4. The simple fact of her being someone else now. The eighteen-year-old girl I had known and made love to was still living within her, but as the years passed, she had been buried deeper and deeper within, like the sapling encased in the bark of the tree. I loved the Füsun now lying at my side far more than I’d ever loved the young girl I’d met so many years before. Time had favored us both with growth of wisdom, and of depth, it pleased me to see.

Giant raindrops began to fall on the windowpanes and windowsills. As the sky thundered, the downpour began. And as we listened to the heavy summer rain, wrapped in each other’s arms, I fell asleep.

When I awoke the rain had stopped. Füsun was not beside me but on her feet, putting on her red dress.

“Are you going back to your room?” I said. “Please don’t go.”

“I’m going to look for a bottle of water. We seem to have had a lot to drink. I’m terribly thirsty.”

“I’m thirsty, too,” I said. “Stay, I’ll go. I saw some bottles in the restaurant refrigerator.”

But by the time I had got out of bed, she’d quietly opened the door and left. So I got back into bed, and happily imagining that she would soon return, I fell asleep.

79 Journey to Another World

MUCH LATER, when I awoke, Füsun had still not returned. Thinking she had gone to her mother’s side, I got out of bed and lit a cigarette at the window. The sun had not yet risen, but in the gloom I could make out just the hint of daylight and the fragrance of wet earth. The neon signs of the gas station up the road, and of the Grand Semiramis Hotel, were reflected in the puddles on the edge of the asphalt and in the polished chrome bumpers of the Chevrolet in the adjacent parking lot.

I saw that the restaurant where we’d had dinner and performed our engagement ceremony the night before had a small garden, its chairs and cushions now sopping wet. Just beyond, a naked lightbulb was strung to the branch of a fig tree, and in the light filtering through its leaves I could see Füsun sitting on a bench. She was half turned toward me, smoking as she awaited sunrise.

I threw on my clothes and went straight down. “Good morning, my beauty,” I whispered.

She said nothing, lost in thought and shaking her head like someone preoccupied with great troubles. On the chair right beside the bench I saw a glass of raki.

“While I was getting the water, I noticed there was an open bottle of this, too!” Her impish expression reminded me that she was Tarık Bey’s daughter.

“Assuming we aren’t going to spend the most beautiful morning the world has ever seen drinking, what are we going to do?” I said. “It will be hot on the road. We can sleep all day in the car… Is this seat taken, young lady?”

“I’m not a young lady anymore.”

I did not answer, but sat down beside her, and taking her hand just as I’d done in the Palace Cinema, I settled in to admire the view with her.

Sitting there in silence we watched the world around us slowly brighten. There were still purple lightning bolts in the distance, and orange clouds shedding their rain on some part of the Balkans. An intercity bus rumbled past. We gazed at its red taillights until they disappeared.

A dog with black ears approached us with care from the gas station, wagging its tail amicably. It was a dog of no distinction, an ordinary mutt. After sniffing me, and then Füsun, he rested his head on her lap.

“He’s taken a shine to you,” I said.

But Füsun didn’t answer.

“Yesterday as we were coming in, he barked at us three times,” I said. “Did you notice? There was once a china dog just like him on top of your television.”

“You stole that one, too.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘stole.’ Your mother, your father, all of you knew about it from the first year.”

“True.”

“What did they say about it?”

“Nothing. It upset my father. My mother would act as if it didn’t matter. And I wanted to become a film star.”

“You still can be.”

“Kemal, that’s a lie you’ve just told me. You don’t even believe it yourself,” she said in a serious voice. “That really makes me angry-how good you are at telling lies.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You know perfectly well that you have no intention of helping me become a film star. There’s no longer any need, after all.”

“What do you mean? If it’s what you really want, it’s perfectly possible.”

“It’s been what I really wanted for years, Kemal. And you know that.”

The dog nestled up to Füsun.

“It’s the spitting image of that china dog. Especially those ears, half black, half wheaten-they’re identical.”

“What did you do with all those dogs, and combs, and watches, and cigarettes, and everything else?”

“I took comfort from them,” I said, now a little resentful myself. “The whole collection resides in the Merhamet Apartments. I could feel no shame about it with you, my lovely. When we get back to Istanbul, I’d like you to see it.”

She looked at me and smiled. There was compassion in that smile, and, at least in my opinion, just as much mockery as my story, and my obsession, merited.

“So you want to take me back to that dusty garçonnière, is that it?” she said.

“There’s no longer any need for that,” I said in some pique, throwing her words back at her.

“That’s right. Last night you tricked me. You robbed me of my greatest treasure without benefit of marriage. You took possession of me. And people like you never marry what they’ve already had. That’s the kind of person you are.”

“You’re right,” I said, half angry, half playful. “This is the one and only thing I’ve been waiting for all these years. Why should I get married now?”

At least we were still holding hands. Hoping to smooth it over before the game turned serious, I kissed her passionately on the lips. Füsun submitted at first, but then she drew away.

“I could kill you,” she said, standing up.

“Because you know how much I love you.”

I wasn’t sure she’d heard me. My beauty, truly angry now, walked off in a drunken huff, her high heels clicking furiously.

She did not go back into the hotel. The dog was following her, and together they headed out to the highway, turning in the direction of Edirne, Füsun in the lead, and the dog trailing. I finished the raki left in Füsun’s glass (as I’d sometimes done at the house in Çukurcuma, when no one was looking). For a long while I watched them from behind. The Edirne road stretched out straight ahead of them to the horizon, almost into infinity, and with Füsun’s dress ever easier to spot as the sky brightened, there seemed no danger of her vanishing from sight.

But after a time I could no longer hear her footsteps across the fields. And when I could see no more the red speck that was Füsun, when she had vanished into infinity, like a heroine at the end of a Yeşilçam film, I became uneasy.

A few minutes later I saw the red speck again. She was still walking on, my angry beauty. A great tenderness was born in me as I considered it: We would spend the rest of our lives making love as we had done last night and having tiffs as we’d done this morning. Even so, I longed to make the arguments fewer, the rough patches smoother, and Füsun happy.

Traffic was building on the Edirne-Istanbul road. A pretty woman in a red dress with such beautiful legs was bound to be harassed. I got into the ’56 Chevrolet and set off down the road to find her.

A kilometer and a half on, I spotted the dog under a plane tree. He was sitting there waiting for Füsun. I felt a sharp pang inside me, and my heart knocked against my chest. I slowed down.

ALTAT TOMATOES, a large billboard proclaimed, amid gardens, fields of sunflowers, little farmhouses. The Os had been peppered with bullets, target practice for bored passengers driving past. The holes had had time to rust.