Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale (38 page)

That was life . . . These words expressed regret, despair, and separation . . . Yes, that was life. “Which movie theater was it, Saray or Melek? Melek it was, I believe. Yes Melek . . . Josy had spoken about Monsieur Saltiel, about the days when his father used to pay a visit to his father’s workshop to have costumes made to order. Monsieur Saltiel was the former owner of the movie theater. It was one of the rare evenings when Josy had been talkative and jovial. Later that evening we had gone to a dancehall. We had reminded each other that the movie theater in question had once been the Skating Palace. Well I remember the song that Rita sang: Put the blame on me boy . . . Josy had a pallid expression. He knew he was sick. He was to disclose it to me in a couple of days. That was the last time we had gone to a movie theater . . . ” One lived one’s life by shaping one’s own image over the course of time, by fitting and adjusting the images that assigned meaning to one’s life to their proper places. You recall the story of the superimposed imagery, especially at such moments of flight, when you return to your inevitable solitude. Stories and secret chambers keep haunting you. Do you think you could open those doors once more after the lapse of so many years for the sake of those moments and individuals? Would you be able to abandon those glances and touches freely, even though you were to experience other such encounters? One enlivened, or tried to enliven, one’s imagery according to one’s own whims . . . to the extent one’s own boundaries and recollections permitted . . . Had it not been your desire to keep a part of yourself whole, notwithstanding your losses, for the sake of certain stories? This held true also for those words that delineated the boundaries of those images within us of certain people, didn’t it? Had we not tried to protect our words by secretly coming to terms with ‘that man’ we thought to abide within us forever, although we tried to wean him from our thoughts and attribute meaning to the words within our own sphere of action? I wonder to what extent could one vouch for the vernacularism of the French words spoken in a completely different climate in the piecemeal narration of a story. Which of these words can be considered reanimated for whom and for where? Which of these words are rewritten, are desired to be rewritten? Our talks that were interspersed with Aunt Tilda’s occasional monologues could be found there once upon a time, and have returned. How many of these words remained over time, how many of them found a new life here? I’m aware that such questions may take me to a new story in the future and compel me to write an entirely new variant of this story. Nevertheless I feel myself obliged to believe in that world those words depicted. There were times when we had access to the new meanings that certain images had assumed. We had left behind a song to gain access to a life mislaid somewhere. In fact we were busy at that time writing our own script. We felt at home in our own film. Those shadows were our shadows, those voices our voices. Aunt Tilda’s monologues contained so many stories that invoked sadness in me. The movie theaters and the films she faithfully kept in the store of her memory, the man who had once been her husband, the skating arena where she had skated as a little girl, her resentments, regrets, and the images left unrealized were all there. “It’s true we hadn’t had another chance to go to a movie theater . . . That evening had been the last. The beginnings weren’t any different though. We had never had the chance of visiting those places as I would have liked. I think I had always expected an end. It looked as though in each of us there was an end. A diversity of ends, so many ends . . . We cannot deny that we had seen all those films; we had not missed a single one of them. Yet, as I’ve already said, none of our
sorties
had been as I would have liked. I would have preferred to be there half an hour before the program started so that I could meet a few acquaintances and exchange a few words with them, all the while not failing to show off my new costume. This should be the
raison d’être
of the movie theater . . . Josy was misanthropic, he shunned people . . . The movie theater Melek . . .
Only Angels Have Wings
with Rita Hayworth had been shown there I believe. Can it be that my memory is failing me? Or could it be that the film was running at Gloria? I don’t think so, no. That was a long time ago, however . . . ” It was high time now that certain images had to be consigned to oblivion. This was a process rather difficult to define. Had she been resenting her betrayal or was hers a sense of escape from the place to which she knew she would never go back? It may be that betrayal had been embedded in her memory, or perhaps it originated from one of the judgments in which she wished to have perfect confidence in and hoped to build a bridge between. To escape, to be a fugitive in the places she preferred to consign to obscurity . . . Were those words borrowed from a film’s soundtrack, those words duly preserved, those costumes no longer worn yet not discarded, and those recollections rewritten and regenerated during a nightmare so that clues to those regrets and to the reason for a bondage to a certain path could be extracted? It took me years to follow that trail with similar questions. This woman, whose story I believed I was able to tell succinctly, to a few people whose interest I hoped to arouse, had an all-consuming passion for movies for which she reserved a special place in her heart. In fact, she had come to me escorted by those images that had guided her life, since, to be frank, despite disappointments she had lived with her attachments, with trivia she could not give up. I was about to share a secret. Quite the reverse of what Monsieur Jacques and all of the Venturas and the Tarantos, whom I encountered quite unexpectedly, had thought, Aunt Tilda had remained faithful to her husband Joseph Rothman, the tailor. She loved with a love whose extent was to be discovered much later. She referred to him as Josy, which gave the impression that she was recalling him from a distant past. Solitudes, silences, unanswered questions that originated from the inability to part with a dearly loved one, whoever this may have been . . . Misunderstandings, misinterpretations . . . Life’s fragments, scenes failed to be enacted were for Aunt Tilda concealed in the movie theater, in that eternal screen of delusions. Now I feel I will be in a stronger position to maintain and conceal what has been conveyed to me regarding that place amid the pages of another book. Rita Hayworth and the elation she had caused when she had pulled off her gloves in that famous scene, the brightly lit splendor of the movie theater Melek, alias Emek, its new appellation, the dazzling beauty of Joan Crawford in costly fur coats, fated to be identified as “Miss Pepsi Cola,” the unforgettable Ingrid Bergman in the role of Anastasia and her tragic end, the scene in which she appeared divine which skillfully created the atmosphere of the Grande Duchesse, expected to be seated on a throne without subjects and her typical cough, Bette Davis’ eyes, Paul Muni’s laudable artistry, Edward G. Robinson as a gangster, Humphrey Bogart’s noble love, the fact that even those who played a minor role in that film were prominent actors and how she had sobbed at that scene in which La Marsellaise was sung, the lunches at the Atlantik, the pastry of the Lebon, the hats and the orchids, and the supermarket Au Lion d’Or . . . We had tried to relive the past on that boundary line that separated the past from the present, in full consciousness of the fact that we were no longer in a position to express and give utterance to our merriments and the insidious sadness and restlessness they contained, to the extent our recollections, locution, and remoteness permitted, taking into consideration all eventualities. Fragments had been deposited to different people at different times . . . This could be the reason why one had desired to live that imaginary scene to the bitter end. It may have been that those fragments had been shot in a different chiaroscuro in a different movie. With a view to raising the wall of that movie theater by placing its bricks carefully one on top of the other . . . aiming at discovering and finding that place in which we expected to rediscover ourselves in addition to those we had failed to see properly and had lost by now in some place or another, in the time we were destined to live. This may have been one of those stories that those who are content with ready-made solutions or those who enjoy stories of people nostalgic about the old days, damn with faint praise as soon as they have a cursory look at the introductory chapter. Such an attitude could do nothing more than cause such purveyors of hindsight to relive, quite against their own wishes, feelings of abandonment and betrayal. We were living at the time with our reformed faces that we were compelled to change . . . to be multiplied as a crowd. Where was it exactly, the spot where solitude began; can you remember when you had became conscious of your own solitude for the first time, after which glance and which touch? I’m inclined to believe that this is the way to get to the heart of the individual, the individual we try to conceal within us . . . If one broods over that dark path, certain encounters become nightmares. However, this was conceivably the only way to reach Aunt Tilda, the true Aunt Tilda. Her story had never been a story of nostalgia. The truth that transformed her into a lunatic, who should preferably be visited more often than not, in the eyes of those nearest to her should be sought in the dead end of the person she inhabited who could not observe her surroundings and times as others could. She had been one of those who had gone through streets, doors, and rooms by unexpected transitions and means, who had shifted from one time to the next as she pleased, who had tried to live in more than one time simultaneously, by giving them all their due, who listened to the voices in her head despite the losses and defeats she had suffered, not merely remaining an onlooker but being an acting agent as well, who had taken the risk to follow the dictates of those voices, who had been compelled to live her life by her own proclivities. What have acquainted us with these facts have been Monsieur Jacques’ sayings and Madame Roza’s reports and the confirmed rumors that swept over the town. This had been the same experience she had had during her youth when she had sensed in a transport of delight the inebriation caused by life, and during the days she spent with Joseph Rothman, in their short matrimony. The fragments of the past mislaid in others brought her back to me as a woman, a licentious woman who had known more than one man in her life. It appears that she had played a leading role in the days gone by, in big receptions and on weekend trips. Her irresponsible behavior had naturally disconcerted the conservative milieu around her, proud of their established customs. There was nothing incomprehensible in this. Those who had based their lives on the established order would, out of necessity, find it difficult to acknowledge the existence of people lost in reverie, imagining things they could never materialize in life. During those secret sessions, the family members had come to the conclusion among themselves that this girl, who had strayed from the right path and disrupted their fixed order, had succumbed to a serious malignancy, and thought that a marriage might, in the grand scheme of things, restore her health. Such was the power of conformity . . . Putting such a resolution into action might be considered a convincing victory for the people who were obliged to agree upon the correctness of the lifestyle they had adopted. There were a plurality of ways to cover up humiliating defeats, silently, surreptitiously as though one did not experience loneliness or betrayal, just like in several other climates, histories, and cultures in the world . . . One ought to take care not to feel that repressed turbulence, and what is more important still, not to let other people sense it.

It seems that the tailor Joseph Rothman had appeared on life’s stage right at this moment. Joseph was reported to have taken Aunt Tilda to the Lebon pastry shop the very day of their encounter. She had experienced her first disappointment there. You may call it disappointment or a sense of indifference if you like . . . That young girl who had had a marginal life had apparently expected to be taken to a music hall or a pub by the man who was to be her prospective husband, to a nightclub where they could dance till the early hours of the morning. Thus, the photograph would find its way into the album, among the other heroes of fiction. Could it be that she had dreamt of starring in a film, having as her co-star Robert Taylor, resting on a deck chair in the lounge while crossing the Atlantic?

Beyond the boundary Line

This preamble and the probabilities that I have reproduced based partly on hearsay and partly through my own logic have inevitably brought me to the verge of a conventional world of sentimentalism, emptied of its contents. On this threshold, I find myself faced with an apprehension of defeat which I find difficult to relate to others. After getting so close to this woman—who I always found to be different, and believed to be different—I cannot help but asking: “It’s all very well, but what was it that held this difference that was exposed to our view?” What had engendered that difference; what had caused Aunt Tilda to break loose from her circle among a multitude of words that were consumed and soiled? There are photographs sent to you by individuals, ones lost and ones desired to be lost, at unexpected moments in places unknown to you so that you can never trace the sender. This will remind you once more of the ‘road story.’ You will see in that particular frame of film millions of living people suggesting to you the idea that millions of people live on millions of fantasies, each unlike the other, connecting endless stories. Then you will venture to find places to fit in them the aspects of those individuals and relationships that had always been left in the shade . . . a new moment of disappearance, silence, and counterstatement . . . I wonder whether all that has been lived would assist in converging in you a few similarities with them, contrary to your expectations. Now, I am trying to see through such factors that make me uneasy, through probabilities that keep gnawing at my mind. Who possessed the said difference, where was it exactly, in which particular glance was it contained? Something—whose exact location, color, sound, and odor were not necessarily known—that led to Aunt Tilda or that originated in her, was quite probably hidden somewhere in this story. I don’t think I’ll ever find this something in my story or be able to trace it. Well, I don’t care. I feel safe in the knowledge that at least I know how to march ahead and disappear, despite all the defeats I have suffered . . . As for the boundaries of that world of sentiments soiled and denuded of its contents, I may take a few steps forward now. Aunt Tilda had lived naturally and idiosyncratically with what lay beyond that boundary. She had to move forward silently to the place where she wanted to live. Truths, your own truths, might well return to you when you considered the meaning of this forward march. You might like to have a new insight into the place where you had come face-to-face with your own realities, with the people you confronted, and the time that this had taken place in reference to your acquisitions from that solitude. This was a small but original legacy; a legacy that one should like to preserve secretly somewhere in one’s life. The extension of this legacy within me enables me to understand better the impression that Joseph Rothman had left on her despite the disappointments at the pastry shop. He had explained to Aunt Tilda that the profession of tailoring had been passed on to him by his father and that he had been trying to carry it on, that what made this profession particularly enticing was his observation that the bits and pieces of learning he had acquired could be gradually transformed into tangible things through the clothes he was making. The meaning inherent in it, which had to be unfolded and disclosed, was being gradually composed in this way, but what was being built up in that workshop no longer gave him satisfaction. He had taken a fancy to set off on a polar expedition about which he had resolutely made up his mind to carry out some day having already made all the preparations necessary for it in his mind, based on what he had studied in the books he had skimmed through. He even drew the tracks he was to follow, hoping he would eventually be able to set foot on that cold, vast, and deserted white realm even though the venture might be beset by disastrous incidences and marred by untoward events. Nevertheless, disenchanted as he was with his current lifestyle, this was the journey he had been patiently yearning for ever since he was a boy. He couldn’t tolerate those who could not realize the full seriousness of his dream. Among them, his father was in the lead, the figure whose confidence he had been trying to gain. His father and master who had instructed him in the trade was no longer what he used to be. He had lost his sight a couple of years ago; the light, which he had been endowed with and to which he had been accustomed throughout his life had failed him. He did, however, endeavor to go on working as he had nothing else to cling to in life. He came to the workshop with great difficulty for the mere sake of smelling its odor . . . of inhaling that odor and experiencing those touches . . . a habit he had developed over many years . . . He saw the workshop as a place of refuge rather than a prison . . . The touching of things restored to him the necessary energy he needed. Joesph had established an original connection between himself and the clothes he used in his room—an empathy difficult to explain. He had developed the habit of conversing with them for long periods of time when left alone. What he uttered was mostly devoid of sense; it was meaningless, things that left some people alienated; those clothes were his own conglomeration of people, his ultimate coterie . . . One must acknowledge the fact, however, that he still designed impeccable clothing. Nevertheless, he hardly spoke with his acquaintances unless he was compelled to by circumstance. Nor did he communicate with himself anymore. If ever he could . . . This had adversely affected Aunt Tilda. This lapse must have come as something of a surprise to her, coming from a man who had fought his way to her through other people’s steps. A fall quite different from the one he had experienced when he had taken cognizance of the importance of that fantasy that gripped his imagination of that cold, vast, and deserted white realm. That pastry shop, remote from the illuminated nightclubs, housed a hope beyond all nostalgic yearnings, deprivations, and extraneousness . . . a hope that made abandonment easier to face. There was a joy in it that sorrow enriched; a joy that originated from conveying a part of oneself to a fellow human being, or from finding that part of oneself in someone else. In that moment, in which certain feelings were observed from a different angle, one was faced to look inward. What he had grasped at such a terminal point would, I believe, shed light on a quite different path. Regrets experienced due to his delayed actions would be gnawing at him, at the man he tried to hold onto in the midst of the mass of people who would deprive him from the streets he walked, the lights, the colors he saw, and the odors he smelled . . . To root one’s fantasies in a vast, white, and deserted imaginary realm . . . That was the sole fantasy that Joseph had indulged in throughout his life, the one he had been seeking to justify. The traveler she had seen, the man that fate had presented to her, reminded her of the travelers she had seen in films. On the other hand, what Joseph had found in Tilda was a woman, who, for probably the first time in his life, lent an ear to him. The moment they met was one that gave credence to those who had an unshakable belief in first encounters. What they had both seen, what each of them saw in the other, was what he or she had wanted to see.