The Trojan War Museum
Page 17
In Paris, S.’s opponents had watched his hands, followed his eyes. He had wished, so many times, to be invisible.
Now, in the dark, a peace comes over him. He thinks he can smell her perfume. He is suffused. He can feel her across from him and he wants nothing more than to reach out and take her hand, so that the warmth from it spreads through him.
How can he have gone so long without love?
SHE SEES THE MOVE and yet she struggles to bring herself to make it.
She wants some kind of sign. Proof. She wants to know that Thomas is healed.
Maybe it is not Thomas’s absence she must live with, but this new presence. She looks at the long fingers of the Turk, which have reached out and moved each piece. She imagines taking him by the hand and warming his fingers with her own. Perhaps her father is right. It does not matter if there is anyone or anything inside. She should simply be amazed at man’s creation.
What she misses most about Thomas is the way he spoke to her. He would inspire such thoughts in her. Perhaps she and the children can do that for each other.
She makes her last move, and the game is hers. The crowd cheers, somewhere in the room her children leap to their feet, even Maelzel congratulates her, and still the machine keeps his eyes cast down, as if studying the board to determine the cause of his loss.
WHAT THE TURK WISHES he could make her understand is she is not Leyla, left behind. She is Mejnun.
Inside of her is the capacity to love beyond love.
Inside of her is the history of time up until this moment.
Inside of her is an infinite space that contains all things, including what she has lost.
What he wishes he could make her understand is there is no her, there is only inside of her.
How he wishes he could tell her.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A graduate student of mine once turned to me and said, “I hate acknowledgments pages.” I knew instantly what he meant; I, too, despite being a voracious reader of acknowledgments, sometimes hate them. Because from the outside, they can feel like a statement of the worst of the writing world—the who-you-knows, the what-you-wons, the where-you’ve-beens, the students-of. But from the inside, when you are the grateful one, hyperaware of how your book would not exist without the whos, the whats, the wheres, the thought of not writing an acknowledgments page (and I did think of it) is actually painful. So:
It took me nearly ten years to write this book. You can imagine how many people and places that entailed. I hope to thank each of you in person.
But especially:
Julie Barer, my agent, and Alane Salierno Mason, my editor, have proven to be two of the smartest, most literary, most ethical businesspeople I have ever met. I am proud to be represented by the Book Group and published by Norton, two institutions that value books not just as products but as experiences, as ideas, as art. Equal gratitude to Nicole Cunningham and Ashley Patrick for so much boots-on-the-ground work.
Mary Kenagy Mitchell and Andy Furman read nearly every one of these stories, sometimes more than once. A writer is lucky to have one great reader; I have two.
My colleagues (past and present) at Florida Atlantic University have become not just my friends but my family. Folks sometimes wonder why creative writing is in the English department, but many of these stories grew out of my understanding of my colleagues’ scholarship and writing. If I have a muse, it is the FAU Department of English.
I’m also grateful to the FAU Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, the Millay Colony for the Arts, the Betsy Hotel, and the Studios of Key West for support as I wrote these stories.
Most of all, thank you to the other Bucaks: my parents; my big brother, Deniz; my sister-in-law, Gabrielle; and my niece and nephew, Audrey and Devin, who are my two favorite people, the two funniest, smartest, most interesting people I could ever spend time with, and who I wish I could see every day.
Finally, special gratitude to the magazines and editors that first published a number of these stories:
“The History of Girls” in Witness and the O. Henry Prize Stories 2013
“A Cautionary Tale” in the Pinch
“The Gathering of Desire” in Normal School
“Little Sister and Emineh” in Prairie Schooner
“An Ottoman’s Arabesque” in the Kenyon Review
“Iconography” in the Iowa Review and the 2014 Pushcart Prize
Many of the stories in this collection include fictionalized versions of real people and real events. My copy editor did her absolute best to keep me honest—any mistakes or misrepresentations are my own.
CREDITS
“A Cautionary Tale.” The Pinch 35.2 (Fall 2015).
“An Ottoman’s Arabesque.” Kenyon Review 36.2 (Spring 2014): 29–47.
“The Gathering of Desire” was originally published under the title “The Missing Beloved, The Gathering of Desire.” The Normal School 6.2 (2013): 6–14.
“Little Sister and Emineh.” Prairie Schooner 86.4 (2012): 83–94.
“Iconography.” The Iowa Review. 42.2 (2012): 53-62. Reprinted in 2014 Pushcart Prize. Ed. Bill Henderson. New York: Pushcart Press. pp. 274–284.
“The History of Girls.” Witness 25.1 (2012): 26–36. Reprinted in 2013 O. Henry Prize Stories. Ed. Laura Furman. New York: Anchor/Doubleday. pp. 353–366. Reprinted Aster(ix). May 31, 2016.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Ayşe Papatya Bucak
All rights reserved
First Edition
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Bucak, Ayse Papatya, author.
Title: The Trojan War Museum and other stories / Ayse Papatya Bucak.
Description: First edition. | New York : W. W. Norton & Company, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018057459 | ISBN 9781324002970 (hardcover)
Classification: LCC PS3602.U225 T76 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018057459
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