In the Shadow of the Yali

by Suat Dervis

  It was cold as ice.

  “She’s freezing,” he thought. The heating must have gone off some time ago.

  All she was wearing was her black velvet dress.

  Her cheek fell onto his. A pause. Then he felt her warm breath on his lips as she whispered: “Muhsin, I’m so very happy!”

  When their lips met, there was no passion. Only love.

  That old, mad urgency was gone. In its place was something deeper, calmer and more solemn.

  At last Celile moved, sliding down onto the pillows.

  She gazed happily into the distance.

  Muhsin watched her. Never had he known such joy.

  Here she was, this woman who was now his and his alone. She would never be able to go back to her old life.

  This morning she looked more beautiful than ever. Though her face looked pale, and her eyelids bruised, her beauty took his breath away.

  If she seemed more beautiful to him than ever before, it was partly because she was now his.

  The ugly problem had been solved.

  From now on, things would be different. Celile would no longer be dividing herself between two men. She would no longer be a feckless adulterer, or he her partner in crime. Ahmet had ceased to be his rival, or for that matter his partner.

  He would no longer need to abase himself, or share a woman with that little upstart who had only managed to gain a foothold in the construction industry with Muhsin’s help.

  From now on, Celile would be his mistress, pure and simple. His mistress…

  As for Ahmet, he was easily dealt with.

  The dispute was settled. At long last, Muhsin’s mind was clear.

  No more doubt. No more hesitation. The die had now been cast.

  This woman now belonged to him. From here on in, she was in his care.

  It would be up to him to cherish her and keep her safe. To satisfy her every need and desire.

  And it would, he was sure, bring him great pleasure.

  He’d been lying there without moving for so many hours that every part of his body ached.

  When he stretched, he suddenly felt very tired.

  The heat had been off for many hours, and Muhsin could feel the chill in his bones.

  Then he remembered Celile. Her icy cheeks. Who could know how cold she’d been all night.

  All night!

  All night, Muhsin had been thinking about himself. He hadn’t spared a single thought for her. Hour after hour he had lain there, grappling with his own dilemma.

  He stood up.

  Left their little bridal chamber. Went into the bedroom and returned with a heavy men’s robe.

  “The heating’s gone off,” he told Celile. “Your hands and cheeks are cold as ice. Put this on, will you?”

  And as he wrapped that heavy robe around her, as gently as a mother putting a warm shawl around her child, he said: “You’re very tired. You’ve been up all night. Wouldn’t you like to lie down for a while and get some sleep?”

  Nothing had been proposed, and nothing settled. But now it was as if Muhsin was initialing an agreement they had drawn up together.

  As far as Muhsin was concerned, there was nothing to discuss. She was not going home. She would sleep in his bed.

  She was tired. She would have to sleep here, with him.

  She would sleep in his bed and wake up in his bed. And here she would remain.

  Celile looked down and said, “Yes, I shall.” As if to add her signature to the same agreement. For a time she kept her eyes downcast. And when she lifted them, they sparkled like a clear and cloudless summer day.

  Beneath those heavy lids, her hazel eyes were as if lit by the sun.

  She gazed at her lover and sighed.

  “I’m so happy,” she murmured. “So very happy!”

  After Celile had drifted off into a deep and peaceful sleep, Muhsin left the room, making sure to close the door behind him.

  Soon afterwards, he was next to the phone.

  He picked up the receiver, dialed a number with a single, impatient finger. And when he heard a voice at the other end of the line, he said: “Hello. Hello. Ahmet Bey. Yes.”

  “…”

  “No…No…Ahmet Bey. Ahmet Beyefendi…This is Muhsin. Muhsin Demirtaş.

  “No…Please listen to me, Ahmet Bey.”

  “…”

  “Yes, I am calling to speak to you about Celile Hanımefendi. She doesn’t want to come home. Ever.”

  “…”

  “Yes, you’ve heard me correctly. No, she doesn’t want to come home. If you would be so good as to come to my office tomorrow at six in the evening, I can explain.”

  “…”

  “So six is too late for you? In that case, we can meet this morning at seven…”

  “…”

  “No…No, she’s perfectly fine. Don’t worry. Until we meet, then.”

  Muhsin put down the phone.

  TWELVE

  For a moment Ahmet just stood there, staring in amazement at the receiver still in his hand.

  What had just happened?

  He had so many questions. But the line had been cut.

  He could make no sense of what he’d just heard.

  How could Muhsin have anything to say to him about Celile?

  And why had he invited him to his office? What did he mean to explain?

  What had happened to Celile?

  She might have been in an accident! Or been run over by a tram! She might have been struck dead!

  But if she had, was this the way to give him the news? With a cold and peremptory phone call?

  No, it had to be something else. Something else entirely.

  But only a cad of a husband would suspect Celile of that sort of something.

  She must be in a hospital, he thought. Suffering terribly, and who could know why or how.

  Or was she in a morgue?

  Just the thought of Celile dead…it sent him into a tailspin.

  But there had been nothing in Muhsin’s voice to suggest it might be so.

  “No,” he had said. “No. It’s nothing like that.”

  What was Ahmet to make of that? He must be losing his mind. Why had Celile not come home? Why had Muhsin been the one to call him, to tell him she would never be returning? He could make no sense of it.

  What had happened to Celile, his wife?

  Why was he going to have to wait for another man to tell him?

  At the crack of dawn, the phone rings, and a man informs him that his wife won’t be coming home.

  Such disrespect!

  How did this man come to know so much about his wife? He and Celile had met a dozen times at most. How, at this time in the morning, did he come to know that she would not be coming home?

  Celile and Muhsin…

  Impossible! How could it be that all this time Ahmet had noticed nothing? Unless Celile…

  Banish the thought.

  She could at this very moment be lying on her deathbed, or in a morgue. Better not to think than to have thought so ill of her.

  He’d not slept a wink. He was a wreck. His eyes were smarting and his tongue was furred.

  Worry had turned his face a waxy white. His heart was racing, his face and hands dripping with sweat.

  While Celile had been enjoying the happiest night of her life, Ahmet had been making his first acquaintance with suffering.

  Because nothing bad had ever happened to him before tonight.

  His home life had always been peaceful and uneventful.

  He was, after all, the son of a well-placed civil servant who paid his bills on time. Nothing had ever happened to disturb the peace, or indeed the tedium. They had never endured any kind of deprivation. No page in their family calendar had been blackene
d by an affair, a divorce, a second marriage, an illness, or a death.

  His years at Galatasaray Lycée had been happy. From start to finish, he had been surrounded by friends. His only sorrow had been seeing all the things that his wealthier classmates could afford to do: things that he, coming from a family of more modest means, could not.

  He had longed for their privileges. It had bothered him that they were beyond his reach. His father, who loved him very much, could see how bad his son felt, and he’d done his best to console him.

  And when Ahmet, who’d always shone on the playing field, joined the national football team, he went way up in the eyes of his rich classmates. Thanks to fine performance in amateur tournaments in Europe and finally in the Olympics, he’d enjoyed considerable popularity as a bachelor.

  For he was not just an athlete, but a very handsome young man. The girls had loved him. Every time he had walked out onto the field, he’d had a new one in tow.

  His only anxiety during those happy years of his youth had been the danger of being disqualified after a foul.

  Throughout those bachelor years, he’d shied away from serious involvement. In his flirtations with various girls from good families, he had never stepped over the line.

  At those European tournaments, but also in Istanbul, it would have been easy to have a fling or two or even take on a mistress, but he had never done so.

  Celile was his first true love.

  He had loved her as he had never loved another.

  He’d worshipped her. He’d been as faithful as a dog.

  Celile was his everything. So much did he admire her, so deep was his love for her, that until today he had considered himself the luckiest man on earth, to have had her for ten years as his loyal wife. For ten years he had basked in this happy illusion.

  Every night, he had come home to find Celile waiting for him.

  He would knock on the door, and at once he’d feel safe and calm. To see Celile after a day of struggle and aggravation—this was his reward.

  To set eyes on Celile, to take her in his arms, to look into her eyes and kiss her…They were gifts from God.

  Lately, all that had changed. Ahmet had been working like a madman, rushing from one thing to the next and sacrificing those pleasures by getting home too late.

  But even when he did manage to get home early, Celile would not be there.

  This had never raised his suspicions. He’d seen nothing unusual in it. He’d just assumed that having grown accustomed to his coming home late, she’d tired of sitting at home waiting.

  Now that they had risen in the world, she must have found new friends.

  He’d lost count of the times Memduh Bey’s wife had invited her over for an evening of bridge.

  Celile did not play bridge. She’d turned down the invitations, until finally the engineer’s wife had given up.

  Even if he came home late, though, Ahmet had never asked her how she’d spent her day.

  He’d immediately launch into an account of his own day.

  His business dealings, in other words.

  Most nights, he’d jump into a taxi around nine o’clock and arrive home exhausted.

  Last night, unfortunately, he’d come home at seven.

  “The lady is not at home!”

  This is what the maid had said to him.

  “Did she say where she was going, or what time she’d be back?”

  “No, sir. She did not.”

  “Fine then. Draw me a bath. I can be in and out before she gets home.”

  While in the bath, he kept an ear out for the doorbell. But when he rose from his bath, she was still not there.

  He got dressed. He went into the sitting room. He couldn’t stop himself from asking the maid if Celile was back yet.

  “Not yet, sir.”

  But even now, Ahmet was not unduly concerned.

  He sat down to read the evening paper while he waited.

  It was getting late now, and Ahmet was getting hungry. He looked at his watch.

  A quarter past eight. He called the maid: “What time did the lady go out?”

  “The same as always. Half past four!”

  He had been feeling somewhat annoyed. But as the maid left the room, anxiety overtook him.

  At twenty past eight, Ahmet was seized by the idea that Celile might have been in an accident.

  His heart froze.

  It was cold outside. The streets were icy. One wrong step. One car that forgot to brake…

  He covered his eyes, murmuring “Please God!”

  But Celile was not a child.

  He glanced at his watch. A quarter to nine.

  He tried to calm himself: it was not as late as all that.

  She could have been to see her seamstress and been delayed. She could still be at the hairdresser, waiting her turn. Or she’d gone to a friend’s house. That friend might not have wanted her to leave. She might have agreed to stay for a bit longer.

  A friend’s house…

  But what friend, where? Celile had never liked visiting other people’s homes. And she’d never accepted an invitation that would keep her out this late.

  Though lately, quite a few of the wives of his new business partners had been paying her visits here.

  Maybe Celile had befriended one or two of them, and maybe she was with her new friends this evening.

  But where, exactly?

  By half past nine, Ahmet was in a panic. He was still in the sitting room, pacing back and forth.

  He blamed himself. He had been working so hard to make money, and as a result he had been neglecting his wife, who was more precious to him than all the treasure in the world.

  Now here he was, worried to death but with no idea where she might be.

  Where could he find her?

  He could no longer bear to sit here and wait.

  Returning to the bedroom, he got dressed to go out.

  No, he could not bear another minute in this apartment. He had to go out and find her.

  He threw on his coat. Hurrying down the stairs, he was still getting his arms into the sleeves.

  The front door was already locked for the night. He had to go down to the basement, and out through the janitor’s entrance. Outside, the pavement was covered with ice.

  The pavement was sparkling with crystals.

  The harsh wind cut into his skin like a knife.

  As the door shut behind him, he paused for a moment to think where to go.

  But where?

  Who would know?

  He couldn’t go from house to house, asking everyone he’d ever met where his wife was.

  Something must have happened to her.

  Something terrible.

  She must have been in an accident.

  What sort of accident?

  He was the sort of man who imagined every eventuality. But because he’d never yet seen the cold mask of death, he hadn’t given it serious thought.

  So now, thinking that Celile might have been in an accident, his fear was so great he could barely breathe. To keep himself from shouting out her name, he had to bite his lips so hard he almost made them bleed.

  He hurried to the corner, not knowing where else to go.

  His heart racing. His face crumpled with dread.

  He looked like a sick cat, lost in the middle of the street. A blind dog, surrounded by strangers.

  Whatever had kept her out so late, she must, Ahmet thought, be thinking about how much worry she’d caused him.

  She’d call the house. Certainly, she would call.

  But she had not called.

  So Ahmet wished with all his heart that, whatever her reason for being out so late, it was one he had somehow not imagined.

  If she appeared at this very moment
, walking around the corner in her usual calm and unhurried way, he would forget all the worry she had caused him.

  He would forgive her for upsetting him so.

  How could he ever be angry with her?

  His panic and worry counted for nothing, did they? All he wanted was to know she was safe.

  All he wanted was to see her, distant and indifferent to everyone and everything in her midst.

  “Oh dear, were you worried? Goodness, it didn’t occur to me to phone.” How he longed to hear those words.

  He had been pacing back and forth in front of the apartment for half an hour now.

  But still Celile had not come home.

  It was pointless to stay here.

  He had to do something.

  Something! Anything! He had to look for her. A respectable married woman like Celile didn’t stay out in the street till ten at night without a reason!

  Dear God, what should he do?

  Where to look for her? Whom to ask? A police station, he decided. To ask if there’d been any accidents.

  He hurried off to Beyoğlu Police Station.

  As he walked, he peered into every passing tram and the fogged windows of every taxi to see if he could make out her beautiful face.

  He looked each passing person in the eye.

  He was in such a state by now that he was almost ready to ask these people if they had seen her.

  He’d never in his life been in such torment. He loved his wife that much.

  If something had happened to her…

  At the police station they made the appropriate inquiries. But there were no reports of any accidents.

  Just a five-year-old boy who’d been found freezing to death in the ruins of an old madrassa. He was only just able to stop himself from going to the hospital where they’d taken this boy, to ask if he was Celile.

  That’s how distraught he was.

  Returning home from the police station, he took some comfort in knowing she hadn’t been in an accident. But his mind was still running in circles. Where could she be? Why couldn’t he find her?

  He looked for a taxi to take him home. But the taxis in the street were all full. He had to walk. He had to hope that he’d get home to find she’d just arrived.

  Or even just after he’d left.

  He walked as fast as he could.