Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
My name is Yuri, and I am a nothing. This is not a complaint, but a statement of fact. This room of mine, in this dusty attic, is no different from a coffin, and I am the sole mourner at my own funeral. While the world outside flows by like a roaring river, I sit here, between the moldy walls of my own mind. Sometimes these walls close in, stealing my breath. It is in those moments that I think of Tanya. Tanya... She is the only ray of sunlight that seeps into this putrid nothingness. And at the same time, she is the dagger that wounds me most deeply.
1
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I remember the day I first saw her. In the corner café, she was watching the patterns the rain drew on the window. She had a book in her hand, but she wasn't reading. She was simply lost in thought. In that moment, her existence overshadowed my own. She was real; a living, breathing, thinking being. I, on the other hand, was merely a ghost dissolving in the shadow of her presence. Since that day, watching her from afar has become my morbid ritual. Every laugh she let out, unaware of me, would build a cathedral in my soul and, in the same instant, demolish it.
2
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
There are two Yuris inside me. One is an ascetic who glorifies this love for Tanya, placing it on a divine pedestal. He believes this love will save him, that it will pull him out of this pit of nothingness. This Yuri is positive; he is full of hope. The other is a cynical devil. He whispers in my ear; 'You are a nothing, Yuri. A parasite. You feed on her light, but the only thing you can give her is your darkness. This isn't love, it's an obsession. A theft.' This second voice escalates the tension, dragging me into a vortex of hesitation and self-loathing. Which one is the real me? Perhaps both. Perhaps I am nothing more than the endless war between these two.
3
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Last night, I made a decision. This shadow play must end. I cannot live as a ghost. I will tell her everything. In my mind, I have rehearsed the sentences I will say hundreds of times. 'Tanya, my name is Yuri. I have been watching you for a long time...' No, that sounds like a stalker's confession. 'Tanya, your existence holds a meaning for me...' Too philosophical, too absurd. Every scenario was like proof of my own inadequacy. But I will go nonetheless. The end of this adventure will be either salvation or complete annihilation. My heart is beating as if it will break through my ribcage. Is this a sign that I am alive, or a harbinger of death?
4
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
There she is. In the same café, at the same table. The sun illuminates her hair like a halo. My steps slow, my feet feel as if they are taking root in the concrete. Ten steps... Five steps... Just as I am about to enter, our eyes meet. Only for a moment. In those eyes, there is neither recognition nor curiosity. Only emptiness. For the woman who is the center of my world, I am no different from any other face passing on the street, no different from a shadow. It is in that moment I understand. My confession was not meant for her, but for myself. I am a nothing. And this nothingness is my only truth. I turn back. To my coffin. But this time, it is different. No longer facing a delusion, but a reality.
5
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
The days following that defeat passed in the moldy silence of my room, like a rat gnawing its own tail. I was consuming myself. I contemplated my inadequacy, my cowardice, how my very existence had dissolved in that momentary void. But that void, that indifferent gaze, had seeped into my mind like a drug. Merely waiting in the café was no longer enough. If this was an obsession, I had to sink to its very depths. If this was a disease, I had to wait for my fever to reach its peak. I began to follow her.
6
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
This was not like a hunter stalking its prey; no, it was more like a shadow helplessly trailing the body to which it belonged. I learned of the old apartment building where she lived, the route she took to work, the small shop she visited in the evenings to buy books. Each step of hers was like a line from a sacred text to me, and I was a pathetic disciple who memorized this text but could never decipher its meaning.
7
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
And then I saw Dimitri. I learned his name later. The first time I saw him, walking beside Tanya with his arm in hers, the cynical devil inside me roared with laughter. Dimitri was my complete opposite. A man confident, speaking with a resonant voice, laughing with ease, a man who belonged to the world. Even the overcoat he wore seemed like a king's cape next to my wretched clothes.
8
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
What I felt in that moment was not pure jealousy. No, it was a more complex, more venomous emotion. It was a sense of existential injustice. Why him? Why did he have the right to bathe in the warmth of Tanya's smile, while I was forced to gather mere crumbs of this moment from a cold, dark corner? God, if He exists, did He cheat when He cast the dice to assign these roles?
9
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
My love transformed from that moment on. It lost its purity. Resentment, hatred, and ambition seeped into it. I no longer just loved Tanya; I began to see her as an innocent, a victim who needed to be saved from Dimitri. Dimitri could not understand her soul. His shallow laughter was desecrating Tanya's profound silence. I, only I, could be her true savior. This was the new and dangerous grand delusion of my mind.
10
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
My room turned into a laboratory of thought, a courtroom. I slept during the day and worked on this case at night. I judged Dimitri, defended Tanya, and declared myself the chief prosecutor. The cracks on the wall, the scribbles in my notebook, all were evidence in this case. I talked to myself, making Dimitri's defense, and then refuting it. Was I a madman? Perhaps. But is a madman with a cause not less mad than a sane man without a purpose?
11
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
A week later, in a moment when I was not brave, but merely desperate, I made a plan. It was not a plan for confrontation, no. It was a plan for contact. A contact disguised as an accident. There was a narrow street they passed through every morning. I would wait there. As Tanya passed by, I would 'accidentally' drop the books in my hand. That was it. Simple, foolish, but for me, it was an act as monumental as climbing Everest.
12
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
That morning, my heart was pounding in my chest like a rebel's drum. My palms were sweating. The old, yellow-paged philosophy book I held in my hand felt as if it weighed tons. I saw them from a distance. Dimitri was making one of his foolish, loud jokes again, and Tanya was smiling politely. That smile... That smile, gifted to Dimitri, was enough to destroy my plan, my courage, everything, in an instant.
13
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Coward. The devil inside me hissed. You are a shadow, Yuri, and shadows cannot drop books. They only watch. They only crawl. And so I crawled. As they passed by me, I cowered against a wall, holding my breath. As if my very presence was a toxic gas that would pollute their air. They left. The street emptied. The book in my hand, heavy with the weight of my shame, fell to the ground. Not by accident this time, but in utter defeat.
14
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
When I returned to the coffin of my room, a new idea had sprouted in my mind. If I am a nothing, if my existence is so faint, then I could turn this faintness into a weapon. Like a ghost, like a spy no one notices, I could infiltrate their lives even further. My inaction would become my greatest action. I would gather information. I would find Dimitri's weak point, Tanya's deepest desire. This would be a cold, analytical operation, conducted with the patience of a scientist. I would set my love aside and focus solely on strategy.
15
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
With an artificial strength granted by this new purpose, I began my research. Dimitri was a lawyer. A partner in a small but successful law firm. He was a social man; he often went out with his friends. Following him was easy. One evening, I watched him from a dark doorway across from a tavern he entered with his friends, without Tanya. His laughter spilled out onto the street. And amidst that laughter, I heard them talk about Tanya.
16
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
A friend asked, 'How is Tanya? Can you handle that serious girl?' Dimitri laughed. With that meaningless, shallow laugh of his. 'Tanya is an angel,' he said. 'But angels can sometimes be boring, can't they? I wish she were a bit more... full of life. But she's ideal for marriage. Loyal, calm, no trouble.' My heart stopped. For a moment, I forgot to breathe.
17
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
No trouble. That word cracked like a whip across my soul. That being, who was the center of the universe for me, that unique soul, was just a 'trouble-free' commodity for Dimitri. An object. A good investment. I understood then; I had not been mistaken. Dimitri truly was a fraud. He didn't see Tanya's light, he only used the comfort that light provided. This was my proof. The most powerful evidence for my case.
18
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I returned to my room that night with the air of a victorious commander. But the intoxication of victory was short-lived. It was replaced by a cold terror. What was I to do with this information? Go to Tanya and say, 'Dimitri thinks this way about you'? Who would believe me? A shadow, a nobody? She would see me merely as a slanderer, a jealous madman. And she would be right.
19
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Inaction pulled me in again like a vortex. I knew the truth, but this truth was like a snowflake melting in my hands. I was powerless. Knowledge itself is not power; power comes from the ability to use it. And I lacked this ability. I was just a spectator; a spectator who sees the fraud on stage but does not dare to shout.
20
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
In these moments of helplessness, I started to think about the old woman on the floor below me, Elena. I would occasionally see her on the apartment stairs. The deep lines on her face were like a map of sorrow. But in her eyes, there was a tranquility of one who has accepted everything. Once, as I hurried past her, she had said, 'May God grant your soul peace, my child.' I had been angry with her then. How could she soothe my tempestuous soul with that simple prayer?
21
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
But now, those words echoed in my mind. Peace. What a foreign word for me. My soul was a battlefield. Tanya, Dimitri, the ascetic and the devil within me... all were fighting on this field. Elena's tranquility, however, was like a silent reproach, showing me the meaninglessness of this war. Her existence rendered my intellectual arrogance, my philosophical pains, meaningless. She lived suffering; I merely thought about suffering. That was the difference between us.
22
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
One night, there was a knock on my door. Slowly, hesitantly. This was impossible. No one ever knocked on my door. I opened it with fear. Elena stood before me. She was holding a small, steaming bowl. 'I made soup,' she whispered. 'You look so thin. Perhaps this will warm you.' I did not invite her in. I couldn't. My room was a reflection of my sinful soul; I could not let her be a part of this filth.
23
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I just took the bowl and mumbled a thank you. I closed the door. That warm bowl stood in my hands like a certificate of shame. It was an unrequited kindness. A pure act of humanity, without calculation, without strategy. Even my love for Tanya was not so pure. My love was to save myself. This soup, however, was just because she thought of me. For the first time, I understood how selfish my own nothingness was.
24
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I drank the soup. Its taste was like recalling a forgotten memory. Perhaps it was the taste of humanity. That night, I dreamed neither of Tanya nor Dimitri. In my dream, I was in an empty room, looking at a sliver of light seeping through a crack in the wall. I was not afraid. I was just looking. When I woke up, there was a strange determination within me. If I was a nothing, then what did I have to lose?
25
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
The issue was no longer about 'saving' Tanya. It was about revealing the truth. To expose Dimitri's fraud before Tanya's very eyes. This was my moral duty. An act for which even a nothing like me was responsible to the world. My plan was simple, yet devilish. I would write an anonymous letter to Dimitri.
26
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
There would be neither a threat nor a slander in the letter. Only a question. I would write; 'Do you have the courage to tell Tanya you love her only because she is 'no trouble'?' That's it. Just that sentence. This sentence would enter his confident mind like a virus, gnaw at him, and cast him into doubt. I would leave him alone with his own conscience. With the most ruthless judge.
27
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I composed this sentence by cutting out letters from various newspapers and magazines. It looked like a ransom note. I liked the irony. After all, I was demanding Tanya's soul as ransom from Dimitri. I put the letter in an envelope and, the next day, dropped it into his law firm's mailbox without being seen. The die was cast. I had set the game. Now, I would just wait.
28
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Waiting was a greater torture than the act itself. Every hour was like a century. A thousand scenarios played out in my mind. Would he read the letter and laugh? Would he tear it up? Or... or would that poisonous seed truly sprout? I watched them pass by the usual café. I searched Dimitri's face for a change. A hint of worry, a cloud of thought... But there was nothing. He was the same shallow man as always.
29
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I fell into despair again. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps Dimitri had no conscience. Perhaps he had skin thick enough to be unaffected by such pricks. My plan had failed. I was a nothing once more. I had lost even in the game I had set myself. The walls of my room began to close in on me again.
30
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Two days later, on a Saturday evening, everything changed. I saw them leaving a fancy restaurant in the city center. It was not one of their usual places. Was it a celebration? Tanya's face was pale. Dimitri, on the other hand, was talking nervously. Faster, louder than usual. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
31
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I followed them at a distance. They didn't take a taxi; they walked. The air was cold. Dimitri was passionately explaining something, while Tanya listened to him in silence. Then, they stopped under a streetlight. And I heard it. Dimitri asked, 'Did you ruin the whole evening because of that ridiculous letter? You know I love you!'
32
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Tanya's voice was like a shard of ice. 'I don't know that you love me, Dimitri. I know that you want to possess me. There's a difference.' That sentence... That sentence was my victory. The trap I had set had driven Dimitri into a panic, and in defending himself, he had confessed everything. He had made the foolish mistake of showing the letter to Tanya.
33
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
In the shadow where I stood, I was trembling with pleasure. It was a divine feeling. I, Yuri the nothing, had changed the destiny of these two people. I had taken the strings in my hands like a puppeteer. But then I saw Tanya's face. It was not the face of someone who had won a victory. It was the face of a suffering, disappointed woman. There were tears in her eyes. My victory was built upon her pain.
34
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
The ascetic and the devil inside me switched places at that moment. While the devil was ecstatic with pleasure, my ascetic side was in agony. What had I done? I had set out to 'save' her, but I had only given her more pain. I had saved her from a fraud, only to push her into the arms of despair. What kind of salvation was this?
35
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
That night, for the first time, I was afraid of myself. I saw how destructive my obsession, my pride, and my nothingness could be. I was not a savior. I was a disease. I was an invisible plague germ that had infected Tanya's life. And now, I was watching the consequences of my illness.
36
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I didn't see Tanya at all the following week. Not in the café, not on the street. I saw Dimitri a few times, though; he was a wreck. His face was gaunt, his eyes bloodshot. It was clear that Tanya had left him after what had happened. My plan had been more successful than I had expected. And this success sat in my stomach like a stone.
37
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I had to find her. It was my responsibility. I had created this wreckage, now I had to face the consequences. But how? I didn't have the courage to go to her apartment. What could I say? 'I'm sorry, I was the one who wrote that anonymous letter that ruined your life'? That wouldn't be a confession, it would be an insult.
38
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
After days of agonizing waiting, I saw her. She was coming out of that little bookstore she loved so much. Her face was even paler than that night. The light in her eyes had faded. As if a light inside her had been extinguished, never to be lit again. And I was the man who had extinguished that light.
39
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
In that moment, something inside me broke. Pride, strategy, the ascetic, the devil... they all fell silent. All that remained was an overwhelming regret and a desire to help her. Not for myself this time, but for her. Without thinking, in an instinctive move, I walked towards her. I no longer had a plan. I was just another human being walking towards a suffering one.
40
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I stood in front of her. She lifted her eyes from the ground and looked at me. This time, there was no emptiness in her gaze. There was a faint recognition. That strange man who dropped his books. That faint face that froze in front of the café. A flicker of curiosity appeared in her eyes. 'Yes?' she said in a whisper. Her voice was fragile.
41
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. None of the sentences I had rehearsed in my mind fit the reality of that moment. What could I say? All the lies, all the strategies had become meaningless. All that was left was the naked, pitiful truth. 'I...' I stammered. 'I just... wondered if you were alright.'
42
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
A look of surprise mixed with suspicion appeared on her face. She put her guard up against this sudden and personal question from a stranger. 'Thank you,' she said with a cold politeness. 'I'm fine. Now if you'll excuse me...' She took a step to leave. I had to stop her. This was my last chance.
43
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
'No, you're not alright,' I said. My voice came out with an unexpected strength. 'I know. Because sometimes, pain is best understood by another who is also in pain.' I didn't know how that sentence came out of my mouth. It wasn't planned. It was a cry from the depths of my soul. It was the beginning of a confession.
44
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
She stopped. She turned back and for the first time, she truly looked at me. Her eyes bored into mine, into the darkest corner of my soul. I don't know what she saw there. A madman? A source of comfort? Or just a reflection of her own pain? 'Who are you?' she asked. This time, there was no fear in her voice, only pure curiosity.
45
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I had waited for this moment for years. The moment I would tell her who I was. But now that the moment had come, I had nothing to say. 'I am Yuri,' I said simply. 'Just Yuri.' All those philosophical titles, those savior identities, those devilish roles... they had all evaporated. All that remained was a name. The name of a nothing.
46
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
There was a long silence. The noise of the people on the street was like a distant hum. The two of us were alone on that street in that moment. Time had stopped. Then she did something unexpected. She smiled faintly. It was a sad, tired, but genuine smile. 'You know, Yuri,' she said. 'Sometimes, it's easier to talk to a stranger than to your closest friend.'
47
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Those words unlocked a lock in my soul. All the words I had accumulated for years, the words that were poisoning me, all those confessions, wanted to pour out like a flood. But I held myself back. This was her time, not mine. I just nodded. A silent acknowledgment, showing that I understood.
48
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
'There's a café nearby,' she said. 'Would you like to have a coffee? I think... I think I need to talk.' This was an invitation. A real invitation, beyond my morbid fantasies, my obsessive dreams. It was a hand extended to me, a nothing, by a suffering soul.
49
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
My heart was pounding, not with fear this time, but with an indescribable hope. But beneath this hope, there was a sharp sense of guilt. I would be sitting at that table with her under a great lie. As she poured out her troubles to a stranger, she would in fact be pouring them out to the cause of her troubles. This would be my greatest sin, and perhaps, the beginning of my atonement. 'Of course,' I said. 'With pleasure.' And together, in silence, we began to walk towards the café. The storm was just beginning.
50
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
The moment we stepped through the café door, the world split in two for me. One was the noisy, meaningless reality left outside. The other was this dim, coffee-scented space, this sacred and cursed ground established between Tanya and me, filled with lies and expectations. We sat at a table. The wooden surface between us was both an altar that united us and a shield that concealed my sin. When the waiter came, she ordered a tea, and I asked only for water. My mouth was dry, a knot of words stuck in my throat.
51
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
'Why did you stop me?' Tanya asked, her hands wrapped around her teacup as if begging for its warmth. 'That sentence of yours... Pain is best understood by another who is also in pain... Were you serious when you said that?' I looked into her eyes. Yes, I wanted to scream. My pain is both the cause and the shadow of yours! But I remained silent. I nodded slowly. This silent yes was the greatest lie I had ever told.
52
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
And she began to speak. She spoke of Dimitri, of their relationship, of that 'no trouble' label. Every word from her was a shard of glass piercing my soul. I was seeing how the life I had judged from the outside like a god was, from the inside, so human and so painful. She had loved Dimitri. Truly loved him. The man I had branded a fraud was once a source of hope for Tanya.
53
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
'Then that letter came,' she said, her voice trembling. 'That hideous letter, written with cut-out letters. Dimitri showed it to me. As if to say, 'Look what kind of jealous madmen are out there.' But when I read that sentence... when I saw the word 'trouble-free'... everything made sense. Because I had heard that word from him before. He had said it during a joke, unknowingly. Whoever wrote the letter knew this. It was as if it was one of us. Like a spy.'
54
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Spy. The word lay on the table like a bomb. I wiped my sweaty palms on my trousers. I could feel the blood drain from my face. She continued. 'Do you know what the worst part was, Yuri? That letter didn't separate me from him. It separated me from myself. It made me doubt my own love, my own intuition. How could I have been so blind? Was the truth hidden in that ugly piece of paper written by a stranger?'
55
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
In that moment, the devil inside me chuckled with delight. This is it! Victory! But my ascetic side was on its knees in a corner of my soul, weeping. I had not revealed a truth. I had poisoned a soul. 'Sometimes,' I said, trying to keep my voice calm, 'the truth comes in the ugliest ways. Perhaps whoever wrote that letter wanted to do you a favor.' This sentence made me nauseous. I was defending myself. Trying to turn my crime into a virtue.
56
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
'A favor?' she laughed bitterly. 'You call this a favor? Tearing a person's life, their faith, their past to shreds? Whoever wrote that letter is not a human being. They are a demon.' A demon. Yes, that was true. I was a demon. And she, unknowingly, was telling me who I was to my face. This was my trial, and my judge was none other than my victim.
57
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Our conversation lasted for hours. She talked, I listened. She cried, I comforted. Every word of comfort I offered was a new layer added to my lie. I told her, 'Time heals all wounds.' I told her, 'You are a strong person.' Every sentence was proof of my own depravity. When we left that table, for the first time in weeks, there was a faint expression of relief on Tanya's face. On my face, however, was the brand of a damned soul, which no one could see.
58
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
'Thank you, Yuri,' she said at the café door. 'You've been a great help to me.' Then, the most unexpected and terrifying moment of my life occurred. She reached out and touched my shoulder. That brief contact burned my skin like a branding iron. It was like a sacred being touching something unclean. I recoiled. She attributed my reaction to her own fatigue. But I knew. It was a criminal shrinking from the touch of justice.
59
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
When I returned to the coffin of my room, I was no longer alone. Tanya's pain, her ghost, her words... they were all with me. My room was no longer a sanctuary, but a torture chamber. The cracks on the wall whispered 'demon' to me. The dust on the floor rose, whispering 'spy'. I was drowning in my own nothingness, and this time, the sensation of drowning gave no pleasure. Only pure terror.
60
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
A few days later, I received a note from Tanya. It had been slipped under my door. 'Can we talk again?' it asked. 'Talking to you gives me strength.' Strength. I, Yuri the nothing, was giving her strength. My lie had become her medicine. This was both my greatest victory and my greatest curse. To say yes to her meant expanding my lie. To say no meant abandoning her in the midst of the pain I had caused.
61
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I accepted. We met again, once, twice, three more times. At each meeting, I played the role of an anonymous priest to whom she confessed. And with each meeting, she grew more attached to me, and I was crushed more under the weight of my own lie. I gave her advice. 'You should forgive Dimitri,' I would sometimes say, as if testing my own demonic nature. 'Perhaps he is a victim too.'
62
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Meanwhile, I continued to follow Dimitri. The man was a wreck. He was drinking. Not going to work. One evening, I saw him waiting in front of Tanya's apartment, drunk. He was begging. 'Tanya, forgive me!' he shouted in the middle of the street. Tanya didn't even look out the window. But I was looking. From my attic window, I was watching the hell of my own creation.
63
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
It was then that a new and more terrible idea fell into my mind. As long as Dimitri did not disappear, Tanya could never be truly free. His presence hovered over Tanya like a ghost. And perhaps over me too. Dimitri was the living proof of my sin. As long as he existed, I was a criminal. He had to disappear.
64
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
This was not a plan to kill. No, I was not a murderer. This was a plan of annihilation. I would finish him socially, professionally. I would force him to leave this city. This would be my second great sin. And this time, I would do it not to 'save' Tanya, but to save myself, my own lie, and my own false peace. My pride had taken the stage once more.
65
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I began my research. Coldly and methodically. Dimitri's law firm, his partners, his important cases... One night when he was drunk, I followed him to a bar. There, he was complaining to another lawyer about an important case he had lost. He had missed a detail. A case involving a large corporation. This would be my weapon.
66
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
A new anonymous letter. Not to Dimitri this time, but to the rival law firm. The letter explained, in simple and technical language, the critical legal loophole Dimitri had missed. This information could lead to a retrial of the case, and could condemn Dimitri's firm to millions in damages. It was an atomic bomb that would end a man's career.
67
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
As I mailed the letter, there was no trace of the excitement from the first letter. Only an ice-cold determination and a void in my stomach, akin to nausea. I was no longer playing a game. I was no longer taking a person's life or soul, but their tangible future, their livelihood. This was a dirtier, more mundane sin. And perhaps for that reason, more unforgivable.
68
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Weeks passed. My meetings with Tanya continued. She was slowly recovering, building her new life upon my lies. She had started to call me her 'only friend.' This word both stroked my pride and struck my soul like a whip. I was not her friend. I was her executioner.
69
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
And one day, the bomb exploded. A small news item in the business section of the newspapers; Dimitri's firm was under a major investigation over an old case. The news mentioned 'a tip-off letter leaked to a rival firm.' When I met Tanya that day, she had also read the news.
70
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
'Can you believe it, Yuri?' she said, a complex expression on her face. 'Another letter. It's as if a ghost is hunting Dimitri. This is terrible. As much as I hate him, no one deserves this.' And I whispered, 'Perhaps this is justice. Perhaps the universe is collecting its due.'
71
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
But Tanya was not relieved as I had expected. On the contrary, there was an expression of guilt on her face. 'It happened because of me,' she said. 'I brought him to this. I left him, and he fell apart, made this mistake. This is my fault.' It was then that I understood how foolish, how shallow my plan had been.
72
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
While I was trying to free her from Dimitri, I had actually bound her to him with invisible, yet stronger chains: the chains of guilt. Now, Dimitri was not just an ex-boyfriend to her, but a victim she had destroyed. I had not set her free. I had made her the warden of her own conscience.
73
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Tanya changed after that day. She no longer spoke of her own pain, but of Dimitri's pain and her own guilt. She asked me, as a friend, for advice on how she could forgive him, how she could help him. I, the man who destroyed Dimitri, was now giving Tanya advice on how she could save him. This was a demonic comedy that pushed the boundaries of reason.
74
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
My nights in my room turned into a symphony of madness. I would burst into laughter by myself, then dissolve into sobs. I was not a god, but a clown. The most pathetic, most inept clown in the universe. I thought I had taken the strings of fate into my hands, but in reality, I had only trapped myself and the woman I loved in a more complex knot.
75
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Paranoia began to take over my mind like a vine. What if Tanya made the connection between the two letters? What if she suspected that this 'helpful stranger' might be the same person as that 'ghostly hunter'? I started to look for a hint in her every glance, her every question. 'You are a very intelligent person, Yuri. You understand people well.' Was this a compliment, or a trap?
76
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
One day, my downstairs neighbor Elena, stopped me on the stairs. She fixed her eyes on mine. 'Your soul is very weary, my child,' she said. 'The burden you carry is not for your shoulders. Remember, some secrets burn their owner from the inside out.' Could this woman see through walls? Could she read my sinful soul with those old eyes? I fled from her in fear.
77
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I had to make a decision now. I could not sustain this lie any longer. I had two paths; either I would confess everything and earn Tanya's hatred and disgust, but perhaps cleanse a corner of my soul. Or I would disappear, return to the nothingness from whence I came, and leave her alone with her guilt. Both were a form of hell.
78
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I decided to confess. It was not an act of courage. It was a surrender born of exhaustion. I could no longer carry this burden. I invited her to meet one last time. To the usual café. I would close this circle where it began. In my mind, I rehearsed the sentence I would say a hundred times; 'Tanya, there is something I must tell you. That demon... is me.'
79
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I went to the café. I sat at our usual table and waited. Every second hammered another nail into my heart. She would come, I would confess, and the expression on her beautiful face would turn from surprise to understanding, and finally, to absolute hatred. I had to endure this image. This was my penance.
80
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I waited. One hour. Two hours. Tanya did not come. This was unlike her. She had always been punctual. A fear began to overtake my remorse. What if something had happened to her? What if this chaos of my creation had driven her to a more terrible end?
81
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I rushed out of the café and ran towards her apartment. All my plans of confession, all my thoughts of penance had vanished. All that remained was a pure, primal anxiety. The apartment building's main door was ajar. I climbed the stairs two at a time. When I reached her floor, I saw that her apartment door was also open. And I heard the voices from inside.
82
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Someone was crying. The other was comforting them. I peeked slowly through the doorway. The scene I saw was beyond even my imagination. Tanya was sitting on the floor, crying. And next to her, hugging her, stroking her hair, was Dimitri. A wreck, but he was there.
83
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
'I know, it was all my fault,' Dimitri was saying between sobs. 'But I'll get better, Tanya. For you, for us... I swear.' And Tanya whispered, 'No. It's not your fault. It's my fault. I left you alone.' They were two wounded souls who had taken refuge in each other. And right in the middle of this picture, like an invisible poison, was me.
84
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
While I was trying to separate them, I had actually bound them together more than ever before. I had united them in a shared pain, a shared guilt. My demonic plan had not destroyed their love, it had transformed it, turned it into something more tragic, more profound. I had become the godfather of their love. With my own sin.
85
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I retreated silently. I moved away from that door. I went down the stairs. I went out into the street. I had nothing left to confess. My confession had no meaning. Their own reality had swallowed and digested my lie. In this story, I was no longer a god, a demon, or even a clown. I was just an unnecessary detail.
86
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I opened the door to my room. It was darker, more suffocating than ever. But the walls were no longer closing in on me. There was no longer a war inside me. Just... emptiness. An absolute, infinite, bottomless emptiness. I had come face to face with the purest form of my nothingness. I was a nothing, because even my actions were nothing. Even the chaos I created had eventually led to a self-repairing order. The universe had not even noticed my existence.
87
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
That night, for the first time, I did not think of Tanya. For the first time, I did not hate Dimitri. I just sat. On the chair in the middle of my room, thinking neither of the past nor the future. Time had stopped. My soul, that sea where storms once raged, had now become a completely calm, frozen lake. This tranquility was not the divine peace Elena had spoken of. This was the tranquility of death.
88
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
My mind tried to analyze this new state, this absolute indifference. Was this a defeat? No. Even to be defeated, you must be in a war. This was the disappearance of the battlefield. This was the end of the game. But there was no winner or loser. There was only a player who, realizing the meaninglessness of the game, no longer wanted to play.
89
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Days passed. I did not eat, I did not sleep. I just existed. Like a stone, like a piece of furniture. There was no desire, no remorse, no emotion. I had become the ghost of myself. Even that sole mourner at my own funeral was now gone. All that remained was the empty coffin.
90
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
And one morning, my door was knocked again. This time, the knock was neither Elena's hesitant whisper nor Tanya's gentle note. It was a hard, official knock. I did not want to open it. I did not want the outside world to break the surface of my frozen lake. But the knocking continued. Insistent, commanding.
91
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I crawled to the door and opened it. Two uniformed police officers stood before me. And behind them, with an indescribable pain and fear on his face, was Dimitri. Dimitri's eyes met mine. There was no hatred in those eyes. Only... recognition. A kind of terrible, mutual understanding.
92
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
'Yuri?' one of the policemen said, looking at a paper in his hand. 'You need to come with us.' I didn't ask why. I wasn't curious about what for. On the frozen surface of my soul, this event made less impact than the sound of a small pebble. I nodded indifferently.
93
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
As they led me down the stairs, Dimitri approached me. He was at a distance where the police could not hear. 'How did you know?' he whispered. His voice was trembling. 'That detail in that case... I hadn't told anyone. Only... only Tanya, I once mentioned it to her jokingly. How did you know?'
94
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
In that moment, a crack formed on the surface of the frozen lake. A thin crack. Dimitri thought I had gotten that information from Tanya. He thought that Tanya had collaborated with me, this stranger, to destroy him. My second sin had now stuck to Tanya directly as a slander. In trying to free her from guilt, I had made her a conspirator, a traitor.
95
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I looked into Dimitri's eyes. There, I saw the most terrible consequence of my own foolishness, my own pride. I did not answer. I couldn't. What answer of mine could clean up this wreckage? What confession could correct this new and more terrible lie? My silence was a confirmation for Dimitri. A confirmation of Tanya's betrayal.
96
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
As I got into the police car, I saw Elena at the apartment door. There was neither pity nor condemnation on her face. Only a deep, endless sorrow. Her eyes seemed to say, 'I warned you.' She was right. Secrets burn their owner. And mine had thrown not only me, but everyone around me into a hellfire.
97
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
The interrogation room at the station was brighter than my attic room, but a thousand times more suffocating. The detective sitting across from me read me my rights. Blackmail, invasion of privacy, disclosing a company's trade secrets... The charges were a list. But to me, they were all meaningless. My real crime was not written on that list.
98
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
'Did you collaborate with Miss Tanya?' the detective asked. In that moment, the frozen lake completely shattered. The storm had returned, more violent than before. I wanted to scream, No! She's innocent! All the blame is mine! But this confession would reveal Dimitri's lie, expose my first letter, my espionage, everything. It would save Tanya from a legal charge, but it would make her the victim of a demon's obsession. Which was worse?
99
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I had to make a choice. Between the salvation of my own soul and the preservation of her worldly reputation. And in that moment, for the first time in my life, I made a selfless decision. With the last crumb of humanity inside me. I remained silent. I said nothing. My silence implicated Tanya as an accomplice, yes. But it also protected her from me, from my sick obsession. It kept her away from the greatest danger, which was me. This was my last, most painful, and perhaps my only true act of love. To be silent. And to earn her hatred, forever.
100
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
My silence in the interrogation room was not a confession, but a defiance. A defiance against the system, against reason, and against my own inadequacy. The detective, faced with this meaningless silence, grew bored, then angry, and finally gave up. They threw me into the cold, damp embrace of the holding cell for the rest of the night. As I lay on the iron bunk in the corner, I yearned for the comfort of my coffin in the attic. That was the palace of my nothingness. This place was its tangible form, made of iron and concrete.
101
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I was not alone in the cell. On the opposite bunk lay a man with a dirty beard, his face bearing all the harshness of life. He opened his eyes and looked at me. 'What's your crime, philosopher?' he asked, his voice like a creak. I didn't answer. 'I see,' he said. 'Great crimes. Crimes of the soul. Those are the worst. I just stole a wallet. Mine is simple. Yours, however... yours is like a labyrinth.' The man said his name was Mikhail. And all night, against my silence, he recounted his own simple, miserable life.
102
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Listening to him, for the first time, I understood how arrogant, how artificial my own pain was. Mine was a parasitic pain, nurtured in an attic with books and thoughts. Mikhail's was a real pain, born of the streets, of hunger, of cold. I was thinking about pain, he was living it. After Elena, this was the second slap the universe had dealt me.
103
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
The next morning, a guard banged on the bars of the iron door. 'Yuri! You have a visitor.' A visitor? Who could it be? Elena? Perhaps. But my heart, with a senseless hope, whispered Tanya's name. They took me to a meeting room. The person sitting on the other side of the table was not Tanya. It was my court-appointed lawyer. A tired, world-weary man.
104
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
'Look, Yuri,' he said, leafing through his file. 'Your situation is serious. Mr. Dimitri is insistent on his complaint. But the real problem is that you've involved Miss Tanya in this. If you continue to remain silent, they will prosecute her as an accomplice. Dimitri's statement points directly at her. You think you're protecting her, but in fact, you're dragging her down with you.'
105
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
The lawyer's words struck my brain like lightning. My final, 'heroic' act, my 'true love's' sacrifice... was nothing. A fiasco. By remaining silent to protect her, I had actually pushed her into the arms of the greatest danger: justice itself. I was a clown. Not a tragic hero, just an incompetent, foolish clown.
106
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
In that moment, all the dams within me broke. The frozen lake shattered into a thousand pieces. 'Call the detective,' I told the lawyer. My voice, for the first time in a long while, was clear and determined. 'I will tell everything.' A look of relief appeared on the lawyer's face. But this was not a relief. This was the beginning of my true hell.
107
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
They took me back to the interrogation room. The same detective sat across from me again. But this time, I was different. I was no longer a silent, mysterious suspect. I was a sinner, desperate to talk, to vomit out his soul. And I began. From my attic room, to the first time I saw Tanya, to my hatred for Dimitri, to those two cursed letters... I told them everything.
108
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
As I spoke, my own voice sounded foreign to me. It was less of a confession and more of an autopsy. An autopsy I was performing on my own dead soul. The expression on the detective's face turned from curiosity to surprise, and finally to professional disgust. He was looking for concrete evidence, logical motives. I, on the other hand, was explaining to him the philosophy of a man's nothingness, the anatomy of an obsession.
109
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
When my hours-long monologue ended, a heavy silence filled the room. 'So you did all this, just because you loved a woman from afar?' the detective asked. This simple question turned all my complex, philosophical pain into rags in an instant. Yes. That was the answer. All that tragedy, all that destruction, stemmed from this simple, pathetic reason.
110
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
My confession accelerated the legal process. The charges against Tanya were immediately dropped. She was free now. I, on the other hand, was descending deeper into the labyrinth of my own creation. The newspapers reported the incident with headlines like 'Obsessed Lover's Unbelievable Game.' I, Yuri the nothing, had now become the subject of ridicule in the tabloids. This was the final blow to my pride.
111
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I was transferred to a temporary prison until the court date. The days there were more orderly than in the holding cell, but more soulless. There was no Mikhail in my cell anymore. There was only me and my naked, confessed soul. And that was more frightening than anything. I no longer had a mystery to hide, a philosophy to defend. I was just a guilty man.
112
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
A week later, my lawyer told me I had a visitor. There was not the slightest flutter in my heart. I knew who was coming. I had to know. When Tanya appeared behind the glass of the visiting room, I was prepared. There was no hatred on her face. No disgust either. Only that cold, distant curiosity a scientist might have while examining a rare and repugnant insect.
113
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
She picked up the phone. I picked up mine. 'Why?' she asked. Her voice was clear and emotionless. 'All our conversations... were they all a lie? When you said you felt my pain, were you actually watching the result of the pain you yourself had inflicted?' I couldn't answer. I just looked at her. At that face that was once divine to me.
114
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
'I tried to understand you, Yuri,' she said. 'After what the police told me, I tried to understand you. I wanted to see you as a monster, a demon. It would have been easier. But you are not.' She paused, as if searching for the right word. 'You are not a monster. You are just... empty. A terribly empty, pathetic man. And my greatest misfortune was to be the fantasy that would fill your emptiness.'
115
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Empty. That word was even more devastating than the detective's 'simple.' Because it was true. My whole tragedy stemmed not from a crisis of existence, but from a crisis of non-existence. Tanya had performed the autopsy on my soul better than I had. 'I don't pity you,' she said. 'And I don't hate you. I just... don't want to think about you anymore.' She hung up the phone, turned her back, and walked away. This was the real end.
116
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
After she left, I sat in that chair for a long time. I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I just thought about what emptiness meant. She had been a mirror for me. And in that mirror, I had seen the ugly face of my own nothingness. It was painful. But also, strangely, liberating. I no longer had to play a role. I was a nothing, and this was no longer a statement, but a proven fact.
117
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
When the court day came, I was calm. My lawyer tried to mitigate the sentence by citing my 'psychological condition.' But I told the judge, 'I am of sound mind. I was aware of everything I did. This was not an act of madness, but of immorality.' I had given up hiding my crime behind philosophy. I had to accept it, in all its nakedness and ugliness.
118
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
The judge announced his verdict. A few years in prison. But I didn't care about the length of the sentence. For me, the real trial had already ended in that visiting room, before Tanya's cold eyes. And in that trial, I had been sentenced to a lifetime of emptiness.
119
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
In the transport vehicle to the prison, I watched the outside from the window. The city, the people, life... everything was flowing by. I, on the other hand, had been thrown out of this flow. But for the first time, I was not creating a tragedy out of this situation. I was just watching. Perhaps atonement begins not with heroic acts, with grand confessions, but simply with this silent observation. With accepting one's own nothingness.
120
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
The real prison was brighter than my attic room, but a thousand times more real. Here, the walls did not speak, the cracks did not whisper. There was only iron, concrete, and people. Owners of simple and complex sins, who had ended up there for a hundred different reasons, like me, like Mikhail. I no longer had the silence to philosophize. Life itself was coming at me with all its noise.
121
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
The first few weeks were difficult. The remaining crumbs of my pride refused to adapt to this new environment. I was different from them. My crime was 'more intellectual.' But one morning, in the dining hall, I saw an old inmate drop his piece of bread and struggle to bend down to pick it up. Without thinking, I went, picked up the bread, and handed it to him.
122
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
The man looked at me with surprise and said, 'Thanks, son.' This simple, unrequited act reawakened that strange warmth I had felt after Elena's soup. This was not a theory. This was a hand extended to another human being. Perhaps salvation was hidden not in grand ideas, but in these small, meaningless acts.
123
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I started going to the prison library. I no longer looked for philosophy or psychology books. I only read novels. Stories of other people, other pains, other joys... For the first time, I was reading a book not as a mirror of my own soul, but as a window into another's. I was trying to understand others.
124
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
And one day, I had another visitor. This time, I had no guess as to who it might be. When I entered the visiting room, I saw Elena behind the glass, with that familiar tranquility on her old face. In that moment, a lump formed in my throat. This was not the fear or shame I felt when I saw Tanya. This was a feeling like coming home.
125
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I picked up the phone. 'How are you, my child?' she asked. 'I'm okay,' I said. And for the first time in a long while, that word didn't feel like a lie. I wasn't well, but I was on a path to being well. 'I brought you something,' she said. She showed me a small package in her hand. Inside were homemade cookies and a small, old book.
126
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
'Why?' I asked, my voice trembling. 'After all that has happened, why are you helping me?' Elena smiled. The lines at the corners of her eyes deepened. 'Because God loves His lost sheep the most, Yuri. And because I see a good soul in you, under all those ashes. Just one that has lost its way.'
127
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
A good soul. Those two words were like a balm on the wound created by Tanya's word 'empty.' Maybe I wasn't completely empty. Maybe there was something worth saving under all that wreckage. Elena didn't talk to me at length about God or religion. She just said, 'Forgiveness begins with forgiving yourself. Forgiving others is the easy part.'
128
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
After she left, I returned to my cell. I ate one of the cookies. It tasted again of that forgotten humanity. Then I looked at the book. It was the Bible. I had never read it before. I had always seen it as a consolation, an opiate for weak people. But now, it was an object of curiosity for me. A window into another soul, another world.
129
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I opened the first page. And I began to read. Not searching for a verse, a salvation, or an enlightenment. Just to listen to another story, another voice. To get away from the noise of my own mind. This was my new beginning. The first step after the acceptance of my nothingness.
130
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Months passed. Life within the four walls created its own rhythm. Morning roll calls, the noise of the dining hall, yard time, the silence of the library... All of these became anchors that calmed the storm inside me. I was no longer thinking about myself. I was observing others. Mikhail's simple cunning, the old man's tired steps, a young boy's desperate anger... They were all lessons showing me how meaningless my intellectual pride was.
131
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Elena came regularly every month. She brought me cookies and short, wise words about the simplicity of life. I never asked her about Tanya or Dimitri. She never mentioned them either. The past was no longer a topic between us. We were just two people existing in the present. One behind bars, the other in front of them. But we were both searching for a kind of freedom.
132
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I continued to read the Bible. Not like a believer, but like a student. There, in the patience of Job, in the regret of Solomon, in the forgiveness of the sinful woman... I saw not the pieces of my own soul, but the universal map of the human condition. Pain, pride, remorse, hope... These did not belong only to me. They were our common heritage.
133
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
One day, while I was pacing in the yard, a guard approached me. 'There's a letter for you,' he said. But it wasn't a name on the visitor list. It had come by mail. There was no sender's name on the envelope. But I recognized the handwriting immediately. It was Dimitri's. My heart, for the first time after a long pause, began to beat rapidly.
134
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I ran to my cell and opened the envelope. There was only a single page inside. It read; 'I hated you for a long time, Yuri. I saw you as a monster, a devil. Then, I blamed Tanya too. I thought she cheated on me, that she collaborated with you. But Tanya is gone.'
135
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
'She left this city after the trial. Nobody knows where she went. She left me a note before she left. 'Yuri was guilty, but I was not innocent either. We both used each other for our own emptiness. I hope we both forgive ourselves one day,' she wrote. Her words made me think.'
136
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
'I realized that even if you hadn't entered my life, we would have broken up one day anyway. Because she was right. I saw her as an angel, an ornament. You, in a terrible way, just threw this truth in my face. I still don't like you. But I don't hate you anymore either. Do I forgive you? I don't know. Maybe, as Tanya said, I have to forgive myself first. Farewell, Yuri.'
137
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I read the letter over and over. Tears streamed down my cheeks. But these were not tears of pain or remorse, but of a strange, painful closure. Tanya was gone. To find her own way. Dimitri had faced his own truth. That tragic picture I had created had dissolved. All that was left were three lonely people, left alone with their own sins.
138
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
And for the first time, I was not sad that Tanya was gone. I had set her free. Truly. As a woman who was on her own path, not under the shadow of Dimitri or me. Maybe this was the only thing I should have done from the very beginning; to leave her alone. But to understand this simple truth, I had to go through all this hell.
139
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
After that day, the last storm inside me also subsided. I had no more expectations. Neither to be forgiven, nor to be forgotten. I just decided to live the days ahead, this sentence given to me, not as a punishment, but as a process of purification. My atonement would not come from anyone forgiving me. It was something I would earn every day, by facing my own emptiness anew and trying to fill it with small, meaningless acts of kindness extended to others.
140
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I started to write now. Not philosophical essays or grand confessions. I just... wrote. The story of the man in my cell. The bread the old inmate dropped. Elena's wise smile. Not my own story, but the story of the world around me. I, Yuri the nothing, was no longer the chronicler of my own nothingness, but had become a humble observer of other lives.
141
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Writing was an act. But this time, not a divine act that interfered with the lives of others. Just a human act, aimed at understanding, at bearing witness. Words were no longer a tool of my pride, but an expression of my humility. I was filling my emptiness with the existence of others.
142
Tanya'yı bir daha hiç düşünmedim mi? Elbette düşündüm. Ama artık o, bir saplantının nesnesi, bir hayal değildi. Sadece, bir zamanlar korkunç bir hata yaptığım, acı çektirmiş olduğum bir insandı. Ve ona duyduğum şey, artık aşk ya da arzu değil, sadece derin, sessiz bir pişmanlık ve onun, nerede olursa olsun, huzur bulması için ettiğim sessiz bir duaydı.">
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Did I never think of Tanya again? Of course, I did. But she was no longer the object of an obsession, a fantasy. She was just a person to whom I had made a terrible mistake, whom I had caused to suffer. And what I felt for her was no longer love or desire, but just a deep, silent regret and a quiet prayer for her to find peace, wherever she was.
143
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Years would pass, these iron doors would one day open. I didn't know what awaited me outside. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps I would just continue to live as a nothing. But with one difference. I was no longer afraid of this nothingness. I saw it not as a curse, but as a starting point. A man who has lost everything has nothing left to lose. And that is a terrible freedom.
144
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Perhaps happiness or salvation was not about finding oneself. Perhaps the real issue was losing oneself and in that emptiness, noticing something greater than oneself, another person, an act of kindness, a story. I, Yuri, had gotten lost while searching for myself. And now, being lost, perhaps for the first time, I was beginning to find the right path.
145
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Sometimes at night, I look at the sky from my cell window. I see the small, flickering stars in that endless darkness. In the past, this sight would have dragged me into a philosophical crisis about my own meaninglessness. The vastness of the universe and my smallness... But now, I just look at the light of those stars. I know that no matter how far away they are, that light reaches me.
146
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
And I think, maybe this is what it means to be human. To be able to notice that tiny light coming from another soul, despite the darkness within oneself. Elena's bowl of soup, the old inmate's 'thank you,' Dimitri's painful forgiveness, that wise hope in Tanya's final note... They were all starlight.
147
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I had not noticed these lights; I had chosen to drown in my own darkness. I had declared myself the god of my own nothingness. And this was my greatest sin. Not a sin against God, but a sin against humanity, against those small lights.
148
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
My atonement will not begin when my sentence is over. It has already begun. In this cell, in this silence, in this simplicity. While writing the stories of others, I am actually clearing the wreckage of my own soul. Each word moves a stone from its place. Each sentence allows a small light to seep in.
149
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
My name is Yuri. And I was once a nothing. I don't know what I am now. Perhaps I am just someone who is trying to be. And perhaps, that is all that matters. The trying to be. This long, painful, and perhaps never-ending effort. But I am no longer afraid of this effort. Because I am no longer alone. I am surrounded by stories.
150
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
That day came. It seemed like just another one of those ordinary days piled upon each other over the years, but it was not. The guard opened the iron door of my cell for the last time. 'Time's up, Yuri. You're free.' Free. What a foreign, what a heavy word. Behind the bars, within the rhythm I had created for myself, I had found a kind of security. Now, that rhythm was being broken. The chaotic, noisy freedom outside frightened me.
151
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I gathered my belongings. A few pieces of clothing and a box full of notebooks. Those stories I had written. The lives of others. The pieces I had collected from the wreckage of my own soul. I looked at my cell one last time. At that empty bunk, those bare walls. This place had been more of a monastery to me than a punishment. The place where I understood I was a nothing, but also where I began to be.
152
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
When the massive prison gate creaked open, I squinted. The sun hit my face with a brilliance I hadn't seen in years. It hurt not my eyes, but my soul. In front of the gate, leaning on her cane, I saw Elena waiting patiently. The smile on her face was warmer than the sun. She had come to welcome me. Faced with this unrequited kindness, I could find nothing to say. I just walked to her side.
153
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
'Welcome, my child,' she said. 'The world wasn't waiting for you. But you are ready for it.' Together, we walked towards my old neighborhood. Every corner, every building, was a ghost of my past. The café where I first saw Tanya, the streets where I followed Dimitri, the mailboxes where I dropped the letters... They no longer caused me pain. They just made their presence known, like an old scar.
154
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Elena had arranged a small, clean room for me in the old apartment building, across from her own flat. The exact opposite of my attic room. Bright, airy. 'This is yours,' she said. 'You can stay as long as you want.' In that moment, for the first time, I felt I belonged somewhere. Not to a nothingness, but to a kindness.
155
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
The first few days were spent adapting. The crowds, the noise, the indifferent hustle of people... It all tired me. I often stayed in my room, re-reading the stories I had written in my notebooks. I began to make clean copies of them, to assemble them. This was a purpose. A small, personal purpose. But it was mine.
156
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I needed to find a job. But what could I do? My past was like a brand on my forehead. One day, Elena said, 'They're looking for an assistant at the library. Shelving books, dusting them... A quiet, calm job. Just right for you.' The idea came to my soul like a breeze. To be among books. To lose myself in their silent wisdom.
157
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I was hired. My criminal record was a problem, but the old librarian, Mrs. Agata, must have seen something in my eyes. Perhaps remorse, or perhaps just that deep, quiet love for books. My job was simple. But I did it like a ritual. I handled each book gently, as if touching a patient, and placed it on its shelf, next to the story it belonged to. I was bringing order to the world. In defiance of my own chaotic soul.
158
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
One evening, while arranging the shelves in the philosophy section of the library, I saw a familiar name. Dimitri. It was a law book he had written. Published years ago. I took the book in my hand. On the cover was a young Dimitri, with that old, confident smile. I felt neither hatred nor a sense of victory. I just thought about how we had once turned our lives into a blind knot.
159
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
As I was putting the book back, my eye caught something else on the next shelf. It was a yellowed, worn-out poetry anthology. I opened it with curiosity. Inside, there were notes written in pencil in the margin of a page. I recognized the handwriting immediately. Tanya. Apparently, this was a book she used to come and read often before the prison. My heart felt like it would stop for a moment.
160
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I read the poem she had marked. It was a poem about loneliness, getting lost, and the hope of starting over. In the space below the poem, in tiny letters, she had written, 'Perhaps all roads that lead home first pass through getting lost.' When was this note written? Before our tragedy, or after? I didn't know. But this was a piece of her soul. That deep, thoughtful soul I had never understood, only seen from afar like a dream.
161
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I closed the book and put it back in its place. Reading it felt like violating a privacy. This was not a memory that belonged to me. It belonged to Tanya's own quiet world. And I no longer belonged to that world. I had to respect that. This was part of my new atonement. To resist the desire to know. To just let it be.
162
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I had gathered the stories I wrote in a file. One night, I gave it to Elena to read. 'What are these?' she asked. 'Just stories,' I said. 'Stories of the people I met in prison.' A week later, she gave the file back to me. Her eyes were moist. 'These are not just stories, my child,' she said. 'These are people. You have taken photographs of souls with words.'
163
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Her words gave me courage. I sent the file to a small, old publishing house in the city. I had no hope. I just wanted those stories, the voices of those people, to be heard somewhere. This was my debt to them. They had helped me to get out of my own nothingness.
164
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
My life flowed on in a quiet routine. I went to work, dusted the books, had a cup of tea with Elena in the evenings, and wrote new stories in my room. There were no more grand tragedies, no philosophical crises. Just quiet days, lined up one after another. And this calmness was the greatest luxury for me.
165
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Months later, I received a letter from the publishing house. My heart pounded with that old, forgotten excitement again. The letter said they liked my file and wanted to publish it under the title 'Stories from the Eyes of a Nothing.' I couldn't believe it. I, Yuri the nothing, was going to be a writer? My words were going to find life on the pages of a book?
166
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
The book was published. It was a small print run. I didn't expect it to attract anyone's attention. But one day, a small review of the book appeared in a local newspaper. The critic wrote that the author 'held up a mirror to the darkest and brightest corners of the human soul with a brutal honesty.' And he added; 'We don't know who the author is, but he knows pain.'
167
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Knowing pain. Yes, that was true. I had known pain. Both the pain I had created myself and the pain others had experienced. And now, that pain had transformed into a kind of art, a kind of meaning. This did not make me happy. No. But it gave me a meaning. A small, solid meaning I could build upon my nothingness.
168
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
One day, a package arrived at the library. Addressed to me. The sender was unknown. I opened it with curiosity. Inside was my book. But this was not the edition I knew. It had been published by a larger publishing house in another city. And there was a note inside. 'Congratulations. Some stories deserve to be told. May your path be clear.' There was no signature.
169
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
But I knew who had sent it. In the deepest part of my heart, I could feel it. Tanya. She had somehow found my book, read it, and sent it to that major publishing house on my behalf. This was not a pardon. Nor was it an offer of reconciliation. This was two people, after destroying each other's lives, clearing the path for one another. This, in its purest form, was a farewell. And a beginning.
170
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
That night in my room, I watched the outside from the window. The city was shining with its lights. Each light was a story. A pain, a joy, a hope. I was no longer afraid of those lights. I felt that I was a part of them. With my own small, flickering light, I too existed in that great sea.
171
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
What would happen tomorrow? I didn't know. Maybe I would write a new book. Maybe I would just continue my job at the library. Or maybe I would leave this city, like Tanya, and find my own way. It didn't matter anymore. Because I was no longer afraid of getting lost. As Tanya had said, perhaps all roads that lead home first pass through getting lost.
172
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I took my notebook and my pen. I opened a blank page. And I began to write. This time, not the story of others. My own story. But it was no longer a confession of a nothingness. It was the simple, small, and hopeful story of a man who was trying to be. I began like this;
173
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
'My name is Yuri. And I was once a nothing.'
174
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
After writing this sentence, I stopped. It was the same first sentence with which I had begun this journey years ago. But now, how different its meaning was. It was no longer a complaint, not a statement of fact; just a starting point. A threshold that had been stepped over, left behind. I closed the notebook. That night, for the first time in a long while, I slept a dreamless sleep. No dreams, no nightmares. Just silence.
175
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
The second edition of my book began to be distributed nationally. My name had started to be whispered in small literary circles. It was a strange feeling. I, the man who tried to be invisible, had now become visible. One day, while I was working in the library, a young journalist approached me. 'You are Yuri, aren't you?' he said excitedly. 'I read your book. Those stories... Is that you? Are the events real?'
176
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
The old Yuri would have been intoxicated by this attention. He would have stroked his pride, given mysterious and profound answers. But I was no longer that man. 'The stories in that book are more important than I am,' I said calmly. 'They are the voices of forgotten people. It doesn't matter who I am.' The journalist was disappointed. He wanted the confessions of a tragic hero. I, on the other hand, was offering him only the simplicity of a tired man who dusted books.
177
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
This new fame was a test. It was an opportunity to profit from the shadow of my past, to turn it into a marketing tool. I refused. I turned down all interview requests, all invitations. My atonement had to be in silence. Not under applause. My story was not to become a success story. It was to remain as a warning, a cautionary tale.
178
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
One Sunday morning, while sitting in the park with Elena, I heard a young couple arguing on the bench next to us. The man was speaking in a jealous and possessive tone, while the girl was trying to defend herself with a choked voice. In that scene, I saw Dimitri and Tanya. Worse, in that man's pride, I saw my own old, sick self.
179
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
In the past, I would have burned with the desire to intervene in this situation, to dispense judgment like a god. But now, I just sat and felt that familiar pain. This was not my pain. This was the pain of the human condition. That tragic knot where pride, fear, and love are intertwined. Elena must have seen the expression on my face. 'Some wounds never close, my child,' she said quietly. 'You just learn to live with them.'
180
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Learning to live. That was the whole point. In my attic room, I had refused to live. I had thought life was a theory to be read from books. But life is not a theory, it is a practice. A practice made every day, with small choices, small actions. Saying good morning to someone, putting a book on its proper shelf, listening quietly to a friend's troubles...
181
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Winter came. When the first snow fell on the city, I watched outside from the window of the old apartment building. The falling snowflakes were covering the dirt of the streets, the traces of the past. Everything was white and pure. It felt like a moment of forgiveness. But I knew that when the snow melted, the same muddy streets would be there again. True purification was possible not by covering the outside, but by cleaning the inside. And that was a lifelong job.
182
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
One day, an envelope arrived for me from the post office. It had no return address, no stamp. It was clear someone had left it by hand. Inside, there was a newspaper clipping. A newspaper from another city. The clipping was about the opening of a bookstore. The article featured a photograph and words from the owner, a young woman.
183
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
The face in the photograph was more mature, calmer, but undoubtedly Tanya's. She was smiling. Not a sad, not a tired, but just a peaceful smile. Her words in the article touched my heart. 'Books,' she said. 'Are the stars that guide us when we are lost. Everyone should have a sanctuary where they can find their own story. I opened this shop to create that sanctuary.'
184
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I knew who had left the clipping. Dimitri. This was his final word, his final farewell. He was letting me know that Tanya was okay, that she had found her own way, her own sanctuary. This was a gift beyond forgiveness for me. This was the setting free of my soul. I no longer needed to worry about her, to live with her ghost. She was writing her own story. And I, mine.
185
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I placed the newspaper clipping between the pages of my notebook. It was not a memento of love. It was proof that atonement was possible. A ray of hope that people, even after the deepest wounds, could start over, could build their own sanctuaries.
186
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
After that day, something changed. That last, subtle ache inside me disappeared. It was replaced by a calm acceptance. I could not change the past. I could not undo the mistakes I had made. But I could choose to live with them, to learn from them, and to turn them into fuel to be more compassionate, more understanding towards others.
187
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I wrote rarely now. It seemed my stories to tell had diminished. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe I had started to live stories instead of observing them. I loved my job at the library. I was grateful for Elena's presence. The noise of the city no longer frightened me. It was the music of life.
188
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Sometimes I go to the street where my old attic room was. I look up. At that small, dusty window. For a moment, I greet the self-pitying, arrogant, and lonely man who lived there. He is a part of me. But he is no longer all of me. I thank him. Because if it weren't for him, if it weren't for his terrible mistakes, I could never have become the man I am today.
189
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Is this a story of redemption? I don't know. Maybe there is no such thing as redemption. Maybe there is only a never-ending journey that begins anew each day. Falling and getting up. Getting lost and finding the way. Hurting and healing. Perhaps life is just that.
190
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I no longer think I am a nothing. I don't think I am everything either. I am just someone who walks the streets of this city, dusts the books, sometimes helps Elena with her soup, and watches the stars in the sky at night. Like everyone else. No less, no more.
191
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I think of Tanya's note again. 'Perhaps all roads that lead home first pass through getting lost.' Maybe she was right. Maybe home is not a place, but a state. The state of accepting one's own existence, with all its flaws and wounds. If so, it means I am also slowly walking towards my own home.
192
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Is this a confession? No. This is no longer a confession. This is a simple thank you. To the people I have caused pain, for bearing with me. To those who helped me, for being a light. And most of all, to that silence that never left me. To my own nothingness. For showing me the place where everything began, and where it ends.
193
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Sometimes I think, if God exists, His justice manifests not in courtrooms, but in these small moments. In a newspaper clipping, in a bowl of soup, in a thank you. His forgiveness is perhaps not a grace descending from the heavens, but a hand extended from one human to another.
194
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
And I took that hand. I am still holding it. Every day, as I walk through the library door, as I say good morning to Elena, as I turn the pages of a book... I hold that hand. Tightly. Not out of fear of falling, but from knowing the beauty of walking.
195
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
The past is behind me like a shadow. I do not deny it. I do not run from it. It walks with me. It reminds me who I am, where I came from. It is my compass. Whenever I am tempted by pride, whenever I forget myself, it whispers to me of that attic room, of that emptiness. And I am grateful to it.
196
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
Is the novel over? I don't know. Maybe novels never end. Only their authors get tired and put down the pen. What remains is a whisper that continues in the soul of the reader. I hope my whisper has been a warning. A hope.
197
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
The confession of a nothingness can be the beginning of an existence. The deepest darkness can be the harbinger of the brightest light. If only one can notice that silent angel waiting at the gate of one's own hell, that bowl of soup, that newspaper clipping.
198
Bir Hiçliğin İtirafı
I closed my notebook. Outside, a new day was beginning. The sun was rising over the city. And I, for the first time, felt that the sun was also rising for me. Not as a grace. But simply because I existed. Because I was here.
199
SON
My name is Yuri. And I am here.
200
