The Museum of Innocence (21 page)

“Did nothing special happen even with the German model?”

Zaim flashed a coy, cool smile. “I’m not at all happy about my reputation,” he said. “If I ever found someone as wonderful as Sibel, I’d really want to get married, too. I have to congratulate you—I mean it. Sibel is a fabulous girl. And I can see in your eyes how happy you are.”

“Actually I’m not so happy right now. This is what I wanted to talk to you about. I need some help.”

“I’d do anything for you, you know that,” he said, looking deep into my eyes. “Trust me, and tell me right away.”

As the bartender was preparing our
rakıs
, I looked over at the dance floor. Had Füsun, swaying with the sentimental swill, let her head fall onto Kenan’s shoulder? That part of the floor was too dark for me to see, and every attempt to catch sight of her refreshed my pain.

“There’s a girl who’s a distant relation of my mother’s,” I said. “Her name’s Füsun.”

“The one who was in the beauty contest? She’s dancing over there.”

“How do you know?”

“She’s too beautiful,” said Zaim. “I see her whenever I walk past that boutique in Nişantaşı. Like everyone else, I slow down when I’m passing and look inside. She has the sort of beauty you just can’t get out of your head. Everyone knows who she is.”

Worrying that Zaim might now say something that would make it awkward for both of us, I said, “She’s my lover.” I saw a ripple of jealousy cross my friend’s face. “Just to see her dancing with someone else causes me pain right now. I might even say I am madly in love with her. I’m trying to think of a way out. I wouldn’t want something like this to go on for too long.”

“Yes, the girl is wonderful, but the situation couldn’t be worse,” said Zaim. “And you’re right, you can’t let something like this go on for too long.”

I didn’t ask him why. Nor did I ask myself whether it was in fact jealousy or contempt I saw in my friend’s face. But it was clear that I couldn’t tell him right away what I wanted him to do. I felt a need to tell him first about the depth and sincerity of this thing between Füsun and me; I wanted him to respect it. But as I began to reveal how I felt for Füsun, it was clear to me that my drunkenness would allow me to express only the most ordinary parts of the story, and that if I attempted emotional candor he would think me feeble and laughable, and even, despite his own dalliances, hold it against me. I suppose that in the end what I really wanted from my friend was his recognition, not of how sincere I was, but how lucky, and how happy. So it seems all these years later, but at the time, I myself could not acknowledge these things at all, and so, while we both watched Füsun dancing, and my head was spinning with drink, I told Zaim my story. I told him that I was the first man Füsun had ever slept with, describing the bliss we had discovered making love, and of our lovers’ quarrels and a string of other strange particulars that happened to pop into my head at that moment. “In short,” I said, suddenly inspired, “what I want more than anything else in life right now is to hold on to this girl until I die.”

“I understand.”

When I perceived in him a manly sympathy, free of reproach for my selfishness or moral judgment of my happiness, I relaxed.

“What’s upsetting me right now is that she’s dancing with Kenan, the young clerk at Satsat. She’s putting his job in jeopardy just to make me jealous…. Of course, I’m also worried that she’ll actually fall for him. For truth be told, Kenan would be an ideal husband for her.”

“I understand,” said Zaim.

“In a short while I am going to invite Kenan to my father’s table. What I would like you to do is to go straight over to Füsun and keep her busy, shadow her every move, like a good football defender, so that I don’t die of jealousy tonight—and so that I can get to the end of this evening without succumbing to fantasies of firing Kenan. Füsun and her parents will be leaving soon, as she is taking the university entrance exam tomorrow. And anyway, this impossible love affair of ours must end very soon.”

“I can’t be sure your girl will take much interest in me tonight,” said Zaim. “There’s another matter, too.”

“What?”

“I can see Sibel is trying to keep me away from Nurcihan,” said Zaim. “She wants to get something going between her and Mehmet. But I think Nurcihan likes me. And I like her, a lot. So I’d like you to help me with this a little. I know Mehmet is our friend, but let us compete on a level field.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I couldn’t get very far this evening, not with Sibel and Mehmet working against me, and now if I have to defend this girl of yours from the clerk, that will cut into the time I can spend with Nurcihan. So you have to make it up to me. Promise me now that you will bring Nurcihan with you to the picnic at the Meltem factory.”

“I promise.”

“Why does Sibel want to keep me away from Nurcihan anyway?”

“Well, you do make an impression, with your German models, and your dancers…. Sibel doesn’t like those things. She wants to marry her friend off to someone she trusts.”

“Please tell Sibel that I’m not a bad person.”

“I tell her all the time,” I said as I stood up. There was a silence. “I appreciate the sacrifices you’re making for me,” I said. “But when you are minding Füsun, be careful, don’t let yourself fall for her. Because she’s very sweet.”

Zaim’s expression, so full of understanding, liberated me from feeling shame for my jealousy. It brought me peace, if only short-lived.

Back at my parents’ table I told my father, who had drunk himself into a stupor, that I wanted to introduce a very clever and industrious young clerk named Kenan, who was sitting at the Satsat table. So as not to inflame the other ambitious Satsat employees, I jotted down a note in my father’s name and gave it to Mehmet Ali, a waiter who’d known us since the time the hotel had first opened, instructing him to pass it to Kenan at the next pause in the music. At that moment, my mother reached out and tried to grab my father’s
raki
, saying, “You’ve had enough,” and in the tussle, spilled some on his tie. They were serving ice cream in glasses when the Silver Leaves took a break. In those days, we would all enjoy a cigarette before each new course. The bread crumbs, the tumblers smeared with lipstick, the stained napkins, overflowing ashtrays, lighters, dirty plates, and crumpled cigarette packets all fired painful sensations in my muddled mind that the evening’s end was fast approaching. At one point, a little boy, perhaps six or seven years old, climbed onto my lap, and Sibel seized the excuse to come over to sit beside me and play with him. The sight of this moved my mother to remark, “What a lovely way you have with him.” People were still dancing. A few moments later my young, handsome, dapper clerk had joined the table and as the former foreign minister rose to his feet, a courtly Kenan told him and my father what an honor it was to meet them both. After the former foreign minister had lumbered off, I explained how Kenan Bey had given considerable thought to Satsat’s potential expansion into the provinces, and that he was particularly knowledgeable about Izmir. I praised him at length so that everyone at the table could hear. My father then began to ask him the same questions he asked all the new clerks. “What foreign languages do you speak, my child? Do you read books, do you have any hobbies, are you married?” “He’s not married,” my mother said. “Just a moment ago he was dancing very nicely with Nesibe’s daughter, Füsun.” “She’s blossomed into quite a beauty,” said my father. “Don’t let this father and son wear you down with business talk, Kenan Bey,” said my mother. “You must want to get back to your friends.” “Not at all, madam! The honor of meeting Mümtaz Bey—meeting all of you—is much more important.” “Such a courteous, refined young man,” my mother whispered, though loud enough for Kenan to hear. “Shall I invite him over one evening?”

When my mother liked or generally approved of someone, she would make sure he heard it when she discreetly told us so, because she enjoyed seeing in his embarrassment proof of her own power. My mother was smiling with this satisfaction when the Silver Leaves resumed with a very slow, sentimental number. I saw Zaim escort Füsun to the dance floor. “Let’s talk about Satsat’s chances in the provinces now, while my father is here, too,” I said. “My son, are you telling me that you are going to talk business now, at your own engagement party?” “Madam,” said Kenan to my mother, “you may not be aware of this, but three or four times a week, when everyone else has gone home, your son stays very late and carries on working.” “Sometimes Kenan and I work late together,” I added. “Yes. Kemal Bey and I enjoy our work,” said Kenan. “Sometimes when it’s very late we make up expressions that rhyme with the names of the people who owe us money.” “That’s fine,” said my father. “But what do you do with the bounced checks?” “I would like for us to meet the distributors to discuss this, Father,” I said.

As the orchestra played one slow dance after another, our talk ranged from possible innovations at Satsat, to the places of entertainment that my father had frequented in Beyoğlu when he was Kenan’s age, to the methods adopted by İzak Bey (my father’s first accountant), to whose table we now turned, raising our glasses in what must have seemed to the accountant a puzzling tribute, after which we went on to contemplate what my father hailed as the beauties of youth and of this evening, and, he added in jest, of “love.” Despite my father’s pressing the matter, Kenan would not be made to admit whether or not he was in love. This did not stop my mother from grilling him about his family, and upon learning that his father was employed by the city council and had for years worked as a streetcar driver, she said with a sigh, “Oh how beautiful they were, those old streetcars!”

More than half the guests had left by now. My father was having a hard time keeping his eyes open.

As my mother and father kissed us each on our cheeks, preparing to take their leave, my mother said, “Don’t you stay out too late either, my son,” looking into Sibel’s eyes, not mine.

Kenan wanted to return to his friends at the Satsat table, but I wouldn’t let him go. “Let’s find my brother and discuss this shop we might open in Izmir,” I said. “It’s not often that the three of us are together in one place.”

I took it upon myself to introduce Kenan to my brother, and my brother (who had known him for some time) raised an eyebrow in disdain, declaring that I must be seriously drunk. Then he looked at Berrin and Sibel, nodding in the direction of the glass in my hand. Yes, I had downed two glasses of raki at around that time, one after the other, because every time I caught a glance of Zaim dancing with Füsun, the raki was my only relief from a ridiculous jealousy. As my brother talked to Kenan about the logistics of collecting on overdue accounts, everyone at our table, including Kenan, watched Zaim dancing with Füsun. Even Nurcihan, who had her back to them, sensed that Zaim had taken an interest in someone else and she was becoming uneasy. At one point I said to myself, “I am happy.” As drunk as I was, I still felt as if everything was going to go my way. On Kenan’s face I recognized an all too familiar species of disquiet, and so I took this long, slender glass (see exhibit) and poured a consoling raki for my ambitious greenhorn friend, who, on account of his bosses having taken a sudden interest in him, had lost the girl he’d been holding in his arms only a few minutes before. At that moment, Mehmet finally asked Nurcihan to dance, and Sibel turned to give me a conspiratorial wink, adding sweetly, “You’ve had enough, darling. Don’t have any more.”

Charmed by her solicitude, I took Sibel to the dance floor, and the moment we got there I knew I had made a mistake. The Silver Leaves were playing “A Memory from That Summer,” which called to mind the previous summer, when Sibel and I had been so happy, and as the music evoked these memories with arresting force—just as I hope the exhibits in my museum are doing—Sibel embraced me as if for the first time. How I wanted in return to embrace with the same ardor my fiancée, the one with whom I was to share the rest of my life. But I could think only of Füsun. Because I was trying to catch a glimpse of her in the crowd, because I did not want her to see me in a warm embrace with Sibel, I held myself back. I let the other couples distract me. They smiled at me affectionately, as people will at seeing a groom a little worse for wear at the end of his engagement party.

At one point we came shoulder to shoulder with the best-loved columnist of that era dancing with an attractive dark-haired woman: “Celâl Bey, love has nothing in common with a newspaper column, does it?” I said. When Mehmet and Nurcihan came alongside us, I treated them as if they’d been lovers for ages. I slurred an attempt at a quip in French to Zümrüt Hanım, who spoke French whenever she visited my mother, even when there was no one around, supposedly to keep the servants from understanding her. By now Sibel had given up on having a dance she would remember forever, and was whispering into my ear, telling me how sweet I was when I was drunk, apologizing for having forced me into matchmaking, which she’d done, she insisted, only to make our friends happy, and alerting me that the fickle Zaim had moved on from Nurcihan and set his sights on that girl who was my distant relation. Frowning, I told her that Zaim was a very good person, and a trusted friend. I added that Zaim had wanted to know why she was treating him so badly.

“So you were talking about me with Zaim? What did he say?” said Sibel. During the break between songs, we came alongside Celâl Salik the columnist again. “I’ve worked out something love has in common with a good newspaper column, Kemal Bey,” he said. “What is it?” I asked. “Love, like a newspaper column, has to make us happy
now
. We judge the beauty and power of each by how deep an impression it makes on the soul.” “Master, please write that up in your column one day,” I said, but he was listening not to me but to his raven-haired dance partner. At that moment I noticed Füsun and Zaim beside us. Füsun had placed her head very close to his neck and was whispering to him, and Zaim was smiling gaily. It seemed to me that they could see us perfectly well, but were pretending not to notice as they spun around the dance floor.