Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale (34 page)

This was one of the moments when he was confronted once again with the fact that he would not be able to tell of what he had gone through, even to his closest relations. Everybody had reserved a place for the lie relating to him. Everybody had known him to a certain extent. We had desired that some of our lies remain unshakable, to abide forever wherever they were to carry us along. Everybody had contrived a truth out of that lie. In this belated return, nobody had believed or couldn’t bring himself to believe that he had been as alone as he had depicted himself to be, that he had been forsaken and had foundered. Undoubtedly the fault lay partly with him. During the days that followed his return to Istanbul, oblivious to the time when he had said to those closest to him that he had lost everything; that he had come back to Istanbul for important business affairs; that his briefcase contained valuable papers and contracts waiting to be signed; that his past experiences, the credit he enjoyed in a multitude of prominent banks across the world could solve all sorts of difficulties; that he had come from London to his birthplace that he had not visited for a very long time for a brief stay during which he purported to fix a couple of affairs and that he had effectively established contacts with otherwise inaccessible people. Yet, all his expectations had remained limited to those interviews and the topics discussed during those conversations. His attractive business prospects had not attracted due attention, they weren’t clearly understood and had remained a dull, dumb show. These were the last scenes of the play enacted in Istanbul. The same had taken place when he went to the Sipahi Ocağı Club, where he hoped to say hello to a few old acquaintances, during the nights he went out to gamble, while he made business offers based on his wild imagination, even when he stayed at home or when he bought expensive gifts for Tilda, his ‘little sister,’ whose origin God only knew . . . The lie was being carried on in every way . . . Well, everybody was in need of such a lie. Everybody who could not disclose their darkness to people was in need of such a lie . . . everybody who was acquainted with the idea of detachment . . . everybody who wanted to see life not where he had to relive it, but at the place of his predilection. Would that morning dawn once more from somewhere new and unforeseen?

What had been experienced ‘with them,’ what had been desired to be collected for a new place after so many years seemed to represent the fragments of an adventure of no return . . . fragments of an adventure whose dimensions would not cease to grow in another being, accompanied by alien elements and distances. This was the moment when Monsieur Robert had cast a glance at me during the recitation of the
Hagada
on that Passover evening, all the while smiling faintly at the wine goblet before him. I thought I had caught him unawares, seeing him as a man of a completely different ilk. Then I had realized that Juliet had had a part to play in this. She was staring at us. We had arrived at that moment with diverse feelings that carried with them the memory of diverse people. Notwithstanding, we had felt that we had met somewhere removed from that old rumor, that the dinner table brought family members and families together. The words were once again incarcerated within us, they constituted obstacles that barred our way to that individual we were in pursuit of; they were our borders we could not cross, that we could not describe. What was risked was a talk that three individuals preferred to hold in their restricted and closed states, during which every contributor addressed himself in the first person; notwithstanding we had taken an important step forward in this segregated time . . . even though we were not in a position to see each other as clearly and as we ought to have done. I always wanted to believe that Monsieur Robert had made a call to Lola. New resentments could be obliterated after all those resentments. Was it possible that in that interview, a return, a return to a life to start anew had been discussed? Who knows? A man eventually learned, could not help learning, what certain returns brought and took away after a certain point in time.

It would take a long time before I could have an insight into the truth . . . a very long time . . . at a time when I was to be obliged once more to carry the results of belatedness in an individual . . . That was the first evening that Monsieur Robert had seriously considered going to London in order to get lost for good, aside from the dreams that he might have had about the prospective experience with Lola . . . to London, to that place of exile, with the intention of never returning to Istanbul . . . He had a nagging feeling which he could not define, which he could not articulate, that was tracing this path for him . . . Madame Roza’s disease had not yet been diagnosed; she was not yet burdened with crippling debts; jobs prospects had not been reduced to nil . . . Those disastrous days that marked her downfall were not yet looming ahead despite the disappointments already experienced. Yet, what had been observed in that play that evening had also revealed the image of that path not yet taken. She would not be obliged to live with that individual denounced by her family, in the city where he would retrace her steps. The city where she had spent thirty-five years of her life had seemed closer to her when weighed against this sentiment. She was left there with these visions.

About a year had elapsed in the meantime . . . a year that had assumed meaning through communications that had become less and less frequent. I had often visited her at that hotel room. We used to go now and then to have a cup of tea at the Hilton Hotel. For her, it was one of the rare places, a place of refuge she doted on, and that Istanbul was endowed with, thanks to the power of the imagination of its people. She could never understand me, the fact that I did not feel myself at home there. Products of fevered imagination and elaborate deceptions had besieged us then. We had lost men elsewhere and had been looking for them elsewhere. Our history had been written in different words with missing and omitted parts; it would be written by other people or neglected altogether. Yet, there was a place where we met, where we succeeded in meeting. A place that we could not define, that we did not feel a compulsion to express, where we simply wanted to live, where we preferred to live to the fullest possible degree. A time would come when I would feel nearer. Some of us wanted to abide, to linger, sticking to certain details or to believe that we did so. We had wanted with all our heart to let ourselves be carried away by the charm of transformations, of inevitable transformations . . . Monsieur Robert had spoken to me of those years particularly in this specific corner of his; what I have collected relating to those years was mostly concealed in those tea times and to what those moments had conjured up . . . Gradually ceding the essence, the meaning and the details over to our experiences more and more . . . He was in need of a witness, of a spectator . . . What I had been looking for was a storyteller or, in other words, the missing part of my story. He had to tell his story to a third person . . . on the issue of whether I had gained some ground in the present story, we were agreed. The place we occupied in it had some bearing for both of us.

Then . . . then another year went by . . .

It was the morning of the Passover evening we had celebrated without him. He had called early in the morning. His voice on the phone was that of a dejected but resolute man. “I’m leaving for London . . . I don’t intend to come back . . . ” he said. “As a matter of fact, I’ve got the intention to pop in. Wait for me; we’ll have a chat . . . ” It was a Sunday. The streets were deserted . . . not a soul was stirring . . . The city was still asleep like every Sunday morning that the world had bequeathed to me. As I was passing by a bakery, I slowed down to smell the overpowering odor of the fresh bread. This stirred in my mind the image of the small restaurant I used to frequent to eat soup. The taste of that soup appeared to have made a lasting impression on me. We lose so many things and let them sink into oblivion. Could it be that our failure to reconcile ourselves with a part of our past was due to our fear of encountering the shadows we had left behind? It was a sunny and clear spring morning. A day of rest one would relish after a substantial breakfast by stretching on a sofa to peruse the dailies in the warmth of the sun’s rays . . . Were such details so far removed from those people? It hadn’t taken me long to get to the hotel. A room at Sıraselviler not far from the illuminated quarters of the city, although far removed from its radiation . . . Was it true that stars died without emitting any sound? Why was it that we learned of the death of a star so long after? Why so late? A room at Sıraselviler . . . a spot where a multitude of memories, and their consequent virtual representations could be shared . . . The story of that room, of the events that took place in it with their postulated meanings had begun to take shape. The authors of the story were assembling once again, in this bright morning, for a few details, words and visions . . . once again . . . for the last time . . . for diverse oaths, lights, and deaths . . . When I tapped on the door, I got it into my head that I could never get rid of this story. It may be that in knocking on that door I had reached a new ending, but the voice within me, spurred by this end, suggested that the story would be carried off to different climates as well. I had come to know this sentiment well, this little hope to which I would often return to, with other people, for other people; a sentiment which I would share with them to the best of my ability. That may well have been the reason why I had desired to alter all of those things as if they had occurred without other people knowing. Would Monsieur Robert be able to return to those days without considering his alien state? I waited; I had tried once more to wait. The hotel’s corridor smelt of death like many old and derelict hotel corridors. A woman of about fifty with carefully combed white hair had just emerged from one of the rooms to hurriedly pass to the room opposite, talking to herself. Her thoughts, which she must have imagined to be quiet, would most probably continue when she entered the room. Whose room was it? What had she been looking for in the room she left, why had she quit it for another? How did she see herself, the individual who spoke ceaselessly to herself and who gave the impression that she could not get rid of that person within her? The possible answers to these questions would certainly remain a mystery to me. This event had caught me unawares, leaving me no time to face my own problems. The woman had long white hair and was wearing a transparent nightshirt which exhibited her breasts in full view . . . Monsieur Robert had opened the door as the woman entered the room. I had perceived hesitancy on her part from the sound of the steps coming from behind the door . . . the sounds of hesitancy, fatigue, expectancy, and of being led astray . . . Then we had glanced at each other. I know all too well that I shall never forget that moment. Our exchange of glances needed no further verbal expression. He had laid his palm on my shoulder. He had on his countenance that lamentable smile which would haunt me ever after. He wanted to tell me that I shouldn’t be too disappointed for him; could it be that he was trying to elicit from me some encouragement on the eve of his final departure? “Yesterday evening everybody had been looking for me,” I said, “I had a talk with Juliet; about your experiences. She said she was sorry for all that had happened to you,” I added, holding out to him a parcel containing leftovers from the evening before: spinach rolls, leek meatballs, and two duck eggs fried after having been boiled first, as well as unleavened bread and some jam . . . The intention was to enable him to recall that warmth wherever he went . . . “She sent this to you; she said it was your portion. She’d like to have breakfast with you some day. ‘I’ll prepare
bimuelos
for him . . . ’ she had said with a smile.” Everybody knew, and had to know, that that meeting would never take place. “I can’t carry more than those two bags,” he said, pointing to them. I knew it; I knew that they had been witness to a multitude of different journeys. A multitude of journeys, but different journeys, journeys in a different world to the one they knew . . . At this time they happened to flank him like faithful companions . . . This reminded one of the old clothes he would no longer be in need of. “There are so many things . . . ” he added afterward. To carry one’s past by assuming the identity of an enduring traveler . . . in other words, to know how to carry it; to feel within one’s heart the obligation to carry the burden of what remained of the past . . . This involved both living and transporting the story in a different fashion or in one single breath—to know how to stand the test of time in one single sentence; for our own sake, for the sake of that individual that we cannot dispose of; despite our best efforts . . . For other lives, for those lives that we believe we shall believe are with us forever . . . To know how to defy time in an inexhaustible sentence . . . With our acquisitions from other places, with our expectations, we will see that they are embodied within them. The paraphernalia Monsieur Robert would have required in the land he was proposing to start a new life in was rather restricted to him. His worry and discomfort was due to his indecision as to what he should take with him or not. His witnesses were there surely . . . Yet, how did he propose to go his own way, in the company of whom or in the absence of whom? To take any steps under the circumstances was disheartening, nay injurious. You might tackle the subject of life by dwindling it away, trying to share it with someone else. This had to be a feeling that would assume some meaning in the circumstances. But then again, in what esoteric words, sunken into oblivion, had that land been embedded with now? Where had you last seen such a sentiment, in which individual? In that story you wanted to write? In which unassailable castle? In a story you wanted to write and rewrite even though you had already written it?

Objects, furniture . . . Jackets, shirts, neckties, shoes, handkerchiefs, cuff links purchased for different days and different nights, different places, and different experiences . . . Business interviews, notes of paramount importance, documents, catalogues . . . Business prospects brought to Istanbul with great expectations had always been of overriding importance in his imagination. Big business opportunities, likely to change the course of a farsighted businessman’s life . . . He could, for instance, set up a brokerage house which would buy and sell from the New York and Tokyo stock-exchanges. Through considerable bank credits thousands of gas masks could be imported at a very low price via India for the army, millions of syringes for state hospitals. A big coffee plantation could be bought in Brazil. One could also bid in tenders for construction projects in Nigeria benefiting from the funds offered by the World Bank. One could also be a partner in a casino. Offers were not lacking, payment facilities were sure to be obtained. Yet nobody, no one who was supposed to understand, would understand. The same thing had happened in many relationships, in the days and nights in many a country. He yearned to return to those different countries.