It was a burning sensation, from inside me, and it felt like remorse. What was she doing at this moment? My feet were not carrying me home but in just the opposite direction. When I reached Kuyulu Bostan Street, I walked past a coffeehouse where my friends used to play cards and listen to the radio when we were young, and then past the schoolyard where we’d played football. My inner rationalist, though weakened by all the raki I’d drunk, was not yet dead, and now it warned me that it would be Füsun’s father who’d open the door and that the consequences might be scandalous. I walked only far enough to be able to see their house in the distance, and the lights in the windows. Just to see the second-floor windows reached by the chestnut tree was enough to make my heart pound.
I commissioned this painting to exhibit right here in our museum, providing the artist with all the necessary details, and while it offers a fine impression of the orangey lamplight cast onto the interior of Füsun’s apartment, and the chestnut tree shimmering in the moonlight, and the depth of the dark blue sky beyond the line of rooftops and chimneys of Nişantaşı, does it also, I wonder, convey to the visitor the jealousy I acknowledged as I beheld that view?
As drunk as I was, I was now seeing things clearly-yes, I had come here on this moonlit night to catch a glimpse of Füsun, perchance to kiss her, to speak to her, but in equal part to ensure that she was not spending this evening with someone else. Because now, having gone “all the way” with one man, she might possibly be curious about the experience of making love with one of those other admirers she had enumerated. What fed the ever-growing jealousy festering inside me was that Füsun had embraced the pleasures of lovemaking with the enthusiasm of a child given a wonderful new toy, and that when we made love she was able to give herself over to pleasure completely, in a way I had rarely observed in a woman. I do not remember how long I stood there looking at the windows. It was, I know, quite late by the time I got home, the baby doll present still in my hand, and went to bed.
In the morning, on my way to work, I thought about the things I had done the night before, taking measure of the jealousy I had been unable to banish from my heart. I was gripped then by the fear that I might be besotted. As she drank from a bottle of Meltem, Inge the model eyed me saucily from the side of an apartment building, warning me to be careful. I considered discussing my secret in jest with friends like Zaim, Mehmet, and Hilmi, so as to release the obsession from the confines of my mind, where it could only intensify. But because my best friends all seemed to like Sibel a great deal-indeed found her very attractive to the point of being envious-I doubted they would give me a sympathetic hearing, or feel much pity. For I knew that as soon as I broached the subject, I would find my calculated and affected mockery crumbling under the weight of my passion, until my longing to speak of Füsun sincerely could no longer be denied, and my friends would conclude that I was indeed undone. And so as the Maçka and Levent buses (the same ones I used to ride with my mother and brother on the way back from Tünel) went rumbling past the windows of my office, I concluded that there was, for now, little I could do to master my desire for Füsun without destroying the chance of the happy marriage that I still wanted very much; and that, rather, I should leave things as they were, avoiding panic, and making the most of all that life had so generously conferred on me.
17 My Whole Life Depends on You Now
BUT WHEN Füsun was ten minutes late for our next rendezvous at the Merhamet Apartments, I immediately forgot my resolutions. I kept glancing at my watch, a present from Sibel, and at the Nacar brand alarm clock Füsun so loved to shake until it jangled, and I peeked continually through the curtains at Teşvikiye Avenue, pacing up and down the creaky parquet floor, unable to take my mind off Turgay Bey. Soon I bolted the apartment and went outside.
I kept a careful eye on both sides of the street, to make sure I didn’t miss Füsun walking toward me, and I proceeded as far as the Şanzelize Boutique. But Füsun wasn’t in the shop either.
“Kemal Bey! How can I help you?” said Şenay Hanım.
“We’ve decided I should buy that Jenny Colon handbag for Sibel Hanım after all.”
“So you’ve changed your mind,” said Şenay Hanım. I could see a hint of mockery on her curled lips, but not for long. If I was embarrassed because of Füsun, she must have felt some shame for knowingly selling me a fake. We both fell silent. With torturous slowness, she retrieved the bag that had been restored to the arm of the mannequin in the window, dusting it off with the ritualized care of a seasoned shopkeeper. I directed my attention to Lemon the canary, who was having a dreary day.
After I had paid and was on my way out with my purchase, Şenay Hanım said, “Now that you trust us, perhaps you can grace our shop more often.” She took obvious pleasure in her double meaning.
“Of course.” If I didn’t buy enough from Şenay Hanım, might she plant the seed of suspicion in Sibel, who came into this shop from time to time? It grieved me less to imagine myself falling slowly into this woman’s trap than to catch myself making such petty calculations. I imagined that Füsun had gone to the Merhamet Apartments while I was out, and not finding me, had left. In the bright spring day the sidewalks were swarming with housewives out shopping, young girls clomping around in the latest platform shoes paired with ill-fitting short skirts, and pupils swarming out of the schools from which they had just been dismissed. Still searching for Füsun, I cast my eyes over the gypsy flower seller, and the vendor of black market American cigarettes (who everyone said was a plainclothes policeman), and the other denizens of Nişantaşı.
A water tanker with the words LIFE-CLEAN WATER on its side sped by, and Füsun emerged from behind it.
“Where have you been?” we said in unison, joyous smiles coming to our lips.
“The witch stayed in during lunchtime, and she sent me off to a friend’s shop. So I got to the apartment late, and you weren’t there.”
“I got worried, so I went to the shop. Look, I bought the bag as a memento.”
Füsun was wearing the earrings of which one is displayed at the entrance to our museum. We walked down the street together. We turned off Valikonağı Avenue into Emlak Avenue, which was not so crowded. We had just passed the apartment that housed the dentist to whom my mother brought me when I was a child (as well as the doctor in whose office I had first felt the unforgettable hardness of the cold tongue depressor shoved into my mouth) when we saw that a crowd had gathered at the foot of the hill; a few others were running down to join it, while others still were coming toward us, their faces contorted by what they had seen.
There had been an accident; the road was closed. Only a few minutes earlier the “Life-Clean Water” tanker had swerved into the left lane while heading down the hill and had crushed a dolmuş. The driver of the shared taxi was cowering in a corner, his hands trembling as he smoked a cigarette. The weight of the water tanker had crushed the long nose of a 1940s Plymouth that did the Taksim-Teşvikiye route. All that survived was the taxi meter. Beyond the ever-growing crowd of onlookers, amid the shards of glass and broken car parts, I saw the body of a woman trapped in the front seat, and recognized her as the dark-haired woman I’d passed on my way out of the Şanzelize Boutique. The street was now covered with debris. Taking Füsun by the arm, I said, “Let’s go.” But she paid me no mind. She stood there silently, staring at the woman pinned inside the wreck, until she had had her fill.
By now the crowd had grown considerably, and I was beginning to feel uneasy, less on account of the dead woman inside the car (yes, she must have been dead by then) than out of fear that I might run into someone I knew, when at last a police car came into view; wordlessly we moved away from the accident. As we walked without speaking up the street where the police station was, straight to the Merhamet Apartments, we were fast approaching the “happiest moment of my life” mentioned at the beginning of this book.