“Of course, Süreyya Bey.”
“Just a moment ago I caught you two wrapped up in a serious discussion, and I was curious. What were you talking about, so soon after your engagement?”
“We were wondering whether the guests had enjoyed their food,” I said.
“Sibel Hanım, I have good news for you,” said White Carnation in joyous tones. “Your future husband just doesn’t know how to tell a lie!”
“Kemal has a very good heart,” said Sibel. “What we were talking about was this: Who knows how many people at this gathering are in anguish over who knows what trouble with love, marriage, or even sex.”
“Oooh, yes,” said the gossip columnist, at her uttering of the word that had recently been discovered by the press, indeed, had turned into something of a fetish; and because he couldn’t decide whether it was better for him to act as if he had just heard an admission worthy of scandal, or whether he might be better advised to show his empathy for the depth of human suffering, for a moment he fell silent. “You, of course, are modern, happy people, at ease in this new age,” he said at last. “You’ve put all this pain behind you.” He did not say this sardonically, but with an effortless sincerity cultivated through experience, which taught that in difficult situations the best thing was always to flatter people. Feigning feeling for others not as fortunate as we, he began to tell tales about our guests: the daughter who was hopelessly in love with so-and-so’s son; the girl who was being ostracized by good families for being too free in her ways while all the men lusted after her; the mother who had set her cap for a certain rich playboy as her son-in-law; the slovenly son of another wealthy family who had fallen in love, though he was promised to another. Sibel and I could not help but be entertained by his stories, and when White Carnation saw this he relished telling them all the more. He was just explaining that all these “disasters” would be obvious once the dancing had begun, when my mother arrived to tell us we were being very rude, and everyone was looking at us; she ordered us back to our table.
No sooner had I taken my seat next to Berrin than the image of Füsun fired up in my mind’s eye with full force, as if a television set had just been plugged in. But this time the light from that image exuded joy, not sadness, illuminating not just this evening but my entire future. For a brief moment I recognized myself among those men whose real source of happiness is their secret lover, but who pretend it is their wives and children-I, too, was acting as if it was Sibel who made me happy, and we weren’t even married yet.
After chatting for a while with the gossip columnist, my mother came over to our table. “Take care around these journalists, will you?” she said. “They write all sorts of lies; they do terrible mischief. And then they make threatening calls to your father, asking him to buy more advertising space. Why don’t you two get up and start the dancing. Everyone is waiting for you.” She turned to Sibel. “The orchestra is warming up. Oh how sweet you are, how beautiful.”
Sibel and I danced to a tango that the Silver Leaves were playing. All the guests were watching, and this gave our happiness the illusion of depth. Sibel draped her arm over my shoulder as if to embrace me, and pressed her face against my chest as close as if we were dancing alone in a dark corner of a discotheque; from time to time she smiled and murmured something, and after we’d made a turn I would look over her shoulder at whatever person she had remarked on a moment ago-the waiter whose heavy tray had not prevented his pausing to smile at our bliss, or her mother weeping for joy, or a lady whose hair resembled a bird’s nest, or Nurcihan and Mehmet turning their backs on each other now that we had left them alone, or the ninety-year-old gentleman who had made his fortune during the Great War and who could no longer eat without the help of his servant, who was wearing a string tie-but I did not once look at the back of the garden, where Füsun was sitting. As Sibel kept up her cheerful chatter, it was better if Füsun didn’t see us.
There was a burst of applause; it didn’t last long, and we carried on dancing as if nothing had happened. When other couples got up to dance, we returned to our table.
“You did very well. You looked so good together,” said Berrin. At that point, I think, Füsun was not yet among the dancers. Sibel was fretting so over Nurcihan and Mehmet’s lack of progress that she asked me to speak to Mehmet. “Tell him to come on a little stronger,” said Sibel, but I did nothing. Berrin got involved at this point, and in a whisper she told us that forcing the issue was a bad idea; she’d been watching the whole thing from her side of the table and it wasn’t just Mehmet; they had both been standoffish, or at least nervous, and if they didn’t like each other there was no point in pushing them together. “No,” said Sibel, “weddings cast a kind of spell. It’s at weddings that many people meet the person they end up marrying. It’s not just girls that get into the mood at weddings; it’s boys, too. But you have to help them along…” “What are you talking about? Tell me, too,” said my brother as he joined the whispering conversation, and once he had been apprised of things, he pointed out in hortatory tones that while the days of arranged marriages were over, Turkey wasn’t Europe, and there weren’t many ways couples could get to know each other, with the result that a lot of the burden had fallen on the shoulders of well-meaning informal matchmakers. Then, apparently forgetting that Nurcihan and Mehmet had sparked the debate, he turned to Nurcihan, saying, “I imagine, for example, that you would never consent to a marriage arranged by a matchmaker, am I right?”
“So long as the man is nice, it doesn’t matter how you find him, Osman Bey,” said Nurcihan with a giggle.
We all laughed as if we’d heard something so outrageous it could only be a joke. But Mehmet turned deep red and looked away.
“Don’t you see?” Sibel whispered into my ear a bit later. “She frightened him off. He thought she was making fun of him.”
I was not watching the people on the dance floor at all. But when our museum was established, Mr. Orhan Pamuk recalled that Füsun had danced with two people early on. He didn’t know or couldn’t remember her first dance partner, though I worked out that it must have been Kenan from Satsat. The second, however, was the young man with whom I had exchanged glances a short time earlier while visiting the Pamuk family table-Orhan Pamuk himself, as he proudly told me years later. Those interested in Orhan Bey’s own description of how he felt while dancing with Füsun should look at the last chapter, entitled “Happiness.”
While Orhan Bey was dancing the dance that he would describe to me with utter frankness many years after the fact, Mehmet decided he had had enough of Nurcihan’s giggles and our double entendres about love, marriage, matchmakers, and “modern life” and left the table. At once our spirits dropped.
“That was very rude of us,” said Sibel. “We broke the boy’s heart.”
“Don’t say that looking at me,” said Nurcihan. “I didn’t do any more than you did. You’ve all had a lot to drink and you’re having a good time. Mehmet is the one who is frustrated in life.”
“If Kemal brings him back to the table, will you behave nicely, Nurcihan?” asked Sibel. “I know you could make him very happy. And he you. But you have to treat him well.”
It seemed to please Nurcihan to see Sibel so openly determined to set her up with Mehmet. “No one’s talking about getting married tomorrow,” she said. “He met me, he could have said one or two nice things to me.”