My mother and I took a day trip to visit my grandmother’s half-brother ?ükrü, who had recently bought an interest in a hotel in the Antalya region. It was a long, disorienting taxi ride over winding inland roads. The hotel had no beachfront—it just seemed to be an empty luxury hotel built for no reason on a swamp. ?ükrü met us at a circular drive. Stocky, unctuous, bald, with fleshy lips and pale eyes, he was nothing like my grandmother—my skinny, black-eyed grandmother, with her deep voice and booming laugh.
?ükrü received us in a gazebo, where a waiter brought tea and petits fours. He explained to us that we were sitting in Turkey’s first golf hotel. There was a new mania among wealthy American and Scottish people to play golf in exotic locations, for example in Malaysia. In Turkey, people were still backward, and didn’t know about golf hotels. His partners had bought this land for pennies, because it didn’t have a beachfront, and all Turkish people knew about was beaches. Well, the golfers didn’t care about beaches. You gave them a pool and a first-rate golf course and they were happy.
In truth, the land here was a little swampier than was totally consistent with a pleasant golf experience; basically it was impossible to strike a ball in such a way that it would go anywhere, and a lot of the property would have to be drained. But the main building was finished, for all practical purposes, and ?ükrü was living there himself, along with his daughter—Seda had briefed us on the daughter, a socialite who featured regularly in the tabloids—and his grandson Alp. Alp, he said, was really thriving here, in the empty hotel on a swamp.
? ? ?
Alp drove up in a mud-splattered golf cart. Though he was only eight years old, his barrel-shaped body, paunch, and humorous eyes gave him the aspect of a miniature adult.
“Get in, get in,” ?ükrü told us. “He’ll give you the tour.”
My mother and I looked at each other. After a moment we got in the golf cart. My mother sat in the back, next to and partially under a large metal rake. I sat in the front next to Alp, around whose neck glinted a tiny golden roller skate on a gold chain. Shifting gears with a professional flourish, he backed into some shrubs and careened onto the main drive.
We drove past a fleet of parked golf carts, a rolling hill, and a mound of sand, then veered into the future golf green. The ground was so swampy that the tires left indentations in the mud. The thing that really struck you, directly, in the face, was the amount of life. Members of God’s creation kept flying into your arms and face. The landscape quivered and whirred, the tall grass and palm fronds trembled, the mud seemed to wriggle. Frogs plopped into ponds and unknown creatures rustled among the leaves. Something buzzed loudly past my ear and something or somebody flew into my eye.
Alp gunned the motor to get over a small hill. The tires briefly lost their purchase. “Don’t worry—I’m here,” Alp said.
“Gently, dear Alp, my child,” my mother said.
“I’m going to show you everywhere,” Alp said.
“You already showed us so much,” said my mother.
“You haven’t seen anything yet.”
At some point he braked abruptly, leaped out, grabbed the enormous rake, and started to bludgeon the earth. It turned out he was killing a snake. He snapped its spine and then beat it till it stopped moving, reminding me of Saint George.
“Filthy,” he explained, looking back at us and winking.
I wasn’t sure how things were going for Alp out there, at the deserted golf resort in the snake-rich swamp. It was by no means clear that everything was going well. And yet, the encounter with him made me feel a glimmer of optimism. I thought I might write something about it, about the golf hotel. But when I tried to think of a plot that led to that swamp, I couldn’t face it—not another hotel, no, I couldn’t.
? ? ?
When I got back to school in the fall, I changed my major from linguistics and didn’t take any more classes in the philosophy or psychology of language. They had let me down. I hadn’t learned what I had wanted to about how language worked. I hadn’t learned anything at all.
Acknowledgments
Working on this book has made me increasingly conscious of the debt I owe all my teachers, particularly those I encountered in my first year of college. I didn’t always believe them at the time, but they were basically right about everything. I would also like to express my affection and gratitude toward my former classmates from the same period, many of whom I haven’t spoken to in years, though their earlier selves still feel very present and dear to me.
“Nina in Siberia” is based on a real text, “The Story of Vera,” which I first encountered in 1995, and which was coauthored over the years by some number of Russian-language instructors working, so far as I have been able to determine, under a shroud of secrecy. I thank the Harvard Russian Language Program, and particularly Patricia Chaput and Natalia Chirkova, for introducing me to it.
A first draft of this book was written in 2000–1 with support from Eric Hsu. Beatrice Monti della Corte and the Santa Maddalena Foundation provided the idyllic, pug-saturated atmosphere in which I eventually revisited it, and discovered that time had turned it into a historical novel. I am also grateful for the generosity of the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, Ko? University, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.
My agent, Sarah Chalfant, and my editor, Ann Godoff, have supported The Idiot and its author in every way. Will Heyward contributed insights on topics ranging from Stendhal to the fauna of New Zealand. Casey Rasch is destined for great things. Lorin Stein gave me amazing notes, as always. Dimiter Kenarov was far more useful than a bald man’s comb. I wrote the end of this book at the desk of Rajesh Parameswaran. My beloved parents, Olcay Ayanlar Batuman and Vecihi Batuman, always put my education first. Lindsay Nordell’s readership has been like a splendid shining jewel that I still can’t believe I get to hold in my hand.
Fyodor Mikhailovich: when it came to titles, and not just titles, what writer could ever touch the hem of your lofty garment?