The Museum of Innocence (22 page)

Without losing a beat I maneuvered Sibel in their direction and then, like a pirate ship pursuing a merchant galleon, I caused us to ram Füsun and Zaim from the side.

“Oh, excuse us,” I said with a silly laugh. “How are you?” The confused joy on Füsun’s face brought me back to my senses and at once I spied in my drunkenness a good excuse for bold action. I turned to Zaim, proferring Sibel’s hand. “May I offer you the honor of this dance?” Zaim took his hand off Füsun’s waist. “You two are going to have to get to know each other better,” I said, “and you might as well start now.” Completing my gesture of self-sacrifice, I put my hands on their backs and pushed them together. As Sibel and Zaim began to dance, with obvious reluctance, Füsun and I looked for a moment into each other’s eyes. Then I put my hand on her waist and with a few gentle turns, moved her as far away as I could, like any elated suitor preparing to abscond with his sweetheart.

How to describe the peace that came over me the moment I took her in my arms? The noise of the crowd that had so addled me, the ungodly racket that I had taken to be the aggregate of the silverware, the orchestra, and the roar of the city—now I knew what I’d heard was only my disquiet at being far from her. Like a baby who will stop crying only in the arms of one particular person, I felt a deep, soft, velvety bliss of silence spreading through me. From her expression I could see that Füsun felt the same; taking the enveloping silence as our mutual recognition of shared enchantment, I wished that the dance would never end. But soon I realized that her half of the silence meant something altogether different from mine. Füsun’s silence harked back to the question I had brushed off earlier as a joke (“What will become of us?”), and now I had to give an answer. I decided that this was what she had come for. The interest that men had shown her this evening, the admiration that I’d seen even in the eyes of the children—all this had given her confidence, had lightened her suffering. Now she might even be able to view me in perspective, as a “passing fancy.” As I began, in my drunkenness, to realize that the night was coming to an end, I was seized by the terrifying thought of losing Füsun.

“When two people love each other as we do, no one can come between them, no one,” I said, amazed at the words I was uttering without preparation. “Lovers like us, because they know that nothing can destroy their love, even on the worst days, even when they are heedlessly hurting each other in the cruelest, most deceitful ways, still carry in their hearts a consolation that never abandons them. Trust me that after tonight I’ll stop all this, I’ll sort this out. Are you listening to me?”

“I’m listening.”

When I was sure that no one dancing nearby was looking at us, I said, “We met at an unfortunate time. In the early days neither of us could have known how rare this love was between us. But now I am going to put everything right. Our most immediate concern is your exam tomorrow. This evening you shouldn’t waste any more time worrying about us.”

“Then tell me, what is going to happen now?”

“Tomorrow, as always” (for a moment, my voice trembled) “at two o’clock, after you’ve finished your exam, let’s meet at the Merhamet Apartments. Then I’ll be able to tell you what I plan to do next, without having to rush. If I fail to win your trust, then you never have to see me again.”

“No, tell me now, and I’ll come.”

How sweet it was to imagine in my drunken stupor that she would come to me at two o’clock the next day, that we would make love as always, that we would remain together until the end of my days, and as I touched her wondrous shoulders and her honey-colored arms, I resolved that I would do everything I could, whatever it took.

“No one will ever come between us ever again,” I said.

“All right then, I’ll come tomorrow after the exam, and you, God willing, won’t have gone back on your word, and you’ll tell me how you’re going to do this.”

While we both remained standing, perfectly straight, with my hand lovingly clamped on her hip, and in time to the music, I tried to tug her closer to me. She resisted, refusing to lean into me, and that excited me all the more. But when it became apparent that my attempt to wrap my arms around her in front of everyone was being viewed not as a sign of love but proof of my drunkenness, I pulled myself together and relented.

“We have to sit down,” she said. “I feel as if everyone is looking at me.” She was leaving my arms. “Go right home and get some sleep,” I whispered. “During the exam, just think about how much I love you.”

When I got back to our table there was no one there except for Berrin and Osman, both frowning and bickering with each other. “Are you all right?” said Berrin.

“Perfectly fine,” I said, gazing upon the disordered table and the empty chairs.

“Sibel didn’t want to dance anymore, and Kenan Bey took her with him to the Satsat table, where they were playing some sort of game.”

“It’s good that you danced with Füsun,” said Osman. “In the end, it was wrong for our mother to give her the cold shoulder. It’s important for Füsun and everyone else to know that the family takes an interest in her, that the nonsense with the beauty contest is forgotten, and she can depend on us. I worry for the girl.
She thinks she is too beautiful,”
he said in English. “That dress is too revealing. In six months she’s gone from being a child to a woman; she’s really bloomed. If she doesn’t marry the right sort of man very soon, first she’ll get a reputation and that can lead only to misery. What was she telling you?”

“Apparently she is taking her university entrance exam tomorrow.”

“And she’s still here dancing? It’s after midnight.” He watched her walk toward her table. “I really did like your Kenan, by the way. I say she should marry
him.”

“Shall I tell them both?” I shouted, having moved away from him already. I had been doing this since childhood. Whenever my brother began to speak, I would do the opposite of what he asked, and retreat to the most remote corner, ignoring the fact that he was still talking.

In later years I would often reflect on my bliss and joy at that point in the evening, on my way from our table to the tables in the back where the Satsat employees, Füsun, and her parents were sitting. I had just put everything right, and in thirteen hours and forty-five minutes I would meet Füsun at the Merhamet Apartments. A brilliant future beckoned, and the promise of happiness sparkled like the Bosphorus at our feet. Even as I laughed with the lovely girls now weary of dancing, their dresses in charming (and revealing) disarray, and I joked with the last of the guests, and old friends, and affectionate aunties I’d known for thirty years, a voice inside me warned that if I continued on this path, I’d end up marrying not Sibel but Füsun.

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.