Bliss: A Novel (33 page)

Suddenly, İrfan had an intriguing thought. When someone changed his own life, could it affect the lives of others, too? Or, could he change his own life by transforming other people’s lives?

The idea of participating in the fate of these two young people excited İrfan as though he were playing an entirely new role. Moreover, with his commando training, Cemal would be a great help on the boat. The girl was already doing the dishes. Meryem had had an amazing effect on İrfan, who found the little girl oddly attractive. He liked her large, round, moist eyes that always seemed wide open in amazement. These youngsters could do many tasks on the boat that he could not do himself because of his injured leg, and he would no longer be alone, traveling from one bay to another. He remembered something his mother had said: “It takes one human to heal another.”

Here on his boat were these two people from eastern Anatolia. İrfan had not been able to go there, but the atmosphere of the east, which was a necessary part of his book, had come to him.

Cemal, like İrfan, was immersed in thought. The caretaker of the fish farm was to return the next day, and he and Meryem would not be needed anymore. Where would they sleep the following night? Would the guard allow the girl to stay in the hut? He recognized that Selahattin could only help him for two weeks. Then it was up to him to take care of his own affairs. Cemal had to find an immediate solution, but, without help, he and Meryem could not go anywhere. They needed someone with a boat to take them to a village on the coast.

Should I ask this old man for a job? he wondered. He was willing to work on the boat in return for food and a place to sleep.

At the same time, İrfan was considering how they would react if he offered them a job and gave them some money.

Meryem, having finished the dishes, came out and sat down silently in a corner, breathing in the intoxicating scent of jasmine and wishing that their visit to this boat would never end. The boat was so beautiful, so clean, so different. It did not resemble the hut in any way, nor the shanty in Rahmanlı. The man himself was very different from any other man she had met. He treated her respectfully and, maybe, he even liked her. Yes, Meryem felt quite sure that he liked her.

On those spring evenings, when the sap began to rise and the air was filled with intoxicating scents, Meryem was filled with an indescribable longing for life. She wanted to live. Her body burned with the desire to live. With all the yearning of her fifteen years, she felt the need to touch and embrace another body. Those scents, the young men on the seashore, the half-naked girls licking their ice cream, the boys’ slender bronze bodies, their laughter, their smooth white teeth, their earrings, and the bangs falling free over the girls’ pretty faces—she could not stop thinking about what she had seen. On this boat, there was something that belonged to “that world,” something different from her own, a freedom in the atmosphere, full of life and joy. The humidity rose with the rising mist, and the enchanting scent of jasmine seem to enter into the very pores of their skin.

The professor tried to remember Constantin Cavafy’s line: “The jasmine was like a second skin,” or something like that. His mind was too bemused to remember it clearly, and in any case, the quotation in itself was a reminder of another time when he had not been quite sober.

As they sat in silence letting the smell of jasmine waft over them, each of the three realized that they had come to a decision which did not need to be put into words, it was so obvious.

As Cemal and Meryem left, İrfan said, without getting up, “Don’t come too early tomorrow, but don’t wait till evening either. We’ve got to leave the cove while there’s still light.”

The next day toward lunchtime, the fish farm caretaker arrived in a rowboat towed by another that had an outboard motor. He was a coarse, unfriendly man with yellow teeth and a three-day-old beard. He did not pay much attention to Cemal and Meryem. He immediately went into the hut, sat down on the bed, and lit a cigarette.

Cemal and Meryem no longer had any business there. Cemal asked the man if he could row them to the big sailboat. For the first time, the surly man smiled, or rather grinned. Perhaps he was happy that these two uninvited visitors were not about to become a burden to him. He was quick to get up and row them to the boat.

When they climbed aboard, İrfan woke up. As if she were already familiar with the place, Meryem made him a cup of Turkish coffee. This unexpected kindness pleased him. She was a strange little girl—quick, efficient, and friendly.

Before weighing anchor, İrfan gave his crew their first crucial lesson. He taught them how to use the life jackets and the fire extinguishers. He also told them a few things about the engine and explained how the boat moved forward and backward. Then it was time to teach them about the sails and the fenders. He showed Cemal how to throw the fenders over the side when they docked.

İrfan’s explanations were too garbled for the inexperienced crew to grasp, but their captain was patient. He did not expect them to learn everything at once.

İrfan sent Cemal to shore in the dinghy to tie the painter to a tree. Then he limped toward the front deck and weighed anchor. Using the engine, they began to move slowly out into the current.

The cove was so winding and treacherous that İrfan was amazed he had passed through it safely in the dark without any accident. He steered the boat and gave orders to his crew at the same time. The way they kept bumping into things, getting tangled in ropes, or slipping and falling made him roar with laughter.

Soon they were out on the open sea. The misty, humid air of the cove was replaced by bright, open sunlight. A gentle wind was blowing from the northwest. İrfan let out the sails and turned off the engine. The boat listed to the right and began to speed over the glassy water as it hissed beneath the keel.

Meryem closed her eyes and let the wind caress her face. She reveled in this environment full of new and charming things. The loathsome feeling of dirtiness that had dominated her in the hut was washed away by the open sea, the wind, and the crystalline sky.

After passing the headland, they were caught by a strong crosswind. The captain was at the rudder, trying to adjust the sails to the new breeze, while Cemal stood behind him. Meryem was sitting in the prow.

Involuntarily, she had an idea. She would take the first step in testing her desire to belong to this new way of life. She was frightened at the thought, but a burning desire to live impelled her to take that crazy step. Turning slightly, she stole a glance at the two men and waited for the right moment. While neither of them was looking, she loosened the knots that held the scarf around her head. The cloth slowly freed itself in the wind, and Meryem could feel it move. She waited impatiently. It was time to rid herself of that ugly piece of cloth. Later, one by one, she would shed the rest of her clothes—the faded cotton dress, the black plastic shoes that now seemed so out of place.

Suddenly, the wind swept her scarf away into the air behind her, filling Meryem with joy and fear. With an expression of disbelief, she turned and cried out. The wind had plastered her scarf to the rudder.

Meryem was devastated; she had failed. Now she had to go and pick up the scarf and cover her head again. No one would fall for the same trick twice. Frowning, Cemal watched her in silence.

At that minute, İrfan picked up the scarf fluttering on the rudder in front of him and shouted so she could hear, “Why do you cover your head?” he asked. “You have beautiful hair. Let it breathe.”

Under Meryem’s startled gaze, he released the scarf into the wind and let it go. The cloth fell into the water, floated for a while, then disappeared under a wave.

Meryem shut her eyes tightly. “Oh, my God!” she thought. “Dear God!”

With every passing second, the boat gliding over the turquoise sea carried her farther away from that hateful scarf.

Meryem did not have the courage to look at Cemal—even though it was too late for him to do anything. She guessed that he would not be able to go against the wishes of the long-bearded professor who was as old as his father.

Finally, Meryem was a girl without a headscarf; she could have grown wings and flown for joy. With her hair blowing freely in the wind, she stretched her bare feet toward the foam and lost herself in the swift movement of the boat cutting the water like a knife.

She did, in fact, feel a twinge of guilt. Since she was little, she had been taught that covering her head was one of the most important of God’s commands. Now she had defied that divine order, but her joy was so intense that she did not really mind. “God doesn’t love me anyway,” she thought. “He’s never shown me any miracles as he has others.”

As they flew over the water, it reminded her of the way she had flown through the air when pushed on the swing they had rigged up in the garden in her childhood. It was the first time since then that she had felt so carefree. Foam from the prow splashed against her legs and cooled her down.

After a while, she heard someone call her name. When she turned, she saw İrfan offering her a bright red can of Coke. It was ice-cold in her hand.

Then he did something strange: He smiled and winked at her. Meryem glanced at Cemal, whose eyes were glued to the rudder. Flushed with excitement, he was too preoccupied with steering the boat to notice her. Meryem winked at the professor. They were accomplices now and had exchanged their first secret message.

“Thank you, grandpa!” Meryem said exuberantly.

İrfan’s face fell, and he recalled a line from a poem: “A girl called me uncle, what shall I do!”

For the first time in his life, a young girl had called him “grandfather.” He was not old enough to play that part yet—at most he could be her father. Perhaps it was the long, gray beard that created an impression of age.

These young people who had come aboard made him feel old and worn-out, but at the same time, they instilled in him the jasmine-scented enthusiasm of youth.

“It takes one human to heal another,” he thought.

That evening, they anchored in another lovely cove. There were three cabins on the boat, so there was no problem with sleeping arrangements.

The next morning, Cemal and Meryem woke up very early and went on deck. When İrfan appeared around midday, they were shocked. At first, they thought there was a stranger aboard.

After waking up around 11:00
A.M
., İrfan had first taken the scissors and cut off his beard, before giving himself a smooth shave. Seeing his hairless face in the mirror had surprised him, too. His face looked thinner, more elegant. “I’m still young!” he thought to himself.

As he left his cabin, İrfan was sure that the youngsters would be surprised. He felt as if he were in a scene from John Dos Passos’s novel
Manhattan Transfer
, set at a time when everyone wore beards. There the bearded hero sees a Gillette advertisement in a pharmacy window and, wishing to look like the clean-faced man in the ad, he goes in and buys himself some shaving gear. Then he goes home and shuts himself up in the bathroom to shave off his beard. When he comes out, his children all scream and point at him as if he is a stranger.

İrfan’s prediction was right. Cemal and Meryem were bewildered at first by the difference in his appearance, but they were also astonished to realize how young he really was.

Meryem would never call him grandpa again.

AN INCOMPETENT CHAMELEON

One month after that bright, joyful day on which Meryem’s headscarf had blown into the sea, İrfan was once more alone on the sailboat, driven by the wind and lost in a despair that gave him more pain than his broken teeth and bloodshot eye.

The adventure was over. He cared nothing for his aching bones or about which direction the boat went, but let it be blown hither and thither by the wind. Slumped on the deck with a bottle of gin, warm from the sun in his hand, İrfan recalled the events of the past few days.

His life had taken a crazy turn. His quest for metanoia had failed. He felt dizzy when he looked into the dark depths of the void he had discovered inside himself.

Now he understood why most people did not want to leave the safe waters of their lives or to throw themselves headlong into adventures. Security was the reason they remained in their prisons. Their homes and possessions did not prevent them from being free; rather, they protected them against a greater danger—themselves. The established system prevented man from meeting himself face-to-face. Did those who tried to escape end up as he had?

İrfan wondered about Meryem’s effect on events. He did not know where she had gone, but he knew that he was sailing farther away from her with every passing minute. This gave him pain as well as pleasure.

He had no idea where the wind was taking him. Would the voyage end on the sharp rock of a Greek island or somewhere along the Turkish coast? He did not want to know. At least, another boat was unlikely to hit him. It was almost impossible, because anyone who noticed the aimless direction of his boat would take pains to keep away from it.

Among his confused thoughts, the name Martin Eden frequently surfaced. İrfan tried to remember what Jack London’s tragic hero had been thinking of as he was drowning. İrfan had abandoned many things, but he had not lost his habit of perceiving life through fictional characters.

He no longer recalled how he had spat out his teeth after being punched in the mouth. He only remembered Meryem’s extraordinary character. After that happy day when she rid herself of the headscarf, she had made herself noticed like gradually rising water, eventually becoming indispensable.

Meryem had surprised the professor by quickly learning everything he taught her about seamanship. She grasped new information much faster than Cemal, and her reasoning was more developed. She could make connections between things she knew and could reach intelligent conclusions. When İrfan issued a command, Meryem would already have leapt forward and raised the sail or thrown the boom as swiftly as a sparrow by the time Cemal figured out what to do. Cemal would then frown and cast hostile glances at Meryem and the professor. He did not know how he should behave, and his anger toward the girl increased.