A Mind at Peace (16 page)

Both of them glanced about furtively, hoping an acquaintance wouldn’t appear and disturb them. Finally, the boarding gate at the dock slid open, they stepped onto the ferry as if they were long-lost friends, and again sat in the lower deck.

Mümtaz: “What’d you do with the young lady? Wasn’t she upset when you left her? She seemed rather attached.”

“No, I mean, she knew that it was necessary. We’re worried about the whooping cough that’s spreading through our neighborhood. She spent the entire winter sick besides. She listens to reason when it comes to matters of illness and health.”

“Four years ago I’d have already known about it, but now in İclâl’s absence ...” Four years ago he saw İclâl everyday, learning of news having to do with Nuran.

Nuran didn’t hear this remark; she chased her own thoughts.

“Fatma’s a queer child,” she said. “She seems to live through the interest shown to her by others. If not for the threat of getting sick, she would have raised all hell.”

“I’d have thought you’d prefer to stay with her, too.”

A rascal of light falling from one side clung to her hair, slid slowly toward her neck, and like a small creature accustomed to human warmth, tussled playfully on her pale, moonlight-hued skin.

“That was my intention, but then I had an unfortunate encounter.”

Only then did Mümtaz realize that Nuran was not as carefree as she’d been yesterday – she was distracted, downcast even.

The distress that had seized Mümtaz when he saw Nuran and her ex-husband at the ferry landing overcame him again. He fell silent for a time, then, ever so thoughtfully, said, “I happened to witness that exchange yesterday. I’d been looking for my friends.” He blushed, unable to lie. “I saw your confrontation with Fâhir.” Nuran stared at him silently. Beneath her gaze, he was uncomfortable having observed an intimate moment in her life:
Had I not made the decision to confess everything to you, of course I wouldn’t have mentioned it!
Then he threw all caution to the wind: “The worst part of all is that as you left the landing you wore such a pleasant expression ...”

Nuran smiled gloomily: “Why don’t you just fess up that you’d waited for me to come out ... I saw you. Don’t blush. Such behavior is typical of you menfolk. But, you weren’t able to see the worst part of it! Worst of all was that you didn’t come to my aid and take the poor girl from me. The two of us were on the verge of collapse.” Mümtaz’s face was a swirl of confusion, but Nuran paid no heed. “And equally bad, Fatma was a nervous wreck. Her father had begun to recede in her memory. The girl has an odd sense of propriety. Now she’s jealous of his affections. She cried and moaned till morning, ‘I don’t care if my father doesn’t love me! I love him.’” Next Nuran completely changed the subject as if to dispense with the matter then and there: “Is İhsan the İhsan we all know?”

“I’m not sure. Which İhsan is that?”

“During the armistice and Allied occupations after the Great War, while my uncle was working for the Defense of Rights resistance, he said that he helped a certain İhsan. Apparently, he was Nadir Pasha’s aide. They tried to frame him with Pasha’s death. Even though İhsan could have fled, he’s alleged to have said, ‘With this shadow of incrimination over me, I won’t go anywhere.’ My uncle was of some help in saving him from the gallows.”

“Thanks to a letter that Nadir Pasha had written him. Yes, that’s the same İhsan. But why hadn’t İclâl ever mentioned this fact? I’ve seen your uncle a number of times!”

“İclâl is rather like a writer of realist novels. She doesn’t make mention of anything but everyday events.”

Mümtaz was dumbfounded.

“That means Tevfik is your uncle ... and Talât is your great-grandfather?”

“Yes, Talât is my mother’s grandfather.”

“I’ve even listened to Tevfik perform once. He recited the ‘Song in Mahur’ to us. Do you like the piece?”

“Quite ... very much, in fact. But, you know, it’s believed to bring bad luck in our family.”

Mümtaz stared at her solemnly: “Do you believe in such things?”

“No, I mean, I never gave it much thought. As with everyone, in many respects I feel an unspecified dread lurking inside me. The effect of the ‘Song in Mahur’ on me was quite extraordinary. The error of my great-grandmother’s ways scared me. Many members of our family have – out of sheer ambition and desire – made those closest to them suffer. Since I was a little girl I’ve been told that I resemble her, and as a result I’ve thought about her frequently. Maybe for this very reason I’ve tried to live rationally rather than through my emotions. But what’s the use when fate dictates otherwise ... My daughter’s unhappy anyway.”

“And you’re related to Behçet?”

“No, only by marriage ... He was miserable too. I have a photograph of his poor wife, Atiye! It’s so bizarre. But let’s not talk about such things.”

“İhsan loves the ‘Song in Mahur.’ He practiced it with Tevfik. You realize your great-grandfather’s composition is something of a masterpiece.”

“He’d intended to write a Mevlevî ceremonial piece, but this composition emerged instead.” She closed her eyes. Mümtaz gazed at the ashen sea from the window and watched the sky where tullelike clouds of similar hue loomed large. Then he likened Nuran to the delicate rose saplings in his garden that tended to tremble out of their own frailty in such weather. Light emanated toward them from this tulle-shrouded mass like the portent of pleasures foreign to both. The luminance caressed Nuran’s face and hands in an effective state of delight.

“It seems like you didn’t sleep at all last night.”

“I didn’t. Fatma complained throughout the night.”

“How did you leave her behind like that?”

“My aunt insisted. She told me Fatma would change once I left. So, I agreed. When I’m with her she acts quite spoiled.”

“But you’re so distraught ... If it were me ...”

“If it were you ... but you’re not a woman, are you?”

“True, I suppose, as long as you don’t consider that too great a drawback.” He genuinely wanted to share in Nuran’s fate and he was extremely ashamed and distressed that he couldn’t. This particular affect of his made Nuran laugh. They’d established a friendship of sorts. And this friendship resembled a voyage whose course had been predetermined long beforehand. Their lives were so close to each other.

“You’re an odd bird. Are you doing it for fun or do you always have such a childlike nature?”
If he isn’t actually a fool.
Mümtaz didn’t answer, but smiled.

Later he said, “Would you recite the ‘Song in Mahur’ for me one day? I know you have the voice.” His thoughts were always with the “Song in Mahur,” with this ironic and tragic union of love and death. Nuran quickly responded, “All right ... I’ll sing it for you one day.” Then she added, “You know, I don’t consider you a stranger at all. We have so many acquaintances in common.”

“I feel the same. If our friendship continues, its course will seem preordained.”

Then they spoke of completely different things. Mümtaz found her laughter wondrous. He wanted to savor it to the utmost. He recounted an array of stories to her. And he realized, as he spoke, that he was poaching from İhsan’s repertoire.
So, I’m still living on the surface ... I haven’t been able to find myself...
In fact, he was crossing a vast threshold.

This woman of experience, elegance, and beauty had a quality that was thoroughly radiant and enchanting, as if she were the garden of the sun itself; a realm that he hadn’t experienced beforehand, one that he’d assumed had been denied him, but had only actually been dormant and was now prepared to be filled and emptied by her presence. Each notion transformed in the awareness of a brisk awakening, and the small and mysterious contractions emanating from the depths of his being sang forgotten songs of life. This music of silence existed in both, rising to their faces from deep within, and Nuran, frantic to suppress it, appeared more crestfallen than she actually was, while in contrast, Mümtaz, yearning to mask the shyness of his character, forced himself to be bolder and more carefree.

Till now Mümtaz’s experiences in love hadn’t gone beyond a few random escapades and exploits that were attempts at scattering himself to the four winds. Rather than being instances of the advent of a woman’s presence in his life, they amounted to small flings and trivial crushes – various dimensions of his own ennui and passing lust. He hadn’t even yet sensed the urge for anything more in his imagination, which centered on himself alone. To him, a woman meant Macide’s companionship and the compassion of his aunt, things absent from his life and fulfilled by the two of them between the time of his mother’s death and his adjustment to İhsan’s household.

Now, sitting before Nuran, Mümtaz noted her sublime attributes with a gaze that transcended petty flings, crushes, lusts, and other commonplaces, and he contemplated how spending his life together with a woman of uncommon beauty seemed impossible. His eyes roamed over her face and hands with a forwardness fostered by a kind of indescribable despair. Nuran attempted to evade these bold glances. Each time he allowed her a moment’s peace, she withdrew into her shell embarrassed, as if she’d been suddenly caught stark naked, and to hide herself from the man before her, she frequently opened her purse and powdered her cheeks. Each sensed that a particular fate was being concocted for them and they spoke to each other in intimacies.

Open seas in the offing near Üsküdar had become the waterborne manse of southerlies at eventide. In places between Leander’s Tower and the open Sea of Marmara, copper sheets covered with the glitter of an array of hammer-wrought gems had been layered into the watery depths. At times these copper sheets floated to the surface as jeweled rafts; at other times they opened up great, bright crimson abysses filled with yearning and the desire to ascend to a truth like the distant vanishing point wherein light merged in representations of divine grace and absolution by painters of the French Primitif school.

Presently, warm colors attempted every possibility of being, from a spectacle for the eyes to an ascension, a Mi’raj of the Soul.

“It’s a very beautiful night,” said Mümtaz.

Nuran, not wanting to appear surprised, said, “It’s the right season!”

“Its being the right season shouldn’t diminish our awe.”
Your beauty issues from your youth, but I’m awed nonetheless.
But was she truly beautiful? He wanted to view her at a remove from their present exhilaration. No, he wouldn’t say anything. He couldn’t even see straight anymore. He couldn’t see a thing apart from his own bedazzlement. Not to mention that he’d stumbled upon the mirror of awe within himself. Through this talismanic mirror, he observed what lay inside him, the gradual stirring of desire.

Nuran understood that this response was directed at her and that the invitation that had long been secreted in darkness had now emerged into plain sight.

“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “I meant to say that from now on we’d share evenings as lovely as this one.” She grew frustrated with herself because she’d knowingly uttered this double entendre.

Time remained before the second ferry that would take them up the Bosphorus. They stopped in front of Kemal the bookseller’s stand. Nuran bought a few newspapers and novels. Mümtaz observed her as she opened her purse and removed cash. These gestures, repeated daily, now seemed exceptional to him. Not to mention that the bridge had transformed as had the bookseller and the act of buying and reading books. He was seemingly living in a fable, a world in which animated lines and bright colors rejuvenated all, giving everything a meaning that approached the most generous state of grace, where every movement shimmied and wriggled to infinity like the play of light in a still expanse of water. The bookseller returned her change.

Carrying in his arms his own gift and whatever else she’d purchased, they walked toward the Bosphorus ferry landing. They walked in tandem. He’d just come ashore in Istanbul with a woman whom he’d only recognized from afar yesterday on the morning ferry, whose acquaintance he’d made by chance; yet they’d be traveling up the Bosphorus together on another ferry. For him, this was unfathomable. Granted, it was of the variety of everyday events that happened repeatedly; granted, hundreds of thousands of people might experience such feelings once or a hundred times in their lives; it made no difference. He, too, realized that it was a commonplace to fall in love, to achieve happiness, to be acquainted before falling in love, and after having loved, to forget one another, or to even become enemies. But sea bathing was this way, too, as was sleeping. Everything was this way for everybody. That the experience was neither new nor the first of its kind didn’t diminish the fervor in his soul. Because it happened to be a first occurrence for him, because his body and soul had come to act in unison for the first time, they’d achieved the satisfaction of complete synthesis and symbiosis. Thus, it was exceptional. But did she think the same way? Was she content as well? Did she yearn? Or was she only humoring him? This anxiety, this doubt, made Mümtaz feel wretched. Why was she so silent? Like one whose feet get entangled in string drawn across a dark path, such a battery of questions prevented him from walking straight.
Ah, if only she’d say something!

Nuran, for her part, was in no state to utter a word. She wasn’t waiting free and easy at the intersections of life like Mümtaz. She’d already lived out one life and had separated from her husband. She might rightly assume that hundreds of eyes were boring into her from this throng.
If he’d only leave. If he’d only leave and go ... His arrival was so sudden. I need to spend time alone. Who does he think I am? One of those chums of his with whom he gads about?

I’m a woman who’s established her life, only to watch it crumble. I have a daughter. Love, for me, is nothing new. I’ve passed through this experience so much earlier than him ...
At a place where Nuran might have found a thousand pleasures, she only met with affliction.