Read Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale Online
Authors: Mario Levi
We had to break our conversation for very special reasons. One day I encountered him in front of the French Consulate. He had under his arm books he had borrowed from the library of the Consulate. He looked old, far more aged than when I had last seen him. How many years had lapsed? Four, five, seven, perhaps? I don’t want to recall. He looked offended by my lack of concern for him all those years. I’d told him I had had to travel abroad and had to stay there for several years. He had nodded his head. Life brought to us different people and taught us to experience different moments. He had said he devoted the majority of his remaining time to reading. He had worn himself out. He hardly called at the shop. Everything was in a state of collapse anyway, waning; just like in certain houses and lives. That shop had provided the livelihood of many souls, kept them united . . . He must be thankful now to possess a house, a house that nobody dared touch, the house, the last witness of his loneliness. It’s true that he had another house in Büyükda, but he rarely went there anymore . . . What had been lived there belonged to another time. He lived there all alone. Nobody knocked on his door anymore. However, he had learned how to remain content with what he had. He got up early in the morning. He had his breakfast for which he laid the table the night before. To live in his new world in the company of his old things contributed to his passing the time more easily. The old things represented expectations, regrets, voices, and scents, naturally. The old things were Madame Roza, little Olga, and little Lilica . . . they were Kirkor, Niko, and his parents; the streets that led him to those houses and rooms . . . the things that had sunken into oblivion . . . the things which were still fresh in his mind. I knew all these things, of course. Life had brought those people to me too. These were individuals whose stories I might one day have the courage to narrate. I’d told him about this, about this fantasy of mine. He had smiled. We both knew that this story could be written in a completely different time . . . It was a spring day . . . just a couple of days to go before the advent of Passover. Those who had been staying at Berti’s would join the rest of the survivors. I might go. We could come together for the sake of our crowded days. If only I could get some rose petals from somewhere. He had told this to Berti as well; but he was absent minded, he had become more abstract lately. This was understandable; it had not been so easy to put up with what he had to endure . . . . To cut a long story short, I might pass by the Flower Market after all. Provided I remember. He had missed that scent so much. It was the season, the season the roses would be in bloom. Then he had glanced at his old silver pocket watch hanging by its chain. We knew the story of that watch. There were tears in my eyes. I had looked at him with a deep affection I can never describe. I think he had noticed it. We had a past, a past that included our joint existence, in different places and cities but essentially at the same place, a past that we had reflected on telling the same story. “Those ships had passed us by . . . ” he said at that moment . . . Those ships had passed us by . . . We were strolling along the main street of Beyoğlu . . . once upon a time . . . along the main street . . . Those ships had passed us by . . . A couple of eyes were fixed on us . . . A couple of misty eyes, their pupils smiling . . . We were once more at the spot where the stories recycled.
Can you watch that star?
I had paid a visit to Berti long after the time of that short story, whose meaning was stressed by the memories those vessels had aroused in us, of those vessels that we had missed, of which we were simple spectators. I had recalled the rose petals as I happened to pass by the Flower Market long after their season, feeling once more that sense of delay. I had thought of another season. “That will be for the new season,” I said to myself. However, whether there would be another season or not could not be determined. Another spring and another summer . . .Would Monsieur Jacques be able to express his modest yearning once more in another season, while getting prepared for the summer? I could not tell. All that I knew was that all my heroes who had figured and breathed in the present story were aging in their respective corners along with their different resentments. Berti himself had passed the allotted span; the shop seemed to him a long way off. Those values had been exploited by those emotions. Our talk had not lasted long. He spoke of his intention to close the shop and turn his assets into cash with the least possible loss. His neighbors from Konya showed some desire to purchase it, but they had quoted a price much lower than its actual value. Notwithstanding, he would still give in as he had no other choice. He distracted himself, putting off his acceptance. That was the only thing he could do. The day belonged to others from that point on. He was certainly not the first person who pronounced those words and tried to interpret his ventures from a similar angle. The story was an old one. There were those who would replace others, this would go on perennially. What was important was to be able to understand, to know and to discover the identities of those ‘others,’ of those that seemed to be others, and to be able to identify them accordingly. The emotion inspired in one the image of a question lurking behind a blind alley, a question that might not so easily be put forth the next time. The absence of Olga, Uncle Kirkor, Niko, and Arab the Negro was deeply felt. This was an absence felt by us all . . . Berti also felt this absence . . . He had understood that certain objects breathed only with their possessors to assume some meaning. His father may have decided to keep remote from the shop he valued so much. Now and then he dropped in and talked at great length with Juliet. Juliet used to call him up every morning at an appointed time to hear his voice and his wishes, if he had any. There! He had once again been shoved aside. The foreground was occupied by Juliet. However, no offense was meant in this; it was only a sardonic and derisive remark; a longstanding sardonic remark that only those who knew Berti could notice. What changed in this song, left unsung, was this silent stare. He had been able to reach that boundary during those days, in those separate solitudes. In the meantime, his father, having reserved a place for the death of Jerry, had devoted himself to religious practices. He used to borrow books on the philosophy of religion from the vast library that a friend of his had converted from a synagogue. Juliet saw this gratification from his own thoughts and feelings as a natural consequence of his approaching the great beyond. This demise was one way that old dreams contributed to its interpretation. I had understood this reality even better the last time I had gone to see him. He seemed much older than the Monsieur Jacques I had encountered in front of the French Consulate, notwithstanding the fact that only six moths had elapsed . . . only six months . . . He had taken me to task for failing to show up at their house during the Passover, as such returns might not be possible in the future. I had certainly not expressed my feelings about the fact that I had refrained from paying a visit to them lest I experience that undisguised debacle. There had been so many voices and visions there . . .
During our interview, he had read me a few chapters from the book he had been reading, the latest one. What was written in the Talmud or in some books of philosophy he could understand only now at his advanced age.
“I’ve just purchased a lottery ticket, for the first time in my life. ‘When God throws, the dice are loaded,’ as the Greek proverb goes. Suppose I win, I’ll be able to leave a pretty legacy for my family. My father had spent his life saying, ‘Perhaps next time!’ I think I’ve missed much, very much,” he said as he saw me off. His wish had been to leave something for his family before he departed . . . despite the fact that he knew that his children had remained somewhere far away and disappeared from the face of the earth. It was interesting to nurture such a feeling without ever losing hope. In that long road, one needed, in addition to one’s realities, fantasies and delusions.
As I recall all this now, I cannot help but feel remorseful about my failure to attend his funeral because of my delay in receiving the news of his death. What had endeared us to each other? What sort of a cell had I locked myself in that had impeded me from receiving the news of his death? It will take me some time, I know, before I’ll be in a position to provide an answer to this question. I need some time. After I realize how to proceed on unreservedly . . . I might, on a whim, convey my answer to the people of my choosing perhaps, to my own people. There’s no harm! I would thus be able to reach them on all accounts. I would prove to myself that I had made it, sooner or later. Yet, I’ll never be able to suppress my regret for having been absent at his funeral. These doubts will never quit me and will surely break through when the occasion presents itself; doubts that I will never be able to give utterance to or share with others. What he had bequeathed to me there were certain realities which assumed meaning mixed with wry joys, resentments, sorrows, renewable hopes, and efforts to cling to other human beings. I’ll never forget those moments that transmitted those people to me, and instilled certain feelings in me that I gradually became aware of as I grew up.
The news of Monsieur Jacques’ death was communicated to me by Juliet on a sunny winter day. We had run into one another by chance close to the French Consulate. She wore black. I must say that my belief in meaningful coincidences was once more confirmed. As I looked inquiringly, she bluntly said: “We lost our father!” She was smiling; she said that this hadn’t been a surprise and explained that they had learned to live with death. I noticed that the wrinkles under her eyes had grown deeper and more pronounced. I was at a loss to find the right words. As though she had understood my feelings, she had patted me on my shoulder with such feminine sympathy. She seemed to have set out on a new journey, one steeped in sorrow. She still made the effort to keep smiling. “I understood that you hadn’t heard. Otherwise you would have done your utmost to come over. You knew him well; he hated ostentation. We gave just a small note in the obituary column; had he known of it he would have been reluctant to see it printed. Very few people attended the funeral; you know the usual cousins and relatives, a few old acquaintances from the market and a couple of individuals we didn’t know . . . You had obliterated all traces of yourself; we thought about trying to find you but we didn’t know where to begin. We felt sure you would be there had you been informed. Just before he breathed his last breath, he asked what time it was. It was five-thirty. I gave him his old pocket watch on the night table. He cast a glance at it; then he said he wanted to sleep . . . These were his last words. In three days’ time it’ll be one month and I’ll no longer wear mourning clothes,” she said. We were silent; we were familiar with such short and dead silences. Our speechlessness was, in a sense, the continuation of our conversations we had to break off at certain intervals in the past. I asked how Berti was. “The shop has been closed,” she answered; “he stays indoors . . . Sometimes he goes out to see an old colleague. He’s got plans for the future. ‘How about immigrating to Mexico city?’ he said only the other day. He said he had old friends there; they would help him settle in and find him a job. As though it would be easy for him to work at his age . . . We’re obliged to draw on the fund; the prospects seem to be grim. By the way, I began giving English lessons; just in case, you know . . . And please, do show up more often; you see how scaled down we’ve become, don’t you? We’ve been dispersed all over the earth . . . to learn something more of life. But, please find a way to drop in now and then. We’re always at the same place and we’re resolved to remain there. We’ll talk as much as you please, no more, no less . . . Berti has always been friendly with you, you know, don’t you? When he speaks with you, he feels happy . . . you know,” she said.
No, this would not be our last encounter. In spite of our different outlooks on life, they were the rare people in whom I could trust in many respects, at which some people might look skeptically. We were linked to each other by a deep-rooted, ineffaceable affection despite the distance that separated us. The fact remains, however, that a rupture in our relations has occurred; who can tell what the future holds? We feel a sense of distance from each other. This distance . . . Perhaps it will serve us to understand each other better some day . . . Distance without ever forgetting that our connection will continue at different places, though farther and farther away . . . just to remind me more poignantly that Nora’s call within me has never lost its meaning . . . farther and farther away . . . For the sake of the past we have mislaid. When I brood over them, I want to believe even more firmly in the fact that when we watch the stars at night in heaven we are sure that our gaze will unite on the same star. A star is twinkling there for all our losses; a star is shining there for all our solitudes . . . even though that star is there due to the rapid changes in the brightness of that celestial boby and the turbulence in the earth’s atmosphere . . . even though this illusion reminds us of other delays.
The rest involves but a few steps . . . just a few . . . I know now that I can also exist steeped in the night.
EPILOGUE
OR
FAREWELL LETTER
Istanbul, June 1999
Dearest,
When I was six, death had, for the first time in my life, shown itself on the countenance of my great grandmother, who had had to live on a great many streets in Istanbul with her misty eyes closed to the daylight. What would be the point of looking through quite another obscurity at a very old tale, after having been acquainted with the crimson of the sea at sunset? How come that emotion had been conveyed through that obscurity? Toward whom had those steps been taken through that emotion whose voices and sounds were left unshared? During my first attempts at making headway in my story I had had no answer to these questions. As a matter of fact, even today I’m not able to, despite so many words, deal with returns or deaths. Actually everybody lived in his own darkness according to his own way with his own voices and touches.
One morning, in March, we awoke to see that snow had covered everything. Snow fell more heavily in those days. In those houses, which had already begun making preparations, the residents looked unable to decide whether the coal (which had been supplied in modest quantity) would be sufficient to heat up the rooms till the commencement of spring. Portable gas stoves might have been made use of to warm up the air, no doubt. But the heat that the coal stove emitted was a different heat altogether. Everybody was aware of this. An individual coming from outside and entering a heated room went immediately to warm his hands, holding them up to the stove. People smelled the odor of the scorched orange grinds that were usually placed on the stove cover; people should not be made to feel the absence of that warmth.
Don’t think that I’m longing for those times, despite the strong passion we have for returning to that lost world of our childhood. Yet, I’ve preserved that very special story of Madame Perla relating to one of the houses heated by a stove that dictated itself to me in drips and drabs. The reason why I want to bring back those days, heated by the coal stove, must be uncovered in this little story. Had there been, I wondered, other ways, alien to me, of finding shelter in that climate? I think I’ll find the true answer to this question when I’ll be able to unfold myself once more in front of that mirror. However, the very question I put to myself seems to indicate that certain things have been absent in me, which I will not and cannot define. My great grandmother had tried to cling to life over the course of the last five years before her death, sapping the energy she needed, relying on this warmth, which might seem senseless to many; an old tale, the touch of a sightless woman. I can say nothing more from my present position. The place I now occupy leads me only to this coast, to this coast of solitude. What I’ve been able to channel from the past to the present requires me to rediscover, to reconstruct in a sense, that time I had lived with my wrongs, inquiries, and despairs that I find no difficulty in recalling or interpreting. At least I want to believe that I find no difficulty in recalling or interpreting them. Like every other child, I also had my tales concealed, hidden somewhere within me. How can I forget that room? How can I ever forget the story blowing up within me through the songs that made the room what it actually was? No, I haven’t forgotten. I ought not to forget so that I might rediscover myself. In order to be able to attain a sense of reality in my tale, I had to remember to live it so that I might tell it like those other tales without getting tired or running out of things to say. I couldn’t forget, I couldn’t . . . This was also the fate of those in search of new lands, of those who had to look for new lands. The real realm of strangers was perhaps their only story because of this fact; the train and bus stations were instrumental in establishing bridges between quays and cities that concealed unwritten poems for this very reason. Certain silences had been kept alive thanks to the voices and sounds which could not be carried across boarders and which remained within oneself, detached from certain people. This may have been the reason why my great grandmother, conscious of the fact that her speechlessness was her shield, her only castle whose indestructibility she was sure of, had lived using the Spanish language as her vernacular, as her tool of thinking and feeling. The streets were alien to her. She was not familiar with the Turkish language. The language of the city in which she as born, lived, and whose light she had seen, had never had any appeal to her. As a matter of fact, no one would be able to tell exactly what language was spoken in the city during those days. She had awoke blind one day in the wake of a long lasting disease she had not deserved and which my grandfather was reluctant to name, only to lie down in another bed to sleep and wake no more. Her life to outsiders was plain and simple. As the years went by, I would be able to see the concealment of an individual who had spent great efforts to understand and convey to others the different aspects of the struggle for life behind this simplicity, behind that ordinary tale, in order that I might believe in this truth I would have to take certain steps forward; or at least I would have to try to do so. I think that the fact she said nothing to anybody before departing seems meaningful for some reason or another when I think on the experiences I had to go through thereafter.
I was not allowed to go into that room, into that last room; but my elder sister who had been instrumental in acquainting me with many boundaries, had let me step over that threshold. This was, to the best of my knowledge, our first complicity. We had opened the door making sure that nobody heard us. Over her body was spread a sheet, whose color had faded from concealing many labyrinths from many bodies. As she lifted it lightly she said, “she is fast asleep now.” She was right. A profound, silent and innocent sleep it was. A sleep that showed that the essential things that people desired to express were much simpler than they were thought to be. Death and sleep seemed to have been cast in the same mold. Yet, the sleep of death was much colder than I had imagined, somewhat colder, whiter and more silent. Whenever this image recurs in my mind, I ask myself for whom we try to keep our individual past alive, which we carry over to other relationships we cannot break with? I wonder whether it had been our words which seemed to hold us united and that gave birth to our solitudes. I would be feeling the same experience at other times and in the face of other deaths as well. The death of my paternal grandmother that I would witness years later would remind me of that same sleep for instance. The death of my grandmother meant my breaking with one of the vernaculars of my warm childhood days, with Spanish, in other words; while the death of my great grandmother was my breaking with those tales whose value I would appreciate whenever I intended to go back to those places. It had slowly given birth to those continental islets in a never-ending continuity. The things I had left behind seem to me now as though they are tales of a distant realm. I think I can now hear better than ever those voices, maybe because I’ve distanced myself from those tales. I feel myself nearer to those voices and scents and can see better what lies were concealed behind those appearances. In those appearances I rediscover myself in a form that is alien and forgotten to me. After all, we had coexisted with tales, hadn’t we? In tales we had loved, tales in which we were born and died . . . tales without end . . . without ever knowing the origin of the past . . . We used to tell tales to each other . . . tales . . .in order to see the past through our inner soul, through our inner window. It hadn’t occurred to us then that we might get lost in those tales, that we might be estranged from the people nearest to us.
( . . . ) In the mornings that followed the nights I spent suffering from asthma attacks that seemed interminable, I was obliged to pay a visit to that house that was an integral part of the ritual that our tales necessitated. A time would come when I’d realize that the things I had discovered had gotten me closer, without my being conscious of it, to another long text written in a different climate. I couldn’t possibly expect my great grandmother to take an interest in the truth, in this aspect of the truth. Her fate involved being fitted into a tiny story known to hardly anyone. In order to make headway in that tale, one had to experience the visions and the words that that language required from us. My hero used to move his hands back and forth holding cloves in his palm, making circular motions above my head and chanting an invocatory prayer with a tremulous voice whose origin has always been a mystery to me, in order to ward evil souls away from me. The cloves were then thrown in the stove in order to keep out the cold of the night. From today’s vantage point, we happened to inhabit a house haunted at night by cold shadows and sounds, and during the day pestered with deficiencies and things that are untouchable. At times I heard barely aubidle creaks . . . a few creaks . . . so that I could imagine that the spell might take effect and restore some semblance of order. I liked the cloves for their permeating odor which I tried to find in poetry. I was writing time, my time, slowly, silently, getting nearer and nearer to the emotion that that house had inspired in me. I was to be acquainted with them in that place, with those who led a life like theirs, with those that had been compelled to lead a life like theirs, who experienced many different deaths in many different ways and who carried many different emotions through many different times.
The odor of cloves creates other memories in me when I ruminate over these things. I remember that the atmosphere of the synagogue that my maternal grandfather used to take me to was permeated with the essence of cloves. An ancient silver burner, reminiscent of a big perforated lemon or artichoke, associated in me the maces of old containing cloves that were swung to and fro; the burning of incense took place after a short incantation. This must have been thanksgiving for God’s creation of perfume. Those moments were the most pleasant moments of the ritual. All prayers have been indelibly inculcated in my brain and have survived to this day, probably thanks to that perfume. This was an eleventh hour prayer; a prayer that lingers in my mind, a prayer I’d like to carry about with me forever. I cannot remember the contours of the people in the background. The only thing I remember is the radiance reflected on the faces of the congregation during the Sabbath. The devout passed the remaining time either in the houses of their relatives or in their own homes. For my part, if it was summer, I used to go to the Caddebostanı beach for a swim, and, in winter, my recreational interest dragged me to a movie theater. That was the time when the sea of Istanbul had not yet been polluted; the beaches were still populated by a host of people, a time that seems very distant today. Some preferred to hire a special cabin with a key, which was a way of displaying one’s privileged position in society, instead of changing in the cabins which allowed any one person to change in succession. The difference was obvious; those who had paid for a special cabin used to come out with only their towels while those who changed in the public cabins had to take their clothes with them to the beach. Those cabins would in time create other associations in me; associations related to the passionate moments of our adolescence; in those cabins illicit love scenes were a frequent occurrence. All these things were all the more pleasant during the days when the south wind didn’t blow. The south wind brought ashore watermelons, grapes, algae, and jellyfishes whose origin was a mystery. No weather forecast could, at the time, predict the changes. We used to be beachcombers along those shores . . . on the shores of our childhood . . . with our little steps . . . in our solitudes . . . with all our secret passions pregnant with the sadness that they aroused in us at any moment. This is the way the door to old stories is opened. Having gone through different individuals and tried new faces, your stories turn you back to your losses that are more easily stowed. In this way you can bring yourself to live the words you liked the most, words which are never-ending in your city, which can continue to exist in at least a few people through visions nurtured by those words. In this way you can ask yourself the reason for one’s belief, firm belief in certain people, in certain things to the bitter end, without any fear of your past or the shadows you left behind. For whom had you been experiencing that passionate love, why and for the sake of which worlds? Those little squabbles at home, would they be considered worthwhile to be contemplated and inquired upon by other people once the contenders had vanished into thin air? When one ponders on the probable answers to such questions, be it myself or others, it really does not matter under what circumstances, where and when I was born and raised in Istanbul. We might, off-hand, speak of the demeanor of a child, of a witness, trying to solve the mystery of the world within him, having recourse to new languages. Under the circumstances, there is no sense in brooding over in which schools I had studied, which of my toys I had lost in which of my dreams. Every one of those individuals has gone away to a destination detached from his fellow beings’, every one of those individuals spent years hoping, experiencing, and yearning; hopes, experiences and yearnings different from those of his fellow beings; every one of those individuals has vanished in the distance. When I look back in the light of what I can descry, I realize that many lives are wasted, what could be lived at present was being put off to the next day; that certain regrets are rendered meaningful by silence and that fears guide experiences. One thing I know, however, is the meaning of preferring to dissolve, by appropriating certain people with certain personas. I have not tried to understand or to explain in vain, looking back at my past, the history one could not put into words, the moments in which you were reluctant to face yourself and chase away the voices you preferred to forget in the shadows of the past, of the nightmares you wanted to get rid of despite your hopelessness in taking into consideration all sorts of repetitions. What I tried to put into words were those moments during which I kept walking back and forth in my room, from one corner to the other covering long distances, making myself believe that I had been walking on an interminable road—those recurrent nightmares. You feel that something is loosened in your legs during those long walks. You feel you are being followed in the silence of the night. To lie in that room is tantamount to hallucinating. The occupant of that room was a child who had confined himself there, who tried to speak about the green almond eaten in the shell although he had never tasted it in his life. The green almonds belonged to another spring. The clock indicated another time. This might have been the most proper and reliable way of patiently feeding that waiting and dreaming, that certain people could come before others in the proper sense of the word, after a lapse of many years. At the head of my bed was a weeping woman whose face, whose real face I was not able to see . . . My dream would not come to an end . . . I would try to change that dream by putting it on paper and hiding myself behind words of my choice for which I had a predilection and affection.