Read Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale Online
Authors: Mario Levi
Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale (2 page)
THE STARLINGS
The day was declining and you were smiling
I cannot distinctly recollect where, when, and under what circumstances I’d met her. Nor can I remember those who were earmarked as the ones with the brightest futures. Yet, there is no scarcity of photographs from our past—a past very different to that of other people, one which I know I can never forget or dare to show to anyone, one which I can never rid myself of—that reveals me to myself ever more clearly as time goes by. These photographs embodied our nights, the things that we failed to share and which we could disclose to no one; they also concealed the expectations which I constantly and repeatedly rehashed in total disregard of my past experiences. For instance, we had our summer nights when we watched the city in which I had been living for ages through a different window. We used to sit on the balcony. The flowering of the marvels of Peru concealed in it the solitudes of many a garden in my life. It had occurred to me at the time to touch one of those gardens once more. Mother had a glowworm in her hand. It emitted uninterrupted luminous signals in the warmth of her palm. There were other glowworms as well . . . I had tried to share my old songs with her on the balcony and in other rooms of the house. I was conscious of the fact that the songs, the songs truly experienced, would never leave us in the lurch. I could foresee that certain songs would sooner or later be transported to different spaces in time. At such times we, ourselves, became songs: the vernaculars we had mislaid could not be found anymore, the deceptions I had tried to describe in other tales led to new disappointments. This was the reason why we had preserved some of our memories and were bent on protecting them; in fact, some of these retentions were the intuitions that we projected onto our loves and which nourished our dreams.
I had also wanted to tell of how I had felt defeated and forsaken during those nights of togetherness, exchanging tactile sensations. I could put pen to paper and cling to my writing; an occupation I would never relinquish. The fact is that when we were together I used to forget other people, all my designs, aspirations, my anticipatory mental attitudes, and my procrastinations were even more important. My experience with her was a prolific death, if one may say so. A fecund death! In her touching me, in our nightlong billing and cooing that titillated my entire being, my entire mind, and sexuality, my entire childhood was contained. Yes, my entire childhood! My entire childhood . . . those memories I had lost in my childhood. Today, from that house, what I recollect most are the songs I feel compelled to speak about and share with people.
When all these things rush to my mind, I find it difficult to confess the fact that I have always remained on good terms with her and never wanted to part from her. Even at times when I endeavored to share with her the most precious words and photographs of my life, I failed to find literal expression for what I had in mind; it was a failure. I don’t know why I walked the earth surrounded by these walls of mine. To what purpose, I wonder? What exactly were my expectations and anticipations? Can it be that I feared to let myself go, thus draining her to the dregs, after taking all the probabilities into consideration? Maybe . . . The same was true for the others we knew, who too were lost under the shadow of fear; we could not carry ourselves as we should have done, because we had failed to abandon ourselves body and soul to the care of one another. As a matter of fact, we had drained the lifeblood of our relationship and our passions in our endeavor to conceal, to a certain extent, our personalities . . . She knew this, I think, from the very moment of our first encounter and our dates that followed, from the time when we had decided to be close to each other and live under the same roof. Those were the times when the child within me was calling for that house, lost in memory, and wanted, in the company of his mother, to keep alive the glowworm in the palm of his hand, till the end of its life!
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 had 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.’