Endgame, page 14
‘You can wear them with me,’ I said. ‘All of them.’
‘I know,’ she said.
Her eyes … those enormous eyes set in her innocent face bore that infinite darkness. Her face was the same but her eyes had changed.
It was a beautiful day. The scent of lavender and jasmine hung in the air. And that little, lonely cloud was hovering up there in the bright blue sky. It was as if it followed us wherever we went.
‘I saw that same cloud up at the hotel,’ I said.
‘I know. I saw it too.’
‘If it keeps up like this, we’ll have to adopt the guy.’
I expected her to laugh or say something.
But she looked at me without saying a word.
Even now I can’t make out what it was in her eyes, the way she looked at me. I have no idea what she was thinking then. There was a sadness in her eyes that bordered on grief, an overwhelming loneliness that surprised even me, the desperation of someone who’d been abandoned – it was all there in her eyes. It was so brief that it almost seemed a figment of my imagination but I was sure of it, and it was the last thing I expected.
‘We could only ever have a cloud as a child,’ she said, and the look in her eyes disappeared. But I sensed a lingering anguish in her soft, whispering voice that contradicted her eyes, which had not changed as quickly, though the look was gone by the time she finished her sentence.
She smiled and took a bite of her crêpe, which cracked in her mouth and the cream oozed out from the sides. She hungrily took another bite. And we ate together, looking into each other’s eyes, and when we finished she ordered another, and I ordered another tea.
‘You love to eat but you never put on weight.’
‘I do.’
‘I’ve never noticed.’
She smiled in a familiar way. ‘You’ll see soon enough.’ The sentence was full of promise and innuendo.
‘You’re turning me on,’ I said. And that sincere smile again.
‘There’s no harm in that.’
When we finished breakfast she said, ‘Today’s the open market day. It’s really fun. Should we go?’
‘Yes, why not.’
‘You won’t be embarrassed to be with me?’
‘Why would I?’
‘You’ll see …’
Walking to our cars, I felt truly happy. She gently put her arm in mine and I could feel the pressure of her grip.
‘Last night Mustafa sent me a message asking me to come and see him.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I said I couldn’t, that I was at a henna night. Then he said I should come tonight.’
We walked side by side, looking straight ahead.
‘Are you going to go?’
‘I don’t know … I hate going to that hotel.’ Then she turned to look at me.
‘You meet him in a hotel?’
‘Yes … There’s a hotel in town … You won’t believe it but it’s called the Amsterdam Hotel. Mustafa has a room there.’
‘Why doesn’t he invite you to his place?’
‘I don’t know … He says his mother’s ill and never leaves her room. Or that’s the excuse. But even though he knows I hate the place, he insists on us meeting there. He wants to embarrass me, make me feel bad about it. Even when he knows how I feel walking past everyone there …’
‘Why doesn’t he go to your place?’
‘He says they’ll see him … It doesn’t matter if people see me at the hotel but it does if they see him at my place.’
‘Are you going to go?’
‘I don’t know.’
More than sadness I felt disappointed: I’d hoped she would come to see me that night.
‘Let me know,’ I said.
‘I will.’
We drove off.
Alone, I examined my feelings. I wanted to know if I was really sad. I wasn’t. Disappointed, but not sad.
On the way there I wondered why I wasn’t sad. I suppose I believed that she was drifting away from Mustafa and becoming closer to me, and this belief protected me until something actually happened or at least helped me hide the emotion from myself. I did that sometimes. I could bury feelings I didn’t like. Later they would suddenly take hold of me in the middle of the night, waking me up. But until then I was fine.
By the time we parked our cars on a quiet street near the market I’d managed to suppress the feeling. I guess part of this ‘ease’ came from the idea that Zuhal was still ‘Mustafa’s woman’. She’d told me from the start that she was in love with him and our arrangement was based on that. I’d grown accustomed to the idea.
As we got closer to the market I could hear the mounting clamour of the shifting, murmuring, seething crowd, an indecipherable hum with the occasional cry that soared above the din. Turning the corner, we were face to face with it.
But the noise actually suggested a bigger crowd. It was nothing like the teeming markets in big cities. People were comfortably wandering around the wooden stalls where all the different items were lined up for sale: lettuce, fresh greens and vegetables, knitted sweaters, fresh eggs, mounds of olives and bottles of olive oil, used furniture, knives, baubles, pocket torches, and even a stall stacked with used car tyres.
Strolling through the market, I understood why she said I might be embarrassed because she touched everything that caught her eye, even sniffing the objects as she turned them over in her hands, gazing at them for some time, chatting with the salesman, haggling and then switching right back to small talk. She bought five little brooms with mistletoe on the ends, and in response to my surprise she said, ‘They’re excellent gifts.’ I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hold my breath as we passed the stall with all the tyres but she managed not to run her fingers over them.
Winding in and out of the stalls, she tasted different fruits and chatted with nearly every salesman, making her way to the antique dealers in the back.
She was used to these kinds of places. She liked people and crowds, despite her strange and distant air, which was nothing like mine and which was far more alluring.
We went into every shop.
She ran her fingers over almost every piece of furniture: old chests and used clothes, lamps and broken plates, glasses, carafes and chains.
Seeing the puzzled look on my face, she said, ‘I like to touch the things I want to remember. I can keep them in my mind that much longer.’
‘You must have quite a bit of space set aside in your memory for all those tomatoes,’ I said, and she laughed and gently slapped my face.
There was something like love between us.
In the back room of one shop she delighted over an embroidered dress made of cream-coloured silk, the edges lined with lace. It wasn’t something she would actually wear.
They haggled for some time, occasionally fitting in the odd chatter about family, and in the end she bought the dress.
Then we left the market.
The streets became narrower and quieter. We walked in silence.
All of a sudden she stopped and lifted her head like a little dog catching a scent in the air.
‘Come on,’ she said, taking my hand.
Turning the corner we followed a winding street then came out on a wider one with several shops side by side.
She walked straight over to one of them.
The mouth-watering scent of salt, vinegar and garlic wafted out the door.
The smells were even stronger inside, where a plump woman with dyed blonde hair was sitting. Clusters of dried fish dangled from the ceiling. There was salted fish in vats. Cured beef hung over the counter.
The place was filled with all different kinds of dried or cured food: aged cheese, pickles, mackerel …
‘My God, it’s heaven in here,’ Zuhal exclaimed as she touched and sniffed everything there.
The blonde woman told us how to cure mackerel. ‘You grill them on embers first and then lay them in the vinegar.’
Together they separated the salted fish.
In the end Zuhal bought them all. She bought something I’d never heard of called ‘kalyos’. She asked the woman what it tasted like.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘I don’t eat anything here. I have no idea what these things taste like.’
‘How’s that? You’ve never wondered?’
‘I have but just never tried.’
‘I can’t believe that.’
‘It’s the truth. Not even the cured beef.’
The woman gave us her card as we left. ‘You can always order more.’
‘These people are mad,’ said Zuhal after we had left. ‘You sit in a place like that all day long and you never wonder what the food tastes like.’
I thought, Everyone’s the same. They sit through life never really tasting it. But I kept the thought to myself.
Arm in arm we walked back to our cars.
We loaded everything into hers.
‘Let me know about tonight,’ I said. ‘If you’re going to go or not.’
‘All right,’ she said.
She waved and then left, and I watched her go.
I had the same feeling after she had left me in the hotel in the mountains.
A heavy loneliness. The kind I never liked.
I went home too.
As night fell I received a short message from her.
I’m going.
XX
I didn’t sleep well.
I think I woke almost every hour and checked my messages online.
But there was nothing all night.
And there was nothing from her in the morning.
In a bad mood I had breakfast on the veranda. I wasn’t really hungry. I wondered what their hotel room was like. Was there a mirror? What had they done together? Did she do the same things to him that she did to me?
‘Of course she did,’ I said to myself.
As she still hadn’t sent me a message, I assumed they were having breakfast together. Did they go to the creamery? Were they gazing out over the sea? Did she tell him she wanted to have a baby? Were they laughing together? Was there no longer a cold wind blowing between them?
Like a coroner performing a post mortem, I felt more and more removed from Zuhal, growing colder and more distant.
Hamiyet was busy mopping the veranda, her skirt rolled up over her knees. ‘What’s up? You’re in a strop this morning,’ she said.
I didn’t ask her how she knew. Was it because I wasn’t eyeing her legs? And though I didn’t say so much, I smiled and glanced at her sturdy calves, which were fully exposed, and said, ‘Oh no, I’m fine. I was just thinking.’
‘Oh, I see. But why not smile a little. I’ve never seen you with such a long face before.’
I couldn’t leave the house but I couldn’t go and check my computer either.
I sat on the veranda and read my papers.
That’s when I got a message from her.
Come home.
We used the word ‘home’ for chat, and our home was a place that was ours, a place that separated us from the rest of the world.
I dashed home.
‘last night i went back to the city,’ she wrote.
‘what happened?’
‘i couldn’t stay with him … in that filthy room full of the traces of other women and scraps of food all over the table … it’s a mess … and i kept thinking of you … so i left in the middle of the night and drove back to the city.’
‘was he angry you left?’
‘really angry … we messaged a lot on my way back … cursing each other … saying all kinds of nasty things … he even accused me of using him for sex … oh i was going to write him a really good response to that … finish it once and for all.’
I have to admit this made me smile.
‘i went home and i read your books.’
‘good.’
‘i want to ask you for a favour.’
‘what’s that?’
‘in one of them you describe a religious wedding with an imam.’
‘i think i have several of those.’
‘probably but i remember this one.’
‘yes.’
‘marry me in that kind of ceremony, with an imam … let’s get married in a mosque … you choose the mosque … arrange everything … and marry me …’
‘because i described something like that in my book?’
‘it seems you write what you’ve actually experienced and then you relive it in words … it’s strange … i’m the woman you married in your book …’
‘yes.’
‘so we’re going to get married?’
‘if you want to.’
‘have you ever turned down anything a woman asked for?’
‘why do you ask?’
‘it seems to me that you say yes to everyone and everything, and so sometimes i don’t feel special when i’m with you … especially when i read your books.’
‘don’t read them then.’
‘are we going to get married?’
‘yes.’
‘buy me a ring … and let’s get married in a village mosque … you find the village and the mosque and the imam … and make me feel like you want to do it … more than getting married, i want to know that you want it.’
‘all right … i’ll arrange everything.’
‘i had such a bad night … such terrible dreams … i woke up again and again … terrified …’
‘don’t be, i’m here.’
‘you’re teasing me but i believe you when you say it … don’t say such things if you don’t really believe them … i believe everything you say … don’t tell me anything you don’t really believe.’
‘i won’t.’
‘i have a question.’
‘go ahead.’
‘you won’t hurt me, will you?’
‘no … i would never … you can be sure of that.’
‘i’m sure … i need to go now … will we get married the next time i come to town?’
‘we will.’
‘promise?’
‘promise.’
‘are you going to make me feel like you really want it?’
‘i will.’
‘promise?’
‘promise’
‘ok, i’m going now … will you be my husband?’
‘yes.’
‘i’ve been fantasising about it all day.’
The screen went blank.
It was a strange conversation. I felt as if I’d spent the night with a different woman. I couldn’t understand how the roles had changed but I liked it. I felt relieved. I felt somehow lighter.
Leaning against the door opening onto the veranda, I watched Hamiyet. Her legs even more exposed, I could make out thin veins in her calves. She turned to look at me, a fleeting, nearly imperceptible glance.
‘I’m going into town,’ I said. To be honest, I had no idea what might have happened if I’d stayed home. The strange commotion in me might have spurred me to act on those desires. Perhaps something I would do later on, inevitable but nevertheless delayed.
I tucked my papers under my arm and set off along the shortcuts that would take me to the main street. Crossing the street, Mustafa’s massive black car stopped in front of me.
The window came down. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘To the coffeehouse.’
‘If you have nothing better to do, come with me. I’m swinging by the municipality and then I’m going to the Chamber of Commerce cafeteria for lunch. We can eat together.’
‘Why not,’ I said.
I got in.
He looked exhausted and his face was pale. Clearly he’d been up all night.
‘You look tired. You must be busy these days,’ I said.
‘I worked late last night,’ he said.
‘You shouldn’t wear yourself out like that. This town needs you,’ I said.
I was making fun of the man, cruelly delighting in his defeat. I knew everything about him, or at least almost everything, while he knew very little about me. If Zuhal wasn’t fearful of him, she’d tell him all about me. Some women were double agents, telling both men everything they know. But Mustafa could only learn so much from her because he frightened her and was extremely jealous and mistreated her. All that came at a price. To remain in the dark. Never to know. And then to think you actually know it all.
We stopped in front of the municipality building. People flocked to the car. I stayed inside. Mustafa came back fifteen minutes later. ‘I’m terribly sorry to make you wait like that. Let’s get going,’ he said.
The Chamber of Commerce was one of those old-style, three-storey buildings of sand-coloured stone which gave the town its charm. It was right on the sea. The cafeteria was on the third floor. The food wasn’t very good, so the rich set usually didn’t eat there, but it was full of high government officials who wanted to have a quiet face-to-face meal, and who usually didn’t eat anywhere else.
We sat at a table by the window with a view of the sea. It was a little early and we were the only ones there. Waiters were all standing nearby.
‘Shall we have a rakı lunch?’ he asked.
‘Why not?’ I said and he signalled for the waiters, who hurried over to take his order.
‘Rakı and a few things to go with it.’
Silently he looked out over the sea then turned to me and said, ‘Life’s tough, isn’t it?’
‘It is,’ I said.
‘Are you able to write?’
‘No. Sometimes it seems as if I’ll never be able to write again.’
‘Write. You write well.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘Do you know all the women you describe in your books?’
‘Why do you ask?’ I said, a little annoyed by the question.
He went on as if he hadn’t noticed. Or was it that he didn’t care?
‘I’ve been with many different women. And I can’t understand how you can know them well enough to write about them, know how they feel. I don’t understand a thing.’
‘What don’t you understand?’
Shaking his head as if in pain, he said, ‘I don’t understand anything.’
