During that spring and summer my mother and I grew closer-our camaraderie now resembled nothing we had known before. The reason, no doubt, was that she had lost my father, just as I had lost Füsun. Loss had brought us both greater maturity, and made us more indulgent. But how much did my mother know of my grief? Were she to find the spoons and ice cream cones I brought home with me, what would she think? If she had interrogated Çetin, how much would she have learned of my movements? Sometimes, in moments of misery, I would worry about such things; on no account did I want my mother to grieve for me; I did not want her thinking of me in the grip of an intolerable obsession driving me to mistakes I might “regret for a lifetime.”
Sometimes I would feign being in higher spirits than she was; I could never tell her, even in jest, that her attempts to arrange a marriage for me were pointless, and so I would still listen intently to her detailed reports on the girls she had investigated on my behalf. One of these was the Dağdelens’ youngest daughter, Billur; according to my mother, the spate of bankruptcies that had now come to pass had not arrested their “life of dissipation,” complete with cooks and servants; though she conceded that the girl had a pretty face, she added that she was very short, and when I said I was not prepared to marry a dwarf, she closed the case file. (From our earliest youth, our mother had been telling us, “Don’t you take any girl under 1 meter 65 centimeters, please; I don’t want you marrying a dwarf.”) As for the Mengerlis’ middle daughter, whom I had met with Sibel and Zaim at the Cercle d’Orient in Büyükada early the previous summer, my mother decided that she wasn’t suitable either: The girl had been very recently left in the lurch by the eldest Avunduk son, with whom she had been madly in love, and whom she hoped to marry-a state of affairs that, as my mother had only lately discovered, had been scrutinized by all Istanbul society. My mother continued her search all summer long, and always with my blessing, sometimes because I actually hoped that her efforts might somehow produce a joyous outcome, and sometimes because I hoped this project would bring her out of the reclusiveness she had entered after my father’s death. On any given afternoon, my mother might call the office from her house in Suadiye to tell me of a girl she really wanted me to see: She had been coming in the Işıkçıs’ motorboat to spend her evenings on our neighbor Esat Bey’s wharf, and if I came over to the other side before it got dark and went down to the shore, I could have a look and if I wished, I could meet her-this intelligence all relayed as dutifully as a peasant might do when leading hunters to the place where the partridges had gathered.
At least twice a day my mother would find an excuse to ring me at the office, and after telling me how long she had cried after coming across some possession of my father’s at the back of a wardrobe-his black-and-white summer spectator shoes, for example, one of which I respectfully display here-she would say, “Don’t leave me alone, please!” and would go on to remind me that I shouldn’t stay in Nişantaşı, that it wasn’t good for me to be alone either, and that she was definitely expecting me for supper in Suadiye.
Sometimes my brother would come with his wife and his children. After supper-while my mother and Berrin discussed children, relatives, old habits, new shops and fashions, the ever-spiraling prices, and the latest gossip-Osman and I would sit under the palm tree, where my father had once sat alone in his chaise longue, gazing at the islands and the stars and dreaming of his secret lovers. Here we would discuss the business and the settlement of my father’s affairs. My brother would do as he always did in those days, urging me to come in on this business with Turgay Bey, but never insisting too much; and then he would tell me, again, what a good thing it had been promoting Kenan to the managerial ranks; he would go on to denounce the difficulties I’d made with Kenan, and my refusal to be part of this new venture; after warning me that this was my last chance to change my mind, and muttering that I would live to regret losing this opportunity, he would complain that I seemed to be avoiding him, and all our mutual friends, indeed, running away from success and happiness, both in private life and at work. “What’s eating you?” he would ask with a frown.
My answer would be that I was worn out after the loss of our father and the awkward ending of my engagement to Sibel-and left feeling a bit introverted. It was a very hot July evening when I told him that I wished to be alone with my grief, and I could see from Osman’s face that he saw this as a form of madness. It seemed to me that, for now at least, my brother was willing to tolerate this as a species of severe depression; but if my affliction got any worse, he would find himself caught between embarrassment and the agreeable prospect of seizing permanent control of our business dealings through the pretext of my incapacity. But I was only afflicted by such anxieties if I’d seen Füsun very recently; if a longer time had elapsed since I’d last seen her, and I was racked with the pain of her absence, my thoughts would be only of her. My mother could sense my obsession, and the darkness inside me, but although it worried her, she did not truly want to know the details. After every meeting with Füsun I was overcome by the innocent wish to convince myself that the love I felt was of no great importance; in much the same way, I tried to persuade my mother, without quite putting it into words, that the obsession more and more evidently ruining my life was nothing to worry about. To prove to my mother that I didn’t have a “complex,” I told her that I had taken Füsun, the daughter of Aunt Nesibe the seamstress, along with her husband, out to eat on the Bosphorus, also mentioning that, at the young husband’s insistence, we had all gone to see one of the films of which he was the screenwriter-such diversions as an obsessive could hardly afford to entertain!
“Goodness,” said my mother. “I’m glad they’re doing well. I’d heard how the child was spending time with film people, Yeşilçam people, and it made me very sorry. What can you expect for a girl who enters beauty contests! But if you say they’re all right…”
“He seems to be a reasonable boy.”
“You are going to the movies with them? You should still be careful. Nesibe has a very good heart, and she’s very good company, but she’s a conniver.” Then, changing course, she said, “There’s going to be a party on Esat Bey’s wharf this evening; they sent a man over with an invitation. Why don’t you go-I can have them put my chair under the fig tree, and I can watch you from here.”