by Loren Edizel
“I didn’t know you could dance like that….” His smile hid a tinge of reproach.
“Would you like me to teach you?” For a split second I hoped he would say yes, and become that fun-loving, sexy man I desired, so I could transfer all my yearnings to him.
His bespectacled eyes probing the dark road ahead, he shrugged, “I’m not much of a dancer, I’m afraid.”
Is there anyone to blame for this turn of events? Could one say it was her husband’s fault for being unexciting, or her parents’ fault for being materialistic, or the woman’s, for all her yearnings, or the lover’s, for being so irresistibly gorgeous, and coming into her life seven years too late? In my long life following this event, I have had plenty of time to assign blame to everyone and everything I could; from the war for sending him to me, to my beloved Izmir itself, for intoxicating us with its secret beauty while we thieved for love. There was the port with lovely boats rocking gently in the breezy moonlight. Who could resist passionate embraces right there, behind a quiet palm tree, to the sound of the Aegean rolling in soft ripples? Or the sudden physical need to hold hands in the old, quiet cobblestone streets so narrow that a couple could barely walk side by side around the Alsancak marketplace? Only a cold marble statue would turn a deaf ear to whispered words of tenderness in a phaeton clip-clopping through Kültürpark. Not me. No … I resisted nothing. My blood was on fire. I became an expert in deception.
He started working in our family business, drafting letters in English and French, both of which he spoke fairly well. My husband did not trade with German companies during the war. After hearing of the things that were happening under German occupation to Jews and East Europeans, he refused to use his ships to carry goods to Italy. So his new employee translated incoming letters, and my husband’s outgoing correspondence. Soon enough, he made himself indispensable to my husband. They not only worked together, but they spent time as friends, going on fishing trips in Kilizman and hunting trips in Tuzla where they shot partridges. My husband had nothing but praise for this bright young man and suspected nothing. We frequently invited him for supper to our house and took him to our summer cottage in Çeşme on weekends. There were furtive touches in the kitchen handing over plates, caresses in the garden when my husband disappeared into to the house. There was even a time, when we were all planning to go to Çeşme for the weekend, in the spring. My husband could not go at the last minute due to an emergency at work, and asked him to take me there, along with Nermin, her husband and a few others. We stayed at Nermin’s house, of course; I, in the guest room and he, on the sofa in the living room. He had picked up an empty white conch that had washed ashore earlier in the day while we all took a stroll on the deserted beach. It was the size of an orange and had intricate grooves and crests, like a sculpture, with its smooth pale pink lips curving out. When everyone was fast asleep, he came to my room, offering me the conch as a gift. We made love trying to muffle our moans in the pillows and never went to sleep that night. We lay in each other’s arms until daybreak, when he quietly tiptoed to his couch in the living room.
I could not stop loving him. I could not stop wanting him. And worse, I could not conceive of a future that did not involve him. It made me ill to even imagine going on living with my husband and without my lover, and I figured we had no future, my lover and I, without my husband. To make up for my deception, I treated my husband more kindly than I ever did in our entire life together. In those few months, even our sex life became more passionate, as I made love to him with the ardour meant for my lover. Everyone was happy and although I knew this couldn’t last, it was worth a lifetime for me. I could have died then, I was so blissful.
Upon our return from Çeşme, my husband was waiting for us looking gloomy in the semi-darkness of the living room. He had a glass of rakı in his hand and was lost in thoughts. When I kissed him gaily and inquired what the matter was, he replied that one of his ships carrying goods to France had been sunk by German fighter planes, in the Mediterranean. The food it was carrying, the people on board, the ship itself, everything had been lost. He knew the captain, the people on the ship. He was the picture of devastation, that night. Nermin’s cousin also seemed downcast, although when I saw him to the door he grabbed me from the waist and buried his face in my neck, to my great alarm, whispering he would never forget our night of love in Çeşme.
A couple of months or so later, we were woken up from our sleep in the middle of the night by a telegram. Another one of our cargo ships, this one destined to carry goods to Great Britain sank off the coast of Greece. It had been torpedoed until it went down in a great ball of fire. It looked as though the Germans knew the exact time and location of the ships in the Mediterranean, both times. The fighter planes went out to meet and destroy them, returning to their base without further activity. It was no coincidence, my husband said. Something was awfully wrong.
Not wanting to risk further destruction, he announced that the company was temporarily suspending its operations. He laid off all his employees, to his great regret — and this included Nermin’s cousin — promising to take them all back as soon as this unfortunate incident was sorted out. My husband was a shrewd businessman, but he was also kind-hearted. You do not find this combination of qualities together very often in the same person. He gave his employees extra money to tide them over until he could take them back. He knew they would not be able to find other jobs; there weren’t any. Those were desperate times.
Soon after this incident, two men dressed in grey trench coats and fedora hats rang our doorbell one rainy evening as we were getting ready to go to bed. My husband opened the door and invited them inside. The rain was beating hard on the windows; thunder was crackling with lighting flashing over the bay every few minutes. I stood in the stairway, unable to go up to our bedroom from fear of these strangers in our house and the storm outside. Before they went into his study, my husband came halfway up the stairs to meet me. “Go to bed,” he said softly pressing my hand between his palms, “these men need to see me about some urgent business. I’ll be up shortly.” They sat in the study with the door closed, for a very long time.
My husband continued going to the office “to tie loose ends,” he said. He would stay there until late at night, day after day. Nermin’s cousin came to our house for dinner once more, soon after my husband had laid everyone off. The mood was sombre around the table. He told us he was looking for work and would probably be going to Istanbul soon, so this would be his last visit with us for some time. He avoided my eyes as he said this. My husband nodded while I excused myself from the table to go slice some bread. I remained in the kitchen for a while, trying to compose myself while my eyes were stung by tears not allowed to flow. I went back to the table forgetting the bread basket in the kitchen. When I realized my mistake, my husband offered to go get it. Once he was safely out of reach, I pressed my lover’s hand, begging him not to leave me. “I will come with you,” I whispered, “I can’t live here without you.” The bread basket was coming back to the table. I pulled my hands back and continued eating, my eyes on the plate.
I pressed him once more at the door, as he was leaving. My husband never walked our guests to the door, leaving the task to me. It bored him, I think, to stand at the door making small talk long after having said the goodbyes. I held his hand and asked him where he was going to stay, so I could join him there. “I will leave him, I don’t care. I can’t go on without you.” He caressed my head begging me to stop crying and told me he would come by before leaving, to bid me a proper goodbye.
I never saw him again.
Nermin began to avoid me on the street. Whenever I caught sight of her, she would move quickly to the opposite sidewalk, in a direction that took her far from me. If I called out, she pretended not to hear. For months, I suspected they had all found out we were lovers and were giving me the cold shoulder to quietly punish me. My husband seemed disconsolate. I cried myself to sleep n
ight after night. No one could tell me where he had vanished, and I could not press anyone, least of all my husband, for fear that the affair would come out into the open and ruin us completely.
A year passed in this state of profound despair. I took walks visiting all the places that still held the memory of us: a kiss here, an unexpected caress there, or a moment that made us swoon. I would walk the entire day until I could no more and return home exhausted, only to start again the following morning. I wanted to rip the blue out of the sky, and my soul out of my body as I wandered aimlessly, raging against life.
Finally, one evening, my husband sat me down in the semi-darkness of the living room as the sun died over the bay. He explained that the two strangers who had come to our house on that stormy night a year before belonged to the secret service. Our beloved friend was a spy, and he had been secretly sending the destination and route of our cargo ships to his German contacts in Greece. He had insinuated himself into our lives, befriended us for this very purpose; it was all shrewdly planned, my husband said. He knew my husband would offer him the job and that was his entire mission: to get the shipping information, so the German fighter planes could destroy the ships carrying vital goods to their enemies. They found a radio hidden inside a suitcase in his closet when they searched his room at the Basmacıs’ house. Nermin knew nothing of all this until they went to arrest him in the middle of the night. He had told her he was leaving for Istanbul the night before when she saw him packing in his room. But they got to him before he had a chance to leave.
The Basmacıs were avoiding us from shame, he explained. They felt responsible, somehow.
“What did they do to him?” I shouted, my face already twisting in pain.
He looked away his voice barely audible, “you know the punishment for treason.”
I kept looking at him with blank eyes not understanding anything.
“Public execution. He was hanged, in Ankara, a few days ago, dear. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to ever have to tell you this. I’m heartbroken, too.” He held me in his arms while I howled into his chest.
We never mentioned his name again. The Basmacıs left Izmir soon after that, never to be heard from again. I cried until I could no more. So many days, in the midst of some trivial domestic task, I would suddenly get a whiff of his cologne, or a vision of his face, or the sound of his deep voice whispering sweetness into my ears and I would just freeze in pain thinking of how and why he was taken away from me. It was always late at night, when my husband slept and I lay awake, tormented, that I soaked my pillows with tears. I wept for many years, until my eyes finally dried out. Time passed. I never found out if my husband had suspected our affair; he never showed it. Children came, they grew, and grandchildren came. I learned to cherish life’s remaining gifts. There were a few. But I always kept the conch he gave me so long ago close by. I have pressed it to my ear day after day all these years, hearing his breath in there, his very last, reaching for me so I could continue breathing until I join him. Inside there.
Small Gifts
I GET UP AT SUNRISE every morning. I live up in Şemikler, in a small house with a concrete yard around the side, where my wife crouches under the linden tree to wash our clothes in a basin. We have tomatoes, bell peppers and basil in yellow tin margarine cans around the yard, a white rose bush, and a clothesline crossing the length of the garden, where she hangs the clothes to dry. She cleans houses for the Americans who live in Bostanlı. They’re military types who work at the U.S. Army Base in Çiğli. She gets paid well and doesn’t work too hard, thank God. She says Americans don’t stand on top of you the way locals do, to make sure you do your work thoroughly; they smile a lot showing their nice white teeth and say “merhaba” and “güle güle,” often in the wrong order, but who cares. My son works at the Tekel tobacco factory in Alsancak. A couple of buses, and he is there by eight o’clock sharp. When I awaken at sunrise, if the weather is warm, I go out and sit on the blue wooden chair under the tree, smoke a Bafra cigarette after I put on the kettle for tea.
I have my uniform on: navy blue pants, navy blue jacket and a cap. I have worn them for thirty years. My wife patches the thinning spots. The jacket has become baggy from standing and bending all day, but it’s comfortable. In winter, I wear a green raincoat with a hood. I also have yellow boots so my feet don’t get wet. The Americans gave these to my wife. They did not need them, they said; God bless them. Brand new and they fit perfectly. It is not part of our uniform to have a raincoat. I think the city just doesn’t have money to spend on uniforms and raincoats these days; otherwise why would they not give them to us? I keep my cigarettes in my jacket pocket; whenever I take breaks at work, I light one up, sit on a bench nearby and look around.
My area is the seaside avenue extending from Bostanlı about where our ex-president Cemal Gürsel’s house stands, to the ferry pier in Karşıyaka and back. At first it was only up to Avcılar Kulübü; but the guy who was doing the stretch from Avcılar to Alaybey died last year, so now I have taken over part of that area as well. May his earth be plentiful; he just keeled over while sweeping one hot August afternoon, and that was that.
Ever since he passed away, I have wondered if I will also die sweeping one day. If you get old sweeping, it stands to reason you may die on the street. I liked the guy. We used to meet at the ferry pier around midday and eat lunch together on a bench facing the sea. We bought a loaf of fresh bread from the market, halved it, and ate it with feta cheese and tomatoes. Sometimes we ate bread and onions. We smoked our cigarettes gazing at the boats, said goodbye, and went back the way we came, cleaning the opposite sidewalk.
I run into “İç Ali iç” (Drink Ali Drink) once in a while. Yesterday he was offering a flower quickly snatched from a nearby garden to a fine lady passing on the street, complimenting her in Greek first and then Italian and finally in Turkish in his wine-induced chivalry. She smiled sweetly before accepting his flower. He bowed unsteadily and walked on, the way a puppet gets jerked forward at the end of a string. Everyone loves Ali, our neighbourhood wine lover who came from Rhodes as a boy when Turkey and Greece exchanged their unwanted minorities. He once told me he had a miserable childhood. Some pretty awful things happened to him, but he never speaks of them. If I have a few cents I will give them to him to help him buy his next bottle. Everyone helps Ali. He loves his wine the way some men love their women.
I find things. Earrings and gloves; in singles, of course. Coins. Paper money occasionally. A broken gold chain once. A shoe. You’d be surprised to see the things people drop on the street, aside from garbage. Once, right in the middle of the sidewalk I found underwear, beige silk panties. Who would drop panties on the street and not pick them back up? The panties were small and expensive-looking. I figured they must have belonged to one of these underfed, mop-haired rich girls in tight pants living in the beautiful villas. For a second, I considered picking them up; but my wife’s behind was too large for that small cloth. One day, if I have money, I will buy her the same panties in very large size, so I could feel their softness on her body. She would like them too. Something just for her; for feeling beautiful. Maybe she would think me silly if I bought her a gift like that. She would say, “Man, have you lost your marbles? What am I to do with something like this? Wear it to scrub floors? What a waste of hard-earned money!” She scolds me often. I can tell she thinks I’m childish and a little stupid. She feels that she must tell me what to do all the time; always asking me, “Did you get this? Did you do that? But I told you! Don’t forget to pick up this, don’t forget to pay that.”
The truth is I tune her out. It’s shameful to say, but I have always disliked her voice. It has a metallic ring to it, something that doesn’t slip gently into your ears but whips its way into them. When I met her, I thought she had very pretty eyes in the shape of almonds and peachy cheeks. I liked her figure too: round breasts and hips. That vision of her walking down the street with all that roundne
ss swinging about like baskets filled with sweet melons burned itself into my eyes, so I lay awake thinking of her night after night, unable to sleep. I asked my mother to go ask for her hand before I even heard her speak. I wonder if I would have done this had I heard her voice first. I hated her voice from the very moment I heard it, but it was too late, we were already engaged. She is a good woman nevertheless, a hard worker. She puts up with me; my forgetfulness, my lack of ambition. She kept begging me to work at the tobacco factory like my son, but I refused, remaining a street sweeper and making half the salary. The good thing about being a man is that you can say: “Enough woman, shut up. This is the way I want it and this is how it shall be.” Do I have to explain to her that I cannot work under a boss, under a whistle, under some machine? I need to see the sky above me, the sea at my side; I need to see people coming and going, minding their business and me, minding my own.
Earlier today, I was sweeping the edge of the sidewalk where papers, chewing gum, tickets, and leaves tend to gather when I heard a mother scold her son. He was about ten years old. She was talking rapidly, with a tight frown, having stopped in the middle of her stride to finish her tirade. The boy was looking down at the concrete tiles of the sidewalk, shamed. I gathered it was regarding a disappointing report card, or a failed exam. The woman was holding a rectangular clutch purse in her hand; her hair was puffed up into a high bun and her eyelashes shone. She wore pink lipstick and had dyed blond hair with black roots showing. As she spoke, the woman wove her stylish purse back and forth and all around while the boy nodded, never looking up. His chin had sunk into his neck like a turtle in danger. I could tell the boy wanted to evaporate from the face of the earth, or be swept away by my broom, as curious pedestrians stared at them briefly before walking by. She threatened to give his Mecano set away to the poor if he brought such grades home again. Then she pointed her purse at me, “is this what you want to become in life, a garbage man, sweeping streets all day?”
