The Museum of Innocence Read online

  “It surprises me that not a single one of these men would marry her,” said Sibel. “It means that no one ever loved her enough to take the plunge.”

  “Actually, men fall madly in love with women like that. But marriage—that’s something else. If she had been able to marry the Kaptanoğlu boy, Faris, right away, and without having slept with him, people would have been quick to forget how poor her family was. Or if Belkıs had come from a wealthy family, they would have overlooked her not being a virgin when she married. Because she didn’t take account of the rules and went on enjoying her sex life, all those society women, envious just a moment ago, began calling her the ‘Consoling Whore.’ But maybe for that very reason, because she gave herself to the first boy she ever loved, gave herself to her lovers without hiding it from anyone, perhaps we should have some respect for Belkıs, too.”

  “Do you feel respect for her?” asked Sibel.

  “No, to be honest, I found the deceased repulsive.”

  The party—I forget the occasion—was on the long concrete patio of a house on the Suadiye shore. Sixty or seventy people were standing there with drinks in hand, conversing in near whispers as they looked to see who was there, who was just arriving. Most of the women seemed concerned about the length of their skirts, with the ones in short skirts uneasy in the extreme, imagining their legs were too short or too thick. Perhaps this was why, at first sight, they all looked like awkward, surly bar girls. Right next to the patio, on the jetty, a big sewer was emptying into the sea, producing quite a smell for guests as white-gloved waiters wandered among them.

  After wandering around a bit myself, I met a “psychiatrist” who had just returned from America and opened an office; he gave me his new card the moment we met, and at the incitement of a vivacious middle-aged woman, he offered up a definition of love to the cluster of guests who were discovering him: When one forsook all other opportunities, wishing only to make love consistently with the same person, this feeling, which he held to be conducive to happiness, was “love.” After the discourse on love, a mother, having introduced me to her beautiful eighteen-year-old daughter, sought my advice about where to send the girl to university, so as to spare her the Turkish universities’ continual politically motivated boycotts. The conversation began with a discussion of a report in that day’s papers about how, to prevent the theft of the question booklets for the university entrance exams, the printers had been subject to a prolonged sequestration.

  Much later, Zaim appeared on the patio. He cut a handsome figure with his long limbs, sculpted chin, and beautiful eyes, and especially with the German model Inge, just as tall and elegant, on his arm. What stung hearts most about Inge, with her blue eyes, long and slender legs, fair skin, and natural blond hair, was the merciless reminder to the women of Istanbul society that even as they bleached their hair, plucked their eyebrows, and scoured boutiques for outfits that might let them feel more European, their darker skin and fuller figures were never entirely redeemed by such efforts. But I was less struck by the woman’s northern looks than by her familiar smile that I enjoyed seeing every day in the newspaper ads and on the side of the apartment building in Harbiye—it was like seeing an old friend. Soon enough the inevitable crowd had gathered around her.

  On the drive home Sibel broke the silence. “That You-Deserve-It-All Zaim, yes, I can see he is a good egg. But that fourth-rate German model, who looks like she would sleep with any Arab sheikh who asked … Wasn’t it enough to use her in his ad campaign? Must he parade her around just so everyone knows he’s bedded her?”

  “I give Zaim credit for making a go of that new soft drink of his. I remember he once told me that Turks relish the taste of a modern Turkish product much more once they’ve seen Westerners enjoying it, too…. You know, it’s highly likely that, in her friendly way, this model sees no difference between us and Arab sheikhs.”

  “When I was at the hairdresser I saw a photo of her with Zaim in Hafta Sonu, the centerfold, no less, and there was also an interview plus a very tacky picture of her half-naked.”

  The silence returned and remained for some time. At last I smiled and said: “You know that guy who was prattling away in broken German, complimenting her on the ads, and staring at her hair just to avoid looking at her breasts falling out of her dress—that big, bashful guy, Sabih the Bear … Well that was Belkıs’s second lover.”

  But as we drove under the Bosphorus Bridge, obscured in the haze, I saw that Sibel had fallen asleep.

  19

  At the Funeral

  THE NEXT day at noon I left Satsat and went home to eat fried red mullet with my mother as promised. As we removed the delicious and brilliant pink membranous skin, and with the care of a surgeon cut away the fine, translucent spine, we discussed the state of arrangements for the engagement party and the latest rumors (my mother’s preferred word for gossip). Including those who had contrived to have themselves invited and a few other eager acquaintances whose hearts she couldn’t bear to break, the list reached 230; so for that day, the maître d’hôtel of the Hilton had been obliged to take steps to ensure there would be enough “foreign liquor”—the term made it sound like a fetish. For this purpose he had begun to contact colleagues in the other big hotels as well as to cajole liquor importers with whom he’d had dealings. As for Silky İsmet, Şaziye, Left-handed Şermın, Madame Mualla, and all the other seamstresses who catered to society ladies and had once been friends and competitors of Füsun’s mother, their order books were full and their apprentices were now working until dawn every night to outfit our guests in the elaborate dresses they had ordered for the engagement party. My mother seemed to have spurred our whole world to action, except for my father, who had been complaining of fatigue and was now dozing in the bedroom. It was not on account of his health, my mother thought, but rather that he was feeling despondent, though she could scarcely imagine what could make him so upset, with his son on the verge of getting engaged, and so she began probing to see whether I might know the reason. When Bekri, as he had done since my childhood, brought in the pilaf that he invariably served after fish to aid digestion—this was an unbendable household rule—it seemed almost as if the fish had been the source of her high spirits, because once it was cleared away my mother took on a mournful tone.

  “I feel so bad about that woman,” she said, with genuine sorrow. “She suffered so much, and so many people were jealous of her. In fact she was a very good person. Very.”

  Without once referring to Belkıs by name, my mother recounted how years ago, when the Demirbağs’ eldest son, Demir, had been her lover, my parents had spent time with them in Uludağ; and whenever my father and Demir went off to play poker, my mother and Belkıs would stay up long after midnight, drinking tea and knitting and chatting in the hotel’s “rustic bar.”

  “She suffered so much, the poor woman, first on account of being so poor and then on account of men. Such suffering,” my mother said, before turning to Fatma Hanım to say, “Bring my coffee out to the balcony. We’re going to watch the funeral.”

  Except for my years in America, I had spent my whole life in this big apartment whose sitting room and wide balcony overlooked Teşvikiye Mosque, where one or two funerals took place every day, and when I was a child, these spectacles initiated us into the fearful mystery of death. Not just Istanbul’s rich but also famous politicians, generals, journalists, singers, and artists had their funeral prayers said at the mosque, considered a prestigious point of departure for the “final journey,” whereby the coffin was carried slowly on shoulders to Nişantaşı Square—the procession accompanied, depending on the rank of the deceased, by a military band or the city council ensemble playing Chopin’s Funeral March. When my brother and I were little we would put long, heavy bolsters from the divan on our shoulders and Bekri Efendi, Fatma Hanım, Çetin the chauffeur, and others would follow us as we hummed the funeral dirge, swaying slightly, just as the bearers of the dead did, on our way down the corridor. Just bef
ore a funeral of broad public interest—if the deceased was a prime minister, a famous tycoon, or a singer—the doorbell would ring and unexpected guests would appear, saying, “I was just passing by, and I thought I’d drop in,” and though my mother never let her manners lapse, later on she would say, “They didn’t come to see us but to see the funeral.” And so we began to think of the ceremony not as a comfort against the sting of death or a chance to pay one’s last respects to the deceased, but as an amusing diversion.

  “Come over to this side, you’ll have a better view,” my mother said as I joined her at the small table on the balcony. But when she saw me suddenly go pale, with no evident enjoyment at watching the crowd of mourners, she drew the wrong conclusion: “You know, it’s not that father of yours napping inside who is keeping me from attending the funeral of this woman I loved dearly. It’s the men down there like Rıfkı, like Samim, who are wearing their dark glasses not to hide their tearful eyes, but to hide that they shed no tears. Well, anyway, you can see it much better from here. What is wrong with you?”

  “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  Below the gate to the Teşvikiye Mosque courtyard, in the shaded area where women gathered as if by instinct, I’d seen Füsun among the covered women and the society women who, for the occasion, had draped chic, fashionable scarves over their heads, and at that moment, my heart had begun to race. She was wearing an orange scarf. As the crow flies there were seventy, perhaps eighty meters between us. She was breathing, she was frowning, her soft skin was perspiring slightly in the midday heat; annoyed by the crowd of covered women pressing against her, she was biting her lower lip, shifting the weight of her slender body from one foot to the other—of course, I did not just see all these things, I felt them inside me. I longed to cry out to her from the balcony and wave, but as in a dream I had no voice, and my heart continued to pound.

  “Mother, I have to go.”

  “Ah! What’s come over you? Your face is deathly white.”

  On the street I watched her from afar. Şenay Hanım was next to her. As she listened in to her employer’s conversation with a potential if not actual customer, a stocky but stylish woman, she ran her fingers over the ends of the scarf she had tied so awkwardly under her chin. The scarf had endowed her with a proud and sacred beauty. The Friday sermon was blaring on loudspeakers in the courtyard, but the sound was so bad that no one could make out what the preacher was saying, except for a few words about death being the last station and his boorish and insistent repetition of the word “Allah,” a calculated bit of intimidation, I thought. From time to time, someone would rush into the crowd, as if arriving late to a party, and as all heads turned, a little black-and-white photograph of Belkıs would be pinned onto the latecomer’s collar. Füsun carefully eyed everyone around her, as they greeted one another with a wave across the crowd, arms open for embrace, a hug of consolation, and mutual concern.

  Like everyone else Füsun was wearing the photograph of Belkıs on her collar. It had become commonplace at funerals following political assassinations (so frequent in those days), and the custom had quickly gained currency among the Istanbul bourgeoisie. Many years later I was able to assemble a small collection of these tokens, and I display them here. When crowds of sighing (but inwardly content) socialites sporting sunglasses took to such displays, like so many right-and left-wing militants, these photographs would give an ordinary lighthearted society funeral intimations of an ideal that might be worth dying for, a hint of common purpose, and a certain gravitas. In imitation of the Western conceit, the photograph was framed in black, by which formerly happy images appropriated for death notices assumed the cast of mourning, and the most frivolous images could attain in death the somber dignity usually reserved for victims of political assassination.

  I left without coming eye to eye with anyone, rushing off to the Merhamet Apartments, where I impatiently awaited Füsun. Every now and then I glanced at my watch. Much later, and without giving it much thought, I found myself parting the dusty curtains to look through the always closed window that gave onto Teşvikiye Avenue, and I saw Belkıs’s coffin pass below slowly in the funeral car.

  Some people spend their entire lives in pain, owing to the misfortune of being poor, stupid, or outcast from society—this thought passed through me, gliding by with the measured pace of the coffin, then disappeared. Since the age of twenty I had felt myself protected by an invisible armor from all variety of trouble and misery. And so it followed that to spend too much time thinking about other people’s misery might make me unhappy, too, and in so doing, pierce my armor.

  20

  Füsun’s Two Conditions

  FüSUN ARRIVED late. This upset me, but she was even more upset than I was. She explained that she had run into her friend Ceyda, but it sounded less like an apology than an accusation. Some of Ceyda’s perfume had brushed off on her. Füsun had met Ceyda during the beauty contest. She’d been unfairly treated, too, coming in third. But now Ceyda was very happy because she was going out with the Sedircis’ son, and this boy was serious; they were thinking about marriage. “That’s wonderful, isn’t it?” said Füsun, and as she gazed into my eyes her sincerity was arresting.

  I was about to nod when she said there was a problem. Because the Sedircis’ son was so “serious,” he didn’t want Ceyda working as a model.

  “For example, now that it’s summer, she’s booked to do an ad for a swing set. But her boyfriend is very strict, very conservative. So he is forbidding her to appear in a commercial for a covered swing set built for two—forget about wearing a miniskirt, he won’t even let her do it if she wears a dress that shows nothing. And Ceyda has completed a professional modeling course. Her picture is already in the papers. The manufacturer of the canopies for the swing sets is willing to use Turkish models, but the boy just won’t have it.”

  “You should warn her that this man could have her under lock and key in no time.”

  “Ceyda has been ready to marry and become a housewife for ages,” said Füsun, annoyed that I had failed to understand what she was talking about. “But her fear is that this serious man might not be so serious about her. I promised to get together and talk about it. What do you think, how can you tell if a man is serious?”

  “How would I know?”

  “You know exactly how men like this are….”

  “I know nothing about rich conservative types from the provinces,” I said. “Come on, let’s look at your homework.”

  “I didn’t do any homework. Okay?” she said. “Did you find my earring?”

  My first impulse was to go through the motions like some sly drunk driver stopped for a police search who knows full well that he has left his license at home, yet searches his pockets, his glove compartment, his bags, in a parody of good faith. But I caught myself in time.

  “No, dear, I looked for your earring but couldn’t find it,” I said. “But don’t worry—it will turn up sooner or later.”

  “I’ve had enough! I’m leaving and I’m never coming back!”

  I understood from the misery on her face as she looked around to gather her things, even as she fumbled, unsure where to put her arms, that this outburst was not just theater. I planted myself in front of the door like a bouncer and begged her not to go, pelting her with professions of how deeply in love with her I was (all true), until I could see, from the hint of a happy smile in the corners of her mouth, and the effort she made to hide her pity—slightly raising her eyebrows—that she was beginning to relent.

  “All right, I won’t go,” she said. “But I have two conditions. First, tell me who you love most in the world.”

  She saw at once that she had confused me, and that I could not answer with Sibel’s name or her own. “Give me the name of a man….” she said.

  “My father.”

  “Fine. My first condition is this. Swear on your father’s head that you’ll never ever lie to me.”

  “I swear.”

  “Not like
that. Say the whole sentence.”

  “I swear on my father’s head that I’ll never ever lie to you.”

  “That was too easy for you.”

  “What’s your second condition?”

  But before she could announce her second condition, we were kissing and soon gaily making love. We put so much into it this time and our love so intoxicated us that we felt ourselves transported to an imaginary place, a new planet. In my own mind’s eye it was an alien surface, a silent, rocky desert island, the first photographs from the moon. Later Füsun would tell me her vision: a dark garden thick with trees, a window overlooking it, and in the distance the sea and a bright yellow hillside where sunflowers waved in the wind. Such scenes came to us at moments like this when our lovemaking surprised us—for example when I had taken into my mouth Füsun’s breast and her ripe nipple, or when Füsun had buried her nose in the place where my neck joined my shoulders and was locking me in her arms with all her might, or when we read in each other’s eyes a startling intimacy that neither of us had ever felt before.