Some people spend their entire lives in pain, owing to the misfortune of being poor, stupid, or outcast from society-this thought passed through me, gliding by with the measured pace of the coffin, then disappeared. Since the age of twenty I had felt myself protected by an invisible armor from all variety of trouble and misery. And so it followed that to spend too much time thinking about other people’s misery might make me unhappy, too, and in so doing, pierce my armor.
20 Füsun’s Two Conditions
FüSUN ARRIVED late. This upset me, but she was even more upset than I was. She explained that she had run into her friend Ceyda, but it sounded less like an apology than an accusation. Some of Ceyda’s perfume had brushed off on her. Füsun had met Ceyda during the beauty contest. She’d been unfairly treated, too, coming in third. But now Ceyda was very happy because she was going out with the Sedircis’ son, and this boy was serious; they were thinking about marriage. “That’s wonderful, isn’t it?” said Füsun, and as she gazed into my eyes her sincerity was arresting.
I was about to nod when she said there was a problem. Because the Sedircis’ son was so “serious,” he didn’t want Ceyda working as a model.
“For example, now that it’s summer, she’s booked to do an ad for a swing set. But her boyfriend is very strict, very conservative. So he is forbidding her to appear in a commercial for a covered swing set built for two-forget about wearing a miniskirt, he won’t even let her do it if she wears a dress that shows nothing. And Ceyda has completed a professional modeling course. Her picture is already in the papers. The manufacturer of the canopies for the swing sets is willing to use Turkish models, but the boy just won’t have it.”
“You should warn her that this man could have her under lock and key in no time.”
“Ceyda has been ready to marry and become a housewife for ages,” said Füsun, annoyed that I had failed to understand what she was talking about. “But her fear is that this serious man might not be so serious about her. I promised to get together and talk about it. What do you think, how can you tell if a man is serious?”
“How would I know?”
“You know exactly how men like this are…”
“I know nothing about rich conservative types from the provinces,” I said. “Come on, let’s look at your homework.”
“I didn’t do any homework. Okay?” she said. “Did you find my earring?”
My first impulse was to go through the motions like some sly drunk driver stopped for a police search who knows full well that he has left his license at home, yet searches his pockets, his glove compartment, his bags, in a parody of good faith. But I caught myself in time.
“No, dear, I looked for your earring but couldn’t find it,” I said. “But don’t worry-it will turn up sooner or later.”
“I’ve had enough! I’m leaving and I’m never coming back!”
I understood from the misery on her face as she looked around to gather her things, even as she fumbled, unsure where to put her arms, that this outburst was not just theater. I planted myself in front of the door like a bouncer and begged her not to go, pelting her with professions of how deeply in love with her I was (all true), until I could see, from the hint of a happy smile in the corners of her mouth, and the effort she made to hide her pity-slightly raising her eyebrows-that she was beginning to relent.
“All right, I won’t go,” she said. “But I have two conditions. First, tell me who you love most in the world.”
She saw at once that she had confused me, and that I could not answer with Sibel’s name or her own. “Give me the name of a man…” she said.
“My father.”
“Fine. My first condition is this. Swear on your father’s head that you’ll never ever lie to me.”
“I swear.”
“Not like that. Say the whole sentence.”
“I swear on my father’s head that I’ll never ever lie to you.”
“That was too easy for you.”
“What’s your second condition?”
But before she could announce her second condition, we were kissing and soon gaily making love. We put so much into it this time and our love so intoxicated us that we felt ourselves transported to an imaginary place, a new planet. In my own mind’s eye it was an alien surface, a silent, rocky desert island, the first photographs from the moon. Later Füsun would tell me her vision: a dark garden thick with trees, a window overlooking it, and in the distance the sea and a bright yellow hillside where sunflowers waved in the wind. Such scenes came to us at moments like this when our lovemaking surprised us-for example when I had taken into my mouth Füsun’s breast and her ripe nipple, or when Füsun had buried her nose in the place where my neck joined my shoulders and was locking me in her arms with all her might, or when we read in each other’s eyes a startling intimacy that neither of us had ever felt before.
“Okay, so now, my second condition,” said Füsun, after our love-making, her voice full of elation.
“One day you’re going to come to my house for supper with my mother and father, and you’ll bring my earring and the tricycle I rode when I was little.”
“Of course I will,” I said, with the lightness that comes after love-making “Except-what are we going to tell them?”
“If you ran into a relative on the street, wouldn’t you ask after her mother and father? Wouldn’t she invite you over? Or that day you walked into the shop and saw me-might you not have said you wanted to see my mother and father? Is it so unlikely that a relative would offer a girl a little help with her mathematics before the university entrance exam?”
“I certainly will come for a visit one evening, and I’ll bring the earring, I promise. But let’s not tell anyone about these math lessons.”
“Why not?”
“You’re very beautiful. They’ll know at once that we’re lovers.”
“In other words, are you saying that this isn’t Europe, so men can’t be shut up in a room to do math with a girl without it leading to something else?”
“On the contrary, they can. I’m saying that because this is Turkey, everyone will assume they aren’t there to do math, but something else. And knowing that everyone is thinking this, they start thinking about it, too. Worried about staining her honor, the girl will begin to say things like, ‘Let’s keep the door open.’ Nevertheless, if a girl remains in that room with him for long, the man will think she’s making a pass at him, and even if he hasn’t done anything to her yet, he will eventually have to, because otherwise his manhood would be called into question. Before long their minds will be defiled with thoughts of the things everyone thinks they are already doing, and those thoughts will be irresistible. Even if they don’t make love, they will begin to feel guilty and lose all confidence that they can stay in that room for long without succumbing to temptation.”
There was a silence. With our heads on the pillow, our view was of the radiator pipe, the lidded hole for the stovepipe, the window cornice, the curtain, the lines and corners where the walls met the ceiling, the cracks in the wall, the peeling paint, and the layer of dust. It is to evoke that abiding silence for the museum visitor that, years later, we have re-created this view in such minute detail.