A GREAT LADY OF STAMBOUL
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 a _saltimbanque_, when she 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 an _arriéré_--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 thinks _that_ is the
way _I_ dress--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, spun by 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.
“The _tchelebi_ [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 may be 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 a _saltimbanque_?”
“You are indeed a great lady,” I said--and I meant it.