Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale (28 page)

In the family, there was another woman who had not and could not forsake Monsieur Robert. This woman, who had an important place in my life and who lived with her frenzies—this thrill-seeking character who lived in a realm of sensations completely different from those on the opposite bank—was Aunt Tilda. I hadn’t had any difficulty in finding out the cause of this behavior, of this warmth. That person who had led a hectic life in London was the heroine of a tale lost, not lived. Yes, the heroine of a lost tale yet to be lived . . . even though these tales differed from one another. Her heroine was always there, she ought to be there . . . always . . . like all other heroines of the dreamworld; she knew this struggle all too well, she knew how closely it linked her to that world. She had risked so many things for the sake of those individuals, those individuals and those times that had been the cause of so many solitary walks.

These feelings were not exclusive to Aunt Tilda, of course. She knew full well that the occasional conveying of the individuals in her dreamworld, those who could not take part in her games, to the lives reproduced by lies, led one to difficult nights, to introversion. Why had Juliet been so pitiless, or chosen to be so pitiless, in the face of that return that had affected every family member in a different way? All of us had tried, to the extent our capacity allowed, to take refuge in a stranger to protect ourselves. According to her, trying to find justifications for the failure to assimilate oneself into the community of a city was not so easy. Monsieur Robert should not go back to Istanbul but should continue to live in London in full consciousness of the prevailing conditions, by not trying to assume the right to shatter that image certain people create in their minds of those who had to bear the full burden of life. The concept of responsibility was highly meaningful both for Juliet and Monsieur Jacques if one took into consideration the life of this adventurer. The incidents associated different things in our minds. The attitudes taken despite these judgments and their occasionally conflicting views indicated that no one had remained indifferent to Monsieur Robert’s existence, to his experiences and to those affected by them. Which one of these was right? To answer this question was not so easy at the time. Nor is it so at present. To my mind, everybody had grasped Monsieur Robert’s quiddity in their own fashion, trying to give him shape as they saw fit. This seemed to be the fate of a person who had a story to tell, who was about to set off on a journey and was directing himself to the targeted place . . . to be able to give life to a person by making him a different individual . . . It was this sentiment that supported him in his hardest times, in addition to the dreams which had already gone far beyond false expectations; to be precise, this small victory was not shared with anybody else. Now his figure emerges before me with his sad smile on his face as he was living this small victory in that hotel room. Once again in that hotel room, in that false sanctuary, trying to hold fast to those imaginary moments . . . there where breaks in time, like in certain situations . . . While preparations were being made for the celebration of Passover at the Venturas’ a couple of months after he was back in Istanbul . . . as he was shaving meticulously, combing his hair and making himself smart . . . This was the time when he desired to turn the Passover evening into a real festivity, as he believed that it was not properly celebrated while he was in a different climate, remote from his family . . . with a view to collecting the fragments of the past . . . Through which open door could one peep at such people at such a time?

The Picture at Kanlıca

My attempt at getting hold of Monsieur Robert in a hotel room in the middle of the joy that such a return had occasioned had its reasons, namely to collect the fragments lingering in him within the contours of an original story that would supplement mine. To pluck up the courage to undertake that long journey which would engender once more that return, and with it, the feeling of abandonment and solitude . . . that small victory should have brought along that inevitable question . . . this lie, this sin and this lopsided smile which were surely not the first lie, first sin, nor the first lopsided smile emitted. This inevitable question was not exclusive to that Passover evening, but to many an evening and night left behind. The feelings were those generated by the room and by the steps, the steps that should have been taken. I was persuaded that I would gradually be reaching our story; then I would also be master of my own time. Leisurely . . . I had visions and dreams . . . Those sentences reminded me of a man who paced up and down the room. The man was alone as always. He felt lonely in the midst of his family which he had kept close to his heart as his last haven over the many years of his intense longing. He was lonely once again. Just like the Passover he had celebrated last year, the first Passover that he had celebrated after he had been separated from his wife of thirty-five years. He had spent that evening with two friends, one from Casablanca and the other from Istanbul who had been obliged to live the life of an exile for many years. With two friends who had not abandoned him, in whom he could rely and in whom he could find a safe haven . . . He wondered whether he had done the right thing, the fact that he had abandoned them. It was a burning question. He could have recalled those steps in the past now that he had found two individuals that would enliven his last years by their very presence, thus bringing solace to him. He knew that they were intelligent people who he had longstanding experience of on a day-to-day basis. If they wanted to they could resume their friendship as though it had never been interrupted, with the same sentiments they had entertained. Yes, they could resume their friendship as if it had never been interrupted . . . Despite the fact that it had become customary for them to lay a banquet table to celebrate even the most trivial event, their dispensing with the arrangement of a farewell party indicated that they intended to come together before too long. He hadn’t been wrong in considering them true friends. He hadn’t been mistaken in his conviction. For instance, he owed İcila Hanım, who, by the diversity of her behavior was a chameleon that changed its shade to meet the hue of a given situation, often reminding him of Istanbul and of a couple of unforgettable memories which he could not easily disclose to a third person, not to mention the modest sum of money he had borrowed from her when he had been in dire need. A couple of reminiscences that linked him to life and prevented him from setting off on a journey of no return; he could never compensate for these actions. At an unearthly hour of the night (or day), in a city which could swallow anyone unawares, the conviction that he could knock on the door of that small house whenever he wanted to was a boon for which he could never thank her enough. As for the money he had borrowed . . . although she had so far made no reference to it, he would recognize the debt owed to her and would certainly repay it when the time came. The attractive business offers he made to people, to his ‘new people,’ would sooner or later be favorably answered anyhow. As a matter of fact, the debt he owed was no more than two or three thousand pounds, which he would honorably repay . . . İncila Hanım was sure of this. The experiences of those days were still fresh in his mind. Those experiences belonged to a past, to a remote past, back to a time from which the spectators and witnesses had now been consigned to oblivion. She was not merely a true friend; but also the ‘keepsake’ of a friend; a keepsake from a friend: Hugo Friedman by name, who had lived his London adventure in a completely different fashion from him, in narrow rooms and with dreams far from being colorful . . . He distinctly remembered, he had corresponded with him during his stay in London and had even sat down at his table and had long talks. Hugo had been on a long and arduous sentimental journey with that girl with the beautiful voice from Kanlıca. The story of two people of different origins, two people who were believed to be someplace other than they actually were, two people fated to be the subject of discrimination wherever they went. He knew where the said prejudices took one, to places of exile. Journeys undertaken in the aftermath of certain resentments had bypassed him. That young man who could not find the family he had been searching for and that young girl who had been in pursuit of her songs on one of the most beautiful coasts of Istanbul, had already set off on their journey when they had begun corresponding. They were taking their initial steps in Istanbul, toward the life they were going to lead . . . keeping a low profile while experiencing their passions to the full. Just like in those days when his elder sister, whom he had deprived of a couple of sentences written on his soul, and his brother-in-law who had failed to find the child he had been seeking inside him, had been compelled to cross those borders. The price of it had eventually been paid off sooner or later . . . Monsieur Robert was a friend of Hugo from High School. If one takes into account their past experiences, this relationship assumed a peculiar meaning. This sentence has to be transformed in order to better define certain truths: Monsieur Robert was the only friend of that child who couldn’t find his family. That child had always preferred to look at his acquaintances from a distance. There was more than one reason for this. Hugo was the child of a wealthy family who had benefited from the advantages of riches, but it was a family whose members scattered and disappeared gradually . . . The child was born into a family that had slowly prepared its own collapse at the hands of an authoritarian, womanizing, alcoholic father whose interests were limited to making money and spending it, and of a mother whose entire life was spent sitting at gambling tables. That child used to come home, dreaming that the mere stepping over of the hearth, even though for a very brief period, would provide him with warmth. He lived in a small house and ate his dinners in restaurants, clubs and snack bars. Meals cooked and served at home aided in establishing closer links with the family members during which they disclosed their big secrets. As a matter of fact, it was during one of those evenings that Hugo had disclosed the fact that he was born with one of his eyes deprived of sight. This was not distinguishable to people. He had confessed that it didn’t bother him. He had been accustomed to this defect. This may have been one of the reasons why he shunned people; nevertheless, the secret resentment that this created didn’t deter him from groping his way in the dark. Everybody knew of his defect, which he had experienced parallel to his mode of living; in relation to his own mode of living, to his capacity for vision . . . Nobody had drawn the boundaries of evil so far. “I must’ve been the product of the union of my father and mother who had been dead drunk; they still owe me an eye,” said Hugo. He ascribed some importance to himself despite his ‘natural’ defect, perhaps with some deep-set resentment. This resentment was not against the people who had different outlooks on life, but rather against his parents who had brought him into the world with this defect. He had confessed one day with a smile that this had enabled him to take a closer account of his friends. Those were the days in which that look of his had given him access to the world of his friend, of his only friend.

Had Hugo been successful in being able to look at other people and see the individuals from whom he had been separated long ago? He could no longer recall when he had emerged to view that girl with green eyes from Kanlıca. He only remembered that the consequences that followed that encounter had forced that man who had been looking on the world, on his world, to look with different eyes on the fierce battle raging within him. These consequences were one of the connections by which the family members wished to emphasize their existences to each other . . . a price had to be paid. Their relationship involved a connection which was difficult to be acknowledged by both sides for different reasons. The experiences in question had nothing original about them in fact; they were mere platitudes. They formed the contents of a story ventured or dared to be ventured, and were expressed in different climates with different words, visions and evasions; they had also risked trespassing their boundaries and passing over the stories of their solitudes and feelings of loneliness . . . by escaping to London. He was also in London at the time. He had made the acquaintance of Lola, he was about to cross over the threshold of a new a life he could not refrain from. He also felt himself to be on the brink of a perilous adventure. They were in pursuit of a new family, of
their
family. London, which they had seen in pictures as a faraway land of dreams, had been the point where their paths converged. This expression was far from being illusory. They were to witness in the streets of the city to which they had escaped—over a course of time, while aspiring to materialize their dreams—the different dimensions their friendship would take, as their steps would lead them in different directions . . . Our innate characteristics inevitably determined our place in life. Hugo had taken his flight to a foreign land with a woman he believed to be a foreigner, in order to forget the hell he had experienced in that house at Tepebaşı, risking burning the bridges that linked him to the past. This was undoubtedly a revolt; a revolt that only a few people could understand and interpret properly. This was the biggest revolt of his life. He could not otherwise attract people’s attention, the attention of the individuals he deemed to be strangers. He had set out with the intention not to see his parents again and to leave them in their own quagmire. He had been successful in avoiding his father. His mother had come to London after a few years. She had been separated from her husband after forty years of marriage. She understood her son’s decision to abandon a man whose corrupt lifestyle she had to share; she felt the need to confess this fact. She had given up gambling. She had barred herself from those tables for a reason she could not affirm even to her son whom she had begun to consider her sole support and to whom she felt closer and closer. She had paid a great price for it. She had indeed given up gambling but she was still drinking heavily. Her capacity to bear the effects of alcohol was remarkable. She never became tipsy. She might have been using drugs as well. Yet not even Hugo, who had been very close to her in those days, could detect it. Those were the days when London was seen by them in a somewhat different light. Now and then they went for a drink somewhere where they could sit chatting for hours. These were moments İncila Hanım considered quite normal despite his resentment of the past. Years had gone by and everybody had forgiven everybody and begun to understand each other. Years had obliterated the pains of those tremors. Everybody tried to find the time they had lost over the course of those years, to discover and apprehend it as best as they could. Hugo’s companionship, his first companionship with his mother was important in this respect, especially when one expected they would know each other better by steps deferred to be taken. The coffee houses, the cinemas, the restaurants they shared, and, in particular, their experiences during the long nights in that small house and the breakfasts taken together. Their life in London was spent in this way. She had noticed that Hugo had found the happiness he had been seeking and that he had apprehended that sadness in his soul; it had taken on an entirely different meaning. Then they had parted one day never to meet again. His mother had gone back to Istanbul after the two months, saying to Hugo, “That’s it!” and passing away silently in the Balat Hospital. Hugo had received the news of her death by a short letter written by a foreign hand that had preferred to remain anonymous. The letter said that she had shared the same ward with her mother. Apparently she had felt it her duty to write that letter. The funeral had been held. The letter said that if he so desired he might do something to commemorate her in a synagogue in London. Not to call him for her funeral had been the wish of his mother. This had been her last wish lying on her deathbed shortly before she died. She had said that her son would understand the reasons for their separation. This had caused a mounting heat in Hugo’s heart, a heat that had torn him from the city he loved and transported him to another place. He had not wept. He couldn’t bring himself to weep. There had been a rupture in their relationship, putting an insurmountable distance and estrangement between them. However, his expectations had not been in vain. He had understood perfectly well the reason why he had not been called to Istanbul, their separation in London would have served as an appropriate parting after what had gone between them. This was one of the moments when they could truly come together even though they had spent their time in different climates. He had in fact experienced such a meeting before. His mother was close by him; she said that death “had surged up” in her. She was not sick, she had no apparent condition; yet, she felt it and heard its steps approaching . . . They had been drinking for quite some time at this stage. It was a presentiment that had to be experienced by them. He was conversing with a woman who wanted to be left alone on the brink of death; a woman who believed that people who had not entered her life until then could not induce her to recollect her past, a woman who wanted to remain by the side of strangers, by the side of people she would have known to be strangers. The path she had trodden did not permit her to think otherwise and she was reluctant to see those that had hidden themselves along that path. To have been able to come there in the company of her son had been a gain in itself. At the airport, just before she said goodbye she had given him a fifty pound note asking him to go and bet with it after she had died and to look at the faces of the gamblers, saying: “I’ll be there with you!” This had been the only legacy he had inherited from this woman who had consumed her life in a totally different manner and to whom he could only approach at very rare moments . . . On the evening of the day he had received that letter he had asked Robert to take him to a gambling house, saying: “I’ve got a bet to make on behalf of my mother.” He had told me all these episodes, the experiences of the last moments that evening. There are stories that are written, that are desired to be written, at and for such times. Certain heroes and heroines see each other in a different light at such moments and try to find the children they have lost without paying any attention to the fact that they would become hackneyed objects . . . Hugo had indeed scrutinized the faces of the gamblers around the roulette table. He had detected the emotion they tried to conceal. “You’ve got to be clever to guess the lucky numbers from the way a croupier rolled the ball,” said Hugo. However, Hugo had no such expectations. That night would be the first and last night he would be playing. It was a small commemorative event. He expected that his mother would be there as an onlooker, that those faces would be familiar to her, and that one of those faces might well have belonged to her. That was all. The rest belonged to those who repaid their debts and who knew how to settle a debt they owed related to worldly affairs. Amalia, who had always wanted to be called by her first name by her son’s friends, Amalia, who had returned to Hugo in her identity of mother, was such a person. She was one of those people who had paid a big price for a passion, for her passion for calling bets. Only individuals like him could understand her; the fact that she gave her son that fifty pound note, her last savings, asking him to place it as a bet. Hugo had been at a remote distance from this world. This distance seemed to have determined his other steps as well. When one considers his past experiences, one can see that he had never risked playing big. His biggest bet may have been his decision to choose İncila Hanım as a companion in a completely different country. To tell you the truth he had not been alone in venturing to take this risk. Had it not been for the presence and support of his beloved, he would not have dared to engage in this risky game. Having settled in London, he had earned his living by translating the business correspondence of a big international concern, which, looking back on it, exhausted him. He might have been considered an important employee for the concern he worked for. In addi
tion to English, he had mastered German and French. He also had a smattering of Italian. Each one of these languages was for him a symbol of other lives, of escapes to other lives . . . This, however, was his drawn boundary. There was nowhere beyond. He had possessed nothing but small fantasies, moments and letters to faraway realms, to other stories. His fantasies, moments, letters, and İncila Hanım, who had remained loyal to him even after his death, nothing else deserves mention. He had always recognized the importance that woman had had for him, she who had been his sole companion, friend and beloved, who had never let him recall anything from Istanbul. What had been presented to him as a gift was not only a token of loyalty; it was also the story of a sacrifice, when one considers their flight and the locality they had left. İncila Hanım was one of those people who knew how to devote herself passionately to love; who knew how to value the life she lived, having chosen it in all consciousness of practicality rather than from nobility of heart, in settling in a life already prepared for her . . . This was also a life of sacrifice, a story in which a man knew how to turn to good account his losses like in every story of sacrifice. Robert had been a witness to it. He was in a position to recognize the value of the things he saw, as well as to assess the experiences of these people in their true dimensions, in their multifarious aspects, because he had met such a woman, the likes of whom he had never come across in his life. His recollections of the people that had come from there had reinforced this impression in him. In order to have an insight into her journey, one had to have an idea of İncila Hanım’s devotion to that romantic child who had compelled her to sacrifice a life of ease and comfort. He had not forgotten what Hugo had told him. İncila Hanım had always been the source of pride and admiration of his friends and enjoyed the reputation of being an enviable beauty in the conservatory where she had studied music. She had had many prospective suitors, not only among her friends, but also among the teachers who had imagined a blissful matrimony with her. Everybody saw in her a Seyyan Hanım. The tango world was ready to receive her with great acclaim. She remained an indelible image in the minds of people. The songs she sang at the seaside residence in Kanlıca were echoed on the opposite coast of the Bosporus. Ca
ï
ques diverted their courses toward her residence to listen to her during the hours when she practiced, possibly for a prospective performance when the time came in a different life or lives. People knew well how serious and resolute she was in her practice. One wonders where those people who had listened to her in their ca
ï
ques or her neighbors who had lent an ear to her melodies while bearing their own stories in their soul transported those songs? A question that İncila Hanım had asked him in their later years may have brought back certain remote experiences. She had to place her father somewhere, her father who had said that he seriously performed all that he undertook, who addressed the cognoscente saying at every instance that he withdrew to his solitude at certain prescribed hours. Şamil Şükrü Bey who had received a good education, who had made of his talent a credo to make use of his time in an optimum fashion, was a diplomat in the Foreign Service who had served in many foreign countries in the capacity of ambassador. He assessed the individuals according to their deeds and not by their promises or plans. That was the reason why he had deemed perfectionism as his philosophy in life. He had instilled this into his daughter’s mind. İncila had spent her childhood and adolescence in a well-delineated discipline in a great many European cities. She had mastered English, French and Spanish; she had received her first piano lessons there. Madrid had been her favorite city. During the summer she often went to Kanlıca, at the seaside residence of her maternal grandfather who had been a
pasha
. Her mother was a painter; in the cities she lived as the wife of the ambassador general, she had not tasted the bliss she had dreamt of. She died young in her forty-eighth year. İncila was seventeen when her mother died. She had sobbed for days on end and felt as though she had been abandoned. She understood the reason why certain people did not come back despite their being missed. Those were painful days.