The reader will already have guessed that I then sank into deep indignation. But it didn’t last long. Ten days later I rang the Keskins’ doorbell, as if nothing had happened. Stepping inside, I could see, from the moment our eyes met, that Füsun’s were shining, saying she was glad to see me. At that moment I was the happiest man on earth. We sat down at the table, where we continued to exchange looks.
As the months and years went by, and I was still sitting and talking at the Keskin table, watching television with Tarık Bey and Aunt Nesibe, aimlessly gabbing about this and that-with Füsun joining in at the odd tangent-I tasted pleasures I’d never known before. You could say I was creating a new family for myself. Those nights sitting across from Füsun, taking part in the Keskin family’s conversations lifted my spirits and made the world look so bright to me, I almost forgot the sorrow that brought me here.
So it was when in such a mood, late in the evening, at some unexpected moment, I would meet her eye by chance and suddenly I would remember my undying love, and I would bolt upright in excitement, as if having awakened, as if suddenly resurrected. I’d want Füsun to share my elation. For if she could for only a moment awaken as I had from this innocent dream, she would remember the deeper, truer world we’d once inhabited, and in no time she would leave her husband and marry me. But when I saw no such “recollection,” no such “awakening” in Füsun’s eyes, I would be far too dejected to rise from my chair.
For the whole while our film plans were in limbo, she somehow managed almost never to look at me in a way to suggest any memory of how happy we once were. She looked blandly, pretended to be fascinated by whatever was on television or by the gossip she’d just heard about a neighbor, acting as if her life had found its fulfillment sitting at her parents’ dinner table, as if her quest for meaning ended there; it was in effect the abrupt halt of my quest, too-this impression of desolation, betokening no shared future, no hope that Füsun would ever leave her husband.
Years after these events I saw how much Füsun’s indignant glances and the rest of her coded pantomime owed to the expressions of Turkish films. But it was no mere mimicry, for Füsun, like those heroines, was unable to explain her troubles to her mother, her father, or any man, so she channeled all her anger, her desire, and other emotions into those looks of hers, laden with meaning.
62 To Help Pass the Time
SEEING FüSUN on a regular basis allowed me to impose some order on the rest of my life as well. Because I was getting enough sleep, I’d get to the office early in the morning. (Inge was still drinking Meltem soda and smiling down mysteriously from the wall of that apartment in Harbiye, but according to Zaim, her effect on sales had abated.) Freed of the need to think obsessively at all times of Füsun, I was even working productively: I could spot people’s tricks and make sound decisions.
As expected, it wasn’t long before Tekyay, the company to which Osman had appointed Kenan manager, became Satsat’s competitor. But its success was not owing to the way Kenan and my brother ran it. Rather it was that the textile mogul Turgay Bey (my spirits plunged whenever I thought of his Mustang, his factory, and his infatuation with Füsun, though for some reason, I no longer felt jealous of him) had signed over the distribution rights of some of his key products to Tekyay. Being a man of fine feelings, Turgay Bey had forgotten all about the snub of the engagement party; he and his family were now on sound terms with Osman and his family. Subscribing to the same travel magazines, they’d go skiing together on Uludağ in the winter, and on shopping trips to Paris and London in the spring.
I was taken aback by Tekyay’s aggressive tactics, though I could do little to counter them. Kenan went after the eager young managers I’d brought into the firm, as well as the two middle-aged ones whose hard work and honesty had been the mainstays of Satsat for many years; lured by the recklessly large salaries he was offering, they defected.
More than once over supper with my mother I complained that Osman was so greedy and keen to seize advantage that he was competing with the firm his own father had founded, but in reply my mother only said, “I really don’t want to come between you two, my son.” I think Osman had encouraged her to believe that my separation from Sibel, my strange new private habits, and my visits to the Keskins’-of which I was certain she was somewhat aware by now-had rendered me incompetent to run my father’s business anyway.
Over the first two and a half years, individual visits to the Keskins’ shed their singularity-the looks I exchanged with Füsun, the meals we shared, our conversations, and our excursions to the Bosphorus, which now extended into winter-without exception, each reenacted an event that had happened before; amassed they evoked a sense of the quotidian (with its own beauty) that was out of time. If we couldn’t get Feridun’s art film into production, the commencement of shooting was forever only months away.
Füsun had resolved, or was acting as if she had resolved, that the art film would take longer than she’d hoped, and that venturing on her own into the commercial film business would leave her vulnerable; however, the anger expressed in her looks was not entirely dissipated. Some nights, if our eyes chanced to meet, instead of looking away like a shy girl, she would bore into me with a fury reminding me of all my faults. I would become despondent at this sudden display of all the anger she had suppressed, but knowing that this made her feel closer to me, I’d rejoice.
By now I’d resumed asking, as the evening drew to a close, “Füsun, how is your painting going?” regardless of whether Feridun was at home or not. (After that evening at the Huzur Restaurant, Feridun was going out less frequently, and having supper with us instead, as the film business was in trouble by now anyway.) I remember once the three of us got up from the table together to consider the painting of a pigeon that Füsun was then working on, and afterward we discussed it at length.
“I really admire how slowly and patiently you work, Füsun,” I whispered.
“I’ve been saying the same thing. She should have an exhibition!” said Feridun, also in low tones. “But she’s too shy…”
“I’m doing these to help pass the time,” said Füsun. “The hardest part is getting the feathers on the pigeon’s head to shine. Do you see?”
“Yes, we see,” I said.
A long silence followed. Feridun had stayed home that night also to watch the sports roundup, I think. When he heard someone scoring a goal, he ran out to the television.
“Füsun, let’s go to Paris one day to visit all the museums, and see all the paintings. I’d like that so much,” I said.
This was bold: a crime punishable by pouts, frowns, indignation, and the silent treatment for many visits, but Füsun took my words very naturally: “I’d like to go, Kemal.”
Like so many children, I’d had a passion for painting during my school years, and for a time, when at middle school and lycée, I had used the Merhamet Apartments to paint “by myself,” even dreaming of becoming a painter one day. It was in those days that I’d first indulged in childish dreams of going to Paris to see all the paintings. From the 1950s until the early 1960s, there was not a single museum in Istanbul in which you could see paintings; there weren’t even any art books or catalogs that one could leaf through for pleasure. So neither Füsun nor I knew much about the art of painting. It was enough for us to enlarge black-and-white photographs of birds and other things and color them in.
As one visit to the Keskins’ followed another, the streets of Istanbul, the world beyond the house, took on an eerie cast. To look at Füsun’s paintings, to witness their slow progress, poring over the photographs of Istanbul ’s birds that Feridun had taken for her, and musing in hushed voices about which she should paint next-the hawk, the dove, or the swallow-this intimation of security, continuity, and the pleasures of home seemed to fix things for all eternity. It lifted up my heart to behold that we lived in a universe both simple and good. The peace I felt came from the place, the room, our mood, and what we saw around us; it came from Füsun’s slow progress painting birds, and the brick red dye in the Uşak carpet on the floor, the pieces of cloth, the buttons, the old newspapers, Tarık Bey’s reading glasses, the ashtrays, and Aunt Nesibe’s knitting-in my mind they were all one piece. I would inhale the room’s fragrance, and later, back in the Merhamet Apartments, the thimble or button or spool I’d pocketed before leaving would help me remember all this, and so prolong my happiness.