‘Swamp fever?’
‘Yeah, I don’t know, she’s so yellow and sickly-looking. Have you seen her recently?’
Timur shook his head. But after a moment’s pause, he told his assistant he had something to attend to and would probably be back sometime in the afternoon.
And then, despite the heavy snowfall, he loitered by the big house where Fatma lived until nightfall.
‘In spring,’ said Zeliha that evening. ‘You’ll marry in spring. I arranged it all today. She’s a hard-working girl and good-natured too, she’ll be able to help me out around the house and you’ll be less inclined to go wandering about.’
Swamp fever and no breasts. It wasn’t quite what Timur had imagined. He found it difficult to say anything, but in the end, he managed: ‘It’s all happened a bit fast. I hardly had time to think it over.’
‘You had 25 years to think it over,’ his mother said.
Timur was as strong as a lion, nobody could take him on, he was as strong as a lion and proud – what would he do with a sickly girl? Yesterday, with the stars caught in his hair, he had said yes, but today his feet were back on the ground.
‘So?’ he asked his sister when she came home the next morning. He had slept poorly and had no appetite.
‘So what?’
‘So, has she got…?’
‘It was too dark in the room.’
‘You could have tried feeling for them secretly.’
‘Wouldn’t have worked.’
‘So you couldn’t make anything out under her nightdress?’
‘No, but she’s still very young, they might not be big enough to be obvious yet – that’s if she has any…’
That day, Timur again left the forge in the hands of his assistant, who was surprised because Timur never usually stayed away so long.
Once again, the blacksmith went to the house where Fatma lived, and just when he could no longer feel his feet for the cold, she stepped out the door holding a clay jug. He was standing behind a spot where the wall jutted out, and Fatma didn’t notice him until she was almost standing in front of him. She knew that this was the man whom she’d been promised to the day before, and she turned around and ran back, only to stop abruptly. It had clearly occurred to her that she couldn’t go back into the house without an explanation. She turned around again; she had to visit the neighbour, get some vinegar. She wavered, taking two slow steps forward, hesitantly, her eyes fixed on the ground. Then she took a step back, her cheeks glowing, the snow making an incredible crunch beneath her feet, and stopped. She heard another crunch, then another and another, and as she slowly looked up, she saw the broad back of the blacksmith, walking away.
Timur lit a cigarette and smiled. Maybe she didn’t have any breasts, but she was beautiful. She was beautiful, like a piece of the moon. She was beautiful, as if the stars still hung in his hair. Timur didn’t go back to the workshop straight away, he went to the shopkeeper, to see the one bed he had for sale. He followed the shopkeeper into the storeroom, squatted down and looked long and carefully at the frame.
‘Would you like to buy it?’ the shopkeeper asked, scenting a sale. The bed had sat in the shop for six months. Almost everybody in the small town slept on the floor on mattresses or cushions, or on a divan, and even the rich ones didn’t seem to want to buy a bed – there was no reason to do so.
Timur didn’t respond, so the shopkeeper went on: ‘Are you getting married? Are congratulations in order?’
Timur muttered something incomprehensible without looking up from the bed frame.
‘We can be a little flexible with the price, of course.’
The blacksmith made no sound and his eyes narrowed a little; he nodded briefly, then stood up and slowly walked around the frame.
Finally, he said to the shopkeeper: ‘Yes, I’m getting married. In spring. In spring when everything is green and fragrant. No, I’m not going to buy the bed, but thank you and have a profitable day.’
Timur returned to the workshop in good spirits. There was a lot to do, he would have to stay longer if he wanted to make a start on the bed frame. The bedposts were to be exactly like the model at the shopkeeper’s; knee-high, round and gleaming. And on top of these, he would lay the slats, just as he had seen. But the headboard would not be made out of straight rods, like a prison cell; they’d be curved, like climbing roses.
He worked in the forge until almost midnight and when he finally lay down on his mattress, he closed his eyes, content. A piece of the moon.
Fatma and Timur slept in a real bed for the first time on their wedding night. Neither of them said a word once they’d entered the room. But later, when Timur was just about to fall asleep, Fatma murmured: ‘So this is how kings sleep.’
And Timur was not only proud but also surprised at how exactly her words said what he himself was feeling. He felt richer, more powerful, safer; he felt big enough to rule the world.
It was spring and they were newlyweds, Timur had enough work at the forge, they had money, Fatma brought him something to eat every lunchtime, and then they’d sit together for a while and talk and talk until it was time for Fatma to go and for Timur to get back to work. The food was usually still untouched, but Fatma knew that Timur would’ve eaten it by the evening and that he’d be hungry again by the time he got home; he was a big man who worked hard. It was spring and they had their own room in the house Timur’s father had left his mother.
And that was how the problems began. Zeliha saw her son looking after the young woman, this girl, saw him bringing home a little something for her almost every evening: a length of cloth so she could sew some clothes, a simit, a new headscarf, sometimes sweets or a piece of chocolate. Zeliha saw her son wanting to get close to his wife, saw him in love and caring for her.
One evening, it was summer by this point, she drew him aside: ‘Your wife, she’s lazy, she comes up with excuses not to help around the house. One day she’s sprained her ankle and the next she has a stomachache. And when she does do anything, she never tries hard. On our last washing day, she sat down at the trough and didn’t change the water once in two hours. She washed our laundry in dirty water.’
‘Why didn’t you say something?’
‘I did. She sighed and said she had changed the water. She heaved a great big sigh. You need to teach her some respect.’
‘Mother, you were the one who said she was hard-working and reliable.’
‘I must have been wrong. She’s lazy and disrespectful.’
That night in bed, Timur told his wife his mother had complained about her. And Fatma said in a quiet voice: ‘I’m really doing everything I can. I’m trying my best but your mother… She can be unfair, I think.’
The complaints grew more frequent: Fatma sliced the cheese wrong, she cut the dishcloths in two when she washed up knives. When she went out, she dragged her feet on purpose so she’d get new shoes before the winter, she spread the butter too thickly on the bread, and Timur began to work out what the problem was.
‘Listen,’ he said to Fatma one evening, ‘I think I know what we can do. Next time my mother complains, I’ll drag you into our room and then I’ll bash the cushions and yell a bit, and you scream with pain, then I’ll go out and you stay in here for a while longer.’
Now, every time Zeliha complained to her son about her daughter-in-law, the young couple went to their room and the sound of beatings and screams was heard. The complaints tailed off.
Timur showed off to his friends about the trick, and they laughed together, raised their glasses and drank. And by the time autumn was over, the whole town knew about it.
‘We’ll