Endgame, page 32
I looked at her, and as I remembered our shared experiences her face seemed composed. But I knew her well enough to know that beneath the veneer she was smiling. She was having fun.
‘I don’t know about that. You know the town better than I do,’ I said.
With the same cool expression on her face, she said, ‘That’s right. You can be sure of that.’
I decided to play along.
‘Are you still making those fantastic sweets?’
‘Well, of course. I always do, providing there’s someone who appreciates the flavour.’
A flicker of lust flared up in her voice – one that only I could understand – and then vanished; in that moment I was sure she wanted to make love to me again.
As we were eating the main course, Raci Bey managed to forget about Mustafa for a moment and said, ‘This lamb comes from our farm. You can taste the thyme because the sheep graze in fields of it,’ and before he could say any more Kamile Hanım cut him off.
‘Mustafa is going to marry Zuhal. I heard from the manicurist.’
I didn’t look up from my food, but a little later I said to Gülten: ‘Could you please pass me the bread?’
I knew that Kamile Hanım was watching me and I knew that only she could see the pain in my face. I managed to recover relatively quickly and turning to her I said, ‘Now, I might be wrong but I think it was Winston Churchill. He was told that one of his commanders on the front line had recently married, and smiling he said, Well, then he’ll be fighting on two fronts from now on. Seems Mustafa is in the same boat.’
Once again Rahmi was unable to restrain his rage. ‘And who does he think will come to his wedding?’ he cried.
‘They’re planning to have a rustic wedding. And everyone is invited,’ Kamile said. Turning to me, she added, ‘I imagine that you will be going too?’
‘It would rude of me not to go if I was invited,’ I replied.
‘Oh, they will, they will indeed,’ cackled Kamile. ‘Why wouldn’t they invite you? What kind of issues would they have with you?’
Did she know or was she simply guessing? It was hard to know but she had stuck in the knife, drawing blood. She was probably jealous and that surprised me. I never expected her to feel such an emotion. Or was she merely amused by my suffering? That was more likely.
‘What are you going to do about the factories being shut down?’ I asked Raci Bey.
‘We sent the workers home and we’ll continue to pay their salaries while the factories remain closed. And we’ve appealed to the Administrative Court. I have also informed the Chamber of Commerce, explaining that if my factories are not reopened I will have to report the conditions of all other factories in town. They don’t have fire escapes either. We’ve never seen them in the history of this town. As if Mustafa’s factories have them … despicable, shameless and immoral … No shame left … He wasn’t always like this and I have no idea what changed him. He has lost all humility. Even in war there’s a code of honour. And he doesn’t have it. No respect for his elders any more.’
Grumbling through his teeth, Rahmi said, ‘You’re not listening to me, Dad. At this point we need to speak the only language he understands.’
‘Everything in due course, my son. There will come a time for that,’ Raci Bey said in a hurry, making it clear he wasn’t interested in continuing the conversation just then.
‘If the time hasn’t come yet, I don’t know when it will,’ Rahmi sputtered to himself and added: ‘Are we going to wait for the bastard to come and shut down our home?’
Trying to calm down her brother, indeed the whole family was trying to do it, Gülten said, ‘Dad knows what he’s talking about, Rahmi. He’s more experienced than all of us.’
Kamile Hanım seemed the calmest and most collected of all of them. But I didn’t know exactly why. I sensed that she might be the one who issued the final verdicts to do with this war against Mustafa, as she was shrewder and more powerful than everyone else there. She could do things they couldn’t, take risks they could never take. That much I knew. I knew she wouldn’t waste time complaining. But when she felt the time was right she could deliver the cruelest verdict on Mustafa, and the others would carry it out.
As I left she stuffed a package in my arms. ‘The sweets you like so much,’ she said, with such a cold and blank expression on her face that I trembled with pleasure. I felt her hand touch mine as she passed me the package.
In that fleeting touch the curtain between us fell and I saw her naked, moaning. No one there would ever even dare to think that she had that hidden side.
Sometimes the truth is so far from what we see on the surface that we can’t help but doubt our eyes. I wanted to lift the façade like a blanket and slip inside. That was where the life I loved took place.
Humans will always be drawn to the forbidden.
Only the commandment has changed.
‘Don’t commit your sins in the open.’
And like everyone else I obeyed.
Thanking her for the package, I said, ‘I’ll go through these in no time. You see, I am addicted.’
‘Let me know when you’re finished and I’ll make you more,’ she said.
Those sweets were the source of all my pain but I couldn’t give them up. And compared to what I had lost they seemed so insignificant. It was impossible to compare the two.
My addiction to those sweets was a curse.
It didn’t stop.
I ripped opened the package on the way home and popped one in my mouth.
It was delicious.
XLIV
There are things you know you’ll do even before you’ve decided to do them, before you’ve even thought about doing them, as if part of your mind has made the decision already, never informing you.
When I called Mustafa in the morning I had not yet decided to do it.
I don’t even know how it happened.
Suddenly I heard his cheerful voice. ‘Hello?’
‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine. Heading to the town hall now.’
‘I never really thanked you for the gun you gave me the other day, so I thought I should call. I went out shooting by myself. I’d missed it. Thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it. My pleasure. We should go out together one of these days,’ he said, speaking with the gentry’s centuries-old tradition of refinement and politeness. Gone were the crude manners that expressed themselves in statements such as ‘What could it possibly have to do with you?’
He had changed.
‘How are things?’ I asked.
‘Fine, all fine, we’re getting things done.’
‘Great. I’m glad to hear it. Then give me a call when you have some time and we’ll go out shooting.’
‘All right.’
‘See you, then.’
When I hung up I knew.
He was back together with Zuhal. So the news about them getting married was true.
Only a woman could instil that kind of joy in a man’s voice. In his voice was the energy of a happy man, full of confidence, with the woman he loved; he was so pleased, he’d forgotten all about the troubles that plagued him. Speaking to him then, I got the feeling he would have been happy to cede control of the town to his enemies.
Now, some claim people are easy to understand but I have never felt that way. When I heard the cheerfulness in Mustafa’s voice, and understood his situation, I felt that sharp pain in my stomach but I also felt a happiness, peace and lightness of being, indeed I might even call it delight.
Initially it was a sharp pain.
Then came a sense of peace and contentedness.
Why would a person feel this way talking to a man who loved the woman he loved and desired? A woman whose absence caused such pain in his heart?
What is this?
Why did I feel that way?
And it wasn’t just a fleeting emotion. I waited for it to pass, thinking I was deceiving myself with emotions that only served to dull the initial pain that rushed through me. But no, the sense of peace was still there. It was real.
I walked to the veranda, feeling an overwhelming desire to slap Hamiyet on the rump as I passed her.
I sat down and put my feet up on the veranda railing.
And I looked out over the town.
It was a bright, beautiful day.
The dome of the train station was shimmering like a rival to the sun on earth, beside the palm trees, the oleander, the beach that stretched as far as the eye could see, the dark blue sea, the eucalyptus between the buildings, the plane trees and flower beds, and the scent of honeysuckle and jasmine.
‘Could you make me a coffee?’ I asked Hamiyet.
When she returned, I said: ‘How’s your son?’
‘Better. The wound is healing.’
‘He’s not leaving the house?’
‘No, not yet.’
I thought about asking her what she was up to these days. I still didn’t know the full story of why he’d been stabbed.
I was thinking. I was trying to understand.
Why was I so pleased? It had to be the wrong emotion. There had to be a clear explanation.
I wouldn’t feel such bliss simply because I was a good person with a good heart. I wasn’t that kind of person. Moreover, when it came to women there wasn’t ever a man who would feel like this, I thought, and so I needed to find the source of my happiness amidst all that had gone wrong.
In spite of Mustafa’s happiness and his reunion with Zuhal, I felt joyful and I think I knew the source.
Weighing the sadness that came on in the wake of Zuhal’s final words to me and Mustafa’s joy, Mustafa’s situation only seemed pathetic, and I could sense that Zuhal wasn’t as happy and full of joy as he was, because reading through her last words, probing her feelings, I knew that she wouldn’t easily get over our separation.
She had gone to Mustafa with the sadness born of the void in her life that my absence had created and, despite this sadness, Mustafa was happy. On the one hand I was pleased to know that Zuhal was safe: Mustafa would protect her, from everything, indeed even from herself. Although she had gone to the man she was in love with, she had done so with me on her mind.
She had gone to him with me in her heart; she had taken me there.
But Mustafa couldn’t see that.
And so I pitied him.
I wouldn’t have changed places with him. Perhaps other men would. Men who might very well say, As long as the woman is by my side, I don’t give a damn what she feels. But I wasn’t one of them. What she was feeling was important too, more important than who she was with.
Mustafa was happy with a woman still thinking of me, and this didn’t sadden me.
I would rather she be with Mustafa than with any other man. Someone I knew. With someone she was once in love with. With someone who was in love with her.
So I know where she is. I don’t need to worry about her any more. I will never have to think of something happening to her.
No longer would I be plagued by that obsessive sense of responsibility, protecting her, the urge to always wonder where she is. The responsibility was gone.
This had given me a lightness of being far greater than I could have imagined.
There was the pain of not having her in my life, there was my dream of watching her in the kitchen, but now there was nothing for me to do but accept this pain. I had been freed of burdens far greater than this pain.
Those are heavy burdens indeed.
But I can carry them.
I can be distressed by the troubles.
But freed of these burdens, light and at ease, I was left bare with nothing but the lingering pain.
I had my solitude to console me.
A magnificent solitude I could never renounce. It was everything.
I decided to go to Remzi’s and feast on his fine köfte.
And wash the meal down with a cold beer.
My appetite was back in full force.
But this is going too far, I thought to myself. I shouldn’t feel better so soon, but that’s how it was – it was the surprising truth. Struggling to convince myself of the wonders of this strange reality, I said to myself, Don’t worry. In any event it won’t be long before you’re seized by an even greater pain, and all the memories will come flooding back.
That was true. Such pain simply didn’t vanish into thin air, and so you might feel this way today but who knows about tomorrow? But it was clear that I had been freed of the burdens.
And that was enough for now.
I despised those burdens; I couldn’t simply shrug them off; they were so terribly heavy.
This is a common idiocy in men: when they break up with a woman they assume that something terrible will befall her – I don’t know why – and they rack their brains just to know what she is doing, desperate to know if something has happened to her. This foolishness had made me the prisoner of so many women.
And so never underestimate the power of shrugging off these burdens.
It was a salvation.
And I went to celebrate my newfound freedom at Remzi’s.
After starving myself for so long it was good to tuck into a plate of grilled meatballs, grilled tomatoes and a frosty mug of beer.
If I’d told someone then that I was celebrating the return of a woman to the man she loved, a woman who had caused me such terrible pain when she left me, he would surely have said I was a fool.
But I didn’t tell anyone.
I was celebrating.
I bought Remzi a beer and he joined me.
Finishing our second beer, he said, ‘Trouble’s on the way. Bad things are soon to come.’
I didn’t care.
XLV
I can only explain what I experienced that day as one of God’s horrific coincidences. I don’t think there’s any other way to express it.
During those days I carried in my heart a pain free of all responsibility.
And despite the pain and curiosity, I felt a strange bliss that came with the freedom of not having to worry about Zuhal. Worry could bind me to a woman and bring about dark humours that over time hardened the bond, which grew stronger, and my love for her could then spark concern that later turned into anger and finally a dull weight on my back that I wanted to throw off. It was a ghastly progression of emotion. Relationships could be like that for me: in the end my beloved was nothing but an overstuffed bundle of rags. The love was tainted.
It became distasteful in the end.
I was open to any emotion as long as it was free of burden.
Passion, longing, lust, pain, grief. Whatever it was, but no burdens.
When I began to feel concerned for someone else in a way I never felt about myself, I felt a kind of injustice. I was a restless horse tied to a stake, kicking and struggling to be free.
Perhaps this was one of the main reasons I treasured my solitude.
Thanks to Mustafa, I had freed myself from the burdens of my relationship with Zuhal, but that didn’t take away the pain. Yet the change did provide a sense of comfort and a fresh state of mind.
After breakfast that morning I read through my papers and then, after wandering through the garden, inspecting the trees, touching the odd flower and bantering a little with Hamiyet, I left around noon.
I set out on foot.
I wanted to see the cradle-maker, chat a little with him, whittle away at the pain within me through the infinite future I saw in him.
When I got to the little square, he wasn’t in his usual spot and his shop was closed.
I asked the coffeehouse boy what had happened.
‘I don’t know. He didn’t come today.’
‘Has this happened before?’
‘No, never before. This is the first time he hasn’t come.’
I collapsed onto the little wicker chair.
Suddenly I felt an odd sensation, something like dread. I had no idea why. Some things you just get used to, the important fixtures in the fabric of life, which help define who you are. I needed to see the cradle-maker in his usual place.
Like the rising sun …
What would you feel if one morning the sun didn’t rise? That was the feeling I had when I saw the cradle-maker’s shop closed. The order of the world was disturbed, as if the definition of the world had changed.
He was supposed to always be there; he would be there every time I went to see him.
But he wasn’t there that day.
Suddenly I felt the urge to go and see him at home, and I asked the coffee boy where he lived, but the boy didn’t know. Maybe I could have found him if I really tried but later I realised I had no right to do something like that.
Our friendship didn’t give me the right to go and find him if he didn’t ask me to. If he wanted me to find his house he would have mentioned where it was, but he never did. I had never even imagined his home. It was as if he lived there in the square; like the enormous plane tree, he belonged here.
But the tree was now gone and life suddenly seemed empty.
Shocked and lightheaded, I stood up and started to make my way down into town through the maze of narrow back streets.
It was almost noon.
It seemed as if everything had shifted, something had swept through town, uprooting life itself.
I didn’t know what it was.
I felt something akin to a landslide within me.
We don’t always know how important a place some people hold in our lives, and they don’t know either, and then they are gone and we know this from the tremors that come in their wake. We understand what they meant.
The cradle-maker had been my connection to the future. Somehow he connected me to the infinite, reminding me of tomorrow and easing the pains of today.
I felt that I no longer had a future. Not seeing him there in his spot snapped the tender bond that linked me to the days ahead.
Perhaps I had such a reaction because my emotions were so fragile and tumultuous at the time. Perhaps. But that’s how I felt then.
I felt dizzy.
As I made my way down the hill, the town seemed so very far away.
