“I knew Füsun,” said Orhan Bey. “I remember her from the engagement party at the Hilton. I was so very sorry to hear she had died. She used to work at that boutique down the road. I even danced with her at your engagement party.”
“Is that true? She was such an exceptional person, wasn’t she… I’m not talking about her beauty, but her soul, Orhan Bey. When you were dancing with her, what did you say to each other?”
“If you really have all of Füsun’s things in your possession, I would like to see them.”
First he came to Çukurcuma, showing a genuine interest in this collection I’d assembled and this museum I’d made from an old house, an admiration he made no effort to conceal. Now and then he would pick up an object, for example, the yellow pump that Füsun was wearing the first time I saw her in the Şanzelize Boutique, and he’d ask me to tell him its story, and so I would.
Later on we began to work in a more organized fashion. Whenever I was in Istanbul he would come to my attic once a week, always asking me why the objects and photographs I had recalled and organized in a row had to appear in the same order in the boxes and display cases of the museum and why each had to be mentioned in its particular chapters. With the greatest pleasure I would tell him. He listened very carefully to everything I said, and when I saw him taking notes I was pleased-and proud.
“Please finish this novel now, so that people who are interested can tour the museum with the book in hand. As they walk from case to case in my museum, seeking a better understanding of my love for Füsun, I’ll come down from my attic room in my pajamas and wander among them.”
“But you haven’t finished your museum either, Kemal Bey,” Orhan Bey would say by way of reply.
“There are many museums in the world I have yet to see,” I would say with a smile. And then I would try, yet again, to explain the spiritual effect that the silence of museums had on me, what sublime happiness it was to be in a far corner of the world on an ordinary Tuesday morning, strolling through a forgotten museum in an out-of-the-way neighborhood, and evading the scrutiny of the guards. Whenever I returned from my travels I would ring Orhan Bey at once, and tell him about the museums I’d seen, bringing tickets and brochures out of my pocket, as well as the little trinkets and directional signs that I had pocketed in the museums I most liked.
It was just after my return from one such journey that, after telling him my story, and describing the museums I’d visited, I asked him how the novel was progressing.
“I am writing the novel in the first person singular,” said Orhan Bey.
“What do you mean?”
“In the book you are telling your own story, and saying ‘I,’ Kemal Bey. I am speaking in your voice. Right now I am trying very hard to put myself in your place, to be you.”
“I understand,” I said. “So tell me, have you ever been in love this way, Orhan Bey?”
“Hmmmmm… We aren’t talking about me,” he said, and he fell silent.
After working together for a long while, we had some raki in my garret. Talking about Füsun and our life together had tired me. After he left, I stretched out on the bed where Füsun and I had once made love (more than a quarter century ago) and thought about why I felt so strange about his telling the story from my point of view.
Though I had no doubt that it would remain my story, and that he would treat it respectfully, the idea of his speaking in my voice was disturbing. It seemed a failure of courage, a sort of weakness on my part. While I thought it perfectly normal to tell the story to visitors myself, pointing out relevant objects along the way, for Orhan Bey to put himself in my place, for him to make his own voice heard in place of mine-this annoyed me.
I was feeling that way two days later, when I asked him about Füsun. That night we again met in the attic of my museum, and had already polished off our first glass of raki, when I said, “Orhan Bey, could you please tell me about your dance with Füsun the night of my engagement party?”
For a while he was reluctant-I think he was embarrassed. But when we’d each had another rakı, Orhan Bey described with such feeling how he’d danced with Füsun a quarter century ago that he immediately won my trust as the ideal person to tell my story to museum visitors in my voice.
It was around then that I decided my voice had been heard too much anyway, and that it was time I left it to him to finish my story. From the next paragraph until the end, it will, in essence, be Orhan Bey who is telling the story. Having paid Füsun such sincere, detailed attention during their dance, he will, I am sure, do no less in these last pages. Farewell!
HELLO, THIS IS ORHAN PAMUK! With Kemal Bey’s permission I shall begin by describing my dance with Füsun: She was the most beautiful girl there that night, and there were many men waiting their turn to dance with her. I was not handsome or flamboyant enough to catch her eye, and, though five years older than her, I was not, how shall I put it, mature enough, and in those days I didn’t have much self-confidence, either. My mind was crammed with moralistic thoughts and books and novels that made it impossible for me to enjoy the evening. That her mind was occupied with very different matters you will already know.
Yet despite all this, after she had accepted my invitation to dance, as I followed her to the dance floor, I entered into a reverie at the sight of her tall form, her bare shoulders, her magnificent back, and her fleeting smile. Her hand was light but warm to the touch. When she put her other hand on my shoulder there was a moment when I could not have been prouder had she been my own, and not merely my momentary dance partner. As we swayed lightly across the floor, I was driven to distraction by the closeness of her skin, her perfect posture, the liveliness of her shoulders and her breasts, and though I did my best to resist her attractions, I was unable to stop the fantasies racing through my mind: We left the dance floor hand in hand, going upstairs to the bar; we were falling madly in love; we were kissing under those trees just over there; I was sure we would be getting married!
Just to get the conversation going, I said the first thing that came into my head (“When I’m walking down the street in Nişantaşı, I sometimes see you in the shop”), but my dull words only reminded her that she was a very beautiful shopgirl, and she was unimpressed. Anyway, by the middle of the first dance, she had already worked out that I wasn’t up to much, and had begun looking over my shoulder at the people sitting at the tables, and trying to see who was dancing with whom, keeping track of the many men who had shown an interest in her, to see whom they were laughing and talking with now, and sizing up the most charming and beautiful women, to plan her next move.
I had respectfully (but also with delight) placed my right hand just above her beautiful hip, and with the tips of my first two fingers could feel every movement of her spine, down to the merest flutter, as if taking her pulse. Her curiously erect posture set my head spinning, and for years I would be unable to forget it. There were moments when I could feel in my fingertips the blood coursing through her body, the very life, and then suddenly she would fixate on something new, causing her organs to flinch, a frisson through her elegant frame, and it was all I could do not to embrace her with every bit of my strength.
As the dance floor became crowded, another couple bumped into us from behind, and for a moment our bodies were pressed together. After that shockingly intimate instant, I remained silent for some time. As I gazed upon her neck and her hair, I was so swept up in the fantasy of happiness with her that I would have gladly abandoned my books and my dreams of becoming a novelist. I was twenty-three years old and quick to anger when the bourgeoisie of Nişantaşı, even my own friends, would laugh at my decision to become a novelist, snidely telling me that no one my age could possibly have enough understanding of life for that. Exactly thirty years later, as I revise these lines, I would now like to add that I believe these people were right. Had I had any understanding of life then, I would have done everything in my power to intrigue her during our dance, I would have believed that she could take an interest in me, and when she slipped out of my arms, I would not have stood there so helplessly watching her go. “I’m tired,” she said. “Would you mind if I sat down after the second dance?” I was walking her back to her table, a courtesy I had learned from films, when I suddenly couldn’t hold myself back.