by Suat Dervis
He had no idea how to make it up to her. During the early years of their marriage, he had failed to rise to the challenge, and this caused him much sorrow.
He was just a little bank clerk of limited means. There was no family fortune to back him up, no way of augmenting his income beyond his salary.
Whereas—if she were so minded, if she would deign to notice the world around her—Celile would see that there were thousands of men who would want to set their entire fortune at her feet, pamper her with silks and furs and diamonds and fine cars. Or so it seemed to Ahmet.
But Celile did not deign to notice the world around her. Jewels did not interest her, fortunes failed to impress. She acted as if she already possessed all the wealth in the world.
Once she had even told Ahmet that she wanted no more from life than what he could already give her. This had never ceased to amaze him.
Because for Ahmet, everything had its price. Everything that his limited means put beyond his reach was precious.
He longed for them all. He dreamed of the day when he could move his wife into the city’s most beautiful mansion. When he could bestow upon her the jeweler’s largest gem, the furrier’s costliest stole, and order her wardrobe from the atelier of Istanbul’s most ingenious seamstress.
Their mansion’s large rooms would be adorned with the rarest and most beautiful carpets, and with glass cabinets laden with antiques. They would tour the city in the finest car—the latest model, the one with the silent motor.
He wanted all this for his wife, to demonstrate his gratitude for having so graciously accepted him as her equal.
All he wanted was to buy her the most expensive things, and thus to honor her. It was the only source of sorrow in a happy house—that this dream was beyond his grasp.
Whereas Celile harbored no such dream.
She accepted life as it was, without complaint. And she did so with the sort of gracious smile that might be expected of a well-mannered guest.
It did not matter that she used a cut-rate seamstress. Even in a sports coat made of ordinary cloth, she looked as elegant as if she were wearing a queen’s ermine cloak.
Her clothes might be cheaply made, but she chose them well, adding personal touches that never failed to delight. Never did she give the impression of dressing less well or less expensively than other men’s wives. Chic, gracious, and refined, she always stood out. In every room she reigned supreme.
But she did not have the faintest idea of the impression she made, and this was what most enchanted Ahmet. In fact, it bound him to her like a slave.
Nothing could diminish her. Even in the most august company, no one would have guessed she was the wife of a young bank clerk. It wasn’t just the bank managers and directors—even their wives respected her, and did not challenge her.
From the day they were married, Ahmet had been saying: “You just wait and see. I shall make you the happiest woman in the world.”
For him happiness meant money. And he wanted to give his wife everything money could buy. He wanted her to live in luxury, bedecked with jewels that were beyond other women’s dreams. That was his idea of bliss.
Celile would meet her husband’s effusions with an indulgent smile. She didn’t have the heart to challenge him, call him a fool, remind him that they were fine and happy as they were. That would be going too far. He might take it as criticism.
Celile had been taught not to criticize those around her. Never did she allow herself to take such liberties.
But it did puzzle her. What exactly did Ahmet mean by happiness? She had a vague idea, but she couldn’t quite understand what it was he valued.
For centuries, wealth had been in the hands of the corrupt and the debauched. No one made money through mental effort or hard work. Connections were what mattered. Privileges were to be sought and granted. They came and went in the form of gifts and bribes. They favored those who had seen the world and tired of it. Such were the ways of Celile’s forebears. No one had ever taught her that money itself might have value. Her upbringing had left her indifferent to even the brightest and most wonderful things that money could buy.
If she couldn’t quite grasp what her husband was talking about, it wasn’t just because of her lofty origins, but also because she had never been taught to think of money as something that could buy happiness.
As for the schemes and preoccupations and hopes and disappointments that had so preoccupied her husband over the past four years—with every passing day, they made less sense to her.
It wasn’t just his work. Night and day, he was harnessed to a single goal, a passion that Celile struggled to name.
He was no longer the same person. He’d abandoned his old ways, forgotten how to have fun. He was tired, distracted, and irritable, in spite of which he had, over the past two years, put on a great deal of weight.
He’d given up the things he used to love. He’d stopped playing sports, stopped reading Baudelaire to his wife by moonlight.
It had begun when an uncle of his had died, leaving him a tobacco depot in Samsun. This windfall had changed Ahmet overnight.
He had never left his wife’s side until then—not even for a day—but now suddenly he was off to Samsun for a month and a half, to sell the depot, along with the house and its contents that his uncle had left him. Once he’d wrapped up the estate, he returned to Istanbul, resigned from the bank, opened an office, and (as he liked to put it) “plunged into the world of private enterprise.”
Determined to make a success of it, he took to working long hours. But it was hard to get started. After suffering a string of failures, he began to wonder if he had it in him to succeed, and this terrifying thought almost drove him mad. Then slowly his luck began to turn, and after a few successes he regained his courage.
The first two years might not have gone well, but they had helped to change his thinking. Whatever happened, this was still better than sitting in a bank all day long, waiting for a paycheck that could not even stretch to life’s simple pleasures. Modest his profits might be, but they exceeded his old salary.
The day arrived when he was able to order clothes for his wife from one of the city’s most expensive seamstresses. He went home thinking himself the happiest husband in the world, and its most successful entrepreneur.
The best dress in the city was followed by the best hat, the best handbag, and the best shoes.
Though working still on a very narrow margin, he used his first profits to buy his wife a gold watch and a jeweled pin. The next year he bought her a ring with a single gem.
The apartment in Firuzağa began to feel too small. So they moved to a larger and more modern apartment in Talimhane.
They were on the road to happiness, Ahmet told himself, but he still wasn’t happy.
Since Nazikter’s death, they’d had just one maid. Now Ahmet noticed that she was not a good cook. They hired a second maid who did know how to cook, and another who came once a fortnight to do the laundry. But this wasn’t happiness, either…They needed houseboys, and gardeners, and chauffeurs.
Even these would not bring happiness. They were simply signposts, pointing the way.
Celile, meanwhile, acted as if nothing in their lives had changed.
She greeted their new prosperity with her customary calm indifference.
Not once did he see a glint of admiration in her eyes.
In the old days, he had only to bring back a simple bunch of violets, and she would thank him with a bright and courteous smile. Now, if he brought her a real gift—a ring with a single gem, a gold wristwatch, or a jeweled pin—she would give him the very same smile, and as before, she would make it clear that what mattered more than the gift itself was the thought that had gone into it.
And because Ahmet knew how much more it meant to him to bring his wife a sparkling ring, he could not help but feel diminished b
y his wife’s composure. He would remind himself how lucky he was to have a woman of such refinement as his wife.
And he would know, deep inside, that nothing would stop him from becoming the great man she deserved.
Ahmet had grown up in a modest household, surrounded by modest people. People who woke up at the same time every morning, spent the same hours every day at work, ate at the same time every evening, and waited the same number of years for a raise. He had never tasted the high excitement of high stakes.
Nothing gave him greater pleasure than to get ahead on his own initiative, without a boss telling him what to do. To achieve brilliant success on his own merits—that was his one and only goal. It was why he had departed from the path laid out for him by his father and grandfather, his uncles and brothers, to try his luck on this bright new path.
How he looked down on his old friends from the bank!
He would pass them in the street and pity them for the life he’d left behind. He, at least, was putting his talents and strengths to good use. He was a better man in every way.
All he cared about was his work. He neglected everything else.
He spent his days in offices whose windows looked out on the dark, narrow streets of Karaköy, in ceaseless negotiation with potential investors. Sat at his own desk for hours on end, writing one letter after another, convinced that each new venture would bring him brilliant success. He raged, he dared to hope, he racked his brain until finally deciding on which trading house, which factory, which state institution he would, as he put it, “ensnare next.” Though each day blended into the next, each brought him heady new excitements. There was despair but also joy.
His business was growing. He moved to an office in a more attractive building.
He changed his old suits for new.
Facing his new desk he now had two armchairs made of red leather, and a sofa to match. The ashtray on the coffee table no longer carried an advertisement for light bulbs. Its replacement was cut from heavy crystal.
The linoleum was brand-new. The curtains were thin enough to let in the light. On the floor was a good Uşak carpet.
In the anteroom, which was not much larger than a closet, a young woman sat at a little desk.
This was his typist.
He also had a clerk.
Good omens, all. He clung to them for dear life.
And how he rejoiced on the day he replaced his red leather chairs with a suite that looked more modern. What a happy man he was on the day they installed a phone. When he opened the phone book, he found his own name.
It was all he could think about. Nothing else mattered.
They would be rich. So rich as to turn heads. Not just in Istanbul. In Ankara, too. Everyone in the whole country would know their name. And who could say? One day, perhaps, the whole world would be talking about them.
Without a doubt, he was no longer the man Celile had married. While Celile, against all odds, had remained the same. Nothing about her had changed. She still had the same quiet smile and refined manner.
Nothing touched her. Nothing ruffled her nerves. Wherever she went, she exuded a steely calm, as if no sorrow or joy could ever reach her. But nothing was left now of the old fun-loving Ahmet, no trace of the honest and abstemious family that had raised him. Look into his eyes now, and you saw only the wild glint of greedy ambition. Inside this little man there was a raging fire. And yes, you could see it flickering in his eyes.
In the old days, when he’d played sports and spent his summers in the sun, he’d always had a healthy tan.
But now, after four years in airless offices, sunless depots, and stinking buildings, his skin was wan, almost grey.
As if his ambition was feeding on his own blood.
His muscles were turning to fat.
The constant smoking made him paler still.
At the outset, the aspirations to which he admitted had been modest. All he wanted was to make his own way, be his own boss, give his wife a better, fuller life.
But after leaving the bank and enjoying his first few successes, the desires and ambitions lying dormant in his unconscious had brushed themselves off and taken over.
Inside him, a new man was born. An alien who worshipped money: one who, as he made his way in the world of business, was driven to distraction by other men’s riches and successes, and pushed to the edge of madness by his determination to match them.
This, then, was his new ambition: to sit at the top table, with the richest men in the country, as their equal.
But to make that kind of money, you need serious backing. Modest capital yielded only modest gains. And what he had in mind now was in the hundreds of thousands, or even millions.
It wasn’t easy to get into that league. In a market dominated by the big players, a man of limited means was lucky just to hold his own.
But Ahmet wanted more than that.
He was willing to do whatever it took to get rich.
Until now, he’d had no time for devious methods. He’d found them distasteful. Now he summoned up the courage to take that path.
Anything was legitimate if it helped him make his fortune, and Celile the richest woman in the world.
He ruled nothing out. He did not stop to think. Perhaps he didn’t even realize that he was doing anything wrong. In the end he came up with an acceptable excuse: “I wasn’t the one who started this war!”
This being so, and the fault lying with those who genuinely had started it, what was so wrong about taking advantage of the situation that they’d created? And let’s just say he didn’t take advantage. What would happen then? It would simply be left to other businessmen to play the same games and use the same tricks to grow their fortunes.
How many businessmen were there out there who played by the book? However many they were, and however honorable, weren’t they all forced to bow to speculators and their like at the end of the day or face certain ruin?
Ahmet was no fool. Not every generation got a chance to profit from a war. He hadn’t started this war. But now it was here. To turn away now from the opportunities it offered would be madness.
And to prove he wasn’t mad, when the next round began he would make sure he wasn’t a mere bystander. He would take up position, ready to seize any opportunity he could afford.
He wasn’t a bad man, Ahmet. Not at all. Like all honorable men, he knew what an ugly game it was. If someone had approached him with an opportunity that could start a war, then of course he would never have agreed. But while it was happening right in front of their eyes, he would rather be in with the greedy speculators who had profited from these extreme circumstances than with the ones who had despaired of it and suffered its consequences.
So for as long as this war continued, it would be madness, yes, madness, for him to show greater kindness than any other speculator. Why should he put all he had on the table, only to refuse to play the game? If he paid Niko fifty, why shouldn’t he turn around and sell it to Ali for eighty?
An opportunity was an opportunity. And Ahmet was hell-bent on taking full advantage.
Before the war, he’d never made more than a thousand-lira profit. Now he was increasing that five- and tenfold.
He’d started with the idea of importing machinery from Europe. He’d managed to become the local agent for one or two foreign factories. Now, very slowly, he began to turn this business into a front for his new venture.
This one was the real thing. Nothing else came even close. There was, of course, good money to be made by smuggling foodstuffs by boat to the Black Sea ports of Bulgaria and Romania, but Ahmet lacked the courage to go that far. Truth be told, it wasn’t his conscience that held him back—it was the danger of getting caught. Even though smuggling food was hardly the same thing as smuggling heroin!
In any event, he had something far more ambitious in mind.
> One day the smuggling business would dry up, and the sort of wealth he had in mind was many times larger than anything a war profiteer could hope to gain under peacetime conditions.
Oh, if only he were as rich as the filthy Şükranzades…
Ahmet was very jealous of just about anyone who enjoyed greater wealth and influence than he did. But he hated the Şükranzades most of all.
Lately their firm had become his number-one adversary. And all those scoundrels had to do was dip into their chest. They had their finger in every pie. They dredged the black market like minesweepers, and wherever there was a chance for a profit, they got there before anyone else did. “Disaster strikes, and they sniff it out, like hunting dogs…”
They could fall back on their great fortune, the Şükranzades, and the vast networks they had built with it, and how could Ahmet, with just one clerk and a typist, ever hope to compete? He was forced to go in blind most of the time. One day, he would show them. But first he had to find a partner with influence. A partner with vast wealth.
If he knew one thing, it was that he would succeed in the end. He would get rich.
How could he not, after all his scheming and hard work? He’d given it everything he had, never letting up. He would succeed. There was no doubt.
Since going into business, he’d never suffered a loss. His profits had risen steadily. And now, at last, the prize was within reach. He would soon be the owner of a beautiful yalı on the Bosphorus, a summer villa on Büyükada, and an apartment in Nişantaşı.
He’d buy them, and then one day he would turn to Celile and say, “Come and see what I have for us.”
And if he caught so much as a flicker of admiration in Celile’s eyes, he would be the happiest man on earth.
Muhsin Demirtaş was a cut above your standard industrialist. He wielded influence over the boards of two mighty banks, and his word carried weight.
His influence and reputation extended far beyond the world of finance. He belonged to other important circles as well.