She paused a bit and examined my face. She drank some wine. As she talked, she seemed to be opening up and freeing herself from her distress.
“Why are you astonished?” she continued. “Don’t be afraid, it’s not as you suppose. But I wish I could be like that. I would certainly be doing something that debases the human soul less… Only I’m a painter, you know… I have my own conceptions of beauty… I don’t find making love with a woman beautiful… How shall I say… It’s not aesthetic… Then I love nature very much… I always behave timidly toward unnatural things… That’s why I believe I must absolutely love a man… But truly a man… A man who can drag me without relying on any force… A man who will love me and walk beside me without asking anything from me, without dominating me, without debasing me… That is, a truly strong, complete man… Now do you understand why I don’t love you? Besides, not enough time has passed to love, but you too aren’t what I’m searching for… True, you don’t have that meaningless arrogance I mentioned a moment ago… But you’re too childish, or rather too womanly… Just like my mother, you too need someone to manage you… This could be me… If you want… But I can’t be more than that… We’ll be perfect friends… You’re the first man who listened without cutting off my words, without trying to change my mind, to convince me, that is to bring me around. It’s obvious from your eyes that you understand me… As I said, we can be very good friends. Just as I’ve spoken openly with you, you too can pour out your heart to me. Isn’t this much enough? Is it better to lose even this by wanting too much? I would never want this. I said last evening too, sometimes my one state doesn’t fit my other state… But this shouldn’t lead you to wrong thoughts… I never change in main points… Well? Will you be friends with me?..”
All these words had left me dizzy… I was afraid of passing a final judgment on her and sensed I couldn’t be correct in this. Only one desire passed through my head: at any cost, to be close to her, not to separate from her… I didn’t need her other side… I had never been accustomed to asking from any person more than they gave me…
Despite this, there was a strange stillness inside me. Looking into her black and absent eyes waiting for an answer from me, slowly:
“Maria,” I said, “I understand you very well… I also see that your experiences in life have led you to give such a long explanation, and I’m pleased thinking you’re doing this to prevent things that could shake our friendship in the future. So this friendship has value to you…”
She nodded her head quickly in affirmation. I continued:
“Perhaps you didn’t need to tell me these things. But how would you know? We’re newly getting to know each other. It’s better to be cautious… I don’t have as much experience in life as you. I’ve met very few people and always lived with myself. I see that although we’ve gone by different paths, we’ve both arrived at the same conclusion: we’re both searching for a person, our own person… If we find this in each other, it will be a wonderful thing… What’s truly important is this; other matters remain secondary… As for male-female relations, you can be sure I’ve never been the kind of person you fear. True, I have no adventures that have happened to me, but I never even brought to mind that I could love a person I didn’t respect as much as myself and didn’t find as strong as myself. You mentioned being debased a moment ago. For a man to permit this is, in my opinion, to deny his own personality, to actually debase himself. I too, like you, love nature very much; in fact, I can say that the more I’ve remained distant from people, the more I’ve drawn close to nature. My country is one of the world’s most beautiful places. Many civilizations we’ve read about in histories were established and destroyed in those places. When lying under ten or fifteen-century-old olive trees, I would think of the people who once gathered their harvest. In its mountains covered with pine trees, in places thought untrodden by human foot, I would encounter marble bridges, carved columns. These were my childhood’s companions, my dreams’ subjects. Since then I’ve held nature and its logic above everything. Let’s leave it be; let our friendship too walk in its natural path. Let’s not try to give it artificial directions, to bind it with prejudgments!”
Maria struck my hand resting on the table with her index finger:
“You’re not as childish as I thought!” she said. Her eyes, undecided and timid, were wandering over me. She had stuck out her somewhat larger lower lip even more, thus taking on the state of a small girl about to cry. Her eyes, contrary to this, were thoughtful and searching. I was astonished at how many expressions her face changed in such a short time.
“You can tell me many things about your life, your country, your olive trees!” she began speaking. “I’ll tell you my childhood and some things I can remember about my father. We certainly won’t have difficulty finding words to speak… But how much noise there is here. Probably because the hall is empty… The poor things want to cheer the boss at least with the noise of their instruments… Ah, if you knew what the bosses of such places mean!”
“Are they very rude?”
“And how! This too is an occasion to get to know men closely. For example, the owner of our Atlantik is a very polite man. Not only toward his customers but toward every woman he has no business with… Certainly, if I didn’t work at his cabaret, he would court me as subtly as a baron and make me admire his courtesy. But he suddenly changes toward people who take money from him and probably calls this ‘professional ethics.’ It would be more correct if he said ‘profit ethics.’ Because his roughness, sometimes going as far as rudeness, comes more from the fear of being deceived than from the desire to protect the establishment’s seriousness. If you saw how this man, who is probably a good family man or honest citizen, wants us to sell not just our voice, our smile, our body, but also our humanity, you would shudder…”
With a distant association I cut off her words:
“What was your father?” I said.
“Didn’t I say? He was a lawyer. Why did you ask? Are you curious about how I fell into these circumstances!”
I was silent.
“It’s understood you don’t yet know Germany well. There’s nothing extraordinary in my state. I studied with the money my father left. Our situation wasn’t bad. I did nursing during the war. Then I attended the academy. Our small income went because of inflation. I was forced to earn money. I’m not complaining about this. Working isn’t a bad thing at all. What bothers me is that our wanting to work without debasing our souls isn’t approved… Then being obliged always to be face to face with drunk people and those hungry for human flesh bothers me. Sometimes they have such a look… I can’t call this merely bestiality… If it were only this much, it would still be natural… This is something lower than bestiality… A bestiality mixed with human hypocrisy, cunning, wretchedness… Disgusting…”
She looked around. The orchestra had increased its noise completely. A plump woman with corn-tassel-like hair wearing a Bavarian dress was singing cheerful mountain tunes at the top of her voice, making strange sounds from her throat and turning around.
Maria:
“Come on, let’s sit in a quiet place… It’s still early!” she said. Then looking at my face carefully:
“Or am I boring you?.. I keep talking and dragging you from place to place since morning. It’s not good for women to be so pushy… I’m speaking seriously; if you’re bored, let me set you free!”
I held her hands. I couldn’t answer for a long time. I didn’t look at her face either. Despite this, only after being certain she understood what was going through me:
“I’m grateful to you!” I said.
“I too to you!” she said and pulled her hands away.
When we went out into the street:
“Come, let’s go to a coffeehouse near here with you!” she said. “It’s a very pleasant place. You’ll see strange people.”
“To Romanisches Café?”
“Yes, do you know it? Have you been?”
“No, I heard about it!”
She laughed:
“From your friends who run out of money at month’s end?”
I too smiled and looked ahead.
I had heard that this coffeehouse always visited by artists filled after eleven at night with old, pleasure-loving, young-seeking and moneyed women, and that gigolos of every nation, every age would go there at these times and try to make themselves liked.
Because it was still early, there were only young artists in the coffeehouse. Sitting in groups, they were arguing in loud voices. We went up to the upper floor by a staircase between columns. We had difficulty finding an empty table.
Around us sat young painters imitating the French with their wide-brimmed black hats and long hair, writers filling pages constantly with pipes in their mouths and long-nailed fingers.
A tall, blond young man with sideburns down to his mouth made signs from afar and came to our table.
“I salute the Madonna in a Fur Coat!” he said, taking Maria’s head between his hands; he kissed her first on the forehead, then on her cheeks.
I fixed my eyes on the ground and waited. They talked about this and that. It was understood they exhibited paintings at the same exhibition. Finally, after the young man squeezed and shook Maria’s hand strongly and gave me a greeting saying “Goodbye, young sir!” probably in artist fashion, he moved away.
I was still looking ahead. The woman asked:
“What are you thinking?”
“You said ‘you’ to me, are you aware?”
“Yes… Don’t you want it?”
“What do you mean? Thank you!”
“Oh! You thank so much!”
“We Orientals are very polite people… Do you know what I was thinking? That man kissed you and I wasn’t jealous at all.”
“Really?”
“And I’m wondering why I wasn’t jealous!”
We looked at each other long. With trust, we looked at each other searchingly.
“Tell me a bit about yourself too!” she said.
I nodded my head in agreement. I had planned since daytime to tell her many things. But none of these was coming to mind; completely new things were passing through my head. Finally I decided and began speaking randomly. I wasn’t telling any specific thing; I was talking about my childhood, my military service, the books I read, the dreams I built, our neighbor Fahriye, and the bandits I knew. Aspects I had until now hesitated to tell even myself were coming out from where they were hidden and pouring forth without even informing me. Because I was speaking about myself to a person for the first time, I wanted to appear in all my nakedness, without covering anything up. I was making such effort not to lie to her, not to distort myself, not to change anything; in fact, sometimes going too far in this effort, I was emphasizing the points against me so much that in this way I was again departing from reality.
Memories and long-controlled feelings, always-silenced excitements were flowing out like a flood, gradually growing, swelling, speeding up. The more I saw how attentively she listened to me, how she ran her eyes over my face as if wanting to understand even the aspects I couldn’t put into words, the more I opened up. Sometimes she was slowly nodding her head as if in affirmation; sometimes she was slightly opening her mouth as if in astonishment. When I got excited, she was slowly caressing my hand; when my words took on a complaining manner, she was smiling with compassion.
At one point, as if pushed by an unknown force, I cut off my words and looked at my watch. It was coming to eleven. Not a soul remained at the tables around us. Jumping up from my place:
“But you’ll be late for your work!” I shouted.
She tried to pull herself together. She squeezed my hands more; straightening up without hurrying:
“You’re right!” she said. While placing her beret on her head, she added:
“How beautifully we were talking!”
I brought her to the front of the Atlantik bar. On the road we hardly spoke at all. We both were absent and full, as if wanting to settle the impressions of this evening inside us. Toward the end of the road I felt my body shiver.
“Because of me you couldn’t go home and wear your fur; you’ll be cold!” I said.
“Because of you?.. Right… Because of you… But the fault is mine… It doesn’t matter… Let’s walk fast!”
“Should I wait to take you home again?”
“No, no… Never… We’ll meet tomorrow!”
“As you know!”
Perhaps to avoid being cold, she snuggled closer to me. As we approached the door illuminated by electric lights, she stopped, came out of my arm and extended her hand. She seemed to be thinking something extremely serious. Pulling me, she dragged me to the edge of the wall. Finally, she bent toward my face, fixed her eyes on the sidewalk and in a voice like a whisper but quickly:
“So you don’t feel jealous of me?” she said. “Do you really love me this much?” Suddenly she raised her eyes and began looking at my face with curiosity. Because at this moment I couldn’t find a word to tell her what I felt, I felt my chest constricting as if narrowing, my throat drying. I was afraid every word, even every sound from my mouth, would spoil, muddy my happiness. She was still, this time also with a bit of fear, looking at my face. From helplessness I noticed my eyes had teared up. Then on her face occurred a comfortable relaxation. As if resting, she closed her eyes for a second. Then, holding my head, she kissed me once on the mouth and, turning her back, without saying anything, walked slowly and entered inside.
I returned to the pension almost running. I wanted to think nothing, remember nothing. The events of this night were so valuable I shrank from touching them even with my memories. Just as a moment ago I had feared a small sound from my mouth would spoil the atmosphere of that unimaginably happy moment, this time too I was afraid that every meddling I would make with my imagination would harm the wonderful events of the few hours I lived today and their unique harmony.
The pension with its dark staircase seemed very charming to me; all the smells filling the corridors pleased me.
After this, every day I began meeting with Maria Puder and walking together. We hadn’t finished the things to tell each other on the first evening. The people, scenes we encountered always gave us the possibility to tell our thoughts and determine how close these were to each other. This closeness of ideas was the result of thinking the same way in every point; true, in this was also the influence of one side’s being prepared beforehand to accept and adopt the other side’s idea. But wasn’t seeking an occasion to find every conviction of the person across from you correct and to adopt it also a kind of sign of spiritual closeness?
Most often, we would go to museums and painting galleries. She would give me explanations about the paintings of new and old masters, make arguments about their values. We had gone to the botanical garden several times again, and to the opera one or two evenings. But because leaving here at ten, ten-thirty at night and going to her work was difficult for her, we gave up opera visits. Later one day she said to me:
“Not only in terms of time but also for another reason I don’t want to go to the opera. After leaving there, singing at the Atlantik seems to me like the world’s most ridiculous, most vulgar work.”
I would go to the factory only before noon. I had almost stopped seeing the pension people. Although Frau Heppner occasionally teased saying “We seem to have lost you to someone!” I had only smiled and hadn’t prolonged the talk. I especially wanted Frau van Tiedemann not to hear anything. Maria perhaps wouldn’t see harm in this, but I, perhaps from a habit remaining from Turkey, was of the opinion it was necessary this way.
Yet there was nothing to hide from anyone. Since the first evening, our friendship had remained within the boundaries we had determined between us, and the scene before the Atlantik hadn’t been recalled by either of us on any occasion. In the first times, what brought us closer to each other was more curiosity. We were curious, wondering what else is there, and talked very much. Later a habit took the place of this curiosity. If for some reasons we couldn’t see each other for two or three days, we really missed seeing each other. When we met, we would rejoice like separated friend children, walk holding hands. I loved her very much. I felt there was enough affection in me to love a whole world, and I considered myself happy for finally being able to spend it somewhere. It was certain she too liked me, searched for me. But she never gave occasion to take our friendship to other fields.
One day while walking in Grünewald, a forest around Berlin, she had put her arm around my neck; she was walking leaning on me. Her hand hanging down from my shoulder was swinging lightly, and her thumb was moving as if drawing circles in the air. With a desire whose birth I didn’t understand, I grabbed this hand and kissed the inside of her palm. She immediately pulled her arm away with a soft but definite movement. We didn’t speak about this at all and continued our walk. But her seriousness at that moment was clear and strong enough to prevent me from falling into such feelings again. Sometimes we would talk about love matters. The more I saw how indifferently, as if it were something so distant from herself, she examined this subject, the more I would feel a strange oppression inside. Yes, I had agreed to everything, had accepted all her conditions. But despite this, sometimes I would skillfully transfer the subject to ourselves, would try to analyze our friendship. In my opinion, there wasn’t a separate, abstract concept called love. All the loves, sympathies showing themselves in various ways among people were a kind of love. They only changed name and form according to place. Not giving the love between woman and man its true name was nothing but a kind of self-deception.
Then Maria would wag her index finger and laugh:
“No, my friend, no!” she would say. “Love isn’t at all the simple sympathy or sometimes deep love you say. It’s completely different, such a feeling we can’t analyze that just as we don’t know where it comes from, one day we don’t know where it escapes and goes. Whereas friendship is lasting and depends on agreement. We can show how it began, and if it breaks down, we can analyze its reasons. What doesn’t enter love is analysis. Then think, in the world there are many people we all like; for example, I have many friends I truly love. (I can say the Honorable Gentleman comes first among them.) Now am I in love with all these people?”
I had insisted on my idea:
“Yes,” I had said. “You’re truly and in love a bit with each of the others in love with the one you love most!”
Maria had given an answer I hadn’t at all expected:
“Then why were you saying you didn’t feel jealous of me?”
Unable to find something to say, I thought for a while, then tried to explain:
“A person who has the ability to truly love inside can never restrict this love to one person and can’t expect this from anyone either. The more people we love, the more and stronger we also love the one single person we actually love. Love isn’t something that decreases as it’s distributed.”
“I would have thought Orientals thought differently!”
“I don’t think that way!”
After Maria fixed her eyes on a fixed point and fell in for long:
“The love I’m waiting for is different!” she said. “It’s outside all logic, impossible to describe and of unknown nature. Loving and liking is one thing; wanting, wanting with all one’s soul, with all one’s body, with everything, is another… Love in my opinion is this wanting. An irresistible wanting!”
Then, with a manner certain of myself as if I had caught her:
“What you say is a matter of a moment,” I said. “The love, interest existing inside you, with some reasons not clearly known, at a moment whose time can’t be determined, suddenly accumulates, condenses; just as the sunlight that sweetly warms, after passing through a lens, gathers at one point and begins to burn, this love that increases its power extraordinarily also surrounds and inflames you. It’s not correct to suppose it’s something suddenly coming from outside. It consists of the feelings already existing inside us intensifying in a way that will astonish us.”
We had left this argument here but had taken it up again at other times. I sensed that neither my words nor her ideas were one hundred percent correct. It was certain that certain secret, vague thoughts and desires not subject to us managed both of us, no matter how much we wanted to be open to each other. However many points we united on, there were also places we were separate, and if one side easily adapted to the other, it was doing this only for a purpose it found more important. We didn’t hesitate to pour out even these most hidden corners of our souls and argue about them; despite this, there were also aspects we never touched, because we too didn’t properly know what they were; but a feeling whispered to me that these aspects were actually important.
Because until now I hadn’t encountered a person this close to me, I had the desire to preserve her above all matters. Perhaps the ultimate goal of all my desires was to possess her completely, without any deficiency, with all her material and spiritual being, but with the fear of losing what I could obtain, I hesitated to turn my eyes to this goal; I remained immobile like a person afraid of making the wonderfully beautiful bird he’s watching and wants to catch fly away with a small movement.
I was sensing in a dark way that this immobility, this hesitation based on fear, was more harmful, that in human relations one couldn’t remain as if turned to stone at one point, that every step not taken forward took a person backward, and moments that didn’t bring closer certainly distanced, and I was feeling an anxiety burning silently inside me but growing day by day had begun to take place.
But for me to do otherwise, I had to be another kind of person. Although I knew I was constantly circling around the main point, I didn’t know, couldn’t find the roads to go to this point. My old shyness and timidity were gone. I wasn’t withdrawing into myself; in fact, perhaps even in a somewhat extreme way I was revealing my soul; but all on condition of not touching this main point.
I don’t know whether I thought all these things this clearly and deeply at that time. Today, after more than twelve years have intervened, I bring before my eyes my state of that day and draw these conclusions. My judgments about Maria too have passed through the purification and examination of the same time distance.
At those times I understood Maria too was in certain contradictory feelings. Sometimes she would become extremely still, even cold; sometimes suddenly becoming passionate, showing me such extreme interest as to give me the courage I forbade myself, she was almost openly provoking me. But these states would pass very quickly; the old friendly atmosphere would again appear between us. It was certain she too, like me, noticed that our friendship, by remaining where it was, had entered a dead end. Only she, although not finding what she actually searched for, saw that many other aspects in me were too valuable to be sacrificed for her, and for this reason, she hesitated to do things she thought would cause me to distance myself from her.
All these complex feelings remained in the most hidden corners of our souls, as if afraid to come to light; and we, in reality, were still two sincere friends always searching for each other, wanting each other, always returning more pleased and richer from each other’s presence as before.
But suddenly everything changed and took a completely unexpected direction. It was toward the end of December.
Her mother had gone to one of her distant relatives around Prague to spend Christmas. Maria was pleased with this:
“One of the things that most gets on my nerves in the world is that pine sapling decorated with those candles and tinsel,” she was saying. “Don’t attribute this to my Judaism, because since I find such meaningless ceremonies people resort to with the fancy of supposing themselves happy for a moment ridiculous, it’s quite natural I can’t find pleasant the Jewish religion full of such strange and unnecessary obligations. Besides, my mother, a Protestant of pure German blood, is attached to these customs only because she’s old and for something to do. If she finds my ideas heretical, what’s operative in this is more the fear of spoiling the spiritual calm of her last days than her religious convictions.”
“Do you think New Year’s has no particularity either?” I asked.
“No,” she said, “what difference does it have from other days of the year? Has nature separated it in any way? Even that it shows a year has passed from our life isn’t that important; because dividing our life into years is also people’s invention… Human life consists of a single road extending from birth to death, and every kind of division made on it is artificial… But let’s leave philosophy aside; if you want, on New Year’s Eve let’s go somewhere together. My work at the Atlantik ends before midnight, because that night there are also many other extraordinary numbers. We’ll go out together; like everyone, we too will get drunk… It’s a pleasant thing to occasionally escape from ourselves and get swept away by the current… What do you say? Besides, we’ve never danced together, have we?”
“No, we haven’t!”
“I don’t get much pleasure from dancing anyway; sometimes the person I dance with pleases me and for this reason I endure that hardship.”
“I don’t suppose I’ll please you for this work!”
“I don’t suppose so either… But never mind; in friendship, sacrifice is necessary!”
On New Year’s Eve we ate dinner together and sat and talked at the restaurant until her work time; when we arrived at the Atlantik, she went somewhere in the back to change; I settled at the table where I had sat on my first evening. Inside was decorated with paper ribbons, colored lanterns, gold-plated wires. The crowd already seemed drunk. Almost all those dancing were kissing and cuddling. Inside me was a causeless ennui:
“So what?” I was saying. “Where really is this night’s extraordinariness? We make it up and believe it ourselves. It would be better if everyone went home and slept. What will we do? We’ll embrace and turn like them… With one difference: We won’t kiss… I wonder if I’ll be able to dance?”
In the months I attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul, some friends had shown me some dances they had learned from the White Russians filling the city at that time. I could even waltz a bit… But could I accomplish tonight a skill I hadn’t shown perhaps for a year and a half? “Come on you, I’ll stop halfway and sit down!” I said.
Maria’s violin playing and singing lasted even shorter than I had thought and ended in noise. This evening everyone preferred to be their own number. As soon as Maria changed her top, we left immediately; we went to a big place they called “Europa” across from Anhalter Station. This was completely different from the small and intimate Atlantik. In halls as big as the eye could see, hundreds of couples were dancing constantly. Tables’ tops were filled with bottles of all colors. Those who had laid their heads down and were already sleeping, those sitting in each other’s laps could be seen.
Maria this evening was strangely cheerful. Hitting my arm:
“If I had known you’d sit sulking like this, I would have chosen another young man for myself this evening!” she was saying.
She was drinking the bitter-tasting Rhine wines she had brought one after another with a speed that astonished me, and was forcing me to drink too.
The real fun of the casino started after midnight. Shouts, laughter, the noise of music playing tearingly in four different places, the foot clatter of couples waltzing old-style hopping and hopping were mixing with each other. The unrestrained exuberance of the post-war years was being seen here in all its nakedness. The state of the young men losing themselves in immoderate joy with their frail bodies, protruding-boned faces and eyes shining as if suffering a nervous disease, and of the young girls supposing the best form of rebellion against society’s unjust and illogical bonds, its superstitious judgments, was to let loose their sexual desires, was truly sad. Maria, thrusting another glass into my hand, whispered:
“Raif, Raif. You’re not doing well at all… You see how much effort I’m making not to fall into tremendous ennui and melancholy. Leave it; let’s separate from ourselves this evening at least. Suppose we’re not us. We’re one of a bunch of people filling this place. Besides, are all of them really as they appear? I don’t think so. I don’t want to put myself in place of everyone’s wise or sensitive one. Drink and laugh!..”
