“And that’s the strategy of tension?” asked Catherine.
“The way two people suspend each other in place.”
“What if they’ve never met that other person?”
“Doesn’t matter, the idea of the other person is enough.”
Catherine leafed through the pages, taking in the portraits one at a time. Peter watched her intently. He wasn’t certain what Kristin had told Catherine about him, whether she knew that he was nearly ready to abandon the project altogether, that he was ready to return home. The question implied in each portrait was that the viewer also had a pairing, that they too existed in tension with another person, and in that tension resided their own fate. Peter felt the weight of this tension every time he opened the book, as if an invisible opposite was pulling him like gravity in a direction he didn’t understand. He hoped that Catherine would feel that tension when she looked at the images. If Catherine felt nothing, Peter knew that he had failed, for what else was the point of art except emotional transference, the ability of the artist through some medium to transfer his understanding and what he felt to the stranger who viewed his work.
While Catherine continued to flip through Peter’s book, a man wearing a dark double-breasted suit tailored snugly at the waist with a maroon turtleneck beneath tapped Catherine on the shoulder. “Wonderful to see you, Cat.”
A relaxed smile blossomed across her face. She stood and kissed him on either cheek. “Deniz, meet Peter. He’s a fantastic photographer, and I think we should talk about showing some of his work.” Catherine, who was clutching Peter’s book to her chest, offered it to Deniz.
“A pleasure,” said Deniz. “I don’t want to interrupt your dinner.”
“Not at all,” said Catherine, as she pulled up a chair from an adjacent table. Deniz sat, unhooking the single button of his coat so that its drape hung at his sides like a flag unfurled. Catherine spread Peter’s book in front of him. “Deniz is our chief curator … and a complete genius.”
“Not everyone thinks so,” said Deniz. Without taking his concentrated gaze away from the photographs, he fished from his inside pocket a pack of Winstons, giving it a jerk so a single cigarette freed itself, and then he clutched its filter with his teeth, unsheathing a smoke, which he lit with the candle that served as the table’s centerpiece.
An observant waiter crossed the restaurant and pointed to the No Smoking sign, which had only recently been affixed to the restaurant’s far wall, beneath the clock, as part of a new and unexpected round of government provisions. The waiter and Deniz had a sharp exchange in Turkish, which resulted in the waiter eventually delivering an ashtray. “They won’t let us smoke, soon they won’t let us drink, and soon they’ll shut this museum down.”
“They approved the renovation plans,” said Catherine. “Why would they shut us down?”
“They keep us open so as to claim credit when they shut us down,” replied Deniz.
“Everything is a conspiracy with you,” said Catherine.
Deniz rested his cigarette along the rim of the ashtray. Sensuous in his calm, he lazily turned the pages while shifting closer to Peter so that the two of them might comment together on the book. Their shoulders touched. Then their legs. Peter gradually leaned away as Deniz continued to flip through the photographs. Deniz then shut the book and glanced up at Peter, who was looking not at his work but rather at Deniz’s cigarette smoldering in the ashtray. “Relax,” said Deniz, noticing how Peter had awkwardly propped himself on his elbow to create some physical distance between them. “I’d take Cat home before you.” Then Deniz began to laugh darkly over facts that seemed to amuse him alone.
“I’m not sure I understand?” said Peter.
“Oh, come now,” said Deniz, who turned toward Catherine, as if she were his accomplice. “You Americans are suppressed bigots. In this country we are at least a bit more open about our prejudices. You pretend they don’t exist. You say that when one person rules over ninety-nine people it is despotism, but when fifty-one rule over forty-nine it is democracy. If you’re part of the minority, what’s the difference?”
“Deniz set up the Karsh exhibit,” interjected Catherine, trying to change the subject. “Peter is a great admirer of Karsh.”
“I can see that,” answered Deniz, as he glanced down his nose and resumed turning the pages of Peter’s book. “Karsh can be controversial.”
“Is it difficult to show an Armenian’s work?” asked Peter.
Deniz returned a perplexed look. “No, that Armenian nonsense is not why he’s controversial. The true controversy around Karsh is the criticism that his work is too static, whether his style—the absence of motion—is a reflection of his limitations as a photographer.”
“He was a master of light,” said Peter. “He would—”
Deniz interrupted. “Yes, yes, he would light the subject’s hands and face separately so that one contrasted against the other. Does that make him a genius? It’s a nice little trick, but aside from that all he did was photograph famous people. If he was alive today, he would be working as a paparazzo for Posta, or some other glossy gossip magazine.”
“He could evoke the one shot that revealed his subject,” Peter added.
“Or, perhaps Karsh only picked the photos that revealed the prejudices he brought to his subjects. Perhaps Karsh had already formed his opinions.” Deniz rested Peter’s book on the table.
“Why did you set up the exhibit if you don’t like his work?” asked Peter.
“I don’t have to like his work to think that it is important.”
Catherine placed her hand on Peter’s arm, catching his attention. “That’s what holds Deniz apart from other curators,” she said, speaking as though Deniz weren’t sitting at the table with them. “Our collection is much broader because Deniz includes pieces that he might not like, but whose importance he recognizes.”
“I also can’t afford to buy the pieces that I really want,” said Deniz, and then he glanced at Catherine. “But she keeps promising to help me with that.”
“How long have you been at the Istanbul Modern?” asked Peter.
Deniz glanced subserviently at Catherine, volleying the response to this question over to her. “He’s been here for several years now,” she said. “He’s risen very fast.”
“Where were you before that?” added Peter.
Deniz again hesitated, looking once more to Catherine before speaking. “In Esenler,” he said, “living a cheap life after being kicked out of university.” The hardscrabble neighborhood was far from the Bosphorus, and thus far from the cultural, financial, and political forces that defined the city, and Peter struggled to imagine the conspiracy of events that had resulted in Deniz beating out his competition to ascend into the lead curatorial position at the Istanbul Modern. Far easier for Peter was imagining the circumstances that forced someone of Deniz’s evidently omnivorous proclivities out of the city’s conservative universities. To that question, all Deniz said was “I partied too hard … , or at least not in the acceptable ways.” As the conversation continued, Catherine and Deniz divided and then answered Peter’s questions as though they were a married couple being asked about a shared but complex history, each of them making quick determinations as to who was better suited to respond to certain chapters of their mutual story. Deniz added, “I consider Cat to be one of my oldest and closest friends.”