The Museum of Innocence (18 page)

“You’re drinking rather a lot this evening,” said Berrin. “Slow down a little. There are a lot of people here and they’re all watching the family.”

“Fine,” I said, as I lifted my glass with a smile.

“Just look at Osman, how responsible he is,” said Berrin. “Then look at you, so mischievous at your own engagement…. How could two brothers be so different?”

“Actually,” I said, “we’re very similar. And anyway, from now on I’m going to be even more serious and responsible than Osman.”

“Well, don’t go overboard. People can be so boring when they’re too serious,” Berrin began, and she continued in this half-hectoring vein until, much later, I heard, “You’re not even listening to me.”

“What? Of course I’m listening.”

“All right, then tell me what I just said!”

“You said, ‘Love has to be the way it is in the old legends. Like
Leyla and Mecnun.’
”

“I knew you weren’t listening to me,” said Berrin with a half smile, from which I could see she was worried about me. She turned to Sibel, to see if she had noticed what condition I was in. But Sibel was talking to Mehmet and Nurcihan.

That I’d not been able to put Füsun out of mind all this while; that throughout my conversation with Berrin I’d felt her presence behind me, at her table in the back; that I kept wondering how she was doing and what she must be thinking—I’d been trying to hide this from myself just as I’ve been keeping it from my readers, but enough! You already know that I failed. So from now on I’ll be straight with you.

I found an excuse to leave the table. I can’t remember what pretext I came up with. I cast my eyes over the back of the garden, but I couldn’t see Füsun. The place was very crowded, and as always, with everyone talking at once, shouting to be heard, and children shrieking as they played hide-and-seek among the tables, and the clink of knives and forks going on over their heads—a cacophony the orchestra only exacerbated—it added up to quite a roar. I walked through this infernal din toward the back, hoping to catch sight of Füsun.

“Many congratulations, my dear Kemal,” I heard someone say. “How much longer till the belly dance?”

This was Selim the Snob, who was sitting at Zaim’s table. I laughed, as if he’d said something hilarious.

“You’ve made an excellent choice, Kemal Bey,” a nice matron told me. “You probably don’t remember me. I’m your mother’s …”

But before she could make the connection, a waiter with a tray pushed me aside to make his way between us. By the time I had gathered my bearings, the well-wishing woman had been carried away in the flow of the crowd.

“Let me see your ring!” said a child, roughly twisting my hand.

“Stop, don’t be rude!” said the child’s fat mother, seizing the child roughly by the arm. She lunged, as if to slap him, but the brat was wise to her ways and wriggled out just in time. “Come here and sit down!” cried his mother. “I’m so sorry … and congratulations.”

A middle-aged woman I’d never seen before was laughing herself red in the face, but when our eyes met she suddenly became serious. Her husband introduced himself—he was a relation of Sibel’s, but apparently we’d both done our military service at the same time in Amasya—and he invited me to sit down with them. I surveyed the tables at the back of the garden, hoping to catch sight of Füsun, but she seemed to have vanished into thin air. Misery spread through my body.

“Are you looking for someone?”

“My fiancée is waiting for me, but of course I’d love to sit down and have a drink with you….”

They were very pleased, and at once they pushed together their chairs to make room for one more. No, I didn’t need a place setting, just a little more
raki
.

“Kemal, my friend, have you ever been introduced to Admiral Erçetin?” the man asked, pointing at the gentleman across the table.

“Yes, of course,” I said. In fact I had no memory of him.

“Young man, I am Sibel’s father’s aunt’s sister’s husband!” the admiral told me humbly. “I congratulate you.”

“Please excuse me, Admiral. I didn’t recognize you out of uniform. Sibel speaks highly of you.”

In fact, Sibel had told me how a distant cousin of hers had years ago spent the summer in Heybeliada and fallen in love with a handsome naval officer; thinking that this admiral must be one of those grandees that rich families treat so well so as to have someone to pull strings whenever they have dealings with the state, or when they need to arrange the deferment of some son’s military service, I hadn’t paid particular attention to her tale. I now had a strange urge to ingratiate myself by saying, “When is the army going to step in, sir? How much longer can we be pushed to the brink by communists on the one side and reactionaries on the other?” but I was composed enough to know that if I said these things in my present addled state, I would be judged drunk and disrespectful. Suddenly something prompted me to stand up, and there, in the distance, I saw Füsun.

“I’m afraid I’m neglecting our other guests. I think I’d better get up, gentlemen!”

As always after drinking too much, I felt like my own ghost trying to take its first solo walk outside the body.

Füsun had returned to her table in the back. In a dress with spaghetti straps, her bare shoulders had a healthy glow. She’d had her hair done, too. She was so very beautiful that even from that distance it filled my heart with joy and excitement to catch a glimpse of her.

She acted as if she hadn’t seen me. Four tables closer was the fidgety Pamuk family, and so, to close the distance between me and Füsun, I went over to greet Aydın and Gündüz Pamuk, who at some point had done some business with my father. All the while I kept my antennae tuned to Füsun’s table, whose proximity to the Satsat table had created the opportunity for my young and ambitious employee Kenan, who could not take his eyes off Füsun, to strike up a conversation with her.

Like so many formerly rich families that had squandered their fortunes, the Pamuks had turned in on themselves and found it upsetting to come face-to-face with new money. Sitting with his beautiful mother, his father, his elder brother, his uncle, and his cousins was the chain-smoking twenty-three-year-old Orhan, nothing special about him beyond his propensity to act nervous and impatient, affecting a mocking smile.

Rising from the tedious Pamuk table, I walked straight over to Füsun. How to describe the expression on her face when she realized that she couldn’t ignore me—that I had been so bold as to approach her with love in my eyes? At once she blushed, her deep pink skin glowing with life. From the looks Aunt Nesibe was giving me, I guessed that Füsun had told her everything. First I shook her hand, which was dry, and then I shook hands with her father, who had long fingers and slender wrists like his daughter’s, and he gave no sign of knowing anything. When it was my beloved’s turn, I took her hand, and with tenderness and propriety, I kissed her on both cheeks, furtively inhaling the tender spots on her neck and below her ears that had brought me such pleasure only hours ago. The question I couldn’t get out of my head—“Why did you come?”—now took the form of “How good of you to come!” She had put on just a bit of eyeliner and some pink lipstick. With her perfume, the makeup gave her an exotic womanly air. But her eyes were red and puffy like a child’s, so I knew that after we had parted that afternoon she had gone home and spent the early evening crying; but no sooner had I worked this out than she assumed the demeanor of a confident, well-bred woman who knew her own mind.

“Kemal Bey, I know Sibel Hanım. You’ve made a very wise choice,” she said bravely. “Congratulations.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“Kemal Bey,” her mother said at the same time. “I can only imagine how busy you are. God bless you for giving so much of your time to helping our daughter with her mathematics.”

“Her exam is tomorrow, isn’t it?” I asked. “She should be heading home early to get plenty of rest.”

“I understand you have every right to be concerned,” said her mother. “But while she was working with you she got very upset. Give her your permission to have a little fun for an evening.”

I gave Füsun a compassionate, teacherly smile. With all the noise from the crowd and the music, it seemed that no one could hear us. I saw in the looks Füsun was giving her mother the same flashes of anger I’d seen during our trysts in the Merhamet Apartments; I took one last look at her beautiful, half-exposed breasts, her wondrous shoulders, and her childish arms. As I turned away I felt happiness overwhelm me like a giant wave crashing.

The Silver Leaves were playing “An Evening on the Bosphorus,” their version of “It’s Now or Never.” If I didn’t believe with all my heart that absolute happiness in this world can only happen while living in the present and in the arms of another, I would have chosen this instant as “the happiest moment of my life.” For I had concluded from Füsun’s mother’s words and her own hurt and angry looks that she could not bring herself to end our relationship, and that even her mother seemed to have resigned herself to this state of affairs, though with certain expectations. If I proceeded with great care and let her know how much I loved her, Füsun, I now understood, would be unable to break off relations with me for as long as I lived! The manly pleasures outside the realm of morality that God granted just a few favored slaves—the happiness that my father and my uncles had had only a taste of, and rarely before their fifties, not before they had suffered terrible torment—it seemed to me now that I was going to be able to enjoy the same good fortune—partaking of all the pleasures of a happy home life with a beautiful, sensible, well-educated woman, and at the same time enjoying the pleasures of an alluring and wild young girl—all this while I was still in my thirties, having scarcely suffered for it, or paid a price. Though not at all religious, I have engraved in my memory what I still regard as a postcard of bliss, sent by God: the image of merry guests, now dispersed to the outer reaches of the garden, and beyond them among the plane trees and the colored lamps, the landscape, the lights of the Bosphorus and the deep blue sky.

“Where have you been?” said Sibel. She’d come out to look for me. “I was worried. Berrin said you had had a bit too much to drink. Are you all right, darling?”

“Yes—I did overdo it in there, but I’m feeling better now, dear. My only problem now is that I’m too happy.”

“I’m also very happy, but we have a problem.”

“What?”

“It’s not working with Nurcihan and Mehmet.”

“Well, if it’s not to be, it’s not to be. What matters tonight is that we’re happy.”

“No, no, they both want this. If only they could let their guard down a little, I’m positive they’d be on the road to marriage in no time. But they just can’t seem to break the ice. I’m afraid that they’ll miss their chance.”

I watched Mehmet from a distance. He just couldn’t get Nurcihan to warm to him, and when he realized how clumsy he’d been he got angry and damned himself into still further awkwardness.

I motioned to Sibel to sit with me at a small service table piled high with clean plates. “We may be too late for Mehmet…. It may not be possible to find him a proper, decent wife.”

“Why?”

As her eyes grew large with fear and curiosity, I told Sibel that Mehmet would never find happiness anywhere but in a heavily perfumed room with red lamps. I ordered a raki from the waiter who darted over as soon as we were seated.

“You seem to know quite a bit about these places!” said Sibel. “Did you visit them with him before you knew me?”

“I love you so much,” I said, putting my hand on hers, and I didn’t mind when the waiter shot an inquisitive glance at our engagement rings. “But Mehmet must surely be wondering if he can ever be deeply in love with any decent girl. In fact he must be panicking.”

“Oh, what a pity!” said Sibel. “It’s all because of those girls who shied away from him….”

“Well, he shouldn’t have scared them off. The girls are right to be careful. What happens to them if they have slept with a man and he doesn’t marry them? If word gets out and she’s left in the lurch, what is she to do?”

“It’s something she just knows,” said Sibel carefully.

“What is?”

“Whether she can trust a man or not.”

“It’s not so simple. Many girls suffer terribly, being unable to make up their minds. Or else they give in to desire but are too afraid to take any pleasure from it…. I don’t even know if there is any girl out there who can enjoy it for what it is and damn the consequences. And Mehmet, if he hadn’t listened to all those stories of sexual freedom in Europe with his mouth watering, he might not have got it into his head that he had to have sex with a girl before marrying her, just to be modern or civilized; he’d probably have been able to make a happy marriage with a decent girl who loved him. Now look at him, squirming in that chair next to Nurcihan.”

“He knows that Nurcihan slept with men in Europe…. I know this intrigues him, but it scares him, too,” said Sibel. “Come on, let’s go give him a hand.”

The Silver Leaves were playing “Happiness,” a mawkish piece of their own composing. But I was in the mood and it moved me. As I felt my love for Füsun coursing through my veins—such pain, and such bliss—I was nevertheless able to appear paternalistic, lecturing Sibel that Turkey, too, would probably be modern like Europe in a hundred years’ time, and that when that day arrived everyone would be free of worries about virginity and what people thought, free to make love and be happy as it is promised one in heaven. But until then most people would continue to agonize over love, and suffer sexual pain.

“No, no,” said my beautiful and good-hearted fiancée. “If we can be this happy
today
, then so can they. Because we’re definitely going to get Nurcihan and Mehmet married.”

“Okay, then, what’s the plan?”

“What a fine sight—engaged for only an hour and already off in a corner by yourselves?” This was a portly gentleman neither of us knew. “May I join you, Kemal Bey?” Without waiting for an answer he grabbed a chair from the side and sat down next to us. He was relatively young, perhaps in his forties, to be sporting a white carnation on his lapel and wearing a sickly sweet perfume, for women, and enough of it to make one faint. “When the bride and groom retire to a corner, a wedding loses its joy.”