In the Shadow of the Yali

by Suat Dervis

  For three months she’d been carrying the weapon inside her, the weapon that would ensure his surrender.

  Forgetting what a formidable enemy Muhsin could be.

  He was not to be felled so easily.

  He had everything on his side—a huge fortune, his life experience, his influence, and his friends.

  Celile was still in bed when he finally went into the bedroom.

  Her face was yellow and waxen. Her red hair spread out over the pillows.

  The air stank of cologne and medicine.

  Muhsin was still in a rage. But when he saw her white lips and her red eyes, anger at once gave way to compassion.

  She’d been crying!

  He felt the same again as he’d felt when he’d first found her spread across her bed as if she’d fainted: terrified of losing her.

  Feeling so bad to have upset her.

  “Celile, my darling. What happened? Did I say something to upset you?”

  Never in her life had Celile seen as dark a look as she saw now in Muhsin’s eyes.

  This was the gaze of an enemy. She closed her eyes so as not to see.

  He repeated his question. In the tone of an interrogating judge.

  “It’s three and a half months. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Eyes still closed, she moaned, “I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure.”

  A thirty-five-year-old woman. A modern woman who had felt no shame at leaving her husband, and who now felt no shame at having a child out of wedlock. Here she was, too ashamed to tell her lover about the child.

  She thought she could fool him, play him like a toy.

  “You shouldn’t have hidden this from me,” he said. “It would have been better if I’d known from the beginning. You should have told me.”

  Celile was biting her lips to keep from crying. She fell back onto her pillows.

  “I was ashamed,” she sobbed.

  She was still playing to win, he thought. Well then, it was time for her to understand that he was not the sort of man who could fall for a game like this. She had to learn here and now that this nonsense was to stop.

  He had made up his mind.

  As much as he loved her, he needed her to understand that her behavior was unacceptable.

  So he spoke in a voice that was not to be disobeyed.

  “We have to help you get rid of this baby as soon as we can. I’ll call Dr. Raif. Not to invite him to supper. But to save us from this burden.”

  With that, he left her to pace the sitting room.

  He could not forget what Celile had done. He never would.

  He could forgive her anything. Anything but this ugly trick.

  In a single blow she had revealed her true nature and her true aims.

  In seeking to tie him with a child—in hiding a pregnancy for three and a half months—she’d had in mind to blackmail him.

  If this were not her purpose, wouldn’t she have alerted him much sooner?

  Seeing as it was his child as much as it was hers.

  Seeing as the decision to bring a child into the world was a decision to be made jointly.

  Mushin was not the sort of man to bow to blackmail.

  Now he understood why he had never fully trusted her.

  To think how he might be feeling today, had he ever made that mistake.

  He would show her now. Show her how impervious he was to her little scheme.

  He was no fool, and he had no time for games.

  NINETEEN

  After Muhsin left her side, Celile slowly pulled herself up in bed.

  Burden! That had been his word for it.

  This child she could now feel growing inside her, this helpless creature that was as much his as it was hers—

  He’d called it a burden.

  How could a child be a burden? All over the world people had children. So why, when Celile had her chance, was it suddenly a burden?

  It would have not one but two living parents. And it was hardly coming to an impoverished household. The child would not be a burden to its father, and neither would it stop its mother from working, in the unlikely event that the need ever arose. There was no reason why this poor creature should count as a burden for its mother.

  If Muhsin truly loved her, if he genuinely wished to spend the rest of his life with her, then this child could not be a burden. It would only be a burden if this were not so.

  When a child was born, it needed a name, an identity, and a future.

  And Muhsin would therefore be obliged to formalize his relationship with Celile by making her his legal wife.

  So when he used the word burden, he was not thinking of Celile but himself.

  A burden that would force him to marry Celile.

  Thereby committing himself for life to a woman he did not know how long he would love, a woman he might already have stopped loving.

  She had to face the facts.

  Muhsin did not love her as much as she’d thought. Remembering that look of hatred in his eyes, she felt her whole body trembling.

  She had never seen him wear that expression before. It had made him look like a different person. No, she did not recognize this man who had shown her such hatred.

  She did not know this new Muhsin at all. She’d never thought he could look at her with such hatred.

  From the moment she’d seen him oppose this child, she’d felt a powerful desire begin to burn inside her—to oppose his wishes.

  Body and soul, she set herself against his decision to destroy this new life.

  This new life that had so frightened her at first, this life she had feared might bring her own life to an end—this unformed creature was now a most precious presence.

  She was willing to do anything, anything, to protect it.

  She had never wished for a child. She had thought she never would.

  She’d feared it might kill her, as it had done her mother.

  She still did not wish to become a mother. If she could turn back the clock, she would.

  At the same time, she wanted to be persuaded that none of these dangers she so feared were real.

  Now that nature had brought her this child, she was ready to be a mother.

  She accepted this responsibility with pride. She undertook to do everything in her power to honor it.

  It grieved her deeply that Muhsin might not love her. But now that she knew he wished to rip this new life from her body, she was starting to hate him.

  Meanwhile, she tried to reason with herself: “Muhsin is right…What could this child be but a burden? Its father doesn’t love me anymore. It could put my own life in danger. It would be madness to bring such a life into the world. What have I made of my own life, after all? How much happiness have I known? If I did bring this child into the world—what could I promise it? What hope for this child, with a mother as hopeless, pointless, idle, and miserable as me?”

  With this question, she fell into despair.

  So when she heard the shout through the door—”The doctor’s here!”—she admitted him to the room without objection.

  And without objection, she took herself to Maçka and the clinic where they saved her from the burden.

  Celile spent five days in Dr. Raif’s clinic.

  Though the procedure had gone off without a hitch, it had left Celile badly shaken.

  She spent those five days in a little room with white walls, and windows looking out onto the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Princes’ Islands.

  It was painful to spend five days apart from Muhsin.

  Since dispatching Celile with such haste to the clinic, he had not come to see her once.

  He had wanted to visit her. But he was too well known. If he showed his face at the clinic, everyone would know who the patient was and what s
ort of ailment she’d come in for.

  Thanks to Ahmet, Muhsin had been dragged into a scandal.

  All the gossips of the city were on the lookout for the next installment.

  “Muhsin Demirtaş has made his mistress have an abortion!”

  For this, he could be blackmailed.

  And if, God forbid, Ahmet got wind of it, it could end up becoming a police matter.

  As much as he longed to see Celile, Muhsin had thought it wiser to stay away.

  Meanwhile, Celile suffered alone and in agony, convinced that Muhsin no longer loved her.

  The proof had been in his expression, in his harsh decision to abort the child without so much as a thought for Celile’s feelings.

  He did not wish to have a child with her. He balked at the prospect of the bond a child might create. He did not wish to marry her. He did not love her.

  These were her thoughts throughout her five-day stay at the clinic, surrounded by white walls and white-uniformed nurses whose faces were as blank as the walls.

  Dr. Raif came to see her several times a day to tell her that Muhsin had phoned him to send his greetings. Dr. Raif treated her like a close friend.

  Every morning, Muhsin sent a beautiful bouquet. But that was all! No sign of the man himself.

  It hurt her so deeply to have lost his love.

  When she first fell in love with him, she had never anticipated that she might one day suffer such pain.

  Now she was so miserable she could die. She could not smile, except to be polite.

  On the day she returned to the apartment in Nişantaşı, she found Muhsin waiting at the door.

  He embraced her with genuine longing. He had missed her.

  There was no mistaking the flames of desire in his embrace, his cheeks, his neck, his hair, his lips.

  “How I’ve missed you, Celile! How very much I’ve missed you!”

  How was Celile to respond to those words?

  “But you look so pale,” he said. “You’re all right, aren’t you?”

  “I’m very well,” said Celile. “I’m glad to have been spared that burden.”

  Muhsin chose not to read the hidden meaning.

  “You’re glad, too, aren’t you?” Celile asked. And then, without a smile, without a hint of irony, she added: “You’ve been spared, too!”

  By now they had moved further into the house. Reaching the bedroom, Celile turned her back.

  “Let me change, and then I’ll call you.”

  Once she was alone, she fell onto the chaise longue, facedown.

  For the first time ever, she had taken no pleasure in seeing Muhsin. For the first time ever, his lips and his caress had not lit the flame of desire.

  “How very much he’s hurt me!” she thought. She felt a void open up inside her.

  She had felt this empty and lonely once before. This had been at Çeşmiahu Hanım’s bedside—when her grandmother closed her eyes to the world for the last time. Leaving her bereft. A single thought had passed through her like a cold wind: she had no one left in the world. No one.

  She felt that same cold wind now. As it ripped through her heart, she shivered like a naked, hungry child.

  “What will become of me if I don’t love him?”

  She felt as weak and frail as she had on the day of her grandmother’s death. She could not hold back the tears.

  Muhsin stood bewildered at the door. She had not responded to his kisses. She had been listless in his embrace. Once again, he had to marvel.

  They had not seen each other for five days, but coming into the apartment, she’d hardly acknowledged him. She’d dismissed him like an annoyance. She had not invited him into the bedroom.

  “I’ll change,” she’d said, “and then I’ll call you!”

  She was treating him like a stranger. She was furious at him. Exceedingly furious.

  Muhsin did not wish to admit to himself that he had been harsh with her and hurt her badly.

  Egotist that he was, he preferred to find fault in her.

  She must, he thought, be sulking because he’d foiled her little plot.

  However!

  Hearing her sobs, he was again amazed.

  She was crying like a little child.

  He opened the door and went in. Celile was still lying facedown on the chaise longue.

  What was wrong with her?

  Celile was asking herself the same question.

  If she no longer loved Muhsin, why did it upset her so, that Muhsin no longer loved her?

  When she said his name, she felt the same as she might if she were remembering a loved one who’d passed away.

  Yes, Muhsin was dead to her now. But she still loved the Muhsin who was no longer. She loved him as she loved her grandmother. She was long gone, but Celile still loved and missed her.

  Now something had died between her and Muhsin. And Celile was crying for the Muhsin who was no longer.

  “Why are you crying?”

  Was this a new ploy, he wondered, to trap him into marriage? What did this woman want from him?

  “Tell me why you’re crying,” he demanded. “Please.”

  And then he added, “Or are you angry with me? Are you angry I didn’t come to visit? Try and be reasonable. I couldn’t show my face there. People would have recognized me. And then they would have known who you were, and known we were still involved. They would have guessed what kind of procedure you’d had. We already know how many enemies I have among my friends. Why give them what they want? You have no right to take offense. I couldn’t come, Celile. Just think about it…”

  Celile could think about it, perhaps. But she could never tell him what she thought. Celile couldn’t speak. She was still crying.

  She did not wish to explain her tears to him. She did not want him to see her so exposed.

  “I was in close touch all along. As much as I could be, without being with you in the flesh. I was always calling Dr. Raif to ask how you were. You got my flowers, didn’t you? And my cards?”

  “Yes, Muhsin, I did,” she sobbed. “And thank you.”

  Dr. Raif had told him that Celile was still weak and would greatly benefit from a few weeks of fresh air.

  So Muhsin decided to take a week off work and spend it with Celile in a quiet hotel on the Bosphorus.

  They took adjoining bedrooms that led out into a large hall.

  During their five days apart, Muhsin had come to understand that he’d never manage to live without her.

  But his hunger for her, and his thirst—these things still irked him.

  He was hoping to keep these needs in check by spending an entire week with her, without interruption.

  The hotel, which had once been home to an Ottoman minister, was a quiet place. Large sofas, and large halls whose windows opened onto the sea.

  There were six of these windows in their private hall. All overlooking the sea. They ate their meals here, where no one could see them.

  Muhsin had hoped that he’d start missing her less after five days alone with her, but…

  His thirst was still not sated. Because even when he held her in his arms, he could sense Celile’s absence.

  She was no longer with him. On the surface she was still the same quiet and well-mannered woman, but she was no longer with him.

  She did not wish to argue with him. She did not say a word.

  Wouldn’t laugh. Wouldn’t even smile.

  He could tell that she was in pain.

  There were dark rings under her eyes. Her skin had a yellow tinge to it. No more golden flecks in her eyes. Her eyes had grown darker.

  No, he thought. A worldly disappointment would never have this effect.

  Muhsin could see that he had upset her very deeply.

  So now he wanted to make amends.


  He needed the old Celile back. The Celile who never was offended, who loved and embraced him with such warmth.

  The old Celile!

  It was his fault that the old Celile wasn’t here with him.

  He had scared her away.

  So now he made an effort to find her and bring her back.

  He’d never tried to spoil her. Only love her. But now he wanted to spoil her.

  Anything to see a smile on her face and hear her utter sweet words.

  She was so different from any woman he’d ever known.

  She expressed her love so differently from any other.

  The same held for the way she took offense.

  Another woman would complain, argue, grumble, cry, and scream and shout—and all the while excuse her own behavior, seek to put all the blame on him.

  But Celile did not say a word. She did not explain herself. Nor did she ask the same of him.

  She’d cried just once. And then she’d stopped.

  She let him kiss her. But she did not respond to his caress.

  She was quiet and polite.

  When Muhsin spoke to her, she’d offer a short, clipped response that made further conversation impossible.

  When he didn’t address her, she said nothing. She acted as if she were alone in her room. She’d sit for hours in her chair, eyes closed, silent and still.

  For Muhsin, all this was torture.

  Celile was no longer happy with him. And how could Muhsin find pleasure in this woman when she was so miserable?

  The fact remained that he wanted this miserable woman to be happy again. He wanted the old Celile back. The old, unruffled Celile, who never held a grudge. Who had loved him so dearly.

  He needed her back. But he couldn’t find her. What had once held them together, without need of words—it was gone.

  With all his heart he longed to make it up to her. He would love her not for two days, or five days, but forever. There was no need to strengthen his commitment by getting married. If he did not wish to marry, it was not because he didn’t love her.

  Celile needed to understand this. She needed to understand his reasons. Muhsin wasn’t just anyone, after all. He carried the name his family had made for itself over three generations. He had his high place in society to preserve.