The Front of Istanbul

A man and his wife share the early hours of the morning together.

The man came in through the door in a creeping way, quiet not to disturb his wife. She slept on the sofa, with heavy blankets tussled all about her, and a light snore, which her husband adored, escaped her mouth as she breathed. The party had been an incredibly wild one; he almost had had too much liquor to drink, before he realized that he would have to drive home. And then he drank liquor all the more, heedless of his wife's care and sometimes subtle worry and warnings.

He sat beside her sleeping image, a drunken face gazing over her curvy form. Her body was not the body of a supermodel, but its round curves and smallish form, to an extent, gave her a voluptuous air as she slept. He began to imagine himself as a younger man, who would have her all to himself, before he had known of her younger days himself. It had been a shock to him, to find out the sheer number of sexual partners his wife had had, a fact she had relinquished to him on the eve of their wedding.

Now, however, he seemed to admire the fact. It proved his wife a creature of the world. Someone who was knowledgable and sturdy, and who could organize things for him. For he himself was a simpleton. He often lived to party, and when not at parties, he would delight in his music and paintings. His wife often would sit beside him at the bench in front of the grand piano they had in the tiny apartment. She would sit and listen to the soft, slowly repeating melodies. The melodies that she loved. His hands glided over the keys at times, and at times they pounded the ivories with the force of an ape gone mad. And every time she sat stunned at the transparent beauty of his music.

His paintings were another matter. The wife was hardly amused by the cartoonish figures, which seemed to lack depth. But she had grown accustomed to commenting on their beauty, which she feigned in order to please him. Her actual tastes were of a more complex sort when it came to the realm of visual art, and the husband secretly suspected this. But he did nothing to change her well-meaning but false approval of his paintings. He was far from needing her approval, as she seemed to need of him, and hardly wished to prove his suspicions.

The husband gazed into her face now. He looked at her drooling sleepy time face, and was quite enamoured. He bent in to give her a soft brushing kiss on her lips. At first, the woman embraced him without even knowing he was there. It was a sort of reflex action, borne out of being the sort of woman who easily gave herself to a man whenever the opportunity arose. Of course, the husband did not realize this, but instead took the reflexive embrace to be a further sign of her adoration for him.

Then, she opened her eyes, and a true recognition of the man she had married came forth. He had kissed her, and now she kissed him back in earnest, saliva flowing freely between their two mouths. She looked over to the clock, which, in the dark, gave a stark green glow from its box-like numerals. The face of the digital thing read 3:13 in the morning, and the wife knew that her husband had been partying out all night.

"Come to bed with me...will you?" She said. As comfortable as the couch was in favor of the dust-mite ridden mattress which was stacked and pushed up against the tiny apartment wall which they lived in, the sofa was much too uncomfortable with two or more people attempting to sleep on it. The woman longed to feel her husband's large body beside hers. She wanted him to crush her on that mattresses.

The husband, however, did not comply. "No. You are too beautifull..." His face was that of a puppy in adoration of its master, and the woman then knew how drunk he was. He probably was soft in his pelvic region at the moment. She knew that a morning of passionate sex was beyond him. But he was, at that moment, docile, and so she slid off of the couch and took him by the hand, gently leading him towards their first bed.

He followed her meekly, as the alcohol rendered him submissive and in awe of his wife. Togethere they slept on the faint yellow mattress for a few hours. Though the woman wanted him inside her, that was not a possibility, and so they cuddled for a bit, until, in the early light of the morning, the timer on the television set reached a certain threshold that had been programmed into it. The television turned itself on as they lay, quietly brodcasting the morning news into the otherwise silent apartment. But the gentle, mellow sounds from the television were too soft, muffled by the couch, the mattress, and the pillow over the couple's heads. They slept on, with news from the front of Istanbul gently creeping into their heads.

Author's Note

All issues raised will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.