle man. If he ever found out what was going on, he'd probably drop dead on the spot. July 21, 2019 My doctor called today. Naturally, I didn't answer. Three months ago he came for a routine check and I didn't open the door. A month later he came again, and I still didn't open it, so he stopped coming. Now he's worried, I guess. He's not wrong: I haven't taken my meds in three months. He's an idiot too; he knows I won't answer, yet he keeps calling. The janitor is the opposite. He's figured me out completely. He always follows the note I tape to the door: Don't ring the bell. The list and money are in the bag. Bring the groceries and leave them at the door. As he does every Sunday, he hung the grocery bag on my handle and left. When his footsteps faded, I took it inside. I ate something and my stomach turned. There was movement only in apartment one all day. An old woman lives there, poor enough that you can see it at a glance. A lonely woman. Looking at her makes my heart ache. I thought how nice it would be to reach out, pull her into my apartment, take care of her, stroke her hair. Maybe she'd let me rest my head on her lap and tell me stories. I drew the curtain, stretched out on the couch, and cried a little. The man in apartment five woke up toward evening and opened his curtains. His place is always crowded, people coming and going. They drink a lot - alcohol, and mostly drugs. Last night a swarm of people came again and partied until morning. I feel like I know him: smug, convinced the world spins only for him. He's heading somewhere bad. July 22, 2019 The tiny-skirt woman is a prostitute. She leaves at night; luxury cars usually pick her up. In the mornings she comes back by taxi. For the men everything is sweet while they collect her, but once they're done she is left alone. She goes back into an apartment that oozes sickness of the soul and tries to scrub herself clean. She disappoints whoever still loves her and she will die alone. She knows it. Sixty percent JP-4 jet fuel, forty percent benzene, polystyrene until it gels. Super napalm, and a whole truckload. I'm driving the truck. I don't lift my foot from the gas as I crash through the entrance. My favorite song plays in the background. What a show it would be. A building like this feels like a black hole that swallowed everything and spat it back out, charred. Corrupt, unable to grasp life as it is. It stands right in front of me. I stare at them all and judge them. Filth has spread everywhere; the place is cursed. Nothing clean remains inside. Maybe the child. Maybe the old woman. Maybe apartment six. July 23, 2019 I don't feel like writing today. I only watched apartment six. How calm it was. How beautiful it was to look at. For hours he stood by the window, smoking. July 24, 2019 I want to kill the woman in apartment three for not taking her child and leaving. He beat them again, brutally. The child's nose broke. The woman was covered in blood. He locked them in a room. The man in apartment four wasn't home; he went over there. The child's pain must have been unbearable. Apartment six seems to smell disaster. He leaned his head against the glass and watched the street. The prostitute left the building with her head bowed. It was nearly midnight. Everyone watched her through a slit in their curtains. They didn't see their own mud; they shamed her instead. Let's pause here. Reading a diary wasn't really my thing, and spying on a building was even less. So I kept reading, curiosity pulling me by the collar, and I did not look out at the building at all. Some days he wrote nothing. Some days he only drew. These were the lines of a strange man. I didn't want to sleep. I studied every sentence, every sketch. He had drawn the child and the man in apartment six: a frail child, a handsome man. He had drawn fists too, and ugly faces, dark and helpless. He had no private memories. Only the building. I went mad with the urge to look. My hand would reach for the binoculars and then pull back. I kept reading. August 1, 2019 I was tense today. Apartment three kept its curtains shut. The man in apartment four drank raki when he got home in the afternoon. The man in apartment six paced all day, circling his rooms. He talked to himself, sometimes flaring up, sometimes calming down. He went to bed early. When he went to bed, I decided I would too. August 2, 2019 Apartment three still hasn't opened the curtains, but I know the bastard left. He went with the woman across the hall. The child sat on the sidewalk in front of the building all day, crying. Will the mother and child pack up and leave now? Where would they go? They have no one. No bread. No money. The child will grow up too fast now. August 3, 2019 Around noon a moving truck pulled up. They loaded a few pieces of furniture, sullen and wounded-looking. It wasn't hard to tell who was leaving: apartment four. No goodbyes. No one wishing him well. Only me, watching from my window. August 4, 2019 Last night apartment five partied until morning again. The old woman in apartment one came to her window. She has two potted plants. She watered them, fussed over them, spoke to them. I wish I knew how to be with her. My chest ached. Her hair has turned white. August 12, 2019 I've been stuck in bed for days with the pain. Only now and then I looked across, at apartment six. Whenever I looked, he was there, as always, at the window, smoking and watching the street. Today the police came. They asked questions. A murder had happened the other night: the man the prostitute went home with killed her. No one seemed sad. No one seemed shaken. I was devastated. August 13, 2019 The building is sinking deeper into darkness. You can almost hear it creak. Apartment six is frantic tonight, preparing something. He dragged a table to the window, smiling. I saw him smile for the first time. He set a chair beside it and brought paper and a pen. For a while he leaned his elbows on the table and stared at the blank page with empty eyes. Then he hummed a song. If it were me, if I were going to sing, I'd sing Müzeyyen Senar: "Kimseye Etmem Şikayet." My mother used to play it on vinyl when I was little, before everything happened, before anything at all. I sang it. He listened. He wrote something. He smiled. He poured pills into his palm. I said goodbye to him; he didn't hear me. He said goodbye to me; I didn't hear him. It was close to five in the morning. The street dogs barked and we both heard them. He stacked the papers neatly, and even though he knew no one would read them, he stroked the pages like an animal's back. He looked out. Our eyes met. He left. Everyone left. There was nothing left to write. I flipped through the diary quickly. The rest was blank. It couldn't end like this. I had to know everything. I grabbed the binoculars. Dawn was breaking. I went to the window, pulled the curtain aside, took a deep breath, pressed the binoculars to my eyes, and looked at the building. Nothing. How had I not noticed? The binoculars had no lenses. They weren't cracked or shattered. The lenses had been removed, carefully, on purpose. I felt like I might lose my mind. I don't remember putting on my shoes. I don't remember leaving the apartment. I only remember running. The building stood right in front of me. I couldn't even look up at its windows. All I wanted was to get inside and talk to them. Then, at the door, a voice behind me snapped me around. "Where are you going, brother?" "Huh?" "Where are you going?" "I'm going into the building. I've got business there." "Are you blind? Can't you read?" "I don't understand." "For God's sake. Brother! Are you blind? Can't you see the sign?" I hadn't seen it. A huge warning was posted on the door. "According to Article 2 of Law No. 6306, this is a hazardous structure. Entry is prohibited." It was like boiling water poured over my head. My whole body shook. With one last effort the words forced their way out. "How long has it been like this?" "Since it was built. It was never used. The contractor ended up in court with the municipality or something. Somebody must have pulled strings, so they still haven't torn it down. Kids play around here. One day they'll get hurt..." He kept talking, but I couldn't hear him anymore. The world tilted. I flung my hand out for something to hold and found nothing. Someone caught my arm before I fell. I recognized the grip at once: my dear real estate agent. I must have looked like a ghost, because his voice stayed calm. "Sit down. Let's talk." "No!" I shouted. "What's going on? Tell me. Who are you?" He drew a deep breath, held it. I held mine too. "Dissociative fugue." "Disso-what?" "A type of memory loss. Brought on by trauma." "What trauma?" "Everything. And most recently..." "What do you mean, most recently? Talk!" "I found you at home, almost dead... You were supposed to take your medication. Your mind replaced your memories with other memories. I thought coming back here might help. This isn't what I expected. I'm sorry." "Sorry?" "Please. Try to stay calm. We need to go to the hospital." The hospital. Memory loss. My memories. Who was I? And who was he? He was my doctor. I had been forgetting. I'd forgotten my own home, my own life, my own memories. Without realizing I'd forgotten, I'd been swapping them out, filling the holes with something else. He had acted like a real estate agent and rented me my own apartment. Experimental treatment, the bastard. I was supposed to become a stranger to my own memories, and then remember. And I did. I remembered the memories that made me draw pictures of an empty building with five apartments. I remembered what my father did. I remembered my prostitute girlfriend. My broken nose. All of it. There was only one thing I couldn't remember, not until I realized my apartment number was six. Meltem AVCI