“Let’s sit down somewhere and have a piece of cake,” I said.
Before Füsun could answer, a woman broke through the crowd and crying with delight threw her arms around her. It was Ceyda, and her two children: a boy of eight or nine and his younger brother, both in short pants and white socks, both healthy-looking and vivacious; as their mother spoke to Füsun, they eyed me curiously: They had Ceyda’s huge eyes.
“How lovely to see you two together!” said Ceyda.
“We ran into each other just a few minutes ago,” said Füsun.
“You look so nice together,” said Ceyda. They lowered their voices to continue their conversation inaudibly.
“Mother, I’m bored, can we please go?” said the older child.
I remembered sitting with Ceyda in Taşlık Park eight years ago, when this child was in her belly; as we’d gazed down at Dolmabahçe, we’d talked about the pain I was in. But recalling that time I was neither sad nor overcome by emotion.
After Ceyda had left us, we slowed down in front of the Palace Cinema where they were showing That Troublesome Song, starring Papatya. During the past twelve months, Papatya had (if the papers were to be believed) broken some world record by playing the lead in no fewer than seventeen films and photoromans. The magazines were peddling a lie about her being offered starring roles in Hollywood, and Papatya had kept the story line bubbling by posing with Longman’s textbooks and telling lies about taking English lessons, and her willingness to do whatever she could to represent Turkey abroad. As Füsun examined the film stills in the lobby, she noticed me paying close attention to her expression.
“Come on, darling, let’s go,” I said.
“Don’t worry, I’m not jealous of Papatya,” she said sagely.
We continued along in silence, gazing into shop windows.
“Sunglasses are very becoming on you,” I said. “Shall we step inside for a profiterole?”
We’d arrived at the İnci Patisserie at the exact time her mother and I had arranged for the rendezvous. Without hesitation we went inside: An empty table beckoned at the back, just as in my dreams of the past three days. We ordered the profiteroles, for which the patisserie was famous.
“I’m not wearing sunglasses to look good,” said Füsun. “Whenever I think of my father, it brings me to tears. You do understand that I am not jealous of Papatya, I hope?”
“I understand.”
“Still, I’m impressed by what she’s done,” she continued. “She put her mind to something, and she refused to give up, and she succeeded, just like a character in an American film. If I regret anything, it’s not having failed to become a successful actress like Papatya; it’s having failed to fight for what I wanted in life, and for that I have only myself to blame.”
“I’ve been pressing my case for nine years, but that is not always the best way to get what you want in life.”
“That may be true,” she said coldly. “You spoke to my mother. Now it’s time for you and me to speak.”
Exuding self-assurance, she took out a cigarette. As I leaned forward with my lighter, I looked into her eyes and-in a whisper, so that no one in this tiny patisserie could hear me-I told her once again how much I loved her, how our bad days were over, and how, despite all the time we’d lost, a great happiness awaited us.
“I feel the same way,” she said in a measured, cautious voice. Her gestures were tense, her expression anything but natural, from which I concluded there was a tempest raging inside her that required all her strength to suppress. Seeing how forcefully she was exerting herself to do the right thing, I loved her more than ever, but I also feared the intensity of what was brewing inside her.
“After I’m officially divorced from Feridun I want to meet all your family, your friends, everyone,” she said, sounding like the pupil at the head of the class, laying out her future. “I’m not in any hurry. We can take our time… After I’ve divorced Feridun, of course your mother has to come to us to seek permission. She and my mother will get along fine. But first she has to telephone my mother and apologize for not coming to my father’s funeral.”
“She was very unwell.”
“Of course. I know.”
We fell silent, and for a time picked at our profiteroles. As I watched her mouth, now filled with sweet chocolate and cream, it was not desire I felt, but love.
“There is something you must believe, and I expect you to behave accordingly. At no point during my marriage with Feridun did we have marital relations. You absolutely must believe this! In this sense I am a virgin. I shall be with only one man in my life, and that man is you. We can draw a veil over those two months that preceded the past nine years.” (Actually, dear reader, it was a month and a half, less two days.) “It will be as if we’ve just met. So it will be just as in those films-I married someone, but I remained a virgin.”
She smiled slightly as she uttered the last two sentences, but having grasped the seriousness of her demands, I only frowned soberly and said, “I understand.”
“We’ll be happier if we do it this way,” she said as one would utter any judicious pronouncement. “There’s one more thing I want. Actually, this was not my idea-it was yours. I want us all to tour Europe together in your car. My mother will come to Paris with me. We can go to the museums, look at all the pictures. Before we marry, I also want to buy things there that I can take to our house, as my trousseau.”
Hearing her speak of “our house” I broke into a smile. Even as she issued her commands she smiled slightly as she spoke, as a chivalric commander emerging victorious might declare his righteous terms at the end of a long war. Later, when she said, “We’ll have a big, beautiful wedding at the Hilton, like everyone else,” she frowned gravely. “Everything will be as it should be, down to the last detail,” she said, without affect, as if having no memories, good or bad, of my engagement party there nine years earlier, and simply wanting all to be correct.
“That’s how I want it, too,” I said.
For a time we were silent.
The İnci Patisserie had been an important landmark of my childhood excursions to Beyoğlu with my mother, and in thirty years it hadn’t changed a bit, though it was more crowded than I remembered, and that made it harder to speak.
When, for a moment, a mysterious silence fell over the whole patisserie, I whispered that I loved her very much and would obey her every wish, desiring nothing else in the world than to spend the rest of my life with her.
“Really?” she said, in the same childish manner as when doing her math homework.
She was confident and determined enough to laugh at her own words. Carefully lighting another cigarette, she enumerated her other demands: I was never to hide anything from her, I would share all my secrets, and whatever question she asked about my past, I was to answer it truthfully.
As I listened, everything I saw engraved itself upon my memory: Füsun’s stern, willful expression, the patisserie’s ancient ice cream machine, and the framed photograph of Atatürk, whose frown so closely resembled Füsun’s. We decided that the engagement should happen before we went to Paris, and that it should be a small family affair. We spoke of Feridun with respect.
Returning to the subject of sexual relations, she expressed her clear wish to wait until after marriage in the following terms: “Don’t try to force me, okay? It won’t work anyway.”
“I know,” I said. “Actually, I’d prefer this to be an arranged marriage.”
“It can almost count as one!” she said, sounding so very certain.
She went on to say that without a man in the house anymore, the neighbors might jump to conclusions if I continued coming to supper every night. (Every night?) “Of course, I don’t really care about the neighbors; they won’t be my neighbors for long,” she said later. “I just can’t have those same sweet conversations without my father there. It’s so painful.”
For a moment I thought she was going to cry, but she held herself together. The patisserie had swinging doors, but now a great influx was holding them open. A crowd of lycée students in navy jackets, their thin ties askew, were pushing their way in, laughing boisterously and jostling one another. Before long we rose to leave. Taking no end of pleasure from escorting Füsun through the Beyoğlu crowds, I walked silently by her side as far as Çukurcuma Hill.