Like a Sword Wound Read online

  “But it’s no use, we didn’t tell him, we couldn’t, for nine months there was a darkness, an ill-omened silence in the tekke, there was neither satisfaction in the rituals nor friendship; Sheikh Efendi’s face was always long; when a master has a long face, there is no light left in that place, however it happens, everyone has a long face. That’s exactly how it happened in the tekke; faces got darker and darker, everybody started seething, shouting at each other, improbable things happened between dervishes, they picked fights, the cook bashed in his scullion’s head with a ladle with a single blow, some left the tekke and started some dirty dealings in Pera, the sanctity of the tekke was lost. Then one night Rukiye Hanım was born, she was exactly like her mother, she had the same eyes, it’s impossible for a human baby to resemble her mother so much, but she did, my boy; it was as if they had swaddled Mehpare Hanım and put her in the cradle, that’s how much the baby resembled her. Sheikh Efendi’s face grew longer even though one would have expected him to be happy, and they started sleeping in separate rooms with the excuse of the pregnancy; three months after the birth they sent Mehpare Hanım and the baby away in a coupe, I don’t know whether Sheikh Efendi ever saw the baby after that, don’t ask me. If you ask my opinion he didn’t, I think Sheikh Efendi sensed from the baby what he didn’t sense from his wife, he understood what kind of woman she would become. A year later he married Hasene Hanım, but this time there was no wedding or anything, and then every year they had a daughter; six daughters in a tekke, a total of six girls in a tekke, if you ask my opinion ill fortune befell the tekke.”

  After Mehpare Hanım left the tekke, Hasan Efendi followed her with an instinct whose reason he never understood or wanted to understand. He wandered around the mansion, he surreptitiously gathered information about her from his acquaintances; he often went to the places she went, he observed her carriage from the shadows.

  He was a man chasing after ill fortune; as if as long as he followed ill fortune he could control his destiny; he could avoid the disasters that might befall him, his Sheikh and his tekke; he could avoid the evil rooted in that whore’s beauty. And when he lost track of Mehpare Hanım, the ill fortune would hit them suddenly from an unknown quarter. Without realizing it, he tied his life to hers. And there was also a desire to see the face of ill fortune from up close. The more closely he looked at Mehpare Hanım’s face, the better armed he would be against evil. It was probable that none of Mehpare Hanım’s lovers were ever as closely connected to her as Hasan Efendi, who saw her as a bringer of ill fortune, but Hasan Efendi thought that this fact was part of the woman’s own ill fortune.

  IV

  That summer, while Istanbul was wracked by cholera, Mehpare Hanım and Hikmet Bey were given leave in honor of their wedding to go to Paris and stay with Hikmet Bey’s mother, Mihrişah Sultan.

  Mihrişah Sultan, who had just entered her forties, had been a legend in Paris since the day she arrived because of her long-lashed black eyes that looked out from the depths of mystery, her arched eyebrows, her large forehead, her slightly large but well-shaped nose that resembled Cleopatra’s, her thick lips, the large, round, fleshy white breasts that threatened to burst free from her dress, her tallness, the proud gazes that captivated everyone she met, and her marvelous wealth; even ministers of the French government would boast about having had her as a dinner guest. Young counts, aging barons, rich bankers who held great power in Europe, famous writers and painters on the verge of fame pursued this magic-eyed woman who seemed to have emerged from an Oriental fairy tale smelling of ambergris. They wrote poems for her, made money fly for her, fought duels for her at dawn in the Bois du Boulogne.

  With her deep eyes, she watched all of the men swirling around her, the ones who told her stories, anecdotes, adventures, the ones who proclaimed their love, the ones who begged, the ones who wept, the ones who laughed, the ones who tried to kill each other; she held out her hand for them to kiss, gave them the distant smile the Parisians called “imperial,” and walked away; no man could go further than to touch his lips lightly to that long-fingered, white-gloved hand. For a time they whispered that she was interested in women, but soon realized this wasn’t true either. In the end, after having had the honor of dancing with Mihrişah Sultan at a ball, a young poet who had recently achieved fame in the Paris salons told his friends his opinion, and everyone accepted it at once:

  —Monsieur le Viscont, my dear friend, I will no longer pursue this woman, I can’t compete with my rival, this woman is in love with herself.

  Mihrişah Sultan did not have any relationships with men after divorcing her husband, who she’d been forced to marry; she admired her beauty so much that she couldn’t share it with anyone else. She believed that it would demean her beauty to allow any mortal hand to touch the magnificent body that she contemplated for long hours in the enormous crystal mirrors before which she undressed every night. This beauty was not for humans, but for the lips of a god, and she could offer it only to a god. This exceptional beauty enchanted her like a secret spell, and set her apart from everyone.

  From the moment Mihrişah Sultan and her daughter-in-law met, the two women’s beauty collided with all their force like two trains; in that fleeting moment, of which none but the two of them was aware, they looked at each other in terror, admiration, jealousy, and hatred, and felt the magnitude of the collision in the depths of their souls. Each believed that no one could be more beautiful than herself, yet both suspected that the other might be more beautiful.

  Mihrişah allayed this suspicion with the knowledge of her nobility, wealth, dignity, and the number of her admirers; Mehpare Hanım found consolation in her youth and her husband’s love for her. Both of them behaved just as they should have: Mehpare Hanım kissed her mother-in-law’s hand, respectfully addressed her as “mother sultan,” and deferred to her completely; Mihrişah Sultan took pains not to put pressure on her daughter-in-law, and instead to remain distant and kind. The two women found this to be the best way to humble each other, but they never appeared in public together, never attended any event or ball together, and no one ever had the luxury of seeing them together and comparing them to each other.

  Hüseyin Hikmet Bey never understood what was going on between these two magnificent women, and one day, years later, he said to Osman, “My mother and Mehpare liked each other very much, they never hurt each other, not even once,” and this made his last descendant, this half-mad man, laugh at his naïveté.

  During the summer they spent in Paris Mehpare Hanım agreed to take off her chador but, in spite of all the insistence, she didn’t give up the silk turban with which she covered her head or the tulle veil that covered her face. Seeing how this tulle veil impressed the Parisians, who sought secrets and mystery in everything from the Orient, Hikmet Bey soon stopped insisting.

  Having found his old friends, Hikmet Bey, with his wife in tow, went to the taverns, restaurants, and casinos he used to frequent in his youth, and after the meals they arranged little “soirées” at his friends’ houses. Sometimes they left Paris, and went to a friend’s country house to stay for some days, riding in the morning and strolling by the riverbank in the evenings. Mehpare Hanım was very fond of the new sport she had learned, namely riding.

  As for their love life, lifted on the wings of an aphrodisiac that smelled of a mixture of asphalt, tobacco, coffee, fruit, silk, and wine, they flew deliriously every night till morning, coyly, coquettishly, languorously, and sometimes violently, playing love games that Mehpare Hanım had never heard or thought of, or dared to remember in the morning, whispering, sometimes shouting obscene French words in the headiest moments. Through this lovemaking Mehpare Hanım learned a strange kind of French; the only words she knew were about lovemaking, she didn’t know any other words at all; perhaps this was why she thought about the bedroom and lovemaking whenever she heard people speaking French. For the rest of her life French never lost its seductiveness for Mehpare Hanım; the simplest words in the world excited her if they were uttered in French.

  After her marriage to Sheikh Efendi, after those stilted nights, the uninhibited nights she spent with her second husband, discovering new pleasures, a new game every night, changed Mehpare Hanım’s way of life and her habits completely; this made her believe that in some secret place she could not yet reach there were still more pleasures of life to be discovered, and so she became a pleasure seeker.

  During the day she wandered around in silence wearing a tulle veil and a smile that recalled Oriental nights, and at night when she retreated to the bedroom, with a courage that surprised even her, she would undress and flow into the bed, caressing her husband’s most secret parts, trembling and sighing, and looking at the bawdy magazines her husband had bought. With childish curiosity they imitated everything they saw in those magazines. Mehpare Hanım wanted to try a new game, a new position, every night, and with each game she grew more expert, seizing control from her husband in bed.

  Hikmet Bey wasn’t very aware of the changes his wife had experienced, but with her woman’s eye Mihrişah Sultan could see the transformation in her daughter-in-law, even though she always sat so respectfully at breakfast; Mihrişah divined hints of what her son lived at night from a slight smile, a glance out of the corner of her eye, a fluctuation in the tone of her voice. It made Mihrişah even angrier to realize that behind the innocent and submissive appearance, her daughter-in-law was not so innocent at night.

  The woman who had been imprisoned within Mehpare Hanım for years, the woman given to love games and carnal desires, was freeing herself and revealing herself step by step; her love for her husband grew stronger by the day; she couldn’t stand to be parted from her husband for even a moment; she wanted to touch him, caress him, whisper words in his ear that would remind him of the nights they lived together, to see the desire in his eyes all of the time, everywhere. At that time she was not yet aware that her love for her husband was in fact her craving for men; she believed that her desire to make love had to do only with her husband. It was only much later that she would understand that this was not the case, and this realization would bring a searing pain that would hurt so many people.

  She now offered her hand more comfortably to men who wanted to kiss it, didn’t immediately avoid the glances of men who sought her eyes; she carefully watched people dancing and tried to memorize the steps, and even danced with Hikmet Bey at home some evenings; she did not refuse alcohol, especially champagne, at first she drank champagne with fruit juice but now she drank it without, sipping it slowly, with a demure smile. At first she rejected oysters almost in disgust, but now she squeezed lemon over them, added salt and pepper, and sucked them from their sea-smelling shells with an almost obscene appetite. Her appetite increased with her lust.

  On one of the happy days spent at parties, dinners, excursions, and crazy lovemaking, they experienced something Mehpare Hanım would never forget; at the beginning of July they were invited to lunch at the chateau of the Cont de Moulen, the father of one of Hikmet Bey’s schoolmates, near the Parc de Souex. In the morning, they set out in a fancy red carriage with four black horses and emblems on the doors that Mihrişah Sultan had given them for the day, and a while later they encountered a large crowd on the Champs-Élysées.

  Men with caps and big moustaches and women with their hair tied back were marching with red flags and placards and singing; there was no end to the crowd. The driver wanted to go into a side street to avoid the crowd, but before he was able to change course, the crowd surrounded the car; from a distance the carriage was like a little red boat on a stormy sea.

  The crowd rocked the carriage, shouting angrily, and the horses reared and neighed, and the driver was trying to calm the animals and to chase off the crowd with his whip. Women climbed onto the running board and leaned in the window, pointing at Mehpare Hanım, repeatedly laughing sarcastically and saying something as they wrinkled their faces. The noise of the crowd mingled with the neighing of horses, the shouting of the driver, yelling in French, swear words, angry laughs. The shaking carriage was almost toppled by the pushing crowd; they threw a rotten tomato into the carriage; the tomato burst as it hit the side of the window and splashed onto Hikmet Bey’s face. Mehpare Hanım froze because the tomato stains on Hikmet Bey’s pale face looked like blood.

  Until the crowd passed them and left them behind, they didn’t utter a single word, they sat in silence, motionless, waiting for the carriage to fall over and for them to be lynched by the crowd. After a while Mehpare Hanım swallowed hard and asked:

  —Who are these people, Hikmet Bey?

  Hikmet Bey answered, chewing on his moustache:

  —Workers, madam.

  Mehpare Hanım didn’t know exactly what a worker was.

  —Do you mean boatmen, servants, drivers, sir?

  —These people work in factories Mehpare Hanım.

  Mehpare Hanım had never before heard the word “factory.”

  —What do they do in factories?

  —They make all kinds of things, madam . . . They weave clothe, they manufacture goods . . .

  —OK, then why are they shouting like this?

  Hikmet Bey adjusted his fez.

  —They want the government to resign, madam.

  Mehpare Hanım opened her large eyes wide in surprise

  —Do they want the pashas to resign, are they rebelling against their sultan?

  Thinking that it would be difficult to explain all of this to his wife, Hikmet Bey gave her a short answer.

  —Yes, madam.

  —Aren’t the pashas angry about this?

  —They probably are.

  After thinking for a while Mehpare Hanım asked:

  —Do they want new pashas if these pashas resign?

  —No, madam, they want their own party to take over.

  Mehpare Hanım was even more surprised.

  —Will the workers govern the country?

  After a short while she smiled.

  —You’re having fun with me, aren’t you, Hikmet Bey?

  —No, madam, I’m serious.

  Mehpare Hanım didn’t ask any more questions, she remained silent the whole way; but she now had a lower opinion of a country where the workers wanted to overthrow the pashas, and shouted in the streets and rocked carriages and tried to topple them. She felt a secret anger at and fear of the servants to whom she’d never given much thought; after that day she was suspicious of people on the street, servants, valets, local tradesmen, in short all poor people; whenever she saw a poor person she remembered the crowd that had tried to topple her carriage. Hatred made a nest in her heart.

  V

  Mehpare Hanım returned from France pregnant with the son who years later would become one of the most famous playboys of Beyoğlu; they moved to Şişli, for the winter, to the mansion next to that of Abdürrezzak Bey, who was the famous Kurdish chieftain Mir Bedirhan’s son and the brother of Ali Şamil Pasha, the commander of Üsküdar, and the gardens of the two mansions were adjacent.

  After Mehpare Hanım and her family moved in as Abdürrezzak Bey’s neighbors, Hasan Efendi started visiting Abdürrezzak Bey’s mansion often; in the evenings he went to the tekke, and during the day he socialized with the Kurdish guards, whom he met through a Kurdish friend. As usual, he learned all of the details of everything that happened in Mehpare Hanım’s mansion; no one saw him talking to the workers at the neighboring mansion; no one knew where he got the information he had; in fact there were not many with whom he shared this information.

  He learned before anyone else that in order to ease the longing for Paris that Mehpare Hanım had felt since her return from France, they’d brought a governess from France to take care of young Rukiye, her daughter from Sheikh Efendi, and the baby that was on its way, that the governess was named Mademoiselle Hélène, that Mehpare Hanım wanted her husband to talk with Mademoiselle Hélène in French for half an hour every evening, and that she would listen to their conversation with her eyes closed.

  Later, Hasan Efendi told Osman, “That whore of a woman went wild after she came back from France, she pushed the governess into her husband’s bed with her own hands, she no longer had any shame.”

  On a rainy day in mid-November, as she was returning from a visit to a friend, a wheel of the carriage carrying Abdürrezzak Bey’s first wife, who was growing fatter every day, broke at the entrance to the mansion, which was a hundred meters from the street; this little accident led to a chain of disasters, murders that would shake Istanbul, and to thousands of lives being consumed in lonely and impoverished exile; but no one saw the portents of this dark future when the wheel broke.

  When his wife complained angrily about having to walk through the mud because of the broken wheel, he said, in the hope that he could ease the unspoken tension caused by his taking a younger, second wife, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it,” and sent his butler to Rıdvan Pasha, the mayor of Istanbul, who was paving Şişli Avenue, and asked to have the hundred-meter driveway from the street paved as well. But because there had been resentment between them over the matter of a marriage proposal, the mayor refused this request cruelly, saying, “There is not enough material, after paving the streets, where will we find stones to pave a driveway?”