Breathless, she fell silent. I’ve been running off at the mouth. I’ll make the woman angry again. She regretted what she had said. If I said you’re right, what you say is justified, it wouldn’t be any skin off my nose! But I’m like this. I’ve been like this ever since my childhood. Seri hisk: headstrong they used to call me at home. Only my teacher used to say, she is not headstrong, she’s clever, proud. The teacher was a good man, a special man.
She was afraid that just as she had got close to her, begun to like her, she had made the sick woman angry. ‘Don’t be angry, teyze,’ she said. ‘You are older and more experienced. You know about such things. Let it be as you say.’
The excitement of talking was added to the sedative effect ofthe medicine, and just before nightfall, as the lights on the far hills were lighting up one by one in the dusk, she took refuge in sleep. Sleep swathed her wounded body and her wounded heart. She began to run after the goats in the green meadows. She gathered violet, purple wild tulips and yellow daisies among the rocks. She reached the spring before the animals and filled her cupped hands with water. The water was cold, and she drank eagerly. The sky was a deep blue in the land of dreams, the earth a green kilim sprinkled with sparkling iridescent flowers. The peaceful happiness of her dream was like a warm quilt and enfolded Zelal like Mahmut’s body, Mahmut’s arms. She slept.
SEVEN
Jiyan Means Life, Commander!
Whether in fiction, or in real life, it was inevitable that they made love. That they came together and loved not just with promises, not just with eyes, words and silences but with glowing hearts and bodies was no momentary madness, no fleeting fancy but their inevitable fate.
The evening they met at the chemist’s shop — and was it not a sign that it was the Hayat Chemist which was open that night? — as they talked about this and that, the region, Mahmut, they realized it when they parted and their eyes met at the moment of farewell. They had got the message, had not pretended not to understand, had not resisted; they had acquiesced. The following days during which they lived as though nothing had happened, no spark had been ignited, were no more than a delay, a fearful expectancy that did not suit their independent personalities. Now, as they lay side by side, they were ashamed not of their love-making, their union, but of having waited until now, of putting it off, of their moral scruples. They had deceived no others, just their own passion, their own bodies and their destinies.
Freed of hairslides, elasticated bands and the other fetters of a virtuous widow, Jiyan’s raven-black hair that spread out in ripples and curls like a raging river was the only barrier between their perspiring bodies, the only covering for their nakedness. It seemed to Ömer that everything, every incident and every development following that extraordinary night at the coach terminal, had occurred with mysterious and unerring teleology for them to find each other. The strange woman in the Ankara coach station: the one who had lost her child while fleeing across a central European river … The woman who was shot there: Zelal who had lost her baby to a stray bullet … Mahmut who had fled from the mountains; neither coward, penitent nor confessor, a naked person who had cast off his guerrilla uniform, his militia clothing, somebody who yearned for the open sea he had never seen … Elif, his wife, whom he always kept in the depths of his heart even when he was with another woman, who was going west after her lost son … Everything, all of this, seemed to be leading up to his meeting with Jiyan.
Now at a moment without yesterday or tomorrow, making love sometimes roughly, sometimes gently, and lying side by side damp, sweaty, naked, satisfied and tired on the mattress spread out on a rainbow-coloured nomadic kilim that covers the floor of the room, they experience the serene happiness of a cat that has stretched itself out in the sun.
One can also reach Jiyan’s house by a wooden staircase from the depot behind the chemist’s shop, through a door hidden by a cupboard with shelves. The main door to the building is in the back street. Looking at the building from the outside, it is difficult to imagine that the interior can be so large and luxurious. Jiyan’s flat is nothing like the houses typical of the town’s notables. Having prepared himself for ornate, tasteless heavy brocade armchairs, gilded suites of furniture, carved sideboards stuffed with crystal and silverware and elaborate lace cloths, Ömer is surprised to be greeted by the restful aesthetics of simplicity and emptiness. In the huge sitting-room there are only a few pieces of furniture: in one corner a plain white sofa and armchairs; in the middle, a large, long dining-table with a cream-coloured cloth decorated with white pearls and simple white embroidery; against the wall, a solid wooden sideboard with hand-carved tulips in the corners; in the opposite corner, huge cushions with colourful flowers hand embroidered on white and scattered all around the cushions, newspapers and magazines … This must be Jiyan’s corner.
One wall of the room where they now lie side by side, naked and content, is taken up by a wooden cupboard of many doors resembling the closets of old mansions. In the middle of the cupboard is a recessed section designed as a dressing-table. There is a mirror behind two wooden panels that open out on either side and are decorated with pretty flower pictures. Immediately below it is the wide shelf that Jiyan uses as a dressing-table, with rings, pots of creams, makeup, combs and brushes and in front a small stool. And then there is this large comfortable mattress spread with snow-white linen sheets on the floor.
When he first arrived and she was showing him around her home, Jiyan had said, ‘For me, mattresses and cushions on the floor are essential items. I brought the kilims, the embroidered cushions and so on from the mansion in the village, I mean, from home and also the doors of the cupboard in the bedroom. Did you notice the panels of the mirror? In my father’s village was a young man. He used to draw and paint pictures on paper, cardboard, wood, whatever he could lay his hands on. If he couldn’t find anything else he would make figures with small stones on the dry earth. I bought him lots and lots of paint, oils and watercolours in many colours, and coloured pencils. It was he who painted the flowers on the panels of the mirror. They are lovely aren’t they?’
She stopped talking and ruefully attempted a smile. ‘I miss the village, the mansion with forty rooms … Of course, it didn’t have forty rooms, but that’s how it was known. In my great grandfather’s time it was described as quite palatial. That’s why it’s still known in the area as “the mansion”. The family also call it that. I miss the people, my animals and the countryside. I was able to live in the village only for a very short time. Sometimes I wonder whether it was all a beautiful dream. You know there are some dreams that you can’t get enough of, and as soon as you wake up you close your eyes again wanting them to continue. Were those days a dream like that?’