Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale (36 page)

Aunt Tilda stood in front of that mirror as a human being who knew how to put up a bold front to her past experiences. As she looked into it, she seemed to be after the image she had once lost. Tears rose to her eyes. All the details fitted snugly with the setting of the stage and the scene enacted. “Don’t worry; our relationship isn’t worth a damn!” she said to the person on the receiver as she was putting up her hair and listening with a smile to what was being spoken on the other end, occasionally nodding without any comment as though she tacitly endorsed what was being said; as though she had already seen that film. I think she was feeling herself in another world. It was as though she listened to what was being said on the phone from a foreign place with a foreign ear. Hers was an ironic and wry smile; it gave me the impression of someone looking at things from a fair distance, from a respectable distance, on one’s own terms, as though one wished to call the things one set one’s eyes upon and give them new names.

It looked like spring was already settled in; it was a warm afternoon, an afternoon that recalled in my mind Aunt Tilda’s house at Kurtuluş which I had visited incognito, concealing my identity from everybody, especially from Madame Roza, as I could not possibly decline the persistently reiterated invitations after my successive refusals; it was a Friday in a past already consigned to oblivion associating in me the wry joy that certain visions of certain streets arouse . . . I was getting the utmost enjoyment out of an abetment. I was once more in the company of one of the tabooed and castaway groups of the family. The source of that wry joy must have been due to the experience of a transgression, the desire to transgress, let alone the associations of those Friday evenings left there and expected to be enacted on common ground for the entire family. Aunt Tilda must have been in her sixties at that stage. “It’s such a pity,” she said as she hung up, “you don’t know what you’re missing; they were going to play Mozart.” She hung up gingerly as if trying not to damage something fragile. Then, she had remained immobile for a while without saying a word. Who knows what feelings, what old memories or apprehensions she had fitted into that time. This will remain a mystery. It is true that there was no scarcity of presumptive evidence that might contribute to the solution of this mystery; yet, the said presumptive evidences were my own assumptions, my own suspended judgment, nay my own solitudes.

While moving toward the kitchen, she persisted in preserving that smile on her countenance. I had preferred to keep silent and made as though I had not perceived the things I might have been inclined to witness. Both of us had to believe in this lie up to a certain extent; I knew that we could do this. Nevertheless, there was a proposed line of action independent from me. This might have been the reason why I was so anxious to be there. I had no other option but to look elsewhere to cover up my disquiet and make as though my attention had been diverted by something else. Nothing was certain; I may or may not figure in this scenario. We did in fact take a few steps toward the past, in the direction of predetermined destinations at unexpected moments; we had taken—we had wanted to take, or were compelled to take—those steps.

After a short while, she had cried out from the kitchen: “I’ve bought rolls for you, and white cheese to boot. Here’s your cup of tea. We’ve things to discuss, y’know.” That voice was the voice of an individual who did not give up enjoying life to the full; it was to abide within me forever and ever. As a matter of fact, she had played her part once again. She acted in the play as the leading actress. She was accustomed to converting lies into truths and living with the products of her imagination as though they were concrete realities. Now that quite some time has elapsed, I understand the invigorating effect of such behavior much better and the fact that it reinforces one’s connection to life. This must have contributed to her remaining erect all these years. Yes, all these years and seasons . . . In the company of solitudes that others would have consigned to oblivion . . . Long years, long seasons . . . At least up until the moment when I saw, when I thought I was ready to see her . . . Thus it was quite natural for such a skillful individual who had always deemed life, her life, as deserving to be explored. How else can I explain her being meticulous about the white cheese—which she had made a point to see to it that it was never lacking when rolls were served? Whenever I think of it I feel elated, an elation not lacking in some sort of sadness. A sadness I had shared with many individuals who had forged a place in my heart and with whom I had planned to empathize one day during one of those tea parties that opened a diversity of paths leading to different milestones. The taste of the cheese gains special meaning when I meditate on these things. Once again I started musing over the story in the moments that assume meaning with cultivated tastes. I had tasted the sweet cake—containing mastic bought from the bakery at Kurtuluş, which came straight from the oven—for the first time in her house; the aftertaste of those peppery biscuits consumed in her small drawing-room whose furniture had seen better days still lingered long after the decline of festive occasions, mingled with the flavor of the taste of walnut cake. The same taste was certainly enjoyed by other people elsewhere. Different languages, different times, and different climates banded us together despite our deviating paths, varied work focusing us toward common grounds, efforts, and diverse places. However, what is of particular importance here is the consequences of that behavior I recalled for the sake of that woman rather than that old text to which I had access to and whose sorrow I could interpret differently according to the seasons. These tastes were small but true gifts. For Aunt Tilda had rarely been seen in the kitchen in the entire course of her life. This had never been conveyed to me within her lifetime, to be entrusted to me to be kept safe; this would have contributed to the revival of an entirely different woman; even during her lifecycle, the value of which she had to acknowledge long after and which she kept secret despite her woes and unrealized dreams; eating for her had held its charm elsewhere, in worlds beyond the boundaries of home. She had never been a housewife; she had never intended to be. For her to be a woman was to be able to realize a life of her own exclusively in the company of a man, a lover, rather than having the odors of a
ménage
. From the earliest days of her youth the actors in her life had invited her to partake in such relationships. There was a spot where dream and reality mingled, a spot whose boundaries nobody could ever draw nor wanted to draw. A handful of fantasies had enthralled her and made of her a soul dedicated to the world of dreams; one of those heroines, who, having denied all chimeras, could, with a few glances and words, deviate us from our path, leading us to the fantastic world of imagery just like in stories, novels, songs, and films. That was the reason why that cake and those biscuits were precious to me. What would she not dream up in that kitchen, toward which day and night would she be silently heading, guided by associations and fantasies that she would not risk to transport once again to a possible tomorrow, to another fantasy? I’m certainly not in a position to answer all these questions. However, all the clues I know of may well have been produced during those small talks. I feel it incumbent upon me to recall, as best as I can, all those pieces of information and patch them together. I think I need some time for this; time likely to enable me to confront the images in those mirrors, time in which the due is given and lived as required. For stories whose many aspects are desired to be written and lived . . .

Nevertheless, it occurs to me now that, save for those that had been reproduced over and over again for the sake of special occasions, what had precisely been rendered during those small talks that was wonderfully vivid in my imagination was the inimitable taste of the tea served. The light tea with lemon I had had in her house had had a special flavor for me, and has, ever since, remained indelible on my palate. There were certain refined tastes and scents that one enjoyed only at certain moments, which exclusively belonged to those moments and adhered to them alone. Could this be one of those little blissful states that one discovered later in life and kept intact? Why not, after all? She was humming a tune that seemed familiar to me as she was busy preparing the tea, a far-off air that may have remained in the store of my memory from an old movie. Then, she had emerged from the kitchen, a tray in her hand, walking with a swaying movement as though she were putting in an appearance in a scene from a stage play. She had a wry smile on her face; a smile that drew us even closer to one another. Certain details became clearer in the daylight, as soon as the sun’s rays fell upon the room. She wore a long bluish-violet velvet dress; her hair was in a bun and dyed crimson. The dark red nail polish fitted in with her traditionally feminine image. She was sitting opposite me. A small, rather elevated coffee table stood between us. We were near the window. The hullabaloo of children playing football came in from outside, to which were added the voices of street peddlers and a woman calling out for her neighbor. A dog was barking, a boy kept on ringing the bell of his bicycle. The flow of things underwent no interruption; everything followed its own course. We were sitting by the window, the window which was an eyewitness to so many things. By the window that was to cause different people to experience different thoughts and feelings, just like all other windows in which we believe, or want to believe, open in time to other lives, eras, and eventualities that have cast anchor in our life or are subject to change . . . “We were supposed to attend a concert tonight; they were going to play Mozart’s concerto No. 21,” she said, her eyes riveted on the tray. “Fool!” she rejoined, “he wouldn’t let her go, eh? To risk one’s life at such an age! Afraid to be the talk of the town . . . Oh, I see, desecrating the memory of his wife! They’re going to confine him in an asylum for the elderly, is that it? Fool! Fool!” This was a summarized account of the telephone conversation I had overheard. There must have been things that she exclusively reserved for herself from what had been bequeathed to her from her past experiences with that man with whom she had pleasantly shared some time. In fact, he was one of the many partners she had had. As she returned to the place which she had judged to be the right spot for her, she had taken along with her that little hope she had snatched from her relationship with him. That man was a type who had created in her an image which caused a sense of
déjà-vu
that she had tried to push into oblivion. Nevertheless, things that were to be named at different times, by different individuals, in different ways had to be spared. The struggle we wage in order to remain alive necessitates our protection, our safeguarding of those parts within us that have so far remained untouched by alien glances. It may be because of this that that relationship would be lingering there, that evening. We would no longer revert to the story of this separation. It would take years before I came to understand the fact that the experiences with that man killed, or seemed to have, killed her. Within the space of a couple of sentences, I could see the beginning of the end. What had drawn us to each other over the course of our long past was, I believe, the things that we had failed to see at the time and our inevitable feelings of remorse. Perhaps we drew nearer to the person concealed within us at such moments. A deficiency we could not define seemed to call us back to our darkness. I’m at a loss as to pin down the feeling we experienced as we took those steps, the feeling we could not help taking stock of.

She had served tea in that antique Chinese set. This set had, as is the case of every object which had a history behind it, a voice or sound concealed in it which could be heard only by certain people. In fact, this voice or sound had, quite probably, often taken him to that small apartment at Asmalımescit. She had shared that apartment with a man she had met late in life about whom she could not speak to anybody. For outside observers the marriage she had left buried there had been a sham, steeped in false faces and misguided streets. For those who had crossed the threshold, one could speak of the sedulous growth of deficiency. That growth of deficiency could only be measured in that china set which had gradually dwindled through the breakage of each item that eventually constituted the entire collection; just like him, as is the case with those people who cannot do otherwise. Yet, every breakage, every slippage had opened the door to stronger connections with the visions left in some corner of the mirror. What had been the image that had made you experience that betrayal the most? What had been the shape that had caused you to relive your loneliness, your abandonment, those things that you had desired to tell but could not do so, and what had been the object you couldn’t dispose of or get rid of despite all that you had gone through? I knew all this; she, on the other hand, was conscious of the fact that I had empathized with them. We had viewed the same memories from different angles. We had converged on the same spot from different paths and points of view. The only difference was that my story had been embellished by products of my imagination, while her story was streaked with lies. Could this be the reason why I had failed to learn the true story of this chinaware which silently sheltered certain things in its innermost depths? There was no end to the stories concocted by Aunt Tilda in connection with this set, with those which had deserted her being labeled as a load of bullshit; but the stories were her stories . . . They were her realities, although they may have had no truth in them . . . They subsumed not only the dissipated warmth of a broken marriage but also the disparate things that had been stuffed inside the world of that small apartment. A secret agent who was supposed to be a senior civil servant in the U.S. Embassy, a tradesman from Beirut, the son of an Ottoman Sultan: these had been the respective inhabitants of that said world. The set had in fact been a gift from these people. They had all been gentlemen and spoke more than one language. They were
bon vivants
and loved to spruce up and dance. They had been her men; men she had mislaid, had to mislay somewhere, irretrievably. To be an elegant gentleman and an active member of the community had been
de rigueur
for them. However, none of these so-called gentlemen lovers had had a concrete existence; what she had been expressing were but the figments of her imagination. They had been mere figures and nostalgic expectations that populated her imagination, figures that had to be infused with life to the very end; those stories were, just like those songs, concocted lies, meant to fit that world; lies that made life easier to live, even though they left a bitter aftertaste and in a way were more amenable to expression, regardless of whether other people discerned what was told or not. All these parlor games gave one the clues of a colorful and distant world of fantasies as well. This was an imaginary world which had broken Aunt Tilda loose from her family, from those supposed to be by her side and from those she knew to be different, enriched at different times, visions and talks drawing their boundaries gradually, inextricably cutting deep grooves into the ground. It must have been the attraction and call of this imaginary world that indulged them in those movies and concerts. That was the place where she lived and believed herself to be living and she was convinced of its beauties.