Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale (12 page)

“Eat my arse, Niko” were the words he had spouted a few minutes before he died at the hospital where he was taken because of a heart attack on a cold winter morning; he had to be taken to the church to which he had never been in his life. Apart from Madame Ani, only a few individuals who worked in the shop had attended the funeral at that small church at Feriköy. Madame Ani had said in the graveyard that she was intending to go on a world tour but had died within four months because of a diffuse cancerous growth; these were the signs that epitomized the absurdities involved in these incidents. As though these things were not enough, years later we were to be taken by another surprise. Uncle Kirkor had a brother who worked as a waiter in one of the pubs at Kumkapı. I didn’t go to visit that man. I had the feeling that that place had best be kept a secret for the time being and would be made accessible in a different timeframe. I must not deny the fact that I was filled with a perverse joy whenever I came to think of it. No doubt, there was hatred, a profound hatred in that story. How else could one explain this hiding or dissimulation? Uncle Kirkor must have been greatly amused by concealing from us this significant secret. This was another aspect of the absurdity that was highly difficult to explain. Even though this may seem nonsensical, I believe I must trace the reason for his being at cross-purposes with Olga. How interesting her view of that story was from the old people’s house at Hasköy! When Olga had gone there he had whispered the following remark in my ear: “She has spruced herself up, the wench; be sure she is going to visit her man!” As a matter of fact, everybody felt himself obliged to make a remark when her attire was smart, elegant and sober. At times, her elaborate coiffure was the subject of astute observation. Inclining toward my ear, he said: “I wonder what number of dye she uses? Any idea how they dye a woman’s hair?” Sometimes he elaborated on his remarks and said: “You know what? She has invested a lot of money in her hairdresser!” I believe there was also a latent appreciation here. However, such an attitude cannot explain away certain facts. This seemed like a confrontation between a woman—a woman who tried to perpetuate the idea of nobility in her imagination together with her modest means, a woman who endeavored to keep Uncle Kirkor’s circle at arm’s length, partly for self-protection, a woman who felt herself more and more estranged from her milieu—and a man who had been obliged to carry the burden of destitution on his shoulders all his life and experienced his lack of competence in every respect and who had spent every effort to be on the up and up, something I know from first hand experience. I’d been a witness in the past to this hostility. What is regretful, however, was the blindfolded attitude of the players who had failed to realize their solitudes and common traits. Oh the number of opportunities missed! Despite their differences, Uncle Kirkor and Olga had exchanged a great many secrets. Olga had seen the reflection of Niko on Uncle Kirkor’s complexion. What Uncle Kirkor knew about Olga was far richer than the vestiges of those visits to the old people’s house at Hasköy. He had ventured on a new path without saying anything to anybody. This showed that he was an astute observer who knew how to keep track and infer a lot from the clues available to the extent that even detectives would be envious. Actually both of us had followed the same track. The same track . . . despite our different objectives, expectations and misconceptions . . . despite our diverging views . . . In order to be able to find out the real reason for our habit of putting up obstacles in order to protect us from those liable to injure us on this rugged path, clasping each other’s hands, appearing before them with the falsehoods and illusory manifestations we agreed upon, I had once spoken, or rather tried to speak, about the fascination killing gave one. Uncle Kirkor was certainly conscious of this meditation, of the concern for self-defense. To begin with, he was a friend of Niko. They were familiar with this idea, they must have been . . . All this reminded me of Yorgo who had over the years endeared himself to Niko; Yorgo had the knack to now and then pop up rather skillfully. I believe Niko got the gist of the matter. This may have been the reason for his excessive drinking and playing the role of drunkard. The only difference was that he had seen other places. Niko was reported to have said that he had died. He must have ventured on a drinking binge somewhere else. One should be lenient toward Niko for this falsehood. We are obliged to behave with understanding. Betrayal never received the approval of anybody. Nobody had succeeded in surviving by taking refuge in lies . . . However, frankly, what Niko witnessed after the heartache of his self-betrayal could not be denied. Yorgo had done something that he had failed to do and took the required step; the step that he had to take, a step that no one had dared to take before. Did he regret it? We can never know. The most pertinent remark had come from Monsieur Jacques who had said: “The most important thing for him was the raki which should exist everywhere he went.” No fertile imagination was needed for this . . . His mastery of the Turkish language was certainly a problem. Yet, I feel assured now. He must have eventually rescued himself. We all have to believe in this. One of us was going to appear on another stage. Yes, one of us was going to appear elsewhere . . . I wish I could have said this to Niko. Nevertheless, I’m still at a loss as to where I’m supposed to join that story in order that I may realize this little dream of mine.

Time to part

The detective work of Uncle Kirkor had given certain clues that allowed me now and then to keep abreast of matters in many other stories, thanks to which I had viewed those days in another perspective, not only those days, but also those places, which had enabled me both to live and refashion them. I had to grow up. Uncle Kirkor was aware of this, the other people who had been the heroes of those stories knew this as well. Everybody knew it, except me. I can’t tell now whether I was sufficiently grown up to satisfy the expectations of Uncle Kirkor. I must acknowledge the fact that I had failed to prove it. I cannot say why, because I don’t know what growing up exactly is . . . This fact had gained wide acceptance among them. They were sure they would be in a position to indicate the point once I had reached it. Their observations and interpretations were directed toward the spot they intended to specify . . . The meaning in their looks was directed at covering up the said place. If one took all these things into consideration, there was a writer lying in ambush, the author of certain stories acting as the conscious or unconscious agent of this automatic writing; this author who assisted me to shift from one story to another and knew how to open the doors for them. This seemed to hold true also for that story which had found Monsieur Jacques and Olga in bed together. This had been the case at least at the beginning, during the initial episodes of the story. It seems to me that that story, for Monsieur Jacques, had its inception at that small apartment of Olga’s at Şişli which looked like a sanctuary, or a country to which one had defected, which had over the years acted as a hideaway remote from the temptation of his prohibitions and their grip on his life. So it seemed to me. I was to be initiated into it gradually, by approaching the problem through different avenues; the novels I borrowed from the French Cultural Centre; unforgettable songs; conversations that lasted till the early hours under candlelight, inhaling the perfumed atmosphere; a story that involved refuges taken, refashioned by various days, in different ways, in multifarious anxieties and despair; a story that many people lived or imagined to live in their own lives, representations they always wanted to see . . . . Representations tinted by those days of expectations at the French College
Notre Dame de Sion
, by those spacious living rooms in the house at the Kuledibi Jewish Quarters, and by those unheated bedrooms, long corridors, and smell of coke stoves . . . A few short bridges stretching to a lost time . . . A flawed Venetian vase with semi-obliterated designs, sweet yeast bread, cheese-toast baked in the oven, conversations exchanged in languages spoken the world over—German, Arabic, Yiddish, French—languages stripped bit by bit of their original meanings; a porcelain tea set of Czech origin with missing pieces, a small decanter with variegated hues, imitation Christofle cutlery kept especially for festive occasions, an anonymous still life the frame of which bore on its reverse side the address of a picture-framer in Pera, a bedspread, deep blue, that used to inspire Olga, when she was a young girl, to have a lie-in in the depths of the sea, a silver picture frame whose picture had been taken off and left untenanted for lack of a new photograph deserving to occupy it . . . It was certainly inevitable for these reconstructions to stir up new representations that were unexpected, just like that sinuous path that led from one story to another. One wonders how Olga could carry the burden of the wound that Henry had bequeathed to her, during those lonely nights that she tried to decorate with images in order to add some meaning to them from one room to the next. How could she carry them across into those new rooms in the company of that young girl she could not bring herself to kill despite all that she had done? What, after those long years, had brought Henry back to have a different sort of relationship and obliged him to confess that certain errors committed in the past might gain a footing all the same somewhere in his life? Her father’s principle argument was: “What is important for us is what we actually produced in the past, not what we are planning to do now or what we shall be doing tomorrow,” and had, after days of strenuous hardship, aided her success in imposing her tailoring skills on a restricted circle in a different climate; what should have been the words she used in order to explain the reasons for her irresistible and hasty approach to her boss, Jacques Ventura, a friend of her father’s, in the workshop where she had begun to work and wherein she had succeeded, in her days of dejection, in bringing about certain things for which she could no longer find, about that togetherness she imagined that could now never be realized, about that relationship, which, thanks to her deep attachment, had assumed meanings that she had been nourishing all her life? As time went by, as she proceeded on that road within her, the only path she could tread, she had begun considering Jacques Ventura whom she had started viewing as a man of destiny, not only as a prohibited lover, a spouse accepted at all events whether the conditions favored it or not or as a reliable companion, but also as a father figure whose compassion also included some unique elements. Monsieur Jacques was younger than Moses Bronstein. Yet, one sometimes preferred to live and let live in regard to certain relationships as one would have liked to see them. Despite everything, she had begun working in the workshop soon after she had lost her father. This might explain the void she experienced; it was a different kind of solitude. I distinctly remember, Olga had ventured out one evening and took the risk of returning home the long way when she had made the decision to follow that life, or, to be precise, those lives. She was offended. Offended and injured . . . But against whom had she taken offense? Against those who had caused her to live or not to live those days, against that woman whom she kept alive inside her, that woman whom she had to accept was barring everything? She couldn’t bring herself to decide on this. She had yearnings. These yearnings might well have been for those days past, irretrievable, irrecoverable, or they might be yearnings of an indescribable sort. I could understand that feeling. This was the feeling experienced by everyone who had to live removed from life, far away and abandoned. Olga felt dejected and nostalgic that evening. It’s true, she felt removed from those days, but smiled all the same. Time passing causes people to forget certain days, or incites one to live in a different fashion . . . Moses had died of pneumonia . . . Yes, from pneumonia . . . as if to display to his circle once more the absurd and meaningless nature of life; in his wisdom, having left behind and transcended their expectations realized or unrealized, he allowed those men to share and discover the man left inside them all . . . Olga was smiling that evening. She had a sad countenance which she tried to conceal; a sadness that her past experiences made even more beautiful. “I’m glad I’ll be meeting your mother,” her father said on his deathbed, “I’ve missed her so much. I know Schwartz also loved her. She suffered a lot but I had always been by her side.” This was a story of fidelity deeply experienced that Olga knew and understood even better as she grew older. That evening, in that room where there was someone else smiling at us from far away.

You might get lost in Istanbul

Schwartz’s story in Istanbul, of which Olga has no recollection, had begun in those days when that wandering tailor was doomed to carry with him his destinies to ever new realms, with that forbearing woman from Riga who faithfully followed her husband wherever his path led, and subserved him when needed, at a time when they were getting to know and acclimatize themselves to their new surroundings. Those were the days when they, who could never have felt at home anywhere, were familiarizing themselves with their new street, house, rooms, walls and languages; those were the days that seemed new, refashioned, reclaimed—reminiscent of an incredible and inconceivable soap opera—in the hope that one of those long war stories that gave certain people new life, would be also written and carried to another plane. The time when that revolution had swept the immigrants to a completely different city, to a completely different life, where they could perpetuate their line of nobility only in their past history or within themselves; the time when the new visitors had imported into Istanbul not only their attire, but also their hairstyles, lifestyles, dialects, music, dances, and, in particular, their legends, thanks to whom the sea, the beaches, the Princes’ Islands were re-discovered; certain ‘jewels’—which had not previously been considered fashionable—at certain soirées; their low necklines, their gambling and prostitution customs, their traveling habits. Poverty had increased; the country was being secretly and slowly disrobed for all to see. According to the account of Moses, it was a clear and sunny winter morning, according to others, a freezing one; he was getting ready to fit the dark blue uniform on Signore Bompiani, director of one of the maritime transportation agencies who had divorced his wife with whom he had been married for twenty years and ventured to marry his secretary, that dark girl from Fındıkzade. A man passed by his small workshop at Tünel in a striking officer’s uniform decorated with medals and wearing a sabre . . . So far, so good! The strolling of foreign army officers in uniform in the streets of the city was nothing out of the ordinary at the time. Nevertheless, the man, after a short while, made an about turn, and, as though he was addressing the troops under his command, shouted “Achtung!” while he made as though he was firing at an imaginary target with an imaginary weapon under his arm. Dadadadada; an officer speaking German with such awkward gestures that he looked as though he had been thinking deeply about his own thoughts, feelings or behavior; (he was not unfamiliar with such cultures and representations. He readily understood that the man had been a member of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) was this the picture of a man strayed from his path, of someone who had ventured to taste a new life in a foreign country? This question might not have crossed Moses’ mind at that critical moment of their encounter. Yet, barring all that was experienced and ruminated over, one could not imagine that a man who had ventured to launch himself into alienation with all its potential snares, whether willingly or against his will, would remain indifferent to another foreigner, especially to a legendary hero that had come from the world of his childhood, to wit from his mother’s lost world. Thus, he extended an invitation to this outsider, expecting to catch a glimpse of another ‘moment’ without the least hesitation. The outsider responded favorably to this invitation as though he had been waiting for it, behaving with composure, in due decorum, befitting a well-disciplined army officer. So they got to know each other. The fact that the name of his guest who already seemed to have been a far-flung hero of an old story was Schwartz made the situation even more interesting. For Schwartz was a Jewish name. Moses in his turn had introduced himself; as a Jew, who, although he had not had a formal education in German, had considered it his vernacular; he was another Jew who had had to part with an important phase of his life in Odessa. It was as though they had been making headway toward a certain place, indescribable and nameless. But the really interesting account began when Schwartz began by telling of his adventures. The army was visiting the city with a view to conducting certain joint tactical operations with the Allied Forces, having in mind that a war would break out sooner or later, favoring the Allies, a war that was expected to last a fairly long time. They had been stationed here for the moment for an undetermined length of time . . . Then, something had happened, and he had been ‘mislaid,’ while the rest of the army had long departed, going back to Vienna. (Years later a writer, a friend of mine, was to tell me that soldiers who went to a foreign land were obsessed with the fear that they might be thrown off the scent of war.) According to the account of Moses—reared by his mother who had a perfect knowledge of German, and also from his years spent in both grammar and high schools—Schwartz spoke German flawlessly but with an accent. It would be reasonable to suppose that he was a true Viennese who had received a proper education in that capital city of culture. It was quite natural therefore that he would revive in his imagination one of those dreams that had sunk into oblivion: the avenues, the cafés, the forests, the Opera, the Waltzes, the emperor Franz-Joseph, and, last but not the least, the
lieder
that his mother used to sing for him on certain evenings . . . In other words, there was more than one reason for his taking an interest in his guest under the circumstances. But the fact is that none of these subjects had been taken up. Schwartz, mislaid in Istanbul, under the effect of that dreadful shock of being forgotten, was suffering from amnesia; he had forgotten his past, or had deposited it somewhere he could not remember. Neither a place-name, nor any clue to trace his identity was available. All that he could remember was that, as he told during the following days, he had been to a different land, somewhere in Poland, in a big farm-like place. Schwartz took him to his home that day and also briefed Eva of the situation. Thus, the story was also imparted to Eva . . . with certain details added, omitted or transformed. That night was followed by a number of days, a number of days and a number of nights. Life stories were exchanged; stories of lives occasionally mislaid somewhere. Whenever Schwartz began speaking of his story he never failed to insert a new detail into the narrative flow. He seemed to be a man in search of domicile. They asked him whether he desired to return to his motherland, to Austria or Poland. But they received no response. He simply smiled at them. His gaze was at the moment fixed on the statuette of the prancing horse that Eva had brought from Riga as a young girl that stood on the tripod next to the armchair in which he was seated. He seemed to be lost in reverie, in a faraway land. “The earth had such a delectable smell those summer nights. I miss it so much,” he was heard saying. In order to enable him to find his way back to his motherland, to his home and family, appeals were made to embassies. However, those appeals and attempts had all been in vain. They were told that no sufficient information was available regarding him; to be able to get in touch with certain authorities definite names and useful clues were needed which too seemed presently mislaid or sunken into oblivion.