Though I’d been amused to read in the papers about Melikhan, the former foreign minister, who had taken a fall having caught his foot on a carpet at a ball and died two days later of a brain hemorrhage, my mother didn’t mention it, fearing perhaps that it might remind me of Sibel and the engagement. There were other pieces of news that my mother saw fit to withhold, but that I’d heard from Basri, the Nişantaşı barber. It was he, for instance, who informed me that my father’s friend Fasih Fahir and his wife, Zarife, had bought a house in Bodrum; that Sabih the Bear was actually a very decent person “underneath it all;” that gold was actually a foolish investment right now; that prices were bound to fall; that there would be a lot of fixing at the horse races that summer; that even without a hair left on his head, the famously wealthy Turgay Bey, out of attachment to the habits of a gentleman, still came in for regular haircuts; that two years ago Basri had been offered the Hilton concession, but being a “man of principle” (the meaning of which he did not elaborate) he had declined-and in this same spirit proceeded to ply me for any information I might have on this and that. It would irritate me to realize that Basri and all his rich Nişantaşı clients knew all about my obsession for Füsun, and lest I give them more to gossip about, I would sometimes go to Cevat, my father’s old barber in Beyoğlu, and from him I would hear tales of the Beyoğlu hoodlums (by now referred to as the mafia) and the film world. It was from him, for example, that I heard of Papatya’s involvement with Muzaffer, the famous producer. None of my sources, however, talked to me about Sibel or Zaim, or about Mehmet and Nurcihan’s wedding. From this, if nothing else, I should have deduced the universal awareness of my sorrow and suffering, but I didn’t: My informants’ tact seemed as natural to me as their oft-repeated indiscreet accounts of all the bankers going bankrupt, stories I always welcomed.
It was two years earlier, at the office and also from friends, that I’d begun to hear about all the bankers who’d gone bankrupt, and all the investors who’d lost their fortunes-stories I enjoyed because they proved the utter brainlessness of the Istanbul rich, not to mention their slave masters in Ankara. For her part, my mother relished saying, “Your dear departed father always did insist that no one should trust those conniving bankers!”-a subject she warmed to since, unlike so many others in our circle, we’d not fallen prey to them. (Though I sometimes suspected that Osman had secretly invested some of the profits from his new ventures with them.) My mother felt bad for any friends who’d been fleeced-Kadri the Sieve, whose beautiful daughter she had once hoped I would marry, Cüneyt Bey and Feyzan Hanım, Cevdet Bey and his family, the Pamuks-but when it came to the Lerzans, she would profess amazement that they should have consigned their entire fortune to a “so-called banker” who was the son of an accountant in one of their own factories (and who had worked his way up from security guard), a man who had only recently risen from the shantytowns with no financial credentials, but with an office of some sort, an advertisement on TV, and a checking account with a reputable bank. Closing her eyes as if she would faint and shaking her head half in jest, she would say, “They could at least have gone to someone like Kastelli, who’s so close to those actor friends of yours.” I would never dwell on the subject of my actor friends; when she marveled that “sensible, reasonable people” (including, as readers will recall, Zaim) could be so harebrained, I would enjoy chiming in.
Tarık Bey numbered among those my mother dismissed as stupid. He had invested money with Kastelli the banker, who had hired so many of the famous actors we knew from the Pelür to appear in his commercials. When Tarık Bey had admitted losses two years earlier, I’d assumed them to be small, as he gave no indication of serious suffering or hardship.
On Friday, March 9, 1984, two months after Füsun got her driver’s license, when Çetin dropped me off at the house in Çukurcuma at suppertime, I saw that all the windows and curtains were open, and the lights were on upstairs and downstairs, this despite Aunt Nesibe’s perennial upset at the waste of electricity when a single light was left on upstairs at suppertime; without fail, she would say, “Füsun, my girl, the bedroom light’s still on,” and without delay Füsun would go straight upstairs to turn it off.
Steeling myself for a family quarrel between Feridun and Füsun, I went upstairs. No one was seated at the table where we’d eaten supper for so many years, nor could I see any food. The television was on, and sitting before it were two neighbors-an old lady and her husband-who seemed at a loss as to what to do. Out of the corners of their eyes they were watching our actor friend Ekrem Bey, who, dressed as the grand vizier, was making a speech about infidels.
“Kemal Bey,” said the neighbor, Efe the electrician. “Tarık Bey has passed away. Please accept our condolences.”
I ran upstairs, instinct taking me not to the master bedroom but to Füsun’s room-the little bedroom I had dreamed of for so many years.
My lovely was lying doubled up in bed and crying. When she saw me she straightened herself, and I sat down beside her. We instantly threw our arms around each other, embracing with all our strength. She rested her head between my neck and chest, weeping convulsively.
Dear God, what great happiness it was to hold her in my arms! I felt the world’s profundity, its unbounded beauty. With her head resting on my shoulder, her chest pressed against mine, I felt as if it were not just she but the entire world in my arms. Her shaking upset me, grieved me deeply, in fact, but what bliss it brought me, too! I stroked her hair with care and tenderness, combing it gently with my fingers. Every time my hand returned to her roots so my fingers could pass once more through her hair, her entire body quaked as she burst into tears once more.
I called to mind my own father’s death so that I might better share in her grief. But much as I’d loved my father, there’d always been a tension between us, a rivalry of sorts. Füsun, by contrast, had loved her father deeply, tirelessly, and without effort or reservation, just as one might love one’s home, and one’s street, and the sun that shone down on them. And it seemed to me that her tears were shed not just for her father but also for the state of the world, and the course of life.
“Don’t worry, my darling,” I whispered into her ear. “Everything will be fine from now on. From now on everything will work out. We are going to be very happy.”
“I don’t want anything anymore!” she said, wailing more fiercely. As I felt her shudder in my arms, I looked long and hard at the furniture, the drawers, the little nightstand, Feridun’s film books, and so much else. For eight years, how much I had longed to come into this room where Füsun kept all her dresses, and all her other belongings.
As her sobbing intensified, Aunt Nesibe came in. “Oh Kemal,” she said, “what are we going to do? How can I live without him?” Sitting down on the bed, she, too, began to cry.
I spent the night in Çukurcuma. Sometimes I would go downstairs to sit with the friends and acquaintances who had come to offer condolences, and then I would go back upstairs to comfort Füsun, still crying in her room; I would stroke her hair and give her a fresh handkerchief. As her father’s body lay in the next room, and the friends and acquaintances gathered together downstairs sat drinking tea and smoking cigarettes and watching television in silence, Füsun and I lay side by side, locked in an embrace, for the first time in nine years. I breathed in the scent of her neck, her hair, her skin perfumed with the scent that the exertions of crying had released. Then I would go back downstairs to serve the guests.