Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale (23 page)

crepe de chine
dress, the silk
chemise
, the two scented candles she kept for Christmas Eve which she was convinced she would light one day, a couple of photographs and the small heart-shaped gold medallion that her mother had thrust into her hand as she was about to leave the house saying: “Do whatever you want to do, but make sure not to postpone beauties,” or so it seemed to us now after so many years from a much different perspective. Was she really seventeen? The answer to this question was to remain a mystery to us; contributing to the formation of a persistent rumor as with all questions that remain without an answer, along with their concomitant mysteries. There are times when logical explanations fall short of the mark. The evening this question came up was such an occasion. That young girl, at an age when she should have been free, had to submit to her father’s peremptory measures, despite the temptation to escape. She had experienced all possible vacillations between potential regrets and hopes, along with all their scorching effects; she must have experienced them prior to the said escape. She knew well the precious place she held in her father’s heart; she should have been conscious of the fact that her departure would deprive that man, who was already subject to all sorts of erosions, of so many things. Yet, one can derive certain conclusions from certain facts she must have learned from her mother as regards the light that her feelings emitted; these things which are true for some, necessary for a life truly lived, and for others are egotistical and treacherous. If I must be frank, I feel, when I think of the different alternatives, that I am not in a position to judge the spirit directing the course of this argument. I must confess that this gives me the creeps now and then. This fear does not originate merely from my need to inquire into the matter in case I’ll be subject to such a vacillation, but also from the thought that this man, whose story I’m trying to patch up based on photographs already partially torn and deprived of their gloss, might, if I were to take a wrong step, take vengeance on me, either in my dreams or in another corner of my mind where his gaze is fixed on my memory. Can this be the voice of my conscience? I doubt it. It may be a slight variant or evasion, in order not to recollect other relationships or steps not taken. Nevertheless, Eleni had dared, I should say, to experience quite a different verse within that story, at least that evening, and proved to be far more courageous compared to many other people. She had tried to at least; she had proved that she could do so. And then what? Well, this question compels us to go further into the deployment of the story. We are reminded that certain people, walking on the threshold, condemn themselves to a silent death, for the sake of their love. Eleni would be kept confined by her father who regularly went to his shop every morning; not only would she not be able to frequent her school, which had remained off the trodden path, at a place quite different to her lover’s hideaway, but would not be allowed to stick her nose out of the house. Her officer would be waiting for her at the usual spot, the starting point of their elopement, of their evasion toward freedom, fed partly by their dreams. Actually, for the sake of that step, a future had already been risked. The meaning of that risk could only be grasped by those who had lived such an adventure . . . to be able to take a risk for love, whatever the consequences may have been, to jeopardize one’s life for love; in the sight of those who chanced to take such a gamble, of that impression, of that adventure, Eleni, who had refrained from going to that point of encounter much against her will had exposed herself to a solitude that was to be transformed with every passing day into a labyrinth without escape . . . The pain she felt through the inability to express her unfair treatment, of knowing that she would never be able to get it across . . . the thralldom that others were reluctant to define and were often unconscious of . . . carrying on with a relationship without taking stock of things as though there was nothing to worry about . . . no, they were not for her. She had been asked to assume somebody else’s identity. Her misfortune was due perhaps to her failure in observing the rules of the game . . . As far I could gather, this obligatory servitude lasted for a couple of years. She had been put in shackles in a way. The funny thing was that her officer lover had not once inquired after her despite all the afflictions felt and pains experienced. It seems that there is a break in this story; something that does not add up in light of what was experienced, something desired to be snatched from time and kept as a secret . . . When you think of those sentiments generated by those encounters, you find it difficult to think that such a love was relinquished without a fight. One is inclined to conclude that the lover must have inquired after her but failed to get in touch; it must have been so sad to fail to reach her despite one’s best efforts; this must have been the incubus of the captain whose name we will never know. I wonder whether that lover had been able to remain in the army and whether he had grown sterner, merciless and implacable against life, reminiscent of the heroes in war films and novels. I wonder whether he had asked the military authorities to assign him to a duty somewhere in Anatolia, far from Istanbul, which would allow him to dream about the past during those long watch hours . . . Could it be that he had opted for another lifestyle in order to forget his grief? Could it be that he was in pursuit of a new life, a long path to consign himself to oblivion? After all, this was not a sudden disappearance, to find oneself in the middle of a desolate wasteland, victim of a betrayal difficult to explain and to express; such steps might undoubtedly conduce one to various interpretations. For some reason or other, I think about that Anatolian town, that wasteland where the lover was to entrench himself. This image often recurs to me. It is so saddening to speak about certain separations and solitudes; it was so heartrending to consider certain probabilities . . . To descry certain possibilities makes a man restless . . .

It seemed as though in the love affair between Eleni and her lover certain minor secrets had been preserved for the sake of their special value. In terms of meaning, preservation or retrieval, a photograph, a completely different photograph, must have been reconstructed with all its associations; not only to bring it back to life but to build a legacy to a life to which she attached a meaning, reserving for it a different place in her life, to her mother whom she had not seen after that morning of separation and who she kept alive within her heart like a human being worthy of tracing, to the path that her mother had left imprinted on her imagination. When one pours over that photograph, I cannot help but conclude that one could not have put up with that betrayal of values. Her refusal to go out even after the door had opened; her sporadic visits much later to her relatives at Kumkapı and to her old friend at Kurtuluş; to go out shopping for essential needs, especially on Christmas Eve, particularly mastic brioches at Yeşilköy or squid at the fish market at Galatasaray, these sorties gradually diminished in frequency however. Could all these things be linked to such a feeling? How could one explain her wandering about stark naked at home, her only sanctuary wherein she kept her dreams alive, utterly disregarding the possibility of being seen by her neighbors through the windows giving unto the light shaft, during those nights, when she had realized that certain chances had been lost, and the consequences of her ostracism had been duly acknowledged? Was this her way of proving to others that she could live a story which could never be penetrated or that she could live a life of her own which couldn’t be watched from outside, a desire to live, even though for a brief space of time, that sense of freedom, believed to be alien to others? When one brooded over these things, one felt that the story had a tinge of mystery worthy to be inquired into . . . the things left or desired to be left in the dark . . . To believe in such things that were unearthed, in some way or another, at different times, is not so easy, after one’s experiences over the course of the succeeding years. It was not for nothing that the curtains had been left drawn during those years of oppression, a thralldom she had contributed to by her own free will. Tanaş had locked his daughter up successively in different rooms. How had she survived in those rooms without being able to communicate with her father who loved her? So many questions need to be answered . . . This may have been the reason why I attached such great importance and tried to pay such close attention to those little paths lighted to a certain extent by suspicions, personal interpretations, and rumors (a consequence of my personal fallacies) among a multitude of other questions requiring answers. What Madame Roza had learned from Madame Eleni about the events of the night in which Tanaş had died seemed to shed some light on this narrow, but important path. Tanaş was suddenly taken ill some three years after the incarceration in question (however, in regard to the length of this time there is no consensus, it might have been three months, six months or eight years; since Eleni had mentioned several spans of time while discoursing on the subject). He was drunk, he had said to his daughter that he had an excruciating headache; he had announced that the end of his earthly career had come, that he felt it, and confessed that whatever he had done had been because of his love for his daughter whom he tried to keep away from the perils of life. He breathed out his last breath within a couple of hours after having asked her pardon in all sincerity and with some despondency. This breath reminded her of a flame that was about to go out. No word came out from his mouth during those couple of hours. Their hands clasped, they were trying to see those people whom they had prohibited from each other. Eleni lighted the two scented candles she had been keeping for Christmas Eve, which she observed were burning even more beautifully than she had expected. Then, she had put in her father’s palm that small enameled golden heart-shaped locket without saying a word—she had not felt the need to speak. She had wanted to keep the meaning of that locket to herself, exclusively to herself. Tanaş had recognized the locket and held it tightly. Then he had slowly closed his eyes; the shiver observed on the lips had spread to his entire body before the final collapse . . . That was the first night that Eleni, after such a long time, could establish contact with the outside world by her own free will. That first night, if she so desired, she could have freely stepped outside and wandered through the streets for hours on end. She rang up her aunt. “Come, get my father!” she said. There wasn’t the slightest trembling or a sign of sorrow in her voice. While she was telling Madame Roza about that night, she noted that she hadn’t shed a single tear when her father died. What is more, she had refused to attend the funeral claiming that she was not supposed to go out of the house as this had been prohibited by her father. This may have been a sort of justifiable acquittal. One could understand and empathize with it. Just like her insertion into the dying man’s hand of that locket; the primitive reprisals carried out on those who have inflicted pain on you. On the night of his death and during the following nights, her mind was preoccupied with her mother. Those were the nights when she yearned for her, for that woman who was far away; those were the nights when she could heartily weep, the nights when she felt her solitude deeply. On the nights that succeeded the demise of Tanaş, when the demarcation line progressed and regressed between thralldom and freedom, when that vacillation had been truly felt at the least expected moment. I feel inclined to consider that, along with the yearning felt for a lost mother, the said solitude seemed inexpressible and the loneliness in question must have been stored for the sake of new beginnings, in the secluded corners of her heart, taking into account the things I had been imparted with, not only by Roza but by others, people in whom I have confidence, regarding that long, intolerable father-daughter relationship. These judgments and assessments were open to various interpretations due to the inescapable delusional traits of the characters. Nevertheless, I must admit that, taking all misinterpretations into account, to know that in certain witnesses certain valuable data remained intact, aroused in me a joy of a quite different proportion, one of faint hope.

Certain things that cannot be put into words, things that are always expressed with certain missing points, things we cannot and would not call by name . . . The efforts I had been spending inserting into this story what had been recounted years later by one of the rare people who knew Tanaş relatively well, Muammer Bey, must have had its origin in that fascination that these confidential renderings had aroused in me . . . Tanaş’s devotion to his daughter could be defined as an earnestness with a zeal rarely encountered. It was a strange display of affection; it might perhaps be more appropriate to call it a passion. You may call it the affection that every father feels for his daughter, but this was not the case. Muammer Bey had once sadly called it an unusual attachment, a sadness that had a touch of a smile. That description reflected some of the meanings the smile in question generated in me. “I believe that he had gone on living merely for his daughter’s sake after he had been forsaken by his wife. He ran a small delicatessen somewhere in Karaköy, near Perşembe Pazarı, to the best of my knowledge. Once I myself had been a regular customer of his. Whenever my path took me there . . . many years ago, ages back . . . It seems to me that I did my utmost to shun that district of Istanbul, to obliterate it from my mind, eventually consigning it to oblivion. If I tax my memory, certain reminiscences surge in the mist of the past and I seem to visualize Tanaş who never failed to cut an unassuming figure in his shop to which he repaired every morning in the early hours . . . and then to certain corners near the subway . . . only a few details though . . . Who knows where those people of the neighborhood are now and can they even recall anything about that small delicatessen? There were a host of people who lined up to buy sandwiches at noon. The delicatessen had its regulars. As a matter fact, Tanaş knew who would buy what and when. Friday evenings were a hectic time, the time when Jewish customers called to stock up on victuals for the weekend. Salami, peppery sheep cheese, a little butter, a little anchovy, a little pastırma, a few green olives, a few slices of salted tunny, some smoked mullet, and for customers who were slightly richer, dried and smoked roe of the gray mullet called
abudaraho
. Tanaş enjoyed a refined appreciation of such subtleties. The word abudaraho had always caused laughter in me. I could not trace the origin of it. I ventured to make an inquiry as to its etymology and asked the people I knew from chance encounters and our neighbors, but to no avail. These people were not interested in such academic issues; their interests lay elsewhere, namely in tangible and factual things. The roe was delicious and went well with rye bread and was called abudaraho, that was enough, no need to inquire about it any further. This may have been a knock-on effect, or a lack of far-sightedness or of being mindful of uncertain contingencies. I had so many experiences with those people without losing track of the abudaraho. Fooleries, fun and games, pranks, sports, and larks were never lacking, these contributed to our well-being. A neighbor by the name of Moses Abudaram had a perfumery at Tahtakale where he eked out a living. He sold the
eau de cologne
he produced himself. His shop with its creaking floor and faded ceiling, a derelict building bearing signs of decay in all of its pores had a peculiar smell of its own. Whenever I called at his shop to buy
eau de cologne
, he took me to the famous meatball restaurant where he described to me in detail how he concocted his product, the ingredients and the special components making up the composition other than those known to everyone; the method of converting the pure alcohol into eighty-per-cent alcohol, the exact quantity of spirit he used, the exact time it took in letting the solution rest were narrated minutely. His description was interspersed with accounts of the happenings in other perfume shops. How, and from which sources, had he come by this documentary information? What was the origin of his meticulous, sensitive style which demanded attitude in matters of taste and of the great importance he attached to the story of his production? These questions have remained unanswered to this day. It was a mystery. He had mentioned once a paternal uncle, a talented painter, who, after spending considerable time in this profession, had become an alcoholic caused by an unrequited love and who was stabbed to death by the brother of the girl he had been in love with. His uncle had made a portrait of the girl from a distance, unbeknownst to her, drawing her image through his window whenever she passed by. He said he had the portrait in his possession and that he would show it to me one day. This was the only unifying element between them. However, the subject in question had been mentioned only once and that was the end of it. I never saw that portrait which was no doubt consigned to oblivion. You know what, I sometimes think that no matter what we do, we cannot escape our fate, nor can we succeed in attaining the things we pursue. One day, Moses was deceived into getting involved in contraband. He realized that he had bitten off more than he could chew. He barely escaped without getting caught. Having smelled a rat, he left with his family for Israel. Before leaving he said: “We are weighing anchor for an unknown destination; we are fated to assume a new identity elsewhere. Who knows what the future will bring. There may be no return, who can tell! Henceforward, everybody will get old in his own den!” A poetic expression of his thoughts, like living one’s own life haphazardly in a poem . . . Notwithstanding, he did come back a couple years ago, after thirty odd years. We ran across each other at the arcade quite by chance. His speech was interspersed with Hebrew words. “Thank Heaven we’re all right!” he said. He had had difficult times. He had married off his daughter with another
emigré
from Istanbul; he considered all foreign suitors ineligible. After trying his chance in freelance work, he had been engaged as a security guard in a bank, from which position he had retired and was now on a pension. I spoke to him about myself, about my collection of postcards and about the postcards that contained New Year greetings written in Armenian and sent to Paris. You may remember I had sent the same postcard to you. It had church bells on it? It was as though it had been seeking its place, its man, among the old gramophone records, padlocks and key holders displayed at the counters of Şerafettin Bey who still went to his small shop of secondhand articles at the flea market at Kadıköy, clad in his ancient costume, wearing the same old shirts and neckties he wore during his employment at the Railway Company. Actually, it was nothing special, except that the note on it was in Armenian. It had given rise to a funny feeling in me for no plausible reason. Şerafettin Bey could not remember how and when he had come by it. In fact, it was his custom to forget all that came into his shop. He did his best to forget all about the sellers of odds and ends. “Were I to remember their original owners, it would be difficult for me to dispose of them so easily,” he used to say. He had to eke out a living; he worked hard in order to be able to secure better living conditions for his daughter’s child who was serving a prison sentence for an intellectual offence and to add a few cents to his retirement pension. He had made me a gift of that postcard. It was a fact that we knew the story of each other’s lives; we both shared accurate insights into certain things. What was written on the postcard was a mystery to him as well; he also must have had puzzling questions to which he could not provide an answer. Some people lead eccentric lives, don’t they? They have their own idiosyncrasies; they have an eye for detail. However, I was determined to find out more about that inscription. So, I had recourse to Hatchik, the shoe repairer; the postcard bore on it an address in Paris. Hatchik cast a glance at it and immediately said: “It is in a woman’s handwriting.” The inscription was imbued with nostalgia. It read: “How cruel it is, to be obliged to celebrate Christmas without you . . . Who are the people you get together with there? I’m the same as ever; sad and dejected . . . ” I remember it exactly. You must also recollect it, don’t you? I’m telling it once more just because I know you’d like me to recall that memory. It also pleased Moses. He said: “The woman must’ve abandoned a lover in Paris. She knows that she ought to go to him but cannot afford it; pity . . . ” he added: “Or it may be that the man had run away . . . to end that love affair . . . He just couldn’t wait apparently. The woman may have married someone else. You think so?” After a moment’s indecision he had put the following question to me: “Why on earth should a postcard sent to Paris, be in Istanbul now?” Moses was such a man, a man who would not delay in probing such mysteries. He shared with me the urge for reflecting and displaying curiosity, especially about the affairs of others. This, I think, was what had drawn us to each other; unconsciously sharing the same outlook on life and deriving pleasure from it . . . He had also asked me whether I still played the zither. He was ruminating on our revelries. “Now and then, when I’m in the mood,” had been my answer. Actually, I had not touched the instrument after a certain incident. We had lost track of our positions in the conversation. Moreover, he would be dispirited to learn about it. So I had given it a miss. Sometimes, observing silence in certain matters saved the day, certain hours at least . . . We stood around making small talk. We were unwilling to part. Nevertheless, each of us had to go his own way and see certain individuals; this reality we could not shun even though it played on us. “Life has dispersed us in all directions,” I said. He had grown pensive. “We’ve been cast away, but our spirit has remained here, all the same. We wanted to have another glimpse at our past. We could treat ourselves to a meal on the banks of the Bosporus, and see a stage play. Yet, everything seems to have undergone transformation. The old theater has burnt down and sunk into oblivion; very few things have survived to this day. Well, after all, even we have waxed and waned, haven’t we?” he said. After a while, he added: “It’s been five years now since Rachael passed away. I live together with a woman; but I have no intention to marry her, I took an oath not to marry again. She is not one of us anyhow. Women prattle on and on, I’ve had enough of idle gossip. My daughter insists that I should marry. She says that marriage will put my life in order. Life has reduced us to order already, has it not? Nothing is left that requires new arrangement. She wants me to go and live with her in her house so that the flat we live in can be relieved of our burden. That was not what we had planned at the time. Yet, that’s life! Not easy to cope with! The woman with whom I’m sharing my bed at present would be only too glad to be hitched. But I’ll not hear of it! No! She may leave me if she wants to. I’m not hen pecked! There’s no scarcity of women in the world. We can do without them, you know! My marriage with Rachael was the outcome of a passionate love. Her family was of modest means. I’d not asked for any dowry from her family, for which my father and my uncle had reproached me. But we survived to see this very day, haven’t we, Muammer?” I knew perfectly well that the dowry that a Jewish girl was expected to bring in holy wedlock was of paramount importance. Before we parted, I asked him: “Tell me, that name, abudaraho, is it in any way related to your family name?” “Idiot!” he retorted. “Had we been sellers of abudaraho, would we be in such a plight today?” Moses had his own fantasies about becoming rich like any other Jew leading a modest life. This was a confidential dream; a fantasy that converted the losers of this war into philosophers in their own right as they advanced in age. I deem the consequences of such fancies wholly justifiable . . . But enough of this, before we digress any further. Where had we been a while ago and where are we now? From the abudaraho of Tanaş to Moses Abudaram . . . I have been prattling on as usual, I know, but I wanted to introduce you to my old friend. The thing is that this little story will be of benefit to you someday, I’m certain. When we are gone . . . Now, back to the matter at hand: Tanaş! He was a wonderful talker, son of a bitch! When he was in the mood and commented on the politics of the day he exhibited a mind full of wit and wisdom. He had a rich store of anecdotes, mostly salacious. He had no self-restraint. If he felt like it, he just told it regardless of the milieu in which he happened to be and of the audience, using the exact words, without reverting to euphemisms and prevarications. He had the vice of scoffing at his customers; those that were simple souls, making sure they did not get to the bottom of it. He used to tell cock-and-bull stories about the delectable snacks he himself prepared. This always put a smile on his face and those of his friends. There were also times when he happened to be at his wits’ end. We immediately realized that he preferred to be left alone at such times. His petulance must have had its origin in what was going on at home. This temper of his may have been due, not only to disagreements going on at home, but dashed hopes as well. If he confessed that he had confined Eleni, his own daughter, to home on the grounds that he could not bear to see her abandoned for a second time, the matter might have been settled. Nevertheless, Tanaş had a face he preferred to keep veiled. We could never learn exactly what had been going on at home before he died. What we were imparted with after he died can never be verified of course as the things that were supposed to have taken
place did not go beyond speculation. Thus, we shall never be able to decide our position versus this narration. Funny, isn’t it, not to be able to have access to the mysteries that enveloped a man so near to us? What still puzzles me is the reason why he preferred to remain so enigmatic; this sense of mystery gave him a terrific air. He gave the impression as though a deep-seated feeling within him drove him to act in this manner, a feeling whose depths we could never fathom. He passed away without disclosing his secret. Whenever we asked about Eleni, he used to say that she was all right in Greece with her mother, that she regularly wrote to him and would soon return. Basing on the contents of her imaginary letters, he used to tell stories about her. Apparently she had a life of her own there. A life concocted for our benefit, for us or for those that kept distant from her. This served to conceal her true story, of which Eleni had no inkling. The door of that house opened inward to another life; she had resigned herself to this life which she tried to carry on.