by Ahmet Altan
As Hasan Efendi related what had happened, the bright lights of the city were suddenly extinguished and the city sank back into its accustomed darkness, there were no lights except for the trembling flames of the oil lamps inside the tombs of the Sultans and the saints’ shrines.
In that darkness, the Sheikh shivered as if he sensed what was going to happen in the city, and, saying that it was getting cold, went inside.
2
The sisters at the French hospital showed a special tenderness and consideration to the polite patient with the soft gaze who, for whatever reason, looked like a pansy with the purple rings under his eyes and who spoke superb French. They often came to his bedside to ask how he was, hold his hand, say a few encouraging words, and sometimes, as the nights grew longer, they’d pull up a chair and read to him from books they’d borrowed from the hospital library.
Sister Clementine, who was said to have been a baroness once, spent more time than the other nuns with this patient whose education could be heard at once in his voice, and she clearly enjoyed talking with him about literature, writers, people, weaknesses, religion, and sometimes, when no one else was around, even politics. The sisters had either learned his tragic story or he’d touched their spirits with the otherworldly look in his large, chestnut eyes, and they were swept up in an ardor in which they saw him as part brother and part lover, they often spoke among themselves about Monsieur Hikmet; they each felt a secret pain, an inexplicable sorrow, at the thought that this patient who had recovered enough to shave himself would soon be discharged.
Even though he’d pointed the gun, which he was using for the first time, directly at his heart, by the grace of God his hands had trembled and he’d shot himself above the lung and shattered his collarbone; as Hüseyin Hikmet Bey later told Osman, “You can’t imagine what a sad embarrassment it is to fail to die.”
He’d wanted to kill himself because of the inconsolable pain of knowing full well that he could never be reunited with the woman he loved, his wounded pride that the woman he loved had chosen another man, and the disappointment he’d experienced in politics, and to all this pain was added the shame of not being able to die. As Hikmet Bey lay in his hospital room listening to the moaning of patients in other rooms, the whispering of the nurses, smelling the disinfectant the janitor added to a bucket of water to mop the floors, he knew the importance of warm affection to the healing of his soul, which was more badly wounded than his body, much more clearly than he had when he was healthy. He didn’t know how the desire to see Sister Clementine’s hair, which he’d decided was a chestnut red, had seeped into his gratitude for the interest she’d shown in him.
Despite the nurses’ tenderness, the vibrant harmony of past balls, Paris nights, love affairs, and sin that he could sense in Sister Clementine’s voice even when she prayed and the anger that betrayal inevitably causes, he couldn’t get his wife Mehpare off his mind.
Despite his bitterness, desperation, and sense of abandonment, or perhaps because of them, he dreamt of this beautiful woman every night, he muttered her name during bouts of fever, and thought no one but this woman could ease his agonizing loneliness. Like any man who’s been betrayed, no matter how angry he was he secretly believed that the only person who could relieve his pain was the person who’d caused it, and he allowed himself to dream; he waited for Mehpare Hanım to come back, for her to enter his hospital room one morning, concealing the shame on her face with a distant look, and ask his forgiveness.
When she didn’t come, he didn’t distance himself from Mehpare Hanım, on the contrary he felt more strongly bound to her. He’d loved his wife since the day he met her, this love, like many others, had not been nourished and strengthened by happiness, but by doubt and desperation, over the years it had become part of his personality, of his very being; he couldn’t get over this love, moreover, he didn’t want to.
When this longing became unbearable and started to break not only his soul but his body, he prayed to God, like a patient in pain begging for morphine, for the ability to forget, but his soul rebelled against his body’s entreaties, he remembered Mehpare Hanım at her most beautiful, the way she combed her hair, the way she held his hand on the way to their bedroom, and, realizing that to forget her would completely erase her from his life, at that moment, like anyone who was in love, he couldn’t countenance even the thought of forgetting. He loved someone who was far away, someone who wouldn’t come to him, and the only connection they had was the love he felt; the moment he forgot, this connection would vanish, and Hikmet Bey couldn’t bear to even imagine this. He would be unable to let go of this love unless it left him one day without his knowledge.
In fact, Hikmet Bey was not the kind of person who needed to suffer in order to love; when he loved, he loved with all his soul, with all his being; an impediment, a sense of longing, desperation, a game, or a betrayal couldn’t increase his love, when he’d fallen in love with Mehpare Hanım he hadn’t held back even a drop of his soul, he hadn’t kept aside anything for himself, he’d felt no need to hesitate. With the childish purity and innocence that was sometimes seen in well-raised men, he’d gone to the very limit of love: there was nothing beyond these feelings, nothing but death; and he really had tried to cross this boundary of death when his love wasn’t returned, but, as he himself said, “Unfortunately, I didn’t succeed.”
He remembered that day in shame; the people who’d rushed into the room when the gun went off, the shouting in the mansion, running, footsteps, the sad, frightened looks on the children’s faces, the rushing servants on the edge of tears, the annoyed, derisive look on Mehpare Hanım’s face, about which Hikmet Bey said, “Even remembering it is painful.” They carried him to the carriage by the arms and legs like a sack and placed his bloody body on the seats. He heard the driver shout and crack his whip, felt the pain in his chest, murmured, “Mehpare . . . ” and then passed out. Later he told Osman, “I remember that I wanted to say something, to call to her, I was going to tell her something; they operated on me at the hospital, after I came to, I thought for days about what I was going to tell her, but, strangely, I couldn’t remember.”
The palace doctor’s son had been brought to the hospital with a serious wound and had been abandoned there like a miserable outcast, neither his children, his wife, his mother, nor his father came to see him, and even the Committee friends with whom he’d shared a common fate lost themselves in the joy of their success and chose to forget their friend who’d shot himself because his wife betrayed him. If he’d died, many of those who didn’t visit him in the hospital would probably have gone to his funeral, but he hadn’t, and it had become his destiny to live with the humiliated shame of being a “cuckolded man” rather than have a tragic end.
On account of the influence the Sultan still had, Reşit Pasha received daily updates on his son’s condition from the governor’s office, and as soon as Mihrişah Sultan learned her son would recover, she sent a telegram to her daughter-in-law, whom she’d never loved, telling her to send the children to Paris immediately; the strange thing was that this woman who hadn’t even gone to visit her seriously wounded son surprised everyone by not only taking her grandchild, but Mehpare Hanım’s daughter from her marriage to sheikh Yusuf Efendi as well.
Sheikh Efendi didn’t want his daughter to live with him; he accepted Mihrişah Sultan’s taking her with restlessness and a heavy heart about his decision. Even though he was known as “the protector of the abandoned,” even though he never hesitated to help strangers or intercede on their behalf, he couldn’t be there for his own daughter, he couldn’t take his own flesh and blood under his protection, adding one more sin to the many he’d committed since the day he’d first seen Mehpare Hanım, no one knew the reason, he shouldered this heavy sin without giving any explanation to anyone. Later Hasan Efendi, pitying his Sheikh, told Osman, “He could have taken her in if he wanted, but he wanted her to stay with Mihrişah Sultan; his
daughter constituted a link to both Mehpare Hanım and Mihrişah Sultan, who’d charmed him with her beauty when she’d come to the tekke, it wasn’t because he didn’t want his daughter, it was because he didn’t have the strength to cut this bond, he left her with that whore.”
After sending her two children to her mother-in-law, Mehpare Hanım closed up the mansion in Salonika and moved to her Greek lover’s large mansion in the middle of the vast vineyards in Khalkidiki to escape the gossip and to live her love in peace. On the day she arrived there, she erased Hikmet Bey and what they’d lived together from her mind with the selfish ferocity seen in women who leave the man they don’t love to be with the man they do love, indeed she did this with an inner peace that’s difficult to explain.
With the uncanny intuition that lovers have, Hikmet Bey sensed that he’d been forgotten, what was more depressing was the knowledge that he wouldn’t have been forgotten if he’d died, and this gave him one more reason to regret that he’d lived.
Despite the pain he felt, there was no bitterness in his heart; in the mystical manner seen in those who return from the brink of death, he tried to understand each of the people close to him and found excuses for them not having visited him even once. Perhaps he no longer had the strength to be angry, perhaps because he had humiliated, denigrated, and shamed himself so much more than anyone else that he didn’t even take secret offense at what they did. He just felt a deep repentance. He realized that a failed suicide attempt was more dishonorable than never having attempted suicide.
While the Muslim community celebrated the opening of parliament, the Christians, especially in Salonika, were swept up in the excitement of the approaching Christmas season; despite the soberness of the nurses and doctors, there was a cheerful flurry of activity in the hospital, everyone had begun buying little presents for their acquaintances. Hikmet Bey couldn’t find anything to be cheerful about, so in desperation he borrowed from the happiness of others as he watched the preparations for Christmas from his bed with a bitter smile.
Two days before Christmas, when Sister Clementine was doing her rounds in the deserted hospital as the patients slept, she went into Hikmet Bey’s room and saw that he was still awake, and without attempting to conceal her pleasure said, “Are you still awake, Monsieur Hikmet?”
With a broken smile that suited his pale face, Hikmet Bey replied, “I couldn’t fall asleep.” Sister Clementine straightened the bedsheets and pulled the blanket up a bit and said, “Tonight will be cold, cover yourself well.” Hikmet Bey said, “If you have the time could you sit with me a bit?”
“Aren’t you going to sleep?”
“I’m not sleepy, somehow I can’t sleep at night, and even if I do fall asleep, I wake up again and again.”
Sister Clementine pulled a chair up next to the bed and sat down.
“Would you like me to read to you?”
“If you have the time, I’d prefer to talk.”
Sister Clementine sat with her knees together, her hands resting on her lap, both of them were aware of an undulation in her voice that had nothing to do with the innocent manner in which she was sitting.
“You’ll be leaving us next week, Monsieur Hikmet. What will you do when you get out?”
“I suppose I’ll go back to Istanbul.”
A shadow passed across Sister Clementine’s face.
“Have we bored you so much that you want to flee at once?”
Later Hikmet Bey told Osman, “I think it was that night, as I was conversing with that tall nun, that I realized for the first time that women are attracted to men who fall into the position of being despised by other men.” Osman noticed that he spoke of Sister Clementine without using her name, referring to her only as “that tall nun” as if she was of no importance to him, but he didn’t point out this sly omission and attributed it to Hikmet Bey’s inhibition.
“By no means, not at all,” Hikmet Bey replied to her reproach. “In any event there are a lot of things I have to take care of here, when I said I would be leaving I meant after I’ve wrapped everything up.”
“Do you miss Istanbul?”
“I suppose I have, I think I miss approaching the harbor in a ferry more than I miss Istanbul itself, the odd smell the city has, the buzzing . . . When I think of Istanbul I think of the harbor, as if I don’t remember anything else . . . What about you? Do you miss Paris?”
Sister Clementine sighed, then leaned toward Hikmet Bey with a playful smile, “Don’t tell anyone, but I miss it terribly.”
Then she added, “The head nurse would be furious if she heard that.”
“Why?”
“Oh, because the city is a worldly place, it means that I miss the world, we’re supposed to have left all that behind.”
There was a silence.
“I miss Istanbul, but I’m not sure I miss the world, no, I can’t say I’ve missed the world, I’ve even grown accustomed to this place, to the hospital; if they weren’t discharging me I’d stay here, far from the struggles and problems of life.”
“Don’t say that, Monsieur Hikmet. Just as it’s inappropriate for us to miss the world, it’s inappropriate for you not to miss it, you’re a young man, you need to live your life.”
“I’m not young anymore, Sister Clementine, I’m not trying to hold on to my youth, I don’t miss it . . . from now on life is pointless for me; when you no longer have anything to hope for your youth has ended too; what can I hope for, nothing . . . From now on life is just something I have to endure, indeed, if you can believe it, it’s like a prison sentence . . . ”
Smiling like an aristocrat who’d learned to smile through the deepest pain, as if he was mocking himself, Hikmet Bey said, “They’ve put me in solitary confinement, as they do to convicts who try to escape; when you try to escape you lose all your privileges, I will carry on my life as someone who couldn’t escape, who was caught attempting to escape.”
Sister Clementine held Hikmet Bey’s hand.
“Why are you talking like this, why are you being so pessimistic? I would never have thought you would give up so quickly.”
“Quickly? Do you think I gave up quickly? I gave up very late, too late, I should have given up earlier . . . Someone who gave up in time might get the chance to bounce back, but anyone who gives up too late doesn’t have a chance . . . I didn’t give up quickly, I was late, Sister Clementine, too late, about ten years late.”
Sister Clementine spoke in a slightly reproachful manner and with a spiritual maturity, earned through years of hard work, that obliged mortals to be respectful and keep their distance.
“Monsieur Hikmet, when we know that life doesn’t end with death, that it begins again in a better way, how can you decide that your life has ended in this world, that your life is over when you’re still in your prime. I know that this is held just as much a sin in your religion as it is in ours.”
This time he really smiled a genuine smile.
“Ah, I wish that were my only sin . . . But I committed much more pleasurable sins, sins that are more difficult to forgive. You can be sure that this sin is much more innocent than my previous sins.”
Every time the word sin is uttered between a man and a woman, whoever they are, it creates its own fire and charm, it penetrates the thickest uniforms, cloaks, and clothing worn against it, it reaches the indelible experience of sin and the pleasure derived from it and moves the soul with its ungodly power. The same thing happened this time; for a brief moment, the coquettish shadow of Paris evenings and sinful experiences, whatever their nature, that she’d tried to forget passed across Sister Clementine’s face, but she regained her spiritual composure so quickly that it could have seemed he’d only imagined it. However, Hikmet Bey, despite being wounded in body and soul, was familiar enough with the shadow of sin to recognize it at once.
Instinctively, as if she wanted to protect herself,
Sister Clementine reached into her deep pocket and took out her rosary beads.
“Everyone is a sinner, Monsieur Hikmet, that’s why we seek redemption, this is why we work to avoid sin, we pray daily, we entreat God to not allow the smallest, seemingly most innocent sin to taint our lives. Don’t forget, the most dangerous sin is the simplest and most innocent; a person can decisively close his soul to the greater sins, but it’s the small sins that find a chink in our armor and make their way in.”
For the first time since he’d arrived at the hospital, Hikmet Bey looked carefully at Sister Clementine’s face, he looked at her as a man looking at a woman and tried to see what was concealed behind the wimple that looked like swan’s wings, the pale blue habit of coarse cloth, the white apron, rosary beads, mature and understanding smile and clasped hands. With the instincts of a man familiar with women and bedroom games, like a purebred hound catching its prey’s scent, he caught the scent of a woman, there was a woman hiding in there. She had a slightly bulging forehead that shone like ivory, blond eyelashes that reached her temples, an aquiline nose that gave her an aristocratic look, thick, blond, almost yellow eyelashes, dark, almost navy-blue eyes, and thick lips. Later Hikmet Bey said, “It wasn’t a face I wouldn’t notice, that meant I’d never looked carefully before, when I looked at her all I saw was her habit, her wimple, her rosary beads; it didn’t occur to me that there was a woman behind them.”
Hikmet Bey never told anyone, but he remained faithful to the wife who’d left him for another man; if he’d known he wouldn’t be mocked for it he would have told people, he would have said he wasn’t being faithful to his wife but to his love. Moreover he’d never decided to or even wanted to be faithful, it was just that he didn’t want to look at another woman with desire.
