Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale (65 page)

s preferred to be kept in the shadows of the past. We had had this experience before in different climates and in different sentences. This was just one of the emotions that had brought us to the riverbank of the individuals to whom we were inextricably bonded; we could not obliterate their images from our memories. I tried to change the subject; I started talking about the image and the legend of Vienna, where we happened to be, which might be the point of departure to a new and spontaneous story. I happened to be a tourist interested in the buildings and rooms seen on a sightseeing tour. It would be the story of being in pursuit of hopes fed by trivia and wry joys, wonderful in that they were not yet shared. Somewhere there was an image of an adventure, of a little legend. This city which I was resolved to know the ins and outs of by following the tracks of some old photographs, some airs and words which set off the salient characteristics of it, this city which I was resolved to penetrate, might perhaps lead me to experience certain indefinable things not imagined so far which would light the way to the unforeseen labyrinths of a new story. Fantasies and cities . . . I felt compelled to gain access to the meaning of this togetherness, of this lingering hope. A voice was calling us from afar . . . I could describe those visions. The streets I wasn’t familiar with had led me once more to one of the squares of the city. I was at the spot where the city met with strangers. The cathedral rose before me in all its splendor. I distinctly remember it. A long and old text which I had tried to enrich with lies, each different from the other, a text which I had been trying to enliven had once consumed me with its light when I had been under the effect of such a vision. The words did not belong to me; the visions and the hopes they contained belonged to other people. All the words I tried to find in those visions for other rooms and shelters belonged to other people. Under the circumstances, I was to enter with that old countenance of mine, with that face of a tourist I was being estranged from. I was standing mute. Those voices I could hear had remained outside the text I had been imagining; once more I had been compelled to converse with people far removed from me. That was the light I wanted to leave in another city, to believe that I had left it in another city. Thus I would not be in a position to touch those colors in the pictures of years gone by. What had changed? What differed after those numerous steps in numerous foreign temples? An emotion wasting away within me was smothering me. Right at this moment, I saw that woman when I was having this experience, the woman who was dragging me toward another faint hope. Before her were strewn hundreds of candles lit for hidden wishes which could be renewed ever after just because they were hidden. Silence reigned there for years on end. Tens of thousands of voices were heard in that silence, in that tunnel of silence, intoned in different places for different worlds. She had also lit a wish candle. On her face there flickered the light of other candles. This was for me one of those little rituals that was performed with all their prerequisites, duly observed despite any deficiencies. It was one of those elaborate rituals frequently practiced throughout the years with patience for the postponement of death. Whose voice was it? To whom was it addressed, for whose life? I was asking my fantasies once more whether I could trust them to show me the way to those stories. Where was I to be heading as an outsider, toward the individual I had lost or had failed to experience? Which different individual would I be trying to become, oblivious to all probabilities? All these questions were doomed to remain unanswered in the depths of that moment. Those questions meant our abandonment, our irredeemable abandonment, our hopelessness we failed to convey to the people we chose. Those questions were our history, our floral scents we could not share, our night walks, our morning cafés whose bedewed tables could not be touched. What had stopped me at that moment, or made me stand stock-still at that spot where these questions had brought me? It was as though there was an invisible wall before that voice which made its presence felt against my will. I had watched that woman from my lair, in her darkness, in such a mood. I could take a few steps forward, merely a few. Both of us were abiding in our respective solitudes, in our zones of security. She seemed to have in her eyes the traces of an inexhaustible longing despite the long separation. The war had ended years ago. The actors in that war had already buried with their dead what they had failed to live. Yet, she was still waiting for that person. It may have been because of this that she came to light a candle there always at the same hour. A candle . . . only one candle . . . in the hope of meeting him . . . Once this had been realized, progress would be easier. However, it was so far so good. Certain stories waited for a real presence just as is the case with those people and their relationships. After all, I had satisfied my need for an unforgettable detail to establish the permanence of the cathedral within me. The said detail should, at that particular instant, remain preserved for other moments. Otherwise, all the appearances there would gradually disappear in the outlines which I could not fit in anywhere in my life and could not account for properly—a construction in the process of moving away from me. The photograph had been shot, like all true photographs for perpetuity, for eternity and permanence. Although that woman had remained here at the said moment, there was another woman who was hailing me from my past. I had first run into her in the lobby of the small hotel which I considered an integral part of my pilgrimage in this city. She hadn’t noticed me. She appeared as though she preferred to remain oblivious to her surroundings and her furtive glances seemed to avoid all the figures alien to her, making sure they didn’t come into contact with any stranger or hotel guest. I could understand her. Those who closed the borders of a new world had wandered silently through my stories. However, what was important and should be considered from all angles was the reason why I attached such a great importance to the said borders and those beyond them, and the reason why I couldn’t restrain myself from speaking about them. The answer, the true answer was hidden somewhere, I knew. In order that I might understand the reason for this I had to take the risk of making further progress in my journey toward the darkness within me. It was not for nothing they had said that the future was already in the past. The remoteness of that woman to me felt at the same time like her closeness; it was like a stirring that had been awaiting words but failed expression. Before long I came by the knowledge that she happened to be the mother of that man who appeared to have shouldered all the burden of management for the hotel. That man seemed to be one of those heroes who had learned how to endure solitude, who called one to take part in a sad, mysterious, and at the same time, appalling stage play, whose true stories were destined to remain untold, a play that fed upon our fantasies, and what is still more important, upon our fears. He had a gash on his neck. It looked to be a deep wound that had become scarred years ago. Having checked me in in a fastidious and gingerly fashion, he had tended to me my key, saying: “I’m giving you a room that receives plenty of sunlight in the morning; if you think this might disturb you I suggest that you draw the curtains before going to bed.” For which I had thanked him as I was particular about it. “In case you feel like having a cup of coffee, I may send it up to relieve the weariness that your journey may have caused,” he added as I was heading for my room. My reaction to this suggestion had been quite positive. Not ten minutes had lapsed before he had appeared at my door with a tray which had the appearance of having
been rescued from an ancient derelict house about to collapse. I had suddenly felt the need to touch, even though for a brief moment, a memory and to approach it. I had placed a couple of books on the table. A couple of books I intended to experience and read again in a different city. Among the said books was
The World of Yesterday
. As he was placing the tray on the table, the man said: “Welcome to Vienna!” These words must’ve meant something, for, after a short silence, he added: “You are a writer, I see?” I could answer his question with a question. What had revealed my identity, I wondered; what particular clue might have given him this idea? Which characteristic of a man who had been trying to wade about on a path that many people would envy to be treading? My answer would be met with a sad smile . . . for a moment to be relived and narrated some day . . . A person could attain certain truths only through one’s intuitions. “You wouldn’t guess it; I haven’t read a single book for years now,” said the man. “Many a hero that have had an impact on my path thus far have been consigned to oblivion and the new heroes do not recognize me . . . And yet . . . during those nights of apprehension . . . during those days when war had ripped men from this city . . . ” he continued, but had to cut it short, leaving the words that had failed him to another time. This was the fate of sentences that were to remain without having had the chance of being transmitted to other people, but to be layered elsewhere at other times and to be resuscitated. Certain texts belonged exclusively to us. “I’m perfectly aware of the consequences that people who are deported are exposed to; regardless of the reasons involved. I’ve witnessed the same bitter experience in my country as well,” I said. He had nodded his approval with a smile, before making for the door. Just as he was about to close the door, he said: “By the way, don’t let my mother disturb you. She is a habitual sleeper; as a matter of fact, she is asleep in her room right now. Presently she’ll rise and walk through the corridors before settling in her armchair opposite the reception desk only to doze off again. I couldn’t part with her.” This last sentence had reminded me of an individual I had abandoned somewhere in my story whose trace I had lost. This fact might trigger within me the power of imagination which would lead me to make use of my own sentences. Otherwise, I had no chance of escaping that sleep, that long sleep. I had seen her as I was leaving the premises. She was just like her son had described. She was peacefully asleep in the armchair facing the reception desk. Had she been round the corridors, I wonder; for, I had dozed off for two hours. When I came to, I thought I ought to take up the hotel story where I had left it. Well, the woman was smartly dressed as though she were to attend a formal meeting. She wore a dark blue two-piece suit on whose lapel was a white line. Around her neck was wound a silk scarf with red and black spots; a couple of pearl earrings completed her outfit. Throughout my stay in the hotel she would be wearing the same dress and accessories. A special outfit appeared to have been decided upon for a particular stay. Certain people were attached to their habits of which they could not rid themselves. A like sleep I had witnessed elsewhere. There had been groundings there, a hope that could not be killed off despite all those preparations and belatedness. I had desired to experience to the bitter end once again a moment which seemed to have been mislaid somewhere within me. I had desired to live a certain moment, a precise moment yet again. To shuttle between different times was far from easy. To live the different moments in the same vision called for the transportation of voices that had to be kept muffled to the ears of others. I was striving to be as silent as possible and to keep away all traces of fear. However, the man said: “Don’t bother, she won’t hear your steps; as a matter of fact, she hears nothing anymore.” So, she did not hear anybody; perhaps having witnessed so many lives and deaths, she did not want to see anybody. She looked as though she had lived more than one time in one place where she would have been reluctant to be even a spectator of the incidents around her. The place where I had put up would hardly be qualified as a hotel. It was a sort of boarding house squeezed into a single flat or an old apartment. Thus, the woman’s wandering through the corridors at particular hours of the day became more meaningful. As a matter of fact, I was to run into her in one of those corridors one afternoon. I felt tired; I was going back to my room; I felt myself in surroundings from which I was estranged and whose borders I could not trace. The strange thing was that I had had the impression that the woman had come out of my room; that she had momentarily been wandering through the objects that made the room inhabitable. This seemed to be an integral part of my resistance against all that had been experienced and lost. This was a ritual; a desire to walk endlessly using one’s own steps in one’s own time. I had felt a shudder run down my spine. She was walking slowly, shuffling. She was hunchbacked. She seemed to have difficulty in carrying the burden of her years on her shoulders. She appeared not to have noticed me. As she ran into me in the corridor, I had to move aside, letting her pass. She cast a glance at me; big blue eyes were offset against her wrinkled face. She had her long white hair in a bun. I wondered if I was to remember her features elsewhere. I felt as though I was being charmed by the photograph of an ancient life far away from the city where I happened to be. We had been the spectators of the days we had actually been living from an indefinite time hard to be shared. This was the only communication I had dared to engage her with. She had thanked me and shuffled through the corridor without casting another look. That was the last exchange of words between us. I had not thought it realistic to expect anything further from this relationship. Once more I had preferred to remain aloof from that boundary. There, I thought I would be closer to my falsehoods. I had preferred not to talk with that woman in the cathedral as the writer or the hero of a possible tale in the hope of safeguarding this boundary. I had to leave them in their own stories for my own sake, for the sake of my own tale. Was this another sort of escape? Perhaps. However, a language I was not familiar with, which I found strange, kept me removed not only from the people of a different time but also from the city which I was trying to discover. I had to live the adventure of being a spectator on my journey. I had had a similar experience when I had caught that special particular moment at the opera house. I still remember the torso of Mahler. The mirror behind the torso was contained in other mirrors and the reflection of the crystal candelabra dragged me once again toward the visions that that inexpressible symphony conjured up in me. This was a moment lost on many a visitor. Referring to the owner of that torso, our guide had made the following comment: “He had been the director of this opera house for many years. He was one of our great composers,” in total disregard of the blank looks of the tourists to whom I had grown accustomed. I wondered whether a single sentence, void of contents, memorized and recited over and over again, could express that time accurately. If so, for whom had that time been waiting; at whom had those voices been aimed so that they might enable them to forget or delay which deaths? When we had gone down to the orchestra pit, what I had been told had generated a simple history of splendors in me. I had realized that I had severed myself from the group. I seemed to have fallen into a labyrinth replete with new pictures, candelabras, and mirrors. A gentle soul had been instrumental in guiding me through this labyrinth toward the exit. He was tall, with opaque eyes and white skin. He had been following me with his eyes; it was as though he had been there to catch me when I felt lost in this maze. His impressive low tone of voice belonged to someone who was afraid to disturb someone. He gave the impression of a fugitive, trying to escape notice, someone who was not wanted anymore at the place where he belonged, as well as o