Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale (55 page)

To find one’s reflected image in one’s solitude

I had already tried somewhere else to describe the indignation of those whose paths converged and who had to choke back the words they felt in the process of regurgitating. In actual fact everybody was imprisoned in their own sentences, engaged in introspection. However, the said sentences had paved the way to others; we had presumed that we could bring other people to life in those sentences through a process of resuscitation. I think I understand better now the reason why I keep on going back to certain facts which seem to form a sort of unbreakable bond. The same feelings, or at least the associations these might produce, had their origins in other people and places. If one bore in mind the effects created over time by the combined words of Madame Roza, Juliet, Berti, and Monsieur Jacques about Jerry, the said origins shared a common sore spot that seemed to be very far from the actual location of where the words were uttered. Now I feel myself very close to it. A man who learned how to penetrate the darkness of other people gained a vantage point from which he had a better view of himself. On that account, Berti’s experiences that day, that morning, are highly relevant to me. He had—even on that day which was one of his most memorable—experienced a place toward which Jerry’s extremely original associations had directed him in a completely different fashion. That place was to form an important turning point at the time, clad in a garb that should be considered the most significant of his life. When he tried to narrate it, long after Juliet’s account of the story, he gave me quite a different picture than the one Juliet had provided me with. He painted a completely different picture in order to justify himself. He appeared to be somewhat dejected, although he tried to conceal it as best as he could. He was resolved to convince himself that he had acquired the mental and emotional qualities considered normal for an adult and a well adjusted human being, although his shortcomings oozed out at times, despite the fact that all he wanted to do was to communicate and show himself so that he might attract attention and admiration.

I was well acquainted with that desire. I had tried to preserve some of my stories and keep them to myself for the sake of that yearning; or maybe I had simply played someone false. He had felt himself to be the odd-man-out during that banquet honoring his marriage. Had he been the decision maker he would have preferred a limited number of guests around a modestly laid table; a table in a secluded corner of the city, distant from strangers who took such a vitriolic joy in exposing their pretensions and their hypocrisy. He would have preferred to arrange a clandestine marriage with Juliet and merely show the parents the photographs of the wedding, risking all the resulting consequences that would be in store for them. However, he had submitted to the will of others on the way that led to the nuptial chamber. It was plain, however, that interpreting this as a form of emotional indulgence would be unfair if one considered the preceding incidents. One should not forget that he had submitted to this ordeal to avoid an additional injury to the one Jerry had already caused his parents. They could hardly endure the effects of a new grief. His duty toward the family, a duty he considered preordained, could not allow him to think otherwise. He imagined himself the hero of a play whose fate it was to face his ordeal defying all the adversities this involved. I was familiar with this play. To this play Juliet’s contribution had not been negligible as far as I could see; this play in which we had taken part in different ways, with different sentimental approaches. The shelter was one whose surrounding walls had been raised by others in perseverance, envisaging varying objectives. Juliet knew of these walls. She had observed at the time, through her well-developed intuitive power, the existence of these walls and Berti’s need for them. This modest discovery of hers would secure her a steady progress toward his new family through cautious steps. It had been Berti’s perennial aspiration to find a woman who would guide and advise him in his actions and prospective undertakings. She had understood it in the course of their initial relations when they had first truly touched one another. It looked as though she was going to take over a duty, a transfer of duty that the other female members of his family, of his extended family had cultivated the habit of, a duty undertaken after much consideration. She was going to take over this duty from Madame Roza. This experience had enabled her to realize the boundaries of his zone of security better. This was one of the ways to find peace: to lose one’s serenity in places where rules hardly underwent changes. Juliet had never said a word about this; she didn’t even try to share with me (even when we had been very close to each other) her impression of those days. I come to this conclusion based on the development within me and of Berti’s legacy. Therefore, it is quite likely that I have been led astray as well. Hadn’t we already observed that what we have consigned to oblivion guided us imperceptibly and would never cease to do so even at times when we have profound belief in our own truths, when we need to lend credence to them? This was a kind of awareness, after all. An awareness that would remind one once more of the fact that truths and wrongs are steeped in our shadows at times. This awareness had caused me to experience that old play once more. Juliet knew these scenes all too well, the very words to be recited, and the figure she would cut in the spotlight that shone upon her face. She appeared on the stage in the part that her history had cast her in. The role she played was the most truthful and convincing role of her life, defying her eccentricity and nonconformity. The play was the embodiment of a sorrow of resignation dated from the days of yore. Women who shared a similar fate to hers felt the drive to expose this anguish. This sorrow had been sublimated and transformed into poetry. Deaths, those silent deaths, could be consigned to oblivion through other people’s mortalities. Juliet would not miss this opportunity. But first, other evenings and other expectations had to be lived. Feelings found their proper places only after divesting a man gradually of his assets. As far as I was aware this was the true state of affairs, and so, I tried to preserve it. I could not possibly ignore that evening I had been trying to prepare myself for Berti’s story, armed with patience, despite my alienated state and my own misconceptions. My admission this time had been from a different angle. I was being guided by Berti. The former visions would gain further meanings with new revelations. They had popped in for a drink at the nightclub Kervansaray on one of the days preceding the celebration of their engagement. There he had spoken about Marcellina and spoken of the particulars of their relationship to the best of his memory. This indiscretion was aimed at gaining a solid footing for the prospective lifelong union. The goodwill of this intention could not possibly be ignored. If Berti’s account of that evening is to be trusted, Juliet had listened to the yarn spun with a smiling countenance, in a graceful and friendly manner. She had not said a word nor made any comment. Now that I am an impartial observer far removed from the actual event, I’m inclined to believe that this silence, which seemed to imply a question mark, concealed a desire to understand. Here was a person waiting to be understood. This candid confession of Berti’s, this attempt at pouring out his grievances, betrayed the modest self-glorification of a man who had lost his confidence in many respects. Juliet had a great deal of tact in this matter. Barring all her faults, there existed in her a second woman who could instantaneously notice the significance of such details. It seemed that she was also the author of the implausibility and the glumness of life. Was she the kind of woman who had preferred to keep silent while listening to the episodes narrated during the early hours of that evening, to transpose them to another time? In order to be able to uncover this mystery one must have the courage to get closer to that moment. To the best of my knowledge, Juliet had not trusted in any of the platitudes expressed during such situations. She said to the man who wanted to proceed on in unison (with a past he could not forget) with a matter-of-fact voice which was at the same time smooth and velvety: “Time now to go dining! We might go from there to a nightclub to dance. We must drive our dull cares away tonight.” Suiting word to action they had dined somewhere where they had discoursed on other peoples’ lives and on attitudes, thoughts, and judgments permeated or prompted by feelings and frittered away the time roaming the streets already abandoned by people. In the meantime suggestions were made to which ears had duly been lent. This scene would remain fixed in their memories as a natural phenomenon both that night and the nights that were to follow. The actual players on the stage and the guest stars were known. At a time when they were lulled into the magic of the night, Juliet had said to the man who was heading back toward her with caution’s steps: “We are burying Marcellina tonight . . . for your sake and mine; in fact, for the sake of us both.” This call, this voice should not go unnoticed; this voice and what it invited. The lover that had been abandoned would remain so forever, a topic never to be touched on again. It appeared that that night was that night in which Berti had felt nearest to his new woman. At the place from which the voice came there was a new sanctuary; his intuitive faculty was driving him toward that sanctuary. However, one cannot deny that the sanctuary, despite its warmth and security, had also been the cause of an inevitable crack, of a silent crack not openly affirmed. One wondered to whom had those footsteps been taken. From whom those footsteps grew fainter? It is true that they had succeeded in burying Marcellina there, nervously obeying that voice’s command. But this had left be
hind a void that would remain as such; yes, a void; a void whose obscurity and inaudibility was vulnerable to expansion and to be elaborated on in other stories. This void was due to the fact that each of them had interred Marcellina in different sepulchers without letting each other know. Certain breaks, in conjunction with certain concomitant agents, went deep, very deep. Certain families took shelter in those refuges only thanks to these breaks. This option entailed the interment of certain things with their concurrent aspirations and expectations, whose mixed designations were subject to variations depending on the human beings involved, to the time and the feeling in question. The divinities of those lives were tabooed; so were the rituals. Everybody was supposed to know for himself exclusively where exactly he lived, what or whom he lived for. To imagine a night or day cloaked differently would be tantamount to finding one’s reflection in one’s own solitude. The story had to be lived by someone, or had, at least, to have been told or tried to have been told to someone by someone else. However, no matter what had been witnessed and experienced that evening, one thing was certain; and that was Berti’s great affection for Juliet. It appears that Juliet had expressed that night to Berti that she had the feeling that Marcellina had left behind no serious impact. Notwithstanding this observation, it was plain that she also had a clandestine ‘ritual’ buried in her breast. It was as though she also had tried to bury an experience somewhere, a loss, a missing something. I could never make out whether Berti had even realized this. All I knew was the fact that this nagging suspicion, this doubt, a figment of my imagination, just like in my multifarious relations, had effectively increased the attraction I felt for Juliet. She had made me a gift of a new question for which I should be grateful. I had to remind myself that certain women were reborn by virtue of certain questions, or, to put it differently, certain questions that remained unanswered could never be launched into eternity. This was the reason why I had attached special importance to Marcellina who was nestled somewhere in Berti. This led me to the conclusion that Berti could never entomb Marcellina as Juliet would have liked. Notwithstanding, Berti, despite the question mark that Marcellina had left in him, had succeeded in reserving an important place for Juliet in his life. One should not forget that she displayed the merit of a chef in her preparation of artichoke dishes. How could I ever forget the taste! That was the reason why that evening in which all time-worn controversies, solitary confinements, as well as vague expectations and fervent hopes that we continue to entertain, had seemed such a real tonic to me. We had not seen each other for a long time, almost two years. When one considers what we had experienced in the meantime and our previous dialogues, the time-lag should be deemed considerable, an interval of time long enough to generate a desperate longing that would be hard to imagine. But there it was! We could not forestall whatever had been destined for us. We had learned to live through ordeal. When she had suddenly seen me, she had rushed to hug me tightly without uttering a single word, not a word . . . We were locked in a tender embrace for a long time, as though we were trying to recapture what we had missed over the course of two years. We had tried to give this longing its due, feeling each other’s presence, remaining in each other’s arms, even though for a brief moment. I believe that she had, like me, recalled the poetry of beginnings and renewed relationships. I think she had also showed the desire to know if so much bitterness had been necessary for joy, for an unanticipated moment of rejoicing. I had caught sight of Berti whose eyes were full of tears. He was trying to smile. His smile expressed a wry joy. “I knew it you bitch! I knew you’d be coming back sooner or later. But why on earth did you tarry so long! Why did you have to subject us to such an ordeal? You didn’t think that we’d kicked the bucket, did you! I’m here as you can see, body and soul, and still belong to you!” Juliet said. This effusive demonstration of feelings caused us to laugh. We had to force ourselves to laugh, in other words. It was one of the rare moments of my life when tears and smiles mingled . . . I felt myself as a person holding a position of higher standing in a hierarchy of ranks. I had better understood life just as death opened the door to the birth of an unexpected sensation at an unexpected moment. That poem that had inspired me with the idea that all birthdays legislated new laws would in time find a place reserved for him after many a summer.