Bliss: A Novel (25 page)

Yakup could not explain all this to those in the village. Their thick heads would be unable to comprehend this kind of plan. In fact, he had promised himself that he would never go back to live among those ignorant people. They had no idea of life outside of their small town.

Cemal was confused. How could Yakup speak so bitterly and demeaningly of their village? “Brother,” he said, “I’m sure you don’t mean that, especially as our father may get to hear of this. You should be more careful.”

“That father of ours!” Yakup exclaimed, looking sternly at Cemal.

Cemal did not understand what Yakup meant, but he felt that his older brother was harboring some grief from the past. He did not question him further.

It was Yakup’s turn to ask questions. What was Cemal doing there? Why had he brought Meryem on such a long journey?

Cemal told him briefly that while he was serving in the military, Meryem had been defiled. She had to be gotten rid of in order to cleanse the family honor, and Cemal had been entrusted with this duty.

“Just like the other poor girls, you might say,” Yakup said. “I know that when you live in the village, it seems the right thing to do, and it is practiced even here.”

He did not look sad, surprised, or angry. Apparently, all that he wanted was for this sudden calamity to disappear. He did not care about the village, Meryem, Cemal, or his father. He just wanted them to stay out of his life.

Yakup had blotted his hometown from his memory. He would not go back there and would make sure that his children forgot they were from Suluca. In any case, he intended to remove their records from their hometown and reregister them in Istanbul. The thought that Zeliha could suffer the same fate as Meryem caused his hair to stand on end.

“Look, Cemal,” he said, “you are certainly acting on our father’s orders, and I know you’re as much in awe of him as if he were God. It’s pointless to ask you to change your mind, but if you’re going to do it, do it right away.”

Yakup then told Cemal about some tall, deserted viaducts on the highway about thirty minutes away on foot. Immigrants to Istanbul committed these ritual murders at such spots. A number of girls had been thrown to their deaths from the viaducts. The media had even reported some of the incidents.

Later, as Cemal lay on his thin mattress in the dark, he made a plan. He had to act quickly. After traveling so far, they had unluckily ended up in a place under gendarme surveillance. The longer they stayed there, the more familiar they would become, both to the residents and the authorities. If Meryem disappeared suddenly, suspicions would be aroused. The best thing to do would be to take Meryem to the viaduct early in the morning and fulfill his duty. If two people left the house and only one came back, that might look suspicious. He would not return to Yakup’s—his brother’s disrespect toward their father and the village had, in any case, offended him. He would go to visit Selahattin, then immediately board a train for Van. He would be back home with Emine in no time, and with honor restored to the family.

His brother’s words seemed reasonable to him, especially since such events took place quite often at the viaduct. It would seem like an accident that the girl had fallen from the height.

When he had reached this decision, Cemal felt a sense of relief, and he soon fell into a peaceful sleep.

GOD ALONE EXISTS IN SOLITUDE

The professor woke up one day with a terrible headache. He took two painkillers before going on deck. The sea looked lifeless. Under an overcast sky, the water was gray, turbid, and devoid of any motion—a sea of concrete. Friendly and flirtatious until two days ago, the sea now looked as hard as a turtle shell, cold and merciless, almost hostile.

İrfan had been familiar with the sea since childhood, and usually was unaffected by its vast expanse or capricious behavior, but he was shaken from a close encounter with death he had experienced two days earlier. In order to escape from the impending storm that flashed and thundered on the horizon, he had been making for the nearest harbor with sails strained to such tautness that the monstrous force of the wind could have easily ripped them to shreds. When he finally entered the harbor, İrfan realized that the wind there was just as violent, and his boat was careering toward the shore at full speed. When the owners of the boats in the marina saw his craft advancing on them at such a pace, they began to wave and shout out warnings. İrfan himself knew well that entering the harbor so fast could cause a disaster.

At that moment, he noticed a huge ship behind him that had entered from the other side of the harbor and was getting ready to dock. When the sailboat appeared, sirens and whistles blew a deafening alarm. The panic of the people in the marina and the sight of the giant ship bearing down on him petrified İrfan. He had to slacken sail and approach his intended mooring place slowly, using the engine, but he could not do what was necessary all by himself because the pulley was stuck. If he let go of the rudder and ran to the sails, he would lose control of the boat. If he kept on steering, he would not be able to lower the sails, which were propelling the boat along too quickly. This was the problem of being a one-man crew. A second person would have made things much easier. İrfan knew that he had to make an immediate decision, for in a few seconds it would be too late.

Gathering all his courage, he let go of the rudder and threw himself in a death leap toward the sails. As he freed the tangled halyard at lightning speed, he felt a stabbing pain in his knee. He must have bumped it. The sails were down, but İrfan could not breathe. He had often heard the phrase, “his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth,” and he had always thought it just a figure of speech, but now, this was really happening to him and no matter how hard he tried, he could not open his mouth and fill his aching lungs with air. Finally, he hung over the side of the boat and drank handfuls of the harbor’s dirty water. He took a deep breath. Never before had he experienced such total fear.

He spent the night tied up in the marina, talking with the other sailors. When they realized he was sailing single-handed, they acknowledged that he had overcome great danger by acting in the correct manner. He was a good sailor, they said, but one should not play games with the sea. It was not right to sail alone in such a large boat.

The yachtsmen invited İrfan for a drink. Though most of them were gray-haired, they were all fit, athletic men, who spent their time repairing their boats, exchanging memories, and planning frequent regattas. İrfan noted that they did not talk about anything other than the sea. Throughout the evening, no other subject was discussed. It was as if the land did not exist for them. Their hands were callused like those of laborers. This one talked about the new GPS he had bought, while that one explained at length exactly how he had repaired his regulator. They were not interested in strangers, and naturally, they did not realize that this huge, unkempt man was the professor whom they might have seen on television. Or perhaps not. These men were not citizens of the Turkish Republic but of the Republic of the Sea—a republic with imperceptible borders but very definite laws. They never had difficulty in finding a wind to billow their flags. They spent most of their time among their fellow sailors and had the air of men who had no wives, mothers, fathers, or children.

That night, İrfan realized that for him the sea meant solitude. He had been sailing alone for many days, and the enthusiasm of his first days at sea was slowly being replaced by a peculiar melancholy. During nights spent in desolate coves, he had wondered what would happen if he fell and broke his leg or had a heart attack or suffered a stroke. As he sat alone by the kerosene lamp, absolute silence had enveloped him like the silence of death. If he faced a serious problem, he could do nothing but try to survive until someone found him, and finding him would be very difficult.

The sea was full of serious risks like the one he had overcome that day. He remembered the saying “God alone exists in solitude” and had to agree with the Anatolian sages who had said this so many hundreds of years ago.

At first, he had stayed away from the coast as much as possible, choosing the most deserted bays in which to spend the night, but now a secret drive was directing him toward the coastal towns and the small villages with their rickety landings. In such places, he always found a reason to visit the small grocery store, where he bought bread, sausages, or beer.

Was his life changing? Was change actually the freedom of shopping at old-fashioned groceries in small Aegean resorts, empty of tourists at this season, instead of the gourmet delicatessen in Istanbul? Could metanoia be defined as lying lazily on the deck day and night, watching the flying fish leap from below the surface, startling shoals of small fish that scattered in all directions through the turquoise water, as he listened to Jean-Pierre Rampal play the flute?

That night, for the first time, İrfan thought about going home. In fact, he did not think about it—one could not call this thinking—rather, he heard a barely audible voice inside him that troubled him greatly. He did not let the voice die away, for he wanted to confront it as it whispered to him, “Can you go back? Can you return to your old life, your old home, Aysel, the university, your friends, or your clever and very successful know-it-all of a brother-in-law? Can Istanbul be your Ithaca, you foolish professor?”

“No! I can’t go back,” he told himself. “I don’t want to, and even if I did, they would all kill me.”

İrfan knew very well how Aysel treated people who angered her. If he returned to Istanbul, everyone close to him, especially Aysel and her brother, would see him as the Devil and want to tear him to pieces. And no one would build a tomb for him.

İrfan recalled an afternoon spent with Aysel in a pleasant hotel room on a comfortable bed with starched white sheets and embroidered pillowcases. They had been very happy. It was as if no other couple had ever been as madly in love as they were. That day, Aysel had pushed him away from her warm, slender body at the climax of their lovemaking, crying, “Get away! Leave me alone!” He had been stunned, unable to decide what to do. He listened to Aysel’s screams, not knowing what he had done wrong.

They had been staying in Scotland at the Turnberry Golf Hotel, which resembled an enormous birthday cake placed down on top of the moist, fertile earth, where manicured putting greens swept down to the sea. In the mornings, they would walk to the lighthouse, play golf in the afternoon, and go to the Edwardian bar, where they would sit toasting themselves in front of the fireplace, with its fire of oak logs, sipping Lagavulin whisky.

Until that day, everything had gone fine. After golf, before even taking her shower, Aysel had pulled İrfan into bed and pressed her slender body onto his like a lecherous clam. Then, at the highest peak of their lovemaking, she had pushed him away. He had felt like a student, punished by being sent to stand on one foot outside the door.

Having gained enough experience to stay away from Aysel at such moments, İrfan had taken a quick shower and left the room. He had gone downstairs to the bar, where mahogany, morocco leather, and noble coats of arms reigned supreme. A few minutes after he ordered a drink, Aysel came and sat next to him on the green leather chesterfield. “I’m sorry,” she said. She was calmer but still tearful, apologizing to him once again. İrfan was used to this habit of hers. If he responded, her madness would intensify, but if he kept silent, stayed away, and ignored her insults, she would calm down and come to apologize.

He could not understand her fury. Sipping his whisky, he had racked his brains to comprehend his mistake: an inappropriate joke while playing golf, an act of rudeness at the hotel, a word, a glance? He could remember nothing to cause this outburst. “You don’t have to apologize, darling,” İrfan said. “We must forgive each other, but I really don’t understand. What happened? Everything was going so well.”

Aysel glanced at him helplessly. “It’s difficult to explain,” she said. “Sometimes you make love to me because you feel you have to. You’re a strong, clean, healthy man, but you don’t enjoy making love to me. Even at that moment of extreme pleasure, I realized without a shadow of a doubt that you weren’t enjoying it.”

İrfan tried to raise an objection, but Aysel silenced him. “I’m not blaming you,” she said. “But a woman knows. You make love as if you’re playing golf.” Then she gave a brittle laugh as if she wanted to lighten the atmosphere, and asked him to order a drink for her.

The subject had been sealed. They continued to make love, though less frequently. Aysel felt that she was facing a fact too serious to be changed by rebelling against it and felt scared, like a little girl lost in a great forest.

*   *   *

After so many weeks on the sea, the boat meant solitude for İrfan—a loneliness that would last forever. He wondered how a man would feel who, after dreaming of happiness and success all his life, suddenly realized toward the end of it that he had long ago missed his opportunity. Would his dreams collapse? Yes, of course! Maybe that was why his heart felt so heavy sometimes with the weight of such morbid feelings.

He thought often of the emptiness of his life. Although from being an indigent student in Izmir, he had gone on to study at Harvard, he had not succeeded in creating anything noteworthy. His life had been spent in vain. After he died, he would not leave anything behind about which people would say: “This is İrfan Kurudal’s work.” All he had achieved was the flimsy book he had written for his professorship.

İrfan had been considering an interesting subject for a book. For years, he had been researching, while waiting for the right moment to start writing it. He knew he would never find a better place finally to start his project than on this boat.

His book would be about the Bogomils. A gnostic Christian sect of the eleventh century, the Bogomils had first appeared in Samosata in eastern Anatolia, the hometown of the great, ancient writer, Lukianos. The Bogomils’ dogma had disturbed the orthodox church so much that they had been forced to leave Samosata and go to
Ala
ehir
in the Aegean region. Unable to establish themselves there either, they emigrated to southern France via Marseille, where they built Montsegur Castle. They were known as the Cathar Knights, until the French army forced them to leave after the famous Montsegur siege. The Bogomils fled in many directions, some to Italy and others to the Balkans. According to some historians, the Bosnians in the Balkans were descended from the Bogomils. They had converted to Islam in order to escape from the tyranny of the Church.