“Come inside,” said Fatma Hanım.
From her manner I guessed it was something special, so I followed. Stepping into her room, she picked something up; then she led me into my room and turned on the light; she opened her palm like someone doing a magic trick for a child.
“What’s this?” I said, before my heart began to pound.
“It’s an earring. What is this-a butterfly with a letter? Isn’t it strange?”
“It’s mine.”
“I know it’s yours. Months and months ago I found it in the pocket of your jacket. I set it aside, to give it to you. But your mother saw it and took it. She must have thought your dear departed father had bought it for someone else, and she would spoil his fun, or something like that. Anyway, she had a secret velvet pouch where she hid things from your father”-she smiled-“stole from your father and then hid from him. After your father died, she emptied it out and laid all the contents on top of his bureau, and when I saw this, I recognized it right away, so I grabbed it for you. There is also a photograph I found in one of your father’s jackets. Take that, too, before your mother sees it. Did I do well?”
“You did very well, Fatma Hanım,” I said. “You are very clever, very wise, and truly wonderful.”
With a happy smile, she handed me her gifts. The photograph was the one my father had shown me at Abdullah’s Restaurant: a picture of his deceased sweetheart. Looking at this sad girl now, and the ships and the sea in the background, I suddenly saw shades of Füsun.
The next day I called Ceyda. Two days later, we met again in Maçka and walked to Taşlık Park. Her hair was in a bun, and she was radiating with the happiness one sees uniquely in new mothers, and I soon saw she had acquired the confidence that comes of having to grow up quickly. During the past two days, and without much strain, I had written four or five letters to Füsun, finally putting the most moderate and coolheaded of these into a yellow Satsat envelope. As I had planned in advance, I frowned as I handed Ceyda the letter, telling her there had been a very important development, and that she had to make sure Füsun received this letter. My plan was to tell Ceyda nothing of the letter’s contents, creating an air of a mystery of such importance that she could not take responsibility for failing to deliver it. Ceyda’s sane, mature, accepting manner disarmed me, and it was with great excitement that I confessed to Ceyda that the letter pertained to a matter that had made Füsun very angry at me, and that when Füsun received the news I was sending her, she would be very glad, as I was, and that apart from lost time, our troubles were over. As I said my good-byes to Ceyda, who was rushing home to nurse her baby, I told her that as soon as Füsun and I married, we would have a child who would be friends with her boy, and that we would laugh one day at these troubles and the contortions it had taken to find true love. I asked her what she had named her child.
“Ömer,” said Ceyda. “But life never turns out the way we want, Kemal Bey.”
When weeks had passed without an answer from Füsun, Ceyda’s parting words came back to me often, but I never doubted that Füsun would answer my letter, for Ceyda had confirmed that Füsun was aware I had broken off the engagement. In my letter I had said that her earring had turned up in a box of my father’s, and that I wanted to bring it back to her, along with the other earrings of my father’s that I had tried to give her, and the tricycle. The time had come for the evening we had planned so long ago, when I would come for a meal with her parents.
In the middle of May, on a busy day, I was at the office reading correspondence from our distributorships in the provinces, along with other letters, personal and professional, offering friendship, thanks, complaint, apologies, and threats. Most had been written by hand, and I was struggling with some of them, because I couldn’t read the script-and then I came upon a very short letter, which I devoured with my heart pounding:
Cousin Kemal,
We too would very much like to see you. We await your company at supper on May 19.
Our phone line has not yet been connected. If you are unable to join us, send Çetin Efendi to let us know.
With our love and respects,
Füsun
Address: Dalgıç Street, No. 24, Çukurcuma
There was no date on the letter, but from the postmark I could tell it had been sent from Galatasaray Post Office on May 10. The nineteenth was more than two days hence, and though I longed to bolt straight to that Çukurcuma address, I restrained myself. If my aim was to marry Füsun in the end, and to bind her to me ever after, I should take care not to seem too anxious, I told myself.
49 I Was Going to Ask Her to Marry Me
ON WEDNESDAY, May 19, 1976, at half past seven, I set out for Füsun’s family’s house in Çukurcuma, telling Çetin Efendi only that we were going over to return a child’s tricycle to Aunt Nesibe. I gave him the address and I sat back in my seat, watching rain pour down on the streets, as if someone had upended a giant glass. Not once during my thousands of dreams of our reunion had I imagined such a deluge, or even a light drizzle.
Stopping at the Merhamet Apartments to pick up the tricycle and the pearl earrings that my father had given me in a box, I got completely soaked. Still entirely contrary to my expectations, I felt the deepest peace in my heart. It was as if I had forgotten all the pain I had endured since last seeing her at the Hilton Hotel 339 days earlier. I remember even feeling thankful for every minute I had spent writhing in agony, because it had brought me to this happy ending. I blamed nothing and no one.
I saw stretching out before me the same wondrous life I’d seen at the beginning of my story. Stopping off at a florist on Sıraselviler Avenue, I had them make me a huge bouquet of red roses that was as beautiful as that prospect. To calm myself, I’d had a half glass of rakı before leaving home. Should I have stopped off for one more at a meyhane-one of the taverns in the side streets leading up to Beyoğlu? Impatience, like the pain, had taken hold of me. “Be careful!” warned a voice inside. “This time you can make no mistakes!” As we passed the Çukurcuma Hamam shrouded in rain, I suddenly realized what a good lesson Füsun had taught me with these 339 days of agony: She had won. I was ready to do whatever she wanted, to avoid the punishment of never being able to see her again. Once I had recovered from the initial excitement, once I was sure that Füsun was at my side, I was going to ask her to marry me.
As Çetin Efendi peered through the rain, trying to read the house numbers, I conjured up the proposal scene, which I had already imagined somewhere in my mind, hiding it from my consciousness: After entering the house, handing over the tricycle, making a few jokes, taking a seat and settling in-was I up to doing all this?-I would sip the coffee Füsun brought me, and then, summoning my courage, I would look straight into her father’s eyes and say point-blank that I had come to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage. The tricycle was just an excuse. We would laugh about it, like so many jokes we would use to keep from ever talking about the agonies, or the sorrows that had caused them. As I drank the Yeni Rakı her father would naturally serve me at the table, I would look into Füsun’s eyes and feast on the happiness that my decision had brought me. We could discuss the details of the engagement and the marriage at another time.
The car stopped in front of an old building; the rain made it impossible to see what sort of structure it was. My heart racing, I knocked on the door. Almost at once Aunt Nesibe answered. As I carried the tricycle inside, I remember how impressed she was by the sight of Çetin Efendi, who stood behind me holding an umbrella, and how delighted she was by the roses. I sensed unease in her expression, but I was not the least deterred, because I was climbing the stairs, and with every step, I was drawing closer to Füsun.