The Museum of Innocence Read online

  “Zaim has a very good heart, and he’s honest. He just has a weakness for women. Can’t Nurcihan have a bit of fun here as she did in France? Is it absolutely necessary for her to get married?”

  “French men don’t look down on a woman just because she’s slept with a man before marriage,” said Sibel. “But here even a little fun can get you a reputation. Besides, I don’t want to see Mehmet’s heart broken.”

  “I don’t either. But I also don’t want other people’s love affairs to overshadow our engagement.”

  “You don’t seem to appreciate the pleasures of matchmaking,” said Sibel. “If these two get married, just think of it, Nurcihan and Mehmet could be our closest friends for years.”

  “I doubt Mehmet is going to be able to peel Nurcihan away from Zaim tonight. He shies away from confrontations with other men at parties.”

  “That’s why you have to go have a word with him, tell him not to be scared. I’ll handle Nurcihan, don’t you worry. Go—go and bring him back here right away.” As I stood up she gave me a tender smile. “You’re very handsome,” she said. “Don’t stop and gab. Come back at once and take me off to dance.”

  It had occurred to me that I might run into Füsun as I made my way from table to table in search of Mehmet, through the crowds of merry, shouting, half-intoxicated revelers, shaking my hand. There were three friends of my mother’s who had come to our house every Wednesday during my childhood to play bezique. With the same spontaneity that must have prompted them all to dye their hair the exact same shade of brown, they and their three husbands simultaneously began waving to me from their table, calling “Ke-maaaal” as if summoning a child. Next I saw an importer friend of my father’s who ten years later would be notorious for bringing down the minister of customs and excise who’d asked him for an obscenely large bribe, which he’d delivered inside an enormous baklava box packed with stacks of bills with a picture of Antep on the top. He’d later released to the public verbatim the intimate conversation that had ensued, recorded on the tape machine he’d secured under his arm with Gazo brand tape. He is now etched in my memory with his white tuxedo, his gold cuff links, his manicured nails that were doused in the perfume that remained on my hand long after he shook it.

  As it was with so many of the faces in the photographs my mother trimmed so meticulously for arrangement in our albums, I found many of the faces in the crowd so familiar, so close, that it made me terribly uneasy when I was unable to work out the relations among them—who was whose husband, or whose sister.

  “Kemal darling,” said an amiable middle-aged woman at just that moment. “Do you remember proposing to me when you were six years old?” It was only when I saw her stunning eighteen-year-old daughter that I recognized her. “Oh, Aunt Meral, your daughter looks just as you did then!” I said to my mother’s second cousin. When the mother told me that they were regretfully obliged to leave early, because the daughter was taking the university exam the next day, I realized that between me and my jovial aunt there were as many years—twelve, to be exact—as between me and her gorgeous daughter, an awareness that produced a momentary stupor, before I yielded to the urge to glance in the very direction I had been avoiding, but Füsun was not visible at the table in the back or on the crowded dance floor. It was shortly thereafter that this photograph was taken of me with “Ship-Sinker Güven,” who ran an insurance company. You can’t see my face, just my hand in the photo that I acquired years later from a collector whose home was littered with piles and piles of photographs of weddings and other parties from the Hilton. In another that would be taken three seconds later, the gentleman banker in the background would be shaking my hand, having introduced himself as an associate of Sibel’s father, this revelation having caused me to remember with some surprise that every time—that is to say, both times—I had been to Harrods in London, I’d seen this gentleman banker lost in thought as he was picking out an appropriately dark suit for himself.

  Making my way through the crowd, stopping to pose for souvenir photographs, I marveled at how many brunettes had bleached their hair blond; and how many of the rich, flashy men were wearing almost identical ties, watches, rings, and thick-soled shoes, and how their mustaches and sideburns were trimmed to equally disturbing uniformity, but at the same time I recalled that I knew them all and that we had many fond memories in common, and this was enough to stir a wave of nostalgia, and also wonderment at the blessed life before me, and the unparalleled beauty of the summer evening that carried the scent of mimosa. I greeted Turkey’s first Miss Europe, who had, after the age of forty, and two failed marriages, devoted herself to fund-raising balls sponsored by associations working on behalf of the poor, the disabled, and the orphaned (“Forget idealism, my dear, she takes a percentage,” my mother used to say), and who visited my father’s office once every two months, seeking his support. I remarked on the beauty of the evening to the lady whose shipping magnate husband had been shot in the eye and killed during a family feud, and who had, ever after, been teary-eyed at family gatherings. It was with great respect that I shook the soft hand of Celâl Salik (I display a column by him here), then Turkey’s best-loved, strangest, and most courageous columnist. I sat down for a photograph with the sons, daughter, and grandchildren of the late Cevdet Bey, one of Istanbul’s first Muslim businessmen. At another table of some guests invited by Sibel, I entered into a wager about the likely outcome of The Fugitive, the television series that had captivated all of Turkey and whose final episode was to be aired the following Wednesday: Dr. Richard Kimble had been hunted down for a crime he didn’t commit, and being unable to prove his innocence, would always, always be on the run!

  In the end I did find Mehmet comfortably perched on a stool in the bar adjacent to the garden, drinking raki with Tayfun, a classmate of ours.

  “Oooh, all the bridegrooms are here at last,” said Tayfun as I sat down to join them. It was not just that we were delighted to see each other; his remark brought back happy memories that caused us all to smile. During our last year at Robert College the three of us would often hop into Tayfun’s father’s Mercedes on an afternoon and head for a glitzy brothel lodged in an old pasha’s mansion in the hills above Emirgân, where every time we would sleep with the same charming, lovely girls. These girls, who’d joined us for a spin in the car a few times and for whom we felt a deep affection we were at pains to conceal, charged us much less than they did the aging loan sharks and drunken businessmen they serviced in the evenings. The madam, an old, high-class prostitute, always treated us courteously, as if we were meeting at a society ball at the Cercle d’Orient in Büyükada. But every time she saw us in our school jackets and ties, clearly on our lunch hour, in the hallway where in the evenings her miniskirted girls would sit on divans, smoking and reading photoromans while waiting for customers, the madam would burst out laughing, and call out, “Giii-iirls! Your schoolboy bridegrooms are here!” Thinking it might cheer Mehmet up to recall those happy days, I reminded him of the time when, having drifted off to sleep after making love in those rooms warmed by the spring sun streaming through the closed shutters, we gave as our excuse to the aged schoolmistress: “We were studying biology, madam,” and that from then on, “studying biology” was our code word for visiting the brothel. We remembered there was a sign on the front of the mansion, READING CRESCENT HOTEL-RESTAURANT, and that the girls had botanical aliases—Flower, Leaf, Daphne, Rose. Once on an evening visit we’d just retired upstairs with the girls when a famous tycoon turned up with his German partners; knocking on our doors, the madam had quickly extracted her girls and sent them downstairs to belly dance for the foreign guests. As consolation, we were given permission to sit quietly at a table in the back of the restaurant to watch. And as they gyrated in their sparkling, sequined harem outfits, we knew it was us, and not the aging moneybags, whom they were trying to entrance. We spoke with longing of watching them dance, knowing that we’d loved them and that we’d never forget our times in that pla
ce.

  Whenever I returned from America for summer vacation, my chums Mehmet and Tayfun were always keen to fill me in on the latest bizarre developments, for every time there was a new chief of police, the rules of engagement changed. For example, there was an establishment occupying a seven-story Greek building on Sıraselviler Avenue; for a time the police were raiding it daily, but sealing off only one floor, obliging the girls there to take their admirers to another one that was, nonetheless, adorned with the same furniture and mirrors…. In one of the side streets of Nişantaşı there was an old mansion where the bouncers ejected any guest or interested party whom they deemed not rich enough. And then there were the mobile services of Deluxe Şermin, whom I’d seen earlier that evening at the hotel entrance, and who a dozen years ago had been known to cruise around in her finned 1962 Plymouth, making a tour of the Park Hotel, the Divan, and Taksim, stopping occasionally for her two or three girls to be claimed. If you phoned ahead, she would even do “home deliveries.” My friends’ wistful tones suggested that they had found far greater satisfaction in these places, and with these girls, than they ever could in the company of “good” girls atremble with worries about their honor and virginity.

  I couldn’t see Füsun at her table, but her mother and father were still sitting there. I ordered another raki and asked Mehmet about the newest establishments. Tayfun boasted that he had all the most up-to-date information on the newest and most luxurious brothels, and then, as if to prove the point, he presented me with a malicious recitation of famous deputies caught during vice raids, married acquaintances who once spotted in the waiting room would gaze abruptly out the window to avoid his eye, and generals well known for their presidential aspirations who had died of heart attacks in the arms of twenty-year-old Circassian girls in beds overlooking the Bosphorus, though the official story would have them dying in bed beside their wives. As a soft, sweet, melody laden with memories played in the background, I could see that Mehmet balked at Tayfun’s venom. I changed the subject, reminding him that Nurcihan had come back to Turkey to marry, adding that she had even told Sibel she liked him.

  “She’s dancing with Zaim the Sodaman,” said Mehmet.

  “Only to make you jealous,” I said, without once looking at the couple on the dance floor.

  After a few moments of coyness, Mehmet admitted that he had found Nurcihan attractive, and that if she “really was serious” then of course he would be glad to sit next to her and whisper sweet nothings, and that if everything worked out, he would be grateful to me for life.

  “Then why didn’t you treat her well from the very beginning?”

  “I don’t know, I just couldn’t.”

  “Come on, let’s go back to the table, before someone takes your place.”

  Heading to the table, stopping en route to embrace many guests, I was glancing at the dance floor, scanning it for Nurcihan and Zaim, when I saw Füsun dancing … with Satsat’s young and handsome new clerk Kenan…. Their bodies were far too close…. An ache spread through my stomach as I returned to my seat.

  “What happened?” asked Sibel. “No matter, it’s not going to happen with Nurcihan, she’s just mad about Zaim. Just look at the way they’re dancing. Oh, don’t look so sad. I’m sure you did your best.”

  “You’ve got it wrong. Mehmet’s willing.”

  “Then why are you looking so grim?”

  “I’m not.”

  “My darling, it’s very clear that the joy has gone out of you,” said Sibel with a smile. “It’s about time you stopped drinking.”

  The orchestra going without pause from one number to the next was now playing a slower, more soulful tune. At the table there was a silence, a very long one, and I could feel jealousy’s venom mixing with my blood. But I did not wish to acknowledge this. Neither Mehmet nor I was looking at the dance floor, but I could tell from the looks on people’s faces that the change in tempo had pushed couples there closer together, to the pleasure of some at the table and the annoyance of others. My brother was talking, and after so many years I can’t remember a thing he said, but I do remember trying to pay close attention. Just then the orchestra began to play a number even more syrupy and romantic than the one before, and now even Berrin and Sibel, oblivious a moment ago, were registering reactions to the sight of the dancing couples as they wrapped their arms around each other even tighter. My heart and mind were in utter disarray.

  “What were you saying?” I asked Sibel.

  “What? I wasn’t saying anything. Are you all right?”

  “Shall we send the Silver Leaves a note, requesting a short break?”

  “Why? Oh, for goodness’ sake, let the guests dance,” said Sibel. “Look, even the shy ones are dancing with the girls they’ve had their eyes on all evening. Believe me, half of them will end up marrying these same girls.”

  I did not look. Neither did I let my eyes meet Mehmet’s.

  “Look, here they come,” said Sibel.

  For a moment I thought it was Füsun approaching with Kenan, and my heart began to race. But it was Nurcihan and Zaim who were returning to the table. My heart was still beating madly. I jumped up and took Zaim by the arm.

  “Come, let me introduce you to a special drink at the bar,” I said, and I took him over there. As we made our way through the crowd, again through a gauntlet of hugs and kisses, Zaim exchanged a few pleasantries with two girls who’d shown interest in him. Seeing how hopelessly one of them gazed at him (she had long black hair and the Ottoman hooked nose) I remembered hearing gossip about her falling desperately in love a few summers earlier, and attempting suicide.

  “All the girls adore you,” I said when we sat down. “What’s your secret?”

  “Believe me, I don’t do anything special.”

  “Did nothing special happen even with the German model?”

  Zaim flashed a coy, cool smile. “I’m not at all happy about my reputation,” he said. “If I ever found someone as wonderful as Sibel, I’d really want to get married, too. I have to congratulate you—I mean it. Sibel is a fabulous girl. And I can see in your eyes how happy you are.”

  “Actually I’m not so happy right now. This is what I wanted to talk to you about. I need some help.”

  “I’d do anything for you, you know that,” he said, looking deep into my eyes. “Trust me, and tell me right away.”

  As the bartender was preparing our rakıs, I looked over at the dance floor. Had Füsun, swaying with the sentimental swill, let her head fall onto Kenan’s shoulder? That part of the floor was too dark for me to see, and every attempt to catch sight of her refreshed my pain.

  “There’s a girl who’s a distant relation of my mother’s,” I said. “Her name’s Füsun.”

  “The one who was in the beauty contest? She’s dancing over there.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She’s too beautiful,” said Zaim. “I see her whenever I walk past that boutique in Nişantaşı. Like everyone else, I slow down when I’m passing and look inside. She has the sort of beauty you just can’t get out of your head. Everyone knows who she is.”

  Worrying that Zaim might now say something that would make it awkward for both of us, I said, “She’s my lover.” I saw a ripple of jealousy cross my friend’s face. “Just to see her dancing with someone else causes me pain right now. I might even say I am madly in love with her. I’m trying to think of a way out. I wouldn’t want something like this to go on for too long.”

  “Yes, the girl is wonderful, but the situation couldn’t be worse,” said Zaim. “And you’re right, you can’t let something like this go on for too long.”

  I didn’t ask him why. Nor did I ask myself whether it was in fact jealousy or contempt I saw in my friend’s face. But it was clear that I couldn’t tell him right away what I wanted him to do. I felt a need to tell him first about the depth and sincerity of this thing between Füsun and me; I wanted him to respect it. But as I began to reveal how I felt for Füsun, it was clear to m
e that my drunkenness would allow me to express only the most ordinary parts of the story, and that if I attempted emotional candor he would think me feeble and laughable, and even, despite his own dalliances, hold it against me. I suppose that in the end what I really wanted from my friend was his recognition, not of how sincere I was, but how lucky, and how happy. So it seems all these years later, but at the time, I myself could not acknowledge these things at all, and so, while we both watched Füsun dancing, and my head was spinning with drink, I told Zaim my story. I told him that I was the first man Füsun had ever slept with, describing the bliss we had discovered making love, and of our lovers’ quarrels and a string of other strange particulars that happened to pop into my head at that moment. “In short,” I said, suddenly inspired, “what I want more than anything else in life right now is to hold on to this girl until I die.”

  “I understand.”

  When I perceived in him a manly sympathy, free of reproach for my selfishness or moral judgment of my happiness, I relaxed.

  “What’s upsetting me right now is that she’s dancing with Kenan, the young clerk at Satsat. She’s putting his job in jeopardy just to make me jealous…. Of course, I’m also worried that she’ll actually fall for him. For truth be told, Kenan would be an ideal husband for her.”

  “I understand,” said Zaim.

  “In a short while I am going to invite Kenan to my father’s table. What I would like you to do is to go straight over to Füsun and keep her busy, shadow her every move, like a good football defender, so that I don’t die of jealousy tonight—and so that I can get to the end of this evening without succumbing to fantasies of firing Kenan. Füsun and her parents will be leaving soon, as she is taking the university entrance exam tomorrow. And anyway, this impossible love affair of ours must end very soon.”

  “I can’t be sure your girl will take much interest in me tonight,” said Zaim. “There’s another matter, too.”