The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk Page A

saddens me to say that he has knowingly done our family a great wrong.”
    “Friendship has lost its value, Kemal Bey, as has humanity—in today’s world. Those old ties count for nothing,” said my future mother-in-law, blinking wisely. “May those people whose names you’ve added never cause you similar trouble. How many are they?”
    “A history teacher and his wife, who’s distantly related to my mother and worked for many years as her seamstress, and their lovely eighteen-year-old daughter.”
    “Oh good,” said my future mother-in-law. “We’ve invited so many young men that we’d begun to worry that there weren’t going to be enough beautiful young girls for them to dance with.”
    As Çetin Efendi drove us home in my father’s ’56 Chevrolet, I dozed off, opening my eyes from time to time to contemplate the chaos on the main avenues, which were dark as ever; and the beauty of the old walls covered with cracks, political slogans, mold and moss; the searchlights of the City Line ferries as they lit up the landing stations; and the high branches of the hundred-year-old plane trees receding in the rearview mirror; and all the while I listened to my father, who had been rocked to sleep as the car bumped over the cobblestones, and now softly snored.
    My mother beamed with contentment at seeing her wishes coming true. As always on rides home after an evening out, she wasted no time sharing her views of the gathering we had just left and of those in attendance.
    “Yes, it was all very good; these are fine people, straight arrows, not lacking in humility, or in elegance either. But what dreadful shape that beautiful mansion is in! Can it be that they can’t afford to fix it up? Surely not. But don’t misunderstand me, son—I don’t believe you could find another girl as charming, graceful, and sensible in all of Istanbul.”
    After leaving my parents in front of the apartment, I felt like going for a walk, which took me past Alaaddin’s shop. This was where my mother had taken my brother and me when we were little, to buy cheap Turkish-made toys, chocolates, balls, water guns, marbles, playing cards, Zambo Chiclets that came with pictures, comics, and so much else. The shop was open. Alaaddin had taken down the newspapers he displayed on the trunk of the chestnut tree outside, and he was just then turning out the lights. With an unexpected warmth he invited me inside, and while he bundled the last of the newspapers he would exchange for the new ones delivered at five in the morning, he tolerated my browsing to pick out this cheap baby doll. I calculated that it would be another fifteen hours before I could give it to Füsun as a present, and wrap my arms around her and forget all my jealous thoughts; and for the first time I felt pain at being unable to call her on the phone.
    It was a burning sensation, from inside me, and it felt like remorse. What was she doing at this moment? My feet were not carrying me home but in just the opposite direction. When I reached Kuyulu Bostan Street, I walked past a coffeehouse where my friends used to play cards and listen to the radio when we were young, and then past the schoolyard where we’d played football. My inner rationalist, though weakened by all the raki I’d drunk, was not yet dead, and now it warned me that it would be Füsun’s father who’d open the door and that the consequences might be scandalous. I walked only far enough to be able to see their house in the distance, and the lights in the windows. Just to see the second-floor windows reached by the chestnut tree was enough to make my heart pound.
    I commissioned this painting to exhibit right here in our museum, providing the artist with all the necessary details, and while it offers a fine impression of the orangey lamplight cast onto the interior of Füsun’s apartment, and the chestnut tree shimmering in the moonlight, and the depth of the dark blue sky beyond the line of rooftops and chimneys