Authors: O.Z. Livaneli
One day, Meryem had seen a log in the water coming their way and shouted a warning. Now and then, logs would roll off freighters into the sea. They could damage or even sink the boat. Meryem had warned them in time. İrfan shivered as the enormous log rolled by harmlessly. Although Meryem had never encountered this kind of danger before, her intuitive warning had saved them from a catastrophic collision.
Soon Meryem was able to determine the position in which to moor the boat when they entered the bay where they would spend the night. Sometimes when İrfan directed her where to cast anchor and where to tie the painter, she would object, and say, “The last time the wind blew at two o’clock in the morning, it shook us badly. The same thing could happen again, so I think it would be better to tie the rope to that tree.” İrfan was left openmouthed in astonishment. What Meryem said was true, but he was surprised at her saying it. He had to laugh at her audacity. Was this the ignorant village girl he had first seen with her head tightly covered with a scarf?
The professor discovered that Meryem had difficulty reading, so he began to tutor her. He enjoyed listening to her pronounce sentences from the newspaper syllable by syllable. Once he asked her to read the words “God willing,” together with him, but before they had finished the first two syllables, she quickly said, “God willing! That’s something I know very well.”
Another day, while cleaning the boat, Meryem had seen the Magritte reproduction in İrfan’s cabin and stunned him by asking, “Are those people flying in the air Armenians?” Even if he had contemplated it for a hundred years, he would not have imagined that those people wearing felt hats and suspended in the air in the picture
Golconde
were Armenians. What strange thoughts this girl had. When he asked her to explain, she blushed, and said, “One day a great wind blew in my village, and all the Armenians flew away. I thought those people in the air were them.”
How could this ignorant girl, whose head was full of fantasies and superstitions, learn so rapidly and, more importantly, reason things out so well? Two weeks after coming aboard the boat, she had changed so thoroughly, it was as if she bore no relation to the girl she had been.
Her appearance had changed, too. İrfan had freed both Meryem and Cemal from their odd-looking clothes. He had taken the girl to the market in Bodrum to buy her some new things.
At first, Meryem had been too shy to walk along the marina in her cotton dress and black plastic shoes when others were dressed in bathing suits. At İrfan’s insistence, she allowed herself to be taken to the fashionable shops there.
Under the puzzled glances of the clerks, İrfan picked out cotton T-shirts, white pants, jeans shorts, bathing suits, and Nike trainers for Meryem. Then, ignoring her protests, he told her to go and try them on in the dressing room. Though she was too shy to put on the shorts, Meryem tried on a pair of white pants, a pink T-shirt, and the phosphorescent sneakers. İrfan almost fainted when Meryem came out. How elegant she looked. Her breasts, which had been invisible under the loose dress, sprouted like two small peaches under the T-shirt.
Meryem was so self-conscious she could not look anyone in the face, but kept her eyes fixed on the ground and held her arms awkwardly at her side. It was obvious she had undergone a great shock.
İrfan bought a pair of sunglasses for her as soon as they left the store, so that she could lift her head and look around. As she walked along the marina, Meryem sometimes caught a glimpse of herself in the shop windows. She had become one of those girls she had so longed to resemble. She felt indebted to the professor for everything, especially for releasing her from her headscarf.
A miracle was taking place in her life. This man had now become one of those miracles that had always been reserved for others, never for her. Maybe he was that very holy man, Hızır, who, dismounting from his gray horse, had boarded a boat and disguised himself as a sailor. Bibi and her aunt always used to say: “It’s only when a man’s problems become serious that he is granted a solution to them.” That was when the holy man would come to your aid. She would tell the professor her thoughts later and explain it all to him. Meanwhile, before returning to the boat, they went into a men’s outfitters and bought clothes for Cemal, too.
At first, when Cemal saw Meryem in her new outfit, he did not recognize her. Then his eyes opened wide in astonishment and fury. But when he saw his new clothes, he forgot his anger. The professor was able to encourage him to replace the thick, creased trousers and dirty yellow shirt for knee-length, white sailor’s shorts and a navy T-shirt. Now he was involved in thinking about his own appearance.
The sight of Cemal wearing shorts reminded Meryem of a chicken with feathered legs and made her want to laugh. The sudden appearance of his hairy legs, which had never seen the sun and were somewhat bandy as well, made his self-image of the strong man a little ludicrous.
Thanks to the rapidly changing circumstances, the clothing revolution went smoothly. In the village, Meryem would never have been allowed to wear such an outfit, but, on the sailboat and in coastal towns full of tourists, her other clothes would have made her stand out and attract attention.
Once again, İrfan admired the human ability to adapt to new conditions and accept a new order of things so quickly. He regarded the experiences of the past weeks as a sociological experiment. It seemed he had been right when, in an article written years before, he had compared people to passengers on a transatlantic liner. When things went well, the passengers had a good time in the formal ballroom; people stood aside for each other, men rose to their feet when ladies entered, and they toasted each other in champagne, clinking their fine crystal flutes, while listening to lively tunes played on the piano. When the ship began to sink, these same people, struggling in the sea to catch hold of a piece of driftwood that would enable them to survive, would mercilessly push others away from it.
Human beings were chameleons, with the ability to survive by adapting to their surroundings. Yet some were incompetent, like himself. İrfan was a chameleon who was ready to try everything to adapt to his environment but who struggled in vain to change color—an incompetent chameleon.
That would be a good name for a book, but it was already too late for İrfan to dream about the future. Sooner or later, the boat would hit a rock and sink. The incompetent chameleon would be buried at the bottom of the sea, and his lifetime of incompetence would disappear forever.
From where he lay, İrfan could see the blazing red sky. A little later, darkness would descend like irresistible, absolute death. The boat had to be in a strait somewhere, because the wind was rocking the boat. İrfan was determined not to get up and look. Whatever would be, would be.
In two weeks, Meryem had learned to read fluently, then he began teaching her how to use the charts. He would lay a yellow chart on the table, and, as they bent over it to study the headlands and bays, he could inhale the girl’s fresh scent. Sometimes, he would ask her which headland they would encounter next. Even when she answered incorrectly, he would applaud and say,
“Brava!”
He knew it was impossible for her to learn to read a map in just a few weeks, and the headland she had pointed out bore no resemblance to the one he had asked for, but he felt he was helping her develop her self-esteem.
Besides his usual attitude of bad-tempered silence, Cemal had begun to cast angry glances at them both. There were two conflicting poles on the boat: İrfan and Meryem at one pole, and Cemal at the other. The closeness between the professor and the girl and the way he praised her infuriated Cemal.
The fact that she was obviously streets ahead of him in intelligence and understanding was something he could not accept. How could this snot-nosed girl, this feeble creature whose life he had spared, have changed so much? In the village, it would have been her duty to serve him, and there she would not even have been allowed to eat or talk in the presence of men. On this boat on the Aegean shore, it seemed as if she were the superior being. That professor was spoiling her completely. Could it be that he was making advances to her? If Cemal discovered such a thing, he was ready to defend the family honor by immediately throwing him off the boat. With every passing day, his grudge against them grew, and he began to spend more time alone. Sometimes when they were at anchor he jumped into the water and swam long distances. At least he could swim better than Meryem.
İrfan insisted that Meryem should learn to swim. He said that if they ever had an accident or she fell into the water, she might drown if she could not swim. But Meryem was not brave enough. To learn to swim, she would have to wear a bathing suit, and she was not ready to expose her body.
Actually, she longed to wear her pretty new bathing suit. In fact, every day when she woke up, she put it on and wore her pants and T-shirt over it.
At first, she had felt naked in these clothes, but gradually she got used to them. But going around in a bathing suit in front of two men was out of the question.
İrfan continued his efforts to encourage her. “You’ll get used to it,” he said. “Human beings quickly get used to good things. And you’ve really scared me with the speed at which you adapt to new things!”
One evening, after they had cast anchor, İrfan had the opportunity he had been waiting for. “There’s an incredible little bay nearby,” he told Meryem and Cemal. “Let’s get in the dinghy and go see it.”
Cemal shook his head as usual. He did not want to join in anything they did. So Meryem and İrfan left together.
There were many interconnecting bays in this area of the coast. Idling along the virgin, green, pine-scented coast, they sailed over the blue water, so transparently crystalline that one could see clear through to its aquariumlike depths.
Meryem trailed her hand in the cool water and watched small silver fish swimming below the surface. İrfan was telling her about their destination, a narrow piece of land between two bays. In the age of Cleopatra, the local inhabitants had unsuccessfully tried to dig a channel across the narrow peninsula to connect the two. Since then, everyone who had tried to do the same thing had died in mysterious circumstances. In just a little while, he would point out to her the ancient ruins.
The sun was setting when they entered the bay, but Meryem was still able to see the ruins. On one side, they faced the setting sun, and on the other, the rising full moon. As darkness deepened, the moon shone brighter.
After a while, they took the rubber dinghy and made for the shore that was beginning to gleam silver in the light of the moon. They sat down on the pebbles. İrfan opened the two cans of beer he had brought along and handed one to Meryem.
Meryem was lost in a dream. The beauty around her, the silvery moonlight shimmering over the bay, the intoxicating scents, the gentleness and care of the man sitting next to her made her head swim. She felt as if she were being drawn along by a stream that was carrying her where it wished.
She accepted the beer without showing too much reluctance. Her lips touched the cold can first, and then she felt a momentary tickle of foam before a somewhat bitter taste. She was content and stretched out her feet toward the waves rippling along the shore. Cemal’s absence—the lack of a controlling presence—was enjoyable. Maybe for once she could spend a few hours without being told what to do.
The respectful attention of this wealthy, learned man with his sensitive ways made her tremble inside and opened the door to a mixture of feelings. For the first time in her life, she felt valued, intelligent, and beautiful. Lost in these thoughts, she did not realize how quickly she had drunk the whole can of beer.
İrfan felt intense compassion for the girl sitting beside him. He wanted to grasp her thin shoulders and hug her. This was not from sexual desire, but rather from a feeling of sympathy. All he wanted was to clasp the girl to his breast and hold her like that for a while. He could not hug her. The girl would misunderstand.
The moon was rising fast. İrfan asked Meryem if she could see a shape in it that resembled a woman’s profile. She could not. One night long ago in Izmir, when the air was heavy with the scent of rose geraniums, İrfan’s father had taught him to look carefully at the moon until he could distinguish that figure. The full moon was like a medallion on the face of which was the profile of a beautiful woman, her face turned slightly upward. İrfan described the face of Meryem in great detail, but the girl could not discern it. What she could see was something completely different.
He decided to teach Meryem how to swim. He made the proposal with such eager enthusiasm that Meryem, already tipsy from the beer and the magic of that strange night, was not able to resist. After İrfan got into the water, she took off her clothes, hoping that the darkness would conceal her body. With only her bathing suit on, she stepped into the sea. Her bare feet, unprotected from the sharpness of the stones, made it difficult for her to walk. The sea, however, felt warm and protective. She was afraid that the professor would see her half-naked body in the light of the moon, but she did not resist when İrfan took her hand and pulled her into the sea. Soon, the water rose to the height of her chest. Terrified, she clutched İrfan’s hand.
When he laid her abruptly on top of the water, she screamed. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I won’t let you go. Just keep your back straight. The water will hold you. Lie on the water as if you are lying in bed.” At first in her panic, Meryem could not relax and lie flat. Afraid of drowning, she allowed her waist to drop and began to sink, but İrfan’s protective hands were ready to catch her. He would not allow her to go under. Soon, she learned to trust him and began to float on the water unafraid.
Meryem shone in his hands like a white fish in the waters of that moonlit bay. He was holding a miracle. With light touches, he corrected the girl when she started to sink as she tried to float by herself. Each time, he admired her slender body more. The two resembled animals playing in a splendid bay by moonlight. The bays, which Cleopatra had tried to unite, were filled with laughter and little screams of pretended fear.