The Museum of Innocence Read online

  After drunken evenings like this, as I drifted in and out of sleep, I was beset by painful thoughts: that my youth was well and truly over; that (as was the case for all Turkish men) my life was taking its ultimate shape before I had even reached the age of thirty-five; that I would—could—never again know great happiness. At times, remembering the love and longing that filled my heart, I would console myself thinking that if my future seemed darker with each passing day, this could only be an illusion induced by the political assassinations, the never-ending street battles, the spiraling prices, and the bankruptcies that filled the news.

  But if I had been to Çukurcuma to see Füsun, if we had looked into each other’s eyes and spoken, if I had stolen from the Keskins’ house a few objects that would remind me of her later, and if back at home I had a chance to play with them, it would seem to me as if I could never feel unhappy again. There were times when I would survey the knives and forks that Füsun had used, and that I had secreted away from the Keskins’ dinner table, as if they formed a single picture, in themselves a complete memory.

  Sometimes, convinced of the possibility of a better life elsewhere, beyond the circumscribed world of my obsession, I would struggle to dwell on other things. But if by chance I’d seen Zaim, his report on all the latest society gossip was enough to remind me that I was not missing much by avoiding the company of rich friends, whose lives seemed increasingly boring.

  Though they had been seeing each other for three years by now, Mehmet and Nurcihan had (according to Zaim) still not made love, and were telling people that they planned to marry. This was the biggest piece of news. Even though everyone, Mehmet included, knew of Nurcihan’s love affairs with French men during her years in Paris, she was determined not to make love with him before marriage, and she made light of this decision, saying that in Muslim countries, the foundation of a true and long-lasting, happy and peaceful marriage was not wealth but premarital abstinence. Mehmet seemed to appreciate this joke; it was part of the tapestry of their common outlook, which they articulated in one voice, telling stories illustrating the wisdom of our ancestors, and the beauty of our old music, and the contentment of the old masters, with their dervish temperaments. Neither the jokes they liked to make, nor their interest in our Ottoman ancestors, had led to their being branded in society as devout or reactionary. Zaim believed that one reason for this was the amount they both drank at parties, which, however excessive, never compromised their manners or their elegance. When he’d had some wine to drink, Mehmet would proclaim with some excitement that the wines mentioned in Divan poetry were not metaphorical but real libations, and he would recite lines from Nedim and Fuzuli—the accuracy of which no one could judge—and looking carefully into Nurcihan’s eyes, he would lift his glass to toast the love of God. There was a reason that society had not been put off by such an exhibition and indeed had even accepted it respectfully: There were far worse things, a lesson that could be traced to the panic among young girls following the dissolution of my engagement to Sibel. This episode had served as potent warning to girls of our generation in Istanbul society not to put too much trust in men before marriage, and, if the rumors were to be believed, inspired terrified mothers with marriageable daughters to urge extreme caution. But lest one attach too much importance to my own experiences, I beg the reader to remember that Istanbul society was such a small and fragile circle that the deep shame of any member was no less universally felt than in a small family.

  Especially after 1979 I’d grown well accustomed to the comforts of my new life, and moving between my home and my office, Füsun’s house and the Merhamet Apartments, I felt at one with its spirit. I would go to the Merhamet Apartments, and, reflecting upon the happy hours Füsun and I had spent there, I would lose myself in daydreams, admiring my slowly growing “collection” with ever renewed wonder. As these objects accumulated, so did the manifest intensity of my love. Sometimes I would see them not as mementos of the blissful hours but as the tangible precious debris of the storm raging in my soul. Sometimes I felt ashamed at their very existence, alarmed at the idea that someone else might see them, and a bit afraid that at this rate, my collection would soon fill the rooms in the Merhamet Apartments from floor to ceiling. For I had not begun taking these things from the Keskin household with an eye to what the future might hold, but only that I might be returned to the past. It did not occur to me that there might one day be objects enough to fill rooms and whole houses, because for the better part of those eight years I sustained myself with the conviction that it would be only a few more months, six at most, before I could bring Füsun around to marry me.

  Here I exhibit a cutting from Akşam, a column from the “High Society” page, dated November 8, 1979:

  SOCIETY AND THE CINEMA: A MODEST WARNING

  We all like to boast that Turkey’s film industry is the third largest in the world after Hollywood’s and India’s. Sadly, the situation is changing: The new sex films and our citizens’ growing reluctance to go outside in the evening, in view of the terror wrought by militants of the left and right, has kept our families away from the cinema. Even the most esteemed Turkish cineastes are now unable to find the audiences or the backers to make their films. The Turkish cinema has never had as great a need as it has today for rich businessmen to come to Yeşilçam to make “art films.” In the past, artistic-minded cineastes tended to come from new money—families recently arrived from the provinces—and their aim would be to make the acquaintance of beautiful actresses. Of the many “art films” that our critics praised so lavishly, not a single one has gone on to be shown to the intellectuals of the West, despite what has been claimed, nor have any of them received an honorable mention in the bland small-town festivals of Europe; instead they have served as vehicles for any number of scions of the nouveau riche to meet and engage in amorous affairs with female “artists.” But that was in the old days. Now there is a new fashion. These days our wealthy art lovers don’t come to Yeşilçam to have love affairs with beautiful actresses; they come to make girls they already love into stars. As a consequence, we now find the bachelor son of one of the most illustrious families of Istanbul society (having chosen to withhold his full name, we shall call him Mr. K) is so infatuated with a young married woman he describes as a “distant relation” and so jealous of anyone who comes near her that he cannot even bring himself to arrange for the “art film” (for which he has commissioned a screenplay) to go into production. This reporter’s sources tell him that Mr. K has gone so far as to admit, “I could not bear to see her kissing someone else!” And such is his jealousy that he shadows the young woman and her director husband, crawling after them in Yeşilçam bars and Bosphorus restaurants, a glass of rah in his hand, and apparently he gets upset if the married would-be actress so much as steps outside her house. According to these sources, our society bachelor—who not so long ago celebrated his engagement to a graduate of the Sorbonne, the adorable daughter of a retired diplomat, with a fabulous party at the Hilton attended by all society and described in lavish detail in this space—was irresponsible enough to break off the engagement, all for the sake of the beautiful relative to whom he has now said, “I am going to make you a star!” We, meanwhile, are reluctant to stand by while this feckless rich boy, who has already done so much harm to the diplomat’s lovely young daughter, goes on to blacken the name of F, the beautiful would-be actress, to whose charms a great many philandering gentlemen are particularly susceptible. So, after apologizing in advance to readers who have tired of lectures, we would like to pass on the following wisdom to society’s Mr. K: Sir, in this modern age, when the Americans have gone to the moon, it is simply not possible to have an “art film” without kissing scenes! You must decide once and for all, and either marry a headscarf-wearing peasant girl and put Western art and films out of your mind forever, or give up on this fantasy of making stars out of young girls you guard so closely that you can’t bear anyone else even looking at them. That is, if makin
g stars is what you’re really after.—WC

  My mother read the two newspapers delivered daily to our house from cover to cover, never missing the society gossip. As we were having breakfast the morning that column appeared, I waited until she had gone to cut out the offending page, fold it up, and slip it into my pocket. “Something’s bothering you again—what is it?” my mother asked me as I left the house. “You’re so gloomy!” At the office, too, I tried to feign high spirits, telling Zeynep Hanım an amusing anecdote, whistling as I walked down the hallway, and jovially making the rounds of the aging and ever more idle employees of a moribund Satsat who whiled away their time by doing the Akşam crossword.

  By the time everyone came back from lunch, it was clear from the expressions on their faces and in particular the compassion—and fear—in Zeynep Hanım’s eyes that the entire staff of Satsat had read the column. Maybe I’m just imagining things, I told myself afterward. My mother rang me to say that she’d been expecting me for lunch, and also asked, “How are you, darling?” straining not to let concern inundate her normal voice, from which I could tell all the same that she’d heard about the column, sent out for another copy of the paper, and had a good cry over it (her “normal” voice now full of that gravitas people acquire after they’ve cried); just as she could tell from the torn-out page that I’d read it, too. “The world is full of people with monstrous souls, my child,” said my mother. “You are not to let anything upset you.”

  “What are you talking about, Mother?” I said.

  “It’s nothing, my child,” she said.

  I was tempted to pour out my heart to her, but I was certain that if I did, she would, after ample expression of love and understanding, feel obliged to tell me that I was at fault, too, and then press me for all the details of the Füsun story. She might even have burst into tears and told me I’d been bewitched. She might have said, “In some corner of the house, inside a jar of rice or flour, or at the back of one of your drawers at work, there’s an amulet hidden—someone’s cast a spell on it, and breathed on it, to make you fall in love—so find it and burn it at once!” But I sensed that she was downcast because she’d been unable to share my sorrow, unable even to broach the subject. It was all she could do to show respect for my predicament. Was this an indication of how bad my situation was?

  At this moment, I wondered about the readers of Akşam: How contemptuously were they regarding me, how heartily were they laughing or raging at my passion, and how many of this report’s details did they believe? I couldn’t dislodge these questions from my mind, nor the thought of how upset Füsun would be when she read the column. After my mother’s phone call, it occurred to me to warn Feridun to keep Akşam away from Füsun and everyone else in our family. But I didn’t place the call. My first reason was fear that I might be unable to explain things to Feridun in such a way that he wouldn’t get so upset as to feel compelled to act. But my second reason was deeper: Despite the humiliation and being made out to be a fool, I was still glad about the column. I hid this satisfaction even from myself, but when I look back now, so many years later, I can see it perfectly well: My relationship with Füsun, my closeness to her by whatever name, had been reported in the papers, and thus, in some sense, society had accepted it! This column was read by absolutely everyone with an interest in Istanbul society; malicious columns like this one were discussed for months on end. And so I tried to convince myself that this gossip augured my return to my former place in the social order, with Füsun at my side—or, at the very least, to imagine that our story might arrive at this happy resolution.

  But such was the hopelessness to which I’d been delivered that I could entertain such sweet dreams. It would not be long before I felt that society gossip and mendacity and innuendo were slowly turning me into a different sort of man. I was no longer the one who had, by force of his own will and passion, embarked on an unconventional course, but someone who had been ostracized after being featured in a gossip column.

  The initials over which the column appeared left no room for doubt that it had been written by White Carnation. I was annoyed at my mother for having invited him to the engagement party, and incensed by Tahir Tan, whom I suspected to be the source of many of the manufactured details (“I could not bear to see her kissing someone else!”). How I longed to sit down with Füsun, to curse our enemies together, so that I could console her, and she me. We would need to go to the Pelür Bar and defy them all with our determination. Feridun would have to come, too! Only this could prove the gossip a degrading lie, and silence the slurring drunks of the film world—not to mention our friends in society, who were now reading the column with relish.

  But the evening after the column appeared, I could not—hard as I tried—bring myself to visit the Keskins. I was sure that Aunt Nesibe would do her best to put me at ease, and Tarık Bey would affect to know nothing of what had happened, but when I tried to imagine the moment when my eyes met Füsun’s, my mind went blank. In that moment there would be no denying that we were both feeling the same turmoil within, and for some reason, this frightened me. Then I had the following insight: What we would both understand the moment our eyes met was not that there were tempests raging in both our souls, but simply that the false reports were actually true!

  Yes, as the reader well knows, quite a few details in White Carnation’s column were wrong: I had not broken off my engagement with Sibel to make Füsun a star; I had not commissioned Feridun to write a screenplay. But these were trivial errors. What newspaper readers and all the gossips in the city would take from the column was this simple truth: My love for Füsun and the things I had done for her had led me to disgrace myself! All of them were mocking me, laughing at everything I’d done; even the most well-meaning pitied me. Though I reminded myself that Istanbul society was very small, and that none of these people was seriously rich or genuinely principled, my shame was unrelieved. Rather I felt the sting of my stupidity and ineptitude all the more. Here I was, living in a poor country, yet lucky enough to have been born into a wealthy family; offered such opportunity as God offers so few in this corner of the world—an honest, civilized, and happy life—and I had idiotically thrown it all away! I knew that the only way out of this predicament was to marry Füsun, put my business affairs in order, make my fortune, and then return, victorious, into society, but by now I could not find the strength to realize this plan, and indeed I’d come to hate that tiny set into which I might seek readmittance. Above all, I knew that, once they’d read the offending column, the Keskin household would neither entertain nor abet my dreams.

  My love and my shame had brought me to this place where my only inclination was to turn inward and live in silence. For a week I went to the cinema every night: I went to the Site, the Konak, and the Kent and saw American films. Especially in a world as miserable as ours, the point of films is not to offer verisimilitude but a different new universe to amuse us and make us happy. Particularly, in identifying with the hero, it would seem to me that I was exaggerating my troubles. And at such moments I would castigate myself for having been inept enough to become the idle gossips’ object of derision; I even began to believe some of the lies they’d told about me.

  Of all the lies, the one that bothered me most was the claim that I had said, “I could not bear to see her kissing someone else!” At moments of greatest discouragement I would become convinced that it was this charge that was chiefly provoking laughter, and it became the center of my obsession to correct the lies. I was also irked to be portrayed as a spoiled rich boy irresponsible enough to break off an engagement, but I assured myself that those who knew me would not fall for that one. That I might have said I didn’t want her kissing anyone, however, was credible, because despite all my Western airs, there was something in me of a man who might say such a thing, and I wasn’t even sure I hadn’t said as much to Füsun, either in jest or in drunkenness. Because, in truth, even for art’s sake, I definitely did not want Füsun kissing anyone else.
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  64

  The Fire on the Bosphorus

  IN THE early hours of the morning of November 15, 1979, my mother and I were awoken by the sound of a huge explosion; we jumped from our beds and ran into the hallway to embrace each other in terror. For a moment the entire apartment rocked from side to side, as if caught in a severe earthquake. Accustomed as we were to bombs going off in coffeehouses, bookstores, and the city’s squares, we assumed that yet another had been detonated near Teşvikiye Avenue, but then we noticed the flames rising near the other side of the Bosphorus, just off the Üsküdar shore. Figuring this was some act of political violence, for a while we watched the fire with the red clouds rising from it in the far distance, and then we went back to bed.

  A Romanian tanker loaded down with crude oil had collided with a small Greek ship just off Haydarpaşa; oil had gushed into the water, causing explosions within and without the tanker hull and then the fires. The papers rushed to put out special editions, and the next day the whole city was abuzz with talk of the Bosphorus set ablaze and the clouds overhanging Istanbul like a black umbrella. At Satsat that day I could almost feel the fire inside me, and I sensed it was the same with all the lady clerks in the office, and the bored managers, and so I tried to see the conflagration as a good excuse to go to the Keskins’ for supper that evening. The event would utterly preempt the gossip column, which I wouldn’t even have to mention as we sat at the table talking incessantly about the fire. But, still, like everyone else living in Istanbul, I associated the Bosphorus fires with all the other disasters that were contributing to the general misery: an ensign of the political assassinations, breadlines, hyperinflation, and the impoverished, abject appearance of the entire country. And as I read the latest editions, it seemed to me that I was fascinated by the fire because it spoke to me about the disasters in my own life.