I don't know whether I was really thinking through all these things so clearly and deeply at the time. Today, after more than twelve years have passed, I picture that day's state of mind and draw these conclusions. My judgments about Maria have also gone through the same filtration and examination that time distance brings.
Around then, I could sense that Maria herself was caught in contradictory feelings. Sometimes she became excessively quiet, even cold; other times she suddenly burst with enthusiasm, showing me such exaggerated interest that it gave me the courage I forbade myself — practically provoking me outright. But these moods passed quickly, and the old atmosphere of friendship would reappear between us. It was certain that she, like me, realized our friendship had reached an impasse by staying where it was. Only she, though unable to find what she was truly looking for, saw that many other sides of me were too valuable to be sacrificed for her sake, and therefore she refrained from doing anything she thought might drive me away.
All these tangled feelings remained hidden in the most secret corners of our souls, as if afraid to come to light. And we were still, at heart, the same two intimate friends — always seeking each other, wanting each other, returning from each other's presence more content and enriched than before.
But suddenly everything changed and took an entirely unexpected direction. It was toward the end of December. Her mother had gone to visit a distant relative near Prague for the Christmas holiday. Maria was pleased about this.
"One of the things that irritates me most in the world is that pine tree decked out with candles and tinsel," she said. "Don't attribute this to my being Jewish — because since I find absurd these meaningless rituals that people resort to in their desire to feel happy for a moment, it's only natural that I wouldn't appreciate the Jewish religion, which is full of such strange and unnecessary obligations. Besides, my mother, who's a pure-blooded German Protestant, only follows these customs out of old age and for something to do. If she finds my ideas heretical, it's more from fear of disturbing her peace of mind in her final days than from religious conviction."
"Does New Year's Eve have no special meaning for you either?" I asked.
"No," she said. "What difference does it have from any other day of the year? Has nature set it apart in any way? Even the fact that it marks another year passing from our lives isn't so important — because dividing our lives into years is also a human invention... Human life is nothing but a single path stretching from birth to death, and any divisions made along it are artificial... But let's drop the philosophy. If you feel like it, let's go somewhere together on New Year's Eve. My work at the Atlantik ends before midnight, since there are plenty of other special acts that night. We'll leave together, get drunk like everyone else... Sometimes it's nice to escape from ourselves and go with the flow... What do you say? And we've never danced together, have we?"
"No, we haven't."
"I don't especially enjoy dancing anyway. Sometimes I like the person I'm dancing with, and that's why I put up with the bother."
"I doubt I'd be someone you'd like for that purpose."
"I doubt it too... But never mind, friendship requires sacrifice!"
On New Year's Eve, we had dinner together and sat talking at the restaurant until it was time for her to work. When we reached the Atlantik, she went to the back to change, and I settled into the same table in the hall where I'd sat on my first night. The place was decorated with paper streamers, colored lanterns, and tinsel. The crowd already seemed drunk. Nearly all the dancers were kissing and carrying on. I felt a vague restlessness inside.
"What's the point?" I thought. "Where's the real specialness of this night? We make it up ourselves and then believe in it. Everyone would be better off going home to bed. What are we going to do? Spin around holding each other like them... With one difference: we won't be kissing... I wonder if I can even dance?"
Back in Istanbul, during the months I attended the Academy of Fine Arts, some friends had taught me a few dances they'd learned from the White Russians who'd flooded the city. I could even waltz a little... But could I pull off a skill I hadn't practiced in maybe a year and a half? "Ah, whatever — I'll just stop mid-dance and sit down," I told myself.
Maria's violin playing and singing lasted even shorter than I'd expected and got lost in the noise. That evening, everyone preferred to be their own act. As soon as Maria changed, we left immediately and went to a large place called "Europe," across from Anhalter Station. It was completely different from the small, intimate Atlantik. Hundreds of couples danced nonstop in enormous halls that stretched as far as the eye could see. The tables were covered with bottles of every color. Some people already had their heads down sleeping; others sat in each other's laps.
Maria was strangely cheerful that night, almost excessively so. She slapped my arm and said, "If I'd known you'd sit around sulking like this, I'd have picked myself another young man for this evening!"
She drank the tart Rhine wines she kept ordering with astonishing speed and pressured me to drink too.
The real liveliness of the club began after midnight. Shouts, laughter, the roar of music playing raucously in four different spots, the stomping of couples doing old-fashioned hopping waltzes — all blended together. The unbridled frenzy of the postwar years was on full display here, stark and naked. The sight was truly pathetic: young men with frail bodies, gaunt faces, and eyes gleaming as if afflicted with a nervous disorder, losing themselves in immoderate joy; and young girls who thought the best way to rebel against society's unjust and irrational bonds, its superstitions, was to give free rein to their sexual desires. Maria pressed another glass into my hand and whispered:
"Raif, Raif, you're not doing well at all... You see how hard I'm trying not to sink into terrible boredom and melancholy. Let it go — let's escape from ourselves at least tonight... Pretend we're not ourselves. Pretend we're just one of the crowd filling this place. And really, who's to say they're all what they seem? I don't want that. I don't want to set myself up as the sensible or sensitive one. Drink and laugh!..."
I realized she was starting to get a little drunk. She got up from the chair across from me, sat down beside me, and put her arm around my shoulder. My heart was pounding like a bird caught in birdlime. She thought I was sad. But I wasn't. I was too happy to laugh, and I took my happiness seriously.
A waltz began to play. I leaned close to her ear. "Come on..." I said. "But I'm not very good..."
She pretended not to hear the second part of my sentence, jumped up, and said, "Come on!"
We started turning through the crowd. It wasn't really dancing — it was just being dragged from place to place at the mercy of the bodies pressing in on all sides. But neither of us complained. Maria fixed her eyes on me. In those black, dreamy eyes, something I couldn't understand flickered from time to time and threw me off. From her chest came a faint but wonderfully beautiful scent of skin. And above all this, there was being close to her, knowing I meant something to her.
"Maria," I whispered. "How can one person make another so happy?... What tremendous powers must be hidden inside a person!"
That gleam passed through her eyes again. But after looking at me attentively for a while, she bit her lip. Her gaze was hazy and blank.
"Let's sit down," she said. "What a crowd! I think I'm starting to get bored."
She drank more wine, one glass after another. At one point she stood up, said, "I'll be right back," and staggered away.
I waited a long time. Despite all her urging, I'd avoided drinking too much. I wasn't so much drunk as dazed. My head ached. Nearly fifteen minutes passed and she still hadn't returned. I began to worry. Afraid she might have collapsed somewhere, I went and checked all the restrooms. There were women in there trying to pin torn parts of their dresses together or freshening up in front of mirrors. I didn't find Maria in any of them. I looked one by one at the women curled up and dozing on the sofas along the edges of the halls. I couldn't find her. A sudden, intense anxiety seized me. Bumping into people sitting and standing, I ran from one hall to another. I took the stairs several at a time, went down to the lower floor, and searched. She wasn't there.
At that moment, my eye caught sight of outside through the misty glass panels of the club's revolving door. Something white seemed to be standing there. I rushed to the door and let out a cry when I got outside. Maria Puder was leaning against one of the trees right in front of the door, her arms together at head height, her face pressed against them. She was wearing nothing but a thin wool dress. Snowflakes were falling slowly onto her hair and neck. When she heard my voice, she turned her head and smiled.
"Where were you?" she said.
"Where were you? What are you doing? Have you lost your mind?" I shouted.
She put her finger to her lips.
"Shh..." she said. "I wanted some air and to cool down. Let's go!"
I practically forced her inside, found a chair and sat her down, went upstairs to settle the bill, and brought my coat and her fur coat from the cloakroom. We started walking, our feet sinking into the snow on the street.
She held my arm tightly and tried to walk fast. There were many drunken couples in the streets. The main avenues were crowded with groups of people. Women so lightly dressed they seemed to have stepped out in summer clothes were laughing merrily and singing in this weather, two or three hours past midnight, as if out for a springtime spree.
Maria pulled me along to move faster through these cheerful, drunken people. She responded with a cursory smile to those who catcalled or tried to put their arms around her neck, slipped deftly out of their hands, and dragged me on. I realized how wrong I'd been to think she was too drunk to stand.
When we reached slightly quieter streets, she slowed down. She was breathing hard and fast. She let out a deep "ah," then turned to me.
"Well? Are you happy with tonight? Did you have fun? Ah, I had so much fun — so, so much fun..."
She started laughing loudly. Suddenly she was seized by a coughing fit. She writhed as if choking, her chest heaving, but she didn't let go of my arm. When she calmed down a bit, I said, "What's wrong with you? See, you've caught a chill!"
She laughed with her whole face. "Oh, I had such fun!..."
I was afraid she might start crying, and now it was me who wanted to get her home and leave her as soon as possible.
Toward the end of the road, her steps began to falter. Her strength and will seemed to have abandoned her. But the cold air had completely sobered me up. I held her by the waist and guided her, occasionally stepping on her feet. Crossing from one sidewalk to the other, we nearly tumbled into the snow. She was murmuring jumbled words in a barely audible voice. At first I thought she was trying to sing to herself, then I realized she was speaking to me and listened.
"Yes... This is how I am," she was saying. "Raif... Dear Raif... This is how I am... Didn't I tell you? That I'm not the same from one day to the next... But there's no need to be sad... There's no need for anything... You're a very good boy... You're definitely a good boy!..."
Suddenly she started sobbing, then began muttering again: "No, no, no need to be sad..."
Half an hour later, we arrived at her door. She leaned her back against the stairwell wall and waited.
"Where are the keys?" I asked.
"Don't be angry, Raif... Don't be angry with me... Here... They must be in my pocket!"
She reached inside her fur coat and held out a ring of three keys.
I opened the door. When I turned to help her upstairs, she slipped away and started running up the stairs.
"You'll fall!" I said.
She replied, panting: "No... I can manage on my own!"
Since I still had the keys, I followed her. From the darkness on one of the upper floors, she called out to me: "I'm here... Open this door!"
I opened it by feel. We went in together. She turned on the light in her room. Old but well-preserved furniture and a beautiful oak bed caught the eye at first glance.
I stood motionless in the middle of the room. As she took off her fur coat and put it aside, she pointed to a chair and said, "Sit down!"
Then she perched on the edge of the bed. Quickly she took off her shoes and stockings, pulled her dress over her head, tossed it onto a chair, and slipped under the covers.
I got up from where I was sitting. Without saying anything, I held out my hand to her. She studied me as if examining someone she'd met for the first time, and a drunken smile spread across her face. I lowered my eyes. When I looked again, I saw that she had raised herself slightly in bed, her eyes wide as if in great anxiety, blinking occasionally like someone trying to wake from a dream. Her right shoulder and arm, emerging from the white sheets, were as pale and white as her face. Her left elbow was propped on the pillow.
"You'll get cold," I said.
She pulled my arm quickly and made me sit on the edge of her bed. Then she moved closer, took both my hands, pressed her face into my palms, and said: "Ah, Raif, so you can be like this too?... You're right... But what can I do? If you only knew... Ah, if you only knew... But we had fun, didn't we? Definitely... No, no, I know! Don't pull your hands away... I've never seen you like this. How wonderfully serious you can be! But why?"
I lifted my head. She knelt on the bed and sat beside me, putting her hands on my cheeks: "Look at me," she said. "What you're thinking isn't true... I'll prove it to you... I'll prove it to myself... Why are you standing there like that... Still don't believe me? Still doubting?"
She closed her eyes. She was making an effort as if trying to catch something inside her head that kept darting this way and that and couldn't be caught. Her forehead and the space between her eyebrows creased. Seeing her bare shoulders shivering, I pulled the blanket, wrapped it around her back, and held it in place with my hand so it wouldn't slip.
She opened her eyes. Smiling confusedly, she said, "There... You're laughing too, aren't you?" Then she couldn't continue and started staring into a corner of the room.
Her hair had fallen over her forehead. The electric light from the side cast the shadow of her eyelashes onto the bridge of her nose. Her lower lip trembled slightly. At that moment, her face was more beautiful than both the painting and the Arpie Madonna. With the arm that was holding the blanket, I pulled her toward me.
I felt her body tremble. She took short, broken breaths and said: "Of course... Of course! Of course I love you. And I love you very much... Could it be any other way?... I certainly love you... Definitely love you. But why are you surprised? Could it be otherwise?... Did you think it would be otherwise? I understand how much you love me... And I love you just as much, without a doubt..."
She pulled my head toward her and covered my entire face with kisses as hot as fire.
When I woke up in the morning, I heard her deep, steady breathing. She had her arm under her head, her back to me, sleeping. Her hair lay in waves across the white pillow. Her mouth was slightly open, and there were very fine hairs at the corners of her lips. As she breathed, the wings of her nose moved, and a few strands of hair that had fallen over her mouth lifted and fell again.