Paean to The Long Grass Books, no. 3: Bilge Karasu's Night

A note found on the floor of the chamber belonging to Attorney Clendon. The good man is missing, and much nameless havoc is feared.

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Night slowly comes on. Descends. Already it has begun filling the hollows. Once these are full and it empties onto the plain, everything will turn gray. For a while no light will go on, in the hollows or out beyond. The glow on the hills will seem for a time to suffice; then the hills too will sink into darkness.

Some weeks ago I read a very interesting book by Bilge Karasu, translated by Guneli Gun. I took many careful, tedious notes, as I was trained to do. Unlike my fellows in the comment trade, I was not confused by the separate characters, nor by the way they began to blur and dance and re-configure. I noted with scrupulous attention the place where a second character began to be identified by the letter N. I kept the triple strand of character separated, I followed each to his lair through a labyrinth with monsters. I suffered trial, love, intricate wanderings, violence, metamorphosis, paradox, and reversals. I came face to face—or face to faces—with the Author. The book with its twists and turns stood bared to light in my mind, and I was satisfied with my understanding.

The book seemed to me a worthwhile journey, and though it lacked—because of its surreal, intellectual windings—a certain heart, I found it satisfying. Perhaps, you may say, it is because I am myself a compendium of dry dust from law books, crumbling writs, and shadows of events that do not belong to me. In some moods, I find myself so.

Yesterday evening something strange happened.

I picked up the book; it held a bookmark made from a folded shadow. When I looked closer, I saw that gloom had gathered into letters, and it seemed to me that it was a warrant for my arrest. When I looked again, the letters were gone, and the events of the book had fallen into darkness.

At 2:00 a.m., I woke to see three people standing around my nightstand. They were spooning more darkness into the pages with tarnished silver spoons. The substance flowed like honey into an extractor, spilling down the legs of the nightstand and onto the valuable Turkish carpet on the floor. I cried out in surprise and felt a sudden jabbing pain in my arm, as though a knife blade had swept its length. The three faces lifted only slowly and then fused into a single face: I recognized the suffering, intelligent face of the late Bilge Karasu in a flash of light. Then a cloud swept over the moon, and all was lost in shadow.

I write this by a thin starlight. The darkness has almost reached the steps, and I hear the distant tread of a party of soldiers . . .

--Athanasius Clendon

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