Sometimes I wondered whether this was all happening because her entrance exam had gone badly. Afterward in my guilty dreams I would give her long, exacting math lessons; my pain would abate, especially when the math lessons were over and we would make love. But the dream would end abruptly when I remembered that she had broken the promise made while we danced at the engagement party-to come to me as soon as the exam was over-and when I recalled that she had not even furnished me with an excuse, I would begin to feel angry at her, my resentment fed, too, by her lesser crimes-trying to make me jealous at the party, listening while the Satsat employees joked at my expense. These grievances I would use to distance myself from her, thus answering with my silence her desire to punish me.
By half past two Friday afternoon, and with that day’s recognition that she wasn’t coming despite my every petty resentment, conjured hope, and self-deceiving trick, I collapsed in defeat. The pain had now become fatal, eating me up like a wild beast without pity for its prey. I lay like a corpse on the bed, inhaling her fleeting scent on the sheets, remembering how happily we’d made love there, only six days earlier, asking myself how I would live without her, even as jealousy irresistibly mixed with the anger. I imagined Füsun wasting no time taking a new lover. This shameful and debilitating fantasy had come into my head at other times, too, but now I was unable to fend it off, imagining as my rival Kenan, or Turgay Bey, or any number of other admirers, even Zaim, whoever fetched up first. A woman like her, who had taken such pleasure from lovemaking, would certainly not refrain now from seeking the same pleasure with others, particularly with her anger toward me driving her to revenge. Though in one part of my mind I could see these feelings for what they were, I surrendered, nevertheless, allowing this degrading dream to engulf me. Resolving that desire and anger would drive me mad, I rushed out of the apartment and made straight for the Şanzelize Boutique.
I remember my heart pounding with hopeless hope as I raced down Teşvikiye Avenue. Fueled by the certitude that seeing her would restore me, I gave no thought to what I might say. The moment I saw her, my pain would disappear, at least for a time-this I knew. She had to hear me out; there were things I had to say. This wasn’t what we’d agreed at the dance-we were to have gone to a patisserie to talk.
The little bell on the door of the Şanzelize Boutique rang and my heart seized up. The canary was gone. I had already worked out that Füsun was not there either, but out of fear and helplessness I tried to convince myself that she was hiding in the back room.
“Kemal Bey, welcome,” Şenay Hanım said with a diabolical smile.
“I’d like to take a look at that white embroidered evening bag in the window,” I whispered.
“Oh, yes, that’s a very nice piece indeed,” she said. “You’re very discerning. Whenever something beautiful comes to the shop, you’re the first to see it, and you snap it up. This just came in from Paris. Note the precious stone in its clip. There’s a change purse inside, and a mirror, all made by hand, of course.” As she lumbered over to the window to extract the bag, she carried on exaggerating its finer points.
I glanced through the curtains into the back room. Füsun was not there. When the woman brought me this elegant floral bag, I pretended to examine it carefully and accepted without question the exorbitant price quoted. As the witch was wrapping it up, she spent a very long time telling me how impressed everyone had been by the engagement party. Just to keep the transaction going, I told her to wrap up a pair of cuff links that I happened to notice. Emboldened by the pleasure I saw on her face, I asked, “So what’s become of that relation of ours? Hasn’t she come in today?”
“Oh dear, didn’t you know? Füsun quit suddenly.”
“Is that so?”
She’d guessed at once that I’d come looking for Füsun, and deduced from this that we were no longer seeing each other, and now she was eyeing me closely, trying to figure out what had happened.
I managed to contain myself, asking her nothing. Despite my pain, I reached calmly into my pocket, to hide the fact that I was not wearing my engagement ring. As I paid her I noticed her looking at me with a certain compassion: It was as if, having both lost Füsun, we had been drawn closer together. And yet I could not help casting a further incredulous glance in the direction of the back room.
“This is what it’s like these days,” the woman said. “Today’s young people aren’t interested in earning their money. They want it all the easy way.” It was that last sentiment that hurt in particular.
I managed to hide all this from Sibel. My fiancée registered and was affected by my every expression, my every new gesture, and yet, during the first days following our engagement, she asked me nothing, but on the third day, at supper, when I was twisting with evident discomfort, she remarked, with the sweetest of expressions, that I was knocking back drinks rather quickly, and she asked, “What’s going on, darling?” I said that problems at work with my brother were getting the better of me. The following Friday night-with one shaft of pain shooting up from my stomach, and its mate shooting down in the opposite direction, from the nape of my neck into my legs, as I wondered what Füsun might be doing-Sibel repeated her question. I managed to invent a whole skein of details to give credible life to this story about the argument with my brother. (With such symmetry as only God can fashion, these inventions would come true many years later.) “Never mind,” said Sibel with a smile. “Shall I tell you what tricks Mehmet and Zaim are hatching to get close to Nurcihan at the picnic this Sunday?”
27 Don’t Lean Back That Way, You Might Fall
TO REFLECT the synthesis of traditional pleasures and inspirations drawn from French home and garden magazines favored by Sibel and Nurcihan, the picnic basket displayed here-the thermos filled with tea, stuffed grape leaves in a plastic box, boiled eggs, some Meltem bottles, and this elegant tablecloth passed down to Zaim from his grandmother-evokes our Sunday excursion that may offer the visitor some relief from the oppressive succession of interior settings, as well as my own agony. But neither the reader nor the visitor should on any account think that I could forget my pain even for an instant.
That Sunday morning we went first to the Bosphorus, to the Meltem factory in Büyükdere. On the sides of its buildings were giant pictures of Inge next to leftist slogans that had been painted over. Even as we toured the sterilizing and bottling lines, where silent women wearing headscarves and blue aprons worked under the direction of loud, cheerful supervisors (there were only sixty-four employees in all, despite the countless advertisements Meltem had plastered all over the city), and even as I expressed my distaste for the modish belts, blue jeans, and leather boots that the others in our party had chosen to wear that day-accoutrements that were, like their easy and open demeanor, overly European-I had to muffle my mournful beating heart, pitifully crying, Füsun, Füsun, Füsun.
We piled into two cars and moved on to Belgrade Forest, to a green field overlooking Bentler and offering much the same view as this one painted 170 years ago by the European artist Melling, and here we spread out a déjeuner sur l’herbe. I remember lying down on the grass toward noon and gazing up at the bright blue sky. Sibel and Zaim were busy trying to set up an old swing from the Persian gardens with new ropes, and I remember how struck I was by her grace and beauty. At one point I played the children’s game Nine Stones with Nurcihan and Mehmet. As I inhaled the sweet smell of grass and the cool breeze coming from the lake behind Bentler, redolent of pine and roses, I thought that the wondrous life before me was a gift from God, thought how all this beauty had been bequeathed to me unconditionally; how colossally stupid-and perhaps sinful-it was to let it be poisoned by these pangs spreading from my stomach to every part of my body. I still felt shamed that the pain of not seeing Füsun had reduced me to this, and that with my self-confidence undermined, I succumbed to jealousy. As Mehmet, managing to keep immaculate the white shirt and tie he wore with trousers and suspenders, set out the food, and Zaim went off with Nurcihan, supposedly to pick blackberries, I realized that I was happy he was here because it meant he could not be meeting with Füsun. But I could not further assume that Füsun was not with Kenan or someone else. Chatting with my friends, playing ball, watching Sibel swing like a child, even slashing my ring finger as I struggled with a new kind of can opener-at intense moments of this order I was distracted from my pain. I could not stanch the flow from my finger. Was this because love had poisoned my blood? At one point I sat on the swing and began to propel myself with all my strength. When the swing came down so fast it seemed to be in free fall, the pain in my stomach abated slightly. As the ropes creaked, and I described a great arc in the air, throwing my head way back, so that I was almost upside down, my pain almost gave way to true relief.