The Museum Of Innocence

30 Füsun Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

I RAN ALL the way to their house. Even before I passed the corner where Alaaddin had his shop, I was euphoric, already imagining how I would feel when I saw her. As I smiled at a cat dozing, shaded from the July sun, I asked myself why it had not occurred to me before simply to go to their house. The pain in the upper left-hand quadrant of my stomach was already abating; the leadenness in my legs and the fatigue in my back were even now gone. As I approached the house, however, the fear of not finding her set in, and so my heart began to race: What would I say to her, what was I going to say if it was her mother who came to the door? At one point I thought of turning back to collect the childhood tricycle. But I knew the moment we saw each other there would be no need for excuses. Like a ghost I entered the cool foyer of the little apartment house on Kuyulu Bostan Street, walked up the steps to the second floor, and rang the bell. Visitors to the museum might wish to press down on the button alongside this exhibit to hear the sound of a chirping bird-so fashionable as a door chime in Istanbul at that time-which I heard as my heart fluttered like a bird, trapped between my mouth and my throat.

It was her mother who answered the door. The foyer was so dark that at first she wrinkled her nose at this tired stranger, as if he might be an annoying salesman. Then she recognized me, and her face lit up. Taking hope from this, the pain in my stomach eased slightly.

“Oh! Kemal Bey! Do come in!”

“I was just passing by, Aunt Nesibe, so I thought I’d drop in,” I said, sounding like the earnest neighborhood teenager in a radio play. “I just noticed the other day, Füsun’s not working at the shop anymore. So I was wondering; she never dropped by to tell me how she did on the university exam.”

“Oh, Kemal Bey, my poor boy, come inside so that we can share our troubles.”

Without pausing to register what she might have meant by “sharing our troubles,” I went into that dingy backstreet apartment that my mother had never once visited, in spite of all those cozy sewing sessions at our home and all the talk of our being related. Slipcovered armchairs, a table, a buffet holding a candy bowl, a set of crystal tumblers, and a television crowned by a sleeping china dog-I found these things beautiful, because they had all assisted in the making of the wondrous miracle that was Füsun. In a corner I saw a pair of sewing scissors, lengths of cloth, threads of many colors, pins, the pieces of a dress that was being sewn together by hand. So Aunt Nesibe was still working as a seamstress. Was Füsun at home? She didn’t seem to be, but here was her mother, standing there waiting, as if about to bargain with me, or present me with a bill, and from this I drew hope.

“Do sit down, Kemal Bey,” she said. “Let me make you a coffee. You look pale. You need to relax. Would you like some water from the refrigerator, too?”

“Isn’t Füsun here?” asked the bird caught inside my parched throat.

“Noooo. Noooo,” said the woman, in a tone to suggest, if only you knew what has happened! “How would you like your coffee?” This time she used the polite word for “you.”

“Medium sweet!” I said.

What I now realize, all these years later, is that the woman went into the kitchen not to make me a coffee but to cook up an answer. But at the time, even with my senses on full alert, my mind was whirling from being in a house where the scent of Füsun was everywhere, and dizzy with the hope that I might see her. There, in its cage, was my friend the canary from the Şanzelize Boutique; its impatient twitter was something of a salve on my heart, and this confused me all the more. On the low table in front of me was the Turkish-made, thirty-centimeter wooden ruler with its fine white edge. I had given it to Füsun as a present at our seventh meeting, by my later calculations, for use in her geometry lessons. It was clear that Füsun’s mother was now using the ruler for her sewing. I picked it up, brought it to my nose, and as I remembered the scent of Füsun’s hand, there, before my eyes, she came to life. As Aunt Nesibe returned from the kitchen, I slipped the ruler into my jacket pocket.

She put the coffee down and sat across from me. She lit a cigarette, something in the gesture reminding me she was her daughter’s mother, and then she said, “Füsun’s exam did not go well, Kemal Bey.” She had by now worked out how she was going to address me. “She was so upset. She left in tears before she could finish-we haven’t even bothered to find out her results. She was in a terrible state. My poor daughter is never going to be able to study at university now. She was so traumatized she gave up her job. Those lessons with you really harmed her. You surely saw how sad she was on the night of your engagement party… It all got to be too much for her. You’re not the only one responsible, of course… She’s a fragile young girl. She had only just turned eighteen. But she was heartbroken. So her father took her away, far, far away. So very far away. You should forget all about her. She will forget you, too.”

Twenty minutes later, as I lay in our bed at the Merhamet Apartments, staring at the ceiling, tears dripping silent and slow onto the pillow, I thought about the ruler. I had used such a ruler as a child, which perhaps explains why I had given Füsun this standard lycée ruler, so it is hardly surprising that it should have become one of the first significant pieces in our collection. It was an object that reminded me of her, the first that agony had provoked me to take from her world. I put the end marked “ 30 centimeters ” into my mouth, keeping it there for the longest time, despite the bitter aftertaste. For two hours I lay in bed, playing around with the ruler, trying to recast the hours it had spent in her hands, which introduced a relief, a happiness almost akin to seeing her.