About the Night (9 page)

In those moments of quiet intermission, when their overtaxed senses had been dispatched to feigned rest, the two of them awakened for a second time, acquiescing to that hunger that demands its price, her body sucking him into her, filling up, erupting, looking for the shared rhythm that was taking shape as their love deepened. When they were spent, their breathing still ragged, they rolled onto their backs, seemingly satiated and unaware that in just a short while they would desire each other once again.

After an entire day of this, they lay in her room facing the Bosphorus, languorous and sated, saturated with the scent created by their union, and in spite of the softened lull, they were still astonished at their discovery.

The Bosphorus was full and mighty, and it caught her eyes each time she took them off Elias. His body was thin and not too muscled, his steps light, and his neck shapely and tanned. This, precisely, was the way she wanted him. She even liked the way he slipped into his shirt and trousers, with subtle movements that did not disrupt what had come together between them.

Everything that reminded her of their country, always parched and dusty, made her envious of the unbearable abundance enjoyed by the Turks. Over a dinner of rice with pine nuts and thin slices of beef, she told Elias that thanks to water and other natural resources, Turkey had become an empire.

He could not get enough of her; he simply wished to gaze at her without respite, especially since he had discovered this other side to her, burning and astonishing in its power and openness. In his eyes, she was more beautiful now than ever. A feminine softness sculpted the contours of her face—nature’s intervention, he reasoned, reserved for women loved the way he loved her.

Happiness came to settle in with them, sure and appreciated. There was no doubt it was there, just as there would be no doubt if ever it decided to desert them. It was happiness, raw and clear, sturdy and pure as gold panned from a river. Sometimes the most lofty emotions, the ones that are nearly unattainable, can be found surprisingly nearby.

“To fall in love with you,” Elias said, “is to feel simplicity, something very basic and strong. To eat with you, to watch you brush your hair, to feel whole just because you exist, just because you are as you are. Exactly as you are.”

He led her through the narrow streets as though he had already been there before and knew every corner of the city. The morning was brightly sunny and full of strong light, like Jerusalem. He raced from spice shop to spice shop in the market like a pirate in pursuit of a treasure chest, bringing anise seeds for her to smell and crushing lavender leaves in her palms, their scent different from what they were used to at home. He bought aromatic spices, each in a mound of colorful splendor. For hours they strolled around, touching necklaces strung with moonstones and hand-painted china. Lila lost track of where they were or how they had gotten there and wondered how they would find their way out. The vendors took notice of her, pleading with Elias to buy something for the beautiful woman, and he smiled as if to say, “Feast your eyes, let them burn—she’s mine!”

“Walk with me,” he said to her. “Close, close enough to put your hand in mine.”

They glowed, the two of them. Otherwise, how could one explain the glances they received from every angle? Drivers and vendors and passersby regarded them with covetous looks. Suddenly, a parade of children playing folk tunes on flutes and drums passed before them. Lila stopped in her tracks, and Elias followed suit. He thought that even if she did not wish to revisit her childhood, it was coming to her anyway, into her heart.

They were served fresh fried fish on beds of parsley at their table. After they punctured the flaky skin with their hands, after they wiped the scent away with half lemons, and after she agreed to eat fresh chunks of coconut and
dondurma
, the Turkish ice cream, served with sugared cherries in a baked crust, he suggested that they go to the cinema. That, too, he knew precisely where to find, as if he had been born there, explaining that he had seen it from their taxi. Lila marveled at how he knew where he was anywhere in the world and that he would never get lost.

In the darkened cinema, he grasped her hand and whispered that he missed her.

“How can you miss someone you’re with?” she asked.

“That you’re beside me,” he said, “merely heightens the longing. I can’t bear thinking that you won’t be with me.”

They left the dark cinema and emerged blinking in the bright light, then went for a drink at the bar of the Pera Palace Hotel. She sat with her thighs pressed together, and when her forearm brushed lightly against his, the longing returned and overwhelmed her. This was how she wanted him, as he was at this moment—ponderous, quiet, drinking raki, and capable of pushing away thoughts of how time was slipping away, the hours that were passing and those that remained for them. He was so different from her. She felt threatened by the falling darkness, their second in this city that was giving them refuge, because it meant their time there was coming to an end.

She wished she could stop calculating the time that remained and be happy with what they had at the moment, a moment she had the chance to see him at his best as he was working his Levantine charm on the bar manager, who was already inviting them to another round of drinks on him. And when she fell into the melancholy that awaited her in every corner, Elias could feel her mood. His honeyed eyes drew her out before it was too late, and she found herself smiling and listening to the bar manager’s life story while filling up with desire for the man at her side, the memory of her first night with him causing waves of pleasure to flow through her.

Fall skies covered the city, their disappearing blue hinting at what was to come. A soft, veiled sensuality came to them through the sheer curtains of the hotel room and bathed them in excitement as they pressed against each other and explored hidden worlds and got drunk on the perfume created by one body with another, just as it was in the verse that came to her a moment before drifting off to sleep:
And their flesh became one
.

Juniper trees, rockrose bushes, and orchids painted the windows of the car as it made its way eastward. The driver told them that the bee orchids normally blossomed in the spring, but that this year, they had bloomed late because of the cold. “Which is why,” he said, daring to look directly at Lila in the rearview mirror, “you are lucky that you are visiting Turkey at this time of year, and Madame can enjoy the beautiful view.”

Elias was silent; as Lila was learning, he had various silences that held different meanings: when he was sated and at ease, he was silent, but also when he fell into a cloudy sadness, he could be both part of reality and absent from her at the same time. In the car traveling difficult dirt roads along the Black Sea, his silence seemed to be the kind to which one should accustom oneself, the silence of someone who preferred to remain in the dark, since morning light was too realistic and bright.

In fact, this silence of his taught her just how fortified the building they had built together in the past three days was, how it was nearly impenetrable to marauding strangers even though within it was openness and closeness and amiability and desire and feelings that awaited the chance to burst out.

On the advice of the concierge at their hotel, Elias suggested a stop in the town of Şile. He dismissed the driver back to the city, wishing to spend the hours he had with Lila alone. He rented a car to drive on these unfamiliar roads.

After the long drive, Lila was happy to step out of the car. They walked down a narrow alley, and beneath an engraved gateway, he pulled her to him and kissed her in a way that said
I have waited long enough
. Beaming, they walked the length of the sandy, winding beach, where Lila was thrilled to discover a black-and-white lighthouse and the remains of a castle from the Middle Ages. Alpine swifts, with white necks and black throats, circled above them like a canopy of feathers and filled the air with their screeches. He smiled at her and thanked whoever it was that had sculpted her perfect profile. Elias wanted to hear about her nights as a girl, but she could not recall any stories that had been told to her. She remembered herself alone in bed, her father tired in the small living room and her mother silently embroidering. She pictured people floating across the dark walls of her bedroom, but there was no one to listen to her before she fell asleep.

They passed through Findikli, where the hazelnut trees grew. The nuts were left to dry on tarps in the sunshine. In the shade of a tree, in an improvised chair, a barber was shaving a customer. Elias rubbed his own chin.

“Do you go to the barber regularly?” Lila asked him.

“Every few days, I get a facial massage and we chat. He’s happy to see me. After a visit with my barber, I feel invigorated. It’s a habit,” he said. “A good one.”

Here they are, she thought, the side effects of falling in love, the possessiveness that follows conquest. This wish that his time were hers, that his pleasures be interwoven with hers, that his emotions and feelings be nurtured from the reservoir they would fill together. She wanted to be the one to shave him, to see him thus, with open eyes, handing over his face to the blade and the shaving cream. She wanted to be the tailor taking the measure of his shoulders and his waist, the personal assistant steeping the tea in his office, the woman preparing his meals.