Charmed by her solicitude, I took Sibel to the dance floor, and the moment we got there I knew I had made a mistake. The Silver Leaves were playing “A Memory from That Summer,” which called to mind the previous summer, when Sibel and I had been so happy, and as the music evoked these memories with arresting force-just as I hope the exhibits in my museum are doing-Sibel embraced me as if for the first time. How I wanted in return to embrace with the same ardor my fiancée, the one with whom I was to share the rest of my life. But I could think only of Füsun. Because I was trying to catch a glimpse of her in the crowd, because I did not want her to see me in a warm embrace with Sibel, I held myself back. I let the other couples distract me. They smiled at me affectionately, as people will at seeing a groom a little worse for wear at the end of his engagement party.
At one point we came shoulder to shoulder with the best-loved columnist of that era dancing with an attractive dark-haired woman: “Celâl Bey, love has nothing in common with a newspaper column, does it?” I said. When Mehmet and Nurcihan came alongside us, I treated them as if they’d been lovers for ages. I slurred an attempt at a quip in French to Zümrüt Hanım, who spoke French whenever she visited my mother, even when there was no one around, supposedly to keep the servants from understanding her. By now Sibel had given up on having a dance she would remember forever, and was whispering into my ear, telling me how sweet I was when I was drunk, apologizing for having forced me into matchmaking, which she’d done, she insisted, only to make our friends happy, and alerting me that the fickle Zaim had moved on from Nurcihan and set his sights on that girl who was my distant relation. Frowning, I told her that Zaim was a very good person, and a trusted friend. I added that Zaim had wanted to know why she was treating him so badly.
“So you were talking about me with Zaim? What did he say?” said Sibel. During the break between songs, we came alongside Celâl Salik the columnist again. “I’ve worked out something love has in common with a good newspaper column, Kemal Bey,” he said. “What is it?” I asked. “Love, like a newspaper column, has to make us happy now. We judge the beauty and power of each by how deep an impression it makes on the soul.” “Master, please write that up in your column one day,” I said, but he was listening not to me but to his raven-haired dance partner. At that moment I noticed Füsun and Zaim beside us. Füsun had placed her head very close to his neck and was whispering to him, and Zaim was smiling gaily. It seemed to me that they could see us perfectly well, but were pretending not to notice as they spun around the dance floor.
Without losing a beat I maneuvered Sibel in their direction and then, like a pirate ship pursuing a merchant galleon, I caused us to ram Füsun and Zaim from the side.
“Oh, excuse us,” I said with a silly laugh. “How are you?” The confused joy on Füsun’s face brought me back to my senses and at once I spied in my drunkenness a good excuse for bold action. I turned to Zaim, proferring Sibel’s hand. “May I offer you the honor of this dance?” Zaim took his hand off Füsun’s waist. “You two are going to have to get to know each other better,” I said, “and you might as well start now.” Completing my gesture of self-sacrifice, I put my hands on their backs and pushed them together. As Sibel and Zaim began to dance, with obvious reluctance, Füsun and I looked for a moment into each other’s eyes. Then I put my hand on her waist and with a few gentle turns, moved her as far away as I could, like any elated suitor preparing to abscond with his sweetheart.
How to describe the peace that came over me the moment I took her in my arms? The noise of the crowd that had so addled me, the ungodly racket that I had taken to be the aggregate of the silverware, the orchestra, and the roar of the city-now I knew what I’d heard was only my disquiet at being far from her. Like a baby who will stop crying only in the arms of one particular person, I felt a deep, soft, velvety bliss of silence spreading through me. From her expression I could see that Füsun felt the same; taking the enveloping silence as our mutual recognition of shared enchantment, I wished that the dance would never end. But soon I realized that her half of the silence meant something altogether different from mine. Füsun’s silence harked back to the question I had brushed off earlier as a joke (“What will become of us?”), and now I had to give an answer. I decided that this was what she had come for. The interest that men had shown her this evening, the admiration that I’d seen even in the eyes of the children-all this had given her confidence, had lightened her suffering. Now she might even be able to view me in perspective, as a “passing fancy.” As I began, in my drunkenness, to realize that the night was coming to an end, I was seized by the terrifying thought of losing Füsun.
“When two people love each other as we do, no one can come between them, no one,” I said, amazed at the words I was uttering without preparation. “Lovers like us, because they know that nothing can destroy their love, even on the worst days, even when they are heedlessly hurting each other in the cruelest, most deceitful ways, still carry in their hearts a consolation that never abandons them. Trust me that after tonight I’ll stop all this, I’ll sort this out. Are you listening to me?”
“I’m listening.”
When I was sure that no one dancing nearby was looking at us, I said, “We met at an unfortunate time. In the early days neither of us could have known how rare this love was between us. But now I am going to put everything right. Our most immediate concern is your exam tomorrow. This evening you shouldn’t waste any more time worrying about us.”
“Then tell me, what is going to happen now?”
“Tomorrow, as always” (for a moment, my voice trembled) “at two o’clock, after you’ve finished your exam, let’s meet at the Merhamet Apartments. Then I’ll be able to tell you what I plan to do next, without having to rush. If I fail to win your trust, then you never have to see me again.”
“No, tell me now, and I’ll come.”
How sweet it was to imagine in my drunken stupor that she would come to me at two o’clock the next day, that we would make love as always, that we would remain together until the end of my days, and as I touched her wondrous shoulders and her honey-colored arms, I resolved that I would do everything I could, whatever it took.
“No one will ever come between us ever again,” I said.
“All right then, I’ll come tomorrow after the exam, and you, God willing, won’t have gone back on your word, and you’ll tell me how you’re going to do this.”
While we both remained standing, perfectly straight, with my hand lovingly clamped on her hip, and in time to the music, I tried to tug her closer to me. She resisted, refusing to lean into me, and that excited me all the more. But when it became apparent that my attempt to wrap my arms around her in front of everyone was being viewed not as a sign of love but proof of my drunkenness, I pulled myself together and relented.
“We have to sit down,” she said. “I feel as if everyone is looking at me.” She was leaving my arms. “Go right home and get some sleep,” I whispered. “During the exam, just think about how much I love you.”
When I got back to our table there was no one there except for Berrin and Osman, both frowning and bickering with each other. “Are you all right?” said Berrin.
“Perfectly fine,” I said, gazing upon the disordered table and the empty chairs.
“Sibel didn’t want to dance anymore, and Kenan Bey took her with him to the Satsat table, where they were playing some sort of game.”
“It’s good that you danced with Füsun,” said Osman. “In the end, it was wrong for our mother to give her the cold shoulder. It’s important for Füsun and everyone else to know that the family takes an interest in her, that the nonsense with the beauty contest is forgotten, and she can depend on us. I worry for the girl. She thinks she is too beautiful,” he said in English. “That dress is too revealing. In six months she’s gone from being a child to a woman; she’s really bloomed. If she doesn’t marry the right sort of man very soon, first she’ll get a reputation and that can lead only to misery. What was she telling you?”