The Museum of Innocence Read online

  “Well, if it’s not to be, it’s not to be. What matters tonight is that we’re happy.”

  “No, no, they both want this. If only they could let their guard down a little, I’m positive they’d be on the road to marriage in no time. But they just can’t seem to break the ice. I’m afraid that they’ll miss their chance.”

  I watched Mehmet from a distance. He just couldn’t get Nurcihan to warm to him, and when he realized how clumsy he’d been he got angry and damned himself into still further awkwardness.

  I motioned to Sibel to sit with me at a small service table piled high with clean plates. “We may be too late for Mehmet…. It may not be possible to find him a proper, decent wife.”

  “Why?”

  As her eyes grew large with fear and curiosity, I told Sibel that Mehmet would never find happiness anywhere but in a heavily perfumed room with red lamps. I ordered a raki from the waiter who darted over as soon as we were seated.

  “You seem to know quite a bit about these places!” said Sibel. “Did you visit them with him before you knew me?”

  “I love you so much,” I said, putting my hand on hers, and I didn’t mind when the waiter shot an inquisitive glance at our engagement rings. “But Mehmet must surely be wondering if he can ever be deeply in love with any decent girl. In fact he must be panicking.”

  “Oh, what a pity!” said Sibel. “It’s all because of those girls who shied away from him….”

  “Well, he shouldn’t have scared them off. The girls are right to be careful. What happens to them if they have slept with a man and he doesn’t marry them? If word gets out and she’s left in the lurch, what is she to do?”

  “It’s something she just knows,” said Sibel carefully.

  “What is?”

  “Whether she can trust a man or not.”

  “It’s not so simple. Many girls suffer terribly, being unable to make up their minds. Or else they give in to desire but are too afraid to take any pleasure from it…. I don’t even know if there is any girl out there who can enjoy it for what it is and damn the consequences. And Mehmet, if he hadn’t listened to all those stories of sexual freedom in Europe with his mouth watering, he might not have got it into his head that he had to have sex with a girl before marrying her, just to be modern or civilized; he’d probably have been able to make a happy marriage with a decent girl who loved him. Now look at him, squirming in that chair next to Nurcihan.”

  “He knows that Nurcihan slept with men in Europe…. I know this intrigues him, but it scares him, too,” said Sibel. “Come on, let’s go give him a hand.”

  The Silver Leaves were playing “Happiness,” a mawkish piece of their own composing. But I was in the mood and it moved me. As I felt my love for Füsun coursing through my veins—such pain, and such bliss—I was nevertheless able to appear paternalistic, lecturing Sibel that Turkey, too, would probably be modern like Europe in a hundred years’ time, and that when that day arrived everyone would be free of worries about virginity and what people thought, free to make love and be happy as it is promised one in heaven. But until then most people would continue to agonize over love, and suffer sexual pain.

  “No, no,” said my beautiful and good-hearted fiancée. “If we can be this happy today, then so can they. Because we’re definitely going to get Nurcihan and Mehmet married.”

  “Okay, then, what’s the plan?”

  “What a fine sight—engaged for only an hour and already off in a corner by yourselves?” This was a portly gentleman neither of us knew. “May I join you, Kemal Bey?” Without waiting for an answer he grabbed a chair from the side and sat down next to us. He was relatively young, perhaps in his forties, to be sporting a white carnation on his lapel and wearing a sickly sweet perfume, for women, and enough of it to make one faint. “When the bride and groom retire to a corner, a wedding loses its joy.”

  “We’re not a bride and groom yet,” I said. “We’re only engaged.”

  “But everyone is saying that this splendid engagement party is more sumptuous than the grandest wedding, Kemal Bey. Where might you have the wedding, apart from the Hilton?”

  “Excuse me, but with whom have I the pleasure of speaking?”

  “Forgive me, Kemal Bey, you have every right. We writers assume that everyone knows who we are. My name is Süreyya Sabır. You may know me by my pen name, ‘White Carnation,’ in Akşam.”

  “Yes, of course, there can’t be anyone in Istanbul who doesn’t read you to find out the latest society gossip,” said Sibel. “I always assumed you were a woman—you know so much about fashion and clothes.”

  Carelessly I interrupted her to ask, “Who invited you?”

  “Thank you for the compliment, Sibel Hanım. But in Europe, refined men with a knowledge of fashion are not uncommon. And Kemal Bey, the Turkish press regulations allow journalists to attend gatherings that are open to the public, on condition that we show this press card. By statute, any gathering announced by invitation is ‘open to the public.’ All the same, I have never once attended a party to which I had not been invited. I am here this lovely evening at the invitation of your esteemed mother. Because of her modern outlook, she knows the value of what you call society gossip, which I prefer to call news, so she invites me to many of her parties. So great is the trust between us that sometimes when I can’t attend a particular party we’ll speak of it on the phone the next day, and when I sit down to write I quote her word for word. Because—like you, my dear girl—she pays precise attention to everything and never gives false reports. There has never been a mistake in my society news column, Kemal Bey, and there never will be.”

  Sibel mumbled something like, “I’m afraid you misunderstood Kemal’s question. He meant nothing by it.”

  “Just now there were a number of vipers saying Istanbul’s entire supply of black market whiskey and champagne must be in this room. Our country is suffering from a shortage of foreign currency reserves, we don’t have the wherewithal to keep our factories going or to buy diesel! There are some, Kemal Bey—jealous enemies of wealth—who would write articles asking, ‘Where does all this black market alcohol come from?’ just to cast a cloud over this lovely evening…. Because I would never dream of trying to upset you, I shall forget your thoughtless words at once, for all eternity. Because we have a free press in Turkey, I shall ask that you answer a single question truthfully.”

  “Of course, Süreyya Bey.”

  “Just a moment ago I caught you two wrapped up in a serious discussion, and I was curious. What were you talking about, so soon after your engagement?”

  “We were wondering whether the guests had enjoyed their food,” I said.

  “Sibel Hanım, I have good news for you,” said White Carnation in joyous tones. “Your future husband just doesn’t know how to tell a lie!”

  “Kemal has a very good heart,” said Sibel. “What we were talking about was this: Who knows how many people at this gathering are in anguish over who knows what trouble with love, marriage, or even sex.”

  “Oooh, yes,” said the gossip columnist, at her uttering of the word that had recently been discovered by the press, indeed, had turned into something of a fetish; and because he couldn’t decide whether it was better for him to act as if he had just heard an admission worthy of scandal, or whether he might be better advised to show his empathy for the depth of human suffering, for a moment he fell silent. “You, of course, are modern, happy people, at ease in this new age,” he said at last. “You’ve put all this pain behind you.” He did not say this sardonically, but with an effortless sincerity cultivated through experience, which taught that in difficult situations the best thing was always to flatter people. Feigning feeling for others not as fortunate as we, he began to tell tales about our guests: the daughter who was hopelessly in love with so-and-so’s son; the girl who was being ostracized by good families for being too free in her ways while all the men lusted after her; the mother who had set her cap for a certain rich playboy as he
r son-in-law; the slovenly son of another wealthy family who had fallen in love, though he was promised to another. Sibel and I could not help but be entertained by his stories, and when White Carnation saw this he relished telling them all the more. He was just explaining that all these “disasters” would be obvious once the dancing had begun, when my mother arrived to tell us we were being very rude, and everyone was looking at us; she ordered us back to our table.

  No sooner had I taken my seat next to Berrin than the image of Füsun fired up in my mind’s eye with full force, as if a television set had just been plugged in. But this time the light from that image exuded joy, not sadness, illuminating not just this evening but my entire future. For a brief moment I recognized myself among those men whose real source of happiness is their secret lover, but who pretend it is their wives and children—I, too, was acting as if it was Sibel who made me happy, and we weren’t even married yet.

  After chatting for a while with the gossip columnist, my mother came over to our table. “Take care around these journalists, will you?” she said. “They write all sorts of lies; they do terrible mischief. And then they make threatening calls to your father, asking him to buy more advertising space. Why don’t you two get up and start the dancing. Everyone is waiting for you.” She turned to Sibel. “The orchestra is warming up. Oh how sweet you are, how beautiful.”

  Sibel and I danced to a tango that the Silver Leaves were playing. All the guests were watching, and this gave our happiness the illusion of depth. Sibel draped her arm over my shoulder as if to embrace me, and pressed her face against my chest as close as if we were dancing alone in a dark corner of a discotheque; from time to time she smiled and murmured something, and after we’d made a turn I would look over her shoulder at whatever person she had remarked on a moment ago—the waiter whose heavy tray had not prevented his pausing to smile at our bliss, or her mother weeping for joy, or a lady whose hair resembled a bird’s nest, or Nurcihan and Mehmet turning their backs on each other now that we had left them alone, or the ninety-year-old gentleman who had made his fortune during the Great War and who could no longer eat without the help of his servant, who was wearing a string tie—but I did not once look at the back of the garden, where Füsun was sitting. As Sibel kept up her cheerful chatter, it was better if Füsun didn’t see us.

  There was a burst of applause; it didn’t last long, and we carried on dancing as if nothing had happened. When other couples got up to dance, we returned to our table.

  “You did very well. You looked so good together,” said Berrin. At that point, I think, Füsun was not yet among the dancers. Sibel was fretting so over Nurcihan and Mehmet’s lack of progress that she asked me to speak to Mehmet. “Tell him to come on a little stronger,” said Sibel, but I did nothing. Berrin got involved at this point, and in a whisper she told us that forcing the issue was a bad idea; she’d been watching the whole thing from her side of the table and it wasn’t just Mehmet; they had both been standoffish, or at least nervous, and if they didn’t like each other there was no point in pushing them together. “No,” said Sibel, “weddings cast a kind of spell. It’s at weddings that many people meet the person they end up marrying. It’s not just girls that get into the mood at weddings; it’s boys, too. But you have to help them along….” “What are you talking about? Tell me, too,” said my brother as he joined the whispering conversation, and once he had been apprised of things, he pointed out in hortatory tones that while the days of arranged marriages were over, Turkey wasn’t Europe, and there weren’t many ways couples could get to know each other, with the result that a lot of the burden had fallen on the shoulders of well-meaning informal matchmakers. Then, apparently forgetting that Nurcihan and Mehmet had sparked the debate, he turned to Nurcihan, saying, “I imagine, for example, that you would never consent to a marriage arranged by a matchmaker, am I right?”

  “So long as the man is nice, it doesn’t matter how you find him, Osman Bey,” said Nurcihan with a giggle.

  We all laughed as if we’d heard something so outrageous it could only be a joke. But Mehmet turned deep red and looked away.

  “Don’t you see?” Sibel whispered into my ear a bit later. “She frightened him off. He thought she was making fun of him.”

  I was not watching the people on the dance floor at all. But when our museum was established, Mr. Orhan Pamuk recalled that Füsun had danced with two people early on. He didn’t know or couldn’t remember her first dance partner, though I worked out that it must have been Kenan from Satsat. The second, however, was the young man with whom I had exchanged glances a short time earlier while visiting the Pamuk family table—Orhan Pamuk himself, as he proudly told me years later. Those interested in Orhan Bey’s own description of how he felt while dancing with Füsun should look at the last chapter, entitled “Happiness.”

  While Orhan Bey was dancing the dance that he would describe to me with utter frankness many years after the fact, Mehmet decided he had had enough of Nurcihan’s giggles and our double entendres about love, marriage, matchmakers, and “modern life” and left the table. At once our spirits dropped.

  “That was very rude of us,” said Sibel. “We broke the boy’s heart.”

  “Don’t say that looking at me,” said Nurcihan. “I didn’t do any more than you did. You’ve all had a lot to drink and you’re having a good time. Mehmet is the one who is frustrated in life.”

  “If Kemal brings him back to the table, will you behave nicely, Nurcihan?” asked Sibel. “I know you could make him very happy. And he you. But you have to treat him well.”

  It seemed to please Nurcihan to see Sibel so openly determined to set her up with Mehmet. “No one’s talking about getting married tomorrow,” she said. “He met me, he could have said one or two nice things to me.”

  “He is trying. He’s just not used to talking with a girl as self-possessed as you are,” said Sibel; giggling, she whispered the rest of what she had to say into Nurcihan’s ear.

  “Do you people know why boys in this country never learn how to flirt with girls?” asked my brother. He assumed that charming expression he wore whenever he’d had something to drink. “There’s nowhere to flirt. We don’t even have our own word for ‘flirt.’”

  “I remember your idea of flirting,” said Berrin. “Before we got engaged, you’d take me to the cinema on Saturday afternoons…. You’d bring a portable radio with you, so that you could find out about the Fener match during the five-minute intermission.”

  “Actually, I didn’t bring the radio with me to tune in to the match, but to impress you,” said my brother. “I was proud to be the owner of the first transistor radio in Istanbul.”

  Then Nurcihan admitted that her mother used to brag about being the first person in Turkey to use an electric blender. She went on to tell us how, in the late 1950s, years before canned tomato juice became available, her mother was offering her friends tomato, carrot, celery, beet, and radish juice when they came over to play bridge, and as the ladies were all sipping from crystal glasses, she would proudly take them into the kitchen to show them the first electric blender to arrive in the country. As we listened to light music from that era, we remembered how the Istanbul bourgeoisie had trampled over one another to be the first to own an electric shaver, a can opener, a carving knife, and any number of strange and frightening inventions, lacerating their hands and faces as they struggled to learn how to use them. We talked about all those tape recorders brought back from Europe that usually broke on first use, and the hair dryers that blew the fuses, the coffee grinders that frightened the servant girls, the mayonnaise makers for which no spare parts were to be found in Turkey, but which no one had the heart to throw away and so relegated to a remote corner of the house to gather dust. Meanwhile, as we were laughing about all this, You-Deserve-It-All Zaim sat down in the seat Mehmet had vacated, and within four or five minutes he had managed to enter the swim of the conversation and was whispering into Nurcihan’s ear, making her laugh.r />
  “What happened to that German model of yours?” Sibel asked Zaim. “Did you ditch her like all the others?”

  “Inge wasn’t my lover. She’s gone back to Germany.” Zaim spoke without losing any of his good humor. “We were just business associates, and I was only taking her out to show her Istanbul by night.”

  “So you’re telling me you were just friends,” said Sibel, using one of the expressions newly popularized by the celebrity magazines.

  “I saw her today, at the cinema,” said Berrin. “She turned up on the screen, sipping that soft drink with that same beckoning smile.” She turned to her husband. “I went at lunchtime—the power was out at the hairdresser’s. I went to the Site—it was Jean Gabin with Sophia Loren.” She turned to Zaim. “I see her everywhere—in every single kiosk in the city; and it’s not just children drinking Meltem now, it’s everyone. You’re to be congratulated.”

  “We timed it well,” said Zaim. “We’ve been lucky, too.”

  Seeing the puzzlement in Nurcihan’s eyes, and knowing that Zaim would expect me to explain, I quickly informed Nurcihan that my friend was the owner of Şektaş, the company that had recently launched Meltem, and that he’d also introduced us to Inge, a lovely German model who could be seen in the advertisements all over the city.

  “Have you had the opportunity to taste our fruit-flavored soft drinks?”

  “Of course I have. I especially liked the strawberry,” said Nurcihan. “Even the French haven’t been able to put out something that good in years.”

  “Do you live in France?” asked Zaim.

  Zaim invited all of us to visit the factory that weekend, also promising a Bosphorus cruise and a picnic in Belgrade Forest just outside the city limits. The entire table watched him and Nurcihan. A short while later they got up to dance.

  “Go find Mehmet,” said Sibel. “Get him to rescue Nurcihan from Zaim.”

  “Are we sure she wants to be rescued?”

  “I don’t want to see my friend swallowed whole by this embarrassing Casanova whose only ambition in life is to lure girls into bed.”