The Aziz Bey Incident

by Ayfer Tunç

  The next evening he donned his father’s smoke grey suit, starched shirt and tie, and began his programme with a little bit of his father inside him.

  Will this wound in my heart not find a cure?

  Now all is pitch black in my suffering heart.

  As he wore that suit, he somehow became reconciled with his father, and shared in his guilt.

  *

  For many years after this death, there were no important changes in his life. Time, and the sound of his tambur soothed everything. He moved up two floors in the boarding house he lived in to a larger, light and airy room; he ate at the right times, he bought new underwear, handkerchiefs and socks. A multitude of women came and went through his life just as they had before Maryam. He made new friends and acquaintances and began to laugh and talk happily, even if not quite as much as in his early youth. He approached middle age as a handsome man; a maturity and a worldliness entered his attitude and manner. Yet he kept aloof, and when job offers came along he did not hurry, but worked meticulously until he gradually became known in his own small field and gained respect. One day they called him from a top-notch nightclub. ‘Play at our club,’ they said. He thought it over and accepted. That day he saw the notice ‘unfinished suit for sale’ in the window of the blind tailor. His father’s suit was well worn by then, and while he was still thinking, ‘Should I get that suit?’ he went in and bought it.

  It was a striking black lounge suit with a purple satin collar and cuffs. When he returned to his room, he put it on and looked in the mirror. The body was a perfect fit but the sleeves were too short. Neither was it finished yet. The tacking was still in place. He went to Macide Hanım who ran the boarding house.

  ‘Do you know of a good tailor?’ he asked. ‘I need to have this suit finished. The sleeves need lengthening a little too.’

  Macide Hanım examined the costume on Aziz Bey, looking at it from every angle.

  ‘There’s not much left to do,’ she said. ‘Vuslat will finish it in a couple of nights. She’s my niece… If you like I’ll call her, let her have a look at it. Actually she’s a typist in a firm, but she’s good at sewing.’

  ‘Is she skilled enough to do it?’ he asked. ‘She mustn’t spoil my beautiful suit…’

  ‘This is nothing Aziz Bey,’ said Macide Hanım. ‘She even sews her brothers’ winter coats, surely she can sew this?

  ‘In that case would you kindly call and let her come?’ said Aziz Bey.

  Vuslat came that same evening. She was a tiny, pale girl past her prime; she was timid. Aziz Bey appraised her coldly and impudently.

  ‘I don’t want any mistakes,’ he said. ‘Just so you know. Don’t even begin if it’s beyond you.’

  Vuslat was confused, not knowing how to respond. Just then, Aziz Bey noticed her eyes; those of a girl past her prime, who stood as if wallowing in deepest grief. They sparkled, those eyes put in with a smutty finger. Aziz Bey saw these eyes about to fill with tears, and regretted his harsh manner.

  ‘Iron it well,’ he said, ‘I’m very particular.’

  That night at the tavern, Vuslat popped into his mind from time to time. Her quietness, calmness, the sense of sadness in her gaze wrenched him deep inside, and he regretted his harsh treatment.

  Chatting to his friends that day, they got round to the subject of women, and their infidelity. Again Aziz Bey remembered Maryam, and relived that painful adventure. On Tuesday, when he took the suit from Macide Hanım and was putting it on, he lost his temper for no reason, found a stack of faults, and ranted and raved. He wanted the seamstress – whose name he knew perfectly well was Vuslat – to put them right immediately.

  Macide Hanım was astonished; she could see none the faults Aziz Bey complained about.

  ‘I’ll tell her and she’ll put them right, Aziz Bey,’ she said. ‘Why lose your rag over this?’

  She stared after the departing Aziz Bey complete with his suffocating fury; and didn’t understand a thing.

  The next evening Aziz Bey – all he’d said about the newly finished suit long forgotten – was wound up with the excitement of the nightclub. He was working on one of his new songs. There was a knock at the door. It was as though a nervous, frail hand, hesitant about whether or not to knock was touching the frame.

  Aziz Bey opened the door and saw Vuslat.

  ‘I’ve brought your suit…’ she said.

  She was holding the slightly wet packet wrapped in sheet upon sheet of newspaper to her breast inside her coat; she drew it out and presented it to him. There was no one around. There was not a sound from the rooms, the only audible noise being the rain beating violently on the windowpanes. Aziz Bey noticed that water was dripping from her coat hem. He likened the girl to a frightened sparrow struggling in a rough hand.

  ‘Come inside,’ he said. ‘You’re soaked.’

  Vuslat was uneasy. After all these years spent quietly and unobtrusively trying to avoid attention, she was both very afraid and longing to enter the strange and troubled field created around this man who seemed larger than life to her, with his self-confident manner, his striking movements and his growing popularity as a musician.

  ‘No thanks,’ she said in a barely audible voice. ‘I’ll wait in my aunt’s room. If you could try it on and see if it’s alright…’

  Aziz Bey smiled warmly at the girl whose heart he’d broken a few days earlier with his harsh manner.

  ‘Your aunt isn’t there,’ he said. ‘She’s staying on the other side tonight. Come inside and warm up a bit, you’re like a drowned rat, come on.’

  That night, when he took a book and lay on his bed, he could not stop thinking about the unattractive, puny, but clear-faced Vuslat. There was something good and calming in her bearing and her face, as well as in her soft voice. When Aziz Bey’s destructive glance fell on her eyes it paused, he broke inside, and a feeling of loving compassion towards this forlorn, subdued face kindled inside him. A poor lonely girl forgotten in her own narrow world in this city where everyone suffered his or her own individual trials… And then the thought struck him that he was at least just as lonely as her. He had no home, no family. The years that passed without one realising would pass even quicker; the troubles and sorrows he had hidden to be able to hold his head high and remain proud would gradually become more unbearable. A life woven with friends, food, drinking sessions, propositions, interviews, patrons and a stack of other details enveloping him from all directions as soon as he took a step outside his room, took on a totally different aspect when he entered his room and closed the door; then a childish wistfulness settled on that confident, busy, Aziz Bey and he felt the need for someone who would listen intently to at least a few words of what was bottled up inside.

  Could this person possibly be Vuslat? He had no desire and was in no fit state to fall in love, to put up with whims or satisfy the heart of a woman who would turn their mutual lives into a silly rhyme of never-ending demands. Such was his selfish reflection that he thought he could only live with a woman like Vuslat who was quiet, insignificant, invisible unless peered at carefully, whose presence was not felt unless needed. If he spoke she listened, if he asked she answered; in short he thought he could live with a woman who made life as easy as possible, moreover he wanted such a woman.

  He began to think frequently about this. He had Vuslat sew two shirts and a jacket although he did not need them. During the fittings, measurements, and comings and goings, he formed an opinion of her. As for Vuslat, she felt so insignificant beside him, she vehemently avoided crossing his path or of disturbing him by being seen. She was frightened of being swept up in an unfounded hope and being hurt, so she made no move to go beyond the distance Aziz Bey had placed between them. It is very possible that she even avoided dreaming, lest she get carried away and believe in those dreams.

  It was on a planned walk during lunch break that they ran into each other. This was no coincidence; Aziz Bey was seated in a small café that overlooked the door of the office building wh
ere Vuslat worked, waiting for her to come out for lunch. When he saw her at the door wearing a coat she’d made herself, he left the café, followed her for a while and then approached her and said, ‘Hello.’ An evident joy flashed over Vuslat’s face. They chatted a little. Aziz Bey acted as warmly as he was able. He had worn the jacket she’d made, and he invited her to lunch. He had such a commanding manner that Vuslat could not say no; she made herself think that this was a casual invitation and did not look for an intention that would raise her hopes in vain. They went to a pudding shop and ordered chicken pilaf. Aziz Bey was relating something in a powerful voice; Vuslat was listening with a smiling face. The chicken pilaf was finished and they went on to dessert.

  Aziz Bey asked, ‘Do you work on Saturdays?’ as though it were a natural part of the conversation. ‘If you’re free, let’s go to the cinema.’

  Vuslat dropped the pudding spoon, and as she tried to reach it she knocked her glass over.

  All she could manage was a stuttering, ‘All right…’

  As they were leaving, she couldn’t even manage to put her coat on, or find the door.

  They married within a few months. However much Vuslat’s father hemmed and hawed and made feeble objections to the loss of a wage coming into the house; however much her good-for-nothing brothers objected merely for the sake of it, saying, ‘We won’t give a girl to a musician,’ for the first time in her life Vuslat put her foot down saying, ‘I’m going to get married.’ This obstinacy greatly astonished both her father and her aunt.

  During the time they rented and furnished a house overlooking the Golden Horn, Aziz Bey did take some pleasure in life. He thought that from then on he would be living a comfortable, easy existence, but he did not consider this new state very important; whereas all this had passed through Vuslat’s head.

  Everything was as Aziz Bey wanted it. Their wedding ceremony was extremely simple, as he had not wanted to invite many guests. Vuslat’s father, aunt, two very close friends... that was all. This excessive simplicity upset Vuslat. All the same, she did not mind too much, since she just could not believe that she was married to Aziz Bey. The first night she kept waking up to look and see whether or not the man lying beside her was indeed him.

  However, it didn’t take her long to realise that the only loving party in this marriage was herself. She quickly saw they didn’t find the same meaning in their life. There was not a trace of the kind of romantic feelings that filled Vuslat in Aziz Bey. She retreated into the shell she’d readily abandoned in that simple ceremony. And thus that great dream came to an end.

  These years were Aziz Bey’s heyday. The colourful world outside had embraced and surrounded him. He was happy to abandon himself to this exciting and drunken world where melodies and drink flowed like water, where there was no room for quiet souls. It was as though he were swimming in a hot river, passing over waterfalls, falling into still lakes and finding himself afterwards again among the foam. He loved this fast life that took on a different face each evening. He performed at a number of nightclubs every night, went on tours, watched different women pass through his life, he spent money like water and became drunk in melodies. In this way, he forgot Maryam and the time he spent downtrodden, sad and dejected in a faraway and hot city. That charismatic halo he created around himself grew and strengthened; and Aziz Bey lived vainly, to his heart’s content.

  While he was out, carried away among the constantly raised rakı glasses, the music and peals of laughter, Vuslat sat in front of the window with deep shadows on her face thrown by the lamp burning in the far corner of the room. She looked at a shattered moonlight reflecting in the dirty waters of the Golden Horn, thinking about her life and grieving. Despite Aziz Bey’s objections she had a baby, who did not live. After that she faded altogether, and became silent.

  And so they spent many years like this, and both grew old. Vuslat was worn out from carrying her broken heart. Aziz Bey’s golden years came to an end. The nightclub owners, who at one time sent cars to collect the famous tamburî of the time from his house, closed their businesses one by one. Families withdrew to their homes; outmoded singers unable to keep in step with the new system fell from favour, their hearts ached and they became alcoholics.

  Aziz Bey began spending most of his time at home. The friends who at one time dragged him by the arm to musical orgies were hard at work in bad nightclubs and cheap music halls trying to earn a crust. With that splendid life behind him, Aziz Bey’s once lyrical and musical life was like a long cheerful coloured film, which faded into a dull photograph. He resisted for a while, but eventually he surrendered. He was reduced to second-class taverns instead of the nightclubs where his capriciousness knew no end. He shared the same fate as his friends.

  Not a word passed through their lips at the end of their sessions in the early hours of the morning. Wishing each other goodnight, they scattered home in deep distress, tucking their heads down, pulling the collars of their jackets up. No one offered to spread a table in a tavern for them any longer. Even their subjects of discussion during the short intervals in the programme changed. They stopped talking about the girls who had just come on the market, the scandals that rocked the place, the compositions entering the Turkish Radio and Television’s repertoire, the articles in the newspapers about famous singers, their reminiscences of philandering. They even stopped pulling their acquaintances to pieces. They were occupied with wood, coal, rent, gas bills and debts to the local shop. An expression of bewilderment which read, ‘How did it come to this?’ settled on their faces, a broken strain entered their voices. They became too complaisant and they submitted. In the end, all those true musicians who’d been playing since childhood and who’d never have anything said against the music they played, virtually disappeared.

  Drunks who slurred their speech after a couple of glasses asked Aziz Bey to play arabesque songs whose titles he’d not even heard of. He put up with this new turn of events, hoping it would quickly pass, and that he’d soon return to that colourful life. Putting up with it made him, if anything, more intolerant, bad tempered, and even more aggressive than before. A long time passed like this, too.

  Things got from bad to worse. Aziz Bey had been unemployed for several months. He had worked in almost all the taverns that employed musicians and the fairly respectable nightclubs; had quarrelled with them all and had left. They were living off their capital. Because it went against the grain to go round begging to his old bosses who had had their nightclubs pulled down and had office blocks built in their place and the organisers who at one time ran after him, he sat at home tense and depressed all day, reading the papers and drinking endless cups of coffee. Sometimes, he would go out onto the balcony and shout at the children playing ball in the neighbourhood, while waiting all the time for the telephone to ring with a good offer just for him.

  It was around that time that he caught an inkling of Vuslat’s hurt feelings. For the first few weeks of his unemployment he had spent almost every day sitting waiting for work in the musicians’ café. But he soon left when he realised that this place was only filled with strange-looking men who’d begun their music careers by playing the darbuka to tourists in Kumkapı at the age of five, and where rummy-o boards were overturned every second on tables covered with green broadcloth to the sound of revolting loud guffaws and obscene oaths. Deciding this poisoned the air was not for him, he left his telephone number to a few trusted people and he returned home.

  *

  With nowhere left to go, his attention focused on his wife. He saw sorrow in Vuslat’s eyes, now lost among crow’s feet. One day, around midday, he noticed his wife’s hair had turned almost entirely white. He was astonished. At that moment his wife appeared both close and as foreign as if he’d never seen her before. Vuslat was preparing the table for lunch, going to and fro between the kitchen and the room. While Aziz Bey was staring at Vuslat as if looking at an old friend who’d reappeared after years of absence, old and exceedingly worn out, she s
aid in her usual frail voice, ‘Lunch is ready.’ Aziz Bey heard his mother in this frail voice, the soft tone and the tired steps of his wife bringing the meal to the table, and he shuddered.

  But that wasn’t all. He glanced at the hands clutching the arm of the chair to get up. His own hands… These hands were just like his father’s hands. Suddenly he realised that the grumpy-looking man who’d been wandering around the rooms of this house throughout their marriage was not himself but his father; he was horrified.

  Unnoticed, he had become his father. His father, who never bared his heart to his wife, who found life outside the home more important than within, who never understood the heartaches at home, or if he had, ignored them; his face perpetually sour, his voice always loud and ready to reprove…

  He saw his face in the dresser mirror. The same broad forehead, stern features, then same sharp gaze… He brought his hand to his hair, and the movement of his arm reflected in the mirror was again his father’s. The fingers that touched the combed back silvery hair were his too. The man he’d once left, slamming the door in his face, had entered him and lived there silently for years.

  He fell into a strange mood. It hurt him to be the continuation of the man whom he could not forgive for trying to prevent him pursuing far off promises and scattering his youthful hopes. And yet, there was also something of a rarity, a feeling of superiority in this identicality, this similarity like two drops of water. For a moment this state seemed to him like a sign of nobility. In this damned world in which he was searching for a humble place for himself in which to be happy, he felt rooted like an aged plane tree; he felt proud. Then he realised how meaningless this was. He was a poor copy of a man whose life had been spent main -taining that his wrongs were right, trying to be a man he was not, and abusing a quiet and inoffensive woman. He was depressed twice over.