The Museum of Innocence Read online

  Sibel, too, became a believer in the idea that the pleasures of yali life would be curative. As we sat at the bay window overlooking the water, eating our evening meal like a couple who were able to live on nothing but love, the City Line ferry named Kalender would leave the Ana doluhisarı landing stage, and there at the wheel we would see the mustached captain with his cap; so close that he could see the crackling mackerel at our table, and the eggplant purée and fritters, the white cheese, the melon and rakı, he would cry, “Good appetite,” which Sibel took for yet another charming ritual bound to advance my cure and make us happy. In the morning, as soon as we awoke, my fiancée and I would jump into the cool waters of the Bosphorus; we would go to the Ferry Station Coffeehouse for tea with simits—sesame rolls—and to read the paper; we would cultivate the peppers and tomatoes in the garden; toward noon we would rush over to the fishing boats just returned with fresh fish to buy gray mullet and sea bream, and on very warm September evenings when not a leaf would rustle, when, one by one, the moths flew too close to the lights, we would splash once again in the sea now sparkling phosphorescent. Sibel’s faith that these rituals would heal me was clear when, in bed at night, she would gently drape her fragrant body around me as if changing the dressing on a wound. When the shooting pains in my stomach stopped me from making love to Sibel, I would awkwardly laugh it off, saying, “We’re not married yet, dear,” and my darling fiancée would laugh along to soothe my unease.

  Sometimes, after whiling away the night alone in a chaise longue on the terrace, or gorging on a boiled cob of corn bought from a vendor in a rowboat, or having planted two kisses on Sibel’s cheeks like any young husband getting into the car in the morning on the way to work, I could see in Sibel’s eyes a certain contempt, a budding hatred. Certainly my failure to make love to her was a cause, but there were more frightening reasons: Could Sibel have been thinking that her extraordinary show of love and restraint in the hope of “making me better” had come to nothing, or even worse, that, once cured, I would continue to see Füsun after our marriage? In my worst moments, I, too, wanted to believe in this last possibility, dreaming that one day I would receive news of Füsun, which would permit an immediate return to the happy routine of old. Our daily meetings in the Merhamet Apartments, while furnishing the ultimate remedy for the pain of love, would, of course, enable me also to make love to Sibel as before, in which state we would go on to marry and have children, enjoying the full blessings of normal family life.

  But it was only when I had lifted my spirits by drinking heavily or when a beautiful morning inspired hope that I could entertain such dreams, and even then rarely so. More typically she crowded out every other thought in my mind, and by now the pain of love was caused not so much by Füsun’s absence but by the more abstract prospect of agony without end.

  41

  Swimming on My Back

  TO BE SURE, those painful September days had their dark beauty, and as the month wore on I discovered an important new way of making them bearable: If I swam on my back, the pain would ease. To make this happen, I had to throw my head very far back to the point where I could see all the way to the bottom of the Bosphorus, but upside down, and I had to carry on swimming in this attitude for some time without coming up for air. As I backstroked through the current and the waves, I would open my eyes to see the inverted Bosphorus changing colors, fading into a blackness that awakened me to a vastness altogether different from the boundless pain of love—offering me a glimpse of a world without end.

  Because the Bosphorus is so deep so close to the shore, there were times when I could see the bottom and times I couldn’t, but to glimpse this brilliantly colored realm, albeit upside down, was to see a great, mysterious whole, at whose sight one could not but rejoice to be alive, humbled at the thought of being part of something greater. Gazing down at the rusty cans, the bottle caps, the gaping mussels, and even the ghosts of ancient ships, I would contemplate the vastness of history and time, and my own insignificance. At times like these I would notice that I could enjoy concentrating on my love and being absorbed by it. Exposed, and grieving ever more deeply, I could cleanse my soul.

  What mattered was not my pain, but my connection with this mysterious infinity shimmering beneath me. As the waters of the Bosphorus poured into my mouth, my throat, my ears, my nostrils, I could tell that the djinns inside me, governing equilibrium and happiness, were well pleased. A sort of sea drunkenness would overtake me as I propelled myself backward, stroke after stroke, until there was no pain in my stomach at all. I would feel a deep compassion for Füsun welling up inside me at that same moment, and this reminded me of how much anger I felt, too.

  Seeing me racing backward toward a Soviet oil tanker or a City Line ferry anxiously tooting its horn, Sibel would jump up and down on the shore, frantically calling to me, but most of the time I would not hear her cries. In this habit of swimming so dangerously close to the steady procession of City Line ferries, international oil tankers, cargo ships laden down with coal, passenger boats, and barges distributing beer and Meltem to the Bosphorus restaurants, almost as a challenge to those vessels great and small, Sibel saw an unhealthy impulse and in her heart she wanted me to stop bobbing backward in the Bosphorus in front of the house, but knowing what good it did chasing away the pain, she didn’t insist. Rather, sometimes she would suggest I take myself to a secluded beach, or on windless days, when the sea was calm, to Şile Beach on the Black Sea, or else go with her to one of the empty coves beyond Beykoz, and without taking my head out of the water, I could swim as far as my thoughts would take me, with no end in sight. Later, when I had swum back to shore and lay exhausted under the sun with my eyes closed, I would entertain the hopeful thought that all serious and honorable men who happened to fall passionately in love went through the same things as I did.

  Still, there was one unsettling difference: The mere passage of time brought me none of the healing it seemed to offer everyone else. Despite Sibel’s tireless encouragement during our silent nights together (when all that could be heard was the gentle putter of a barge passing in the distance), we were both daunted by the awareness that my pain would not simply ebb away. Sometimes I sought escape by willing myself to see this agony as a figment of my imagination or as proof of spiritual frailty, but to be cast in this light, as helplessly dependent on the mercy of a redeeming mother-angel-lover, was itself unbearable, so most of the time I could do nothing but continue to master the pain in the only way I knew, by swimming on my back, though I knew full well that I was deceiving myself.

  During the month of September I went three times to the Merhamet Apartments, hiding each visit from Sibel and, in a way, from myself, each time lying on the bed and touching things Füsun had touched, enacting the consolatory rituals already known to my readers. I could not forget her.

  42

  The Melancholy of Autumn

  IN THE early days of autumn, after a storm had blown in from the north, the fast-moving waters of the Bosphorus were too cold for swimming, and my melancholy had soon darkened beyond the point at which I could still hide it. Night was falling earlier each day, and all at once the shore and the back garden were carpeted with leaves; the yali apartments that served as summer homes fell empty; rowboats were pulled out of the sea, and after the first days of rain, overturned bicycles littered the suddenly empty streets, and for us a deep autumn gloom set in. With growing panic, I sensed that Sibel would soon be unable to bear my apathy or the misery that could no longer be concealed or consoled, or the consequence that I was now drinking like a fish.

  By the end of October, Sibel had had her fill of the rusty water that poured from the old taps, the dankness of the ramshackle kitchen, the yali’s leaks and drafty cracks, and the icy north wind. Gone were the friends who had dropped by on hot September evenings, getting drunk and giddily jumping into the sea from the dark landing, now that there was more fun to be had in the autumn in the city. Here I display the damp and broken stones of
the back garden and the shells of snails that crawled over them, along with our solitary friend, the panicky lizard (now petrified), who disappeared during the rains—all represent the abandonment of yali life by the nouveaux riches with the approach of winter, and the attendant melancholy of the season.

  It was clear by now that any decision to stay on in the yali with Sibel for the winter depended on my proving to her sexually that I had forgotten Füsun, but as the weather grew colder, we struggled to heat the high-ceilinged bedroom, we each grew more withdrawn and hopeless, and on the few nights when we were moved to embrace, it was only in camaraderie and compassion. Despite our express contempt in ordinary days for those who used electric heaters in wooden yalis—those irresponsible philistines who subjected combustible historical buildings to risk—every evening, when we began to feel cold, we would plug that infernal device into the deadly socket. At the beginning of November, when we knew the heat had come on in our winter homes, we grew curious about the autumn parties we might be missing in town, and the new nightclub launches, and the old haunts that had been renovated, and the crowds gathering outside cinemas, so we began to make excuses for returning to Beyoğlu, and even Nişantaşı, and the streets from which I was banned.

  One evening, while in Nişantaşı for no good reason, we decided to stop off at Fuaye. We ordered raki on the rocks, which we drank on empty stomachs, and exchanged greetings with the waiters we knew, speaking at length with Haydar and the headwaiter, Sadi, and like everyone else we complained about the ultranationalist gangs and leftist militants who were throwing bombs right, left, and center, bringing the country to the brink of disaster. As always, the elderly waiters were much more circumspect than we were about enlarging on politics. As we saw people we knew coming into the restaurant, we gave them welcoming looks, but no one came over. In a mocking tone Sibel asked why my mood had suddenly dropped again. Without having to exaggerate too much, I explained that my brother had patched things up with Turgay Bey, and that they were starting up a new business, with room for Kenan—how I regretted never having found a way to fire him—and this lucrative new enterprise taken together with my reaction to Turgay Bey would now furnish a pretext to exclude me.

  “Kenan—is he the Kenan who was such a good dancer at the engagement party?” Sibel, I knew, was using the words “good dancer” as a way to allude obliquely to Füsun without mentioning her name. Both of us recalled the engagement party with some pain, and being unable to find an excuse to change the subject, we fell silent. This was a change. During the early days, when the reasons for my “illness” had first come to light, Sibel, even at the worst moments, had shown a lively and robust talent for changing the subject.

  “Is this Kenan now to be the director of the new firm?” asked Sibel in the sarcastic voice that she’d slowly been cultivating. As I looked sadly at her hands, which were trembling, and at her heavily made-up face, it occurred to me that Sibel had changed from a healthy Turkish girl with the veneer of a French education into a cynical Turkish housewife who had taken to drink after becoming engaged to a difficult man. Was she needling me because she knew I was still jealous of Kenan on account of Füsun? A month ago, such a suspicion would not have crossed my mind.

  “They’re resorting to trickery just to make a bit of loose change,” I said. “It’s not worth thinking about.”

  “There’s more than a bit of loose change at stake—this could be quite lucrative, you know, or your brother wouldn’t bother. You shouldn’t sit by and let them exclude you, or deny you your share. You have to stand up to them, challenge them.”

  “I don’t care what they do.”

  “I don’t like this attitude,” said Sibel. “You’re letting everything go, you’re withdrawing from life; it’s almost as if you enjoy being ground down. You have to be stronger.”

  “Should we order two more?” I said, lifting my glass with a smile.

  As we waited for the drinks to arrive, we stayed silent. Between Sibel’s eyebrows appeared a furrow that always reminded me of a question mark, and told me she was annoyed or angry.

  “Why don’t you ring Nurcihan and company?” I said. “Maybe they’d like to join us.”

  “I just checked, but the pay phone here is broken,” said Sibel in an angry voice.

  “So, what did you do today? Let’s see what you bought,” I said. “Open those packages of yours. Let’s have a little fun.”

  But Sibel was not in the mood for opening packages.

  “I am quite sure that you could not be as in love with her now as you were,” she said, with a startling airiness. “Your problem is not that you’re in love with another woman—it’s that you are not in love with me.”

  “If that were so, then why am I always at your side?” I said, taking her hand. “Why is it that I don’t want to go through a day without you? Why am I always here, holding your hand?”

  It wasn’t the first time we’d had this discussion. But this time I saw a strange light in Sibel’s eyes, and I feared that she would say: “Because you know that left alone you wouldn’t be able to bear the pain of losing Füsun, and that it might even kill you!” But luckily Sibel still didn’t realize that the situation was quite that bad.

  “It’s not love that keeps you close to me; it just allows you to continue believing you have survived a disaster.”

  “Why would I need that?”

  “You’ve come to enjoy being the sort of man who is always in pain and turns his nose up at everything. But the time has come for you to pull yourself together, darling.”

  I made my usual solemn assurances—that these difficult days would pass, that in addition to two sons, I was hoping we’d have three daughters who would look just like her. We were going to have a big, wonderful, happy family; we would have years and years of laughter, and lose none of the pleasures of life. To see her radiant face, to listen to her thoughtful words, to hear her working in the kitchen—these things gave me no end of joy, I told her, and made me glad to be alive. “Please don’t cry,” I said.

  “At this point, it doesn’t seem to me as if any of these things could ever come true,” said Sibel as the tears began to flow faster. She let go of my hand, picked up her handkerchief, and wiped her eyes and her nose; then she took out her compact and dabbed a great deal of powder under her eyes.

  “Why have you lost faith in me?” I asked.

  “Maybe because I’ve lost faith in myself,” she said. “I’ve even lost my looks—that’s what I think now sometimes.”

  I was squeezing her hand and telling her how beautiful she was when a voice said, “Hello, young lovers!” It was Tayfun. “Everyone’s talking about you—did you know that? Oh dear, what’s wrong?”

  “What are people saying about us?”

  Tayfun had come to visit us at the yali many times in September. When he saw Sibel had been crying, all the jolliness left his face. He wanted to leave the table, too, but seeing Sibel’s expression, he was paralyzed.

  “The daughter of a close friend died in a traffic accident,” said Sibel.

  “So what was it everyone was saying about us?” I asked mockingly.

  “My condolences,” said Tayfun, looking left and right in search of an escape, and finally shouting in an overloud voice at someone who had just walked in. Before peeling himself away, he said, “People have been saying that you are so in love it’s got you worried that marriage might kill it, as happens with so many Europeans, and that, because of this, you’re thinking of not getting married. If you ask me, you should just get married. Everyone is just jealous of you. There are even people saying this yali of yours is unlucky.”

  As soon as he was gone we ordered more raki. All summer long Sibel had ably masked my “illness” from others with invented excuses, but there was no way forward. Our decision to live together before marriage had become fodder for gossip. It had been noted, too, that Sibel had begun needling me and making jokes at my expense and that I’d begun to swim great distances on my
back, and, of course, there was the ridicule of my low spirits for some to savor.

  “Are we going to call Nurcihan and company and ask them to join us, or should we order our food?”

  Sibel seemed anxious. “You go find a telephone somewhere and call them. Do you have a token?”

  Among those taking an interest in this story fifty or a hundred years on, there might be a temptation to turn up their noses at Istanbul circa 1975, when there was still a shortage of running water (obliging even the richest neighborhoods to be supplied water by private trucks), and where the phones rarely worked. In an effort to elicit reflective sympathy rather than reflexive disdain, I have displayed a telephone token with serrated edges that could be bought in those days at any tobacconist’s. During the years when my story begins, there were very few phone booths in the streets of Istanbul, and even if they had not been vandalized, they were usually out of order. I do not recall being even once able to make a call from a PTT phone booth during that entire period. (Such success was only managed, it seemed, in Turkish films, whose stars copied what they saw done in Western films.) However, one clever entrepreneur had managed to sell metered phones to grocery stores, coffeehouses, and other outlets; it was by using these that our needs were met. I offer these details as explanation of why I was obliged to go from shop to shop in the streets of Nişantaşı. Finally, in a lottery ticket outlet, I found a phone not in use. But Nurcihan’s phone was busy, and the man wouldn’t let me make a second attempt to call, and some time had passed before I was able to ring Mehmet from a phone in a florist’s. I found him at the house with Nurcihan, and he said they would join us at Fuaye in half an hour.