Each time the tension between the comrades and the concubines intensified, Petite-Ma, who identified herself with neither group, secretly gestured to the maid to serve mint liquor in crystal glasses and almond paste sweets on silver plates. This duo, she had discovered, was the only thing that could soothe the nerves of every single Turkish woman in the room, no matter which camp she was in.
Late into the party, Riza Selim Kazanci would call his wife and ask her to play the piano for the honored guests. Petite-Ma never refused. In addition to Western composers, she played national anthems exuding patriotic fervor. The guests cheered and applauded. Particularly in the year 1933, when the anthem of the Tenth Anniversary was composed, "March of the Republic," she had to play it over and over again. The anthem was everywhere, echoing in their ears when they slept. It was a time when even babies in their cradles were put to sleep with this hearty rhythm.
Consequently, at a time when Turkish women were going through a radical transformation in the public sphere thanks to a series of social reforms, Petite-Ma was savoring her own independence within the private sphere of her home. Though her interest in the piano never diminished, it didn't take Petite-Ma too long to come up with a list of new diversions. Hence in the years to follow, she would learn French, pen never-to-be-published short stories, excel in different techniques of oil painting, doll herself up in shiny shoes and satin ball gowns, drag her husband to dances, throw crazy parties, and never do a day of housework. Whatever his perky wife asked for, Riza Selim Kazanci complied with fully. He was usually a composed man with a lot of esteem for others and a profound sense of justice. However, like too many made out of a similar mold, he could not be mended once broken. Consequently, there was one topic that brought the bad side out in him: his first wife.
Even years later whenever Petite-Ma happened to ask him anything about his first wife, Riza Selim Kazanci drifted into silence, his eyes shadowed by an uncharacteristic gloom. "What kind of a woman can abandon her son?" he said, his face crumpling with detestation.
"But don't you want to know what happened to her?" PetiteMa inched closer and sat on her husband's lap, caressing his chin softly, as if to cajole him into facing the question.
"I have no interest in learning that slut's fate." Riza Selim Kazanci stiffened, without caring to lower his voice so that Levent wouldn't hear him smear his mother.
"Did she run away with someone else?" Petite-Ma insisted, knowing she was surpassing her limits but confident that she could not fully know what her limits were until she had surpassed them.
"Why are you poking your nose into things that are none of your business?" Riza Selim Kazanci snapped in reply. "Are you interested in repeating the act or what?"
With that Petite-Ma learned what her limits were.
Except for the moments when the topic of the first wife came up, their life flowed tranquilly in the years that followed.. Comfortable and contented. Unusual indeed given that the families around them were anything but. Their contentment was a source of envyy for relatives and friends and neighbors. They would meddle in whenever they could. The most suitable topic to pick on was the couple's childlessness. Many tried to persuade Riza Selim Kazanci to marry another woman before it was too late. Since under the new civil law men could no longer have more than one wife, he would have to divorce this wife of his who, by now everybody suspected, was either barren or bolshie. Riza Selim Kazanci turned a deaf ear to such counsels.
On the day he died, a totally unexpected death common to generations of Kazanci men, Petite-Ma came to believe in the evil eye for the first time in her life. She was convinced that it was the gaze of the jealous people around them that had pierced through the walls of this otherwise blissful konak and killed her husband.
Today she barely remembered any of that. As her creased, bony fingers caressed the old piano, Petite-Ma's days with Riza Selim Kazanci flickered from a distance like a dim, ancient lighthouse misguiding her through the stormy waters of Alzheimer's.
On a divan in a renovated apartment facing the Galata Tower, a neighborhood where the streets never slept and the cobblestones knew many secrets, under the rays of the sunset reflecting from the glass windows of decrepit buildings and amid the squeals of the seagulls, Asya Kazanci sat nude and still, like a statuette absorbing the talent of the artist who had carved her out of a block of marble. As her mind drifted into fantasyland, so did the thick smoke she had just inhaled coil inside her body, burning her lungs, elating her spirits until she finally exhaled it slowly, reluctantly.
"What are you pondering, sweetheart?"
"I am working on Article Eight of my Personal Manifesto of Nihilism," Asya replied as she opened her foggy eyes.
Article Eight: If between society and the Self there lies a cavernous ravine and upon it only a wobbly bridge, you might as well burn that bridge and stay on the side of the Self, safe and sound, unless it is the ravine that you are after.
Asya took another drag, and held the smoke in.
"Here, let me feed you," said the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist, taking the joint from her hands. He leaned toward her, his hairy chest pressing against her; she opened her mouth like a blind baby bird ready to be fed. He blew the stream of smoke directly into her mouth; she inhaled it eagerly as if thirstily drinking water.
Article Nine: If the ravine inside enthralls you more than the world outside, you might as well fall in it, fall into yourself.
They repeated the act, he directing the smoke into her mouth, she taking it in again and again, until the last puff of smoke that had disappeared down her throat was released.
"I bet you are feeling better now," cooed the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist, his face reflecting his desire for more sex. "There is no cure better than a good screw and a good joint."
Asya bit the inside of her mouth to fight back the urge to raise objections. Instead, she tilted her head toward the open window and stretched her arms as though she were about to embrace the whole city, with all its chaos and splendor.
He in the meantime was busy perfecting his statement: "Let's see. There is nothing so overrated as a bad fuck and nothing so underrated as a good-"
"Shit." Asya lent a hand.
Nodding heartily, the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist stood up with only his silken boxers on and his slight beer belly exposed. He lolloped toward the CD player to put on a song, which happened to be one of her all-time Johnny Cash favorites: "Hurt." Swinging with the opening rhythm of the song, he walked back, his eyes all glittery: I hurt myself today / To see if I still feel…
Asya scrunched up her face like she had just been pinched by an invisible needle. "It's such a pity…."
"What is a pity, sweetheart?"
She stared at him with widely opened troubled eyes that seemed to belong to someone three times her age. "It sucks," she groaned. "These managers and organizers, whatever they are called, they organize European tours or Asian tours or even hurrah-perestroikaSoviet Union tours… but if you are a music fan in Istanbul you do not fit into any geographical definition. We fall through the cracks. You know, thee only reason why we don't have as many concerts as we'd like to is the geostrategic position of Istanbul."