Bliss: A Novel

  From the pier, the village appeared larger than it had at first. There were quite a number of foreign tourists around, predominantly English. Some were reading, some were drinking Turkish coffee, and others were snoozing on divans under the giant eucalyptus tree in the garden of the teahouse. On the green hills behind the town beyond the last of the houses, ancient ruins, including the remains of a half-ruined theater, were visible. How delightful it all seemed.

  Having decided that this was exactly the kind of place he had in mind, İrfan went ashore alone. Meryem was lying on the deck. She raised her head to look at the village, but then went back to sleep. Cemal was studying his surroundings.

  İrfan thanked the deeply tanned boys who had helped him tie up the boat, promising to visit their fish restaurant. He then headed for the teahouse in the garden with the eucalyptus, which was so enormous that not even three people holding hands could encircle the huge trunk.

  The professor ordered a Turkish coffee. He loved to sit in the open air outside a café or a teahouse in the early morning, looking at the bright green sea. He remembered the previous comic scene when the boy had tried to speak English with him. Since he had cut off his beard, no one would take him for a tourist any longer. He could see the boat from where he sat and keep an eye on Meryem.

  Apparently, the local tourists had not yet discovered this place. Once, he had made the mistake of spending a holiday at a fashionable resort in the south. It seemed like hell: Giant sailboats crowded the small bay; seaplanes carried customers from the airport to the luxurious five-star hotels; the helicopters of the yacht owners buzzed overhead; and speedboats madly turned circles in the sea. Every hotel and restaurant by the seaside played different music, and the beat from various discos deafened the ears. At the time he had thought he was enjoying himself, but he had realized during those nights on the sailboat how much the voyage had changed him. Now many things disturbed him that he had then taken for granted.

  The peace of this hidden village on the shores of the Aegean was something different. It was a refuge. Stray dogs drowsed idly by the roadside, opening an eye every now and then to glance at passersby. Nobody meddled with them. Here, life flowed slowly on its tranquil way.

  The professor shared some of his first impressions with the owner of the teahouse. The middle-aged man said, accenting his words in the Aegean way, “You’re right, but more and more people keep coming. In one or two years, this place should be full.”

  The owner had misunderstood him. The man considered the village’s isolation a defect. If more tourists came, the village would get asphalt roads, traffic lights, and big hotels. The man wanted to earn more money; what could be more natural?

  İrfan then told him that he liked the village very much and asked if he knew of a house for rent.

  The owner did not know of any empty ones but said a man from Istanbul, a retired ambassador, had bought an old house at the other end of the village. And he sometimes rented rooms. They would not find anywhere as comfortable as that house. The old man was a bit strange, but they would have to put up with that.

  İrfan was curious about the ambassador. The son of the teahouse proprietor accompanied him to the house, the last building at the end of the bay. It was a simple stone structure in the midst of a grove of orange trees with their fragrant blossoms. At least five hundred trees were giving off the provocative scent that embraced İrfan. This orange grove beside the sea was surrounded by tall cypress trees to block the wind. The garden ran right down to the sea, near to which a giant olive tree attracted the professor’s attention. Just beyond it, he noticed a landing stage, ramshackle and rickety, but nevertheless a place to moor the boat if the water was deep enough.

  He walked around the side of the house and came to the front garden, where a thin, white-haired, well-dressed man was crouching next to a splendid cypress tree. He gestured to them to keep silent before signaling them to come quietly.

  İrfan walked softly toward him. The old man was holding a baby sparrow in his hand. The poor thing could not even open its eyes, let alone flutter its wings. The man carefully placed the tiny bird on the garden wall and took a step backward. When he was far enough away not to disturb it, he said, “There are sparrows’ nests in the cypress tree. That little one had fallen out, and the mother was chirping anxiously. I’ve put it where its mother and father can see it. Let’s see what happens. Soon we’ll find out if it fell out of the nest accidentally, or if the parents pushed it.”

  “What will you do if it’s been pushed out?” İrfan whispered.

  “Then I’ll take it home and look after it.”

  “So you’ll change its fate, you mean.”

  “Yes,” replied the ambassador, and for the first time, looked closely at İrfan. “Who are you?”

  The professor introduced himself. He said that he was looking for a place to rent for himself and the two people with him.

  “You may stay here, but there are certain rules,” the ambassador said.

  “What are they?”

  “There’s no television here, and you can’t bring one in. Radios and newspapers aren’t allowed, and neither is any discussion of politics. Singing popular songs and talking about celebrities is not permitted. Nor is support of any football team whatsoever. In short, any behavior that would cause the nation of folly to enter this house is banned.”

  İrfan was stunned.

  “‘The nation of folly’?”

  “Yes. Foolishness is so widespread in this country that it could enter a house through the air if one did not shut the windows and doors. Foolishness is the most contagious disease in the world.”

  “All right,” İrfan said. He had never met such an ambassador. “How much is the rent?”

  “As much as you offer.”

  “What?”

  “As much as you want to pay. I don’t hide the fact that I need money—the oranges don’t make enough to cover their cost. People no longer want oranges that have seeds, when they can buy navel and Jaffa oranges, even though ours are tastier and more aromatic. Anyway, that’s why I take a tenant every now and then. They pay whatever they can. You look wealthy, so you should pay more.”

  “How much more?”

  “One or two million dollars.”

  Upon hearing this, İrfan realized that the old man really was an oddity, but he liked him for all that. The old man had tremendous energy and subtle irony—a good combination.

  “You’re as odd as they say.”

  The ambassador laughed.

  İrfan checked the jetty and determined that the water was deep enough. After walking along the fine sandy beach for about ten minutes, he arrived back at the boat.

  Meryem was still asleep. He asked Cemal to take in the fenders and untie the moorings. They turned on the engine and went to their new anchorage. The garden looked magnificent from the sea, and even from the boat they could smell the intoxicating scent of orange blossom. Meryem sat up and looked at the garden. Then she lay down again.

  When they arrived, the ambassador was inside. He looked sad. He was sitting in an old armchair on the verge of tears. İrfan asked him what the matter was.

  “Guess what happened to the little sparrow,” he said.

  “What happened?”

  “Guess.”

  “Its mother came and took it back.”

  “No.”

  “You brought it home.”

  “No.”

  “What happened then?”

  “A cat ate it.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I shot the cat. So now, both the sparrow and the cat are dead.”

  “Don’t be sad,” İrfan said. “You’ve lost a bird and a cat, but you’ve made three new friends.”

  As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized what an idiotic thing he had said, but it was too late to change it.

  The ambassador looked at the three of them. There was a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. He looked at Cemal in his shorts and Meryem i
n her village clothes and headscarf. “Who are they?” he asked.

  “My friends.”

  “Are they professors, too?”

  “No.”

  “Then they must be associate professors. Oh, who cares … your rooms are on the upper floor. Did you inform your associates of the house rules?”

  “Yes. Don’t worry.”

  As they carried their belongings to the second floor, the ambassador said, “You told me I was a strange man, but you, Professor, are no less odd.”

  “You’re right.” İrfan smiled.

  The old man smiled, too. İrfan decided that the ambassador was not so strange after all but a very intelligent man who was simply teasing him.

  Maybe everything he had said about the bird and the cat was a merciless joke.

  “That was a fine game you played,” he told the ambassador.

  “What game? The game of becoming a child?”

  In the evening, after İrfan had drunk a glass of half-frozen whisky, he asked the old man what he had meant by “the game of becoming a child.”

  The ambassador laughed.

  “Human beings go through a ‘camel phase’ during which they carry all the foolish prejudices society burdens them with. Then comes the ‘lion phase,’ when they fight against all such prejudices. But there’s another phase only a few achieve: the childhood phase. It’s the highest phase, which requires one to consider life with the naïveté of a child, to play games, to be open to all kinds of influences, and to find one’s lost innocence again. That’s why I play games.”

  “I would never have thought that you would be an admirer of Nietzsche,” said İrfan, as he toasted the old man.

  “Well, I only accept his theory up to a point,” the ambassador replied. “All that superhuman stuff is crap.”

  The healing scent of the orange blossom mixed with the salty smell of the sea. Surrounded by the delicately sweet fragrance of the breezy garden, İrfan enjoyed his ice-cold whisky. He considered living here till the end of his life. Meryem could stay with him, but he had to find a way to get rid of Cemal, who made him feel nervous.

  “What’s the girl’s problem?” asked the ambassador.

  “She’s ill.”

  “What’s her illness?”

  “A nervous breakdown, I guess. That’s why she can’t get out of bed.”

  “The will to return to the womb,” said the ambassador.

  “Wilhelm Reich,” replied İrfan.

  The ambassador laughed. They had made up a reference game. Whenever one of them said something, the other had to refer it to its source.

  “Why did she have a nervous breakdown?”

  “I suspect she’s been raped.”

  “What should we do?”

  “Let’s leave her alone for a few days. She may pull herself together.”

  Then the ambassador asked about Cemal.

  “He’s her uncle’s son,” said İrfan. “He’s just finished his military service. As far as I can tell, he was ordered to kill the girl but couldn’t do it.”

  “Maybe he fell in love with her.”

  İrfan laughed.

  “That would be a perfect Hollywood script,” he said. “Even the most mediocre writer would think twice before writing such a story.”

  “Sometimes real life is more melodramatic than Hollywood clichés,” replied the ambassador. “Actually, it’s often like that.”

  “You’re right,” İrfan agreed.

  The ambassador remarked that in Anatolia there was a belief that women were evil, sinful, and full of guilt. This belief was at the root of the country’s underdevelopment, since in this way half of the nation became ostracized.

  “Yes,” agreed İrfan. “But women are seen as guilty and sinful in the Western culture, too!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Think about the word ‘evil.’”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t you think this word comes from the word ‘Eve’?”

  The ambassador frowned, and said, “Perhaps you’re right … Eve, evil, the first sin … You’re right. At least, there’s no such word for evil derived from ‘Havva,’ the name for Eve in our language.”

  According to the bits and pieces of information İrfan gathered from the ambassador as they drank through the night, the old man had worked as a Turkish ambassador in several European capitals. After he had retired, his wife had died, then he had bought this lonely house in this secluded bay. It was not the house he had bought as much as the orange grove, because his first idea had been to pick the oranges, pack and sell them. Later, the idea of living in the house had attracted him as much as selling the oranges.

  “For years, I thought I represented the state,” said the ambassador. “Then I began to wonder if the state was eligible to represent me. The honesty and intelligence of the people in charge did not measure up to my expectations. In the end, I decided to withdraw from the world I had always lived in and come here to write my memoirs.”

  “Did you write them?”

  “No. Because I realized that the problem in this country is not a lack of knowledge or comprehension. We cannot teach them anything. They know everything better than you or I, but they lack good intentions. They insist on having their own way. You can’t influence those who have the power of decision-making in this country, because the public is foolish and naïve. Democracy in a country where the public is uneducated is no different from having a dictatorship or an elected king. Therefore, I cut my ties with this country. I don’t know who the prime minister is, even. The sparrow chick of today is more important for me than the prime minister.”

  “What really happened to that bird?”

  “Come with me.” The ambassador grinned.

  He took the professor to his room. He had placed the sparrow on a bed of cotton in a birdcage.

  “I wasn’t wrong,” he said. “It was the parents that threw the poor thing out of the nest, but I won’t let it die.”

  * * *

  Meryem was lying in bed in a small dim room with only a tiny window. She could not get used to her bed and was tossing and turning. This house reminded her of the vineyard cabin near her village. Whenever she closed her eyes and began to doze, she thought she was in that cabin and kicked wildly in the air to repulse the black-bearded shadow bearing down on her, but the sinister shadow did what it wanted and made the place between her legs bleed. Then she began to moan. The sound of her own voice woke her, and she found herself soaked in sweat.

  The part of her brain that was working soundly whispered to her that even in the barn she had not suffered so much. Much time had elapsed since then, and she was far away from the village. Just when she thought she had forgotten everything, how could the horrifying memories return to haunt her?

  Meryem tried to make her mind numb and expel these images from her mind to become as pure as a child once more. Yet, she could not manage it.

  As Cemal squatted in a corner of the garden and watched the two drunken men, his hatred swelled to the point of bursting. Those two were laughing together—maybe even making fun of him—and talking in a language he did not understand. It was clear that they despised him, as though he were lower than a farmhand or a servant in the east.

  Yet it was the heroism of Cemal and his comrades that allowed such men to live comfortably in this country. If Abdullah could see these two repulsive alcoholics, he would question whether they were worth sacrificing an eye or a leg for.

  In Cemal’s opinion they were not. The professor, in particular, was a traitor. He flew a foreign flag—larger than the Turkish one—on his boat. Every night, Cemal changed their places and put the glorious Turkish flag above the other, which, to him, resembled pajamas with its red and blue stripes. The next day, İrfan would say that it was against maritime rules and put the Turkish flag back in its former place. Cemal would not say anything, but at night, he would change the flags over again. The most important thing was the nation’s flag. After so many of his brav
e comrades had become martyrs for their country, what maritime rule could prevent the Turkish flag from blowing in the wind above the foreign flag?

  The next morning, Cemal found an opportunity to show the professor and the ambassador some of his photos from the mountains. In one of the pictures, Cemal was seen on the crest of a hill in his commando uniform, with his bandolier and cartridge belt, and his G3 gun pointing in the air. The photo had been taken from below. There were clouds in the background, and Cemal had raised his head with pride.

  The two men did not pay much attention to Cemal’s photographs; they gave them a cursory glance and handed them back. No matter what he did, they were not interested in him. If they had only asked, he could have talked about the war for hours.

  WHAT DID THE DONKEY SAY?

  For three days, the scent of orange blossom, which had become almost sticky in the heavy air, enveloped all of them. Not only were the ambassador and İrfan, indefatigable in their consumption of whisky, intoxicated by the odor, but so was Cemal, who spent his time dozing lazily on the boat or in the garden.

  The scent came in through the open window of Meryem’s dim room, suffused her body like a balm, and healed her wounds. Compassion had turned into the scent of orange blossom pervading her room. The intense fragrance caressed her hair like Bibi’s hand. In the rare moments when she half opened her eyes, she had visions of butterflies. Butterflies with dark blue wings and yellow spots flew above her head, landed on her face and hair, and covered her blanket.

  Within a few days, the scent of the orange blossom and the vision of the butterflies brought Meryem back to health. She woke up with a tremendous feeling of boundless energy and well-being and sat up. Her bones ached, but she devoured the food the professor had left for her while she was sleeping.

  Tearing off her clothes as if they were hospital garments soiled with sweat and blood, she jumped out of bed. Her head did not ache anymore, and her body felt weightless. As she opened the shutters and let the sunshine fill the room, her arms and legs responded as though she were floating through water.