The Museum of Innocence Read online

  If I was unable to stay at home, as on most evenings, I didn’t always go to the Keskins’. Sometimes I’d go to a party, hopeful of meeting a nice girl who would help me forget Füsun; sometimes I would go out for a few drinks with old friends and chat. If Zaim had taken me to a party, or, finding myself in the home of some distant relation recently come into society, I ran into Nurcihan and Mehmet, or if, late at night, Tayfun had driven me to a nightclub and, bumping into long-lost friends, we ordered a bottle of whiskey and sat together listening to Turkish pop songs (mostly rip-offs of French and Italian pop songs), I would alight upon the mistaken notion that I was slowly returning to my former healthy life.

  It was not the shame and indecision I felt in advance of going to Füsun’s that bespoke the gravity of my affliction, but rather the indecisive inertia that overtook me when, having sat with them for hours, eating supper and watching television, the time to go home had come. Besides the shame of ordinary inertia, there was in the extreme instance the shame I felt when I was literally unable to summon the will to leave the Çukurcuma house at all.

  The television broadcast would end every evening between half past eleven and midnight, and the images of the flag, Atatürk’s mausoleum, and “our boys” in the army would be replaced by a snowfall of blurry dots, which we would also watch for a while, as if some further program might come on by mistake, until Tarık Bey said, “Füsun, my girl, let’s turn this thing off now,” or else Füsun did so unbidden, with a single touch. And so would begin the particular misery I now wish to analyze. The feeling that if I did not stand up at once and leave there would ensue great discomfort in everyone. I couldn’t reckon how apt it was to worry about this. I would just think, I’ll be getting up soon. Having heard them speak ill of guests who dashed off the moment the broadcast ended, with scarcely a “good-night,” and of neighbors without televisions of their own who did likewise, I deluded myself, imagining I was merely being polite.

  Certainly they knew that I did not come calling to watch television, but to be near Füsun, but sometimes to finesse this imperative I would phone ahead, saying to Aunt Nesibe, “Why don’t I come over this evening. They’re showing Pages from History!” But having seized on such a pretext, I had locked myself into a need to be off once the program was over. So at that moment, the television having been turned off, I would sit for a casual while longer, before telling myself, more forcefully now, that I needed to stand up and get going, but my legs would not obey me. In this motionless state I would remain, whether at the table, or on the L-shaped divan, like a figure in a painting, and as I felt the perspiration beading on my brow, many Aristotelian moments would pass, the ticking of the clock punctuating my discomfort, as I exhorted myself, saying, “I’m standing up now!” forty times over, but still to no avail.

  Even all these years later this inertia baffles me somewhat, just as I cannot fully comprehend the love that so afflicted me, though I can adduce, perfectly, any number of discrete reasons for my apparent loss of will:

  1. Every time I said, “I must get going now,” Tarık Bey or Aunt Nesibe would say with sincerity, “Oh, please stay a little longer, Kemal Bey, we were sitting so nicely!”

  2. If they did not, Füsun might give me an enchanting smile, with such a mysterious air that I would be all the more confused.

  3. Then someone would begin telling a new story, or bring up a new subject. To get up now, before this new story was told, would be rude, I told myself, and so I would sit there, however uneasily, for twenty minutes more.

  4. Coming eye to eye with Füsun I would lose all sense of time, until finally glancing at my watch I’d see that forty, not twenty, minutes had passed, and then I’d say, “Oh, look at the time,” but I still wouldn’t go: I’d just sit there, cursing myself for being so weak, my inertia and shame growing ever deeper, until the moment arrived when it became too heavy to bear.

  5. I would search my mind for an excuse to sit there just a bit longer, to give myself a little respite from that burden before going.

  6. Tarık Bey might have poured himself another rakı, in which case courtesy perhaps required that I should join him.

  7. I would try to ease my departure by using the feeble excuse of waiting for midnight, and then saying, “Oh, it’s midnight already, I really should be going.”

  8. I would tell myself that Çetin was perhaps in the middle of some conversation at the coffeehouse, and that he might not be ready either.

  9. And anyway, down in the street, just beyond the door, a group of neighborhood youths were gathered, smoking and blabbing, so to leave just then would make me the object of their idle gossip. (It was not a fantasy: Whenever I ran into the neighborhood youths on my way in or out of the Keskin house, they would fall silent, and for years that disturbed me, though seeing me on such good terms with Feridun, they could never as “defenders of the neighborhood” challenge me.)

  Feridun’s absence also made me uneasy, oddly more than his presence. I knew already from the way Füsun looked at him that the situation was difficult. But the thought that Feridun might trust his wife implicitly led me to the excruciating conclusion that they might somehow be happily married.

  It was far more comforting to explain Feridun’s lack of concern by reference to taboos and traditions. Living as we did in a country where it was unthinkable to show interest in a married woman in front of her parents, and where especially among the poor, and in the provinces, even a sidelong glance could lead to death, it would have been virtually inconceivable to Feridun that it might cross my mind to flirt with Füsun every night as we sat watching television like a happy family. The love I felt, like the dinner table at which we ate, was ringed with so many refinements and prohibitions that even if every fiber in me shouted that I was madly in love with Füsun, we would all be obliged nevertheless to act “as if” there was an absolute certainty that such a love could simply not exist. At times when this occurred to me I would understand that I was able to see Füsun not in spite of all these exquisite customs and proscriptions, but because of them.

  Let me offer a counterexample by way of elucidation, as it is central to my story: Had we been living in a modern Western society with more candid relations between men and women, and with the sexes not living in separate realms, my going to the Keskin household four or five times a week would, of course, force everyone eventually to accept that I was coming to see Füsun. The husband would have to be jealous and would be obliged to stop me. And so in such a country my visits could never be so frequent, and neither could my love for Füsun have taken this shape.

  On nights when Feridun stayed home, it was less difficult for me to stand up and leave at a suitable time. If, however, Feridun was with his film friends, it could get quite late, the broadcasting having ended, and someone having uttered one of those nightly pleas made out of politeness—“Won’t you have another cup of tea before you go?” or “Sit a little longer, Kemal Bey, please!”—because I would sometimes resolve to time my departure around his return. But not once during those eight years could I decide whether it was better to leave just before he got back or just after.

  During the first months it seemed far preferable to depart before Feridun returned. Because in those first moments after he walked in and we came eye to eye, I would feel very, and I mean very, bad. I would have to down at least three more glasses of raki after returning to Nişantaşı just so I could sleep. What is more, getting up the moment Feridun arrived was as good as suggesting that I disliked him and, even worse, as revealing that I was there for Füsun. Hence the habit of my remaining at least half an hour after Feridun’s return, despite magnifying both my inhibitions and shame. Better to suffer these feelings than to expose my guilt by avoiding him. I wouldn’t follow those dastardly Casanovas in European novels who openly court the countess and scamper out of the castle moments before the count’s return! Of course, as an alternative to leaving before Feridun got back, I could have allowed a longish interval between my departu
re and his arrival. But this would have meant leaving the Keskin house early. And that I could not do. I had trouble leaving late. I had trouble leaving early.

  10. If I did wait for Feridun, we might have a chat about this screenplay business. In fact, I tried this a few times; when Feridun got home, I tried to talk to him.

  “There’s now a faster way of getting cleared by the board of censors, Feridun. Have you heard?” I said once. If I didn’t use those exact words, I said something similar, leading to an icy silence at the table.

  “There was a meeting with the Erler Films people at Panayot’s coffeehouse,” said Feridun.

  Then he kissed Füsun in the half-heartfelt, half-routine way that husbands in American films kiss their wives when they get home from work. Sometimes I would see from the way Füsun greeted his embrace with her own that these kisses were genuine, and it would hit me very hard.

  Some nights Feridun would sit with us and have supper, but most evenings found him at the cafés with the writers, draftsmen, stagehands, and cameramen of the film world, or visiting them at home. He had been drawn into a communal life with noisy, gossipy people who lacked inner calm and were never without a reason to argue with one another. Feridun had in fact come to attach disproportionate importance to the dreams and disputes of these associates with whom he drank and dined so often, so that while his film friends’ passing pleasures brought him instant happiness, their lingering despair left him no less instantly grief-stricken. When he was so afflicted I put my mind at ease and would not worry that my evening visits were keeping Füsun from going out with her husband and enjoying life. Ordinarily, profiting from the nights when I wasn’t visiting, Füsun would go out to Beyoğlu once or twice a week, radiant in a chic blouse and adorned with one of the butterfly brooches I had bought her, and with her husband she would sit for hours in a place like the Pelür or Perde, a detailed report of which would come to me from Feridun on the very next visit.

  Feridun and I both knew that Aunt Nesibe, too, was keen for Füsun to find the shortest way into the film business. Tarık Bey was secretly on “our” side of reluctance, but we knew that he could never be drawn out into the open in this matter. Still, I wanted Tarık Bey to know that I was his son-in-law’s backer. It would be a year after the founding of Lemon Films before I heard from Feridun that his father-in-law was aware of my help.

  During that year, I cultivated Feridun as colleague and friend outside the Keskin household. I could not deny he was affable, sensible, and very sincere. From time to time we would meet at the office of Lemon Films to review the status of the screenplay, our application with the board of censors, and the search for Füsun’s male lead.

  Two quite famous and handsome actors had already expressed an interest in Feridun’s art film, but he and I both regarded them with suspicion. These black-mustached braggarts, who specialized in historic films wherein they would kill Byzantine priests and take down forty thieves with one blow, were sure to set their lecherous sights on Füsun. Their standard repertoire included talking lasciviously about their female costars, even those under eighteen, and their loaded remarks would lead to headlines like “The Kisses in the Film Come True” or “The Forbidden Love That Flowered on the Set.” In fairness, such scandal was part of the film business, because it made actors into stars and drew in the crowds, but it was an advantage that Feridun and I were determined to forgo where Füsun was concerned. Knowing that to protect her in this manner could be costly to Feridun, I would order Satsat to remit more funds and expand Lemon’s budget.

  But that I could not buy my way out of every anxiety attending Füsun’s entry into the film world around this time did worry me deeply. One evening when I went to the house in Çukurcuma, Aunt Nesibe told me, most apologetically, that Füsun had gone out with Feridun to Beyoğlu. I kept a neutral expression, hiding my misery as I sat down with Tarık Bey and Aunt Nesibe to watch television. Two weeks later, when the same thing happened again, I invited Feridun to lunch, to warn him that if Füsun became too involved with this drunken film crowd, it could undermine the integrity of our art film. He should use my visits, I advised, as a way of obliging her to spend her evenings at home. A lengthy explanation ensued as to why I thought this would be for the good of both the family and our film.

  It troubled me that my advice would be so little heeded. Arriving on yet another evening to find Feridun and Füsun gone out to some place like the Pelür, I again found myself sitting with Aunt Nesibe and Tarık Bey, silently watching television. I stayed until Füsun and Feridun returned at two in the morning, passing the time—whose passing I affected not to notice—by telling stories of America as I had come to know it during my years at university: Americans were very hardworking, well-meaning, and at the same time very naïve; they went to bed early; and even the richest children were obliged by their fathers to go from door to door on their bicycles delivering newspapers early in the morning. They smiled as they listened, as if I were joking, but they were also curious. Tarık Bey asked me to explain something he had wondered about: When phones rang in American films, they sounded different from ours. Did all phones in America ring like that, or just the phones ringing in films? Suddenly I was confused, and I realized that I had forgotten what phones sounded like in America. Long after midnight this awareness gave me the impression that I had left behind my youth, reminding me of the freedom I’d felt in America. Tarık Bey did an impression of a telephone in a typical American film, and a different impression of a phone ringing in a thriller, an even shriller sound. It was after two o’clock and we were still drinking tea together, and smoking, and laughing.

  Did I stay so long to discourage Füsun from going out on the evenings of my visits, or did I stay because it would cause me such distress to leave without having seen her? Even all these years later I still don’t know. But finally, after one more serious heart-to-heart with Feridun about the perils of Füsun’s keeping such louche company, she did stop going out when I was expected for supper.

  It was around this time that Feridun and I began to consider whether we should raise funds for the art film in which Füsun would star by first doing a commercial film. It is possible that talk of this prospective interim venture, in which Füsun would play no part, was what inspired Füsun to stay at home, though she did not neglect to communicate her resentment, and on some nights bounded vengefully upstairs to bed before I’d left. Still she clung to her dream, and so the next time I came she would be warmer than ever, asking after my mother, or spooning a bit more pilaf onto my plate unbidden; and then it would be impossible for me to go.

  For even as my friendship with Feridun progressed, I remained afflicted by attacks of inertia that kept me from taking my leave. The moment Feridun walked through the door, I would at once feel superfluous, out of place in this world, like something I’d seen in a dream, but unable to give up my stubborn wish to belong to it. I shall never forget Feridun’s expression one night in March 1977, when the late news on television had been an endless succession of stories about bombs detonated at political meetings and coffeehouses and leaders of the opposition shot in cold blood; it was very late (in my shame I’d stopped looking at my watch), and he arrived to find me sitting there. It was the sad look of a good man who felt genuine concern for me, but also tinged with an element of his nature that so mystified me—an innocence, so light and good and hopeful as to accept everything as normal.

  After the 1980 coup, the ten o’clock curfew constrained my intervals of inertia. But martial law could not cure my affliction; indeed squeezing my relief into a shorter parcel of time made the suffering more intense. During the curfew hours, the crisis of immobility would intensify from half past nine, and I would be unable to stand, no matter how furiously I told myself, “Up now!” As the countdown continued relentlessly my panic would become impossible to bear by twenty to ten.

  When I finally managed to propel myself downstairs and into the Chevrolet, Çetin and I would panic as we wondered whether we wou
ld make it to the house by the curfew; invariably we were four or five minutes late. In those first minutes of the curfew (which was later extended to eleven o’clock) the soldiers would never stop the last few stragglers racing down the avenues. On the way home, we’d see cars that had crashed in Taksim Square and Harbiye and Dolmabahçe in their haste to beat the clock, and the drivers were no less quick to get out of their cars and pummel each other. One night a drunken gentleman emerged with his dog from a Plymouth, its exhaust pipe still spewing smoke, and it reminded me of another occasion when after a head-on collision in Taksim, a taxi’s broken radiator was producing more steam than the Cağaloğlu Hamam. One night, having navigated the macabre darkness and the deserted, half-lit avenues, I reached home safely, and after I had poured myself one last raki before heading for bed, I pleaded to God to return me to normal life. I cannot say if I really wanted this prayer to be answered.

  Any kind word I heard before I left the house, any gentle or positive remark Füsun or the others offered me, however ambiguous, was enough to sustain hope, to revive the conviction that I would win Füsun back one day, that all these visits had not been in vain. In such a gladly deluded state I could take my leave relatively untroubled.

  A pleasant comment from Füsun at the dinner table at an unexpected moment—for instance, “You went to the barber, I see. He took off a lot but it looks good” (May 16, 1977), or turning to her mother, “He enjoys his meatballs like a little boy, doesn’t he?” (February 17, 1980), or on a snowy evening a year later, when I had just walked in, “We haven’t sat down to eat yet, Kemal. We were just saying how much we all hoped you’d be joining us”—and I would feel so happy, however dark the thoughts I’d brought with me, however discouraging the signs I read as we watched television, that when the time came to leave, I could rise from my chair decisively, retrieving my coat from the hook beside the door, and say, “With your permission, sir, I’ll be off!” Leaving the house in this way I would feel serene as Çetin drove me home early, and I could even think not about Füsun, but about the next day’s work.