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There was a burst of applause; it didn’t last long, and we carried on dancing as if nothing had happened. When other couples got up to dance, we returned to our table.
“You did very well. You looked so good together,” said Berrin. At that point, I think, Füsun was not yet among the dancers. Sibel was fretting so over Nurcihan and Mehmet’s lack of progress that she asked me to speak to Mehmet. “Tell him to come on a little stronger,” said Sibel, but I did nothing. Berrin got involved at this point, and in a whisper she told us that forcing the issue was a bad idea; she’d been watching the whole thing from her side of the table and it wasn’t just Mehmet; they had both been standoffish, or at least nervous, and if they didn’t like each other there was no point in pushing them together. “No,” said Sibel, “weddings cast a kind of spell. It’s at weddings that many people meet the person they end up marrying. It’s not just girls that get into the mood at weddings; it’s boys, too. But you have to help them along…” “What are you talking about? Tell me, too,” said my brother as he joined the whispering conversation, and once he had been apprised of things, he pointed out in hortatory tones that while the days of arranged marriages were over, Turkey wasn’t Europe, and there weren’t many ways couples could get to know each other, with the result that a lot of the burden had fallen on the shoulders of well-meaning informal matchmakers. Then, apparently forgetting that Nurcihan and Mehmet had sparked the debate, he turned to Nurcihan, saying, “I imagine, for example, that you would never consent to a marriage arranged by a matchmaker, am I right?”
“So long as the man is nice, it doesn’t matter how you find him, Osman Bey,” said Nurcihan with a giggle.
We all laughed as if we’d heard something so outrageous it could only be a joke. But Mehmet turned deep red and looked away.
“Don’t you see?” Sibel whispered into my ear a bit later. “She frightened him off. He thought she was making fun of him.”
I was not watching the people on the dance floor at all. But when our museum was established, Mr. Orhan Pamuk recalled that Füsun had danced with two people early on. He didn’t know or couldn’t remember her first dance partner, though I worked out that it must have been Kenan from Satsat. The second, however, was the young man with whom I had exchanged glances a short time earlier while visiting the Pamuk family table-Orhan Pamuk himself, as he proudly told me years later. Those interested in Orhan Bey’s own description of how he felt while dancing with Füsun should look at the last chapter, entitled “Happiness.”
While Orhan Bey was dancing the dance that he would describe to me with utter frankness many years after the fact, Mehmet decided he had had enough of Nurcihan’s giggles and our double entendres about love, marriage, matchmakers, and “modern life” and left the table. At once our spirits dropped.
“That was very rude of us,” said Sibel. “We broke the boy’s heart.”
“Don’t say that looking at me,” said Nurcihan. “I didn’t do any more than you did. You’ve all had a lot to drink and you’re having a good time. Mehmet is the one who is frustrated in life.”
“If Kemal brings him back to the table, will you behave nicely, Nurcihan?” asked Sibel. “I know you could make him very happy. And he you. But you have to treat him well.”
It seemed to please Nurcihan to see Sibel so openly determined to set her up with Mehmet. “No one’s talking about getting married tomorrow,” she said. “He met me, he could have said one or two nice things to me.”
“He is trying. He’s just not used to talking with a girl as self-possessed as you are,” said Sibel; giggling, she whispered the rest of what she had to say into Nurcihan’s ear.
“Do you people know why boys in this country never learn how to flirt with girls?” asked my brother. He assumed that charming expression he wore whenever he’d had something to drink. “There’s nowhere to flirt. We don’t even have our own word for ‘flirt.’”
“I remember your idea of flirting,” said Berrin. “Before we got engaged, you’d take me to the cinema on Saturday afternoons… You’d bring a portable radio with you, so that you could find out about the Fener match during the five-minute intermission.”
“Actually, I didn’t bring the radio with me to tune in to the match, but to impress you,” said my brother. “I was proud to be the owner of the first transistor radio in Istanbul.”
Then Nurcihan admitted that her mother used to brag about being the first person in Turkey to use an electric blender. She went on to tell us how, in the late 1950s, years before ca
“What happened to that German model of yours?” Sibel asked Zaim. “Did you ditch her like all the others?”
“Inge wasn’t my lover. She’s gone back to Germany.” Zaim spoke without losing any of his good humor. “We were just business associates, and I was only taking her out to show her Istanbul by night.”
“So you’re telling me you were just friends,” said Sibel, using one of the expressions newly popularized by the celebrity magazines.
“I saw her today, at the cinema,” said Berrin. “She turned up on the screen, sipping that soft drink with that same beckoning smile.” She turned to her husband. “I went at lunchtime-the power was out at the hairdresser’s. I went to the Site-it was Jean Gabin with Sophia Loren.” She turned to Zaim. “I see her everywhere-in every single kiosk in the city; and it’s not just children drinking Meltem now, it’s everyone. You’re to be congratulated.”
“We timed it well,” said Zaim. “We’ve been lucky, too.”
Seeing the puzzlement in Nurcihan’s eyes, and knowing that Zaim would expect me to explain, I quickly informed Nurcihan that my friend was the owner of Şektaş, the company that had recently launched Meltem, and that he’d also introduced us to Inge, a lovely German model who could be seen in the advertisements all over the city.
“Have you had the opportunity to taste our fruit-flavored soft drinks?”
“Of course I have. I especially liked the strawberry,” said Nurcihan. “Even the French haven’t been able to put out something that good in years.”
“Do you live in France?” asked Zaim.
Zaim invited all of us to visit the factory that weekend, also promising a Bosphorus cruise and a picnic in Belgrade Forest just outside the city limits. The entire table watched him and Nurcihan. A short while later they got up to dance.
“Go find Mehmet,” said Sibel. “Get him to rescue Nurcihan from Zaim.”
“Are we sure she wants to be rescued?”
“I don’t want to see my friend swallowed whole by this embarrassing Casanova whose only ambition in life is to lure girls into bed.”