Many and Many a Year Ago (24 page)

She thirstily downed a glass of cognac before beginning.

“I was so lucky to be reared by my grandmother. She was as refined and delicate as a porcelain figurine. She was my mother, sister, and best friend. My
joie de vivre
increased with every ‘Good morning' we exchanged; and every ‘Good night' came after a day made richer by her every gesture. The first thing she taught me was to love color—which was why I never believed she'd be able to cope with my blindness.

“My father came to see us once a year, and my grandfather tried not to be at home then. As soon as my father and grandmother had greeted one another, the quarreling would begin. I knew that he held me responsible for my mother's death. And I knew that he hated the fact that I looked so much like her. I was frightened of his erratic behavior and the wrong toys he always brought me. Despite his protruding eyes and gray hair he was handsome. I suppose I envied him because he looked like my grandmother. He had earned Master's degrees in literature and computer programming, but not even his mother knew what his job was. ‘Maybe Yusuf has a very important position in the computer division of a secret organization,' she used to say hopefully.

“I decided he must be a high-ranking English spy when I heard him yelling on the phone in English, but changed my mind when he finished in coded Turkish. I wasn't terribly sorry that we never saw him again after that summer between my second and third year of high school. He told me when we saw each other for the last time, ‘My daughter, I don't know whether it was lucky for you that your grandmother first practiced her parenting skills on me, but it's definitely a good thing that you've got your artistic mother's looks rather than mine.' I was annoyed that he referred to me as ‘my daughter' but also relieved, as it seemed to me another sign that he was leaving for good. We decided we would tell people he had died in a car accident. But I'm pretty sure he's still alive and that, moreover, he comes once a year to gaze at me from a distance, like a perverted peeping tom.

“The first time I shouted with joy was when I got the news that I'd been accepted by the Art Department of Mimar Sinan University. I knew I'd never become an important painter, so I set my sights on the academic world. I took more pleasure in observing than in painting anyway. After classes I'd visit an exhibition or two. It used to bother me if I couldn't find a story or poem hidden in the paintings. I amused myself by working on my pet theory: the colors humans wear always clash; the colors nature wears always harmonize. I always found a way to meet painters whose work I liked and I never went to bed without reading from the biography of a master.

“I was in my third year when I noticed the freshman Rebii, who always sat sketching in the library. He had a relaxed attitude and an enigmatic face. He was bohemian yet chic. I was impressed by the sketches of his that I sneaked a peek at, so I decided to introduce myself to him. He seemed to be an agreeable, well-mannered kind of guy. Since his father, the high-society dentist Nebi Güler, objected to his becoming a painter, he'd decided to be an architect instead. I gradually got used to taking the lead in our relationship—I guess I thought I was molding the passive Rebii into the ideal husband-to-be.

“My grandfather must have told you about the accident. What really killed me was Rebii's running away. I was afraid I would end up struggling alone in the dark when my grandfather succumbed to alcohol and my grandmother to death. You yourself know how I drove away a real friend who came to help. My psychiatrist—a collector of poor engravings—told me, ‘Those pills I gave you can only cure your headaches. You'll have to find your real medicine in time and in yourself.' Time did what it was supposed to do, but I was hopeless about myself until I heard that tribute to Ingmar Bergman on the radio. He was my favorite film director. Although I had trouble connecting with his dignified characters, they still looked magnificent to me. A sentence by Bergman's son-in-law, the writer Manning Henkel, made me stop and think. ‘Bergman increasingly took refuge in music as his eyesight failed him,' he said. I think this was the divine portent I was waiting for. I stopped seeing myself as the most pitiable girl on earth and a talent lost forever to the art world, and relaxed a bit. I reached a conclusion, as you know: peace with yourself, peace with those around you. Now the next test is my check-up in two months. I hope I won't collapse if they say that another operation won't help. But if they do say there's hope, I don't even want to know if the money we have left is enough: all I know is I can't ask my grandfather to give away his olive gardens …”

Like a teacher rewarding a student for an enthusiastic reading of her composition, I caressed Sim's cheek. I didn't much like the phony tone of my voice saying, “Something in me is happily telling me that you'll see again. And don't forget that I'll be there whenever you need me.”

Next morning we started
Cities of the Plain
. We discussed our misfortunes in a quiet Golden Horn café. Nobody else was in the cinema where we went to see Nuri Bilge Ceylan's
The Seasons
. We were invited to the Uzels for dinner. I knew Sim would impress them. “She looks like Audrey Hepburn rehearsing the role of a blind girl,” Esther said, which sounded right when I remembered the looks she got from the men on the street. I thought my houseguest would be pleased by this delayed compliment but I was mistaken.

For breakfast the next morning we dipped our fresh warm
pide
into Ayvalık olive oil, then with
Cities of the Plain
under my left arm we set out toward the nicely named Unkapanı. I narrated to her the misty Ottoman streets between Zeyrek and Horhor inch by inch and color by color. I read Proust to her in dim cafés under the pitying gaze of tactless retirees. I became self-conscious when I realized that I was producing a different voice and rhythm for each character. (Was this the ploy of a restless father expecting the daughter to whom he is reading fairy tales to quickly fall asleep?) We had lunch at Tirebolu Pide in Fatih. I raked the couple at the next table with my eyes when they stared at me for tearing Sim's
pide
into smaller pieces. Sim liked wandering around the antique dealers' shops on Horhor Street. She fell asleep as soon as we got into the taxi to go home. This time I didn't have the heart to pull my shoulder out from under her head.

I was relieved to hear why she'd turned down my invitation to go to a concert: she needed to get ready to go to her friend Banu's the next morning. (I was now about seventy hours behind in my plans for Disco Eden.) Together we packed her suitcase, and I didn't find helping her dry her hair so tedious. Reluctantly we finished the longest volume of
Remembrance of Things Past
.

I had to admit that I was getting used to Sim. She was an agreeable person who knew when to listen and when to ask questions. For the first time since my infirmity I had revealed my own inner world to someone. Walking down Sofyalı Street with Sim on my right arm and her suitcase in my left hand, I said, “Let me remind you that we still have three volumes to go.”

“I have
The Captive
with me,” she said. “I never thought we'd get past the fifth one.”

“I'll pick up the last two,” I said. “You've got three days ahead of you to make up for lost time with your Banu.”

I liked the studio just inside the entrance of the gloomy
han
that housed pious foundations, trade unions, and the offices of never-to-be-retired lawyers. Was the mess in the studio compensated for by the Puccini opera surging from the stereo next to the antique stove? I almost started describing the colors and sorrowful tales of the huge paintings on the walls to Sim. Banu Tanalp was an attractive woman in her fifties with an elegant look that made one want to pull oneself together. When she told me that she was one of my listeners, I found her ironic smile less fearsome. Sim had already told me that she was an artist who didn't strive desperately to be recognized. On her graduation from the Fine Arts Academy she had married a sculptor thirty years older than herself. It was an exceptionally happy marriage, envied by all her friends, lasting until her husband died four years ago. I was impressed by this artist with the mournful eyes, whose son had risen to the second-violin chair in a California city orchestra. Later I would understand why she had looked down at the floor when I told her I would come back in three days to collect Sim.

The inevitability of two-year-old magazines at the dentist's and two-day-old newspapers at the barber's. As I sat patiently waiting my turn at the Sevil Barber Shop, Taci seemed to be slowing down just to annoy me. A news story and photograph in a tabloid paper with unsolved crossword puzzles caught my eye: the well-known society dentist Nebi Güler's historical mansion on Büyükada had burned to ashes along with everything inside it. The cause of the fire, in which no one had died, was under investigation. The fact that the museum-quality contents of the house were uninsured was emphasized.

I went outside immediately and called Samsun on his cell phone.

“Where can I track you down, you teller of tall tales?”

“I'm in Istanbul, Captain, and with good luck I'll be back in C. tomorrow.”

“Did you and Muho burn down the mansion?”

“I don't get what you're sayin', Captain.”

“I just read about it in an old newspaper. Sim's old boyfriend's mansion completely burnt to the ground. Thank God nobody died.”

“The papers I could buy if I had enough money only cover fires in the boondocks, Captain. And in my book we ain't supposed to light an empty house on fire and run away. I wish I'd been there when those Nebi and Rebii scumbags were at home so I could have shot their eyes out. But Haluk Bey wouldn't let me go, Captain.”

If I believed in Samsun's innocence, I had no difficulty figuring out who the arsonist was.

“Captain, if you please, I got somethin' to tell you.”

“No more than three sentences, Samsun, and let them be your last words. My mind is confused all of a sudden …”

“Now we talkin' man-to-man, Captain. I made up that story for Sim about Haluk Bey crying because of her, to soften her heart. (
This worked
.) To set her up for a stay in Balat, I asked Mrs. Banu for help, and so she pretended to go to Tokat. (
This worked too, didn't it?
) My apologies and my thanks, Captain.”

“If you were here I'd strangle you, Samsun! Are you practicing an internship in meddling, you interfering rat?”

“If necessary, poor Samsun will sacrifice himself for you, Captain.”

I knew that the Master of Twilight, Suat, wouldn't be satisfied with arson alone if he had decided to punish the Gülers. I googled the name on the Net. The news that Nebi Güler was last seen in Cyprus with a model on his arm, and that the Nazmi Ziya paintings Aydeniz Güler had bought were fakes, was offered almost gleefully. It occurred to me how I might get some information on Rebii. I found his father's phone numbers and went to Taksim. I found a wine-whiff-free phone booth and dialed the non-rhythmic number of the Güler Dental Clinic. The secretary broke off her canned response mid-stream, asking abruptly, “How can I help you?”

I asked for Rebii Güler's number, knowing that she would scarcely want to help.

“Who's calling?”

“An old university friend of his, Sadık Kaçmaz. I wanted to express my condolences.”

“He lives in New York now and unfortunately we don't have his phone number.”

“Okay then. How is he getting along, may I ask?”

“Have you just heard about that horrible accident he had last summer?”

“It would be a comfort to me if you could fill me in on his latest condition.”

“Rebii Bey was walking in Manhattan that night when a motorcycle hit him from behind and knocked him down. Just as he was about to get up, a van ran over him. Both of his legs were severed at the knee, sadly …”

I hung up, my head pounding. My inner voice probably thought it would soothe me to say, “Be patient until you meet your benefactor, that postmodern Robin Hood.” I went home and took two sleeping pills and went to bed. That evening I was playing chess with Sami for pizza. (Sim never liked him and once said, “This guy with the firecracker voice, is it fake art he makes?”) I was concerned when he met my bad moves with even worse ones.

“Sami, I know my mind is confused, but what about yours?”

“There's a rumor going around the bazaar.”

“The Grand Bazaar or the Mirror Bazaar?”

“The bazaar says that when Professor Ali gets Sim's eyes opened with an operation, you're going to marry her.”

“So then, Master Sami, did you step up and say, ‘Hey bazaar, I live in the same building as those two poor people and I would know if there was anything between them. Lieutenant Kuray has taken a disabled person into his home for the sake of humanity.' Did you?”

“The young bazaar folk want you to have a big colorful Golden Horn wedding. I have some dollars saved up, and if necessary …”

“I restrained myself when you said that Pink Floyd was more important than Tchaikovsky, but this is too much nonsense even for you, Sami. You'd better get out of this house, or lab, or whatever it is, and don't come back for ten years even if I implore you!”

Hayri Abi used to say, “Don't use music like an aspirin by taking it only when you're mad.” I looked in my drawer for money to go to Disco Eden, but there wasn't enough, so I went down to the shore instead. I sat on the first bench I found and tried to make the best of the cool night air. For a while I listened to the cars hissing by in even intervals on the wet street behind me. Then the surface of the water trembled slightly, and I perked up as though I were about to see a ghostly sailing ship slip by like a Byzantine souvenir.