Read Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale Online
Authors: Mario Levi
Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale (7 page)
This wasn’t the end of the story of her devotion. If one takes into consideration certain events, one can see that Olga, not content with being there, had gone much farther and prepared the grounds for her one-time lover’s tittle-tattle about the old days. Olga had been a listener . . . She listened and tried to share her experiences. She listened in order to prove to him that the days they had spent together were still valuable to her. She listened in order to enable Henry, in his last days, to be proud of himself, of his past. She had also secretly, surreptitiously put some money into the pocket of this gentleman of old who had squandered his great wealth for the sake of an incredibly illusory life. Yes, his life had been an incredibly illusory one, a life that would hardly afford them to dream of an obligation to share his last moments. Henry had told Olga that he had found some money in his pocket whose origin he could not explain. In return, Olga had told him that his wealth was inexhaustible no matter what he did. She never once desisted from telling him words such as: “You must’ve forgotten it or mislaid it only to find it again; you still have some money, you see? Frankly, I’d never have believed you could have spent all you had!” On the other hand, Henry felt compelled to spend even that money; after all, he was a connoisseur of the good things in life. Yet, in the world he lived and to which he was confined, Henry’s insatiable greed to purchase odds and ends had been reduced to nil as there was nothing left to buy anymore. However, he occasionally thrust money into the hands of someone going on an errand, asking him to buy madeleines and liquor chocolates. The errand boys who went to Beyoğlu did not refuse him this favor; they found in him the man they themselves could never be; in their eyes, he was a prince that had emerged from an old tale; a prince that had lost his princess . . . Moreover, leaving everything else aside, Henry was generous in his tips, the only person who knew how to reward the services rendered to him. He offered people the madeleines and liquor chocolates relished by Olga. Olga never forgot his refined hospitality. Her former lover used to spruce up, putting on an appearance for the sake of the good old days . . . for the sake of the good old days . . . as though he would live those little victories anew . . . in one of the suits he had picked up among the wreckage of that long tremor, a tremor that had lasted for years. Olga hated to recall the fate of his suits sold for insignificant sums of money to any chance comer for the supply of his daily needs. When she remembered those tremors, the only thing she did was to escape and shun those specters and hallucinations, just like they used to do long ago. However, there were times when they could cling to life, in all its solidity, to a life in which they had an unshakable belief. Years of practice had trained them in this. At such times, face-to-face, they felt even more destitute than in their adolescence when they consumed madeleines secretly for fear of being caught by their parents. Henry used to set aside a couple of madeleines, trying not to attract Olga’s curiosity. This was part of the game. It did not escape Olga’s attention, however. By the way, she never mentioned Monsieur Jacques. Regardless of the heroes they encountered, both knew all too well the fact that they had lived each other’s lives. Such acts were but deployments of their little game . . . This had turned into a kind of ritual. Everybody was familiar with it. It had become easier for Olga to face this in view of Henry’s indifference and defeat, during his last years only a few people could put up with him.
I was imparted with this information through the accounts of Uncle Kirkor and partly by Olga’s occasional lapses. I hope I haven’t misjudged and erred in my estimations. This was one of the most important episodes in Olga’s life, as far as I know. In her visit to the old people’s home at Hasköy, one could witness an act of self-sacrifice and a loftiness of spirit.
What especially attracted my attention was her wearing the diamond necklace whenever she went to visit him. Was this an esoteric poem devoid of sentimental attachment, the expression of her latent feelings of vengeance difficult to be disclosed? I doubt it. To my mind, she had wanted to be the princess of a fairy tale, of her own tale. This may have been the reason why she stayed with Henry to the very end. The only person who had avowed her noble bearing had been her former lover whom had been swept from his path by an insignificant fantasy. This tale had been their spontaneous propagation. To my mind, this was the most important reason for their coexistence in each other’s tales.
Uncle Kirkor’s view
Uncle Kirkor had left me with the impression that he knew the answers to a good many questions about Olga. Such questions that are generally used as a starting point for certain people. Questions that we could not bring ourselves to ask . . . The reason for this was simple. He had drawn a distinct line between knowing and making out as if he knew, while at the same time giving the impression that he knew nothing. Nobody had ever understood what exactly he did and didn’t know about us. A man who had been watching his friends, for years on end, from the confined area of security he had allocated for himself . . . The meaning of these looks may have been retaliation for defeats suffered elsewhere, for defeats one could not obviate . . . This was one of the doubtless probabilities; an anticipated and expected probability . . . However, I had taken a fancy to him; I’d been looking forward to seeing and knowing such enigmatic people, particularly at such moments . . . Actually I knew, of course, the man, Uncle Kirkor, was far away, in a place none of us could ever reach . . . I reckon that this was how it should be . . . I had experienced such distances in other relationships . . . That long story was partly the product of such anxieties . . . This attitude of Uncle Kirkor’s had, of course, annoyed a good many people. However, for us, for those of us who could chance upon or knew how to extort a few memories from him, it was quite a different affair. For those who had knowledge of him, he was someone who always remained still in order to see, hear and learn about ongoing events. He used to act as though he had witnessed nothing; what is still more important was that he knew how to keep silent. It was a fact that he was aware of other realities related to Olga’s diamond necklace to which we did not have access. He had overheard certain telephone conversations, and certain looks had been reflected in his own guise in all probability . . . Could I arrive at certain conclusions on the relationship of Olga and Henry based on bits and pieces of evidence from those talks? I don’t know for certain, nor shall I ever. However, with regard to certain relationships, I learned, over time, how to be satisfied with what had already been given in the stories of certain individuals. This also held true for people whose sorrows, expectations and memories I had shared, people to whom I had got nearer and people whom I accompanied in their journeys and with whom I breathed the same air. Having reached a given stage on our journey, we had become each other’s visitors. Visitors . . . simply visitors . . . To remain and to be obliged to remain satisfied with what one has been given . . . This state of affairs now and then gave rise to deceptions. However, this place, the place that Uncle Kirkor had indicated, was once a place of refuge and somewhere where one could indulge in wild fantasies, fantasies whose boundaries could only be drawn according to the individual’s own pleasure.
What Uncle Kirkor had pointed to was not simply the place in question and the individual in it. The reason why I failed to give him his due for his contemplativeness and reticence had its rationale, of course. I think I owed it to him to realize the importance of listening, of knowing how to listen. To be able to listen, to concentrate one’s thoughts on a given individual, to see him effectively . . . and in so doing, to be sparing in one’s words, considering that certain things, the things assumed to be right, are doomed to undergo variations more or less according to circumstances. This was the rule then, the most important rule of being a true witness. Nevertheless, Uncle Kirkor had, to the best of my knowledge, already gone beyond the identity of a witness. He was a confidant, a place of refuge for certain people. “I’m a bottomless well. The stone you throw in me is lost forever, even to yourself, mind you,” he told me once. In this statement was also hidden, I think, the modest pride of being conscious of his responsibility, of having been conversant with the ins and outs of those lives to which he could not help making occasional allusions to in every conversation. I knew this. This was his most glorious success in life, especially if one remembers the inevitable defeats people suffered in battles. He seemed to have made the best of this success, especially in his later years . . . savoring it for quite a long while, reviving innumerable fantasies of his life in certain parts of his being closed to everybody else. Embedded in him was the history of a whole era. We must not forget the fact that he had been the factotum in Monsieur Jacques’ shop, an old-timer, in the latter’s words. At this stage, you could proceed on and play with your fantasies and discover, if you wanted to, his desire to explain the function of an organization which kept abreast with the changing business life of the day that seemed to be innate in his personality and in the impression he made on others. However, these private judgments, which failed to go beyond their individual character, could not and had not been able to explain him to us, despite all the clues it provided us with. Perceptive people had understood this.
Uncle Kirkor had unexpectedly succumbed to a heart attack; he had been one of the trustworthy friends and sole confidant of Monsieur Jacques. Was this privileged position of his a consequence of his taking the shop for his own house, his breathing space; or of his display of it as such to others; or, was it a consequence of his comprehensive knowledge of the family; of the fact that he was conversant in Spanish although he did not speak it; or of his unerring intuition that told him the exact moment when the boss wanted to be left alone; or again of his familiarity with the business, of the management of which he was prepared to immediately take over in preference to Berti? All these things may have had their parts to play in the development and perpetuation of that friendship. There were in that shop other details and bits and pieces that built up Uncle Kirkor. For instance, every morning he was the first to come to the shop and the last to depart in the evening; however, not before having emptied the ashtrays, switched off the lights, checked the faucets and the fuses; he had in his possession one of the two keys for the shop, the other being in the custody of Monsieur Jacques. He tried to satisfy the feeling of paternal authority he tasted through occasional rapprochements of Berti. He had never had the chance of going on holiday because of matrimonial troubles with Ani, his wife; he had not thought it decent to engage in such a venture, as he thought it hardly fitting of his character. Tactful and forbearing, for years he had had to tolerate the reproaches of Madame Ani, who accused him of failing to achieve success in life, he tried to tolerate her affront with the wisdom of a sage. Could one establish a link between this state of affairs and his moderate addiction to drink; with his being careless about his attire; with his occasional absences; with his excessive indulgence in candies; with his habitual absences from Sunday services; with his striking up friendships with strange people and with the slovenly attitude of a sage he occasionally displayed? The answers to these questions must be concealed in the labyrinths of that life not readily shared. These accounts I’ve been able to lump together, based on different witnesses at different times, seem to be sufficient to lend meaning to a certain extent to particular acts and words. For instance, being at school had always been a nuisance. He had often entertained the notion to tell his companions how foolishly they behaved in subjects to which they attached overdue importance. But he had failed to express it because of his introversion and diffidence; this had been the source of his being qualified as a layabout, an idler, among those whose blinders allowed them to see only his terseness. His failure in finding a longstanding shelter for himself in the milieu in which the bullies thought that nonconformists should be ostracized (this they considered to be their reason for existence) had resulted in his being ousted from the French college Saint-Michel where his father desired him to acquire the French language. At the time he had not even turned fourteen. Having been awarded low grades as a junior, his father had to ask the school to cancel his enrollment . . . at a time when they were short of money . . . He had certainly been annoyed at having been a failure at school. Years later, he had to recollect his school years and tell of his experiences in a compensatory humorous style, saying: “My report card was riddled with potholes!” He actually deplored the fact that he had been dismissed from school. He hadn’t even learned how to play volleyball; he might have learned a lot from that friar who was well disposed toward him and when the time came his acquisitions would have enabled him to engage in a successful business life. But the fact was that life began for some people from quite a different starting point. He never forgot this, he simply couldn’t. This was the most important reality that that shop offered despite all that had gone on in between. The day he had become conscious of this fact had been the day he had experienced one of the greatest deceptions in his life. He had to account for it by such words as: “Well, I had to interrupt my education. I was young. I was in a hurry to practice an art or craft as soon as possible and launch into business life with a view to avoiding being a burden on my father’s shoulders,” he said one morning. I had learned thus that he had frequented the college Saint-Michel for some time. He had made tea and no one had showed up yet at the shop. Nevertheless, in order to evade the past we are in need of such expressions: you had to have recourse to such words in order to facilitate your life with old memories and fantasies which you didn’t want to see consigned to oblivion. To make public true defeats one had suffered in one’s lifetime was never easy. It was never easy to confess defeats, real defeats, I mean. Uncle Kirkor no longer mentioned his school days anymore. (Whenever the subject of school days was mentioned, it occurred to me to think how his life or lives might have traced a different course had he imposed his alien condition on his peers. But I saw no way out. I’m aware of this fact. I’m aware that there are many people who happen to be in the wrong places, living with the wrong crowd, resigned to their ill fates when looked at from a distance, or at least when we think we are gazing at them from a distance.)