The Museum of Innocence (52 page)

In those days, the most popular place along the Bosphorus was Tarabya, with its line of crowded restaurants spilling across the sidewalks, and the tombala men wandering among the tables, along with the mussel vendors, the fresh almond vendors, the photographers who took your picture and brought back the developed shots within the hour, the ice cream men, the bands of musicians playing Ottoman music and the traditional singers who performed in most of the restaurants. (Back then you wouldn’t see a single tourist.) I remember how Aunt Nesibe laughed admiringly at the speed and daring of the waiters as they darted across the narrow road that divided the restaurants from the tables, weaving their way through the traffic with their heavy trays laden with food.

On our first excursion together we went to a relatively modest restaurant called Huzur (peace), which happened to have a free table, and which Tarık Bey had instantly taken to, because of its proximity to the flashy Mücevher Gazino next door, which meant that one could sit in the restaurant and hear the old Turkish songs being sung “from a distance and for free.” The next time, when I proposed that we could better hear the singers if we were actually sitting in the Mücevher itself, Tarık Bey said, “Oh no, Kemal Bey! Why pay to hear that awful band, and that woman who sounds like a crow?” but for the rest of the meal, he gave all his attention, sometimes joyful and sometimes angry, to the music blaring from the
gazino
. He would correct the “tuneless, tone-deaf” singers in a loud voice, and finish their lines before they could, just to prove he knew the lyrics, and after the third glass of
rakı
he would close his eyes and his head would sway to the music with deep spiritual rapture.

On our Bosphorus excursions from the house in Çukurcuma, to some extent we threw off the roles we played indoors, and that made me relish our trips. Füsun would sit right next to me in the car and at the restaurant, as she never did at the house. And as we sat surrounded by tables, no one noticed if my arm pressed up against her, and as her father listened to the music with his eyes shut and her mother watched the shimmering lights of the Bosphorus in the vaporous darkness, we would whisper to each other over the din, chatting about it didn’t matter what—the food, the beauty of the evening, how endearing her father was—as tentatively as two bashful young people who had just met and only recently discovered how a boy might flirt with a girl, or form a relationship with her, as they did in Europe. Füsun was otherwise liberated, too; while ordinarily averse to smoking in front of her father, in Bosphorus restaurants she would puff away on her cigarettes like some formidable European career woman. I remember once, having decided to try our luck, we bought a ticket from a rascally tombala man in dark glasses, and when we didn’t win a prize, we glanced at each other and both said, “Unlucky at cards …,” inducing in both of us a terrible embarrassment and then elation.

Much as this happiness derived simply from being out of the house, and the twin joys (extolled by many an Ottoman court poet) of drinking wine and sitting beside one’s beloved, there was also the diversion of the street crowds, as traffic jams on the road between the restaurants and the tables provoked quarrels between the people at the tables and the people in the cars: “Why don’t you look at the road instead of the girl,” someone would say, or “Why did you flick your cigarette at me?” As the evening progressed, drunken revelers would begin to sing, and tables would exchange applause and lusty cries. Suddenly a besequined “oriental” dancer would dash from one restaurant to the next, on her way to do a show, and as her costume and bronzed skin caught the car lights, drivers would lean ecstatically on their horns, like ships blowing their whistles on November 10 to mark the moment of Atatürk’s death. On a warm night the wind might suddenly change direction, and all at once the dust and dirt overlaying the rubbish strewn on the cobblestone sidewalk along the shore—the nuts and shells and watermelon rinds and wastepaper and newspapers and soda caps and corncobs and seagull and pigeon droppings and plastic bags—would come to life, and all at once the trees across the street would begin to rustle, and Aunt Nesibe would say, “Beware, the dust has kicked up, children, don’t let it get on your food!” and she’d shield the plates with her hands. Then the wind would suddenly change direction again and rush in from the northeast, bringing us cool air that smelled of iodine.

Toward the end of the evening, when people started arguing with the waiters, challenging their bills, and there was singing at every table, Füsun and I would press our arms and legs and hands together even closer, so close sometimes that I thought I would faint. Sometimes in such happiness I couldn’t resist stopping a photographer to have him take our picture, or a gypsy woman to tell our fortune as if we had only just met. As I sat there pressed against Füsun, I would imagine the day we married, I would gaze at the moon and lose myself in dreams, but no sooner had I drunk another raki on the rocks than I would notice that I had grown hard just as in a dream, but now trembling with pleasure I would not panic, for I felt as if I—we—had become like our ancestors in heaven, souls cleansed of guilt and sin, and I would abandon myself to my dreams, my delights, and the bliss of sitting next to Füsun.

I cannot say why we were able to get so much closer outside the house, in the middle of a crowd and under the nose of her parents, than we could at the house in Çukurcuma. But it was during those evenings that I was able to imagine us as a couple living in harmony, and to see that—in the parlance of magazine writers—we “looked good together.” It was not pure imagining. I remember with utter contentment how once, as we were talking, she asked, “Would you like a taste of this?” and with my fork I sampled the little dark meatballs on her plate, and how, on another evening, again at her encouragement, I tasted her olives, whose pits I display here. On another evening we turned our chairs around to have a long and friendly conversation with a young couple at the next table (to whom we were attracted, I believe, because they resembled us: the man in his thirties with brown hair, the girl twenty, dark-haired, and fair-skinned).

At the end of that same evening I ran into Nurcihan and Mehmet, coming out of Mücevher Gazino, and without mention of our mutual friends we at once launched into a serious discussion of “which Bosphorus ice cream parlors still open at this hour” was best. As I said my good-nights, I pointed in the direction of Füsun, now getting into the Chevrolet with her mother and father, for whom Çetin held the door, and I said that I had taken some distant relatives out for a tour of the Bosphorus. Let me take this opportunity to remind those who visit my museum in later years that during the fifties and sixties there were very few private cars, and that those rich enough to import cars from America and Europe often took their relatives and acquaintances on tours of the city. (When I was a child, I remember my mother sometimes turning to my father to say, “Saadet Hanım wants to go out in the car with her husband and children. Would you like to come, too, or shall I just take them out with Çetin?” Sometimes she would just say “the chauffeur.” My father’s stock response was, “God no! You can take them out. I’m busy.”)

On our way back in the car we were in the habit of singing all together, and it was always Tarık Bey who got us started. First he would hum an old tune, and as he tried to remember the words, he’d ask for the radio to be turned on, and as I searched for a familiar song he would begin to sing some old melody that had drifted over to us from the Mücevher Gazino that evening. Sometimes, as I was searching for a station, we would hear voices from distant countries speaking in strange tongues, and for a moment we would be silent. “Radio Moscow,” Tarık Bey would say then, in an enigmatic tone. Then as it came back to him, he would sing the first words of a song, and before long Aunt Nesibe and Füsun would join him. As we sped under the dark shadows and great plane trees of the Bosphorus road, I listened to the concert in the backseat, and, turning around, I would try to harmonize as they sang “Old Friends” by Gültekin Çeki, though—to my embarrassment—some of the words eluded me.

Whenever we were singing together in the car, or laughing and dining together in a Bosphorus restaurant, the happiest among us was in fact Füsun, and yet whenever a chance presented itself she still yearned to see her film friends from the Pelür. For this reason I would continue to depend first on persuading Aunt Nesibe. For her part she never wanted to miss an opportunity to throw Füsun and me together. Another ploy was to entice Feridun, once even including Yani, a cameraman friend that Feridun was loath to leave behind. Feridun was using the Lemon Film facilities to make a few commercials with Yani, and I didn’t object, thinking it prudent to let them make a little money, though I did sometimes ask myself how I would manage to see Füsun if one day Feridun actually made a lot of money, and moved out of his in-laws’ house, and went off with his wife to live elsewhere. Sometimes I would realize with shame that this consideration underpinned my desire to get along with Feridun.

Aunt Nesibe and Tarık Bey did not come with us to Tarabya that night, so there was no listening to the singers in the
gazino
next door, and no singing on the way home. Füsun sat next to her husband, not me, and immersed herself in film world gossip.

It was the memory of that miserable evening that prompted me, on another occasion, when I was leaving the Pelür with Füsun and Feridun, to tell a friend of Feridun’s that there was no room in the car, as we would be picking up Füsun’s parents for dinner. I may have phrased it a bit brusquely. The man had a large, handsome forehead; I saw surprise, even fury, in his dark green eyes, but I swept him from my mind. Afterward, having arrived in Çukurcuma, I was able to bring Aunt Nesibe and Tarık Bey around to the idea, with a few words and a little help from Füsun, and then off we went to the Huzur Restaurant in Tarabya.

We had been sitting there eating and drinking for some time, I remember, when I realized there was not peace at that table, for Füsun’s tense demeanor had set the tone for the evening, which would bring me no pleasure. I had just turned around to see whether there might be any tombala men to amuse us, or hawkers of fresh shelled walnuts, when I saw the man with the dark green eyes sitting two tables away. He was with a friend, watching us as he drank. Feridun noticed that I’d seen them.

“Your friend must have jumped into a car and followed us,” I said.

“Tahir Tan is not my friend,” said Feridun.

“Isn’t he the man who asked to come with us as we were leaving the Pelür?”

“Yes, but he’s not my friend. He poses for Turkish
photoromans
, and he plays in blood-and-thunder films. I don’t like him.”

“Why has he followed us?”

For a moment no one spoke. Füsun, sitting next to Feridun, had heard what we’d said and was growing uneasy. Tarık Bey was lost to the music, but Aunt Nesibe had been listening to us, too. Just then I guessed from Feridun’s and Füsun’s expressions that the man was approaching us, so I turned around.

“Do excuse me, Kemal Bey,” Tahir Tan said to me. “I did not mean to disturb you. I wish to speak to Füsun’s mother and father.”

He assumed the demeanor of a handsome, well-mannered youth who has seen a girl he likes at an officer’s wedding, and who has come to ask her parents for permission before inviting her to dance, following the advice given in newspaper etiquette columns.

“Excuse me, sir, there is something I want to discuss with you,” he said as he approached Tarık Bey. “There’s a film that Füsun …”

“Tarık, look, the man is trying to tell you something,” said Aunt Nesibe.

“I’m addressing you, too, madam. You’re Füsun’s mother, are you not? And you, sir, are her father. Do you know about this? Sir, there are two important producers, Muzaffer Bey and Hayal Hayati—both prominent figures in the Turkish film industry—who have offered your daughter important roles. But we have been given to understand that you would not give your consent because the films included kissing scenes.”

“It’s nothing like that,” Feridun said coldly.

As always in Tarabya, the noise level was very high. Tarık Bey had either not heard, or else—like so many Turkish fathers who find themselves in this situation—acted as if he hadn’t.

“Nothing like what?” Tahir Tan said, his voice rough now.

It was clear to all of us that he’d had a lot to drink and was spoiling for a fight.

“Tahir Bey,” Feridun said carefully, “we’re out for a family dinner this evening, and we have no desire to discuss film business.”

“But I do…. Füsun Hanım, why are you so afraid? Can’t you just say you want a role in this film?”

Füsun looked away. She was smoking calmly and taking her time. I stood up. Feridun did likewise. We both stepped into the space between the man and the table. At the tables surrounding ours, heads began to turn in our direction. We must have assumed the fighting cock stance that Turkish men assume before a fight. No one wanted to miss the drama; all around us, curious, bored drunks settled in for a good show. Tahir’s friend rose from their table to approach us.

An elderly waiter who’d seen many years of bar brawls intervened. “Come on now, gentlemen, let’s not all crowd in here. Please move back.” He added, “We’ve all had a lot to drink, and tempers will flare. Kemal Bey, we’re bringing out your fried mussels and salted fish.”

Lest they misunderstand, let me inform visitors who come to our museum centuries hence—those happy generations of the future—that in those days Turkish men seized even the tiniest excuse to come to blows wheresoever they found themselves—be it a coffeehouse, a hospital queue, a traffic jam, or a football match, and that huge dishonor attached even to the appearance of shrinking away from a confrontation. Avoiding a fight or cowering was regarded as dishonor without degree.

Tahir’s friend came from behind and put his hand on Tahir’s shoulder; he took him away, making as if he wanted them to “be the ones who kept their dignity.” And Feridun took
me
by the shoulder, as if to say, “What’s the use, anyway?” and he sat me down. I was very grateful to him for doing this.