“She’s not my type of woman, and I’m not her type of man. It’s a very equitable arrangement.”
“What don’t you like about her?”
“Tell me, you wouldn’t happen to be casing out the territory for a personal campaign, would you?”
“It would be degrading to be . . . casing her territory.” Can was clearly drunk.
“How else shall I put it? Do you have a crush on Alice?”
“I have not begun my investigation. How can I already find a crush?”
“Stop playing the fool when it suits you. I’m just asking whether you’re attracted to her.”
“Well, excuse me for saying it,” said Can, “but I’m the one who asked first.”
“And I told you.”
“Absolutely not. You were avoiding to answer.”
“The thought has never even crossed my mind. How do you expect me to respond?”
“Liar.”
“Don’t take that tone with me. I’ve never lied in my life!” Daldry exclaimed.
“You lie to Alice.”
“You just gave the game away, my friend. You called her Alice.”
“What does it prove if I forgot to say ‘Miss’? Just a mistake on my part. I drank too much.”
“Just a little?”
“You should talk!”
“Fine, since we agree that we’re both drunk, what would you say to maintaining the status quo?”
Daldry ordered them a very fine and very old cognac.
“If I ever did fall in love with a woman like her, the only way I could show my feelings would be to go as far away from her as possible. To the other side of the world.”
“I don’t understand how that would show your love,” said Can.
“Because I would save her from meeting a fellow like me. I’m a loner, a bitter bachelor. I’m set in my ways and I hate it when the outside world tries to make me change. I hate noise, and she’s noisy. I hate socializing, and she’s right across the corridor. Besides, all the noble sentiments associated with love always end up threadbare and debased. In love, you have to know when to make an exit before it’s too late. For me, that means restraining myself from making any declarations to begin with.” He paused. “Why are you smiling like that?”
“Because we both agree that you’re a rather sorry fellow.”
“I’m just like my father in so many ways, even if I pretend to be everything to the contrary. I know what I’m talking about—I grew up with him, and now I have to see him in the mirror every morning.”
“Your mother was never happy with your father?”
“I’ll need another drink to answer that. That story lies at a depth that we haven’t reached.”
Three cognacs later, the restaurant was starting to close. Daldry asked Can to take him to a bar worthy of such a title, and Can suggested a place that didn’t close until very early in the morning.
They followed the rails of the tramway down the hill. Can teetered on the right rail, Daldry on the left. When a tram tried to pass, they waited until the last moment to get out of the way, in spite of the conductor’s insistent ringing of the bell.
“If you had met my mother when she was Alice’s age, you would have thought she was the happiest woman in the world. She was so good at acting that I think she missed her true calling. She could have made a lot of money on the stage. But on Saturdays she didn’t have to act. On Saturdays I think she was truly happy.”
“Why Saturdays?” Can slouched onto a bench.
“Because on Saturday, my father paid attention to her,” said Daldry, joining him. “He probably only did it so that she’d forgive him for his sins, and for ignoring her the rest of the time, but he did pay her attention.”
“His sins?”
“I’ll get to that. Why didn’t you ask, ‘Why not Sundays? Wouldn’t that be more logical?’ Well, because on Saturday, my mother was distracted enough to forget that he would be leaving soon. But when Sunday Mass was over, she grew more and more depressed as the hours wore on. Sunday evenings were horrible. When I think that he even had the nerve to take her to Mass.”
“What did he do that was so bad on Monday?”
“After washing and shaving, he put on his finest suit, tied his bow tie, polished his pocket watch, arranged his hair, perfumed himself, and called for his carriage to be prepared to take him into town. Every Monday afternoon he had a meeting with his solicitor and he slept in town because the roads were supposedly dangerous at night. He would return the following day.”
“But he was going to see his mistress?”
“No, he really did have a meeting with his solicitor. They were old friends from school. But they spent the night together, so I suppose it was more or less the same thing.”
“And your mother knew?”
“That her husband was cheating on her with a man? Yes, she knew. She knew, and the driver knew, and the chambermaids and the cook and the governess knew . . . everybody apart from me. For a long time, I thought he was seeing another woman, but I’m a bit of a fool by nature.”
“You know, in the days of the sultans . . .”
“I know what you’re going to say, and it’s very kind of you, but in England we have a king and a queen and a palace. No harem. Don’t think I’m being judgmental. It’s a question of tradition. And to tell you the truth, I couldn’t have cared less about my father’s private life; it was the suffering he caused my mother that hurt me. My father certainly wasn’t the first man on earth to sleep with someone other than his wife, but he sullied her love by doing it. When I finally got up the courage to talk to her about it, she was on the verge of tears but explained everything with a calm dignity that chilled my blood. She defended my father and explained that it was all part of the order of things, that it was necessary for him, something she had never been angry about. For somebody who was usually such a good actress, she really bungled up her lines that day.”
“But if you hate your father for what he did to your mother, why do you let yourself behave like him?”
“Well, I try not to be like him. In watching the way he made my mother suffer, I came to understand that for a man, loving a woman is taking her beauty and putting it under a glass, where she feels sheltered and cherished . . . until it wilts and fades away. Then he turns elsewhere, to other flowers. I promised myself that if I ever came to love a woman, to love her truly, that I would leave her alone, refuse to take her and put her under glass.
“And here we are. I’ve had too much to drink and told you too much. I’m going to regret it in the morning. If you repeat a single word I’ve said, I’ll drown you in the Bosporus with my own bare hands.” He sighed. “The real question is, How on earth are we to get back to the hotel? I think I’m too drunk to walk.”
Can was no more sober than Daldry. Together they helped each other stagger up Istiklal, hanging on each other’s shoulders like two old drunks.
The next morning, Alice settled in the sitting area next to the bar while the hotel maid was tidying up her room. She was writing another letter that she probably wouldn’t send. She glanced in the mirror and saw Daldry coming down the grand staircase. He came and collapsed into an armchair next to hers.
“Long night out?” she asked, without looking up from her letter.
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, your jacket is buttoned up crooked and you missed a few patches shaving.”
“Yes, well, I had a few drinks. We missed you.”
“I don’t doubt it for a second.”
“Writing a letter?”
“To a friend in London.” She folded the paper in half and put it in her pocket.
“I’ve got a ghastly headache. Would you like to go for a walk and get some fresh air? What friend in London?”
She ignored the last question. “Yes, let’s go for a walk. I wondered what time you might resurface this morning. I’ve been up since dawn and was starting to get bored. Where should we go?”
“The Bosporus? Old habits die hard, you know.”
Along the way, Alice dawdled in front of a cobbler’s shop and watched the drive belts spin on a machine.
“Need to resole some shoes?”