Love in the Days of Rebellion

by Ahmet Altan

  As black-cloaked muezzins climbed the minarets, white with snow, that had been erected like long fingers pointing to God, to recite the morning call to prayer and announce to the city that a new day and a new prayer time had arrived, Hikmet Bey, like every sinner who has made love to someone other than the person they loved and derived pleasure from it, came to the painful realization that the person he loved could also derive pleasure from someone else, he thought about Mehpare Hanım as he fell asleep, his weary body satisfied by pleasure and his mind tormented by jealousy. He wondered what Mehpare was doing at that moment and, realizing he didn’t want to know, pressed himself against Hediye’s warmth and drifted into unknowable dreams in which his face once again resembled a pansy.

  When he woke in the morning he felt stronger than he had for some time, it was as if he had regained the pride and the manhood he’d lost; when he turned in bed and stretched like a big cat, he saw the woman who’d given him so much pleasure sitting in a chair by the head of the bed. She was wearing a long velvet navy-blue dress with a raised collar that was fastened with a button and the same silver belt she’d been wearing before. The dark rings under her eyes were traces of the previous night; it was probably because of the color of the dress that these rings also seemed navy blue and this gave her face a weary but somehow more meaningful expression; when she saw he was awake she smiled and it surprised him to see her smile, for some reason it had never occurred to him that she could smile at him, that they could have this kind of relationship.

  “Would you like me to bring your breakfast or would you prefer to have it in the dining room, sir?”

  Hikmet Bey was ashamed to have breakfast in his room with Hediye as if they were newlyweds.

  “Tell them to put breakfast out for me in the dining room.”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  When Hediye left the room he dressed hurriedly because he was shy of her returning and seeing him naked. He was tying his tie when she entered.

  “They’re preparing your breakfast.”

  After hesitating a moment, and with the natural closeness only women could show when sharing privacy, she said, “They’ve lit the fire in the bathhouse, aren’t you going to wash?”

  He worried that the inhabitants of the waterfront mansion would make fun of him, so he answered angrily:

  “No, I’ll bathe when I get to my own home, there’s no need now.”

  “As you wish.”

  “Is the Pasha here?”

  “They left early this morning, sir.”

  Hikmet Bey relaxed, he didn’t want to see his father this morning, he realized his father was also reluctant to see him; both of them felt they shouldn’t see each other for some time so that they could digest their complicity.

  He didn’t touch the olives with thyme, the jams, the cheeses brought specially from the four corners of the empire, hard-boiled eggs, pastries, honey that smelled of flowers, fresh cream, and butter which had been prepared for him and hurriedly drank his tea as Hediye and the housekeeper stood watching him, then he turned to the housekeeper.

  “Tell them to get the carriage ready, I’m going to look at my new house.”

  “The carriage is ready, Hikmet Bey, we can go whenever you wish.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the mansion in Nişantaşı.”

  Hikmet Bey grumbled angrily like an overindulged son of a Pasha.

  “I know that, what do you mean when you say we’re going.”

  “The Pasha ordered me to stay with you for a while and get the house in order.”

  Then she nodded toward Hediye.

  “She’s coming with us.”

  Hikmet Bey realized that dragging his feet was only going to make things more difficult.

  “Then get ready as quickly as you can.”

  “We’re ready, we’ll just put on our abiyas and we can leave.”

  The two women hurried out of the room so as to not annoy him further, Hikmet saw the hurt in Hediye’s eyes, but tried not to pay any heed; the poor girl realized that the man who had shared everything with her the night before wanted to go away and leave her there.

  The two women returned a few minutes later in their abiyas and carrying bundles, they got into the carriage without speaking and remained silent all the way to the mansion in Nişantaşı; they were frightened by Hikmet Bey’s irritability. The housekeeper realized he was irritable because he was ashamed, but Hediye wasn’t in a position to understand this, she thought he didn’t like her.

  The two-story stone mansion was situated in a large garden, a pebbled driveway led to a large door, there were five steps leading to the door, there was another, similar two-story stone mansion, surrounded by low walls, on the other side of the garden, but Hikmet Bey didn’t even look at it, he had no intention of being neighborly.

  The interior of the mansion resembled that of the one in Şişli where he’d lived with Mehpare Hanım, or at least that morning Hikmet Bey thought it looked similar to his old house; the servants had cleaned the house, lit all the stoves, and built fires in the fireplaces before the master’s arrival, it was nice and warm in the house.

  As soon as Hikmet Bey entered the house he tersely ordered a fire to be lit for his bath, when they told him this had already been done he became even more irritated. He found fault with everyone and everything, striding through the house in a rage that made the servants’ knees tremble, commanding them to move one piece of furniture after another and then, when the footmen and maids picked the furniture up to move it, angrily telling them to leave it where it was. He was aware that his irritable manner was unbecoming, but he couldn’t control himself.

  In the end he went to take his bath and let the inhabitants of the mansion breathe a sigh of relief; the large, marble-floored room was filled with lavender-scented steam, the Italian bathtub had been placed under nickel-plated faucets from Austria. He undressed and was about to step into the tub when Hediye entered, bowed her head, and asked in a wounded voice if he needed anything.

  In her heavy, navy-blue dress she looked odd in that steamy room, and when he looked at her he involuntarily remembered how she looked naked and the pleasure she’d given him the previous night; when he remembered this he suddenly wondered what Mehpare Hanım was doing at that moment, but remembering Mehpare didn’t keep him from desiring this girl, nor did desiring this girl help him get Mehpare off his mind. It was as if he was tangled in a chain, as he desired the girl he remembered Mehpare Hanım more often and became even more jealous, but he couldn’t stop desiring that girl.

  He spoke as if he was rebuking her.

  “You’ll get sweaty here in that dress.”

  She could have interpreted these words in two ways, she could either leave so as not to sweat or she could take off the dress; Hikmet Bey left the decision to her, for some reason he was ashamed to express his desire openly. Hediye wasn’t sure of what he was saying, of what he wanted, she stepped forward through the steam and looked at his face; that morning she sensed she could only ascertain what he wanted from his expression rather than from his words.

  In spite of his shouting, his anger, the way he spoke to everyone as if he was scolding them, there was a pleading expression in Hikmet Bey’s eyes. This morning he was ashamed to tell this girl, who was prepared to do anything he wished, what he wanted, perhaps what made him bashful was the thought that the footmen and maids would know about their relationship and that what happened between them would become public knowledge, it disturbed him to realize that after all he’d lived through the only woman in his life was a Circassian concubine and that everyone knew about it.

  Hediye started to unbutton her dress, but as she did so she couldn’t resist taking her womanly revenge, she unbuttoned the little buttons with maddening slowness, using this slowness to show him that even in a relationship in which she had no voice only a wom
an could master herself and create a space for herself, even if it be insignificant, to pay him back for the hurt of wanting her so much when they were alone and humiliating her when they were with others. Hikmet Bey realized what she was doing and noticed that she was displaying an unbecoming artlessness, he smiled and decided there and then to not treat her badly in front of others, and as she undressed he realized that this was in fact what constituted his bad behavior.

  He smiled.

  “You seem to be having trouble taking that off, do you need my help?”

  “I can take it off myself, sir.”

  “Why do you call me sir every time you open your mouth?”

  “That’s what I was always taught.”

  Hikmet Bey bowed his head toward the bathtub.

  “Ok, then, let’s take it off, sir.”

  This little joke worked right away and Hediye unbuttoned her dress very quickly. Hikmet Bey was truly surprised when he saw that she wasn’t wearing anything under the dress.

  After that, he treated her like a lady and made the servants treat her the same way; Hediye demonstrated that she deserved this treatment by not changing her attitude and her respectful manner. Hikmet Bey felt that the bond between them was strengthening every day; this wasn’t love, he was still in love with Mehpare Hanım and would never love Hediye in the same way, but it seemed as if this young girl had become part of his body, he always wanted her with him, he liked being with her, bathing with her, sleeping with her, joking with her, it wouldn’t have been easy to give her up, at times he surprised her and made her happy with expensive gifts, and was always curious if Mehpare Hanım had experienced the same kind of thing.

  There was no one in this enormous city from whom he could get any news about Mehpare Hanım, her relatives had already passed away, he couldn’t have asked them even if they were alive, indeed it was impossible for him to ask about the wife who’d left him for another man. He wanted to know what Mehpare Hanım was experiencing, he couldn’t overcome his curiosity even though he knew it would hurt him, that it would sadden him, that it might even distance him from Hediye, who lately had been the greatest joy in his life.

  At that time there were only two people in the capital who knew what Mehpare Hanım was experiencing with that Greek womanizer in Khalkidhiki, one of them was Hasan Efendi, who never forgot that beautiful woman even when everyone else did, as if he wanted to demonstrate that enemies could be more loyal than friends, and who gathered information about her in ways that only he knew about, and the other was sheikh Yusuf Efendi, who knew everything Hasan Efendi knew. They both knew that Mehpare Hanım was very happy and didn’t care what the world thought, and this caused them as much pain as it would have caused Hikmet Bey if he’d known.

  5

  Three days after celebrating the New Year in Khalkidhiki, Mehpare Hanım returned to Salonica with Constantine, believing that the gossip would have subsided by then, and Salonica greeted the beautiful woman with the smell of eucalyptus trees, which had been sharpened by winter rains.

  Despite being controlled by Muslims, the city breathed in Christian smells such as the scent of flowers from the gardens of the wealthy neighborhood where it seemed the silence would never be broken, the smell of beer and fried calamari from the beer halls that lined the shore, the smell of seaweed and the sea along the shore, the smell of cocoa, milk, and vanilla emanating from the patisseries, the smell of cognac and women from the cafes chantants.

  The declaration of liberty was felt more strongly here than it was in the capital, political life was being experienced with such enthusiasm that it seemed as if it could turn into a fairground fight at any moment.

  Minority communities and socialist and liberal parties organized meetings and congresses to draw up their own roadmaps of the new life they assumed would be established in the empire. For their part the Committee members who had left their mark on the city were bewildered and disquieted even though they had become legendary throughout the empire, they were frightened by the power they’d seized so suddenly, this power weighed heavily on their shoulders, and they couldn’t come to the fore in governing the nation.

  There was such a dangerous uncertainty in the nation, no one could bring themselves to seize the reins of power, everyone feared their hands would be scalded and they would pay for this with their lives; even though there was a sultan, a cabinet, a parliament, the Committee for Union and Progress, which had brought about the declaration of constitutional monarchy and that was considered powerful, and political parties of various stripes, no one was governing the nation and short-term decisions were dragging the nation toward disaster.

  The liberty that had been greeted with celebration was turning into an angry and impassioned anarchy that presaged a bloody future presided over by an administration unaccustomed to governance.

  In those strange and confusing days, as the empire experienced an irritable joy on the eve of bloody tumult, no one noticed Mehpare Hanım settle into her Greek lover’s large mansion outside the city. Just like the empire itself, she was experiencing the freest, most enthusiastic, most restless, and happiest days of her own history.

  Her life had never been so uncertain, her future had never seemed so uncharted, but, perhaps for the first time, she was not frightened by this uncertainty, on the contrary, it intensified her desire to live, her desire to cling to life like someone clinging to a branch on the edge of a cliff.

  The wild restlessness of her flesh had always suffocated a soul that had been pampered by the confidence of knowing she had always and would always be loved, this restlessness grew within a discomfiting silence, meeting no obstacles and turning her into a nervous, irritable, and selfish person who constantly sought to satisfy her flesh. Now, for the first time, she’d met a pampered, selfish man who was as accustomed to being loved as she was and who gave the impression he could slip through her fingers at any moment, she learned about jealousy, worry, the fear of loss, and that the soul that had always been comfortable and satisfied confronted the hungry flesh that always expected to be satisfied, and it experienced the same painful hunger as the flesh for the first time.

  The new restlessness that had become a part of her life broke her body’s insatiable dominance and created an equilibrium and balance between her flesh and her soul and, strangely, this equilibrium calmed her, yes, she was more restless than she had been in the past; now she was curious about where Constantine went, who he met, when he returned, whether he had other women in his life, was he tired of her, and she struggled to make out the meaning of the man’s every move, every glance, every change in tone. She no longer had any tolerance for other people, she didn’t just pay attention to her man in bed but at every hour of the day, she wanted no one but him, she wanted to be alone with him all the time.

  All of this brought her a kind of unhappiness she’d never known, as well as a kind of happiness she’d never known. Despite the small disappointments and worries she was pleased to experience this happiness she’d never known, for the first time since the unfortunate day she’d married sheikh Yusuf Efendi, she left the bedroom and spread out into salons, gardens, and cities.

  With an almost animalistic instinct, Constantine nourished her happiness and her unhappiness in the same manner, he allowed both of these feelings to run side by side, never allowing either to pass the other, as if he was driving a two-horse carriage.

  On the days he walked next to her among the trees in the garden, holding her hand as he whispered his love to her, embracing her from time to time, and leaning her against a tree trunk for a long kiss, he entertained her with talk about ancient Greek philosophy, poetry, mythology, and other topics she’d had no idea he was knowledgeable about, as well as about his childhood, in a voice that was occasionally as deep and vibrant as that of an Olympian god and occasionally as loud and boastful as that of a young Greek tough down by the harbor. Sometimes after a night during which he
always added a surprising new element, a new touch or word or pain to their love games, his soft touch and strong embraces alternately manly or womanly, making her feel deeply the music of one skin touching another, she would wake happy and grateful only to find he had disappeared, causing her to pace fretfully, full of doubt and melancholy, wondering where her man had gone.

  He turned their relationship into a grand voyage, full of surprises and adventures, that had no destination yet always promised the arrival in an ever-peaceful harbor.

  Mehpare Hanım, who could never confine herself to a single feeling, was constantly distracted and dazzled by excitement, by the storm of changing feelings, she never had the time to be bored by any one feeling, neither happiness nor unhappiness, joy nor sorrow, yearning nor being reunited.

  She found happiness in this pain she had newly encountered and that was nourished by doubt and worry; this beautiful and witty woman who was afraid of boredom and distress was capable of deriving pleasure from pain.

  The secret of her being able to transform worry, doubt, and jealously into pleasure was the hidden confidence she had that she could turn the tables on Constantine and could wrap him around her little finger as she had other men; this confidence allowed her to submit to pain without doubt, and unlike many people, she didn’t flee from pain, indeed on the contrary she feared that this pain would end and that the turmoil of the intoxicating tides in which she lived would run its course.

  After many years of living in security, what she needed now was restlessness, doubt, and disquiet; as she told Osman once, “Everyone seeks what they lack, even when what they seek is something others fear finding.”

  Even though from afar it might have seemed as if Mehpare Hanım was the one who was being scarred, and indeed she was, it discomfited Constantine, who had never encountered anything of this kind, that she desirously abandoned herself to pain and jealousy and derived pleasure from it, and this prodded him to nourish his emotional outbursts. He had difficulty understanding why Mehpare Hanım didn’t flee from pain the way other women did, why she didn’t try to pressure him into establishing a more secure life or try to prevent the flings he was having.