Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale Page 2

  Those were the nights during which we had shared our sexual desires, just like the rest of humanity, when someone else would lay their hands upon things that belonged to another, things that we could not properly define . . . Those were the nights during which we had written our histories, stories that no book could possibly contain. She knew this all too well. She knew for whom I kept it alive, for something that was missing, that something which I, as time went by, understood and continued to understand better . . . It may be because she had wanted all these things for herself, for herself alone . . . that I had to remain myself and in my self.

  That is why I remained attached to her and would never part with her . . . never . . . despite all my expectations, my next-of-kin, and my walls. I’m smiling, and I have started to learn how to coexist with her. I’m well aware that I cannot get rid myself of those nights and those mornings that sneaked into my room mingled with the sounds I thought I had forgotten. For, I am beginning to understand that men who love each other by injuring and harming each other, through all the shortcomings and heartaches that go with it, cannot sever themselves from each other despite all their ill-defined concepts of deception and deference.

  Her name . . . Her name for me was ‘Dejection’ . . . Dejection . . . This was the only title I could recall in view of our long-standing attachment . . . For she kept distant from me other times she might have spared the two of us, her sentiments and her principles, and her other appellations. I can feel this; I can understand this better now after sensing the delays that those deceptions gave rise to. However, just like all other sincere and honest relationships, this relationship also called for some extra effort, effort in order to understand it better. This is the reason why we’ll continue to remain together and try to give birth to other nights of faint hopes. We’ll continue to stick to each other . . . whether we want to or not . . . One can’t understand the sea unless one actually lives on it; neither the sea nor the Mirabilis Jalapa; one can’t understand the scent of the lime blossom if it is not coupled with the fear of losing it; losing it in actual fact. As I keep on brooding over these things now, it seems likely that I shall be in a position to lend her other names as well, when the time comes . . . A mere snapshot will be enough for me . . . I think that I’ll have to store certain photographs indelibly in my memory so that I may remain in them. Then I’ll be able to smile again, but no one among the whole mass of people will understand the reason for my smiling nor the person I am smiling for . . .

  Evening had set in . . . The woman looked through the window. She listened to the sounds coming from outside. “Starlings,” she said, “they will be with us this year also, with voices borrowed from others . . . just like us . . . like us.” Tears rushed to her eyes. She leaned her head on her husband’s chest and closed her eyes. They would have their cup of tea in that garden, in their garden, once again . . . They were once more the heroes of an untold Chekhov story. The clock had once more struck the same hour . . .

  Who had stayed at whose place for whom?

  Olga

  She had rather unconsciously drawn the boundaries of her realm in her small apartment at Şişli. She wore her diamond necklace in order to be able to remain the princess in that fairy tale which she honestly believed to be real with all its concomitant associations and aspirations. She was a woman of infatuations. Her cherished dream was to depart one day for Mexico.

  Madame Roza

  She had remained devoted to Greek; on no account would she ever let it be consigned to oblivion, that Greek tongue that she had imported from Thrace as a child along with the memory of a vast expanse of daisy fields. These were the keys that opened many a tabooed room for her along with the secret corners of this tale. She had observed life firmly believing in the virtues of patience and endurance. Nobody dared to say anything likely to imply a dubious relationship between her and a milliner at Yüksek Kaldırım. She had been a real haven for every member of the family.

  Madame Estreya

  She had preferred to beget and foster her love somewhere far from the heroes and heroines of this tale. Nobody could ever learn about her affairs in that exotic part of Istanbul. At a time when everybody was becoming scarce in their own manner, she had returned to her family as a lifeless body. Her looks were reminiscent of the sea’s fathomless depths, the meaning of which could only be understood properly by one individual.

  Muhittin Bey

  Both Selahattin Pınar’s songs and Chopin’s Polonaises had been a source of delight for him. He preferred to remain the hero of a tale that had been unable to complete its movement. Life, for him, had been a dirty joke.

  Eva

  She was the daughter of a wealthy banker from Riga. The days during which she had made up her mind to marry her third cousin were weighted by a secret, a secret she would eventually disclose to her daughter. Her love affairs had always been colorful and assumed mysterious meanings. When she was obliged to leave Odessa for Alexandria, the thing that had troubled her most had been her separation from her piano.

  Schwartz

  Once a triumphant officer in the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he figures in the present story through his identity as an amnesic hero wandering at random in the streets of Istanbul. He believed he had had a country of his own once though he could not properly describe it; however, he had a photograph of it. The memory of a farm of which he had been the owner seemed to be lingering in his mind.

  Yasef

  Two things interested him in particular: ‘toadying’ and the compilation of anecdotes. He was a firm believer in women’s fickleness; toward the end of his days, he used to say he had lived longer than he should have. Had he been conscious of the fact that he had been able to transmit to his son his skill as a comedian?

  Ginette

  Her story was a long one; she was born at a time when the war was still raging. She was believed to have been brought up first in a convent near Paris, then in Istanbul; she was already a young girl when she found herself in Haifa. She had lost an important part of herself in another war. When she revealed herself to the narrator in Vienna at the least unexpected moment, she was grim-faced, in spite of the fact that what she had always desired most in life was to be smiling, to always wear a smiling countenance.

  Enrico

  He deeply felt the absence of his elder sister when he fell down that deep well.

  Marcello Algrante

  He had chosen a path that led him to an altogether different God. He had studied at the Galatasaray Lycée. Voltaire had been his favorite author.

  Sedat the Arab

  He had carried his double-barreled gun with pride all his life. He had been a commercial traveler, riding in his minibus that he had named ‘The Detective’ throughout Anatolia, selling perfumes. He had in his possession maps showing routes known to nobody. He was a skillful mimic. That small town in the proximity of Istanbul was important not only for him, but also for another person figuring briefly in the present tale.

  Henry Moskowitch

  He was the son of a wealthy businessman who had amassed a huge fortune under the Empire. His amorous exploits with a countess figuring in the present tale (whose name he could never discover) had marked the beginning of an end. According to rumors, he had had many other affairs with famous singers and actresses of his time. In actual fact, he had had just one fairy tale princess.

  Uncle Kirkor

  He had been an eavesdropper, though quite by chance. An unfortunate accident had compelled him to give up his job as a lathe operator to take up commerce. He had been Monsieur Jacques’ most reliable friend. His inability to ask his wife to prepare for him a dish of mussels had had a very meaningful reason behind it.

  Juliet

  Her cherished hope was to be able to appear on the stage as Nora. She tried to show her rebellious tendencies through her beautiful photographs. Her intention ha
d been to put in an appearance as a powerful feminine character in the presence of her narrator. She had performed her dances solely to the accompaniment of her own songs. She had shed tears during the funeral of her daughter.

  Consul Fahri Bey

  His residence at Salacak resembled a hermit’s hut. He spoke of having rescued many a Turkish-Jewish prisoner from concentration camps.

  Ani

  She had tried to banish from her mind all thoughts of her deficiencies, investing them in men whom she easily abandoned. However, her story had not made this easy for her. There should have been other ways of getting along with her father, ways more concrete and warm.

  Rosy

  Reserved as she was, she had nourished deep within her great rebellious impulses. A light touch was enough to trigger a storm in her, a storm that revealed her entire soul. On the other hand, no one could ever learn whether she had experienced that touch in her life. Nevertheless, it was already too late when all these things came to light.

  Berti

  He had been successful in adding his long walks in Istanbul to his travels the world over. Movies had been his absorbing hobby. Among his diversions, reading The Guardian occupied an important place. A good many of his connections had opined that his studies at Cambridge had been a waste of time. He had to convince himself that he had been a good father.

  Nora

  She had mentioned the impossibility of going back in the train she was sharing with her mother. The place where she had been heading for was a place toward which everybody would like to go but had to put off. Could this have been the reason why the narrator had wished to tell all about this? Was this the reason why the narrator didn’t forget her, because of that missing link? He will quite probably tell about it in another story some other time. Her name befitted her actions if one thinks on ‘that play.’

  İncila Hanım

  Her teachers at the conservatory had seen in her a prospective Seyyan Hanım. However, she had taken risks by opting for solitude and deception, by marrying Hugo Friedman and getting lost in London. She regularly returned to her seaside residence at Kanlıca every year for the sake of the old clutter left behind; thus she remained tied to her past as she sipped her raki while watching the sea of the Bosporus.

  Monsieur Robert

  In his small hotel room at Sıraselviler, where he had ventured to return, were the photographs of a man of failure, of a man who left behind him a long past during which he had lived so many other lives. It had not been so easy for him to accept the fact that his actual home had been the small apartment of İncila Hanım in London. Neither could he forget the night when he had lit the cigarette of Princess Soreyya in that vast saloon in Monte Carlo. Whether he was alive or dead during the days when the present story is narrated is a mystery.

  Monsieur Tahar

  He was stylishly dressed and carried a cane; the dark spectacles he wore when he went out gave him the air of an old spy condemned to live in a given city rather than of a retired journalist. He believed that mysticism was a long poem, a gift to humanity, not fully understood yet. Had they known the experiences he had had in Casablanca during his adolescence and youth, his friends in old age would have understood him better.

  Monsieur Aldo

  A Catholic Arab born in Beirut; a Levantine from İzmir; a resident of Thessalonika; an Istanbul Jew called Ashkenazi; all four of his identities. Some claimed that he had spent his last years in Barcelona, some in Goa. Some asserted that he had died of syphilis, while others believed that a Syrian arms dealer had stabbed him. All these were his multifarious identities and lives. Actually, he was a notorious swindler. It was said that he had connections the world over.

  Lola

  Thanks to her studies in music and dramatic arts in Budapest, she had been a colorful figure on the stage in Soho. She had had to pay a high price to escape from the gas chambers. Had her encounter one evening with Monsieur Robert really changed the course of her life?

  Carlo

  He boasted of having mastered thirteen languages in addition to Yiddish. He was a staunch believer that true love could only happen at sea. The fact that he ended up being a pilot duly qualified and licensed to navigate a ship into and out of the special waters on the Bosporus may have had its roots in this conviction. However, when he decided to remain betrothed to the sea, he had intended to persuade himself that he actually was expecting somebody, and would be waiting for that person till the bitter end.

  Şükran

  In her small, gloomy, and stinking apartment, she kept dreaming that one day she was sure to be heading for a sunnier aspect. Her story might be inserted in a daily paper as an ordinary incident.

  Hüsnü

  His failure to feel himself as adapted to Istanbul was due to his obsessive clinging to ‘outlandish value judgments.’ The reason for his despair, for his inability to embrace his daughter at difficult times, may have had its origin in his estrangement from the bright lights of the city. One should not forget that Bafra cigarettes never quit his fingers and that he diligently kept that newspaper till the end of his days. Going back to his hometown without having acquired a flat in the city must have played a part in this.

  Anita

  There was a step she wanted to speak about to her narrator. The moments they met had not been coincidental; it was a necessary consequence of the story’s plot. But in order that that step might be taken forward one should believe that other flowers had also sprouted on the skirts of the mountain.

  Eleni

  She had not deserved to be cooped up in that house. She had reacted to this by wandering stark naked in the rooms in which she was penned up. It was rumored that a daredevil army officer had wooed her in her younger years. Pinpointing that officer might have completely changed the course of the story.

  Tanaş

  The taste of the sandwiches he made in his delicatessen at Perşembe Pazarı must have indelibly remained on the palates of gourmands. He was believed to have been attached to his daughter by a secret passion.

  Jerry

  He was believed to have drawn the entire plan of a huge rocket. When he had gone to study at Harvard University, a rumor was spread that he belonged to a secret society. At the time of penning the present story, his whereabouts are still a mystery.

  Marcellina

  According to some she was a real woman; while others thought that she was but a virtual image. You could run into her anywhere in the world at the least expected moment.

  Harun

  The compelling reason for his abandonment of guitar playing and the resignation of his managerial position in a big company in order to launch into the business of gastronomy by producing meatballs was never explained. Although he was one of the principal actors in the story, he preferred to remain always in the background.

  Joseph

  He had never been able to tell anyone the identity of the individual he had been looking for in that ‘vast white land.’ As he was returning from the island riding a phaeton toward the lights of the city, one wonders if he had finally understood that everything fitted together after all.

  Niko

  He claimed that he had a paramour in Thessalonika waiting for him like Penelope. If he hadn’t been such a skillful tailor, everybody would have called him a vest thief. When he was deported on that ominous day of exile from Istanbul, he had entrusted the gramophone records bearing the brand His Master’s Voice—dating from the epoch of Monsieur Schurr and the Geserian Brothers—to a close acquaintance, in the hope of returning to the city one day to recover them. However, the said collection vanished into thin air, the identity of the acquaintance in question remains unknown.

  Yorgo

  Yorgo was Niko’s cat. It was claimed that it understood Greek and drank raki.

  Aunt Tilda

  She
had been only partially successful in seeing movie stars embodied as real people. When she had had the honor to be invited to that wedding party, she firmly believed that she had made herself as handsome as Merle Oberon. Nevertheless, she had surreptitiously crossed that boundary. Both in her marriage and in all her illicit relations, she bore the traits of that long walk.

  Moses

  Tradition had compelled him not only to become a tailor, but also to live in a succession of cities. That watchmaker from Odessa had transmitted to him a tale he would carry with him in the years to come, and, what is more important, he retransmitted it to other people as well. The fact that he caught pneumonia in Istanbul, his last refuge, was absurd.

  Henry Weizmann

  He was a Spanish-Jewish communist who had taken refuge in France in the wake of the Civil War. Had he not sent ‘that letter’ to Monsieur Jacques, he would not have appeared in the present story. He had been to Istanbul on two occasions. His second visit must have been, in all probability, for the sake of having a role in the story’s other moments that were left untold.

  Rachael

  She waited everywhere for Nesim, whom she loved, lived for, and whom she tried to understand. Her contemplation of life with a smile on her lips was not merely an expression of her personality. She felt a deep remorse for having forsaken her autistic brother who had lost his hold on reality, but she knew well enough that she could not tear herself from her family who was settled in another land. All these things took place before the concentration camps. Had a belief in Job’s legacy had its adherents even then?