by Ahmet Altan
“I’ve never eaten such delicious food in my life, but if I ate it for a month I’d be plump enough to enter the harem.”
Then, with provocative emphasis, she asked the question all French women he met inevitably asked.
“Do you have a harem as well?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Why not?”
“I couldn’t find a harem suitable for me.”
Mademoiselle de Lorenz paused as she struggled to understand what he meant, and frowned as if she was offended.
“You’re making fun of me.”
Hikmet Bey smiled.
“Yes.”
“Have you no shame, Monsieur Hikmet. You’re using my ignorance to mock me.”
“I’m just teasing you. No. I really don’t have the kind of harem you asked about, the kind of harem you imagine only exists in the Sultan’s palace, and perhaps the palaces of a few viziers. Not everyone is cut out to deal with such a large crowd of women.”
Once again Mademoiselle de Lorenz adopted a provocative manner.
“Would you like to have been cut out for that?”
“Occasionally. And would you like to live in a harem like that?”
The girl imitated Hikmet Bey’s voice when she answered.
“Occasionally.”
Just as Mihrişah Sultan had hoped, the dinner continued as a merry and jocular feast during which Hikmet Bey regained his former personality and self-confidence. As he spoke to the others at the table in French that was increasingly brilliant, he told stories as if he was hungry to speak, he answered questions asked out of curiosity, and thoroughly enjoyed the pleasure and confidence of making women laugh, he flattered Mademoiselle de Lorenz and made the other girls jealous, his joyful voice and his health pleased his mother; his levity annoyed Rukiye and after they had coffee he looked at the darkening sky and said that it was time for him to go.
“With your leave, Mother, before the weather gets any worse.”
He politely declined Mihrişah Sultan’s invitation to stay the night. He embraced Rukiye affectionately. He bade farewell to the girls and said he hoped to see them again. He smiled when Mademoiselle de Lorenz said, “I hope you visit your mother often,” and he replied, “You’ll see for yourself how devoted I am to my mother,” then, after kissing Mihrişah Sultan’s hand in gratitude, he left the waterfront mansion feeling he’d regained his strength.
When the launch that had picked him up from the pier reached the other side, he got into the carriage that was waiting for him and hunched in a corner, as he moved away from his mother’s waterfront mansion, her grandeur, Rukiye’s love, Mademoiselle de Lorenz’s attention, and the French ladies’ admiring laughter, he was like a shadow getting smaller as it moved away from the fire, the youth and confidence in his soul faded, and he retreated back into his loneliness, injury, hopelessness, and desperation.
The past would not release him and he could not reach the future. The owner of the pain from the past was far away and as for the future, it seemed meaningless and unattractive enough to lose its promise even during a short voyage by sea.
He walked wearily into the mansion in Nişantaşı. The household had gone to bed, and apart from a few lamps at the head of the stairs, all the lights had been extinguished. The enormous mansion seemed as if it had been abandoned, indeed, in Hikmet Bey’s words “it was as if it had died.” In a panic similar to anger, he almost shouted as he rebuked the housekeeper who opened the door for him.
“Turn all the lights on, what’s going on with this house, you’ve turned it into a mausoleum, I never want to see this place so dark again. The lights are going to burn all night!”
The housekeeper couldn’t reply that for as long as she’d known, the lights had been extinguished every night, with the submissiveness of a flunky she swallowed the rebuke and, as if it was her fault, said, “As you wish, sir,” then she angrily woke all the servants in the house, it was the same kind of anger she’d seen in her master, and had them light all the lamps in the house one by one.
As he climbed the stairs he saw the footmen rushing about to light all the lamps, being careful not to raise their voices as they called to each other, and when he realized that he’d caused a sudden flurry of activity in the mansion, a smile like that of a naughty child, and that did not match his mood, spread across his face. It amused him that people were rushing about like this because of a single command he’d given, that they were taking his ludicrous command seriously, and even though he was ashamed of waking everyone in the middle of the night, this did not keep him from feeling like a naughty child.
When he reached his room he forgot about this brief amusement, and once again he was weighed down by the knowledge that he could not build a new bridge from the past to the future. He had the feeling that every glimmer of hope he had would turn him into a sadder and more anxious man.
He opened the door and went into his room.
A large tiled stove was burning in the center of the wide bedroom, as the room was dark, the red glow of the fire was reflected outwards like a thin, rectangular line from the bottom of the engraved iron door, that rectangular line turned into a mouth, and the rounded stove turned into a creature from a fairy tale.
Hediye stood next to the stove in a tight, shiny, sky-blue dress that reached her ankles; she had probably heard his approach. She peered at Hikmet Bey from under her eyelashes, there was a strange urgency in her eyes, a panic. As usual she looked him over thoroughly, as if she wanted to know in a single glance that he’d returned home in good health, that nothing had happened to him while he was absent from the house, that he hadn’t lost an arm or a leg, that he had not been wounded or shot. As soon as she was certain that the man had returned home in one piece a smile appeared on her face, though it disappeared again quickly. With the surprising instinct of a woman who is attached to a man, no one knows how, she knew that Hikmet Bey was angry.
The light of the red flames that appeared under the stove’s door illuminated the skirts of her blue dress and created a purple halo, a fiery mixing of blue and red just above her soft, white, flat-heeled, buckskin shoes, but it didn’t stop there, it climbed up the shiny folds of her dress, as far as her chest, with a mysterious undulation. Hediye undulated in a vague shimmer in the darkness like a curl of flame that had broken free from a large fire, the motionless white of her face, barely visible, was in strange contrast with her body, which seemed to be undulating because of the play of light.
For a moment Hikmet Bey looked in surprise at the unexpected movement of light in the dark room, when he saw her in the middle of the dark room, which didn’t reveal her beauty and indeed concealed it, he became aware once again of her beauty, which he’d become accustomed to, and indeed more aware than he had been. If he had seen her in daylight he would not have been as moved as he was. This young girl who always effaced herself, who behaved as if she didn’t have an identity, a personality, who even behaved as if she had no being and who in this way even made her beauty almost invisible, seemed to Hikmet Bey to have a new identity, to have gained a new personality, to have become a new person in these moving blue, red, and purple lights, the beauty concealed from Hikmet Bey in daylight appeared now in the darkness.
When Hediye moved toward him and away from the stove, the lights on her blue dress disappeared, as if her body had melted into the deep darkness, though the shadow of her white face became more apparent.
She went up to Hikmet Bey and touched his arm lightly.
“Sit down, sir.”
Hikmet Bey sat on the edge of the bed.
Hediye kneeled and took off his shoes, then undressed him in her usual manner.
“You’re cold, sir. If you’ll allow me, I’ll rub you with lavender water.”
When Hikmet Bey didn’t answer, she poured lavender water into a silver bowl from a bottle she’d prepared earlier, with t
he sound of the water being poured into the bowl, it was as if a lavender mist had spread through the room with the red light from the bottom of the stove. The smell entered with the red light through his half-open eyes and moved into his body, taking him to a land he didn’t know and couldn’t see, but which he believed was beautiful.
“Would you like me to light the lamps?”
“No, merci, it’s fine like this.”
Hediye started rubbing Hikmet Bey’s wrists. When the cool water touched his flesh in that hot room, his entire body felt chilled. She rubbed his arms and shoulders. She made Hikmet Bey lie in the middle of the bed and then climbed onto it and knelt, her feet were bare because she’d taken off her flat-heeled shoes, she was still wearing the ankle-length dress, and as she moved, her lower legs appeared and disappeared. She was to Hikmet Bey’s right, she didn’t move to his left side to rub his left shoulder, she reached from where she was to the left, and as she rubbed, her breasts brushed his face slightly.
Both of them played their parts calmly and with loyalty, as if rubbing Hikmet Bey’s shoulders at that time of night was their real purpose. As he did with all the women who entered his life, Hikmet Bey taught Hediye that there were also games involved in lovemaking and showed her how to derive pleasure from playing them. Now both of them were playing a game they knew well, as the game dragged on they felt their desire increase, but at the same time, with concealed obstinacy, they each waited patiently for the other to give up first. They both knew from shared experience the kinds of rewards patient lovemaking gave to those who were patient.
Besieged by a temptation that penetrated his flesh a bit more with each passing moment in that red, lavender-scented darkness, as hands rubbed his shoulders, breasts touched his face, bare feet touched his legs, and the hardness of the legs he sensed through the silk he touched with his fingertips, Hikmet Bey hadn’t much chance to continue and win this contest of obstinacy with Hediye, who had been trained to constantly control herself and her feelings, and both of them knew this.
Hediye enjoyed transforming from a powerless slave to a powerful mistress, and Hikmet Bey enjoyed transforming from a strong and decisive master to a weak man who had lost his willpower; master and slave changed places as day and night change places. Both of them were aware of how light and time affected their personalities. One of them was pleased to seek the power she needed and the other was pleased to seek the slavery that was familiar to him.
Neither of them knew how long this game took, but in the end Hikmet Bey seized her by the waist and pulled her on top of him and the warmth under the silk covered his body. Hikmet Bey’s hands impatiently tried to unbutton Hediye’s dress but somehow he couldn’t find the buttons, Hediye watched for a while without moving and with a smile that was invisible in the darkness, then unfasted the straps on her shoulders, then in every cell of their bodies they felt the intoxicating touch of the human body and the warmth generated when two bodies touch each other and that makes everything beyond it seem cold and alien.
The red light from the slit at the bottom of the door of the stove now reached the foot of the bed, from there it climbed, losing its sharpness as it spread, moving over the folds of the blue silk dress crumpled in a ball under Hediye’s feet, reaching the bed as a shadowy red light; this did not lessen the darkness but changed its color and made it slightly reddish; in this pale light Hediye’s body, like a silver fish, became brighter, and Hikmet Bey disappeared beneath her completely.
Hediye’s face was above Hikmet Bey’s, when she lowered her head toward the man, her long hair poured over the pillow in all directions like a black waterfall, two faces were lost under the undulating cover of her soft, shiny hair, and their breaths mingled. Hediye touched her lips lightly to his; Hikmet Bey had taught her to kiss on the lips, at first she’d found it strange and had even tried to avoid it a few times; she didn’t know about kissing this way. As Hikmet Bey said to Osman, “At that time, who was there in the Ottoman Empire who knew about kissing.” Then she discovered the crisp, fresh taste of lips, unlike that of any other part of the human body, she liked to touch them with her tongue, to take little bites, to take his lips between hers and suck them like an aromatic fruit. They began to kiss passionately for a long time, enjoying it fully, as if they’d gathered their entire bodies into their lips, feeling each touch throughout their bodies; kissing like this drove them mad with excitement. As Hikmet Bey said later, he didn’t enjoy kissing any woman as much as he enjoyed kissing Hediye, not even Mehpare Hanım, no other woman had been able to bring all of her passion and desire into her lips as much as she did.
It gave Hikmet Bey immense pleasure to feel a woman’s entire body in her lips, it was as if he was being swept up in an otherworldly adventure, those kisses bore the weight of whatever he’d experienced, protected him and sheltered him from reality; as he grasped her waist and pressed her body against his, he murmured with gratitude and excitement.
“You are my only truth, Hediye.”
Even though he said this in the ardor of making love, he believed what he was saying and Hediye remembered those words for the rest of her life. No gift that the man to whom she’d given her body, soul, and being ever gave her made her as happy as this short utterance. In that bed, for the first time, she believed that she had a special place in Hikmet Bey’s life, that she had a special significance for him.
She moved her lips to his ear and made a sound that only someone who heard could understand.
“Ah, Hikmet Bey . . . ”
She wasn’t able to say anything more; for her to find the courage to utter his name when they were making love was a great and deep declaration of love in the private language only the two of them could understand.
There, they created a love with long kisses and short utterances, a love they could only experience when they made love, and which they pretended didn’t exist in all other circumstances.
On that snowy night, as they made love with mad desire in that reddish darkness, neither knew that at that moment plans were being made for a murder that would shake the entire Ottoman Empire, and that with two gunshots the following morning, their lives and everyone else’s would change.
10
There were things the dead didn’t know either, and, according to Osman, they tried to conceal some truths even after they died, they tried to rewrite their lives in the way they wanted. They assumed a strange silence about the shooting of Hasan Fehmi Bey, the leading journalist of the Serbesti newspaper, on the Galata Bridge by an unknown assailant, the first step toward a great riot that would shake the Ottoman Empire, they said they had no knowledge of that murder. Only Ragıp Bey, with his accustomed openness, said, “They went to great lengths to keep the details of the murder hidden, but I heard from friends that it was Abdülkadir Bey who shot the journalist, though I don’t know whether what they told me was correct.” It was clear from his tone that he believed this was true, and also that he disliked Abdülkadir Bey, one of the notorious Committee gunmen. Osman and all of the other dead believed that Cevat Bey, who was on the organization’s central committee, had information about this but, with his usual seriousness he said, “I was in Berlin when the murder was committed, I’d gone there to meet Enver Bey.”
They received news of the murder during a spectacular ball at the imperial palace in Berlin, a ball that Enver Bey wanted to forget for the rest of his life and that Cevat Bey could not forget, that he hid among his memories like a burst of controlled laughter and that caused a smile to spread across his face each time he recalled it.
Chandeliers the size of a man emitted thousands of droplets of light that multiplied in intricate yellowish patterns like water flowing over amber-colored pebbles, creating the sensation of bathing in water made of light. The distinguished officers of the Hassa Regiment in their multicolored uniforms and medals that glowed proudly on their chests like little torches wandered through this sea of light, conversing
with beautiful, ivory-skinned women in long white gowns who moved as if they were gliding; an unnamable fragrance composed of hundreds of different perfumes gave a feminine charm to the entire volcano of color and light, and Cevat Bey would never see anything like this again.
Cevat Bey, dizzied by that magnificent and glamorous night, was so intoxicated by this complex and indescribable scent that it settled in his entire soul and in his entire mind to the extent that he sought it every time he heard the word “woman,” he sought this scent that no woman could possess on her own, and like almost everything he sought in life, he could not find this either.
As the orchestra was tuning up, Cevat Bey was trying to talk to Enver Bey in a corner of the hall, but because German officers and diplomats, who treated this young and silent officer as if he was a prince, kept coming over to chat with him and flatter him, he didn’t get the chance. For his part, Enver Bay was so flattered by the respect he was being shown and the praise that was being showered on him that he didn’t pay much attention to Cevat Bey. Cevat Bey wearied of this and started glancing around for friends scattered in the crowd when a palace official approached them and, after greeting Enver Bey respectfully, spoke to them in a low voice as if he was telling them a secret.
“Her Majesty the Princess awaits your excellency in her quarters, sir.”
Enver Bey flushed, turned his head, and looked at the man in surprise, then when he realized from his expression that Cevat Bey was as surprised as he was, he nodded silently and followed the herald. This short man held himself erect as he made his way through the crowd, looking more like a commander going to war than a man who was on his way to meet a woman.
Feeling out of place in this colorful crowd in his grey uniform and red fez and unable to overcome the rocklike tension he felt as everyone else moved about at ease as if they were part of the lights, Cevat Bey retreated to a column, disquieted by being left alone. Hesitating to confess even to himself that he was in awe of this crowd, these lights, the music which had just started, the beauty of the women, the attractiveness of the men’s uniforms and feeling the strange sense of deprecation whose source he couldn’t grasp and that increased his admiration of these foreigners, he started to watch what was going on around him. Without realizing it, he placed his heels together as if he was standing at attention and clasped his hands behind his back because he didn’t know what else to do with them; he realized he was not and could never be part of the merriment that was flowing around him, and worse than this, he sensed that his own country could never reach this level of wealth, splendor, and power that made itself felt even when these people were amusing themselves, though he couldn’t identify who or what he should be angry at for this.