Bliss: A Novel (22 page)

While Peter was immersed in his thoughts, Leyla stood up, and before they could be aware of it, snapped photographs of Cemal and Meryem and the family sitting opposite them.

Cemal felt he was suffocating. He rose, left the compartment, and once in the corridor, took refuge in a cigarette as the trees flashed past giving him a feeling of vertigo. The foreigner’s questions had exasperated him. They had destroyed the silence that had enveloped him for so long. Moreover, he was worried that Leyla had photographed him with Meryem—the girl he planned to kill. The man was a journalist. What if the picture were to be published in some American newspapers and maybe later appeared in the Turkish press? He thought about grabbing Leyla’s camera and smashing it, but such an act would certainly mean an encounter with the police.

After a while, Cemal realized that the cause of most of his strain was the photo of the naked woman on the magazine cover. His flesh, as yet untouched by a woman, was still on fire. The fear his father had planted in him had prevented him from being with a woman. He had not even—God forbid—played with himself. Some of his friends had satisfied themselves in this way until they felt faint, but Cemal had never forgotten his father’s words: “Masturbation is one of the gravest sins.”

Cemal had not even caressed Emine, even though he was tempted by an overwhelming desire to break down all the barriers that prevented him from touching her body. He had thought that he would achieve his desire after military service, but now this wretched girl had come between them.

In the army, the magazines his companions showed him used to make him suffer, too. It was obvious that creature called woman was an invention of the Devil, created to tempt men into sin.

“What am I going to do?” Cemal thought hopelessly. “How can I kill the girl?”

He had to accomplish his mission, so he struggled to keep his distance and expunge all past memories of her from his mind. Meryem had to become like a stranger to him.

She was corrupt … indecent … filthy. She had sinned.

NEW GODS AND GODDESSES

The professor wished that Joseph Campbell were alive and sitting opposite him. That wise man, who had observed that humanity needed new myths, would be pleased to drink a glass of wine with him, not minding the spindrift that would wet his snow-white hair as they conducted a serious discussion of mythology.

Perhaps İrfan was pursuing a myth now. He had set out to sea to reflect on the world from a distance—as from the moon perhaps—and to observe the differences between nations disappear. Yet İrfan was not on the moon but on the sea. Perhaps he was capable of producing new myths similar to the old ones.

Drifting over the warm, lazy water, he recalled his days in Boston: a white city, cold, clean, and well cared for, full of wisdom and the reminders of an aristocratic Europe. During his first year at Harvard, he had memorized every paving stone, every corner, monument, building, and garden in Cambridge. He bought mugs, T-shirts, sweatshirts, and caps decorated with the Harvard emblem from the university bookstore. As the son of a breadline family from Izmir, studying on a scholarship, these objects made him feel proud. Once he had been to the Faculty Club to meet a professor who had invited him there. The building was like a jewel set in a well-kept garden. On the ground floor, the big hall with its huge fireplace was filled with mahogany furniture and chintz-covered armchairs. It emanated a feeling of peace. The professors read their newspapers in reverential silence, broken occasionally by the crackling of the fire or the rustle of a page.

Whenever İrfan sat on one of the seats fixed to the floor of the classroom in serried rows, he felt that this happiness would play a great part in his life. Years later when he visitied the same classrooms as a guest, he had noted that the seats seemed to have very little space between them. Reflecting that it was rather that the years had made him stouter, he had to smile. When a student at the university, of course, he had been a stringy beanpole.

While at the university, İrfan had seen his life as a straight line. He would stay in Boston, finish his master’s degree and get his doctorate, then spend the rest of his life as a Harvard professor, shuttling his way between the magnificent library and the Faculty Club.

Those dreams kept İrfan occupied until he met Aysel. She had dazzled him with her glamour and affluence. He had barely made ends meet, either when he lived with his family or at the university. Aysel went shopping in a chauffeur-driven Lincoln, wore the most fashionable designer clothes from Europe, and ate at Boston’s most luxurious restaurants, gaining the waiters’ respectful service with the enormous tips she would leave them.

At first, the regard that well-heeled Turks were given in the States had astounded İrfan, but after he married Aysel, he discovered the reason. Certain companies or individuals would give the wealthy an entrée to American high society. Through the services of an agent, a candidate would donate a large sum of money to a charitable foundation set up by a well-known person in order to be invited to charity events attended by people high in the society. İrfan later learned that Aysel had donated twenty thousand dollars to Ivana Trump’s foundation, which guaranteed her a table at the best restaurants. Rich Turks ran across each other at these restaurants.

Although the esteem given to Turkey as a country was close to zero, rich Turks were highly respected abroad. Once, in London, İrfan and Aysel had been invited to a private club in Piccadilly. Entrance was by membership or invitation only, and their passport information had to be recorded at the desk. Black tie and fashionable dress were required. A hostess guided them up the red-carpeted marble stairs, illuminated by the light of crystal chandeliers. Rare and precious works of art were exhibited in niches all the way up the staircase, and magnificent paintings were hung on the walls. The spacious dining room was opulent but at the same time vulgar, with gold leaf glittering from every corner. The dishes, prepared by well-known chefs, were a mixture of Thai, Italian, and Lebanese cuisine. Waiters continuously offered them this or that food to taste, as if they were the guests of honor. The club was always crowded with rich Arabs and Turks in Armani suits and Versace ties. The women glittered in their Chanel gowns and priceless jewelry. İrfan had guessed that membership to this club cost more than the annual salary of the prime minister of England. The price of a dinner was perhaps more than three months’ salary for a cashier working in a bookshop in Sloane Square.

This stylish glitter had bewitched İrfan, and he had given himself up to the pretentious lifestyle of the Istanbul rich rather than becoming a Harvard professor. At the beginning, he had been ashamed of how ostentatious the showiness of it all was. John Lobb shoes, for instance, were an absolute must for this kind of life. An employee of the company would come specially from London each year to take foot measurements to make the elegant, handmade shoes its customers desired.

He had met Aysel in his last year, and afterward, he was able to complete his degree. He had pursued his academic career later at Istanbul University.

One’s lifestyle influences everything, even the way one thinks. Instead of becoming a creative thinker, content with a modest way of life, İrfan mutated into a pretentious dandy from an underdeveloped country. He had not produced anything worthwhile—since he judged himself to be devoid of noteworthy thoughts or feelings.

The professor felt in need of a new myth in order to go on living. Since setting out to sea, he had been able to understand the fears and crises he had suffered in Istanbul. It was not just the fear of dying, which had given him the desire to change his life immediately, but the fear of dying without having produced something significant and without having left even the smallest trace to show he had ever existed.

İrfan had not thought about Aysel since he set out to sea. He loved her very much and did not want to hurt her. Yet, in spite of this, he must have caused her a lot of grief.

Inwardly, he felt happier when he was away from her. He was often disturbed by things of minute importance, the daily repetition of which had become extremely annoying. For instance, Aysel would cuddle up next to him when he watched television as if there were no other place in all their spacious living room. When Aysel’s blond hair, stiff and smelling of synthetic dye, touched his cheek, it would put him on edge. Unable to say, “Take your hair away from my face, it’s scratching me,” he would endure the discomfort in silence. Aysel would curl up next to him and stay there for hours, causing his legs to go numb and his neck to become stiff, yet he could not push her away. Eventually, he would invent a reason to go to the bathroom or to get something from the kitchen, but his excuse would not stop her from asking where he was going. If he replied that he wanted a beer, she would immediately say, “Ask the maid, honey. Don’t trouble yourself.”

İrfan could not easily give orders to the housemaids. He felt embarrassed to summon these servants and tell them to bring him a beer while all he was doing was sitting with his feet up. Aysel commanded and berated the maids with great ease—and they respected her far more than they did the professor.

Aysel’s habit of interrupting İrfan in front of others to take over and finish a joke or a story he had started to tell disturbed İrfan a lot. Even though angry, he would maintain his self-control, and say, “Go ahead, sweetheart. You tell it better.”

Aysel liked to correct her husband about insignificant details. For instance, if İrfan said, “Then we stopped at a grocery store and bought a pound of apples,” Aysel would most likely immediately correct him, saying, “No, we bought two pounds, and some oranges, too.”

İrfan did not have the courage to say, “What’s that got to do with what I’m talking about?” Instead, he would mask his irritation with a smile.

He slept comfortably alone at night in the cabin or on the deck of the boat without Aysel’s sticking her hair into his face or hooking him with her leg.

He usually began his musings by thinking how much he loved Aysel. If he thought a little longer, he would realize how much he hated her and cut his thoughts short.

Joseph Campbell’s
Masks of God
and
The Power of Myth
were two of the few books İrfan had taken with him. That morning he had read these lines from
The Power of Myth
: “Myths formulate things for one. They say, for example, that one has to become an adult at a particular age. The age might be a good average age for that to happen—but actually, in the life of the individual, this differs greatly. Some people are late bloomers and come to a particular stage at a relatively late age. One has to have a feeling where he is. A human being has got only one life to live.”

In another part of the book, Campbell wrote: “We are so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.”

These lines made the professor think that he had recently matured and become adult. He had always felt that his old world in Istanbul was devoid of inner values, but he had internalized this observation only after leaving that world behind. His friends and acquaintances were only interested in the supplements of weekend newspapers, which reported the love affairs between soccer players and models or singers and what went on behind closed doors. The television channels were full of such stories. Maybe this was what Campbell had defined as a lack of mythology.

İrfan believed that monotheism was a less exciting religion than that of the gods of mythology, which had lasted for thousands of years. Later, the people of the Mediterranean had suddenly been propelled into a dry and colorless system of belief in the one true God. There were no longer gods to console, attract, and to amuse them. The way the ancient gods and goddesses who lived on Mount Olympus used to fall in love, feel jealous, kidnap young maidens, make war and peace, rape and receive punishment, and undertake a multitude of adventures, each stranger than the other, was very human. The people of the Mediterranean would tell these stories repeatedly, but the new monotheistic religions were extremely boring. One could not tell whether the One God was male or female even. God had no form nor did He/ She embark on any adventures. Humankind had to create new gods and goddesses to be able to maintain past habits. The members of the new pantheon were actors or actresses, soccer players, models, politicians, toreadors, and tennis pros. Countless newspapers, magazines, and many hours of television time were dedicated to the lives and affairs of these deities. The only difference was that Mount Olympus had now descended to become some Olympos Disco.

The new gods and goddesses, whose adventures were closely followed by Istanbul’s elite, came from the impoverished sectors of the city. Apparently, many poor families living in the outlying suburbs, which had spread their octopus tentacles around the city, had tall, slender long-legged daughters whom they “sold” to the television channels. At first, these girls were timid, disheveled, and a little too thin, but as time passed and they got used to their new occupations, their appearances changed as a result of new hairdressers and the surgeon’s knife, as well as silicone implants to lips and breasts. Once, a columnist had described these girls as “long-legged with grandiose lips,” causing İrfan to chuckle. The shoulder straps of their dresses often slid from their shoulders, exposing their nipples. In an exaggerated tone of astonishment, they would ask the reporters around them, “Did anything show?” Then the goddesses would burst into laughter, showing off their new porcelain dentures, overlarge and a little too protruding.

As for the new gods, they were invariably short, stout, and swarthy, with hairy chests, huge moustaches, and an accent from somewhere in the east.

In their miserable shacks, millions of the poor watched the adventures of these gods and goddesses on television as they sat hunched around their coal-burning stoves, the noxious fumes from which brought death to someone whenever the west wind blew the smoke back down the chimney. They hoped for some kind of help from that world of virtual reality. When the folk-dance music started, they would clap their hands and prance around as if they were the happiest people on earth. This the professor was able to understand, but he could not comprehend why the social group that called itself “the elite” shared these pleasures. There was a deep gulf between the social classes in Turkey; but a factory boss and his workers, a high-ranking officer and his driver, or the founder of a holding company and a beggar were all united in front of the television. All followed the same gods and goddesses, gazed at their photographs, and watched their shows. In this country, there was wealth, but nothing that could be called elite in culture or taste.