by Loren Edizel
“GIRITLI, YOU LOOK … POSITIVELY RADIANT! What happened to you? Did you meet a handsome guy in Istanbul?” Patron asked as soon as I brought him his cup of Turkish coffee with the daily newspapers.
“I simply rested, Patron,” I smiled, “thank you.”
“Well? Aren’t you going to tell me your adventures?”
“Honestly, Patron, what adventures could a couple of women have? We walked around, saw sights, ate.…What more?”
“There is something you’re not telling me. It’s all over your face. Are you in love?”
“Tsk … tsk…. Patron, I don’t ask about your love life, do I?”
“I never wait for you to ask. You’re my only trusted friend in this world. I tell you everything!”
“Is that true?”
“I don’t know what I’d do without you. Quit standing there. It makes me nervous. Sit, sit….” He motioned to the chair impatiently.
I sat down. “Are we going to write a letter?”
He smiled a mysterious little smile, “Yes, a letter to the stranger in Istanbul who stole your heart. Here…” he pushed a pad of blank paper and his pen towards me pointing his index finger to the desk. “Write: Dear Sir, I have been made aware that you’ve recently borrowed something very dear to me. Did he simply borrow it, or is this for good?” He wasn’t smiling anymore.
“What? I just had a long weekend vacation. Being away from here was really good for me. You already know you’re a slave driver. You call me at impossible hours, make me do all this work day and night, tell me about Gönül and all the details of your many escapades, hiding from wife, mistress, and god knows who else. I can’t sleep at night thinking of all the dangers you put yourself into. If your wife ever finds out about the things you do, she will take everything you own, everything, and kick you to the curb. But you don’t seem to worry. You act like a careless teenager. I do all the worrying, plus all the work around here. If anything, I need more vacations like this one.”
“Ahhh! Shame on me for causing you such grief, my good friend! I’m grateful to you. You know this….” He nodded and reached over his desk toward me to pat the top of my hand, “Tell me, why do you do so much for one as undeserving as myself, Mehtap?”
“Because you need it.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” he insisted.
“And I shouldn’t have to,” I replied with finality, but then something made me continue. “This is what friends do. You’d do the same.” I knew he wouldn’t. He was selfish.
“Mehtap, you’re good for both of us. I’m a hypocrite. No good as a husband, or even as a friend. I couldn’t be less deserving of such affection. We both know it.”
“Now you’re telling me? After I’ve put up with your craziness all these years? That’s it, then. I resign as your friend. I’ll continue as your assistant. And, you better make that bonus worth my while. I will need more vacation time, too.”
“Yeah, yeah…. You’re going to suck my marrow dry.” He chuckled.
I nodded.
“Well,” he nodded back, “my secretive friend. Whoever he is, you tell him from me he better treat you right, or he’ll have to deal with me.”
“There is no man, Patron.”
“So be it.”
Before Istanbul, I would have cherished his sudden worry about losing me. Now, it amuses me.
For many years now, I’ve been celebrating his birthday at the office. I’ll buy a chocolate cake (his favourite) and call all the clerks to my office so we can all sing him happy birthday. I make a big deal of it because apparently his wife forgets to celebrate it, or when she does remember, she invites her friends, not his, and buys a variation of some fruit flan he dislikes, so that he never has a good time. I buy him a present that I give him when we’re alone. Every year, I get him one small crystal sculpture, tiny really, the size of a thumb, representing an animal. Last year was an owl, before that an elephant, this year it is a horse. When he receives his gift, he hugs me tight and kisses my cheeks. This kiss, most paternal and un-erotic as it may be, sends shivers up and down my spine. I don’t wash my face all day, to keep a bit of his tea and cigarette breath on my skin a few moments longer. The next kiss will be on a religious holiday, my birthday, or the New Year, so, all together I think he plants one of those avuncular kisses on my cheeks five or six times a year. Nuray teases me. She knows of my crush by now. She was looking for a handkerchief in my drawers and came upon the tin box where I keep his cigarette butts. He no longer smokes, but when he did, I used to steal the cigarette butts at the end of the day and took them home to have something that touched his lips. I also have a handkerchief with his initials that he gave me at my dad’s funeral, because mine was already soaked. It smelled of aftershave, his manly perfume. I just breathed into it and momentarily forgot I was there on account of one of the saddest occasions of my life. He put his arm around me and rubbed my back as I kept pressing his handkerchief to my face. Then, he held me in his arms, to console me, as the sobs burst once again from my chest into his. He held me for a long time, so that the anguish I felt at my father’s burial is forever entwined with the ecstatic sensation of being held in his arms. I begged my departed father to make this man love me back, if he could read my mind at all from the great beyond, as his remains were being lowered into the earth.
His wife was standing farther behind, wearing a stylish black suit with ivory trimmings around the jacket, a rimless hat with a matching ivory ribbon in a butterfly knot on the side, placed carefully on hair teased like some bird’s nest, big round sunglasses, and an ivory clutch. This was one of her Chanel moments; standing dutifully with her husband, probably mostly concerned about the sharp heels of her shoes sinking into the soft earth and getting ruined. Or, perhaps not. I tried to imagine myself in her shoes. Would I wear these clothes, have my hair teased, and adopt this look that grazes the top of everyone’s head as if everything of utmost interest lies beyond the weeping crowd cluttering the foreground? Up there, above everyone’s head, beyond the scene of this burial, was there the fantasy of a chic boutique with fancy clothes or some big expensive thing that makes the heart glad when owned that occupied her thoughts? Whatever she was thinking was aptly hidden by the sunglasses covering half her face. The freshly dug hole in the earth was swallowing my father and despite the exquisite despair of that moment I was able to think all those disparate, inconsequential thoughts about this woman who was oblivious to my deepest, most secret yearnings for her husband, taking in the sight of the crusty grey bark of an old tree across from me on which hundreds of ants were going up and down in single file, focused on bringing food into their subterranean caves, so near my father’s new abode, with soldierly determination.
But here we are. His line of questioning was a sort of confession, I believe, that he has come to need me and doesn’t want to lose the attention to which he has grown accustomed. I, in turn, confessed to Nuray that he will forever be the immutable love of my life, unrequited, unnoticed, and secretive as it may be. I assured her that my affection for her was deep and sensual, our lovemaking the only kind I knew, and would likely ever know. She asked, “If one day he declared his love to you, wanted to marry you, would you leave me?”
“He never will, Nuray. We both know this.”
“Let’s suppose he did.”
“Yes, I believe I would. Forgive me, Nuray. I can’t help it.”
“How can you love him so? What do you know of him? You’re attached to some teenage fantasy of a man; this cannot be real.”
“Well, I know what I feel when he’s around me. I know what I feel because of him. For him, I would give everything up. He hasn’t done anything to deserve it. But I’m deeply attached and that’s how it is.”
“So I’m some kind of pastime, some kind of dirty little secret experiment….” A despondent look came upon her face.
“Those are hurt
ful words, Nuray. You’ve brought such a sense of adventure to my life. You’ve given me a glimpse, the only glimpse I will probably ever have, of what it is to want and be wanted, and of all the pleasures a woman can have. What did I know before you? You’ve opened the doors of existence and womanhood for me. Don’t say these things Nuray. I will always cherish your companionship and the life we have together.”
I said those things. Or an approximation of those things. I cannot bear to see that sad, dejected look on her face. She is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. It is all very clear to me now. The funny thing is, even Patron gives her those lusty stares from time to time, when she passes in front of him at the office, her bosom jutting out in those fitted sweaters and the tight skirts moulding her hips and plump bottom that she swings as she walks, like Marilyn Monroe. It makes me insanely jealous, not only that HE desires her, but also that he desires HER. She has had sex with men before, she’s told me. She shrugs it off; says she is mostly interested in having their attention, that is why she flirts so shamelessly. But the sexual act with a man does nothing for her, she said. “Trust me, it is not for a lack of appetite,” she swished her head as she laughed. “That whole in-and-out thing is highly over-rated, my dear,” she continued. “What I like about men is that I can command their attention. In bed, I find, they don’t know what I want, or perhaps they don’t care, or perhaps I’m the one who doesn’t care.” She giggled some more. “Problem with women,” she went on, and there was no shutting her up at this point despite my visible signs of discomfort, “is that they won’t flirt with a woman they find attractive. Not in the same way anyhow….” She sighed. “It’s all very complicated.” She was thankfully quiet after that.
I WAS LOOKING AT THE FULL MOON from my bedroom window the other night. Nuray was sleeping in hers. We have an understanding about our mutual need for space. Anyway, I couldn’t sleep. And I gazed at the surfaces of the moon, pearly white with grey shadows, wondering why dogs howl at it. Is it because of their fascination for a distant ball that glows night after night never rolling any closer? Is it because it reminds them of the dark and remote universe all around as they toil for a discarded piece of meat, for a warm corner, a mate, some kindness, all the while carrying all that vast remoteness within like heartache? Wouldn’t the moon howl back if she could, gazing at the earth day after day, filled with such noise and movement and emotion from which she remains forever disconnected? It is odd to think of those things that do not speak for themselves, that do not live as we do, and do not share our desperation. Beyond the crust of the earth and its atmosphere is the unimaginable silence of perpetuity from that life spares us with its incessant chatter. When stars explode, who hears them?
NURAY IS SINGING OFF-KEY as I write this, not in the bathtub, but in her room, where her Singer sewing machine is making its own kind of rhythm. She has decided to make us some dresses we saw in the Burda magazine. She chose a bright red fabric for herself and I chose a greyish blue. She twisted her nose at my lack of exuberance. We had a slight argument while Saim Bey stood there watching us from behind the piles of fabric he had unfurled for us to admire.
“Why do you always want to disappear behind drab colours?” she said petulantly.
“I like this. ‘Bright colours just aren’t me!” I retorted with a scowl.
She pushed the fabric I had chosen with disdain. “You will look like a walking curtain!”
“Well, let me worry about that, and you worry about yours! I don’t want a damn dress anymore, pay for your stuff and let’s go.” I turned my back and walked toward the door.
Saim Bey tried to appease us. “Nuray Hanım, I’m sure your friend has a great pattern in mind that will make this a very good choice for her. Don’t you, Mehtap Hanım?” he said encouragingly. I shrugged and replied I wasn’t sure I wanted to buy anything anymore, and I that had a headache.
“Trust me, it will all work out! And I will give you a very nice discount. An Aspirin, too. You’ll come back to thank me when everyone compliments you on your choices.” He proceeded to measure, cut, and package the whole thing before we could change our minds. This is how our visits to the cloth merchant are generally concluded. He pats our shoulders and calls us his daughters, assuring us we will not regret this good bargain. We go home, with me sulking on the way. She is strategically quiet until we get home. Then, she attacks her Singer machine fiercely, and sings loud. I leave the house to run errands, or just wander around not to hear her singing. Mostly, I go to the cinema, which I did today. I watched Belle de Jour with Catherine Deneuve. The theatre was full probably on account of it being advertised as the most shocking movie of the year. It was about a beautiful housewife who loves her husband but has no sex with him while she develops a secret life as a prostitute in an exclusive brothel in Paris. At the end, the patient and loving husband is shot and paralyzed forever by one of her obsessive clients and she spends the rest of her days taking care of him. There is more to it but this is the general idea. I dislike the fact that the loving if bland husband who is utterly deprived of sex must also get shot on top of finding out his cold wife doubles as a whore when he is not able to even walk to the bathroom let alone walk out on her, as if his misfortune was already not profound enough. Many scenes must have been cut, deemed too outrageous for our censorship board, so I can’t say that I understood much. As I was leaving the theatre, I overheard people heatedly talking about how they too understood absolutely nothing and was relieved that I was not alone in my ignorance. I was glad this happened on a Saturday instead of a Sunday, because Sunday movies are a melancholy affair. There’s nothing else to look forward to but eating and going to bed before work the next day.
I came back home and found her still busy at her sewing machine. She is adamant that she will wear the dress tomorrow. I turned on the radio in time for the evening news. Dr Barnard performed his second heart transplant in Cape Town. In Ankara, they transplanted a heart into a dog only to put him down a few minutes later. Dubcek is now the Communist leader of Czechoslovakia. American soldiers massacred more civilians in Vietnam. The Turkish government is the first one to recognize the military junta in Greece. Everywhere students are demonstrating.
I turned my parents’ prized Grundig radio off, cutting the speaker’s phrase midway. It came with a record player, encased in a large pine wooden frame containing the circular speakers and standing on four slim legs angled outwards with metal casings that looked like small hooves. The records were in the buffet, behind the bottles of banana and mint liquor. I took out some of the newer records I had bought. My mother used to love Tino Rossi songs, so there are a couple of records by him, then some Greek songs, of course, and Madame Butterfly featuring Maria Callas. I pushed all the large records aside to reach for my 45s. Yaşar Güvenir’s, “Seni Uzaktan Sevmek,”12 my favourite song. It smelled like ripe bananas. I put it on, turned up the volume. In the softly sung tango, he asks, “What is happiness without you? I haven’t tasted it, I wouldn’t know.… You were etched on my forehead.… Loving you from afar is the most beautiful of loves. I’ve grown so accustomed to your absence; if you were to say, ‘Come to me’ I don’t think I could find the way.”
In my maudlin state, I didn’t notice that the noise of the sewing machine had stopped. Nuray was kneeling beside the armchair where I sat with eyes closed. She gently caressed my limp hand that was hanging off the armchair before placing a kiss on top of it. I looked at her. She said nothing; kept caressing the top of my hand gently.
SHE IS DEVOTED. My inability to reciprocate that particular generosity despite trying to be the best person I can be, adds regret to the sentiment of failure I carry within. She is clearly the one I’m convinced I should love, yet I can’t seem to reach that exalted assurance. Like Roxanne in Cyrano de Bergerac, I’m fascinated with the other one, the scintillating but lesser version, not the one whose soul is noble and vast. In stories, awakening happens at the precise moment
when action has become irrelevant. In my story, I am Cyrano to Patron’s Roxanne, and Roxanne to Nuray’s Cyrano. Nuray, however, is no Cyrano, at least physically. At the snap of her fingers, she can have her pick among dozens of men. Yet she couldn’t care less about them. For me, Patron is an anomaly; the only creature man or woman who sends my heart into that frenzied rhythm. Otherwise men leave me rather indifferent and I prefer the company of women: their warmth, their shapes and manners, the doughy smell of Nuray’s sweaty mound of Venus, especially. So how does this get defined in the world of accepted notions in which I’m finding myself less and less complicit? Indecisive lesbian or reluctant heterosexual? Since this will be the secret I hope to take to my grave, I shall not concern myself with the World of Accepted Notions. Easy to say…. Inside my head, in my dreaming and waking life, even in the moments preceding sexual climax when I feel Nuray’s soft, naked flesh mixed with mine and I almost entirely forget who I am, my somewhat Christian mother, my somewhat Moslem father, all their pious ancestors, my grandmother, and the neighbours watching my every move, Gülbahar Hanım with her fascist dross are all frowning from the ceiling, index finger pointed in accusation for deviating from Accepted Notions and warning me of expulsion from their midst.
I am worn out from the constant effort to conform to these notions so I won’t be perceived as a half-breed, a foreigner, someone who half-represents the enemy, the child of immigrants, the potential infidel and traitor, and now, the lesbian. Did my parents give me this moon-related name anticipating I would feel like an alien all my life?
