When I saw Halit Bey’s servant at the front door, holding the bizarre instrument, I very nearly flew into a rage. Instead I put it down on the sofa, as Pakize and Zehra jumped up and down with excitement. “Come on now,” squealed my wife, “let’s hear you play!” That was very nearly the last straw. I still hadn’t spoken to Pakize about her interview; I hadn’t yet asked her what had possessed her to humiliate me in that way. I was wary of where such a conversation might lead, while my wife went out of her way to avoid it. Meanwhile she preened like a cat who has mothered seven kittens in one fell swoop. Her lack of sensibility tested my patience even more. But a minor intervention on Zehra’s part put an end to my rage:
“Dad,” she said. “Do you know who I saw today? Ismail the Lame. Right outside the office. Oh, he was so very surprised to see me! His face went white as ash. Then he let out a long whistle and hobbled off. But how ugly he was! I can’t believe I was on the verge of marrying that man. God forbid! Whatever would I have done with such a miserable creature?”
My anger suddenly subsided. Just then Pakize cried:
“Hayri, you still haven’t thanked me. Halit Bey told me I would never be able to understand my husband! ‘Do you think you could you ever really understand the importance of such a man?’ he said to me. In fact we even bet on it. But oh! I won—didn’t I ever! If only you could have heard how he thanked me on the phone this morning!”
So that was how it had happened. Halit Ayarcı had thought it all through in advance, encouraging Pakize to lampoon me for the pleasure of my friends and enemies alike. I thanked my wife:
“That’s just wonderful,” I said. “But how in the world did you come up with the story about me sleeping naked on the floor? Couldn’t you have come up with something else? You know very well that I never go to bed without my nightcap and sweater!”
Taken aback, she cried:
“I couldn’t remember the word for hammock! Halit Bey told me that throughout your entire childhood you slept in a hammock. But I just couldn’t remember the word.”
Having dealt with these trivial irritations, she handed me my benefactor’s gift.
“Come on, play for us, just a little, please.”
I took the instrument in my hand and tapped on it here and there, my point being to prove to them that I had no idea how to play. But I was dumbfounded by the transformation on Pakize’s face. She was transported. Tears welled up in her eyes. But Zehra had vanished. And Ahmet wasn’t there either; apparently he was busy working in his room. There was no mention of my performance over supper.
I saw Zehra before I went to bed.
“How was it? Do you like my banjo?”
Zehra fixed her saucer eyes on mine and asked, “Do we have any other choice, Dad? It’s just that I’m really so worried about Ahmet.”
But I had more urgent concerns.
“Did you really see Ismail the Lame?”
“No, but you seemed so angry and frustrated that I had to say something to stop you. And he came to mind.”
Toying with a button on my jacket, she looked me straight in the eye:
“Was that such a bad thing?” she asked. “You were going to have an argument over nothing at all. I’m fed up with all the fighting. My whole life I’ve had to listen to you two squabbling. You have no idea how much I’ve suffered. The shouting terrifies me so much! And the way your faces are transformed by anger, becoming so very different, it’s so hard to bear that. There’s nothing worse in the whole world, nothing more horrid.”
“But you get angry sometimes too,” I said.
“Not any more! I’m more relaxed now. If I can’t love the people in my life, I don’t feel comfortable. It’s like everything’s turned upside down.”
Zehra was in a talkative mood. Just like any other young girl, she wanted to talk about herself. And I had no idea how much truth there was in any of it. But I was pleased that she was opening her heart to me.
“Besides, we can’t even really argue,” she said. “You’re like me. How can a man really argue if he thinks that everyone else is right?”
“Whatever do you mean, my girl?”
“Isn’t that how it is?” she said. “Isn’t that the way you are? Even if I haven’t done anything wrong, I still can’t forgive myself for meddling in other people’s lives!”
“Well, are you at least happy now?” I asked.
Her face suddenly lit up.
“Of course I am,” she said. “We’re no longer living on top of one another. Everyone has their own life. But, then again, the work we’re doing—it seems so strange. I keep thinking to myself, where’s it all going? And another thing, everyone’s changed so much that . . .”
She was right. Everyone had changed.
“Only Ahmet’s the same. He’s still closed off to everyone, always so serious. We did something without telling you. Ahmet sat for the state exams and passed.”
So that was it. That was reason for the secretive air at home over the past month.
“Why didn’t you tell me? There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“He didn’t want to tell you till after it was all done. He wasn’t going to tell you if he didn’t pass.”
For a moment I wondered if Zehra and her mother would have gotten along this well if her mother were still alive.
“You’re not angry, right?”
I couldn’t believe that my children still loved and respected me. Even Ahmet wanted to protect me from needless pain. This was undoubtedly something he had inherited from Emine. I felt a jolt of pain in me. If Emine had lived, I wouldn’t have found myself in such a predicament. How wonderful it would have been to pull the burden of life together, like two carriage horses harnessed side by side, one forever keeping an eye on the other. I remembered my elation upon stepping into the courtyard of our old home on the day I was released from the Department of Justice Medical Facility.
I sat alone in my study until late that night, at a loss for what to do. I just didn’t want to go to bed. The memory of Emine was so overwhelming that I couldn’t bear the sight of Pakize, even though she was asleep. Still, I knew I was being unfair.
That evening the weather was oppressive. At around half past one, thunder and lightning shook the sky. The curtains in the room billowed dramatically, one after the other, before fading into the green glow beyond. Then the sky was rent asunder and released a violent rain. Pakize was afraid of thunder. So with a heavy heart I crept into the bedroom and lay down beside her. Sensing my presence, she instantly awoke. Mumbling coyly, affecting a voice she must have assumed intimated tender compassion, she said:
“Up working late again? Hayri, you really should go easy on yourself.”
Not even the stilted female voices in radio commercials were as cold as her voice. At first I thought she was making fun of me. If only that were the case, but, no, she was serious, even though she knew very well that I hadn’t actually been working, that I didn’t do any work. She was merely playing the role of the sensible, well-intentioned wife thinking only of her husband’s health. She threw her arm over my neck, and my body went cold. How was she any different from a wind-up clock or an automaton? I considered how steadily her interest in me had grown since I’d started work again. Indeed her attention made me feel as if I’d been living in a refrigerator for half a year. I almost missed those days when Pakize thought me spineless and slovenly, indolent, moronic, and clumsy, only acknowledging my existence when she was sexually aroused. At least then she seemed more herself.
At first I felt an overwhelming urge to leap out of bed. But then she’d wake up and start talking. The best thing was to stay in bed but entirely still. Slowly I extricated my every limb from hers, shrinking up against the wall where, eyes still wide open, I listened to the rain and thunder as I waited for morning. I kept asking myself, is she an idiot or just a liar? She was both. Perhaps she
lied out of idiocy. Or perhaps it was something far more horrible than just that. She simply didn’t have a personality. Occasionally the rain subsided and I heard her breathing. “If nothing else,” I thought, “I hope she’s more herself in her dreams.” At one point I sat up and stared at her face. Her lips were parted and she seemed to be smiling. Her face seemed contracted, as sometimes happened when she was emotionally overwhelmed. As if she was no longer of this world! Yet how beautiful she was like that: with her eyes shut, lips slightly open, her breathing shallow and—most emotive of all—her selflessness. But why was she always so happy in her sleep? Why and for whom was she smiling? This was no ordinary smile. It spoke of bliss. So she was happy, like Zehra. Perhaps she had attained this peace of mind because she felt she was doing her part. Or perhaps in her sleep she could escape everything and everyone, to take refuge in a corner all her own. So she too had a secret. She was happy and she was beautiful, even though she was absent from her body. For a moment, I felt envious of her wholeness. I was about to disturb her, break the spell. But what would that do? Within minutes she would have become the person I knew, the same old stone statuette.
With this thought in mind, I shrank back against the wall. Toward morning, I drifted off to sleep. The dream I had then may go some way to illustrating my frame of mind.
I dreamt I was in the living room of our old home. I was studying my reflection in a vast mirror, muttering to myself as I studied my face more closely: But this isn’t me? Could this be me? It’s simply impossible . . . And indeed the face before me wasn’t mine. Every moment it changed—changed so dramatically that I could hardly capture it in my gaze. Then I heard my aunt cry, “Come on, we’re late,” as she tugged me. We were hurrying quickly through narrow backstreets. But with every step one of us lost a shoe, and we had to stop and put it back on before racing off again. “At last, we’re here!” she cried. And I found myself all alone in a rather large square where some kind of celebration was underway. I could hear horns and drums, and suddenly I was on an enormous merry-go-round made of layer upon layer of overlapping rings. With every turn, I saw someone I knew, and we waved to each other as we laughed and laughed. Then slowly the rings started to turn faster and faster, and the ring I was riding together with Halit Ayarcı, Selma Hanım, Cemal Bey, and my aunt snapped abruptly off its axis, and, still spinning, rose up to the heavens. Terrified that I might die, I threw my arms around the neck of the animal I was riding: it was Seyit Lutfullah’s turtle. Holding on for dear life so as not to fall, I fixed my eyes on my aunt. She was no longer mounted on one of the merry-go-round animals. She was flying all by herself. I woke up to Pakize saying, “Come on, wake up! It’s nine o’clock! You’ll be late to work!”
VI
Snug in her armchair, my aunt was telling her entourage what sort of man I was.
“Sister, you have absolutely no idea. He’s completely unpredictable. My late brother should have named him Misfortune, and not Hayri. He didn’t pay me a single visit in twenty years. But I always wondered what he was doing, what would become of him. Was it easy for him? He’s the last in the family. And of course I love him. If not for him, the dynasty of Ahmet Efendi the Some Timer would vanish from earth. Then at last I saw his name in the paper, and I said to myself, well, at the very least, I said, I should go and see him. Not a small feat for a woman at my age, I’d say.”
With a black shawl over her shoulders, a petite Japanese fan fluttering in her hand, and her entire person shimmering in a sea of jewelry, she thus aired her complaints to Selma Hanım and the other ladies. I sat on the other end of the sofa, a mere ornament to the scene. I had fallen into a jar of jam; I was sinking in a swell of sweet reproach never before tasted.
“At one point I heard that he had lost his life in the war. For months, my late husband and I mourned his loss. For three years, we went to his grave on the anniversary of his death and said prayers and recited passages from the Koran. But somehow I always felt that he was still alive—that one day he would come back to us—and that’s exactly what happened.”
She was telling the truth. Just around the time I was discharged from the army a friend of mine went round to see my aunt and found the house teeming with people; and to his surprise he heard my name recited in their prayers. And so my friend had said to my aunt, “If you’re praying for Hayri, your nephew, why, then you have the wrong man, for that Hayri is alive and well.” And in response she had cried, “So yet another lie from the scoundrel, eh! I could only expect as much from the son of that good-for-nothing! He’s never to set foot in this house again. Never! Oh and if does, there’ll be trouble!”
Now the very same woman smiled as she sang my praises and spoke of my late father. No doubt she would have feigned shock if someone tried to explain how my father had died of hunger while I was serving in the army and how I was nearly locked up in a madhouse after her husband’s exploitation of my story about the Serbetçibası Diamond; she would have denied it all.
But she knew I wouldn’t bring up such things, that I wouldn’t remind people of the past. I was now a reserved and well-mannered man, who towed the line. Now I had a good friend, Halit Ayarcı, who had turned my life around, and I had a serious job.
It was the first time my aunt had come to visit us at home. The Clock Lover’s Society held its first public meeting that day and this was the reception. She continued:
“What more can you expect from someone in this day and age? Families will look after their own, won’t they? So be it. But my dear Hayri isn’t like this at all. God bless his wife and daughter! They came to me and . . .”
Just then I heard Zehra flirting with three young men on the sofa near the hall. Pakize was in the inner living room with another group, Halit Ayarcı and Sabriye Hanım. My older sister-in-law was playing the celebrated artiste, stomping around like a restless racehorse as she waited to be summoned to show off her renowned musical talents. My aunt continued:
“But to tell you the truth, I never expected the Hayri I knew when he was a child to become such a modern man! And his job is so pertinent in this day and age. It seems that he is the one who came up with the idea! He was a calm and quiet man. But oh, how he loved watches and clocks! Do you remember how you went to work on my dining-room clock when I was ill? And then you lost the pendulum!”
For a moment, I was afraid she might say, “Now you will either find that pendulum or never let me catch sight of you again!” But no, she was too busy rewriting the past, indeed even embellishing it. And why not? What more can we do than create the environment for ourselves to live in? Especially as we can’t just accept the sharp blade of the present.
“I always wished my stepdaughter had been more like Zehra! But, oh no, she turned out to be a strumpet.”
There was a glimmer in Selma Hanım’s eyes. She had divined my aunt’s reason for joining our coterie. Her situation was the opposite of mine; while I was now inundated with activity, she was lonely. My aunt wasn’t getting along with her stepdaughter and son-in-law. But how could Halit Ayarcı have known this? And why did he have to arrange for her to come in such a roundabout way? How could he have been so willing to risk everything for such a person?
And my aunt finished her monologue, confirming my thoughts.
“I’m so pleased with myself for not giving Hayri her hand in marriage. Of course my relationship with my poor late husband, Nasit, suffered dearly for this.”
What could anyone say? Everything had changed, and I had no choice but to accept everything as it was, or, rather, however it was on any given day.
“Oh, my son! You certainly are a lucky one.”
Ekrem Bey appeared, and my aunt quickly moved on.
“Aha! Here’s another unreliable one. This one doesn’t even come to the meetings, even though he’s a member of the board. Come now, dear Ekrem, shall we not mingle a little and see how the other guests are getting on?”
But
poor Ekrem was looking at someone just behind us. And Nevzat Hanım, squirming to free herself from Cemal Bey’s clutches, also stepped away to mingle with my aunt. A few others tagged along in hope of finding more amusing company.
I asked Selma Hanım what she thought of my aunt. Instead of answering directly, she only said, “She loves you very much. She talked about no one but you for the past hour!” I told her about my various adventures with my aunt. At first she laughed and laughed but then she turned serious, murmuring:
“Men of greatness rise out of strange circumstances.”
I looked at her in complete surprise. What could I say?
A little later Sabriye Hanım came over to us. She had spent the entire day working at the regulation station that was soon to open in Taksim. “Those three girls have been trained exceedingly well,” she said. “We’ve been rehearsing since morning! Everything is just the way we want it to be. It’s just that we still don’t have the uniforms.” Selma Hanım said she could start work herself whenever we wanted. A little later Cemal Bey came over to collect his wife. I asked Sabriye Hanım:
“Did Selma Hanım ever ask Cemal Bey if she could work with us?”
“There’s no need. They’re getting divorced,” she said. “But that’s between you and me, for the time being. Cemal Bey was caught embezzling, and the company is on the verge of bankruptcy. It’s a terrible mess. Haven’t you heard?”
“But Cemal Bey doesn’t seem worried at all.” He’d been comfortably carrying on with Nevzat Hanım.
“Cemal would keep his composure on his deathbed,” she said. “But none of this really matters. How is your aunt? Wonderful, isn’t she?”