22

Discovery

On a wednesday morning in January, Fanis awoke to a city dressed in white. He went to the kitchen to make his coffee and omelet, but he was so excited by the flakes falling past his window that he forgot all about breakfast, called Selin, and said, “Look out the window. Faik Paşa is sprinkled with powdered sugar like a tray of mille-feuille.”

As they gazed at the winter wonderland from opposite windows, Fanis remembered he was to receive his retirement stipend from the Greek Consulate that day. He and Selin had planned to go together and then have a coffee in the Grand Avenue before she took a bus up to Lütfi Kırdar. Seeing the snow, however, Fanis had second thoughts about their plan. “The streets will be dangerously slippery,” he said to Selin. “I don’t think you ought to go to work. And I guess I can wait and collect a double stipend next month.”

“I have no choice,” she said. “Today’s the final rehearsal for the Tchaikovsky concerto.”

“Right.” Fanis pulled his plaid robe more tightly around his shoulders. “We’ll walk over to the consulate together and take a taxi up to the concert hall. I’ll stay until you’ve finished.”

“You’ll be bored.”

“Bored at the Borusan? Are you out of your mind? Besides, there’s no question of you coming home by yourself. The weather could get worse, and the doctor said you have to be careful of colds.”

Three-quarters of an hour later, they met in the street. A thick layer of snow had already settled over everything. “See?” said Fanis. “You couldn’t get a taxi to come to your door even if you phoned.”

They plodded up to the sky-blue, neoclassical consulate and entered the unusually short queue on the opposite side of the street. While waiting, Fanis noticed Selin shivering. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

A second later, wearing a homemade pompom beanie, Aliki came hobbling out of the consulate. “Fanis? Selin?”

Fanis tried to let his arm slide slowly and discreetly down Selin’s back, but it was too late. Aliki’s eyes darted back and forth between them. Her head twitched as if she had a tic. She licked her lips repeatedly. Had Fanis not known her better, he would have thought that she was suffering from mental illness.

“But,” Aliki stammered, “I thought it was only because of Julien . . . and since he never said anything, never made a move . . . and when you and I went for soup, I thought that maybe . . . ”

Fanis realized his mistake. Two weeks before he had helped Aliki sell the antiques that had lain in boxes since the summer. He had obtained such a good price that she had insisted on treating him to tripe soup and saffron pudding, and they had passed a pleasant afternoon reminiscing and telling jokes. Aliki had obviously mistaken his mirth—whose source was his friendship with Selin—as interest in her.

Aliki continued mumbling incoherently and glaring at Selin as if she had sprouted two heads: “Are you two really. . . . How long?”

Fanis spotted a taxi slowly approaching through the lane cleared by the plow. He raised his hand to the driver, took Aliki’s arm, and said, “How lucky you are, dear. Hardly any taxis out now. You’d better take it.” As soon as the vehicle had come to a stop, he helped Aliki inside. Just before shutting the door, he winked and said, “We’ll talk this afternoon, at Neighbor’s House.” Aliki continued staring through the foggy window as the taxi pulled off through the slush. Poor thing.

“Did she really think that . . . we . . . ?” said Selin.

Fanis threw his head back dismissively. “I’ll go straighten things out this afternoon.”

“She has a thing for you, doesn’t she?”

“Perhaps. But it’s not mutual. Come on. It’s our turn to go inside.”

After collecting his stipend, Fanis helped Selin up the steep byway to Sıraselviler Avenue, hailed a taxi, and delivered her to the concert hall. He then spent a delightful day listening to Tchaikovsky’s concerto. He was taken in by its gentle and unassuming beginning, its promise of a long journey to an unknown destination, and its dark and lyrical second movement. He closed his eyes to experience the full power of the explosive third movement. What he liked best, however, was the bittersweet energy of the finale, which seemed to signal that the end was not the end at all. Fanis tried to catch glimpses of Orhan the bassoonist, sitting stiffly in his chair. Sure, Orhan was handsome enough, but Fanis couldn’t believe that a man who played such a clumsy and confined instrument could possibly be the kind of lover who would satisfy Selin.

When Fanis was not spying on Orhan, he fixed his gaze on Selin and the sweat that had collected on her forehead like a diadem. He questioned if such intense playing could harm her recently operated-on heart. At one point she broke so many bow hairs that she had to stop playing and take up a fresh bow. Fanis wondered what the surgical scar on her chest looked like: would it be an ugly jagged thing or a well-healed seam? It would have to be a red line, he decided, delicate and thin. He felt his tongue run along the ridge. . . .

Selin’s voice recalled Fanis to the reality of Lütfi Kırdar: “That’s it for today.” She was standing before him and holding two steaming paper cups, one of which she held out to him. He hadn’t even noticed that the practice was over.

He took the hot cup in both his hands and said, “You were marvelous.”

“You’re kind,” she said.

“Selin . . . do you remember that thing you said about the next man who entered your heart? Last June, at the tea garden? You said that before men came and went through the hole, but that the next one was going to have to stay. Would that be Orhan?”

Selin looked at him with the sassy expression that one usually saw only on the faces of teenagers. “Orhan?”

“Yes. Maybe it’s none of my business, but sometimes, from my window, I see him come and go from your place. I didn’t want to be indiscreet and ask questions, but. . . . Where is he now, anyway?”

She sat beside him. “Gone already, but he sends his regards. He has a date with Ahmet, his boyfriend.”

Fanis flopped back into the velveteen seat. “He’s gay?”

“Are you okay, Fanis? You look a bit pale.”

Fanis put a hand over his heart. It was still beating. “Of course,” he said. “But what about that hickey?”

“What hickey?”

He pointed to the discoloration beneath her jaw line.

“And you call yourself a musician? That’s fiddler’s neck. A hazard of the profession.”

“So . . . there’s no boyfriend at all?”

“Unfortunately not. What about you? It seemed like you were interested in Daphne.”

“Oh, come on. Daphne’s all right, but I prefer a woman with a better sense of style, an ear for music, and a fuller figure.”

“That’s good. Because Kosmas is planning on proposing. As soon as his mother is better, that is. I didn’t want to tell you because I thought you might be upset.”

Fanis finished his tea and crumpled his cup. “Good for Kosmas,” he said. He didn’t mention that he had sent Daphne a Christmas card, just to keep things open on the off-chance that she changed her mind. “I always thought they’d make a nice couple. Listen, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

Selin gave him a sidelong glance. “What?”

“Did you ever want children?” That wasn’t what he’d planned to say. But still, now that he knew she was single, it was an important question.

“Of course I did. But the years passed and now I’m forty-three with a heart condition.”

He squeezed her hand. “Another thing we’ve got in common.”

“How so?”

She was being honest with him. He had to man up and do the same. “It’s difficult for me to admit this, but . . . I have cerebral arteriosclerosis and early vascular dementia. I could have a stroke at any time.”

“Are you taking medication?”

“I burned the prescriptions in the kitchen sink.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Not really. The doctor promised imminent death if I didn’t start taking them right away. For a while I put the diagnosis out of my mind, but Rea’s fainting scared me a bit.”

“If she fainted.” Selin took his cup from him and stuffed it inside her own. “Don’t let her issues scare you, Fanis.”

“But Dr. Aydemir is a good doctor. I just wanted you to know because you’re my closest neighbor, perhaps even my best friend—”

“Your best friend?” Selin tilted her head to one side. “Really?”

“Yes, you are. I always said that friendship between opposite sexes was impossible but, look, we’re doing it.”

“I’m honored.” Selin put her hand on his forearm. Her shimmery black-painted fingernails stood out against his tan cashmere sweater, like beads of licorice. “Listen, Fanis,” she said. “Do you feel ill?”

“No.” What was he saying? Wasn’t he confessing so that she would be prepared for the inevitable? “Well, sometimes,” he said. “But not very often.”

“If you don’t feel ill, then you aren’t. But I’m here if you need me. That’s what best friends are for.”

Fanis sighed at those words: best friends. They were as bittersweet as Tchaikovsky’s concerto. But in his condition, could he possibly hope for more?

He took Selin home in a taxi, then trudged through the snow to Neighbor’s House. Upon arrival, he passed straight into the heated, mirror-walled back area, which his friends used almost as if it were their own private living room. Julien and Gavriela were sitting by the window overlooking the dim snow-covered garden where they took tea in summer.

Julien stood, as he always did out of good breeding. Yet there was something aggressive in his bearing as he pulled out an empty chair for Fanis. “So what’s this I hear about you and my kid?”

Apparently Aliki had recovered her ability to speak and put her telephone to use.

“Your kid?” said Fanis, taking his seat.

Julien crossed his arms over his fishing vest. “She may not be my biological child, but she certainly is a scholastic one.”

Gavriela raised her sweater neck a little higher, so that it covered the bottom half of her chin. “Selin’s hardly a kid.”

Julien sat. “I taught Selin for three years at the Lycée,” he said, rapping the wooden table with his index finger. “I gave her private lessons for five years before that. I wrote her recommendation for the Conservatoire de Paris. I went to her first professional concert in Lyon. And I got a phone call every time some bastard made her cry. That makes her my kid, damn it. And then you, Fanis . . . you’re old enough to be her grandfather—”

“Not exactly,” said Gavriela.

“Please—” said Fanis.

“But he’s a womanizer!” said Julien.

All heads in the tea garden turned toward Julien. Gavriela raised her penciled eyebrows and expressed everyone’s thoughts with an old Greek proverb: “Eipe o gaidaros ton peteino kefala.” And the ass called the cock a bighead.

“Evil-hour!” spat Julien. “Have you got a mouth, Gavriela! Fanis has a right to his fun, but not with my kid. I don’t want any more teary phone calls.”

“Listen,” said Fanis, “we—”

“Emine,” said Gavriela, “another round of tea, if you please.”

Gavriela extended a loaded plate of butter cookies to Fanis. He took one to calm his nerves, but it was sour and malty, as if the butter had gone bad. Emine returned with the teas. In order to wash away the cookie taste, Fanis took a sip, but the tea was stale. It had obviously been sitting for hours.

“What I think the professeur means to say, Fanis,” Gavriela resumed, “is that, although you may be in love with Selin, you do need to think about what you have to offer her.”

“Offer her?” said Fanis. “We’re good friends.”

Julien rolled his eyes. “As if you could be friends with an attractive young woman. Look here, old man, you’re not fooling anybody.”

“I swear I haven’t tried to seduce her,” said Fanis.

“Cut it,” said Julien. “You’ve been with her for months. That’s why you’ve been so scarce. And why I haven’t heard about any new boyfriends.”

Gavriela hissed in disapproval. “In a few years, you’ll be a burden to her. Do you really want to weigh her down with your care?”

There it was again: Dr. Aydemir’s horrid little prediction in the form of friendly meddling. Why did Fanis have to give in to old age and illness? Why couldn’t he just have fun?

But instead of saying any of these things, Fanis shook his head, rose slowly to his feet, and walked out, paying no attention to Julien’s attempts to call him back. The bakery door closed behind him with a rude jangling that unleashed the tears he had felt welling in his eyes from the moment Gavriela had said the word “burden.”