Many and Many a Year Ago (6 page)

“Baba, I'm through listening to you,” I said, glad to see my right hand starting to tremble. “Otherwise you'll go on treating me like a robot for the rest of my life. You forced me to become a pilot just because it was something you wanted to do yourself. If you'd asked me even once, you'd have known that all I ever wanted to do was become a musician like you. Instead, you brainwashed me so completely that I hated even to come home on weekends because I couldn't handle civilian life.

“I knew, as I came down in that parachute, that I would never fly again. But I thought to myself, okay, now I can become the musician I always wanted to be. What an empty wish! Look at this right hand! The doctors can't fix it, Baba. I can't even use it to take a piss, never mind play an instrument. I never know when it will shake and when it won't, and sometimes I want to take an axe to it.

“I can't go to sleep without my pills. Then just when I think I'm relaxed, I'm struck down by a headache. You may be resigned to working at the cemetery, Baba, but I could never sit here pinned to a desk and rot just because I can't fly. I might as well be sixty retiring, I feel that exhausted. I'm going some place far away where nobody can find me. I'll work on getting used to civilian life and see if I can heal my wounds. Know this, Baba, I'm going to throw away my phone if you call me for any reason other than an emergency!”

As I finished speaking I looked over at my mother. It was the first time I'd ever seen her cry, but her eyes seemed to say, “I'm proud of you, son.” The other three people in that room were in a state of near collapse.

I delegated the logistics of the house to Mazlum and his mother, Aunt Cevher. He took charge of supplies while she took care of the housework. Between intervals of wrestling with the furniture she would wonder aloud why I wasn't married. Professor Ali Uzel and I said hello when we ran into each other on the stairs. He appeared to be in his sixties and was always elegantly dressed. From the look in his weary blue eyes I gathered he bore a hurt of some kind. According to Sami, this university lecturer was always writing. The neighborhood shopkeepers knew little about him, but since nobody had seen him smile for twenty years they concluded that he had a secret which would probably do as the subject of a novel. Obviously the professor's discretion as well as his gentle manners entitled him to respectability.

I spent a number of mornings choosing pieces from the CD library and transferring them to my iPod. I experimented with the classical cookbooks in the kitchen and got up from the table half-full. I sallied forth to explore the Golden Horn. Fener, Balat and Ayvansaray were like three stepsisters living in the same waterside mansion. Fener, with its naturally dense and mosaic-like texture, seemed to be the most mysterious. The grand buildings on the east end of the Horn were poetic: the juxtaposition of the lonely and abandoned Greek lycée against the Vatican of Orthodoxy, the Patriarchate, was positively
Felliniesque
. The real monuments of the district were the ruined Greek houses. At every crossroads of those fairy-tale hillsides I gazed at their empty windows, wondering what they were seeing. Whenever a faint breeze wafted inland from the coast I hoped that it would bestow a bit of rain on this faded glory, but it was always denied me.

Every tiny church that popped up on my path seemed to be assembled from stones cut from the same bottomless quarry, and I was charmed by the mosques that bore witness to the pious deeds of Ottoman pashas. It seemed ironic that as you moved west the rural layers grew thicker: nook-like tea gardens, labyrinthine alleys, dried-up ancient fountains, weary streets, and so many tombs of holy men. I memorized their inscriptions and used them as landmarks. I still wonder whether Ayvansaray is the Golden Horn's most—or perhaps one and only—cheerful neighborhood.

I was usually home by the time of the evening
ezan
. If it wasn't the view of Beyoğlu from my window that lured me back, it was the symphonic sounds of traffic on the coast road. I was becoming increasingly fond of my house—how could I not?—but I wasn't sure whether it felt the same fondness for me.

I met Sami every week for dinner. He smelled of paint and didn't say much except to complain about how tired he was. I wished evening would come sooner so that I could transport myself to the city's concert halls: the music lovers at those obscure venues appeared to be retired civil servants and rich Jewish ladies, all in their sixties, who liked to pamper me. Or sometimes if a well-known director's film came to town, I would seek out a quiet Pera café and wait there for it to start. If these were the pleasures of the single civilian life, I was pleased to make their acquaintance.

I made plans to expand my exploration of the Golden Horn. I decided to walk the territory street by street, from Edirnekapı to Sarayburnu on the Sea of Marmara. I would gradually unveil my old friend Istanbul. Long live idleness!

The more I walked, the more rested I felt. I saw women standing as still as mummies behind their bay windows, steadily contemplating the street—their only other occupation when not immersing themselves in housework. I imagined that none of them had ever left their wooden houses, teetering on collapse after God knows how many earthquakes, to take a boat ride on the Bosphorus. I joked with the children who ran after me thinking I was a tourist because I had an iPod. My hunger was almost sated by the bland grilled cheese toast prepared for me by mediocre chefs at their less-than-hygienic buffets. I was welcomed with suspicion by old men sitting in their coffeehouses with nowhere else to go. My wanderings were finally over, I suppose, when I realized that the textures of sound and color which changed every three streets or so had begun to blur at the edges. Did I envy those people who sat simply waiting, resigned to their imprisonment in a melancholy time tunnel? I've forgotten the name of the philosopher who said, two thousand years ago, “Don't exaggerate the importance of life. Remember that your slaves, even your animals, have it too.”

At the main artery of Eminönü, a strategic hub for Byzantines and Ottomans, I ran into weird-looking tourists, aggressive shopkeepers, and giant official monuments whose silhouettes adorned postcards. Delving further into the crossword-puzzle labyrinth of the side streets, I found noble stone buildings abandoned by owners who had fled to
nouveau riche
ghettos. I passed a row of spice shops where the locks on the shutters hadn't been changed since World War II.

And just at that point, why did I suddenly wonder why Suat had fled the scene?

I wandered into a bar where everybody, especially the waiters, appeared to be absorbed in the horse races on TV. A rich brew of swear words and slang thickened the smoky atmosphere. Special “waiters” went back and forth between the bar and a neighboring bookie where they put down bets for customers. The slim man drinking and belching across the table from me laughed to hear that this was the first time I'd laid eyes on a betting slip. He claimed that his name was Muhlis and that he was a sociology student at nearby Istanbul University. Then he leaned close and said, “I like you, brother,” though I had barely said a word. “If you'll meet me tomorrow night with $300 in your pocket, there's a world-class babe who'll suck your …”

I got to the Valide Mosque gate five minutes early. Muhlis arrived ten minutes later. When he saw how I was dressed he laughed and said, “Are you on your way to a wedding or what?” As we walked through the dark streets of Aksaray I learned the unwritten rules of the night. We descended to the basement floor of a ramshackle shopping center. Did the sign that blinked on when it was in the mood really say “Disco Eden”? A couple of dull-witted security men checked us out and escorted us down a stinking corridor and into a dimly lit hall where Turkish and Russian music clashed. About thirty Slavic women were undulating on a small raised dance floor. I was informed that I might choose my own filthy table between them and the damp wall. I had trouble deciding whether to turn my attention to the girls with milk-white legs on the floor, or to the women chewing cigarettes and imbibing
raki
at the neighboring tables. Muhlis, the honorable pimp, advised me to dispatch a waiter to invite the lady of my choice over to negotiate. If we struck an agreement, I would order champagne for the girl, and then we could proceed to her room at the adjacent hotel. It was amusing how Muhlis swaggered like a country lord when it was I who was financing his extravagant charade. He waved his prayer beads airily and a
zaftig
girl swaying on the dance floor came running to our table. I don't know why but the fact that they knew each other bothered me. She was swearing in Turkish that the most sportive of the exotic dancers was her roommate Anna, who had a degree in education from Minsk University. I felt like fleeing this place that reeked of piss but my inner voice spoke up and said, “Don't spoil the game.” So after surveying the field once more, I asked the head waiter to bring over a girl who looked like the actress Sandra Bullock.

As the girl in black shorts minced her way toward us, I thought about what Muhlis had told me: “No names, no phone numbers.” So when the art historian from Odessa asked my name I blurted out, “Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.” My imaginary name made the rounds of these university-connected sex slaves, raising a chorus of giggles. It was with these words, which were the last thing they expected to hear from a horny Turk, that I first entered their memories.

I became a regular at Disco Eden. I went alone, twice a week. I would drink lemon vodka to relax and then retire to a room at the Da-Da Hotel, each time with a new girl. As those lips redolent of vodka and menthol cigarettes started roaming over my body, I would wonder what Suat Altan—if he was still alive—was doing at that very moment.

I bought the most recent issue of
Andante
and dropped by the bank to withdraw every last dollar of the second month's transfer. I walked toward Tünel, planning to sit and read at a quiet café while I waited for the matinee of “Capote” to begin. Suddenly I was startled by somebody whistling Matia Bazar's “Vacanze Romane.” It came from the side street next to the Swedish consulate, and it took me back fifteen years. Cautiously I approached the barefoot man in rags who was inspecting the contents of a large metal garbage bin.

“Is that you, Hayri Abi?” I asked.

Muttering to himself, the man turned a face toward me on which long hair and a beard were intermingled. One eye was shut; but the creature in front of me was indeed my music mentor and exploiter, Hayri Abi. The nails on his scarred hands had turned into claws. He began to stammer and then burst into tears, trying to back away, but he fell over. I saw the filthy underwear beneath his overcoat. He got up with difficulty and, dragging one foot, limped down the street and into nothingness.

I stood there expecting my right hand to start shaking, but instead my head began to ache. I turned and set out on foot toward Balat despite the autumnal nip in the air. Only when I reached home did I feel better. That was the night I stopped taking painkillers and sleeping pills. It was as if Hayri Abi had extracted a virus from my body as he had extracted himself from my life.

I'd spent the night with the philosopher Tanya, who was counting the days until she returned to Lvov.

“In two days I'm getting out of this meat market, Tchaikovsky,” said the ballerina with VITA and BREVIS tattooed respectively on her left and right buttocks. “And don't you get bogged down in this life either. Go out and look for love even if you know it's going to end in disaster. It will help you mature spiritually.”

“I hope you won't laugh if I tell you that the meaning of my name in Turkish is ‘mature',” I told her as I was putting her fee together. “And as for your sound advice, Tanya, I have actually begun the search for ‘self,' thank you.”

From the ranks of battered taxis in front of the hotel I chose one with a bumper sticker that said, “Take me to Sivas, boss.” I smiled to myself, thinking of my oblique response to Tanya. It was probably justice for me to be banished from Aksaray for a while.

The ether-soaked cloth slapped over my face and the stone to the back of my head carried me back to my collision with the rocks and those days in the hospital. When I awoke, the sound of the
ezan
was battering my ears and my head was throbbing with pain, but I had no time for self-pity. I was curled in a fetal position and shivering on a couch in a stranger's living room. I tried to sit up, feeling queasy in this meticulously tidy environment. On the walls and end tables were a series of photographs depicting a couple in youth and middle age. With an effort I got to my feet. It was my neighbor, Ali Uzel, standing next to the pretty woman with shining eyes in every picture. While I waited for him to make his appearance, I checked my pockets. The mugger had taken $200, and my credit cards and house keys. I folded the flowery blanket that had covered me into a neat bundle and sat on the couch waiting to express my gratitude. At that moment Professor Uzel walked into the room, wearing elegant pajamas under a maroon dressing gown.

“Good morning, young man, and a speedy recovery to you.”

“Thank you, sir. I must apologize for all the trouble I've caused you.”

“The mugger must have followed you—a Balat person would never do anything so tactless as this. The doorbell started ringing like mad, at midnight. I looked out the window and there was a man calling to me in a shaky voice that my new neighbor was lying unconscious in front of my door. I came down but didn't see anybody on the street. I called for Sami to come and help, but for some reason he wasn't here even though he's usually home all day. I couldn't find any keys in your pockets, so I dragged you up here myself. It took a while. Come on, let's have breakfast. Later you can have your locks changed. And I'll expect you for dinner at 7.30. It will give us a chance to get to know each other.”