The Museum of Innocence Read Online Free PDF Page A

at that very moment with the refund for the handbag; making up a lie for Abdülkerim, I wolfed down my food and rushed off.
    Twenty minutes after I got there, Füsun rang the bell. Or rather, the person who could only be Füsun rang the bell. As I ran to the door I remembered that the previous night I had opened the door to her in a dream.
    In her hand was an umbrella. Her hair was dripping wet. She was wearing a yellow pointille dress.
    “Well, well, well, I thought you’d forgotten all about me. Come on in.”
    “I don’t want to disturb you. Let me just give you the money and go.” In her hand was a worn envelope on which were imprinted the words “Outstanding Achievement Course,” but I didn’t take it. Taking hold of her shoulder, I pulled her inside and shut the door.
    “It’s raining hard,” I said, although I’d not noticed the rain myself. “Sit for a while. There’s no reason why you should rush out into the rain and get wet again so soon. I’m making some tea. At least warm yourself up.” I headed for the kitchen.
    When I returned, Füsun was looking over my mother’s old furniture, her antiques, dusty clocks, hatboxes, and accessories. To make her feel more at home, and to encourage conversation, I told her how my mother had bought all these things on impulse from the most fashionable shops of Beyoğlu and Nişantaşı, pashas’ mansions whose furnishings were being sold off, Bosphorus yalis half destroyed by fire, antique dealers, and even vacated dervish lodges, not to mention all the shops she visited on her European travels, but that after using them for a short while she brought them here and forgot all about them. At the same time I was opening trunks packed with clothes reeking of mothballs, and the tricycle that we’d both ridden as children (my mother was in the habit of giving our old ones to poor relations), a chamber pot, and finally the Kütahya vase that my mother had asked me to find for her; then I showed her the hats, box by box.
    A crystal sweet bowl reminded us of holiday feasts she had attended. When she’d arrive with her parents for their holiday visit, they’d be offered an assortment of sugar and almond candies, marzipan, sugar-covered coconut “lion bars,” and lokum , or Turkish delight.
    “Once when we came here for the Feast of the Sacrifice, I remember we went out for a ride in the car,” said Füsun, her eyes shining.
    I remembered that outing. “You were a child then,” I said. “Now you have become a very beautiful and enchanting young woman.”
    “Thank you. I should leave now.”
    “You haven’t even drunk your tea. And the rain hasn’t stopped.” I pulled her over to the balcony door, gently parting the tulle curtain. She looked out the window; in her eyes was the light that you see only in children arriving at a new place, or in young people still open to new influences, still curious about the world because they have not yet been scarred by life. For a moment I gazed longingly at her neck, the nape of her neck, and her fine complexion, which made her cheeks so beautiful, and the countless freckles on her skin, which were invisible from a distance (hadn’t my grandmother had such freckles?). My hand, as if it was someone else’s, reached out and took hold of the barrette in her hair. Painted on it were four sprigs of verbena.
    “Your hair is very wet.”
    “Did you tell anyone that I cried in the shop?”
    “No. But I’m very curious to know what made you cry.”
    “Why?”
    “I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about you,” I said. “You’re very beautiful, very different from anyone else. I remember so well what a lovely little dark-haired girl you were. But I never imagined you would turn into such a beauty.”
    She smiled the measured smile of well-mannered beauties accustomed to compliments, but at the same time she raised her eyebrows in suspicion. There was a silence. She took one step back.
    “So what did Şenay Hanım