It seemed that all Aphrodite wanted to do was embrace her aunt, if only just the once, and after thanking her properly, she would have liked to explain how all her sacrifices had been in vain, and perhaps even reprimand her auntie for having abandoned her so abruptly. But try as she might, she couldn’t bring herself to understand how a compassionate and determined soul like her aunt could lose faith in her cause so suddenly:
“There’s most definitely something wrong. Either she’s angry with us or there’s been an accident . . .”
She imagined her aunt on the roadside of the wide and heavily trafficked interstellar highways—wounded, paralyzed, and abandoned and more helpless than ever.
“Perhaps she wants us to live in our new homes. But we are from Istanbul. It’s the only city we know. Even my father never wanted to leave. And all our friends are here.”
At the time when I became a keen regular at the Spiritualist Society (if only to escape the fractious mood swings of my wife and her sisters), Aphrodite had just come up with a new explanation. Every now and then she’d take the lace adorning the edge of her gown between her fingers and show it to us.
“If she loves me, how can she resent me so much?” she cried. “How can she hold a grudge? She must be tired. Or perhaps she couldn’t marry in the material world, at least not before she found us, but perhaps now she’s found someone in the world beyond and married him.”
If she could just about convince herself of this possibility, then she could be sure that her auntie was at peace with the world. She would laugh and sing and hug and kiss the men she fancied. But this free spirit could never forgive herself: she was the reason her aunt had never married, and she blamed herself mercilessly for having kept her aunt from living a full life. She believed that women should marry at all costs. Any other course was utter catastrophe, which is why she was delighted when my aunt made her late marriage.
“But of course!” she exclaimed. “Why wouldn’t she? We all must live!”
My aunt had remarried for her own selfish reasons, with no consideration for anyone but herself, but Aphrodite chose not to notice how mean and unjust the woman had been to us and gave the union her full blessing. And when Nasit Bey died, freeing my aunt to plan her third foray into marriage, Aphrodite measured one aunt against the other, and, finding a greater exuberance of willpower in mine, she judged her aunt to have lost the contest, brooding over her fate thereafter in the way a neighborhood boy might mourn the defeat of his rooster in a cock fight.
Aphrodite had been the most sought-after girl in all of Beyoglu since she was eighteen. Almost everyone in high society knew who she was; and in both Turkish and foreign circles. Invited to every event of consequence, she’d find herself surrounded by at least half a dozen suitors. Yet she never could bring herself to marry: perhaps her freedom was too dear. It was like looking at someone lingering in bed after waking, unable to shake free of the mood left by a final dream: she couldn’t bring herself to give up the freedom she had savored with such outrageous extravagance right up to her twentieth name day. And despite the many changes in her life over the previous five years, she still hoped to carry on as before.
She had suitors of all ages and showed each and every one the same kindness and generosity. They courted her as if possessed, and, suffice it to say, they were all fairly miserable. But after a time they either drifted away from the beautiful young girl, who seemed to have no notion of her gorgeous femininity (never mind its dangers), or they remained at her side, resigned to a life of spellbound intimacy and restless despair.
Aphrodite’s adventures were closely followed by every member of the association, male or female. She was as talked about as Nevzat Hanım’s Murat. When I first joined the association, hoping only to earn a little extra cash, I was under the impression that it had been founded for no other reason than to discuss the questions of Murat and the old woman, with members either doubting or accepting their existence.
Our official psychic, Sabriye Hanımefendi (who claimed to have been Aphrodite’s classmate and intimate at the French lycée Notre Dame de Sion, despite a ten-year age difference and an evident mutual distaste), maintained that the young lady was in no way a spiritual medium and never had been. The truth, according to Sabriye Hanim, was that she had had a passionate affair with a young Italian diplomat who had served two years at the embassy in Istanbul. The romance had captured the imagination of Istanbul’s upper echelons. Everyone—the entire foreign community as well as the Turkish elite that moved in the same circles—thought the Italian diplomat devastatingly handsome and rather sophisticated, and they followed each new development with rapture. But the romance took a fascinating turn after the young diplomat abruptly departed for his native land. That was when Aphrodite dreamed up the whole adventure, convincing her mother to travel with her to Italy so she could meet with her lover one last time and perhaps win his hand in marriage. This was why the matter of the inheritance was so quickly resolved. All had been orchestrated in advance. Was it possible that a matter as convoluted as an inheritance could have been resolved so easily, without divine intervention of this order?
Was there any truth in the story that Sabriye Hanım re-counted a little differently to each and every member of the association? No one could really say. But this much is certain: had there been so much as a hint of truth in her tale, it would not have found much favor with the association. For, like Nevzat Hanım’s Murat, Aphrodite’s aunt was one of the little group’s life buoys. The association needed its myths, imaginary or real: it was through these myths that its members communed with the mysteries of death resurrected.
The myth of Aphrodite was more than an extravagant and alluring adventure; with its promises and warnings, stern words and enticements, it gave life its meaning and its order. The spirit’s proclamations never once contradicted our beliefs, speaking a fluid truth that left its true form unknown. Aphrodite’s aunt and Nevzat Hanım’s Murat were our eternal companions; their essence seeping into ours. They lived out their lives as we lived out ours; they were real even though they were lies.
Our spiritual leader was not seeking the truth in such matters. She was interested only in facts. Well, for us Aphrodite’s aunt was a fact. And that was satisfactory enough! One could be sitting at home on a dark and snowy night when one of these amiable spirits suddenly tapped on the door and shuffled in like a guest, hanging his coat and scarf onto the stove for the icicles to snap and crackle over the heat, guiding us to a world that was so different from our own, unfurling before our very eyes, flaunting its aura for those with eyes to see.
The novelist Atiye Hanım understood all this perfectly, which is why she had no time for Sabriye Hanım and her logic and good sense. With such wild speculation whirling around about, it was useless for Aphrodite to try to deny anything. Deprived of her aunt, the poor girl drifted hopelessly among us, like a forlorn and banished queen fed only by the glory of her past. But perhaps this portrait was itself a product of Atiye Hanım’s imagination—for the real Aphrodite wasn’t in the least hopeless or despairing. It was simply that Atiye Hanım the novelist chose to see the matter in this light.
Whenever it came up in conversation, Atiye Hanım would change the subject, leaving no opportunity for objections before turning the conversation—I never really understood why—to Queen Christina, a film that had created quite a sensation in her youth. Then she would sink into confusion. Atiye Hanım dearly loved the film, representing as it did a turning point in her life as an artist. It had long been her dream to write the story of Kösem Sultan along the lines of this film. For her, Aphrodite became a living example of Kösem Sultan.
But for a long time life would stand in the way, for life had endowed Atiye Hanım with a wealth of material. Her tireless consumption of men had given her enough to fill sixteen rapid-fire romance novels; her current novel in progress dealt with events that had occurred ten years before. Over the last deca
de she’d gone through at least as many men again, and having suffered dearly for it, she was now bloated with sadness and a profusion of sensitivities. Life for her meant loving, making love, changing lovers, and suffering: she’d need at least another sixteen novels to recount all her new adventures. So her Kösem Sultan novel would just have to wait.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t believe Sabriye Hanım’s various narratives. In fact she was quite convinced of Aphrodite’s aunt’s need to exist in spirit form. But if it did not, then she had no objections to the young diplomat. As a novelist, she was more than clear on the necessity for at least so much. Moreover, she knew all too well that a person doesn’t just up and travel to Italy without a good reason, even if all the aunties in the world—dead and alive—were assembled in one spot. Of course she felt there was no need to relay any of this to Sabriye Hanım. The helpless creature was condemned to suffer lifelong jealousy.
Quite unlike Atiye Hanım, Mme Plotkin, the granddaughter of a Jew who had emigrated from Poland to Turkey during the constitution years, believed everything Sabriye Hanım said. But she was never one to gossip, only voicing her opinions on the matter when the subject came up naturally and even then only among her intimate circle of friends. Moreover, Mme Plotkin valued the truth, and she never withheld any detail she knew to be relevant. A case in point: on a trip to Czechoslovakia a year before, she and M. Plotkin had met the young Italian diplomat and the Brazilian widow he’d married. By her account the diplomat had been very fond of Aphrodite but had in fact found the Brazilian widow more beautiful, more comme il faut, and frankly much wealthier. Speaking of Aphrodite she cried:
“The poor girl has such bad luck. Now she’s in love with Semih Bey. But Semih Bey’s madly in love with Nevzat Hanım.”
Sabriye Hanım sighed and began to explain:
“Poor Semih Bey’s swimming against the current. Nevzat will never again love anyone on this earth. Not him, not anyone. But that’s just the male mind for you!”
And with her proud and ever pejorative smile, she flashed her eyes at Cemal Bey, who happened to be eavesdropping. Sabriye Hanım’s cheeks paled as a strange light flickered in her eyes; then she bit down on her paper-thin lips, shutting them like the lid of a box. But under no circumstances did this mean she’d remain quiet, for surely at such times in her heart she’d say, “Forgive me, my love, but I had no choice but to avenge myself!” Sabriye Hanım was in love with Cemal Bey.
This was why she never succeeded in becoming a medium, though it wasn’t for Cemal Bey that she’d joined the Spiritualist Society. The fact is that Sabriye Hanım had joined to indulge her fascination with human affairs. She frequently made the claim—her eyes stretching as wide as her little mouselike face could bear—that from the age of five she’d done everything in her power to uncover the truth behind whatever domestic saga was unfolding at home. Her heightened curiosity was perhaps a byproduct of the jealousy she felt for her stepmother, or perhaps it was simply congenital. And as she grew older, her passion for sleuthing grew and grew: stretching first out to her street and then to her neighborhood and the city and every other aspect of her life. But in thirty years she had learned everything there was to know, and, having set into place a reliable network of informers, she began to take a keen interest in the world beyond.
Just as science had shifted its focus to the stars after fully acquainting itself with the workings of earth, Sabriye Hanım now set her sights on the world beyond. For her, the séances and the Spiritualist Society were windows to its mysteries. And Sabriye Hanım loved windows. At home she always sat at one of the two windows that looked out onto the street. Now she stood before a window that looked out over the vast landscapes of infinity.
Yet it would be untrue to say that any of this caused Sabriye Hanım to sever her ties with the material world. She believed the world beyond was but a continuation of the one we currently inhabited. She claimed hundreds of acquaintances there. Undoubtedly she knew at least one person on the other side (sometimes several) who had something to tell her about whatever affair she was investigating on earth, either through direct involvement in the affair or by witnessing it firsthand. Indeed the two worlds were remarkably close. For instance, in the matter of her neighbor Zeynep’s suicide, consultations with those in the world beyond proved vital.
Sabriye Hanım’s distress following the suicide was genuine. She’d truly valued Zeynep as a friend. That a woman of Zeynep’s noble and courteous bearing could take her life proved that she had been doomed by her fate. She hadn’t gone to a good school like Sabriye Hanım, and she had lived a sheltered life, but she was nevertheless an intelligent woman. Her rich husband had loved her. There had been no apparent problem between them. But still, one day she took her life; she found a gun and shot herself. Citing a nervous breakdown as the cause of suicide, the police closed the case. But Sabriye Hanım, who was of the view that women experienced nervous episodes when they were trying to pester someone into doing something, could never bring herself to accept the verdict. Two years after the tragedy, Zeynep Hanım’s husband still hadn’t remarried. Though Sabriye Hanım followed his every move, she couldn’t uncover a single romantic affair. He remained the same quiet and well-mannered man. He didn’t seem overly relieved by his wife’s absence. If such a tragedy ever happened to Selma Hanım—God forbid!—I’m sure that cold-hearted Cemal Bey would have been rather pleased. But no one seemed in any way relieved by Zeynep Hanım’s suicide, and no one seemed to grieve for her save, of course, her husband. As for her female friends, they seemed neither to relish the situation nor to exhibit signs of a guilty conscience: Nevzat Hanım, though she lived in Zeynep’s apartment building, still assumed a childlike air and a bewildered expression, while Atiye Hanım merely added a suicide to her current novel—wouldn’t any other author have done the same? Selma Hanım managed to affect only a few tears, for her makeup had been carefully applied that day, in anticipation of an engagement later that evening (she’d recently grown concerned about the wrinkles rapidly gathering around her eyes). Seher Hanım got word of the tragedy only months after the fact, and Mme Plotkin had been so preoccupied with the imports arriving from the factory her husband had commandeered in Czechoslovakia that she wouldn’t have registered the event in the first place. So . . .
What was the reason behind poor Zeynep Hanım’s death? Why did she take her own life?
Countless other affairs remained as unresolved as her suicide. Hundreds, even thousands, of people in that great warehouse that was the world beyond had wrapped themselves up in their own secrets as they waited in envious silence.
Sabriye Hanım wanted to communicate with them and encourage them to speak. This was why she was interested in spiritualism: she wanted to close the unfinished cases in the banks of her mind, release their mysteries to the light.
But her situation was soon complicated by an unfortunate decision. Once the séances had begun, it was quickly agreed that Sabriye Hanım was the perfect medium. This, however, was the last thing she wanted. Even in the comfort of her own bed, she always remained, throughout the night, alert to the slightest sound. Now she was going to be hypnotized, and this made her very uneasy indeed.
A medium is never free. And can never ask questions. She is under someone else’s control, with yet someone else’s thoughts bubbling out of her mouth like water bursting from the spout of a public fountain. The operator-hypnotist asks the questions, and the spirit answers. Sabriye Hanım, however, wanted to ask the questions herself. It was for this express purpose that she’d joined the association. Now the roles were reversed.
But Sabriye Hanım, through force of will, achieved the impossible: she broke the rules. Instead of directly answering questions posed by the spiritual mentor, the spirits speaking through her preferred to address the more mundane issues of the world beyond. If the hypnotist happened to question Sabriye Hanım on the purification of souls, a matter thoroughly discussed by t
he medium Hüsnü Bey, son of the old sheikh Kadiri, the tenor of a conversation changed dramatically. According to the spiritualist lexicon, the word “purification” described a soul’s deliverance from evil passions and its return to innocence, but Sabriye Hanım took the word to mean “liquidation.”
“Oh come on!” she cried. “Liquidate the company? Not at all! It’s more prosperous than ever before. Company shares have only gone up and will continue to do so!”
But then if the hypnotist asked Hüsnü Bey, “Have you ever connected with a higher being?” The medium might give the following answer:
“It would take at least ten thousand years of suffering to attain that height. And besides, if I ever reached a higher being, I’d have nothing to do with any of you.” But if the mouthpiece for that very same spirit was Sabriye Hanım, she might say:
“No, I’ve never tried. Truth is, I’ve never even thought of trying. I’ve been too busy following Rudolph Valentino’s latest love affair! If you like, I’ll tell you all about it!”
Several times, in the midst of a deep trance, she’d suddenly interrupt the spirit to cry:
“I can’t find her. I can’t find Zeynep Hanım. I suppose there’s an isolated wing for those who’ve taken their own lives.” And apologizing, she said, “I’m new here. Forgive me.”
Sometimes when the spiritual mentor asked the same gracious, pious, kindly spirit what needed to be done to make people more immaculate and pure, she would cry:
“Are you all fools? Forget about all this and look at what’s right under your noses. Over the last few days, someone among you has been preparing for something that will surely make you quake!”
Sabriye Hanım’s success as a medium lay in her ability to leave her body behind and travel only with her thoughts. Once given a task, she would cast off her corporeal form like an old dress and stare blankly, blissfully out the window, running her eyes up over the walls as she described everything she saw in sumptuous detail. This was of course only the most natural manifestation of her curiosity. Once she found the opportunity to quench it, she used every trick in the book to avoid coming out too early, and to avoid returning to our world she would beg and badger the spiritual mentor: “I’ll just have one more look to see what’s happening on the opposite building’s third floor. I thought I saw Suat Hanım, but it wasn’t her. The woman was blond . . . and tall. I didn’t recognize her.” Describing to us everything she saw, this normally unprepossessing woman was transformed: her face lit up as if she had just awoken from a happy dream, and she seemed almost beautiful.
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