“Everything’s settled,” she said, her manner suggesting not so much a happy outcome as life’s tendency to put things aright in the simplest way. “Füsun and Feridun are separating. If you let Feridun have Lemon Films he’ll be very accommodating. This is what Füsun wants, too. But first the two of you will have to talk.”
“Do you mean me and Feridun?”
“No, I mean you and Füsun.”
After watching the first glow of happiness spread across my face, she lit herself a cigarette, crossed her legs, and told me the story, not in a needlessly dilatory way, but enjoying every bit just the same. Two days earlier, Feridun had come to the house having drunk a good deal; telling Füsun that he and Papatya had split, he said he wanted to come back to the house, and to Füsun. But, of course, Füsun wouldn’t have him back, and a terrible row ensued, and what a pity, what a shame it was that the neighbors, the entire neighborhood, had heard them shouting (this was why Aunt Nesibe had asked that I not visit for a while). Later on Feridun telephoned, and after he and Aunt Nesibe arranged to meet in Beyoğlu, both husband and wife agreed to a separation.
There was a silence. “I’ve changed the locks on the front door,” said Aunt Nesibe. “Our house is no longer Feridun’s house.”
For a moment it was as if all the traffic clattering past Satsat had fallen silent, along with the wider world. Seeing me transfixed by what she’d said, my cigarette burning down unnoticed in my hand, Aunt Nesibe retold her story from the beginning, this time lavishing more detail. “To tell the truth, I could never feel any anger toward that boy,” she said, in a worldly-wise tone of voice that implied she had known from the start how all this would turn out. “Yes, he has a good heart, but he’s also very weak. What mother would want a bridegroom like that?” she said, and then fell silent. I was expecting her next to say something like, Of course, we had no choice, but she said something utterly different.
“I’ve experienced a bit of this in my own life. It’s very difficult, being a beautiful woman in this country especially a divorcée-more difficult, even, than being a beautiful girl… When men can’t get what they want from a beautiful woman, they do evil things to her-you know this, too, Kemal; and Feridun protected Füsun from all those evils.”
For a moment I wondered whether I was one of the evils Feridun had protected her from.
“Of course, it shouldn’t have taken this long to sort things out,” she continued.
Calm but amazed, I said nothing: It was as if I had never noticed before what a strange shape my life had taken.
“Of course, Feridun has a right to Lemon Films,” I said after some time. “I’ll speak to him. Is he at all angry with me?”
“No,” said Aunt Nesibe, frowning. “But Füsun wants to have a serious talk with you. There is so much inside her that has gone unsaid. You’ll talk.”
We decided that Füsun and I should meet at two in the afternoon three days hence, at the İnci Patisserie in Beyoğlu. Aunt Nesibe did not prolong the conversation; she pretended to be uncomfortable speaking in such strange surroundings, but, good woman that she was, she did not try to hide her contentment when she left.
On the afternoon of Monday, April 9, 1984, I went to Beyoğlu as happy and excited as a teenager going to see the lycée girl he had been dreaming about for months. At first I was too restless to sleep and then too impatient to get through the morning. So I’d asked Çetin to drop me off at Taksim early. It was sunny there, while İstiklal Avenue was as always in shadow, and I sought the refuge of its cool shade, its shop windows, its cinema entrances; even the smell of damp and dust in the passages I had visited with my mother as a child was inviting. I was dizzy with blissful memories and the promise of a happy future, the contagious optimism of the crowds swirling past me in search of a nice meal, a diverting film, a few things to buy.
I went into Vakko, Beymen, and a couple of other stores in search of a present for Füsun, but I couldn’t decide on anything. To work off nervous energy, I walked all the way to Tünel, and exactly half an hour before the appointed time, in front of the Mısırlı Apartments, I saw Füsun. She was clad in a lovely spring dress, large, bright polka dots on a white background with a pair of provocatively glamorous sunglasses and was looking at a shop window. She hadn’t noticed me, but I noticed her, and in particular that she was wearing my father’s earrings.
“What a coincidence” were my first clumsy words.
“Oh… hello, Kemal! How are you?”
“It’s such a beautiful day, I had to get out of the office,” I said, as if we’d had no plan to meet in half an hour, and had run into each other by chance. “Shall we walk?”
“First I have to find a particular type of button for my mother,” said Füsun. “She is under a lot of pressure completing an urgent dress order, and so after you and I have spoken, I’m going back to the house to help her. Shall we go to the Passage of Mirrors to find her a wooden button?”
We went not just to the Passage of Mirrors but to several other passages, too. How lovely it was to watch Füsun talk to the shop assistants, looking over samples of all colors, rummaging through trays of old buttons, chatting away as she searched for a set.
“What do you say to these?” she said, having found some buttons.
“They’re beautiful.”
“All right, then.”
She paid for the buttons that I would find nine months later, in her chest of drawers, still in their wrapping paper.
“Come on now, let’s walk a little,” I said. “I spent eight years dreaming about meeting one day in Beyoğlu and walking along together.”
“Really?”
“Truly.”
We walked for a while without speaking. From time to time I, too, would look into a shop window, though it wasn’t the merchandise that drew my eye, but her beautiful reflection in the glass. Men were not the only ones noticing her in the Beyoğlu crowds; it was the women, too, and Füsun liked that.
“Let’s sit down somewhere and have a piece of cake,” I said.
Before Füsun could answer, a woman broke through the crowd and crying with delight threw her arms around her. It was Ceyda, and her two children: a boy of eight or nine and his younger brother, both in short pants and white socks, both healthy-looking and vivacious; as their mother spoke to Füsun, they eyed me curiously: They had Ceyda’s huge eyes.
“How lovely to see you two together!” said Ceyda.
“We ran into each other just a few minutes ago,” said Füsun.
“You look so nice together,” said Ceyda. They lowered their voices to continue their conversation inaudibly.
“Mother, I’m bored, can we please go?” said the older child.
I remembered sitting with Ceyda in Taşlık Park eight years ago, when this child was in her belly; as we’d gazed down at Dolmabahçe, we’d talked about the pain I was in. But recalling that time I was neither sad nor overcome by emotion.
After Ceyda had left us, we slowed down in front of the Palace Cinema where they were showing That Troublesome Song, starring Papatya. During the past twelve months, Papatya had (if the papers were to be believed) broken some world record by playing the lead in no fewer than seventeen films and photoromans. The magazines were peddling a lie about her being offered starring roles in Hollywood, and Papatya had kept the story line bubbling by posing with Longman’s textbooks and telling lies about taking English lessons, and her willingness to do whatever she could to represent Turkey abroad. As Füsun examined the film stills in the lobby, she noticed me paying close attention to her expression.
“Come on, darling, let’s go,” I said.
“Don’t worry, I’m not jealous of Papatya,” she said sagely.
We continued along in silence, gazing into shop windows.