The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk; Maureen Freely

Author:Orhan Pamuk; Maureen Freely
Format: mobi
Tags: Social life and customs, Man-woman relationships, Istanbul (Turkey), Fiction, Romance, Turkish Novel And Short Story, Literary, Psychological, Fiction - General, General
ISBN: 9780307266767
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2009-10-20T05:00:00+00:00

53

An Indignant and Broken Heart Is of No Use to Anyone

I DID not say another word all night. Because so many languages describe the condition I was in as "heartbreak," let the broken porcelain heart I display here suffice to convey my plight at that moment to all who visit my museum. The pain of love no longer manifested itself as panic, hopelessness, or anger, as it had done the previous summer. By now it had become a more viscous substance that coursed through my veins. Because I had been seeing Fusun every other day if not every day, the heartache of absence had lessened, and I had developed new habits to cope with the new milder pain of her presence; after a summer of careful practice these habits had become second nature, making me a new man. I no longer spent my days battling with my pain; instead I could suppress it, veil it, or act as if there were nothing wrong with me.

The new pain, the pain of presence, was in fact the pain of humiliation. It seemed that Fusun did take care to spare me pain of that kind, shying away from subjects and situations that might wound my pride. But in the face of those crude last words of hers, I finally realized that to pretend nothing was amiss was no longer possible.

I had tried at first pretending not to hear them reverberating in my mind: "shell out the money ... We're sick and tired of waiting." But my feeble mumbled rejoinder ("Is that so?") was proof that I had heard her. I could not, therefore, act as if no offense had been taken; and, anyway, who could have missed my grim expression, which spoke of spirits plummeting and utter humiliation. Her insult ringing in my head, I went back to my chair and sat down, still clutching my soda bottle. It was hard for me to move. The worst part was not even those cutting words, but Fusun's evident awareness of my humiliation and the upset it caused me.

I forced myself to think of something else, ordinary matters. I remember asking the same question I would ask myself in my youth whenever I thought I would explode from boredom, surrendering to metaphysical musing, as in: "What am I thinking now? Am I thinking that I'm thinking?" After repeating this sentence silently many times over, I turned to Fusun in a decisive way and said, "They want us to return the empties," and, taking the empty bottle from her hand, I stood up and walked away. In my other hand was my own bottle. There was still some soda in it. No one was looking, so I poured my soda into Fusun's bottle, handing mine, now empty, back to the boys selling the sodas. So I was able to return to my seat with Fusun's bottle, which I display here.

Fusun was talking to her husband; they didn't notice me. I cannot recall a single thing about the film we watched next.

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