The Stone Woman

by Tariq Ali

  My relationship with Halil, while affectionate, had always been slightly formal. Ever since they were children, Zeynep and he had been close. This had nothing to do with their having a mother in common. They had always exchanged confidences and there was a temperamental affinity as well. Both of them were much more introvert than Salman and myself. Halil, in particular, could also be very secretive. Take his marriage, for example.

  He met Catherine almost twenty years ago at a tea party in Istanbul. The Countess Galfalvy was an old family friend, then in her eighties. She was from an old Greek family and had run away in her youth with an impoverished Hungarian count. She spent her life on his family estate, where they had three rooms to themselves. The meals were shared with the family. Her late husband, Gyorgy, had been a painter. He must have painted over a hundred portraits of her during their life together and in every imaginable pose.

  In her youth she had been renowned as one of Istanbul’s great beauties and there had been rumours that the Sultan, too, had expressed an interest. Perhaps that was one reason for her unexpected flight with the Count Galfalvy. They had no children and when the count died, she found the three rooms unbearable and returned to Istanbul with all his paintings. To her amazement, a dealer, who had heard of them from a common friend asked, one day, to see the paintings. He spent several hours inspecting each one separately. He must have been honest, for he offered her a great deal of money for all of them. She kept a few she really liked and accepted his offer.

  I remember going to see her with my mother on a few occasions. She lived in a large house which was fifteen minutes away from where we lived. Even in the pleasing winter sun the drapes were always drawn in her house. Perhaps she wanted to recreate the closed atmosphere of the rooms where she had spent fifty years with her count. But she was lonely. She missed the smell of oil on canvas. She began to visit the conservatory and would often invite young art students to have tea with her. If they were from poor families, she helped them financially and if they were from other parts of the Empire, she invited them to stay with her. Catherine Alhadeff was an art student from Cairo. She had been staying with some rather unpleasant friends of her father when she met the old lady at the school. Within a week, Catherine was installed in a very large room on the top floor of the house. There were no drapes and the light was perfect. The sun streamed in most of the year. Catherine was thrilled.

  Halil saw her one afternoon when he and his mother went to take tea with the Countess Galfalvy. He was greatly impressed by her and probably her name was entered in his notebook later that day as one of the possible brides for him. Salman had once caught sight of the notebook and swore to me that such a list did exist, but when we teased Halil, he blushed and insisted it was a joke. I’m not so sure. I think the list, whether written or not, was always present in his mind. Catherine glided to the top of the list without even trying.

  Halil was the type of person who avoided taking risks, but he was not a good judge of character. He once told me that he never trusted his own instincts because they always let him down. When I questioned him further it emerged that three young officers who he thought were loyal to him had let him down badly.

  Zeynep was the first to be told about Catherine. Halil felt she would be the perfect wife for him. He did not want to live with a woman who did nothing the whole day. It would drive him mad. He told his mother, who expressed irritation that he wanted to marry a Christian. This really angered Halil. He informed his mother that if he wished, he would marry a monkey.

  Then, to our great disappointment, we discovered that Catherine belonged to an orthodox Shia family. Her name was simply the result of her father’s fondness for a sixteenth-century portrait of Catherine de Medici, which he had bought many years ago from a dealer in Istanbul. The painting was unsigned and Catherine’s father had bought it for a very reasonable price. It was when he showed it to a visiting Venetian merchant that the trouble began. The Venetian was convinced it was a Titian and he was so sure of this that he offered to buy it for a fairly large sum of money. Catherine’s father refused to part with the painting. The knowledge that it might be a Titian served only to strengthen his attachment. He grew more and more obsessed with it and when, after four sons, fortune blessed him with a daughter, he named her Catherine, despite the angry protestations of his wife.

  The Countess Galfalvy favoured Halil’s suit and recommended it strongly to Catherine’s parents. Catherine herself appeared to be indifferent. She is supposed to have asked Halil whether he would stop her painting and after he had replied that it was one of the reasons why he wished to marry her, she accepted. She never asked him for other reasons. The owner of the Renaissance painting and his family duly arrived in Istanbul as guests of the Countess. The wedding itself was a modest affair. Only the two families and their close friends had been invited.

  Catherine was a very striking woman, tall and slender with a dark complexion and shoulder-length dark brown hair. Her back arched delicately underneath her dress. She had thin lips and narrow eyes and the combination gave her a girlish quality. When I saw her for the first time I remember thinking, enviously, that this woman would never really look old.

  A year and a half later, Catherine gave birth to a pair of healthy twin boys. There had never been any twins in either our family or hers, which raised a few questions, but as the boys grew all the doubts disappeared. They looked just like Halil and we grew to adore them. They were often at our house and every summer they would come here for a few weeks. Catherine loved this house and she painted it from every angle. Then she would take her canvas and paints to the cliffs and paint the sea. One such painting, in which the seagulls resemble hailstones suspended over the dark green ocean, still hangs in the library. I spoke to her often, but she was usually cold and reserved. It was the same with everyone else. Since Halil was away with the army for extended periods of time, everyone tried to be friendly with her, but, with the single exception of my mother, were politely rebuffed. For some reason Catherine liked my mother. She painted two very fine portraits of her, one of which I have in my old room in the Istanbul house.

  It was a few years ago, after the twins had celebrated their fifteenth birthdays, that we realised something was seriously wrong. My source on the subject was, as usual, Zeynep.

  “It’s really awful, Nilo, just awful for poor Halil. Awful for poor Halil. I swore I would never tell anyone, but what she is doing is too cruel. Too cruel!”

  Whenever she had important news to impart, Zeynep had developed a habit of repeating a sentence or a phrase, imagining that this would somehow double its impact. Its effect on me was the exact opposite. I would get so irritated by her manner of speaking that I could not concentrate on the content. I told her this many times, but she couldn’t really help herself. The story she told me was upsetting.

  Some months after the twins were born, Catherine had informed Halil that she did not want any more children. He was upset, but accepted her choice. He never pushed or pressured her in that direction. Soon afterwards she refused to share his bed and rejected his advances. She informed him that she had been very shaken by giving birth to twins and now the very thought of the reproductive process filled her with nausea. She advised him to find another wife or concubine or whatever he wished. She would accept anything provided they left each other alone. At this point I had interrupted Zeynep.

  “Tell me,” I asked her, “did he not open his notebook and consult the list?”

  Zeynep remained serious. “No. Please. Don’t try to be funny. Don’t try to be funny. It’s very bad.”

  What had made it bad was Catherine’s decision to move to Cairo and take the children with her. Halil had wanted the boys to stay with him. He felt that their education at the lycée was being disrupted, but Catherine would not listen to reason. She disapproved of formal education and felt the twins would learn much more through travel. She had taken them back to Cairo and they had been there for a year, but the boys wanted to retur
n to their father and their friends. She had promised they would be returned to Istanbul in the summer and could stay with their father, but their arrival was delayed, which angered Halil. He had rushed to Istanbul the minute he heard they were back. He had got his children back.

  There was something else as well. Zeynep had prepared a list for him and she wanted him to view the first three names on it so that he could have a woman again.

  TWENTY-TWO

  What Catherine told the Stone Woman ten years ago

  ‘IT WAS THOUGHTFUL OF Nilofer to send me to you. I’ve brought my easel and my oil paints. I’ll paint you as I talk. I hope you don’t mind. It’s not going to be easy to get the colours right. You must have noticed me trying to mix them for the last hour. You look so different when the sun hits you directly. When I first heard about you from Halil, he described you as a goddess, but you’re just a large rock. I’m not even sure whether you were ever carved. Perhaps you were. There are a few traces here and there. Could this have been the remnant of a woman’s breast? Perhaps. That makes you more interesting. I think I’m going to paint you just as I see you. The colour is not exact, but I’m going to start.

  What do you think of this family, Stone Woman? Do they ever mean what they say? I’m beginning to wonder why I ever got married. Halil is a nice man and he understands me. I have no complaints, but I can no longer bear his touch. I never enjoyed intimacy with him and I feel I’ve done my duty by producing two healthy boys.

  It was so painful when they were born, Stone Woman. I thought my agony would never end. I lost so much blood that the midwives began to whisper to each other in worried tones. I thought I was going to die. None of my maternal emotions would come to the surface. I felt nothing. I was just a frightened girl and it didn’t help when I found a child being placed on each breast. It was a strange sensation. I felt like an animal. If two women had not been found to breast-feed my boys I would have sunk slowly into oblivion, but much of the worry was, mercifully, removed from me. I don’t think I was intended to me a mother, Stone Woman. I feel affection for these little boys, but I am not overwhelmed by love for them any more than I was for their father.

  Did you say something, Stone Woman? I could have sworn I heard you ask why I married him. The dilemma confronting me was simple. Either I found someone of my own choice in Istanbul or returned to Cairo and faced the humiliation of having a man imposed on me by my mother, just as all my childhood friends had. I would rather have died.

  My mother was completely opposed to the idea of my being an artist. It was my father who encouraged me. I learnt German so that I could go and study art history in Vienna, but my mother threatened to commit suicide and my father, foolishly, chose to believe her. She never really cared much for me. She had four sons who were all “settled in life”, as she used to say. They were married. Their wives had produced children. Why couldn’t she leave me alone? The agreed compromise was that I could study in Istanbul, because the Caliph of Islam resided here. One of my sisters-in-law who, like the others, is very fat, but unlike them is not so stupid, wrote and warned me that my mother was busy assembling suitors for the great day. Stone Woman, I panicked.

  I discussed the problem frankly with my friend Maria, the Countess Galfalvy. She advised me to accept Halil’s offer. She knew this family of old and said they were quite unconventional in their own way and would never obstruct my career. I was young and Maria had become a mother to me. So I accepted her advice. He seemed a very nice man. When I looked at him closely to see which part of him I could paint, it was his expressive and meaningful eyes that appealed to me. Unlike most men of my acquaintance, he did not like hearing the sound of his own voice. I felt he would never be unkind to me. He was not the man I had been looking for all my life, but that was because I did not think of men, only of being a painter. When I was still in Cairo, my friends would point to good-looking boys and giggle. I was unmoved by these encounters.

  After I was married I found sexual intimacy very intrusive. I knew it had to be done. I had to lie down and let him put his little stick into me, but Stone Woman, I promise you: there was no enjoyment in this for me. None. When I told some women friends they thought there was something wrong with me and I grew tense and unhappy. There was no lack of passion on his part, but his touch simply left me cold. When I felt the need to be touched between my legs, I preferred to help myself. It was far less messy and much more pleasurable. I confessed this to my closest friend in Istanbul, who is also a painter, and she joked that it was like preferring the first rough sketch to the finished oil painting. I thought of this remark for a long time and it almost made me abandon oils.

  I have not been intimate with Halil for three years now, ever since the children were born. I do not feel the urge to find another man. In fact I do not feel any urge that needs another person to fulfil it. I am content with my work.

  One day I told some of this to Maria, imagining she would be horrified, but to my surprise, she understood perfectly. She told me some women are passionate and others are not. She herself had been very passionate in her life with Count Galfalvy, but she was lucky. She told me there was nothing to be ashamed of in this situation. Then she looked at me closely and asked me a question that, believe me, Stone Woman, shocked me deeply. Maria asked if I preferred physical contact with other women to intimacy with men. I must have gone red in the face because she burst out laughing and told me not to worry if that was the case. Istanbul was full of women who preferred each other and it was not a big problem.

  I was so shaken by her question that I avoided her for a few weeks. My studio was still at the top of her house so I couldn’t keep away for ever. One day when I arrived to paint I found a young woman waiting for me. She, too, was from Cairo and came with a letter from my father. She was the daughter of one of his most valued customers (my father, Stone Woman, is a merchant of antiques) and wanted to be a painter. She was spending a few months in Istanbul with her uncle prior to her departure for Florence.

  Rachel, some years younger than I was, deserved to be in Florence. She had a beautiful face framed by thick, golden red ringlets, the loveliest face I had ever seen. At that moment I knew what I wanted most in this world. I wanted to paint Rachel. I wanted to paint that face in very great detail, not missing a single freckle. And, Stone Woman, I wanted to paint all of her both with and without clothes.

  I showed her Istanbul. I took her to the oldest parts of the city. I sat with her on the edge of the water as the Golden Horn shimmered in the light of the full moon and we sipped the most delicious Istanbul coffee I have ever tasted.

  I took her home. She saw the twins and held them in her arms. She met Halil, who liked her and was pleased I had found a friend. I asked to paint her and she was flattered and agreed. She was in Istanbul for one whole month and I painted every curve, every line of her face and body. She would not undress for me, but I imagined what was hidden underneath the folds and she was amazed at my accuracy.

  Then she left for Florence. We wrote to each other regularly. She described the hills around Fiesole, the light just before sunset and just after dawn, the work she was doing and how much she missed my company. She wrote of seeing a painting, studying it for nearly an hour, trying to work out how many times the master had changed his mind, how many layers of paint had been used. She turned around to discuss it with me and became sad because I was not there looking at it with her. I was often overcome by an urge to leave everything here and join her in Florence, but Maria Galfalvy advised caution and I bowed to her experience. Instead, I would disappear with my sketchbook and draw Rachel as I pictured her in different parts of Istanbul. She lived in Florence for three years.

  Now she has returned to Cairo and the leeches are gathering. Each mother wants Rachel for her son, which is not surprising. Her father is a wealthy Jew; she is very beautiful. There is an inevitability about her fate that fills me with melancholy. I am tired of living without her, Stone Woman. I will return to Cairo with my c
hildren. Rachel will have some of her own. We will console each other and paint each other and find a studio in Alexandria for the summer months when Cairo becomes unbearable.

  And what of Halil? He will survive. He will find another wife, someone who will love and give him the pleasure he never had from me. I gave him two sons. I think I have done my duty.

  I wish you could see this canvas. I have drawn you as a giant rock, Stone Woman, but only now do I see how much your eyes resemble those of Rachel.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  A messenger arrives from New York with a letter for Sara; Memed plots to marry Jo the Ugly to one of Kemal Pasha’s daughters

  “WHO IS THAT NOISY son of a donkey?”

  Emineh thought the remark was directed at Orhan and started giggling, but it was not the children who had disturbed my uncle. It was a very hot day and Uncle Memed had decided, wisely, to take his afternoon siesta out of doors in the shaded part of the garden, where the sea breezes make the heat tolerable. I was sitting in a chair next to him trying to make sense of Auguste Comte. The children were playing some stupid game, aiming unripe walnuts at each other from a distance.

  What had wakened Uncle Memed was the noise of a carriage and strange voices from the front terrace. A gardener was walking towards us followed by a strange apparition. Uncle Memed raised himself and glared at the two men.

  The gardener pointed towards me and retreated. The apparition gave Memed and me a slightly awkward bow and began to speak in the worst French I have ever heard in my whole life.