Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale (47 page)

Berti was deeply distressed by Mr. Dyson’s death; for him this was the end of a beautiful friendship. It was the death of a friend whom one was always in need of . . . even though he was far away . . . Berti had surely asked himself then why he did not dare return to London although he had already been there on two previous occasions. On the other hand, he might well find out the reasons for this little betrayal had he so wished. However, regardless of our claim of sanctuary because of certain ostensible motives, one was faced with the lack of something in the wake of death. There might also be a sense of remorse inherent in this absence, which might serve us in transmitting some of our feelings . . . Berti had expected that Mr. Dyson, in that distant god-forsaken, but truly genuine place of his, would never go the way of all flesh. There was nothing extraordinary in our anticipation of immortality for our friends whom we had, strategically, and perhaps unconsciously, assigned a place in our lives regardless of their hyperborean location. To know that those people would be always there might account for our need for our little zones of security. The question here was to believe in the certainty of one’s knowledge rather than simply knowing a fact. They could perhaps explain their reluctance or failure in seeing each other once more due to the fact that there would be no meaning in it. This relationship which could not be terminated, but which they could not properly define despite their best efforts had to stand the test of time through their correspondence. Would a certain number of words be enough to explain everything? Who knows? All things considered, there were an infinite number of ways to make a present of oneself to a given individual. Anyway, one could not possibly get rid of one’s regrets and deficiencies. In the long run, Berti and Mr. Dyson must have reached certain objectives in their letters. However, this long walk had failed to provide a clue as to the mystery that that photograph concealed. The critical bond could not be established, in other words. To be frank, I was no better. Pieces would be patched up only after the lapse of many years. People had been waiting elsewhere for the right time to reemerge. I cannot forget that moment when I felt I had been engulfed in the mystery. One day I was fated to be conjured up to take my place at the twilight of the story. However, this invocation would take place without Berti’s knowledge. I would thus have volunteered once more to assume the role of an accomplice. This was not my first instance of dodging a person whose story I intended to write. I now feel blessed with contentment for the fact that I have kept this secret, in other words, to have spared the pieces of information that he was supposed to know by the instigation of that visitor coming from a past long ago. I will certainly seek an answer for the action within myself one day. However, my rationale may undergo a change in the meantime. All that I can say now is that man takes pleasure in lying. Beyond that one must focus on the efforts related to self-protection through those voices. It may occur to you to know the time in the dead of the night, the real time. Do you think you can convey your feelings to a third person as you would wish? Would your apprehensions not raise barriers between you and them?

The Bridge

Despite the long time passed in between, the hours he had spent in the company of Marcellina were still fresh in Berti’s memory. They had just paid another visit to the pub on the Mill Bridge. They must have wanted to relive the previous experience they had had on the day of their first encounter, to give birth to each other anew. The river ran as usual while the
habitués
had changed. Berti had held Marcellina’s hand. They had stared at the town that stretched outward for a long time without uttering a word. They had promised each other that they would keep track of each other, regardless of their station upon the earth. Berti had said that he would come back soon, while Marcellina would be going to London. There was no relative left in her country who would be interested in her return, no one expected her there . . . As for the individual she had been looking to become, she expected she would show up one day . . . Once settled in London, she would inform him of her address. In the meantime, she might also pay a visit to Istanbul. Keeping track of each other seemed to be indispensable. In Cambridge, at the end of the road they had walked together, he said: “Life follows a completely different course for certain people. You’ll understand this well when the time comes.” They happened to be standing in front of the bus stop tTo which they had been turning a blind eye and which they had been trying to ignore the whole time. The bus was taking Berti to London. He should try to familiarize himself with the path that led him to that point, a point to which he was predestined; he should be capable of taking stock of his situation so that he could prepare himself to better deal with his predicament. They had melted into each other’s embrace. When the bus had started off, the love they had been experiencing for each other had made itself felt even more strongly. One of the heroes of this love story was on his way back while the other stood motionless . . . she was simply there; as though tied, doomed to remain tied by expectations. Through the window of the bus he had seen Marcellina smile as though she said: “Well, this is the end then; we’ll never see each other again.” The bus was running and the windows were closed; no sound could be heard.

On board the plane that was taking him to Istanbul he was to recall once more the image he had retained of her. He wondered whether he could ever believe what he had been through. He had promised to the people he had left behind four years ago that he would be back soon. Well, this return would now be for good. He knew and felt that those people had opened new paths for him in his life; namely, Marcellina, Mr. Dyson his tutor, and Gordon Lucas, his roommate, a schoolfellow with whom he had shared a desk and whose view of life was quite different from his.

In whom had you lost that paradise?

After an absence of two whole years, Berti’s welcoming ceremony in Istanbul had been rather modest. It seemed to him that he had told people about those days, about the wry joy of the past to a different person every time. Those were the individuals he had abandoned there and in whom he now wanted to take refuge. He yearned for them and tried to unearth them on certain nights. Who had not fancied themselves to have been a completely different person in a different story, a completely different person born to live a completely different life! Berti had believed himself as always forsaken in this odyssey. People who pave the way for our downfall are those who have no access to us, those who have always turned a deaf ear to our achievements and outcries despite their mindfulness of our presence . . . It was only Juliet who had empathized with him in his secluded state and proved to be a woman of great insight . . . Those solitudes for which nothing could be voiced that would give satisfaction. The real causes of this affinity would gradually unfold over time, time marred by deceptions, disappointments, and delusions . . . in dribs and drabs, as I saw my place in the story in a clearer light. I tried to discover the different aspects of Berti in relation to that said place, to be precise with the accretions of that place thanks to those words. Where had we been, in what time did we happen to be? At present I am no longer in a position to remember all of this in minute detail. At times, I saw myself strolling in his company; seated at a table in a pastry shop, watching a movie. I was confronted with a fragmented past. I wanted to patch it up into a whole, as I saw fit, in order to better understand the experiences we had gone through. This wholeness might be a completely different totality. On the other hand, it might not be a totality after all, and Berti’s fragmentary episodes might conceal a new meaning that he wanted to get across. It is a fact that a person can see from his angle of vision what he truly wants to pick out. All that he had wanted to find in me had been a reliable friend, a confidant, one to whom secrets could be confided or entrusted during our nomadic lifestyle. Could it be that we had intended to bury our differing solitudes in each other’s loneliness? Could it be that those long walks we had in the streets of our city from which we could not tear ourselves had drawn us to each other, despite all those fantasies we had indulged in? A time will come when I’ll take up my pen and write what that journey meant to me. Those long walks were our burden, our way of carrying our deficiencies and yearnings. When I go over these meanings that the path we have trodden together has generated in me, it occurs to me now and then to ask myself if I’m betraying a confidence, the beliefs, principles, and ideals related to the sanctity of friendship, by communicating to others what had been entrusted to me. This might hold true for anybody who felt like sharing with people, at least with the right person, with just one single true person, a story in which he had perfect confidence in its veracity, with a view to justifying, or, exposing his experiences. In one’s recounting his past history there were surely little betrayals in addition to self-delusions and efforts to deceive others. No one could perceive such subtle betrayals except those involved. However, in order to be able to better understand the reason behind our betrayals, we had to acknowledge the fact that while risking those betrayals we concealed ourselves in those individuals at the same time, so that we betrayed ourselves while betraying the individuals in question. It was our intention to hold the mirror up to ourselves while trying to hold it up to those other individuals as well. However, to be able to express this fact, we had to find the exact meaning of certain words; when I happen to be confronted with what I have gone through, with what I have been compelled to experience, I want to refresh my belief in making inroads toward, and having access to, those meanings. But I am at a loss to hazard a guess if communicating information and trying to bandy words would have any meaning after all. Any conjecture about this issue is surely beyond my reach at this juncture now that I am striving to penetrate and see through the different guises of my disappearance in those individuals. I feel sure that different facets may at the least expected moments associate in me faces I had never anticipated. I wonder if those people who preferred to remain hooked together with well-known lineaments ever had the same apprehension. They may well have had. Notwithstanding all the confidential information I am in possession of, I would rather hold my ground. One must not forget the fact that a secret did indeed protect one against threats while constituting an obstacle at the same time. To see through the meaning of the capability or the inability of taking real steps toward a person was so difficult and nerve-wracking.

One cannot deny that the celebration of Berti’s return home was not totally deprived of sincerity. Madame Roza had spent hours in the kitchen to prepare the favorite dishes of her son. Regardless of the predicaments both were in, there was a certain undeniable mutual attraction between mother and son. Under the circumstances, I tried to remain a passive spectator, a spectator who tried to keep his deficiencies and resentments in the recesses of his darkness. This scene that Berti had depicted to me during one of our walks had penetrated me with all the voices and scents that accompanied it. The value of certain toys destroyed, left intact, or stolen by some culprits was highly appreciated when one bided one’s time. That evening he was asked to speak about his experiences and adventures in England—in Cambridge and London. He had told them what he could recall on the spur of the moment while at the table. He had spoken about Gordon Lucas and Mr. Dyson, of the well-stocked library, not forgetting to mention his bicycle which he used to park by the public mail box in front of a house, of the chilly rooms which could not be sufficiently heated by the embers in the fireplace during the cold nights, of the crowded streets of London and of the large luxurious sedans. Uncle Robert had attended the graduation ceremony in the company of his wife. Their trendiness and elegance had not passed unnoticed. He looked fine. He had said that he had missed Istanbul and his family so much. He desired to see everybody and everything he had in the store of his mind again . . . . However, he had so many things to do first . . . He was extremely busy. He was on the eve of establishing very important business relationships with people all around the world . . . This news had enormously pleased his mother. It appeared that what he had written in his letters and what the gossips said were true. His young brother was far away, but happy; he had realized his dreams at least. He could boastfully say at present to his next-of-kin that he had in London a brother who lived like a lord. If one considers his period of matronship he was justified, one can say, in feeling proud of his own achievements and his success in life.

Now it was Marcellina’s turn . . . Marcellina, about whom he could say nothing during the first visit, despite the great passion he felt for her and the possibilities ahead . . . He had said that he wanted to marry her in London or in Istanbul. His blunt avowal had soured the atmosphere.
“Ya lo yori yo esto. Ya lo pensi ke te ivaz a kayer un dia de muchoz”
(I knew it! I had been expecting to hear of such a stupidity! I was heavy with suspicion!) said his father while his mother tried to calm him down, and had, in her usual charming reconciliatory behavior made the following comment:
“Jak, estate kayado! Deshalo ke avle ki e ezbafe!”
(Come on, Jacques, let him speak out and his tension be eased!) This fact which had bounced back after so many years had seemed to have found its former place within me. I believed I knew these people; these people who were arguing about things they could not openly disclose in the presence of others, about the evasions concealed behind those words. It seemed that they were groping for their places in this long story. Berti had desired to convey to me the exact words exchanged hoping to faithfully reflect the atmosphere. Those words seemed to have no substitute in any other language. What was the exact vernacular native to a region, the real language under the circumstances? Whose language was it? Whose loneliness and whose exile? I still entertain the hope of being able to share my experiences one day. I’m inclined to believe that there are people in a given climate subjected to the conditions of other climates and histories. I’m convinced that most of us are in need of such encounters in order to kill our executioners and phantoms, to deal a deathblow to them. However, in order for this to became reality, those same walls also have to be taken into consideration. “I can recall their lineaments. I had committed a grievous offense; I had been the bearer of the news of a murder; I felt like having been contaminated by a stranger with a mortal malady.” His resentment was reflected in his voice. I had understood; his resentment was not simply due to the fact that he failed to accept Marcellina in her own right, it had its origins in the fact that they had turned a deaf ear to her even in the prevailing difficult circumstances. They had had experiences with similar extraneousness in the past; they had been compelled to. But Marcellina’s case was important. Up until then no one had taken on such overriding importance. This is why he had dared to talk about her, not turning a blind eye to the disadvantages and the inevitable immeasurable latitudes involved.