by Suat Dervis
Muhsin, meanwhile, was increasingly troubled by Celile’s rejections. He’d never thought he’d end up visiting Ahmet in his home, just for the chance of seeing her. But one fine afternoon, it came to pass. He picked up the phone and called Ahmet. Announced that he was on his way to pick them up. The city heat had left him pining for a drive along the Bosphorus.
SEVEN
The next days passed like lightning through a tempest. When Celile thought back, when she tried to make sense of the dizzying chain of events, she felt as if she were at the window of a speeding train, watching the signs and tree trunks and telephone poles merge into a single haze. Her life unraveled with the same hellish speed, until the only thing she could see in that haze was the point of no return:
She had stepped out of her old life to be swept into his.
As simple as that.
How could this be? If someone had suggested such a thing to her a year ago, or even six months ago, she would never have believed it possible.
Nonsense, she would have said. Dismissing it with a smile.
So how had this come to pass? Never in her life had she broken a single rule. So how are we to explain her mad and outrageous behavior? What had compelled this meek creature to race beyond that point of no return without a single backward look, just to throw herself into Muhsin’s arm?
She loved him.
She loved him, with a burning, raging ferocity for which there were no words.
Like a woman possessed!
Nothing else mattered. Only this.
Love alone propelled her.
Great sins bring great pleasures!
Though it would be wrong to call this passion a sin.
It was selfless, entirely selfless. Where is the sin, if a woman chooses to devote herself body and soul to love?
How Celile was able to persuade herself—that remains an open question.
Why did she not judge herself selfish? To go to him, to leave behind her husband and the life they’d shared, to trample on her past, her name, her honor, just to go to this man. What did she think she was doing?
She was gratifying her own needs and no one else’s. She was seeking pleasure.
Call it sin if you will. If you wish, you can choose to forgive her. Either way, it won’t matter to Celile.
Nothing frightened her. Nothing stopped her.
She took no responsibility for her actions. She felt no guilt.
She only had to think back to how she’d met Ahmet.
Had she even been alive then, before she saw Muhsin for the first time? Before she got to know him and love him? Before she became his woman?
Had she really been alive for the past thirty-five years? Perish the thought!
To Celile, it seemed as if life had begun at the moment he entered her life. Her life before—if she could, she would erase it, like a blackboard covered with gibberish.
Before she met Muhsin!…
What a thought! Could she really have been a living, breathing creature before she met him?
If she had indeed been alive all that time, it had been to arrive at this fated moment. It was written that she should meet Muhsin. It was her fate.
Her marriage to Ahmet? It had happened only so that he could pave the way to Muhsin.
It had not been a chance encounter. Their meeting had been dictated by fate.
For thirty-five years she had been traveling down the path fate had drawn for her, preparing for that moment.
She felt no guilt about Ahmet. Her feelings for Muhsin bore no resemblance whatsoever to her feelings for the husband to whom she’d been married for ten years.
She had never before experienced such bliss.
Bliss!
She was in heaven, borne aloft by love.
She loved him enough to bow to his every word and cherish his every desire. To worship him was to bask in divine light.
She would love him forever, from the depths of her heart, drawing on the courage she’d never known she had.
Her eyes gave nothing away. She remained reticent, her face a mask. Only her gestures bore witness to the change in her.
Muhsin, meanwhile, was drunk with desire and driven half-mad by it.
This woman, who had yielded to him so easily—he still couldn’t understand her.
But the mad joy of possession had overtaken him, leaving him no time to think it through.
First she came to him once a week. Then twice a week, until she was visiting him in his small apartment in Ayazpaşa every day of the week and every time of the day—he had only to say, and she was there.
She was like no other woman he had known. Like no other woman on this earth.
When she stepped into his apartment, there were no little games. No fake displays of shame when she walked in. No fake displays of guilt when she departed.
She said nothing to excuse herself. Whereas the others, the women who’d come before—they’d gone on and on, moaning about husbands who failed to understand them or appreciate their fine points or pay them any attention at all. Or they’d tell Muhsin that they loved him in a way they’d never thought possible. Their flimsy excuses told him otherwise.
Celile said none of these things. Celile just walked in…
The night they’d gone for that drive along the Bosphorus, Muhsin had found an opportunity to whisper his address into her ear. Slipping the key into her handbag, he had told her he would be waiting for her there at five o’clock the next day.
He was that bold, that open.
He was shocked, nevertheless, when Celile, having memorized the address, turned up at the appointed hour.
He had waited all day in his dimly lit apartment, going to the window every other minute to peek through the heavy drapes to watch the street below with growing fear and impatience.
She had not kept him waiting…
At five on the dot, she turned into his street. She was wearing a white dress, and even from this distance she looked so very pale.
But there was in her gait none of the fear, timidity, or indecision that you might expect of a woman on her way to an assignation.
She didn’t even lower her eyes.
Shoulders pulled back, head held high, proud as a new bride, she made her way to his door, and on her pale face he could see no sign of sin’s shadow.
How beautiful it made her, this shameless courage. How different from other women.
After she stopped to look at the apartment’s name and number, Muhsin hurried out from the room. Unlocking the front door, he left it ajar, retreating into the dark entryway, to wait.
He could hear her footsteps, pausing at the door. A violet fragrance wafted into the dark entryway, followed by a white cloud.
With one hand Muhsin closed the door behind her. With the other he turned on the light.
He wanted to look at her, feast his eyes on her, here in the privacy of his own apartment, and he did not want to wait a moment longer.
The hallway light blinded him momentarily. When he could see again, it was to meet Celile’s searching, blazing eyes.
He could feel the heat of them on his skin.
Why did he desire her so, and with such passion? He could not say, but neither could he stop himself. He reached out, took her in his arms, and pressed her against his chest, holding her there like a lifelong friend who has been away far too long.
So it began. And so it continued. Not once did Celile’s boldness falter.
Blind to all the precious gifts she’d been given, and holding back nothing, she fell into his arms.
She was his now, entirely his.
The hours she spent away from him, pining for him—these were hard for Celile to bear.
She noticed nothing. Not even the husband lying beside her.
She wandered the house, aimless and incom
plete, a ghost in her own home.
What was there to enjoy if they weren’t together?
After years of watching from the wings, she had walked onstage to take up the first role of her life. She had become the sinner, the lover. The adulterous wife who could not bear to spend a moment away from her lover.
And Muhsin did not know what to make of her. Who was this woman? Why did Celile come to him day after day, every time he called?
How could she concede to him so easily, never showing the slightest hesitation? Muhsin just couldn’t understand.
Other women would have refused him now and again, even if they soon gave in.
Whereas Celile—every time he asked her to come, she came.
In the beginning, Muhsin thought this must be because she had a motive.
She was handing herself over to Muhsin so that Muhsin would help her husband set up this silo construction venture. In other words, she aimed to compromise him.
To make her happy, he arranged the bank guarantee for Ahmet. And it didn’t end there. When a prosperous construction engineer put out a tender, he used all his influence to ensure it went to Ahmet.
Celile made no mention of her husband’s business. Not even a hint.
Few women of his acquaintance had failed to use their most precious moments to recall such matters, if only to insinuate what their lover could do in return for their favors.
Celile made no such demands. She did not say what she thought. She just gave herself.
Without a word, she offered up her love.
One day, hoping to draw her out, Muhsin said, “Your husband is definitely going to win this tender.” And Celile just looked at him, as blankly as if she had just woken up.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “What tender?”
Did she really know nothing?
Or was this just another part of her act?
Curious to know, he pressed her. “Aren’t you happy?”
The young woman put her head on his chest and closed her eyes.
“I’m happy,” she whispered. “So very happy…Happy. What sort of word is that?…I love you.”
Was this her way of giving thanks? If it wasn’t, what was she trying to say? Why did she answer him at all?
“I did it to make you happy,” he said.
And she opened her eyes. “Did what?”
“I’ve been helping your husband win his bid for the silo construction.”
The young woman shrugged.
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “Forget my husband. Forget this tender.” And she buried her face in his chest.
Her hair smelled like a field of violets. Nothing could unsettle this woman. Nothing could pull him away.
“I love you,” she kept saying. Like a woman possessed. How sweet her voice was. As sweet as a siren’s.
It enveloped his entire body with its warm caress.
But he couldn’t take her at her word, could he?
Wouldn’t any woman say this to her lover as she lay in his arms in his small apartment?
“I love you…”
All women said this. As Muhsin knew only too well. But when Celile uttered these words, he felt so happy, so very happy.
“And I love you, Celile. Can’t you see how much I love you?”
He loved her.
As passionately as a man who until that very moment had been left for dead in a cell in the darkest corner of the earth.
And when he made love to her…she felt reborn. Freed at last from the decaying yalı and its dying breed. All her life she had wandered the world like a ghost, and now she wanted to join the world and live.
No! She wanted nothing, either consciously or unconsciously. A magic wand had brought her back to life. And now she lived.
But she was still a foreigner in this world she had newly entered.
She might just as well have arrived from another planet. Walked out through the door of an ancient tomb.
In life, she was a novice.
She had no idea how to read people, or indeed emotions. She had no way of judging others, or giving value or meaning to what they did.
She was like an infant learning to walk, struggling for balance and uncertain where to step.
Celile approached the flame that would destroy her life like a child, without fear or understanding.
And what of Muhsin? Did he ever have a chance to understand her? He and Celile came from different worlds. Where would they have met, these families that had given them their values, these circles in which they had moved?
How could they possibly have come to view the world in the same way?
Muhsin had an almost sacred faith in his family. Like his father and grandfather before him, he understood life as battle, a mountain to conquer step-by-step. Having reached the summit, he knew full well that he would need to make sacrifices here and there to safeguard his influence and good name.
Had he thought that these assignations might harm his name or standing in any way, then Muhsin would probably—certainly—have brought the liaison to a close, no matter how much pleasure and happiness it lost him.
That Celile could throw her honor and dignity to the winds and come to him with such courage—this he understood.
But now—after coming to his bed—she wished to hide this from the world. To him, this made no sense.
It was demeaning! Disrespectful!
To hide their affair, to keep their lovemaking secret, Celile must, he thought, be telling her husband lies and making up all sorts of stories. Even changing cars twice on her way to the apartment, to make sure no one knew where she was going.
But because Ahmet had asked no questions, she had told him nothing.
In Celile’s mind, there was honor in avoiding games and lies. She went to her lover’s side as openly and casually as if she were visiting a friend.
While Muhsin struggled to see any honor in it all. It drove him to distraction to think that he had been so weak as to succumb to a woman who knew no shame.
Her unflinching fearlessness left him astounded.
Celile had been raised by Ottomans who’d lost everything. Everything but the moral code they had bequeathed her.
Her horizons had been determined by a family that could no longer protect its own.
She knew that her father had squandered the last of his fortune at the card table on the night he died.
She was the daughter of such a man, and she knew that she would never enjoy the ease, honor, or prestige that his fortune had accorded him.
Those who no longer have a role in life or a position in society are not necessarily troubled when obliged to sacrifice their last possessions.
While Muhsin saw great value in life. Prestige and influence were what mattered.
He intended to stay at the top. He struggled to understand Celile’s courage, or rather, to explain it.
But no matter how courageous she was, and no matter how Muhsin viewed her, nothing could divert their mad passion from its reckless course. Nothing could tame the wild addiction that drew them ever closer.
No matter how he found fault with her, no matter how he censured her in his thoughts, he couldn’t stop thinking about her and longing for her, even at his busiest moments at the office.
With her leopard eyes, red lips, and sharp white teeth, and with her white skin, soft as velvet, she had cast a spell on him. She had tied him up in knots.
He longed to possess her completely.
For what he sensed in Celile’s devotion was the extravagance of the old aristocrats, whose wealth and power belonged to the distant past.
She was giving of herself with that same bold generosity. Giving him her beauty and her heart.
Leaving back nothing. And without saying a word.
And how it amazed Muhsin that she could offer up her love so generously without lowering herself.
Love did not diminish her. She might have given up her good name for him, and given him her body, but there was no question that they were gifts.
“You have such beautiful eyes, Celile. I could gaze into them forever.
“Do you have any idea how wretched I am when I’m away from you? How can it be that a man my age cannot think of anything but his lover? Tell me, why do I miss you so terribly?”
“Because I love you so terribly!”
“Not at all! Celile, do you really love me?”
“You must be mad!”
“All right. Then tell me, why do you love me? What do you love about me?”
Up until the moment, Celile had not even asked herself such a question. It seemed so very strange to her. So meaningless.
For she believed she had been put on this earth just to love him.
She had no other interest in this world, and no other purpose.
Did she hide within herself the soul of an odalisque, proudly distant from the world and serving only her master?
She herself had no idea. She loved him. That was all.
So why had she fallen in love? What might the reason be?
“Why don’t you say anything? Answer me, please…”
But she had no answer. Raising her lovely arms to his neck, she let her head fall back to gaze into his eyes.
“I don’t know,” she said, puckering her lips. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“So you’re saying you’ve made no effort to understand our love?”
Her answer was as pure and innocent as a child’s.
“Where would I find the time for that?”
There was no room in her life for anything but love. Not once had she stopped for a moment to wonder where this love had come from, or where it might be taking her.
Her world began and ended at the door of this small apartment.
But outside that little apartment, an important change had occurred since the day of their first meeting, and even more since the day she’d thrown herself into Muhsin’s arms: despite his abiding disgust for her husband, Muhsin had begun to help him.