Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale (57 page)

I had the privilege of bearing witness to the continuation of the story. Juliet had become a slave of the order she herself had established according to her values. The training of Nora implied the gradual nourishment of revolt. In the hatching of this conspiracy, there lurked a cooperative effort about whose justification there was no suspicion. While Nora exercised on the piano, Juliet stood by her resolutely, patiently. It was the same determination she had shown during lectures and during their attendance of stage plays they could not stand missing. Juliet’s connection to her daughter allowed her to visualize the haunting presence of her old friend Nora. This also implied singing in unison in order to infuse fresh blood into her old companion’s legacy, finding a new name for a new color. This was something that she had not given to Rosy, her other daughter, as she was so absorbed in her self-centered memories. Why on earth had this never occurred to her? Why? Who was she tutoring and placing under her stewardship? Who was Nora? Her daughter? Herself or somebody else? A time would come when I would venture to find answers to these questions, through both herself and Nora. Then we would have our stories at different venues and times populated by our heroes and heroines. This issue would be a bone of contention between these two women and be injurious to both of them. Nevertheless, for my own part, despite all the incidents we had to go through, I am setting aside what Juliet had said while dancing in front of us during a separate and extremely private narrative. Juliet’s tragedy was not due solely to her compulsive visualization of that individual she had abandoned in her past. What was important for her was the fact that she had not had the opportunity to appear in the role of Nora, whom she held as her idol, with all the connotations and conclusions that would imply. To have missed the opportunity to play Nora’s part . . . This sentence had a deep meaning for those who knew her closely.

I had stayed there overnight. Plays in whose cast we had failed to figure assailed my mind. “They are playing
The Seagull
on the Taksim stage; we might go to see it this weekend if you like,” Juliet said while spreading the snow white bed sheets like in the old days.

You walked into the darkness

It is evident that certain promises were made at points where time was gradually consumed through different postponements, for the sake of different people, for different calls and different expectations. We had not gone to see
The Seagull
that weekend. In fact, to go and see a play simply not to miss it was not worthwhile. Implicit in her suggestion to go and see
The Seagull
were two nagging aches in Juliet’s heart which she wanted to intimate into my mind at that juncture of our relationship; two aches directed toward an uncertain future. “What we’ve experienced belongs to the past; our friendship continues unimpaired, at least for me. What’s more, what we’ve left behind has gained a special meaning after all that has passed between us. I wish you had been entertaining the same feelings; I wish we could meet once again at a common juncture. My emotion, the hope I’ve been entertaining for that dream is as fresh as ever despite your expectations to the contrary,” Juliet would have liked to say. However, these reflections were my invention all the same. But Juliet was one of my heroines who had opened new doors to new stories for me and with whose character I was supposedly acquainted. Juliet I thought I knew, Juliet I wanted to see, Juliet whom I had to reveal these things to one day, had to speak thus that night; there was no other way for her. No other way unless we were resolved to part company. We were perfectly aware that our space was confined. We both knew that I could not prepare the scene of parting she would have wished to act, nor could I smother the player within her. I think I was somewhat more aware of the fact that because of what had gone between us we could not be enemies. This was another kind of despair, I reckon. I would never be able to put in an appearance as the ‘bad person.’ I just could not part with certain people. My despondency, my fear of being left all alone, my tribulation played a role in this. I was determined not to lie at least in this case; I would try not to be evasive.

In trying to intimate to me the thrill she felt for the stage through a different channel, using the medium of one of our privileged spaces, Juliet might have diverted my attention to an absurdity which we took for granted. Nora might well have returned that night arrayed with that sense of absurdity generally associated with insurrectional activity. Our actions and preferences might rouse in us again that sense of absurdity. “This is absurd! The height of nonsense! Just like in the majority of our relationships,” Juliet might have said. An absurdity . . . This word which might take us back, quite unexpectedly, to a diversity of photographs of certain episodes in which Nora and I had been the actors. A series of absurdities . . . to express the bitterness and the resentment I felt for myself; with a view to protecting myself . . . in the hope of finding a way to perform an injustice to that relationship . . . yes, to protecting myself . . . By the way, when exactly had the story begun and how had it come to an end, following which words? However, I was not so sure it had ended in every respect; I cannot be sure of this; I cannot be emphatic on that account. The same thing held true for our loves, or for our relationships we tried to carry along with our dilemmas and deceptions. We had been attracted as though by time immemorial. Over the border, there were phantoms within us; there was that shadow that we contained . . . We were striving to doggedly and secretly protect what we had left behind. Actually, we could not vouch for the certainty of the steps we had taken, were they even our own? Then, we lapsed into silence, to continue conversing with ourselves in the company of our dreams and private visions . . . those private visions we could disclose to no one. When I think of my projections onto others, I feel reluctant now to tell of what Nora and I experienced or failed to experience. The fact is that I am perfectly aware that the story will be written one day from a completely different angle. This is my professed belief, a formulated belief beyond perception. I am inclined to believe not in the relationship as such, not in the eventualities that potentially exist within me, but in its narrative. At least I have my dreams and the accompanying lies to cherish . . . my fantasies and plays . . . my plays and passions which I no longer want to dispose of . . . even though these plays and passions remind me now and then of that absurdity . . . It looks as though to set off when the time comes will not be difficult at all. In this traveling, I can visualize myself or Nora seated by the window of a bus at night traveling from one city to another. That night might well transport different passengers and the bus might arrive at the terminal in the early hours of the morning or at the break of dawn . . . But let us not put the cart before the horse . . . years will have to elapse before the heroes and heroines of this story are considered ready for such twilight. What had been mislaid somewhere was a heartbreaking love story, after all. The tale of a sad love we could try to embellish with songs,
tête-à-tête
breakfasts, deserted streets, and telephone booths . . . in other words, there was nothing original about it, just like all other love affairs. What was original, however, were the words that had been uttered and their relevant usage. Nonetheless, I do not expect that this would truly attract the attention of those who have not had similar experiences. At the time, Nora was only seventeen. An exchange of a couple of phrases had drawn us to each other at the least expected moment and at the least imagined venue. She had said The Seducer, and I had said The Most Beautiful Arabia . . . She had said that she would set off on an expedition on one of those moonlit nights without letting anyone know and I had spoken of the shaded face of the moon. Both of us had left behind a bitter experience which we had been carrying deep within ourselves. This experience was due to our failure in finding ourselves among the family members, or to be precise, to being lost among them. Having trodden those paths, I believed we had come to the same realization; certain paths happened to cross each other over time. Our times certainly differed; words that linked us to those fantasies differed; different were our toys, songs, and the places we wanted to touch. But we had reached the same conclusion somewhat inevitably despite all these things. We had felt that loneliness and sense of abandonment within us once more. I don’t think I can express this sentiment that had been aroused in me in the wake of all I do not know of people I am unfamiliar with. One thing I was certain of was the solitude, that unique solitude that could not be verbally communicated to anyone. One could not choose to be alone, nor could one communicate it to others. This inevitability generated a pleasant sensation; to feel exposed to it or make others feel it caused a funny sensation of warmth spreading within me. I had felt as if I had set off on my journey at the exact moment that Juliet had taken cognizance of the fact that she wanted to fill the gap between the fantasy she had had to leave buried in the past and the new path she wanted to travel with her daughter, Nora. This was, without a doubt, one of those narratives that was set in a different climate and at different periods of history; a narrative whose component parts varied considerably; a narrative which more often than not paved the way in other families to mysterious deaths for which no inquest could be presented. Nobody had asked Nora whether she fancied playing the piano . . . They had been accustomed to living with their shortcomings. They had no need to take stock of their shortcomings, nor any desire to speak about them to a third person. Those fantasies had perhaps been imposed because of this very reason on many young children who found themselves aged suddenly without having been asked if they deserved to be cherished. At the same time here was an occasion that deserved to be shared with someone, by a spectator like me. I was one of the few people who could have a proper insight into the stages that had brought Berti and Juliet to part with their daughter. I knew how they had reached that point. Those were the steps of individuals I knew and with whom I had shared many experiences through the years. The war of fantasies, the war that broke out because of the failure of those fantasies to co-exist with each other, in that small world . . . those small worlds . . . and of finding a foothold there. But a day came, in other words, when the term was due, when contracts were signed. War and Peace . . . How had they signed the peace treaty, after which unnameable defeats? What had these defeats been, whose defeats had they been? Answers to these questions could only be given by those involved. In this I have gained absolute confidence. The enigma lay in those defeats, in the things that had accompanied them, or perhaps in those things that were never discussed during peace negotiations. It was most probable that Berti and Juliet had only realized what they had lost in that peace process by consulting a third person. Here was a section of the story we more often than not find in books. What changed were mere appearances, and what made them meaningful were words. Here we might inquire into that drive that attracts us to those stories and prevents us from breaking with them. Words and appearances were mere keys. Only with those keys could we open the doors. It was for this reason perhaps that we had marched and would continue to march with hopes we continually refreshed despite the fact that we knew that those stories would never change but continue to be repeated. Certain stories would belong to different tongues; they would be read in different tongues by their native speakers. The play was a play of power, after all. The opposition saw one day that they had come to power. One should know how to stand still when power was attained . . . then . . . then you could hide within yourself. Families were but small countries; prisons whose iron bars were barred to sight, the lives spent there were the lives of those near death, if one chose to look through such a window. Families were small prisons, resistant to demolition, doomed to be born in other families through deficient nights and false dawns. Families were cells that every single person reproduced according to his or her own idiosyncrasies; in which they lived to the extent they deserved . . . Just like the cities that do not abandon their children elsewhere; like countries that give their citizens only the image of freedom. Under the circumstances, I had no choice but to opt either for the explanation that Berti and Juliet would not be capable of recognizing this play of power, or that they had preferred to turn a blind eye to it. This would enable them to endure their despair and the pains they tried to cover up. This was the reason why I had not talked to them about what needed to be talked about. This was perhaps a mode of living that friendship caused to sprout. However, in opting for this discretion, I believe I had been afraid to face the facts. Our talks could well prove to be background for the development of this story in a different vein. Our talks could well take us to unpredictable places just like in the case of similar settlings of outstanding accounts. This invitation might require alterations to what I had written, what I would like to have written about them. In other words, it was not beyond reason that I might have missed a detail on the road which might bring about the narration of those nights from a different viewpoint, driven by completely different impulses. I had tried to dodge that settlement for the sake of preserving my own truths, the truths I wanted to keep unimpaired because of my play for power. The price was to live with that suspicion, the loneliness that that suspicion engendered, the abandonment. The price was the fear of occasionally returning to myself.

What had guided our relations had been fear, simply fear, fear of oneself, of one’s dreams, of no return. But I could not possibly disclose all these to Nora at the time. I happened to be stranded somewhere I had never been before or had any idea of. On the one hand were my confidants who had dared to give to my custody the wrongs they had done, who had tried to open for me the secret corners of their hearts, and who had burdened me with their stories; on the other hand, there was a heroine whose influence was beginning to weigh heavy on me and to whom I wanted to justify my private acts. The said heroine originated naturally from an old story that had never been lived. I was supposed to create this heroine within my own boundaries and conceptions. Actually, these were the simple facts which I was to run into frequently in other people’s worlds and to the consequence I was therefore submitted to. However, I could not speak of this truth at the time. In order that I could reach the boundary of this truth I would have to live other stories.