IN THE early days of autumn, after a storm had blown in from the north, the fast-moving waters of the Bosphorus were too cold for swimming, and my melancholy had soon darkened beyond the point at which I could still hide it. Night was falling earlier each day, and all at once the shore and the back garden were carpeted with leaves; the yali apartments that served as summer homes fell empty; rowboats were pulled out of the sea, and after the first days of rain, overturned bicycles littered the suddenly empty streets, and for us a deep autumn gloom set in. With growing panic, I sensed that Sibel would soon be unable to bear my apathy or the misery that could no longer be concealed or consoled, or the consequence that I was now drinking like a fish.
By the end of October, Sibel had had her fill of the rusty water that poured from the old taps, the dankness of the ramshackle kitchen, the yali’s leaks and drafty cracks, and the icy north wind. Gone were the friends who had dropped by on hot September evenings, getting drunk and giddily jumping into the sea from the dark landing, now that there was more fun to be had in the autumn in the city. Here I display the damp and broken stones of the back garden and the shells of snails that crawled over them, along with our solitary friend, the panicky lizard (now petrified), who disappeared during the rains-all represent the abandonment of yali life by the nouveaux riches with the approach of winter, and the attendant melancholy of the season.
It was clear by now that any decision to stay on in the yali with Sibel for the winter depended on my proving to her sexually that I had forgotten Füsun, but as the weather grew colder, we struggled to heat the high-ceilinged bedroom, we each grew more withdrawn and hopeless, and on the few nights when we were moved to embrace, it was only in camaraderie and compassion. Despite our express contempt in ordinary days for those who used electric heaters in wooden yalis-those irresponsible philistines who subjected combustible historical buildings to risk-every evening, when we began to feel cold, we would plug that infernal device into the deadly socket. At the beginning of November, when we knew the heat had come on in our winter homes, we grew curious about the autumn parties we might be missing in town, and the new nightclub launches, and the old haunts that had been renovated, and the crowds gathering outside cinemas, so we began to make excuses for returning to Beyoğlu, and even Nişantaşı, and the streets from which I was banned.
One evening, while in Nişantaşı for no good reason, we decided to stop off at Fuaye. We ordered raki on the rocks, which we drank on empty stomachs, and exchanged greetings with the waiters we knew, speaking at length with Haydar and the headwaiter, Sadi, and like everyone else we complained about the ultranationalist gangs and leftist militants who were throwing bombs right, left, and center, bringing the country to the brink of disaster. As always, the elderly waiters were much more circumspect than we were about enlarging on politics. As we saw people we knew coming into the restaurant, we gave them welcoming looks, but no one came over. In a mocking tone Sibel asked why my mood had suddenly dropped again. Without having to exaggerate too much, I explained that my brother had patched things up with Turgay Bey, and that they were starting up a new business, with room for Kenan-how I regretted never having found a way to fire him-and this lucrative new enterprise taken together with my reaction to Turgay Bey would now furnish a pretext to exclude me.
“Kenan-is he the Kenan who was such a good dancer at the engagement party?” Sibel, I knew, was using the words “good dancer” as a way to allude obliquely to Füsun without mentioning her name. Both of us recalled the engagement party with some pain, and being unable to find an excuse to change the subject, we fell silent. This was a change. During the early days, when the reasons for my “illness” had first come to light, Sibel, even at the worst moments, had shown a lively and robust talent for changing the subject.
“Is this Kenan now to be the director of the new firm?” asked Sibel in the sarcastic voice that she’d slowly been cultivating. As I looked sadly at her hands, which were trembling, and at her heavily made-up face, it occurred to me that Sibel had changed from a healthy Turkish girl with the veneer of a French education into a cynical Turkish housewife who had taken to drink after becoming engaged to a difficult man. Was she needling me because she knew I was still jealous of Kenan on account of Füsun? A month ago, such a suspicion would not have crossed my mind.
“They’re resorting to trickery just to make a bit of loose change,” I said. “It’s not worth thinking about.”
“There’s more than a bit of loose change at stake-this could be quite lucrative, you know, or your brother wouldn’t bother. You shouldn’t sit by and let them exclude you, or deny you your share. You have to stand up to them, challenge them.”
“I don’t care what they do.”
“I don’t like this attitude,” said Sibel. “You’re letting everything go, you’re withdrawing from life; it’s almost as if you enjoy being ground down. You have to be stronger.”
“Should we order two more?” I said, lifting my glass with a smile.
As we waited for the drinks to arrive, we stayed silent. Between Sibel’s eyebrows appeared a furrow that always reminded me of a question mark, and told me she was annoyed or angry.
“Why don’t you ring Nurcihan and company?” I said. “Maybe they’d like to join us.”
“I just checked, but the pay phone here is broken,” said Sibel in an angry voice.
“So, what did you do today? Let’s see what you bought,” I said. “Open those packages of yours. Let’s have a little fun.”
But Sibel was not in the mood for opening packages.
“I am quite sure that you could not be as in love with her now as you were,” she said, with a startling airiness. “Your problem is not that you’re in love with another woman-it’s that you are not in love with me.”
“If that were so, then why am I always at your side?” I said, taking her hand. “Why is it that I don’t want to go through a day without you? Why am I always here, holding your hand?”
It wasn’t the first time we’d had this discussion. But this time I saw a strange light in Sibel’s eyes, and I feared that she would say: “Because you know that left alone you wouldn’t be able to bear the pain of losing Füsun, and that it might even kill you!” But luckily Sibel still didn’t realize that the situation was quite that bad.
“It’s not love that keeps you close to me; it just allows you to continue believing you have survived a disaster.”
“Why would I need that?”
“You’ve come to enjoy being the sort of man who is always in pain and turns his nose up at everything. But the time has come for you to pull yourself together, darling.”
I made my usual solemn assurances-that these difficult days would pass, that in addition to two sons, I was hoping we’d have three daughters who would look just like her. We were going to have a big, wonderful, happy family; we would have years and years of laughter, and lose none of the pleasures of life. To see her radiant face, to listen to her thoughtful words, to hear her working in the kitchen-these things gave me no end of joy, I told her, and made me glad to be alive. “Please don’t cry,” I said.
“At this point, it doesn’t seem to me as if any of these things could ever come true,” said Sibel as the tears began to flow faster. She let go of my hand, picked up her handkerchief, and wiped her eyes and her nose; then she took out her compact and dabbed a great deal of powder under her eyes.
“Why have you lost faith in me?” I asked.
“Maybe because I’ve lost faith in myself,” she said. “I’ve even lost my looks-that’s what I think now sometimes.”
I was squeezing her hand and telling her how beautiful she was when a voice said, “Hello, young lovers!” It was Tayfun. “Everyone’s talking about you-did you know that? Oh dear, what’s wrong?”
“What are people saying about us?”
Tayfun had come to visit us at the yali many times in September. When he saw Sibel had been crying, all the jolliness left his face. He wanted to leave the table, too, but seeing Sibel’s expression, he was paralyzed.
“The daughter of a close friend died in a traffic accident,” said Sibel.
“So what was it everyone was saying about us?” I asked mockingly.
“My condolences,” said Tayfun, looking left and right in search of an escape, and finally shouting in an overloud voice at someone who had just walked in. Before peeling himself away, he said, “People have been saying that you are so in love it’s got you worried that marriage might kill it, as happens with so many Europeans, and that, because of this, you’re thinking of not getting married. If you ask me, you should just get married. Everyone is just jealous of you. There are even people saying this yali of yours is unlucky.”
As soon as he was gone we ordered more raki. All summer long Sibel had ably masked my “illness” from others with invented excuses, but there was no way forward. Our decision to live together before marriage had become fodder for gossip. It had been noted, too, that Sibel had begun needling me and making jokes at my expense and that I’d begun to swim great distances on my back, and, of course, there was the ridicule of my low spirits for some to savor.
“Are we going to call Nurcihan and company and ask them to join us, or should we order our food?”
Sibel seemed anxious. “You go find a telephone somewhere and call them. Do you have a token?”
Among those taking an interest in this story fifty or a hundred years on, there might be a temptation to turn up their noses at Istanbul circa 1975, when there was still a shortage of running water (obliging even the richest neighborhoods to be supplied water by private trucks), and where the phones rarely worked. In an effort to elicit reflective sympathy rather than reflexive disdain, I have displayed a telephone token with serrated edges that could be bought in those days at any tobacconist’s. During the years when my story begins, there were very few phone booths in the streets of Istanbul, and even if they had not been vandalized, they were usually out of order. I do not recall being even once able to make a call from a PTT phone booth during that entire period. (Such success was only managed, it seemed, in Turkish films, whose stars copied what they saw done in Western films.) However, one clever entrepreneur had managed to sell metered phones to grocery stores, coffeehouses, and other outlets; it was by using these that our needs were met. I offer these details as explanation of why I was obliged to go from shop to shop in the streets of Nişantaşı. Finally, in a lottery ticket outlet, I found a phone not in use. But Nurcihan’s phone was busy, and the man wouldn’t let me make a second attempt to call, and some time had passed before I was able to ring Mehmet from a phone in a florist’s. I found him at the house with Nurcihan, and he said they would join us at Fuaye in half an hour.
By going from store to store, I had arrived at the heart of Nişantaşı. It occurred to me that being this close to the Merhamet Apartments, I might as well see if I could do myself some good by dropping in for a brief while. I had the key with me.
As soon as I entered the apartment, I washed my face and hands, and carefully removed my jacket, like a doctor preparing for an operation. Sitting shirtless on the edge of the bed where I had made love to Füsun forty-four times, and surrounded by all those memory-laden things (three of which I display herewith), I spent a happy hour caressing them lovingly.
By the time I got back to Fuaye, Zaim was there as well as Nurcihan and Mehmet. As I gazed upon the genial chatter of Istanbul society, and all the bottles, ashtrays, plates, and glasses on the table, I remember thinking how happy I was, and how much I loved my life.
“Friends, please excuse me for the delay. You’ll never guess what happened to me,” I said, as I tried to think up a good lie.
“Never mind,” said Zaim sweetly. “Sit down. Forget the whole thing. Come and be happy with us.”
“I’m already happy, actually.”
When I came eye to eye with the fiancée I was about to lose, I saw at once that, drunk as she was, she knew exactly what I’d been up to and had finally decided I was never going to recover. Though furious, Sibel was in no condition to do anything about it. And even when she sobered up, she would not make a scene-because she still loved me, and because the prospect of losing me still terrified her, as did the socially disastrous consequences of breaking off the engagement. This might explain why I felt even then a strong bond with her, although perhaps there were other reasons that I still did not understand. Perhaps, I reasoned, this enduring attachment would restore her faith in me, and she would return to believing in my eventual recovery. For that night, however, I felt that her optimism had run out.
For a while I danced with Nurcihan.
“You’ve broken Sibel’s heart. She’s very angry at you,” she said as we danced. “You shouldn’t leave her sitting alone in restaurants. She’s so in love with you. She’s also very sensitive.”
“Without thorns, the rose of love has no fragrance. When are you two getting married?”
“Mehmet wants us to marry right away,” said Nurcihan. “But I just want to get engaged first as you two did-and have a chance to enjoy love a bit before we settle into marriage.”
“You shouldn’t use us as your model, not to that extent, anyway…”
“Why-are there things I don’t know?” said Nurcihan, trying to hide her curiosity behind a fake smile.
But I paid her no mind. The raki was easing my obsession from a strong, steady ache into an intermittent specter. I remember that at a certain point in the evening, Sibel and I were dancing, and, like a teenage lover, I made her promise never to leave me, and she, impressed by the ardor of my pleas, tried sincerely to allay my fears. Many friends and acquaintances stopped by our table, inviting us to join them elsewhere when we had tired of Fuaye. Some wanted to play it safe and drive out to the Bosphorus for tea, others were saying we should go to the tripe restaurant in Kasımpaşa, there were even those proposing we all go to a nightclub to listen to Turkish classical music. There was a moment when Nurcihan and Mehmet wrapped their arms around each other with exaggerated abandon and amused everyone as an instantly recognizable impression of the romantic dance that Sibel and I were given to dancing. At daybreak, and in spite of pleas from a friend leaving Fuaye with us, I insisted on driving. Seeing how I was drifting back and forth across the road, Sibel began to scream, so we took a car ferry to the other side. At dawn, as the ferry approached Üsküdar, we both fell asleep in the car. A sailor woke us by pounding on the window, because we were blocking food trucks and buses. We made our way along the shore, under ghostly plane trees shedding their red leaves, reaching the yali without incident, and, as we always did following our all-night adventures, we wrapped our arms tightly around each other and drifted off to sleep.