Sibel had joined the untidy Satsat table, where they were holding a mock séance, really just a drunken game based on no particular knowledge of spiritualism. When they were unable to summon any spirits, the group began to disperse. Sibel moved over to the next table, which was empty except for Kenan and Füsun, with whom she immediately struck up a conversation before I could join them. Seeing me approaching, Kenan asked Füsun to dance. Füsun, having seen me, turned him down, saying that her shoes were pinching her toes, and with youthful pride Kenan responded as if the point of it were not Füsun but the dance, and went off as the Silver Leaves played one of the evening’s fast numbers to do the latest step with someone else. So now, at the edge of the Satsat table, by now almost empty, a chair awaited me between Füsun and Sibel. So I went and sat down between Füsun and Sibel. How I wish someone had taken a photograph of us that I might have now displayed!
I sat down to discover with contentment that Füsun and Sibel were discussing spiritualism like two Nişantaşı ladies who had been acquainted for years but still maintained a social distance, their language markedly formal, almost ceremonial. Füsun, whom I’d assumed had little religious education, declared that souls certainly existed, “as our religion decrees,” but that for us in this world to attempt communication with them was a sin. Here she glanced at her father at the next table. This idea had come from him.
“Three years ago I disobeyed my father and went with some classmates to a séance-just out of curiosity,” said Füsun. “I was asked for a name and I remembered a childhood friend who was very dear to me, though I’d lost touch with him, and without pausing to think, I wrote his name down, just to play along… But this name I’d written down, without really believing, just for the fun of it-well, his spirit did come and I felt so guilty.”
“Why?”
“I could tell from the way the coffee cup was rattling that my lost friend Necdet was in enormous pain. It was rattling as if it had a life of its own, and I felt that Necdet must be trying to tell me something. Then suddenly the coffee cup went still… Everyone said that this person must have died at that very moment… How could they have known?”
“How did they know?” asked Sibel.
“That same night I was at home and looking through my drawers for a missing glove, and I found a handkerchief that Necdet had given me as a present many years before. Maybe it was a coincidence. But I don’t think so. I learned a lesson from this. When we lose people we love, we should never disturb their souls, whether living or dead. Instead, we should find consolation in an object that reminds you of them, something… I don’t know… even an earring.”
“Füsun, darling, time to go home,” said Aunt Nesibe. “You have your exam tomorrow morning, and your father can barely stay awake.”
“Just a minute, Mother!” said Füsun in a firm voice.
“I don’t believe in séances, either,” said Sibel. “But if I’m invited to one, I never pass it up, because I like watching the games people play, and seeing what they fear.”
“But if you love someone, and you miss them terribly, which would you do?” asked Füsun. “Would you gather up your friends and try to summon his spirit, or would you look for some old possession of his, like a cigarette box?”
As Sibel groped for a polite answer, Füsun shot up out of her seat and, reaching over to the next table, picked up a handbag, which she placed in front of us. “This handbag reminds me of my embarrassment… my shame for having sold you a fake,” she said.
When it was on Füsun’s arm earlier I had not recognized it as “that” bag. But hadn’t I bought it in the Şanzelize Boutique from Şenay Hanım, shortly before the happiest moment in my life, and, after having run into Füsun in the street, hadn’t I taken it back with us to the Merhamet Apartments? Just yesterday that talismanic Jenny Colon bag was still there. How could it be here now? I was like some spectator dumbfounded by a juggler’s trick, and my head was spinning.
“It looks very good on you,” said Sibel awkwardly. “So lovely with the orange, and your hat, that when I first saw it I felt jealous. I was sorry I’d returned it to you. How beautiful you are!”
It occurred to me that Şenay Hanım must have had more than one fake Jenny Colon bag in stock. Having sold one to me, she might have put another in the window, and even lent a third to Füsun for this evening.
“After you realized that the bag was a fake, you stopped coming to the Şanzelize,” said Füsun, smiling graciously at Sibel. “This upset me, because of course you were right.” Opening the bag, she showed us the inside. “Our craftsmen make excellent fakes of European products, bless them, but never enough to fool someone with your experienced eye. But now I must say something.” She swallowed and fell silent, and I feared she was going to cry. But she pulled herself together, and with a frown she recited the speech that she must have rehearsed at home. “For me, it’s not in the least important whether something is or isn’t a European product. And it’s not in the least important to me either if a thing is genuine or fake. If you ask me, people’s dislike of imitations has nothing to do with fake or real, but the fear that others might think they’d ‘bought it cheap.’ For me, the worst thing is when people care about the brand and not the thing itself. You know how there are some people who don’t give importance to their own feelings, and care only about what other people might say”-here she glanced in my direction. “This handbag will always remind me of tonight. I congratulate you. It’s been an evening I’ll never forget.” She rose to her feet, and as she squeezed our hands, my darling girl kissed us each on the cheek. As she turned to leave, she noticed Zaim approaching the next table and she turned back to Sibel. “Zaim Bey is a very good friend of your fiancé, isn’t he?” she asked.
“Yes, they’re very close,” said Sibel. As Füsun took her father’s arm, Sibel turned to me and asked, “What did she mean by that question?” but there was no contempt for Füsun in her expression. I saw instead something akin to excitement, even adoration.
As Füsun headed slowly for the stairs, flanked by her mother and father, I watched her from behind with love and pride.
Zaim came and sat down beside me. “You know, at that Satsat table behind us, they’ve been having quite a laugh at your expense all evening,” he said. “As your friend, I thought you should know.”
“You must be joking! What exactly could they be laughing about?”
“Well, I didn’t hear it directly, of course. Kenan told Füsun. And she told me… And she was quite upset, too. Apparently it’s general knowledge at Satsat that every night at quitting time, you and Sibel would meet there for a romp on the divan in the corner office. This is what all the snickering was about.”
“What’s happened now?” asked Sibel as she came back to us. “You’re depressed again, aren’t you?”
25 The Agony of Waiting
I DID NOT sleep at all that night. In fact, Sibel and I had been meeting at Satsat only rarely, but this was hardly an extenuating circumstance in the indictment I feared would cost me Füsun. Toward dawn I dozed off briefly. The moment I woke up I shaved and went for a walk. I took the long way back, passing in front of the Technical University ’s 115-year-old Taşkışla Building, where Füsun was takıng her exam. Around the door, through which Ottoman soldiers sporting fezzes and pointed mustaches had once passed on their way to drill, mothers in head-scarves and chain-smoking fathers sat in rows waiting for their children. Some were reading newspapers; others were chatting or looking blankly up at the sky. I could not see Aunt Nesibe among them. Between the windows in the stone facade, sixty-six years on, you could still see the bullet holes left by the Action Army upon the deposition of Sultan Abdülhamit. Fixing my eyes on one of those high windows, I said a prayer, asking God to help Füsun answer the questions, and to send her skipping joyously back to me when the exam was over.