It had been perhaps an hour since they had risen from dinner. The husband and wife drank their coffee, as always, on the balcony of the waterside mansion. The moon, resembling a silver tray from which everything had been wiped and swept away and then hung in the sky, illuminated everything, casting its long, gilded reflection on the sullen sea; covering the weary mountains, the lightless mansions, the nightingale-less groves with a purple and cool mist. Sadi Bey finished his third cigarette as well. This was a scrawny young man who had completed his sixtieth year before reaching thirty. His hair, which had begun to fall out before reaching the age of reason, now left not a single strand on the crown of his head. His head shone like a pumpkin in the moonlight. He had fixed his eyes on the distance, the far distance…
His wife, Cevriye Hanım—in defiance of her husband—was a robust, plump, vivacious, full-blooded, young, vigorous body. She was twenty-five years old. But she looked so fresh that… Those who knew her would always judge her to be “barely fourteen…” Moreover, she was a poet. Rhyme and national meter affected her like an elixir of life; as she read new poems she would swell up, and in the unbearable heat of this summer she would feel refreshed as if she had eaten Tokatlıyan’s “raspberry” ice cream, her appetite would open, and twelve times a day her stomach would grow hungry.
“Oh, what a sublime view!” she said.
Sadi Bey made no sound. As if he hadn’t heard. Cevriye Hanım writhed. She gripped the edge of the balcony. She placed one hand over her heart. She was breathing heavily.
“Ah, I’m dying…” she sighed deeply. Sadi Bey asked with a bewildered amazement as if awakening from sleep: “Why, my dear wife?”
“From grief…”
“What grief?”
“Don’t you see my condition?”
“I see it.”
“What do you see?”
“You ate too much. A bit of indigestion discomfort…”
“Alas, that’s men for you!…” Cevriye Hanım began to sob bitterly. She was stamping her feet, moving them as if turning the invisible wheels of an imaginary velocipede, saying “Ah Sadi! You never understood me!”
Sadi Bey, in truth, had not quite understood his wife. Despite all her sensitivity, her capacity for grief, she was getting fatter every day, never losing weight. Sadi Bey was very material, very serious. He would judge everything coolly. Yet even so, since the beginning of the war, every year the necessity had arisen to take in his trouser waistband by five fingers. While he used to wear a size thirty-nine collar, now the neck inside a size thirty-two collar could perform even the most difficult movements of Swedish gymnastics with ease.
His wife asked again: “Is this condition from eating too much?”
“I don’t know.”
“If you don’t know, why are you slandering me?”
Sadi Bey didn’t answer. He plunged into the depths again, gone. But Cevriye Hanım’s anger did not pass. Looking at her husband angrily, she said, “You don’t have as much feeling as a magpie,” she said, “your mind and thoughts are all on food… Are you a Balıkpazarı crier or what? Rice, bulgur, oil, cheese prices… Think, father, think… As if prices will drop because you think about them… Whereas my grief is so emotional, so spiritual… I look at that moon shining in the air, this smiling moon is now looking at half the globe… Who knows how many scenes of love and affection it’s watching…”
Sadi Bey, shrugging his shoulders with a nervous manner, said, “What’s it to us? Let it watch whatever it watches…”
Cevriye Hanım looked at her husband, looked. Then, raising her hands to the moon, she said, “O divine face! Do you understand how many animals are beneath your smiling eyes?”
The moon, looking alone in the starless sky, seemed to smile even more bitterly as if saying “I understand, I understand…” A light breeze was widening its long reflection on the sea.
Sadi Bey said, “I don’t have time to deal with other people’s love and affection…” Cevriye Hanım replied: “But you have time to deal with the affairs of Balıkpazarı criers…”
Husband and wife looked at each other.
Sadi Bey asked: “Do you know what I’m thinking about?”
“I know.”
“What?”
“Meat.”
“No.”
“Rice.”
“No.”
“Oil.”
“No.”
“Bulgur.”
“No.”
“Well then, beans.”
“No.”
“Dry beans.”
“I said no, madam.”
“What? Potatoes?”
“No…”
Cevriye Hanım could not imagine her husband thinking about anything else.
“Surely you hadn’t been lost in poetic reveries for an hour?”
“True… Not poetic…”
“What were you thinking then, you tell me…”
“What would I think about? A new expense…”
“What kind?”
“An expense that will turn our budget upside down… This month we’ll be buying a third gift.”
Cevriye Hanım didn’t understand at first.
“What gift?”
“Uncle’s children were circumcised. We’re invited tomorrow evening. What gift shall we take? This month we took five-lira gifts to two of our relatives who had weddings.”
Cevriye Hanım said, “Must we necessarily take a material gift? Let’s take a spiritual gift. Free, but very valuable…”
“What kind?”
“I’ll write a poem. Let’s take that.”
“Such foolishness won’t do.”
“Oh, so you despise poetry…”
“My dear… well…”
“What…”
“Can such a thing be done?”
“Why not?”
“Then they’ll…”
“What will they say…”
“They’ll say we’re crazy…”
The husband and wife argued for about half an hour. As with every argument, nothing came of their argument either. “From the collision of their ideas, the lightning of truth was actually extinguished.” The moon, to see them better, was slowly, stealthily climbing higher, to the very center of the sky. Cevriye Hanım, saying “You’re scattering my poetic reveries with your empty words!” sulked at her husband. Groaning from her spiritual grief, she went up to the bedroom. Sadi Bey, left alone on the balcony, in this sublime view that was so affecting as to make his wife ill, thought about the gift he would buy tomorrow.
“What shall I buy? What shall I buy…?” he was saying. Two circumcised boys… If he bought each a wristwatch… six liras at three liras each… A desk set each… ten liras at five liras each. He had asked the price of a bone paper knife at Pygmalion and had jumped back two steps like a brave sports horse frightened by tin. A paper knife was five and a half liras… He thought. He thought. There was nothing cheap left in the world. This month it would not be possible to give ten liras for a gift. There were still eighteen days until the end of the month. He lowered his eyes from the sky to the sea. A darkness was passing through the moon’s reflection. He paid attention. A torpedo boat…
The moon in the sky… the moon’s reflection on the sea… a silent, heroic torpedo boat moving through the moon’s reflection, scattering gilded, silvery foam… If he were a painter, he would go crazy for this view.
As Sadi Bey was thinking this way, he went crazy as if he were a painter.
“I found it! I found it!” he cried out.
His wife had not yet fallen asleep. She stuck her disheveled head out of the bedroom window: “What did you find?”
“The gift we’ll buy…”
“What? Something cheap?”
“Both cheap and expensive…”
“Expensive… How many kuruş? A thousand kuruş?”
“No, a million kuruş…”
“Each?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve gone mad! Where will you find this money?”
“Worth a million kuruş but… one lira each…”
“What is it?”
“Guess…”
“You’re playing with me…”
“No, I swear I’m serious.”
“Tell me, for God’s sake, what?”
“I won’t tell, you think and find it…”
“I’m telling you to tell me, my mind is scattered now…”
“My dear, don’t you have any quickness of comprehension?”
“You have no quickness of comprehension.”
Sadi Bey laughed out loud on the balcony.
“Very well, I have no quickness of comprehension. You have it. So then I’m telling you. A gift worth a million kuruş! But we’ll buy it for one lira. What is it? This…”
“You’re playing with me…”
“No, I’m not playing.”
“Is it edible or not?”
“Not edible… Can anything worth a million liras be eaten?”
“Is it big or small?”
“Hand-sized.”
Cevriye Hanım, leaning halfway out of the window as if she would throw herself onto the balcony, was looking at her husband, thinking, thinking, and couldn’t figure it out at all.
“Is it soft or hard?”
“Soft, but not like cotton. Like paper.”
“Tell me the first letter.”
“D…”
Cevriye Hanım named many things beginning with the letter “D”: “Ice cream, drum, checkers, tambourine, breeding sheep, wall clock, large mirror, lace, damask, iron, tumbler pigeon, ladder, sewing machine… and so on…” As she spoke, Sadi Bey laughed, asking “Is this worth a million kuruş?” teasing his wife. Cevriye Hanım could not figure out what this gift was. Her spirits sank so low… Finally she answered:
“Tell me, what is it, or I swear I’ll throw myself down,” she cried. Sadi Bey was convulsed with laughter, his shiny head was shaking.
“No need to throw yourself down, just say: ‘I have no quickness of comprehension’ and I’ll tell you.”
“Very well, I don’t have any…”
Sadi Bey rose from his chair. Looking at his wife’s face writhing with curiosity, he let out a cheerful and pleased laugh, “A Navy lottery ticket…” he said. Rubbing his hands with the sincere joy particular to paupers who have suddenly been freed from a heavy expense, he went inside and slept very comfortably that night.
