"Tell me more about this Baron," Asya said out of the blue. "What does he look like? How old is he?"
Armanoush blushed. Within the vivid light of the winter sun glowing from among thick clouds, her face was that of an enamored young woman. "I don't know. I've never met him in person. We're cyber friends, you see. I admire his intellect and passion, I guess.
"Don't you want to meet him someday?"
"Yes and no," Armanoush confessed after purchasing a simit from the small but crowded buffet inside. She ripped a piece off and with the morsel in her hand leaned against the rail surrounding the deck, waiting for a seagull to approach.
"You don't have to wait for them to appear." Asya smiled. "Just toss a piece up in the air and a seagull will catch it instantly."
Armanoush did as told. A seagull materialized from the empty sky and bolted the treat down.
"I am dying to learn more about him, and yet deep down, I don't want to meet him ever. When you date someone the magic perishes. I couldn't bear for that to happen with him. He's too important to me. Dating and sex are just another story, so knotty…."
Now they were entering that murky zone guarded by the three untouchables. A good sign indeed, indicating that they were drawing closer to each other.
"Magic!" Asya said. "Who needs magic? The tales of Layla and Majnun, Yusuf and Zulaykha, the Moth and the Candle, or the Nightingale and the Rose…. Ways of loving from a distance, mating without even touching-Amor platonicus! The ladder of love one is expected to climb higher and higher, elating the Self and the Other. Plato clearly regards any actual physical contact as corrupt and ignoble because he thinks the true goal of Eros is beauty. Is there no beauty in sex? Not according to Plato. He is after `more sublime pursuits.' But if you ask me, I think Plato's problem, like those of many others, was that he never got splendidly laid."
Armanoush looked at her friend, amazed. "I thought you liked philosophy.. " she stammered without quite knowing why she'd said it.
"I admire philosophy," Asya conceded. "But that doesn't necessarily mean I agree with the philosophers."
"So should I assume you are not a big fan 'of Amor platonicus?!"
Now that was a piece of information Asya preferred to keep to herself, not because the question itself was unanswerable, but because she was afraid of the implications of her answer. Armanoush being so polite and proper, Asya did not want to intimidate her. How on earth could she now tell Armanoush that, though only nineteen, she had known many men's hands and did not feel a speck of guilt for it? Besides, how could she ever reveal the truth without giving the wrong impression to an outsider about "the chastity of Turkish girls"?
This kind of "national responsibility" was utterly foreign to Asya Kazanci. Never before had she felt part of a collectivity and she had no intention of being so now or in the future. Yet here she was accomplishing a pretty good impersonation of someone else, someone who had gotten patriotic overnight. How could she now step outside her national identity and be her pure, sinning self? Could she tell Armanoush that deep in her heart she believed only when you had sex with a man, could you really be sure that he was the right person for you; that only in bed did people's most imperceptible, innate complexes surface; and that no matter what people assumed all the time, sex was in fact far more sensual than physical. How could she reveal she had had numerous relations in the past, way too many, as if to take revenge on men, but the revenge of what, she still couldn't tell. She had had many boyfriends, sometimes simultaneously, polygamous affairs that had always ended in heartbreak, accumulating a heap of secrets she had neatly kept away from the frontiers of the Kazanci domicile. Could she divulge these? Would Armanoush understand without being judgmental; could she really, truly see into Asya's soul from the echelons of that sterile tower of hers?
Could Asya confess to her that once she had tried to commit suicide, a nasty experience from which she had derived two basic lessons: that swallowing your lunatic aunt's pills was. not the right way to go about doing this and that if you wanted to kill yourself you'd better have a rationale ready in hand in case you survived, since "WHY?" would be the one question you would hear from all sides. Could she further confess that to this day she hadn't been able to fathom the answer to that question, other than recalling being too young too foolish too furious too intense for the universe in which she lived? Would any of this make sense to Armanoush?
Could she then disclose that recently she had made some progress toward stability and tranquillity, since she now had a monogamous relationship, except that it was with a married man twice her age whom she met every now and then to share sex, a joint, and refuge from loneliness? How could she tell Armanoush that, if truth be told, she was a bit of a disaster?
Thus, instead of replying, Asya pulled a Walkman out of her knapsack and asked permission to listen to a song, just one song. A dose of Cash was what she needed right now. She offered one of the headphones to Armanoush. Armanoush accepted the headphone warily and asked: "Which Johnny Cash song are we going to listen to?"
11 'Dirty Old Egg-Suckin' Dog!"'
"Is that the name of the song? I don't know that one." "Yup," Asya said gravely. "Here it comes. Listen.."
And the song started, first a listless prelude, then country melo
dies fusing with seagull shrieks and Turkish vocalizations in the
background.
As she listened, Armanoush was too stunned by the dissonance between the lyrics and the surrounding setting to enjoy the song. It dawned on her that this song was just like Asya-full of contradictions and temper, utterly disharmonious with her surroundings; sensitive, reactive, and ready to explode at any time. As she leaned back, the murmur in the background dwindled into a tedious humming, pieces of simit disappeared in the air, a touch of enchantment wafted with the breeze, the ferry glided smoothly, and the ghosts of all the fish that had once lived in these waters swam with them in a sea of dense, viscous azure.
When the song was over they had already reached the shore. Some of the passengers jumped off before the ferry reached the dock. Armanoush watched this acrobatic performance with amazement, admiring the many talents the Istanbulites had acquired to cope with the pace of the city.
Fifteen minutes later the shaky, wooden door of Cafe Kundera opened with a strident tinkle and in walked Asya Kazancl, wearing a mauve hippie dress, with her guest, in a pair of jeans and a plain sweater. Asya found the usual group sitting in its usual place with its usual attitude.
"Hello, everyone!" Asya chirped. "This is Amy, a friend from America."
"Hello, Amy!" they greeted in unison. "Welcome to Istanbul!"
"Is this your first time here?" someone asked. And then the others started to inquire: "Do you like the city? Do you like the food? How long will you stay? Are you planning to come back?…"
Though they welcomed her warmly, they were also quick to go back to their standard posture of unremitting languor, since nothing could upset the sluggish rhythm that prevailed in Cafe Kundera. Those in need of speed and variation could simply go out, for there was plenty of that on the streets. Here it was about mandatory indolence and eternal recurrence. This place was about fixations, repetitions, and obsessions; it was for those who didn't want to have anything to do with the bigger picture, if there indeed was such a thing.
During the brief pauses between questions, Armanoush scrutinized the place and the people, intuiting where the name of the cafe came from. The constant tension between vulgar reality and treacherous fantasy, the notion of the outside people versus us people inside, the dreamlike quality of the place, and finally, the sullen expression on the men's faces, as if they were desperately ruminating on what to choose-either to carry the weight of disheveled love affairs or become half real with lightness-everything evoked a scene out of a Kundera novel. They, however, didn't and couldn't know this, being too enveloped, too much a part of it, like fish that couldn't possibly comprehend the immensity of the ocean in which they swam from the blurry lens of the waters surrounding them.