THE project has eaten up all his Nobel prize money and he says he could have written half a novel in the time it has taken to finish it. But Turkey's laureate, Orhan Pamuk, finally has his Museum of Innocence, the wellspring of his bestselling 2008 tale of the same name, about the doomed Istanbul lovers, Füsun and Kemal.
Since early May a steady stream of visitors have been making their way down a booklined street in central Istanbul, past a hammam, a Turkish bath that pretends to date back to medieval times, past two cats gorging themselves like pashas off a low table on the pavement, to 24 Çukurcuma St.
The museum is set in an old Istanbul townhouse, painted in a discreet but very distinctive red—not plum or cerise, but something in between. Small groups of book-loving northern Europeans and well-dressed locals cluster around the teller's window, examining the colourful printed tickets he hands them. Only when they read the sign above his head, urging visitors to switch off mobile phones and “use a soft conversational tone”, do they realise that the place they are about to enter is not so much a museum as a story den, a piece of performance art.
For much of the first decade of this century Mr Pamuk roved Istanbul's junkshops and market stalls looking for bits and pieces with which to furnish the novel he was writing about the fictional Kemal Basmaci, the obsessive son of one of Istanbul's wealthiest families. Kemal is about to become engaged to the equally aristocratic Sibel. One evening Sibel notices a handbag in the window of an elegant shop, Şanzelize Boutique (“its name a transliteration of the legendary Parisian avenue”). The next day Kemal returns to buy it. Serving him is a young woman whom he recognises as a distant relation, Füsun Keski.
Thus begins the love affair. Part performance, part Wunderkammer or cabinet of curiosities, the Museum of Innocence unfolds the story, as recounted years later by Kemal to the narrator. Each of the 83 cabinets represents a chapter of the novel, beginning with the story of Füsun selling Kemal the handbag. Füsun's mother is a seamstress, copying French patterns for rich Istanbul matrons. Her bag of tricks fills another cabinet: a huge pair of scissors, a treadmill Singer sewing machine, bobbins in many colours. The seamstress and her daughter, the shopgirl, offer the aristocratic Kemal a fresh perspective on the Istanbul bourgeoisie as it struggles with the conflicts of modernity, aping Western fashions and Western ways, but still prizing its traditions of female modesty and virginity. Unwilling or unable to break the social taboos of class, Kemal never marries Füsun. They become lovers and seek their pleasures in the moment.
There are cabinets that recall meals out, with menus and matchbooks with names like Pasha and Sultan, all followed by the word “Lokantasi”, which must mean restaurant. In a cabinet entitled “Füsun's Driving Licence”, a seemingly endless stream of photographs of Füsun and their friends leaning against a car, on a car and out of a car form the backdrop for a solitary speedometer. For those who have forgotten the affair's sudden and tragic end, the curators have thoughtfully provided multiple copies of Mr Pamuk's book, attached to the wall by a chain, and a cushioned bench to sit on.
Deconstructing the “Museum of Innocence” is part of its appeal. Cynical visitors point out the craftsmanship of the museum and insist Mr Pamuk must be a perfectionist as well as an obsessive for having spent so long collecting the many hundreds of objects on display. He is accused of narcissism and a certain commercial sleight of hand. The teller's credit-card swipe works with uncharacteristic speed and the bookshop by the exit contains only Mr Pamuk's books, neatly arrayed in Italian, English, German, Spanish, French and Turkish (with another cabinet upstairs with translations into Greek, Russian, Portuguese, Hebrew, Chinese and Japanese).
But there is no denying that Mr Pamuk is also a storyteller and a romantic, and that more than makes up for his alleged faults. In a final cabinet at the top of the house are these words:
My life has taught me that remembering Time—that line connecting all the moments that Aristotle called the Present—is for most of us rather painful.
However, if we can learn to stop thinking of life on a line corresponding to Aristotle's Time, treasuring our time instead for its deepest moments, then lingering eight years at our beloved's dinner table no longer seems strange and laughable. Instead, this courtship signifies 1,593 happy nights by Füsun's side.
It was to preserve these happy moments for posterity that I collected this multitude of objects large and small that once felt Füsun's touch, dating each one to hold it in my memory.
Mr Pamuk's Museum of Innocence; as the guidebooks say, vaut le détour.
