Book Review

SHERIDAN GRISWOLD | Friday August 27, 2010 00:00

Orhan Pamuk (2009) translated from the Turkish by Maureen FreelyThe Museum of Innocence: A Novel. London, Faber and Faber. 536 pages, Paperback, P189. ISBN 978-0-571-23699-2. Available at Exclusive Books, Riverwalk.

The Museum of Innocence is by the Turkish Nobel Prize wining novelist Orhan Pamuk (Mmegi 16 February 2007).It is the latest of his long, detailed, and delightful explorations of life in old Istanbul. It spans a decade starting on a Monday afternoon in spring on May 26, 1975. Pamuk, who wrote this novel between 2001 and 2008, has created an extraordinary tribute to a young woman, FŸsun, an ode to love and a confession of an obsession held by Kemal Basmaci.

There are a number of themes that run through this tale, besides Kemal Bey's overwhelming passion for Fusun.  Throughout a window keeps opening on Turkish society and politics, preoccupations and complications between 30 and 40 years ago.  Fusun, having won a beauty contest as a teenager, aspires to become a film star.  An inner view of Turkish cinema during these years is also provided; the actors, directors, promoters, the audience and its fickle behaviour.  Kemal establishes a company, Lemon Films, to support the making of Turkish films. 

Museums are the creation of collectors.  Kemal Bey becomes a gatherer of artefacts, nearly everything he can find that has been looked at, touched or taken of Fusun, his overriding obsession.  Collectors are people who become so immersed in their accumulations that the only solution is to organise, arrange and present them to the general public in the form of a museum, otherwise they vanish, inundated by it all.  An endowed museum then gains a life of its own that goes on in perpetuity, long after the collector's death, and no matter how many people visit it.

Kemal Bey began visiting museums in Paris, where after the first 10, he realised how unusual and extraordinary the collector's collection could be and that most museums are based on private collections. For examples in Buenos Aires, Argentina, there are 105 museums, but only a few are supported  and run by the state as national exhibits.  By the time he had opened his museum he had visited 1,743 collections around the world, and when he had passed on 20 years later, he had made it to 5,723 museums. His was the only 'Museum of Innocence'.

When the novel opens Kemal Bey is 32, a young and successful industrialist running a family business, Satsat, with his brother. He has been courting Sibel, a dashing Turkish woman who has spent time living in Paris.  She says to him, 'The art of love is in finding the balance of equals, as there is with you and me' (page 219). On a shopping trip, at a boutique, he meets a distant relative, FŸsun, who has just turned 18. Something magical happens between Kemal and Fusun.  For 44 days they escape over lunch hours to an empty flat his family has kept at the Merhamet Apartments.

Kemal Bey becomes totally enraptured with Fusun.  He even invites her to his engagement party to Sibel.  When he dances with FŸsun he tells her, 'We met at an unfortunate time. In the early days neither of us could have known how rare this love was between us. But now I am going to put everything right. Our most immediate concern is your exam tomorrow. This evening we shouldn't waste any time worrying about us' (page 140). He asks her to meet again tomorrow at the Merhamet Apartments at 2pm.  She says, 'Yes', but she does worry. His feelings for the young woman undermine his commitment to Sibel.  She is long suffering and hopeful, until he breaks off the engagement. In the meantime FŸsun and her parents have vanished - the two lovers never meet again at the Merhamet Apartments. In his male supremacy and desire to have the best of both worlds - a wife and a mistress - he fails to recognise that he has potentially ruined a young woman. Her parents take steps to safeguard her and their reputation. 'Istanbul society was such a small and fragile circle that the deep shame of any member was no less universally felt than in a small family' (page 361).

When Kemal Bey eventually finds them, months later, they have started a new life at Cukurcuma Gardens and have a son-in-law, an aspiring filmmaker, living with them too. To Kemal Bey there was 'a beauty in doing things together' (page 391). As long as he kept FŸsun in his sight, shared part of his life with her, he was forever hopeful that one day they would be together again. He has moved from a shared passion to a sustained period of unrequited love.

Kemal Bey has only told one friend, Zaim, the secret of his relationship with FŸsun, but who can keep secrets?This slowly colours his relationship to his friends and acquaintances in the society in which he moves. His chauffeur, Cetin Efendi is no fool either, nor can he really hide his private life from his widowed mother with whom he still lives.

Once he has found FŸsun his obsession leads him to spend the next eight years seeing her, under the eyes of her parents, in their flat at Cukurcuma, up to four evenings a week. They would dine, watch television until it closed, and end the evening with a round of raki. It was there his pilfering begins of the items that form his collection that will eventually become the Museum of Innocence. 'The true collector's only home is his own museum' (page 502). It is difficult to comprehend what Aunt Nesibe, an accomplished seamstress, and her husband Tank Bey, expected from Kemal Bey. They certainly knew that their daughter harboured an inappropriate love, now married to another man who was rarely under their roof, and that she was still loved by Kemal - a knowledge hidden in their silence and acquiescence to his presence in their lives. There is a note of despair, of potential doom, in the air.

When after many years of waiting he is finally free to be with her alone, in his car, in cafes, giving her driving lessons, they would play games as if in school. Asked, 'What is love?' she responds, 'I don't know.' This gives Kemal the opportunity to say, 'Love is the name given to the bond Kemal feels with FŸsun whenever they travel along highways or sidewalks; visit houses, gardens, or rooms; or whenever he watches her sitting in tea gardens and restaurants and at dinner tables'. She responds '... that's a lovely answer, but isn't love what you feel when you can't see me?' He replies, 'Under those circumstances it becomes a terrible obsession, an illness' (page 432).

This long, dense and deeply embellished novel is the kind that becomes a close friend over the days or weeks that it may take you to read it. You may become so involved in it that you fear to finish and set it down, as then it may be lost to you, unless you decide to start over and read it through again. 'Visitors to my Museum of Innocence must compel themselves to view all objects displayed therein -the buttons, the glasses, the old photographs, and FŸsun's combs - not as real things in the present moment, but as my memories' (page 421). 

At the end you will discover that this novel actually is the guidebook, an annotated catalogue, to accompany the Museum of Innocence - if you ever get to visit it in Istanbul.  There is even an index with over 120 names to help you through the book and museum.  'With my museum I want to teach not just the Turkish people but all the people of the world to take pride in the lives they live'.  E-mail: sheridangriswold@yahoo.com