THE earthquake subsided, and little by little people began to forget its terrors. Some who had old-fashioned houses plucked up courage to enter them, then to abandon their tents and stay in them. One day some young people laughed, and others echoed their laughter. Gradually the older people began to laugh, too; and the terrible shock which had killed so many thousands and unnerved so many more began to lose its hold upon the imagination of the people.
Before the month was over life became normal, and we talked of ordinary, everyday things. One day as I was sitting by my mother, making lace, she casually remarked:
“Nashan is going to be married, you know.”
Of all my Turkish friends Nashan was the one my mother liked best. Perhaps this was because she felt she had a share in her bringing up, since the day on which she had been summoned by Nashan’s mother to pass judgment on the little girl’s clothes—the little girl whose raiment I had compared to that of asaltimbanque, whenshe had thought that she was dressed like a great lady.
“Oh, is she?” I cried, a trifle hurt. “She has not even written to me that she is engaged. I am afraid she cannot care for her marriage.”
I hastened to call on her. She received me in her French boudoir, faultlessly dressed in a Parisian gown, her hair done in the fashion prevalent in Europe at the time. We were so glad to see each other that at first we forgot about the marriage. Finally I asked about it.
Boundless became her indignation. “He is an Asiatic!” she cried, with undisguised horror. “They are giving me to a man who cannot understand a word of French, to a man who is anarriéré—who believes in the subjection of women! They are handing me over to an unknown, who has not touched my heart—merely because our fathers decided that we should become husband and wife. And this Anatolian—this man who has lived all his life in an uncivilized country—has come to claim me—me, as his wife.”
Since her indignation could rise no higher, it toppled over in a torrent of tears. She laid her blonde head in my lap, and wept. And I wept with her, because she was eighteen and I was sixteen, and life seemed so full of tragedy. How dreadful the world looked to us in that hour—and how we hated our elders.
She had lost her mother, her only support, as,long ago, I had lost my father. We had an orgy of tears, which cleared the atmosphere, and helped the barometer to rise. The courage of youth returned to us.
“What do you intend to do?” I asked.
“I thought of dying,” she said simply, but “I don’t want to. I hate to die. Life is so interesting, and I am so healthy.” Inconsequently she added: “Come and see my trousseau.”
No French girl could have had a Frenchier one. No Parisian a more Parisian one. If the father was imposing an Anatolian husband upon her, he was generous in his supply of European accessories. She and I forgot our troubles in admiring and gloating over the creations just arrived from Paris.
“And now look!” she cried, in a tone of loathing. She opened a closet and drew forth a chest, richly inlaid. From its heart she took several garments: they were Anatolian—even more Oriental than if they had been Turkish. She threw them on the floor, and stamped upon them. “His grandmother is insulting me with these. She thinksthatis the wayIdress—I, a European to my finger-tips.”
I picked up the despised garments and examined them with curiosity mingled with admiration. The straight, stiff tunics of home-spun silks, the jackets reaching below the knees, spunby hand and fantastically embroidered in a riot of colour were full of oriental poetry.
“But they are truly lovely,” I cried. “They’re better than your French clothes. Any woman would look adorable in them. I wish you would wear them.”
Nashan only snatched them from my hands and stamped on them again.
As the date of her marriage drew near, I heard that there were scenes of rebellion and tears of helplessness, but her father held fast to his purpose, and the marriage took place. I did not go to it. I was engrossed with my own troubles at the time, and besides I did not wish to be present at what I considered the immolation of a woman.
Two days after the wedding, a note reached me from her saying: “Will you come and spend the day with me?”
I went to her new home in Stamboul—fortunately free from his relatives since these all lived in Anatolia. She was seated in a vast, bare, oriental room which contrasted strangely with her French gown and Parisian coiffure. There were no traces of tears on her face such as I had expected to find; her pupils only seemed larger, and her eyes were shining with a combativeness which I had felt was in her, but which I had not encountered before.
Silently we embraced each other.
“Is he dreadful?” I whispered.
“I don’t even know how he looks,” she replied. “I have not favoured him with a glance. He has not been able to make me speak to him, and you know that according to our laws, so long as I remain silent, he has no rights over me.”
“Do you mean to keep it up till he becomes discouraged and divorces you?”
Before she had time to answer, one of her slaves came in.
“Thetchelebi[master] is asking if he may see you.”
I rose to leave the room.
“Don’t go,” she begged.
I sat down, a very uncomfortable little person. Nashan crossed her slender hands on her lap and waited. Her eyes were firmly fixed on the floor; her lips compressed, as for eternal silence.
He came in. I do not know why I expected to see a grown-up man, with man’s tyrannical power stamped on his brutal features. What entered was a boy, a timid moustache sprouting on his lip. He was tall and good-looking, but almost paralysed with shyness.
He looked at nothing except his wife, and his face shone with all the love he felt for her, with all the dreams he must have made about this one woman, whom he had never seen till the day of his wedding.
We are apt to think only of the woman’s side, and few of us ever give a thought to what maybe the man’s disappointment, the man’s crushed ideals in his marriage. Because he bears it like a man, because he makes the best of what fate has allotted him, often without a word of complaint, we think that the tragedy of marriage is entirely one-sided.
That day, as the young fellow came in, shy and awkward, carrying a small bundle in his hand, prejudiced though I was against him, I somehow felt that there was his side, too. Perhaps it was his extreme youth, his good looks, which touched me; or perhaps it was the expression of misery on his face. Poets and writers have written about the woman’s heart-break, but it is the sorrow of the strong which contains the most pathos.
He timidly took his seat at a distance from her, and fingered the little parcel on his knee.
An oppressive silence fell upon us, I furtively watching the youth, he longingly gazing at his bride. Finally he began to undo his parcel, and his movements were so like those of a little boy that I was ready to weep for him.
The parcel disclosed a beautifully embroidered pair of Turkish slippers. I suppose they were the prettiest he could buy, but even at a glance I knew that they were far too large for Nashan.
He rose and advanced timidly, his offering in his hand.
“I brought you these,” he said pleadingly.He looked at the slippers and then at her. “They were so lovely I could not help buying them for you.”
He sat down on the floor at her feet, and tried to bring the slippers within her notice.
“Let me put them on your pretty feet,” he begged.
She neither replied, nor by the slightest movement betrayed that she was aware of his existence. She was sitting on a chair, like a European. Her knees were crossed, and one foot dangled before him, as if inviting the new slippers.
By a tremendous effort he summoned up courage to slip the Turkish slipper on her foot, over the French shoe, and even then it was too large. It hung suspended for a minute from her unresponsive toe, and fell to the floor.
I laughed more from nervousness than from mirth.
He turned a troubled, inquiring countenance toward me, and then back to his wife.
“Why is she mocking me? Have I done anything ridiculous?”
He appeared more than ever like a frightened little boy. He leaned toward her as if he wished to hide behind her skirt, every movement seeming to beg for protection.
The stony expression left Nashan’s face. She no longer ignored his existence. What was fine, womanly, maternal in her character became alive.
She put her arm round his shoulder.
“Why are you laughing?” she demanded quietly of me in French. “If he were a Christian dog he would have known many women, and he would be aware of the sizes of their feet. But he is only a clean Osmanli boy, and, as you see, I am the first woman he has ever seen, besides his mother.”
It was a new Nashan: not the europeanized Nashan, with her foreign veneer, but a real woman, the one who had once said to me: “I am sure of the existence of Allah, because he manifests himself so quickly in me.” Unmistakably at that moment God was manifesting Himself in her.
I rose to go. She rose, too, and so did the man, who had picked up his slippers and held them fast to his heart. He had not understood a word of the French that had passed between us.
“I bought you these because I thought maybe you would like them,” he repeated.
“I like them very much indeed,” she said, taking them from him.
“They are not so pretty, perhaps, as the ones you have on; but they are exactly like those my dead mother used to wear, when I was a little boy and played on her lap.”
She listened to him attentively, deferentially, her eyes raised to his. Then she turned to me, who was already going.
“Don’t go just yet, dear. I beg of you to remain a few minutes.” To her husband: “My lord, will you make my friend feel at home, while I am gone a little while? I have just been hard to her, because she was rude to you; but I do not think she meant to be.”
Nashan was gone from the room only a short time, yet I hardly recognized her on her return. She was dressed in one of the oriental gowns his grandmother had sent her, and which she had despised and trampled upon. Her French coiffure had disappeared. A Turkish veil was arranged on her head, in the strict oriental fashion for indoors, and on her feet, somehow, she had fastened his slippers.
She bowed low before her husband.
“These, my master, are the garments your honourable grandmother sent me. I hope you like me in them.”
He could not speak, nor was there any need; for his face was a worshipful prayer.
She turned to me with a proud little toss of her head.
“Am I a great lady?” she asked as of old, with whimsical seriousness, “or am I asaltimbanque?”
“You are indeed a great lady,” I said—and I meant it.