The Stone Woman (8 page)

Halil laughed as he stood up to embrace Salman.

“Even I would not be so crude as to blame the short-sightedness of our Sultans for your interminable flatulence. You move too little and you eat too much. The East has not been good for you. When you return I really would not recommend Istanbul as a residence. There you will only get bigger and slower, like a female elephant about to give birth. The indigestion, as you so delicately put it, will get much worse. The city I would suggest for you is Ankara. The air is clean and vices are few.”

Salman stroked his brother’s cheeks affectionately. “You can bury me in Ankara, if you please, Halil, but not till I’m dead. It will cost you to shift this carcass from Istanbul, but you have my permission. The Baron is our witness.”

Salman’s departure brought the evening to a close. Iskander Pasha was very pleased with himself for having manipulated the discussion so successfully. There had been no personal reminiscences of the family, no discussion of our past, and this pleased him. His speech had been paralysed, but his memory had not weakened and there were recollections with which he wanted no contact at all. I felt close to him again. He had once told us that whenever he returned to Istanbul after a stay in Paris or Berlin, he found the odour of stupidity at home extremely reassuring, but was terrified that it might suffocate him if, for whatever reason, he was never able to travel again. I would ask him about that before the summer was over, but not tonight, when he looked so happy. I kissed his head and took my leave.

Silently, I followed the Baron and Uncle Memed to the moon-drenched terrace. We sat down at a table beautifully laid with silver bowls filled with almonds of three different varieties, walnuts and fruits. Petrossian uncorked another bottle and served the two men. Memed told him they would help themselves and instructed him to retire for the night.

I looked at the stars in the sky and wondered whether I would ever find true happiness and be content with my life. I often felt that my mother had sacrificed too much for the sake of a comfortable existence. She had allowed her own personality to be dwarfed by the family of Iskander Pasha. If she had married someone else her biography would have taken a different course. She had spoken once to me, in a slightly embarrassed way, of another man. She had liked him a great deal, but he was poor and when her father had rejected the suit he had emigrated to New York, where he became a very successful painter. She often wished she knew what it was that he painted. I mused over whether her true and intimate feeling for my father was one of disgust, but my thoughts were interrupted.

The two men resumed their conversation. Strange, I thought, that my presence never seems to bother them. They trust me. Perhaps they imagine that like them I, too, am unconventional. Whatever their reasons, I am flattered by their confidence.

“I sometimes get the impression, Memed, that despite our knowledge of each other, you doubt my intelligence.”

“Intimacy can breed doubt and contempt in equal portions, Baron.”

“So, in other words, you had no doubts regarding my intellectual superiority when I was your tutor in Istanbul.”

“None whatsoever, but surely you could not have forgotten that it was also the period of our courtship, which was very intense. You taught me a great deal. Your language, German poetry and philosophy and a love of books. I can still remember the words of the first poem by Heine that you recited and your pleasure when I told you I had understood every word. We talked often of god and religion and the elasticity of so many dogmas. You showed me Berlin and Paris. You compared the growth of learned societies in German towns with the lack of any intellectual movement in provincial France. It was only after I had fully penetrated that world that I could permit you to penetrate me.”

Both men burst out laughing.

‘I
DON’T KNOW WHERE
to begin, Stone Woman. It happened suddenly, without warning, and now I may be in worse trouble than ever before. It happened yesterday in the light of the moon. I wanted to go and count the stars on the beach and I wanted to be completely alone. So I took the tiny path that leads from the cliffs to the entrance of the cave overlooking the sea. When we were children we used to believe that it was our little secret and we were convinced that no adult knew of the path. Even if they did they would find it difficult to follow us because the track was truly little.

As I heard the gentle noise of the water caressing the sand I felt at peace with myself. When I look at the sea glistening in the moonlight and then gaze upwards to catch the stars it somehow puts everything in a different perspective. My own problems shrink into nothingness. Compared to nature, we are but tiny specks in the sand. I was in deep meditation when a familiar voice came from the dark.

“Forgive me,
hanim effendi
, but I thought I should make my presence known just in case you were overcome by a burning desire to bathe in the silken waters of this sea.”

It was Selim, the grandson of Hasan Baba. I had spoken to him on a number of occasions since the circumcision. He had come to inspect Orhan’s wound and make sure it was healing properly. Orhan had grown to like this young man and I, too, had to admit I found his company pleasing. I liked the fact that he never averted his eyes when I addressed him. His eyes were melancholy for so young a person, but when he laughed they shone like diamonds. I was pleased by his presence.

I know what you’re thinking, Stone Woman. You have seen so much over the centuries and you think I had willed him to be present, but I swear by everything I hold dear that I had not thought of him at all. The social chasm between us was so vast that he never entered my mind except as a kind barber from Istanbul who had travelled a whole day to circumcise my son. He was, undoubtedly, an intelligent man and I must confess I was surprised when he declared his passion for the operas of Donizetti Pasha. The music was alien to me, but the way he talked about it made me yearn for the opera. Of course, none of this can explain what happened yesterday, Stone Woman.

“What are you doing here, Selim?”

“I came to watch the sky.”

“And think?”

“Yes,
hanim effendi
, and think. In my world solitude is a precious commodity. I live in a house with six other people. I can’t even hear myself think. This place is like paradise. You must have missed it very much when you were in Konya.”

“I did, and please stop calling me
hanim effendi.
When we are alone you may call me Nilofer.”

“You are beautiful, Nilofer.”

“I did not give you permission to talk in this fashion. Control your tongue, you insolent boy.”

He fell silent.

“I heard you making Orhan laugh yesterday. Tell me a story, Selim. Make me laugh.”

He stood up and began to throw pebbles in the sea. Then he came and sat in front of me.

“I will obey you, princess. Listen, then, to my story. Once long ago in the reign of a Sultan, whose name I cannot recall, there lived a young and beautiful princess. She was a younger sister of the Sultan and he was very fond of her, largely because she kept a storehouse full of jokes. She had been blessed with prodigious powers of recollection. Her memory was the envy of the Court. She never forgot a face, its name or a conversation. She made the Sultan laugh and he rewarded her by never compelling her to get married. She would veil herself and, accompanied by six armed eunuchs, she would visit taverns and places of ill-repute and all this to collect the latest lewd jokes.

“She had refused many offers of marriage, from some of the richest families in Istanbul. She told her friends that she could never be satisfied with one man. She could not commit herself to live the life of a housebound wife. The choice was celibacy or freedom to choose her men. If she saw a man she wanted, she would summon him and lift her veil. Since she was extremely attractive, most men succumbed to her charms. They were conducted by the eunuchs to her private chamber in the palace. Here she lay on a divan awaiting them, only the most flimsy of shawls covering her naked body.

“The lover she had chosen for that particular night was dazzled by the sight of her. When she removed the shawl all was laid bare and as the fortunate man fell on his knees before her she would speak the same words that she had to many of his predecessors: ‘You may gorge yourself on this feast till you are sated. Enjoy it well, for you will never see or taste another. From paradise you will proceed straight to hell.’

“The excited lover was by this time too agitated and overcome by desire to reflect on her warning. It was only after she had been pleasured that he began to show signs of nervousness, but by then it was too late. The eunuchs entered the chamber and escorted the unfortunate lover to a boat moored nearby. One of the eunuchs sang a lament for lost lovers, while the others gently circled the condemned man’s neck with a cord and strangled him to death. The delicate morsel of last night’s banquet was thrown into the Bosporus so that the fish could feed on him. The royal flesh of unmarried females was forbidden to a commoner. He who had enjoyed must be destroyed. He could not be allowed to live and tell the tale. The princess had made one exception to the rule.

“‘If,’ she instructed the eunuchs, ‘any of them ever shouts his defiance of death and declares that a night in my arms is worth the sacrifice, spare his life. Such a spirit should be preserved, not suffocated.’

“Every morning she would inquire anxiously, but none of them ever did. This made her sad, but she lived a long time and in her old age spent a great deal of time in
tekkes
, where ecstasy is not dependent on physical contact.”

I was greatly moved by this story, Stone Woman, or so I thought. Now I think it was the story-teller who affected me.

“Did the princess have a name?” I asked.

“She was called Nilofer.”

It was a warm night and, perhaps, the moon had touched us both, so that when Selim moved closer and stroked my cheeks, I did not resist. When he felt my breasts I made a half-hearted attempt to restrain his ardour, but I wished him to go further. I kissed his eyes and his lips and undressed him. After I had made love to him we washed ourselves in the sea. He was inexperienced, but it did not matter to me. I had not been intimate with a man for nearly a year and the warmth alone had comforted me.

We did not speak for a long time. I stroked his hair as he rested his head in my lap. His first sentence was a whisper.

“Will Petrossian take me out on a boat tonight and drown me?”

I laughed as I hugged him.

“No. In order to do that it would be necessary to castrate him first. Only eunuchs can carry out such an assignment.”

“I thought he was a eunuch. It is said in the kitchen that your family has castrated him in spirit if not in flesh.”

When I suggested that it was time for me to leave, Stone Woman, he held me in a tight embrace and aroused my passion. This time we did not wash because the night was almost over and there was no time to dry ourselves. Am I a lost woman, Stone Woman? What if he has left me with a child? Will the passion I felt for him lead to love?’

My words froze on my lips as I heard the noise of rustling.

“You have embarked on the road to unhappiness, my child.”

“Who’s there?”

My mother emerged from behind the stones. I wept as I screamed at her. “This is a sanctuary, Mother. You have defiled it by your presence. It was cruel of you to eavesdrop.”

“I had come to speak to the Stone Woman myself, child, when I heard your voice. How could I walk away without hearing your story? When you were children, you would hide and listen to all of us. Now it is our turn. You must not complain. My reasons are not so different. You’re such a secretive girl. You never told me about the Greek teacher—and look where it has led you. I know that life with him has made you morose and you were always such a cheerful child. I am starved of information concerning your life, Nilofer. I’m glad I heard your story even though it was an accident. Come with me.”

She put her arm around my shoulders and took me to her room. I sat on the floor so she could massage my head as she did when I was a child. Neither of us spoke for a long time. The reassuring sound of her hands rubbing my scalp had the soothing effect of a balm. As I began to recover my composure I realised, to my astonishment, that she was not in the least angry with me.

“I always wanted you to be happy. When you ran away with the school teacher, I was sad only because I would have liked to celebrate the wedding of my only child. I missed the music and the feasting and the dancing. I would have liked to send you off to your husband in some style. That was a mother’s unrealised dream. Once I had recovered from my disappointment nothing else mattered except your happiness. If you were happy, what right did I have to be sad? But you weren’t happy, were you, Nilofer? That was the impression Halil brought back with him after his first meeting with you and that stick, Dmitri.”

My mother wished to talk of the past. My thinking was concentrated on the present. I wanted to know exactly where Selim was at this moment. I wanted to know what he was thinking. I wondered whether he had told anyone about us. Was he regretting his audacity? As these thoughts raced through my head, my heartbeat quickened in unison, but the impatient expression on my mother’s face was beginning to disfigure her features. It could not be ignored any longer. She would not permit me to move on until I had satisfied her. Perhaps it was more than mere curiosity. Perhaps it was a concern for the children and for my future. Perhaps it had something to do with her own life and frustrated hopes.

“Answer me, Nilofer. What went wrong?”

This was a question I had often asked myself over the last five years. My feelings poured out like a waterfall and almost overwhelmed my mother. I told her that what I had thought of as love had been nothing but the romantic fantasies of an immature mind. Dmitri had offered an escape from the closed world of our family and I had foolishly made the leap with him. I spoke of how I felt my mind beginning to atrophy in the house in Istanbul. I was imprisoned by its routines, stifled by its traditions, crushed by the weight of its history. I was overwhelmed by a desire to experience the real world. Our summer house and the sea represented freedom. Ever since I was three years old I had always loved being here. Dmitri just happened to pass by at the right time. It could have been anyone.