by Ahmet Altan
When people looked at their relationship, they thought he’d been charmed by a young girl, but he’d long forgotten Dilevser’s age and her body, in which she moved like a thin branch in her elegant clothes, he was in pursuit of the mesmerizing glow of her intelligence. Later he said to Osman, “I don’t know if I was interested in her because I noticed her intelligence from the start, or if I noticed it later.”
Nor did he understand why the young girl concealed her intelligence from other people so jealously. As for Dilevser, she merely smiled at his comments and compliments about her intelligence and said he was exaggerating.
Hikmet Bey established a peaceful balance in his loneliness, he submitted his body to Hediye and his mind to Dilevser, he lived his life with a pleasantly satisfied lust and a mesmerized mind, and indeed he didn’t want this to change at all. He believed he finally possessed the most magnificent balance and peace that was possible, but he knew that it was impossible for things to continue this way, he could see that one day something would upset this balance, that life would drag him to make a decision.
Hediye knew about his interest in Dilevser, but Dilevser didn’t know what he experienced with Hediye, or at least she didn’t appear to. This was clearly unfair, but Hediye bore this unfairness in silence, and as for Hikmet Bey, he wasn’t aware that he was being unfair.
Despite all of the pleasure she derived from long nights of lovemaking, Hediye waited for her own little moment of sin amidst all of the sinful games, the moment after lovemaking when she could nestle against Hikmet Bey and he would embrace her lovingly, even if for a brief moment; when that moment came, she nestled softly against him, leaned her body toward his, and enjoyed the feeling of that moment. No one asked what she thought, but if anyone had asked, she would have said that those brief moments made it possible for her to endure that the man she loved spent his days approaching another woman with love.
She didn’t complain about having to experience this moment without Hikmet Bey knowing, as if she was having an affair; in order to capture this moment she was prepared to do anything, to spend her life leaning against a door, waiting for the night, to accept being ignored during the day, to be seen as pathetic by the entire household of the mansion. But, like Hikmet Bey, she knew things would not continue this way for long, she knew they would take this brief moment from her, they would not let her have what was left over from a stolen life.
Despite her inexperience, despite her lack of knowledge about life, she could sense that no one, not even those who spent their lives with a great love and then lost their loved ones, would feel the pain she would feel when she lost that moment.
Some days, that moment grew longer, Hikmet Bey would lie embracing Hediye, absorbed in his thoughts; although she realized that the man embracing her had something else on his mind, this small, beautiful woman lay without moving, afraid even to breathe, she touched Hikmet Bey’s arms softly with her fingertips, without letting him feel it. After nights like that, the mansion household saw Hediye smiling.
As Hikmet Bey and Hediye had sensed and feared separately, this peaceful and balanced life ended suddenly one night.
The telegram that Hikmet Bey had been awaiting with secret, inner shuddering, the same way Mihrişah Sultan had been awaiting old age, knowing that it would come one day, actually arrived.
It was composed of seven words:
“His Excellency Reşit Pasha has passed away.”
When Hikmet Bey read this telegram he collapsed on the bed, then wept until morning, embracing Hediye and talking to her at length about his father and his own childhood; what was one of Hikmet Bey’s most difficult nights was perhaps the happiest and most cherished of nights for Hediye.
One morning, as Reşit Pasha was making his way as usual to the mansion where the Sultan was residing, he stopped, leaned against a tree, had a heart attack, and died without suffering. Because it was summer and the weather was too hot, they could neither send his remains to Istanbul nor wait for his relatives to come, so Reşit Pasha was buried in Salonika as the exiled Sultan’s physician in a silent ceremony attended by only a few.
If his father had been given a proper funeral or if he had been buried in Istanbul, where his son was, perhaps Hikmet Bey would not have suffered so much, he would not have been wounded by the feeling that his father had been left alone and neglected, would not have felt himself to be so alone and helpless, but that he had not even been able to attend his father’s funeral remained a source of deep pain for him.
The letter his father had written hastily before departing for Salonika was always on his mind; the letter that had given him strength, that unforgettable letter. For his part, he had never told his father what he really felt and thought; Reşit Pasha had always lived with the thought that his son looked down on him.
Later Hikmet Bey told Osman, “I would like to have told him he was a hero, I’ve seen many heroes in my life, people who put their lives in danger, but they all demonstrated their courage for causes they felt and believed must be victorious, but my father sacrificed his final days for someone who had lost and who no longer had any chance of winning. I didn’t have a chance to tell him that I have never seen greater heroism, I never told him how much I respected someone who stood with someone who had lost.”
Now these words he had been unable to utter were added to his regrets in life, and for days he thought about his father and his deserted and lonely grave in Salonika. Even though he knew that it was irrational, he couldn’t escape the feeling that his father was cold there all alone at night. Even though he and his father had had many arguments, conversations that had left behind traces of bitterness, he always remembered his father’s witty, childish expression. In a strange way it was as if he was remembering not his father but his child.
It was not through his own will, not consciously, but instinctively, that he chose Dilevser, who shared her extraordinary intelligence with him, and not Hediye, who gave him a great love and a magnificent body; he started spending more time with her, he found the consolation he sought in their conversations and in the warming brightness of her intelligence; the balance between mind and body had been upset and his lovemaking with Hediye grew colder.
Hediye saw what was approaching more clearly than anyone else and continued to spend her days leaning against the wall outside the library without complaint.
Two weeks after his father’s death, he received a letter from Mehpare Hanım asking him to come. She said she wanted to talk to him. Mehpare Hanım’s voice, her image, even her handwriting had the same effect on him every time, suddenly everything and everyone in the world became insignificant, Mehpare Hanım was in front of a pitch-black screen, alone in a bright light that was shining on her face, and Hikmet Bey felt the same excitement. When he read the letter he noticed that he was so excited his hands had grown cold.
He started pacing around the room, he moved a household ornament, straightened an ashtray, looked out the window, struggled to calm the stirring within him.
When he sat in an armchair he was exhausted.
The excitement rained down on him like the heavy downpours that suddenly struck Istanbul on summer afternoons and then disappeared with the same suddenness as they’d begun, without leaving a trace; there was a deaf disquiet in him, a lack of desire for anything.
When he didn’t want Mehpare Hanım, he didn’t want anything else either, anyone else, but he knew that just like the excitement, this lack of desire would soon vanish and he would become as he had been before he received the letter.
After burning desires, pains, jealousy, scorn, memories that he relived constantly again and again, days and nights of suffering, he consumed Mehpare Hanım in his dreams; until his dying day he would feel that same quivering excitement whenever he heard from Mehpare Hanım, whenever he saw her, whenever he heard her voice, but each time he would wait for it to pass, knowing that it would.
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bsp; That evening he wrote Mehpare Hanım a brief letter, informing her that he would not be able to come because he was busy, but that “if she had any request of him he was prepared to grant it.”
He knew that with that letter, Mehpare Hanım would never return to his life; it wasn’t that he didn’t think about not sending the letter, but in the end he gave the letter to his carriage driver and sent it to his former wife, to the most extraordinary love of his life. But from then on he heard about every development in Mehpare Hanım’s life, that she had an affair with a diplomat from the French Embassy, that Constantine came to Istanbul from time to time; even though his love was over, he continued to take an interest in her from a distance.
Now he waited for Dilevser every morning, talked with her at length about literature, books, writers, life, tried to wash away his past with Dilevser’s intelligence, to purify and heal the wounds that had been left behind, and became increasingly attached to the young girl and her intelligence.
Literature was like a living soul that connected them to each other, it gave color to their conversations, they used books to say what they wanted to say to each other, to reveal their intelligence, to admire each other, to become attached to each other.
In her short, simple sentences, Dilevser said things the like of which had never occurred to Hikmet Bey, his surprise at and admiration for her mingled with each other; he thought he couldn’t live without hearing her voice, without listening to her.
At night he encountered Hediye’s love and silence, which were as terrifying as Dilevser’s intelligence, he felt her softness, the strength with which she carried her desperation, the way she nestled against him, he felt their lovemaking occupied more and more of his life, became an essential part of his life. He said, “Hediye, you are the only truth in my life,” and he believed this was true. No one in his life would ever be as real and as close as Hediye, no one would ever love Hikmet Bey as she did, effacing herself in her love.
Once he told Osman, “If my life had been something breakable, a glass or a vase or something like that, I would have given it to Hediye to hold, anyone but her might leave it behind for a moment absentmindedly, drop it, throw it in a moment of pain, but she would never, under any circumstances, let go of it.”
It was as if God had given Hikmet Bey the woman he wanted, but the devil had divided her in two and made two women, now whichever of them he gave up, something would be missing.
Sometimes he wanted to marry Dilevser, to spend his life with that bright intelligence, educating that intelligence, nourishing it, giving it maturity with his own experiences, conversing with her, sometimes he wanted to do something crazy and surprise all of Istanbul by marrying Hediye, to travel with her, to please this little woman who managed to carry such a great love in silence, to see her be cheerful, to witness her at least once feeling safe enough to laugh sincerely.
One day during that time Dilevser said:
“My mother wants to invite you to dinner.”
When Hikmet Bey went to his neighbor’s mansion that evening, he found Dilara Hanım sadder than he’d ever seen her. Although he talked with Dilevser every day, he hadn’t seen Dilara Hanım for a long time. She was as elegant and attractive as usual, but less talkative and less derisive.
At first she was happy that Ragıp Bey was gone, she felt as if she’d regained her freedom, that her colorful and flirtatious life had been restored, she felt rejuvenated by being freed of a bond that had no future, but then, as the days passed, she began to miss his wild and murderous soul, the security and the fear she experienced when she was with him. When she was with Ragıp Bey, she felt that no one, no power on earth, could touch her, that this man would protect her from everyone, it wouldn’t even occur to anyone to harm her unless they were willing to kill or be killed; perhaps this was the ultimate peak of the sense of security a woman could experience, and no one but a murderer, someone who wouldn’t hesitate to kill, could make a woman feel this sense of security in the same way. The fear she felt of the violence of this power that gave her a sense of security added an incredible excitement to that magnificent sense of security. While she was experiencing these emotions she began to find them ordinary, she thought that she could experience the same feelings every time, but a while after Ragıp Bey left, she felt the unfillable void the man had left behind in her life.
That was when she missed him. For a time she consoled herself with the thought that this longing was temporary, she invited new officers to the house, she experienced different lovemaking, with each man she longed for Ragıp Bey even more, in a strange way, the presence of other men increased the affect Ragıp Bey had on her. The more she compared the men she met to Ragıp Bey, the more attached she became to Ragıp Bey.
In the end she couldn’t contain herself and wrote him a joking letter: “Are you so bored of Istanbul that you don’t even consider visiting?” she asked; despite all of her longing she couldn’t bring herself to write a love letter, even though she was angry at herself she found herself unable to do this.
Dilara Hanım waited for days, but she received no answer to that letter. Dilara Hanım never knew whether the letter had been lost in the mountains of Macedonia, in the hands of careless officials in isolated post offices, or whether Ragıp Bey hadn’t written back because the joking style reinforced his belief that the thing that was missing from his life would only be felt more and he was too proud to accept a life from which something was missing.
All she understood was that she’d lost something she could never regain, and that for a long time she would look for what was missing in every man she met.
She decided to invite Hikmet Bey to dinner partly because she wanted to see the bond between Dilevser and Hikmet Bey, which was growing stronger by the day, with her own eyes, partly because she wanted to have a pleasant evening and ease her pain, and partly because she wanted her soul, which was suffocated by the sternness of the officers who came and went, to be refreshed by the behavior of an elegant man.
Although Hikmet Bey managed to make her laugh during dinner, and even though she enjoyed the courtesy she’d missed so much, Dilara Hanım realized it would be a long time before she could be as cheerful as she’d once been. When she saw the way her daughter and Hikmet Bey looked at each other, when she saw that they’d developed the habit of finishing each other’s sentences, she sensed that the bond between them was more meaningful than she’d thought.
As for Hikmet Bey, the dinner had more of an impact on him than he imagined. Dilara Hanım’s elegance, politeness, manners, delicacy, power, and wealth provided a sturdy frame for Dilevser’s intelligence, which wandered like a lost cloud, in a strange way this enhanced Dilevser’s feminine allure for Hikmet Bey, that night, perhaps for the first time, he felt strongly that he could marry Dilevser.
When he returned home, Hediye was leaning against the wall waiting for him.
After the impressive splendor of Dilevser’s house, filtered through the delicacy particular to wealthy intellectuals, it made Hikmet Bey’s heart sink to see how alone and helpless Hediye looked as she leaned against that wall. She had no family, no wealth, no past, not even a name; she stood there naked in her love, she asked for nothing, she didn’t even have the courage to hope. She offered the only thing she had to offer, herself, and she did so body and soul, without hesitation, with incredible generosity, without leaving even the smallest shelter for herself in her life, without complaint she offered every part of herself to the man she loved, knowing he would never appreciate its value.
This girl demonstrated the same courage in the face of life that Ragıp Bey demonstrated in the face of death, in a different way she gave Hikmet Bey the same sense of security that Ragıp Bey gave Dilara Hanım. Later, Hikmet Bey told Osman, “A sense of security is such a strange thing, the ease you feel when you have it can make you undervalue the sense of security itself.”
When Hikmet Bey saw H
ediye leaning against the wall in the room in which most of the lights had been doused, he was ashamed of what he’d felt in Dilara Hanım’s house, at that moment, even if only briefly, he fell in love with the girl’s desperation, he considered renouncing his own life and marrying Hediye simply to give meaning to someone else’s life, he considered this as seriously as he’d considered marrying Dilevser.
They didn’t make love that night. Hikmet Bey embraced Hediye tightly, he buried his head in her neck and repeated the same sentence until he fell asleep.
“Hediye, you are the only truth in my life.”
That night, as she experienced what she’d most wanted in her life, the night Hikmet Bey embraced her with such love she realized, with an intuition much stronger than Hikmet Bey’s, that the horrible end was approaching, that she was on the verge of losing the man she loved. She waited until Hikmet Bey was asleep, gently eased herself out of his arms, went to the other side of the bed, and, pressing her head into the pillow so that no one would hear her, wept until daybreak. At dawn, she turned the pillow over so no one would notice it was wet, got dressed, and went to her room. Hikmet Bey thought she’d been very happy that night, he never knew she’d wept the way she did.
The following morning Hikmet Bey woke with the irresistible desire to play the piano.
He played the piano for days.
All of the mansions, the neighbors, passersby, indeed the entire city listened to Reşit Pasha’s son Hüseyin Hikmet Bey’s pain, longing, sorrow, indecisiveness, joy, hope, memories, and dreams as sonatas, suites, and concertos; occasionally striking the keys softly, occasionally with strong, angry staccatos, he sought his truth and his future in the sound of the music he played, he looked to the ivory keys for all the answers he couldn’t find in his feelings and thoughts.