Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale (76 page)

In which photograph did we figure?

A few tears . . . how many years had gone by since then, how many individuals, expressions, and betrayals have been left behind? The associations revive in one the sorrow of days spent and the sense of being caught by oneself. Is this an illusion fed upon lies which induces us to admit that we have left certain places far away, very far away, yearning to be able to touch those distances? Can it be an escape; a desire to see them again; a desire to display one’s sense of belonging; an absence carried in a different fashion; an acknowledged deficiency; or the need to feel that we are still above them despite all those indignations? A lot of feelings might find their meanings in such a step, in the things generated by that step. For instance, which door had opened at the right time for the right people and the right lives, which door had remained shut although it ought to have been opened? It had been our intention to tackle such issues during that unexpected meeting in Vienna. Ginette and I stood before one another after so many years . . . It would take some time before we realized how far we had succeeded in taking that walk. The city where we met, where we confronted one another, seemed to be the right city for me to start writing the story of that long journey toward death. If one considered the fact that Nesim had been disappointed and disillusioned following the loss of that country he had in mind to build, the starting point of the story might well be that city. It was the right city; it looked that way anyway. But where did we happen to be in that exact time in the story? In other words, were we at the right place? Were we to lose belief at the said time of encounter we had selected by forcing its very conditions? When we considered the moments, and, what is more important, the man, we intended to leave with each other, we had to be prepared for all sorts of contingencies. As for the poems of those moments . . . they were destined, I think, to remain with us. They, in turn, would be perceived by others in different fashions and with different meanings under the influence of associations and histories, in spite of those words discovered after all those efforts and struggles. We had taken our steps toward our solitudes at the very spot where deafness was heard.

“Would you like to have a cup of coffee? I’ll have one myself,” said Ginette, and without waiting for an answer she had ordered for us both. I had noticed a change in her French accent. There was nothing wrong with the grammar, but it didn’t sound like the French of a native. “Do you think it would be a good idea,” I remarked, “won’t we be late? Do you have people waiting for you?” What had induced me to talk like this? Was it to show concern for her or simply to show off as though I was interested in her predicament? “Haven’t I told you that I’m alone? Moreover, you now look sort of grown up, deserving of a few more hours,” she retorted. Under the circumstances, I thought I could allow myself some wider elbowroom. “Considering you’ve been living separate from your husband for over a year now in a foreign land, your marital relations seem to be flawless!” She had reacted to my ironic remark with composure, with an expression that seemed to intimate that I didn’t have an inkling as to the real situation. Then a silence occurred, one of those hushed silences. It was broken by the waiter who had come with our coffee. It was apparent that they knew each other. As he put down the cups on the table he even cracked a joke which she received favorably as she craked a smile. However, as the exchange of wits had taken place in a foreign tongue, I had remained a mere bystander.

“To be frank, I was the promoter of this research trip,” she said with a weak smile and voice after the waiter had gone. “I have harmonious relations with the people at the university. Actually, I’ve escaped. I felt obliged to be devoted to my profession. But, you haven’t even asked what my profession is! I’m a psychiatrist, specializing in autistic cases.” She was staring at me. Her smile seemed to inquire into whether I knew this or not, an important detail related to this long story. We had caught a moment of stillness, laden with meaning. This was the poem of a simultaneous conveyance of a man left at a different time, for different texts, by way of different images and associations. I was reluctant to show that I had been impressed. Certain recollections and enigmatic settlings of outstanding accounts doomed a man against his will to always hear the voices of those memories claiming that they would never let him go. Enrico Weizman’s forgetfulness about that detail relating to the past and his unwillingness to share it with someone else was out of the question. Ginette could not possibly ignore these voices instilled in her. “Your uncle should have lived this long in order to witness this,” I said, trying to touch that dark world of memory despite my apprehensions. She had understood and saw that I could not proceed any further. She had wanted to express that joy she had felt in having witnessed my establishment of the correct link, gazing graciously despite the developments and defaults that had occurred in between, at the little child who had once been taken to long walks in the streets of quite another city that had to be abandoned later on. Where was that child now, in whose company was she, in which details had she been lost and to what particular feeling? The possible answers to this question did not matter so much as regards that interval, when the meaning was accessible and more easily grasped. By the way, the child was still alive; so was the little girl who had taken all the challenges that life had presented without any hesitation. Both the child and the little girl, lost in that pollution, were justified in their apprehensions, concerns, and introversion. But, at the moment . . . yes at the moment, to feel that togetherness beyond all boundaries, eventualities remaining beyond the realities seemed to be even more important than all the possible anticipations. Time had once again been obliterated. However, not only was it important to realize that what one wrote was under the influence of what one read, but also what one experienced and learned through experience. Ginette had held my hands again. That was enough. No words or new questions were needed. They were within us; a place we could always have access to. Silence had fallen afterward. The place where my associations would take me was from that point on a place which I could descry from afar and understand only through my feelings, its tongue remaining foreign for me. I was observing the traces of a deep wrench on Ginette’s face. “My son was killed in action, two years ago, along with two fellow soldiers,” she said suddenly. “The funny thing is that we both had a premonition that this would happen. It was so absurd. He’d never believed in war. He’d always been a conscientious objector. He always occupied the first rank in the mass demonstrations staged against it. Before he had left, he had put his arms around me and squeezed me tightly, saying, ‘I wish we loved and understood each other more.’ He may have said these words as he was compelled to bear arms, for both of us, in fact . . . I had asked him to forgive me for having been unable to understand him better and for having given birth to him, exposing him to a war he did not believe in. What else could I do? I cannot describe the regret I experienced. While trying to help and give succor to others, doing everything within my power to bring them back to life, I’d been working strenuously day and night without realizing that I’d left those near to me untended. Why? I don’t even like to think about it; I’m doing my best to dodge the issue, but I cannot control my dreams and nightmares.

“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to deal with autistic people? You can never convince them to accept anything new. That’s the reason why they are attached to you wholeheartedly. You couldn’t abandon them even if you wanted to. Under the circumstances, you have no other choice but to forget yourself and what you had been planning to do. I’ve been in this profession quite some time now; I think I’ve reached a certain point. Articles appeared in papers about my work. My objective was to see that those suffering returned to life. I wonder if all these efforts would prove to be in vain. After all, those individuals were our very conscience; they are the facets of the world we live in which we refuse to see, which we try to garb in different guises. You may be asking similar questions of yourself. Believe me, I’ve done so myself. Yet during the therapy, that struggle, that desire for struggle overrules everything and you are hardly conscious of anything else. You believe that you’re carrying on the struggle for your own sake and you cling firmly to your past, to your experiences, to your future, to your hopes that contributed to your formation and enabled you to reach the station you happened to be in now. This was another sort of flight, another sort of escape which you were reluctant to admit to. In the origin of this struggle lay the bitterness of those things you had failed to discover and attain. It may be you were trying to show, to prove certain things to certain people with whom you could not settle your account. As you may well see, I can’t help trying to find solutions for my problems. I don’t know the purpose of all these questions and queries. All that I know is that in our profession, one has to admit the fact that in order to make progress, one ought to learn, in the first place, how to accept oneself as the subject of a case study, and that one may, at any moment, feel the need for help.

“Thus, I’ve been in the thick of the action and lived to fight on. While engaged in this pursuit, I had neglected those nearest to me unawares. As I was being rewarded by the gratitude of people to whom I’d extended a helping hand, in time, the successes inevitably lost their significance, I hadn’t realized that I was being driven away from the creature I had given birth to.

“As for my daughter . . . She resigned herself to a life of devotion and married a man who himself was a devout Jew. She had her skull shaved, put on her wig, and changed her lifestyle. She calls me up very rarely. We have nothing to say to each other anymore. We have become strangers; we belong to worlds wide apart. Now and then, when I go over the incidents in my past I cannot help feeling I am being punished by certain people; an ordinary view without any originality, surely; an attitude that makes me more conspicuous than necessary. Such transitions are undoubtedly experienced everyday everywhere in the world. Yet, when I came to know Enrico I’d learned not to feel any need for religion in order that I might know myself better and lead a freer life. I brought up my children in this discipline. I had a world which I had perfect confidence in . . . But now . . . now that so many lives have gone by . . . I’m here at present, in a city which you will find, I expect, meaningful for my writings, for our writings. Now and then my former patients visit me . . . we bandy words . . . as for those to whom it does not occur to make a call . . . ”

I felt confused that I had compelled her to make such a long speech. I felt myself like an intruder who was somewhere I was not supposed to be. I had diverted my stare somewhere else. She must have sensed what I had felt. “You don’t have to blame yourself for inciting me to make a confession. I was meaning to tell all this to you anyhow. Had I not done so, the story you are promising yourself to write one day will have loopholes in it. I’ll soon vanish; I don’t think I can carry this burden all alone when you’ll no longer be able to reach me.” She was smiling. I had once again felt the beauty of her smile. I had heard Berti’s voice. Ginette had learned well enough how to appear according to the whims of her interlocutors. We had exchanged smiles without uttering a word; after which I had to divert my stare once more in another direction, despite Berti and all those old photographs that he bequeathed. “No, this is not a play. There are certain things hidden in that smile, real things desired to be disclosed, to be instilled in me,” I said to myself.

“I’ve another bitter experience which I cannot share with anyone. I feel myself lonelier than ever in the face of all that I have gone through. I never had the privilege of knowing what motherly tenderness was, nor have I had the opportunity to show compassion to my children. What really binds us to this world? Who are we? What ought we do?” she said. “You are reminding me of a scene in a film I never forgot,” I replied. “The action took place in Mexico. The woman, after whose name the film was called, had brought a big bouquet of flowers to her lover. The man to whom she was deeply attached was married. The woman was aware of this, and felt that the man she loved had to be kept distant; yet, she found in this relationship certain things she thought to be inexhaustible. The man had tried to explain to her the reason why he had to keep aloof in the face of this passion which had remained on a platonic level. Actually, there was someone else he was in love with. It was somebody who shared his small world and garden; it was a love that people called perverted. The beloved was there, under the arbor in the garden that had the foretaste of the garden of paradise, decorated with trees and flowers, each more splendid than the last, singing a Mexican folksong with a couple of friends, while watching him. There were times when hell was experienced in paradise. Glances had crossed; he had timidly touched different feelings, apprehensions, and resentments. ‘My wife killed our child,’ the man said. What child was that? To which world did it belong? These were the visions of an earthquake, of an invisible tremor. She had seen the inferno of the man she loved, to whom she had been attached passionately. ‘Well, what are we, what should we do?’ she asked. And the man said: ‘We’ve got to learn how to make our own way silently, in the company of our own dreams, defeats, and routs without trying to understand them. To make headway silently, in the company of our own dreams. Those lives so significant to us, so unforgettable, lives that we could not dispose of might perhaps be explained tersely through words.’” “As a matter of fact, I personally have tried to act according to that man’s advice, to the best of my ability. Everybody who feels the subject of an interrogation sets off and takes this path. It’s a pity that mirrors reflect only what is allowed to be exposed. Just like those with whom we dare let join our lives,” Ginette chimed in. Her words sounded like a call . . .