Days of Moonlight

by Loren Edizel

  As soon as she arrived home, Maria unbundled the heavy cloth belts. First hers, with the gold chains and crosses, the medallions depicting Virgin Mary and her mother’s small childhood rings with blue stones, all remnants of an older, opulent lifestyle to which Maria had never had any access. There was, of course, the large embossed wristband of a bracelet depicting the story of the Minotaur that would fetch a handsome sum due to its weight and artisanship. She laid them side by side on the bed and went to unstitch Mehmet’s belt. There were multiple narrow gold bracelets, she counted a dozen, and gold earrings with blue stones encrusted in them. There was also the very same Minotaur wristband. When she uncovered the identical bracelet, her chest constricted. How was it possible that two unrelated women from such different backgrounds owned the very same bracelet?

  She sat down, turning them around one by one as if doing so would reveal the answer to such a mystery. It could have been a coincidence, she reasoned. Two women making the same purchase at the same jewellery store, very possible…. Still, she pursued the thought further: that could have been the case for Mehmet’s mother; they were wealthy. But her own had been reduced to poverty in adolescence. She could have never purchased it. Inside the bracelet was the engraved karat. Beside it she read the letter “M” and the year 1906. The two women got the bracelets in 1906, the year when she and Mehmet were born. The letter “M,” she realized was for Mehmet the Great—her husband’s father.

  Mehmet the Great must have been her father too—the secret lover whose identity her mother had kept a mystery. It made sense now. In her complete ignorance, she had married her own brother and was having his child. She repeated this to herself trying to grasp the full import of her words, hands shaking uncontrollably.

  Unsure of what she should do with such a thought, she rushed to Mehmet’s atelier. He was in the midst of putting together a large dresser and asked her to sit down, have some tea. Her pale face and the fingers that kept wringing the purse handles alerted him. “Why are you so pale? Are you in pain? The baby?” He stood arms akimbo, his forehead in a frown.

  “I have to talk to you,” she whispered, “not here. Finish what you’re doing, we’ll go outside.”

  “I can’t finish anything with you in such a state.” He called the young apprentice to his side, giving him precise instructions before leading his wife out the door.

  “Our mothers had the same bracelet,” she whispered.

  “So?”

  “Exactly the same.”

  “What is your point?”

  “They are both engraved with an ‘M’ and the year 1906. We were both born that year. ‘M’ is for Mehmet. You see?”

  She waited for his thoughts to lead to the same place. He wasn’t saying anything.

  “Two women from the same village who didn’t know each other much,” she continued. “One was rich one was poor. They both got the same bracelet. Your mother cursed your father for not being there when you were born. Do you know why he wasn’t with your mother? Because he was probably with mine! My mother was the putana your mother cursed with her last breath. You see? Mehmet the Great and my mother…. That makes us brother and sister, Mehmet. That makes us…” her voice trailed off.

  Mehmet stood silently, hands still planted on his hips, head down, eyes focused on the pavement as if looking for a lost object.

  “What are we going to do now?” Maria’s voice was barely audible. Her lips were trembling; soon the tears would flow.

  “Shh. Not in front of all those people and my work. For heavens’ sake don’t cry.” He lifted his shoulders. “You’ll go and sell some of that jewellery to buy the carriage. I will go back in and finish the dresser. We’ll talk when I get home.”

  “Do you think something will be wrong with it?”

  No.” He said with finality. “Nothing’s wrong with it. Stop fretting. We’re both healthy, why should it be otherwise? Look, we didn’t have a clue. How can it be a sin if you don’t know?” He nodded encouragingly and reached over to pat her on the back. It was all the affection he could show, in front of the shop, on the street. “It will be all right.”

  She nodded, unconvinced, and walked away. Mehmet waited for her to put enough distance between them and uttered a curse. He lit a cigarette and leaned his arm on the stucco wall of the building, still looking down at the pavement. He took a couple of quick drags and threw the entire cigarette down squeezing it hard with his foot, uttering another curse. The sidewalk was moving from under his feet, trees and pedestrians swinging this way and that with the entire street rocking like the deck of a ship caught in a storm, daylight dimming around him. He crouched on the pavement wanting to retch. Why? His stomach brought up a taste of bile. He spat and rose slowly, holding on to the wall, unable to stop the world from rocking all around him. He crouched back down, to wait it out. The apprentice was looking at him from the doorway when he looked up.

  “Are you ill, brother?”

  “No. Felt a bit light-headed. Get back in. I will join you in a bit. Go on!”

  He went back to work his face chalky and his stomach unsettled. His existence which had thereto been filled with hope and anticipation was suddenly spiralling into a kind of vertiginous descent that could only end in a catastrophe. His entire being was sucked into this frantic vortex. He was married to his own sister and was about to become a father-uncle. He cursed the bracelets, the day his father chose them, and his oversexed father’s shenanigans. No sooner had he uttered these curses that he repented and apologized to Mehmet’s memory for injuring it. But he wasn’t entirely finished, letting out a few more involuntary blasphemies as he went back to working on the dresser. There was no forgiving his father, or her mother, especially her mother, for keeping their relationship a secret. Why did she not realize, in a small village such as theirs, that a tragedy of this sort was bound to occur?

  “We shall never speak of this again,” he said that night when he returned home drunk. “We will never tell the child or anyone else. It will get buried with us. What difference would it make to this baby, anyway, living so far away from our village in Crete? None! So we will just never mention it again.” He removed his shoes and let them fall by the side of the bed with a thud and lay with his clothes on, unable to focus his thoughts.

  “You’re drunk!” Maria observed with disdain. “I was crying my eyes out here, waiting for you, but you went and got drunk. This was the best you could come up with? Hear this: You won’t ever get to decide what I tell or not tell my daughter! Now, go to sleep.”

  “How do you know it’s a girl?”

  She shrugged and turned her back to him.

  He fell into a deep, dreamless slumber occasionally disturbed by Maria’s pushes. “Shh. You’re snoring! Stop it!”

  When he awoke the next day she had already gotten out of bed and was downstairs in the kitchen with Inez. She stiffened and turned her face away when he tried to kiss her cheek as he was leaving for work. He was not going to be forgiven for his misstep for a long time to come. “So be it,” he thought, indignation rising within him. “I’ll give it right back to her.”

  Miserable days of silence ensued. They would not utter a single word to each other directly, using Inez as an intermediary for the most trivial observations until the woman rebelled. “Leave me out of your childish games. I have more important things to do than run silly messages back and forth! The child will have a bitter disposition because of your stubbornness.”

  APOLOGIES TOOK LONG TO ARRIVE, but they did, somewhat tangentially; he bought her a hat, she gave him a reluctant smile. He carried the crib he had made at the atelier all the way home and placed it in their bedroom. Maria decorated it with sheets and cushions she had painstakingly embroidered. They stood side by side imagining their child in it. He promised he wouldn’t get drunk again. She reminded him they were in this mess because of their father’s boozing. He wasn’t so sure drinkin
g was to blame, but he did not challenge her opinion. Mehmet the Great had a gargantuan appetite for life, like Zeus or Dionysius who indulged in their pleasures carelessly leaving mere mortals the task of toiling in their sloppy wake, struggling to right those wrongs that threatened to destroy their trivial lives. Except that his father—their father—was no Aegean deity. There were no altars to his name. His legacy was a secret that had to be suffered in silence, an awful darkness that neither he nor Maria could endure to visit in their thoughts.

  As the pregnancy progressed they found a way to dull the shock of their discovery by keeping busy and avoiding the subject. Maria thought Mehmet was right in his drunken assessment; they could simply take this to their grave. They would not have more children, certainly. And being half-brother and sister wasn’t as awful as being full siblings in terms of heredity, she consoled herself. She had banished the thought of ever making love again, at first. But that thought also dimmed in importance with the passage of time; they had never had an inkling of any other connection when they fell in love, how could they simply erase all their history together? It was absurd. The nine months of gestation gave them time to absorb this new reality and discard in it what stood in their way. Maria continued to speak of Mehmet the Great as her husband’s father; she could not bring herself to use the possessive pronoun “our” without an ominous sense that this word alone had the power to destroy her life.

  Notebook III. Autobiography

  It WAS A SUNDAY AFTERNOON. Bored at home, I decided to go to Konak, take the ferry across to Karşıyaka for a leisurely walk along the quay there. Strolling along the water on that side of the city always lifted my spirits when I was younger, and I hoped it would have the same effect that Sunday. Aside from boredom, which usually found me on Sunday mornings right after breakfast as if by appointment, there was also that hollow feeling of loneliness I was trying to dispel. The same sparrows that chirped daily by my bedroom window when I awakened, for some reason, on a Sunday morning, reminded me of all the absentees once present in the house. My grandmother Inez, my parents, Nuray … and Aydın, of course, who entered my thoughts like a wily thief able to unlock every door, open every window to steal the little bit of peace I managed to save. I opened my eyes and there he was with his aftershave in my nostrils, his stubble on my skin and his lips upon mine driving daggers through my heart. All my ghosts. I had to get away.

  An hour later, I was taking a stroll in the sun, beside the wall separating the sea from the sidewalk, admiring the beautiful houses and mansions on the other side of the street anticipating my favourite one, with the rose garden in front and the statues rising among the flowerbeds, marble women in contrapposto covered in drapes, and naked youths with vine leaves covering their sex looking over chiselled shrubbery. I was walking with my head turned to the side, so that I would not miss that vision and bumped into a man. I apologized and looked ahead to make sure there were no other oncoming pedestrians, when I noticed, a few dozen metres away, the back of a woman walking between a tall man and a girl of about three who was skipping once in a while and took a few running steps to keep up with her parents. The three of them were walking ahead of me. My heart skipped when I recognized the woman’s silhouette, from behind. That walk, those wide hipbones moving as though they were trying to overturn something with their swing, the fine calves that reminded me of Arabian horses in flight. Then she swung her curls and laughed and I knew for sure. I was losing my breath just standing there, whispering “Nuray, oh my God….” I crossed the street and started running as fast as I could on the other sidewalk, hoping the flow of traffic would block me somehow. I ran and ran until I could no more. I was a good five hundred metres ahead. I waited to catch my breath and dabbed the sweat on my forehead hoping to look composed, debonair, took a deep breath then crossed again so I would be walking toward them. I took a diagonal path thinking it would seem more nonchalant and went straight to the crumbling wall by the sea pretending to look at the water, to be doing something that could seem oblivious. Gazing at the sea, then the horizon, I stood there watching the ferry making its way toward Alsancak followed by a small cloud of seagulls at its tail, the shrill squawks coming toward the land in broken echoes. That day in Moda, standing in our hotel room beside the tulle curtains, facing the Sea of Marmara. The seagulls brought it back. That day when the sun and the sea conspired in another geography, another seaside to set me free. My cheeks were ablaze. After gazing at the water for what I felt was a sufficient lapse of time, I turned toward them to continue my leisurely stroll. We were less than a few paces from each other. She looked straight into my eyes. A wave was building up in my chest. She didn’t smile or acknowledge me in any other way. I stood there frozen and they passed me by. She took her husband’s arm as they did and the little girl turned back, to size me up, having noticed that I had stopped moving. I had to act fast. I walked after them, “Nuray?”

  They stopped. She let go of his arm and turned towards me. “Yes,” she said looking at me politely. Her eyes were shining with anticipation, a tinge of mockery.

  “Mehtap. From work. Remember?”

  “Oh! My goodness! Mehtap how have you been?” She opened her arms and rushed toward me for a hug. When her arms enveloped my waist, the joy of reaching home, of finally arriving at the place of such unbearable longing rose into my throat. I squeezed my eyes shut to prevent tears and held her tightly in my arms. The tickle of her black curls, the familiar smell of her neck. She knew. Her hand caressed my back before pushing me away slightly. A glimmer of tears caught in the long eyelashes was dabbed quickly with her manicured fingertip. “What a long time it has been, my friend! And to say we almost walked past each other. Such absent-mindedness! This is Mehtap, an old friend from work,” she turned to her husband with a bright smile. He reached over to shake my hand. Tallish fellow, hollow cheeks, dark eyes.

  “Enchanted,” I murmured and turned to the little girl. “And who would this be?” I asked with a smile.

  “My daughter, Mehtap,” she put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Say hello to Auntie Mehtap.” She pushed her a little toward me. I crouched down so the girl could look me in the eyes.

  “Merhaba Mehtap Teyze,” she grinned showing tiny white teeth. Some of her hair was pulled back on top into a small ponytail, the rest in soft brown curls around her neck. “How come she never comes to our house?” she asked her mother.

  Nuray smiled. “We lost touch. But she will be coming over now that we have met again, I hope….” She opened her purse and took out a card. “Please do call,” she said, “you must come over for tea. We live not far from here at all.” She waved vaguely ahead, with her hand.

  “Oh, so you live in Karşıyaka, now? How lovely,” I nodded and opened my clutch to insert the card in its inner pocket. “I shall certainly call on you one of these Sundays. So glad to see you again. Goodbye.” I smiled at all three and waved at the little girl, then turned my back and walked away. I overheard her asking, “How come her name is Mehtap, too?” The father said something, but I had been walking too fast to catch it.

  As soon as I had put enough distance between us I looked for a place to sit. The scenery was moving upside down, my ears filled with persistent ringing. I slumped on a bench with my head bent down for a long time. An old lady holding a shopping bag and a cane approached me asking if I needed help. “Just got a little dizzy … I’ll be fine,” I replied to her unconvinced nod. As she walked slowly away turning back once in a while to check on me, I sat there, crumpled, trying to still my racing heart, the madness in my head with thoughts jumping here and there incoherently. What was her husband’s name? I couldn’t remember. How could I ever visit her without fainting, or dying of a weakened heart, or bursting into sobs? The child didn’t look like anyone in particular. Maybe not Aydın’s. On the other hand, maybe not this fellow’s either. She didn’t even look much like Nuray, except for the curls. Nuray hadn’t changed much. Did she look better? Ha
ppier? Did she miss me too? I saw the tear she wiped away quickly. Did the fellow wonder why? How could she do this to me? How could she leave me and go on to be happy with a man, have a child, when she said she didn’t like men. Perhaps, I thought, she had said this to make me feel at ease. Perhaps she was like a hungry octopus. Tentacles moving here and there to grab any prey passing by. An oversexed Aphrodite. After all those years she reappeared to remind me those wounds were still bleeding and nothing had healed. I was as devastated—no, more devastated—than the day she had slammed the door and left. She had replaced me with a child. She had become a housewife. How could that woman be a housewife? The towels everywhere, the military marches splashing in the bathtub, underwear on the floor…. How did that gaunt man take it? As I got up from the bench, I dared imagine she would leave him to come live with me, with her child, now that she saw me again, I dared imagine she realized how unbearably much she had missed me in her life and was going to come to me after slamming the door on him.

  By the time I got on the ferry, the afternoon sun had already paled, heavily falling westward on its sinking path into the sea. She would not leave her husband. She would never do that to her child. The ferry was moving faster toward the setting sun as if to reach it before falling, or to fall with it yonder and I gazed absent-mindedly at the horizon where everything disappeared under an oppressively cloudless sky thinking of a world before Galileo where such thoughts must have led desperate sailors to set course toward the ends of the earth, wishing to fall off and be gone.

  I got off the ferry and took a dolmuş25 that left me not far from the stairs going up my street. The gevrek boy was sitting beside his empty platter, smoking a cigarette. “Iyi akşamlar hanım teyze,”26 he smiled proudly blowing his smoke. I got near him, snatched the cigarette off his lips, threw it down and gave it a violent stomping with my shoe. “What a pity to see you here, filling your lungs with such poison! When will you go to school, huh? You will become a proper man by hitting the books, not by standing in street corners smoking these poisonous sticks. You’re so proud but you look pitiful.” I went on, couldn’t stop myself. “Don’t ever let me see you smoking again!” As if he were my son. “Don’t you have a mother to go home to?”