Chapter 2

That was her fault. Not so long ago - it could have been ten days, it could have been a month ago, no one knows, we didn't pay much attention to time then - she took my rag doll and suddenly threw it into the cellar. Now we walked upward toward the person we feared; but when she threw the doll into the cellar, we had to go downward, running hastily into the unknown. Whether upward or downward, we feel that we are moving toward fear. Even though these fears existed before we were born, they were always waiting for us. At the time, we hadn't been in the world long enough to figure out what was a disaster and what was the source of it, and probably didn't feel the need to know about it. What about the adults? They were looking forward to "tomorrow", to the "now", to a "yesterday" before the "now", or "The day before yesterday", or at most a week ago, and they don't want to think about the rest. Children don't understand the meaning of "yesterday", nor "the day before" or "tomorrow", everything is in the "present": the street is here, the gate is here, and the door is there. Everything is in the "present": the street is here, the gate is there; these are the stairs; this is mommy, that is daddy; this is the day, that is night. When I was a child, my rag doll probably knew more than I did, and when I talked to her, she talked to me. Her face was celluloid, her hair and eyes were celluloid, and she was wearing a sky blue dress that my mother had sewn, a rare pleasure she had, and my dolls were beautiful. And Leila's doll was put together with torn pieces of cloth, with so many rips in it, and I thought that doll was ugly and dirty. The two dolls peeked at each other, sizing each other up as if they would be ready to run away from us if it thundered and rained if a tall, strong, sharp-toothed man tried to tear them apart.

We played in the yard, but we pretended we weren't playing together. Leila sat on the ground with the small basement window on one side and I sat on the other side of the window. We loved this place where we could set up Tina and Noe's stuff on the concrete floor by the wire mesh, "Tina" being the name of my doll and Leila's doll "Noe". We would put some rocks, champagne corks, and glass shards next to the dolls. What Leila would say to No, I would whisper to Tina, but in a different way. If she took a bottle cork and put it on her doll's head, as if she were putting a hat on it, I would say to my doll in tongues, "Tina, put on your queen's crown or you'll catch a cold." If Noe had been playing hopscotch in Leila's arms, I would have let Tina play, too. At that time, we had not yet played the game together, and even then we played together in a place that was not agreed upon with each other. Leila sat there, I wandered around her, pretending to be going somewhere else, and later, as if nothing had happened, I also sat next to the basement window.

What attracted us most was the cool breeze blowing out of the basement, whether it was spring or summer. We also liked the cobwebs on the iron fence, the darkness of the basement, and the dense iron mesh that was a little red from rust. On the side where I sat, and on the side where Leila sat, the iron netting had spread out a bit, forming two symmetrical holes through which we threw stones and listened to the sound of them falling to the ground, all very exciting and frightening. Because through those two holes, the darkness might suddenly take away our rag dolls. Sometimes we held our dolls close to our arms and we often put them next to the holes as well, also letting them enjoy the cool breeze blowing through the basement and listening to the frightening rustling and creaking sounds below.

Neither Noe nor Tina was happy because the fear we felt every day was passed on to them as well. The sun shines on the rocks, the buildings, the fields, outside, and our families, but neither of us feel safe, we can feel those dark corners and the feelings that are almost crippling. We attribute this fear and insecurity to those dark holes - the cellars beneath entire urban areas, the things that frighten us even in daylight. Don Achille, for example, who lives not only in his own home on the top floor but also exists beneath these buildings, is a spider among spiders, a rat among rats, and he can take on many appearances. I imagine him with a bloody mouth that he can't close because it's full of fangs, his body made of stone and glass, and poisonous weeds growing on him. He always carried a huge black bag and would put anything we threw into the basement into the bag, the big black bag was a symbol of Don Achille, he always carried that bag and carried it at home, he kept all kinds of things in the bag, dead and alive.

Leila knew that I was scared, that my doll had expressed my fear, and because of that, we exchanged our dolls for the first time that day without discussion, just through glances and gestures. She had just gotten Tina and threw her through the hole in the wire mesh, and my doll crashed into the darkness.