In the Shadow of the Yali

by Suat Dervis

  Whenever she felt that hand, she knew she had done something forbidden.

  They hadn’t taught her to complain. And so, whenever she saw that old hand reaching out for her, she would, before extending her own hand, consent to be guided in the direction indicated. As soon as she had left the prohibited terrain, the old hand would let go, and Celile would again be returned to a blissful freedom.

  This freedom would last until the bay and the opposite shore grew dark with the mournful peace of evening.

  As the sky darkened, Nazikter’s hand would appear out of nowhere to curl itself around her little fingers.

  She’d be taken to a sink to be thoroughly washed and dried. Clothes made neat and hair brushed, she would be taken to see her grandmother.

  Celile would walk into her room to find her kneeling, head bowed, on her prayer rug, which was purple and embroidered with bright birds. Her veil, made of Bursa silk, was draped around her shoulders. She would rise, stand up straight, and once again kneel, turning her head to the right. She would hold out her hands, palms upturned. They had lost none of their youth or beauty, these hands. And neither had her fine form, unbroken by time or time’s reversals.

  Celile would make her way in silence across the room, to sit down on the divan in the corner and watch.

  Loving, welcoming everything she saw. Calmly, and with joy. Each new sight was as lovely as a new dawn.

  She would contemplate the room’s lengthening shadows, and her grandmother’s bowed head, and the bright flowers on her prayer rug, and revel in its peaceful blessing.

  The moment her mistress had finished her prayers, Nurser Kalfa would step into the room—so swiftly as to suggest she had been watching from the door. She would cross over to the high chest to light two petroleum lamps. Their lampshades were white, their bases long and clawed.

  In the summer Celile and her grandmother would eat in the great dining room. In the winter, supper would be served in her grandmother’s room, on a tray. There was little conversation. Celile knew to speak only when her grandmother asked her a question. She was never to ask a question herself. Nazikter Kalfa had made sure she knew her manners.

  This is how she learned to keep her thoughts and feelings to herself—in effect to shut herself off.

  When supper was over, she would kiss her grandmother’s hand and withdraw to her bedroom. Nazikter Kalfa would sit her down on a chair. Placing the girl’s legs over her knees, she would remove the girl’s stockings and her slippers. And then, to keep her bare feet from touching the floor, she would carry her to bed.

  If she ever tried to run across the room barefooted, Nazikter Kalfa would cry, “Watch out! The bugs might bite!”

  After tucking her into bed, Nazikter Kalfa would light the oil lamp on the night table, extinguish her own lamp, and leave the room.

  And at that same moment, Celile would be engulfed by a terrible longing. Her little lips trembling, she would whisper, “Mother!” And then, in an even smaller whisper—as if she feared that the thousand-and-one shadows brought to life by the oil lamp might hear her—she would add: “I want my mother!” Some nights she would say no more, as her eyes filled with tears. Some nights she would break into loud sobs.

  This was when another memory would return to her—of a stout, wide-shouldered man with a thick moustache. He would lift her up and throw her into the air. He would lift up his strong arms and catch her. And kiss her cheeks, grazing them with his whiskers.

  “Father! Dear Father!”

  How these words hurt her. How lonely they would make her feel. Until, with unimaginable speed, they vanished into the night, releasing her to the childish pleasures of a dreamless sleep.

  When she woke up in the morning, she did not feel lonely. She did not feel sad.

  She did not have a single friend her age with whom she might have shared her sorrows, let alone the joys and pleasures of exploring the world around her.

  Celile grew up alone. Never sharing her feelings or her thoughts…

  She never saw her father again. He’d stayed on at the embassy in Berlin until the very end of the war. Deeply implicated as he was in the doings of the disgraced Committee of Union and Progress, he had not dared to return to his country.

  As for her father’s second wife—she’d never been happy with Fazıl Bey. She’d taken up with a young doctor who’d come to Berlin to specialize with a famous professor, finally returning with him to Istanbul. This, then, became Fazıl Bey’s second reason for choosing to stay abroad.

  He had a brother still in Istanbul. He gave him power of attorney and instructed him to liquidate his property.

  He then set about spending his fortune in the bars and nightclubs of postwar Berlin. Postwar inflation made it go a long way.

  Over time, as Germany’s currency grew stronger, and Berlin became as expensive as other European cities, Fazıl Bey left the German capital in search of other amusement.

  This life, into which he had thrown himself of his own free will, did not last long. Fazıl Bey ran through the rest of his fortune at speed. Left with almost nothing, he raced off to Monte Carlo to try his luck at the tables.

  On the night after he’d lost everything, he was found dead in his room.

  For years, they kept this news from Celile. Only after finishing school was she told of his death. As for the manner of his death, only after her grandmother’s death did they tell her.

  It was again Mardirosyan Efendi, the old moneychanger, who had arranged for Celile to be enrolled as a boarder at Notre Dame de Sion when it reopened after the armistice.

  She did not make a single friend during her years at that school. She remained shy and distant from her elders, too. She confided in no one. She never said a word more than necessary—not to anyone.

  She kept her thoughts about the outside world to herself.

  When she left for school and its crowded classrooms, she left behind a vast and somber yalı that had been emptied by now of most of its beautiful furniture, priceless carpets, brilliant çeşm-i bülbül vases, Sevres and Saxony ensembles, and Venetian mirrors. But she took its loneliness with her.

  During her first years at school, she kept to her old habits. She’d been a silent, friendless child. A silent, friendless child she remained.

  It would not be an exaggeration to say that she was the school’s best-behaved child. She preferred to be alone with her books. She gave her teachers her full attention, never asking an unnecessary question. And she never, ever complained.

  From a very young age, she had been taught that everything her elders said was true, and that she must always do everything required of her, without complaint.

  She was attentive in class, measured in her breathing, quiet in the dormitory, and silent in the refectory.

  Games mystified her. Never having played with other children, she could not see the point of them, and so she never joined in.

  During recess, she would join her hands around her back and stride back and forth across the yard. This quickly earned her the nickname “Little Philosopher.” They assumed she did a lot of thinking. In fact, she did no thinking whatsoever.

  It was impossible to distinguish her happy days from her sad ones. Whatever the occasion, she met it with a polite smile and as few words as possible.

  Distant though she stayed from all her classmates, no one ever called her standoffish. There was nothing in her expression to suggest pride, let alone contempt for others.

  It was simply the way she was, and perhaps also what she had been raised to be.

  She had never truly entered the real world.

  In that rotting, crumbling yalı, there was no room for a young and adventurous heart.

  At school, surrounded by children of the new order, she never belonged, always felt herself an outsider. With her every breath, she drew in the yalı’s musty air and its dying tra
ditions.

  There was no room for a young and adventurous heart in a dying yalı. And no room for a child of a dying yalı in that school.

  If she had treated the lifeless yalı as a museum—standing at the doors through which the modern day had never passed to contemplate its treasures—she did much the same at school. Here, too, she stood at the edges, watching and never joining in.

  And it wasn’t just at the yalı and at school, but in every phase of her life, including her marriage—she had always kept herself apart, as if to watch a spectacle on a distant stage.

  Hers was a life of calm monotony, free of confusions and storms. Long accustomed to observing the world from afar, she accepted it as it was. Nothing about it troubled her. For it did not touch her—she was simply observing, without ever feeling the need to oppose or reject what she saw.

  When Celile finished school and returned to the yalı, her grandmother was suffering the last stages of her long and grueling illness.

  She placed herself at her bedside. Summoning up all her courage, she sat there next to the only relation she had ever known or loved, watching her surrender to the fearful mask of misery, and finally to death.

  During those miserable years, it was as if she and her grandmother were competing to see which of them was the more tolerant and courageous.

  Even during her last and most painful days, this proud daughter of the Circassian mountains retained her fine arched eyebrows, and never did she complain; she surrendered herself to her approaching death without fear, while the wild creature raised in this fabulous forty-room yalı placed herself at the sickbed without complaint, showing the devotion one would expect of a matron of advanced years, and finding the strength to care for her with compassion, warmth, and generosity.

  When, after eight more days of excruciating agony, her grandmother left this world, Celile shut herself up in her room so that she could cry in peace. Not even her nurse, Nazikter Kalfa, saw her tears.

  Because grief, like joy, was something Celile kept to herself.

  So no one knew how much her young soul was ravaged by this loss. Her grief was sacred and secret and never to be shared.

  Until her dying day, Celile’s grandmother had kept the material concerns of the household to herself.

  Never once had she mentioned to Celile how she paid for the yalı’s upkeep or Celile’s school fees.

  But despite her youth and inexperience, Celile met the stark realities of her new situation with absolute equanimity, never showing the slightest surprise or upset. She went through these ordeals as if they hardly concerned her—an observer yet again.

  The yalı that she might have inherited from her grandmother had been mortgaged to the national pension fund. It had fallen in arrears, and the interest had mounted. The only way to cover the amount owing was to sell.

  The yalı went to auction. And thus the bill was paid.

  All that Celile inherited was her grandmother’s fortitude and the contents of the few rooms still in use in her last years.

  The loss of the yalı upset its other inhabitants far more than it did her.

  When he bought his village grocery store, Seyfullah the old butler had also bought the three-room apartment above it. Nurser, the older of the two maidservants, now arranged to rent one of these rooms. Her husband had been a customs officer, and she was able to use his allowance to cover the rent and her other expenses. She also agreed to cook for Seyfullah Efendi and do his laundry.

  The old cook’s mind had now gone almost completely, and just to stand up made him short of breath. With no family to claim him he might have been a candidate for the poorhouse, but Nurser Kalfa managed to convince Seyfullah Efendi that this would cause a scandal. And so it was that the old man moved into the third room.

  It was the dread prospect of having to live with her grandchildren that gave the elderly Nurser Kalfa the courage to take on the care of these two bachelors.

  What would happen to Celile?

  What were she and her nurse to do?

  Celile gave no sign of concern. To express such emotions as anxiety or surprise, it was first necessary to feel them. Before Celile had had a chance to consider her position, her uncle—her father’s brother—arrived with a proposal. She’d hardly seen him over the years, beyond the usual exchange of visits on religious holidays. When he announced that she was to come to live with him, for she could not live alone, she said, “But I am not alone, Uncle. I have my nurse with me.”

  Her uncle smiled. “Silly child,” he said, stroking her back. “We shall take her in, too, of course.”

  Celile was now twenty-two years old. But she accepted her uncle’s invitation as meekly as a little girl. And so it was that she and Nazikter Kalfa moved into her uncle’s house.

  Accustomed as they were to the silent yalı, they moved through this noisy, happy household like two shadows. Never looking anyone in the eye. Never getting in the way. No one heard them speak or breathe or saw them smile. Even their footsteps were silent.

  They disturbed no one, and no one disturbed them.

  Celile remained distant from those around her.

  She was reserved but never standoffish, never haughty. It was impossible to know what she wanted out of life. She did not know herself.

  That was why she never crossed anyone. She had nothing to cross them with. She did not become involved in the lives of others, let alone identify with others. Wherever she happened to find herself, she kept herself at one remove, never joining in, never involving herself with others.

  But not because she looked down on them.

  She placed herself apart because she felt herself separate. She’d done so all her life. If on occasion she was obliged to participate, she became like a branch drifting with the currents in the sea, never resisting. She was ruled by the currents. But they never got inside her. Inside, she remained the same.

  Nothing could penetrate her. Nothing could draw her out.

  Celile remained with her uncle’s family until she was twenty-five years old.

  Then one day her cousin Refik introduced her to his old classmate Ahmet. And she married him.

  THREE

  Ahmet was an Istanbul boy from an honest, decent family of modest means; his father, like his grandfather before him, was a respected civil servant.

  An only child, Ahmet had been sent to study at Galatasaray, the city’s most prestigious lycée. He’d decided against university, choosing instead to go straight to work in a bank. The sooner he was in a position to make money, the better…

  Clever and quick-witted, he did well at the bank. He wore his chestnut hair slicked back. His suits were cut from good cloth by passable tailors. He was a natural and accomplished athlete, and famously good-natured, always ready with a witticism of the kind that Galatasaray boys have passed on through the generations.

  His kept his shirts, hands, and handkerchiefs immaculate, and his nails polished. He liked to row. He was a strong swimmer. Most important, he was a defender in the national football team.

  Girls loved him. His picture appeared in the sports pages every other day.

  He met Celile in Suadiye, early in the summer season.

  He’d been strolling down the beach when he ran into his old classmate Refik, who was there with his sisters as well as Celile. Ahmet was already acquainted with Refik’s sisters, but that was the day his friend introduced him to his cousin. For the rest of the summer season, he and Celile were inseparable, sunning and swimming and taking out rowboats by day, and touring the summer gazinos by night.

  Ahmet was charmed by Celile’s remote and pensive manner. Her silences made all other girls he knew seem brash. It was not long before his admiration turned into something stronger.

  And then one day towards the end of the season, they found themselves alone together in the garden of her uncle’s summer villa. Seeing no ne
ed for a lengthy preamble, Ahmet told Celile that he loved her.

  The day was very warm. The sea had a sticky, oily shine to it. The heat was close to suffocating. Not a leaf was moving. Inside the house, they were all taking naps. No noise but for the insects buzzing in the bushes.

  Celile was twenty-five, of normal build and in good health.

  Ahmet was handsome and charming. His words touched her heart.

  She looked at him as if for the first time. His broad shoulders, his thin waist, his narrow hips. Suddenly she found this young man very pleasing.

  Three months later, they married and moved into a three-room apartment in Firuzağa.

  The years that followed were peaceful and—no reason to avoid the word—happy. Her own mother having died in childbirth, Celile had no wish for children. And Ahmet, understanding her reasons, accepted her decision without complaint. “What do I need children for? You’re my everything. All I want is you.”

  And it was true. Ahmet did genuinely worship his wife.

  At no point in their marriage had Celile put on airs or insisted on having a say in how they managed their household. She accepted things as they were, deferring in all matters to Ahmet.

  She made no demands and offered no opinions, depending on Ahmet to tell her how to think, what to feel, how to live.

  Ahmet, meanwhile, was ever-mindful of the distance between their families. He had no grand viziers or Veliddin Pashas to boast about. His wife had married down. And the truth was that he loved her for it. He looked up to her. It brought him huge pleasure to be wedded to a woman from a class above his own.

  To be the husband of a creature so exceptionally beautiful, so meek and restrained, modest and refined—it was beyond what he thought he deserved, and this being so, he could feel only amazement at his good fortune to have been blessed with such a prize, and he was grateful to his wife for having accepted her situation with such good grace.