“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.