by Moris Farhi
‘Great man. The perfect man.’
She shook her head vehemently. ‘No. Not perfect.’
I grew indignant. ‘How can you say that? He was a man who gave meaning to existence.’
She faced me, eyes blazing. ‘If he was so perfect, why did he die?’
Her beauty, particularly her incandescent sable hair, captivated me. ‘He ... was ... ill ...’
‘He should have recovered!’
‘How? Who can beat cancer? But the way he died – so brave ... Proof of his perfection ...’
‘Only those who defeat death are perfect!’
I turned away. I didn’t want her to see me cry. ‘He was a hero ... unique ...’
She touched my arm. ‘I’m sorry ... Forgive me ... Grief makes one say all sorts of things ... He was unique, yes ...’ Gently, she caressed my cheek. ‘I’ll leave you with him ...’
I wanted to hold on to her and weep my heart out. Instead, clumsily, I held up my saz. ‘I wrote a song for him ... I was going to play it ...’
She smiled. ‘He’d love that. He played the saz, too ...’
‘I know.’
She started walking away, then stopped. ‘Do you think ...? Could I stay ... and listen? I’ll keep my distance ...’
I shook my head. ‘Don’t! I mean, yes. I mean don’t keep your distance ... Stay ...’
‘Thank you.’ She moved to the other side of the grave.
I tuned up, then sang:
in Rumeli’s shadow
death
voluptuous
waylaid me
she held me by the hand
my eyes scared lambkins
I pleaded
she whispered in my ear
my heart a humming-bird
I consented
she rubbed her breasts on my face
my mouth insatiable
I suckled
she opened her legs
my manhood a dolphin
I plunged
there in her well
I found
the only true water
I ended up weeping uncontrollably and, surprisingly, didn’t feel embarrassed.
She came across and kissed my hand. ‘May your heart be always full of love.’
I couldn’t speak. Afraid of becoming hysterical, I staggered away.
At the top of the slope, I composed myself and looked back.
The sun was rising over the Anatolian shore; a roseate tide was engulfing the cemetery.
Madam Ruj had sat down again. She was bathed in a glow that could have emanated only from Haydar’s soul. She had taken out her lipstick and was putting it on.
The constant application of lipstick, I remembered, was one of her idiosyncrasies. All Istanbul knew that. Her cigarette case and lighter and her lipstick were part of her accoutrements. Wherever she sat down, she lined them up in front of her with the intensity of a chess-master setting up his pieces.
I watched her.
She looked like a somnambulist: uncontrolled yet constrained. She didn’t seem to need a mirror. And the way she applied the lipstick, she could have been painting a portrait. Or obliterating it.
We met again six years later.
I had just returned from England. I would stay a year, shuttling between Istanbul and Ankara – with occasional visits to my supervisor in Oxford – researching my doctoral thesis. Determined to revive a fatigued mind with a good holiday, I had headed for Büyükada. To my parents’ disappointment, I had declared full independence by spurning the family villa and renting a room.
Hooked on rugby, I had become a hefty youth. And I considered myself rather experienced in sex – if, that is, one can call rushed couplings in digs, bedsits, the last row of a cinema or the back seat of someone’s car, experience. (I deserved little credit for all that sensualism; in those days, a Turkish male in England was still a rare, if not exotic, dessert for debutantes voraciously feasting on Oxbridge fare before their demure ascent up the social ladder.)
I was ready for Istanbul’s sun, sea and passionate naiads. And, in pursuit of these, I had begun looking up old flames.
I was not being very successful. Passionate naiads in my age group were not interested in a summer affair with a dusty scholar who was going to spend several years working on a thesis and then end up teaching at some dreary university for a risible salary. They were looking for men who had graduated as engineers, architects, lawyers, doctors or who were on the way to becoming grandees of industry or commerce. Indeed, passionate naiads in my age group were dousing their passion lest they be perceived as wanton women unfit for marriage; they were determined to usher autumn in with an engagement ring so that next summer they could compare fur coats, limousines, months spent skiing in Switzerland and, not least, pregnancies.
I had had dinner at a fashionable restaurant with Emine, with whom I had had a spirited flirtation before going to Oxford. Having set her sights on one Bülent, a graduate of Harvard Business School, she had eaten and drunk lustily, for old times’ sake, then had dismissed me with a peck on the cheek and a perfunctory ‘good luck’.
So I had caught the last ferry to Büyükada and, to repair my pride in seclusion, had settled in the first-class enclosure.
As the ferry’s horn announced its departure, I spotted a woman sprint down Galata Bridge and scamper over the gangway.
She was followed, seconds later, by a bony middle-aged man whom I had noticed lurking on the pier.
As she entered the first class, I recognized her: Madam Ruj.
Though the enclosure was empty, she came over and sat at my table. ‘If I may ...’
I nodded. ‘Sure.’
She took out her lipstick, cigarette case and lighter and lined them up on the table. ‘I’d feel safer.’
The bony, middle-aged man, I observed, had taken a seat on the deck and was watching her. ‘Is he bothering you?’
She looked at the man and chuckled. ‘Dan Weiss? Couldn’t hurt a mosquito.’
‘What’s wrong, then?’
She lit a cigarette. ‘Demons.’
‘Demons?’
She started freshening up her lipstick. ‘Inside. Don’t you have demons?’
‘Many.’
‘Tiresome things – but what can you do?’
‘Madam Ruj ... Right?’
‘Who else?’
‘You don’t recognize me?’
She smiled. ‘Sure, I do. I’m not in the habit of plonking myself at a man’s table without knowing who he is. It’s names that get cloud-hidden sometimes.’
‘Aslan. Aslan Erdoğan.’
‘Of course. I have a big file on you.’
‘You don’t have to humour me. I’m not offended.’
‘I’m doing nothing of the sort! We met – at Haydar’s grave. You sang a song.’
‘You do remember ...’
She put her lipstick back on the table. ‘I have a tape – where you sing that song ...’
I looked at her in surprise. ‘Really? I only made a few copies – for friends.’
‘Yes, well, I managed to get a copy of a copy ... Do you still compose?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Only sometimes? Why?’
‘Lost the urge. Then studies ... I’ve been away ...’
‘Six years.’
‘How did you know that?’
She smiled, dragging heavily on her cigarette. ‘It’s my job to know. As I said, I have a file on you. I’m a matchmaker.’
‘Yes, but ... I mean, how could I be of interest?’
‘You’re a bachelor. A good catch in many ways ...’
‘Me?’ I laughed. ‘Marriage is the last thing on my mind. I have a thesis to write!’
‘When you finish. People would be prepared to wait ...’
‘What people?’
‘Interested parties ...’
‘Who, for instance?’
She shrugged. ‘All sorts.’
‘You don’t mean my parents?’
She chuckled. ‘No. Your parents wouldn’t employ me. I’m Jewish. They’d find someone Muslim. But your grandmother ...’
‘My grandmother?’
‘She’s from Salonica. A very Jewish city until the war. She feels close to the Jews.’
I was baffled. ‘My grandmother – approached you? You’re joking ...’
‘I never joke about business.’ She picked up her lipstick and retouched her rouge. ‘There are people of other denominations also ... You see, we’re improving. As a society, I mean. Burying prejudices. Intermarrying. Excellent for my business ...’
‘I don’t believe this ...’
She looked at me – pityingly, I thought. ‘I have at least eight parents of teenagers interested in you. Their daughters will ripen just when you finish your doctorate ...
I started laughing. ‘But me, of all people ...?’
She put her lipstick back on the table and picked up her cigarette. ‘Gilt-edged. Well-educated. An English university – and not just any university, but the best. Enlightened, in all probability. Therefore made to measure for intermarriage. You’re peerless!’
‘Well, I’m amazed, Madam Ruj ...’
‘Call me Mazal. Madam Ruj is for clients.’ She stubbed out her cigarette and lit a new one. ‘Did you write other songs about Haydar?’
‘Yes. At the time. A few.’
‘Could I hear them one day?”
‘Sure.’
She gave me her card. ‘Come to lunch – before you go back to Oxford.’
I read the card. ‘You live on the island – nice ...’
‘Yes – though not all that nice in the summer. Half of Istanbul descends on it. But in winter – it’s heavenly. Which is perfect for me. That’s when I take my holidays.’
‘Don’t people arrange marriages in winter?’
‘Not unless they’re desperate. You can’t exhibit merchandise all that well in winter. Whereas in the summer, in a bathing suit by the sea, even Dan can look captivating.’
I laughed and glanced at the bony man. ‘Hard to imagine that.’
‘Don’t be fooled by appearances. He’s a rock. Looks after me like a father.’
‘He doesn’t look that old ...’
‘He’s not. But he’s made it his business to keep an eye on me ...’
‘Why?’
‘In case I go Haydar’s way ...’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Do myself in ...’
I stared at her, suddenly chilled to the bone. ‘Why should you?’
‘Good question ...’ She put her head on my shoulder. ‘Can I doze a bit? I’m exhausted ...’
‘Of course.’
She shut her eyes. ‘I’ve just completed a shiddach – made a match. It was hard work. But I’ll earn a fortune ...’
‘Congratulations.’
She muttered drowsily. ‘Want to know how much?’
‘It’s none of my ...’
‘I’ll tell you anyway ...’
She fell asleep.
She was still holding her cigarette. Carefully, making sure I didn’t burn her, I extricated it from her fingers. Then I put an arm around her and, impulsively, to spite Dan, kissed her cheek.
I turned towards him to catch his reaction, but he had stopped watching us and was reading a newspaper.
When we reached Büyükada, I nudged her gently.
She stood up, somewhat confused and embarrassed.
Hastily she touched up her lipstick.
She collected her cigarette case and lighter, then, just as she had done at Haydar’s graveside, she kissed my hand. ‘Thank you.’
She hurried away.
As I disembarked, I saw her settle in a landau and reapply her lipstick. I watched the carriage trot into the night.
Dan Weiss followed her in another landau.
Haydar had planned his suicide meticulously. He had swum out from Bodrum, the ancient Halikarnassus, on 20 May at 5:28 PM and had expected to expire ‘as fish-fodder’ at around midnight, just outside Turkish waters, off the Greek island of Kos.
He had worked this out, in several notebooks, by computing the speed of the currents, their seasonal anomalies and the ebb and flow of the Mediterranean’s negligible tides. But he had either miscalculated or had tired too soon. (During his last weeks, his energy had been fast diminishing.) Consequently, his body had washed ashore the following morning at the tip of Bodrum’s peninsula, bloated but untouched by the fish.
In other notebooks, he had discoursed on death’s holy role in life, the blessings of the return to primary matter and the even greater blessings of reincarnation. (‘How can we attain Nirvana if we do not experience the states of being and non-being of every organism?’)
His last notebook, scrawled with barely legible handwriting, expounded on the benedictions of terminal illnesses, particularly those that inflict intolerable pain. Partly the ramblings of a man shuttling between the euphoria of morphine relief and the torment of morphine deprivation, partly an espousal of redemption through suffering – that effluvium of monotheism which, though he had passionately rejected it, kept resurfacing to poison his consciousness – and partly a manly stand against unendurable adversity, the discourse revolted me. I saw it as the sentimental vacuity of a man terrified by death. Whereas I had wanted him to bellow his wrath at being cut down in his prime so that those who faced untimely and humiliating quietus – all humankind, in effect – could use that wrath as an anthem. What’s the use of our religions if they keep worshipping Death?
These and Haydar’s other papers – poems, letters received, copies of letters sent, pamphlets seeking equality for the Kurds and the rehabilitation of their language and culture, articles condemning the Menderes regime’s corrupt and paternalist rule, indictments of the Soviet bloc’s homicidal treatment of dissenters, panegyrics on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, treatises on steering humankind to peace through a world government – indeed, just about everything he had owned, written or been associated with, including the tape of the song I had sung by his grave – had been kept by Madam Ruj in her Büyükada villa, in a blue room seemingly blending with the sea that she called ‘the shrine’.
I became a devotee of this temple of love and catalogued every document. (This devotion set back my thesis by several months. On the other hand, I did manage to get Haydar’s poems published as a collection and to favourable reviews.)
My involvement started after I visited Madam Ruj, as I had promised, to play the songs I had composed for Haydar – five in all – all that time ago. She liked them and insisted on giving them their rightful place in the shrine.
Thereafter, she summoned Dan – ‘bony Dan’ – to record them, assuring me that, coincidentally, like Haydar, he was an accomplished jack-of-all-trades.
My initial response to Dan had been one of deep antipathy. This most adroit father figure, I had decided, was an opportunist – even though I had known that it had been Madam Ruj who had cast him in that role. (She had been quite frank on that point, admitting that, having lost both parents when still an infant, she had wanted some form of parenting.) However, within a short time, Dan’s natural dignity and genuine decency dispelled my prejudices and we became close friends.
Dan had never met Haydar.
He was an Ashkenazi Jew whose father and mother, academics in Berlin, had been confrères of Erich Auerbach, the author of Mimesis. When, in the wake of the Nuremberg Laws, Atatürk had offered sanctuary to the Jews of the Third Reich, Auerbach and, in his wake, Dan’s family, had accepted the invitation and emigrated to Turkey. Auerbach, duly appointed director of Istanbul University’s School of Foreign Languages, had, in turn, installed Dan’s parents in the faculty. When, at the end of the war, the full dimensions of the Holocaust had emerged, Dan had embraced Zionism and run off to Palestine. He had fought in the Arab-Israeli war of 1948-49, then settled in a kibbutz established by Turkish Jews. About three years back, Madam Ruj had visited that very kibb
utz in search of a widow for an elderly client; Dan, assigned as her guide, had instantly fallen for her. Thereafter, abandoning his Zionist ideals, he had followed her to Istanbul. Since then, despite her repeated declarations that she had sworn never to marry again because she would never love a man as she had loved Haydar, he had orbited her patiently.
Yes, she and Haydar had married.
Secretly. Soon after they had met at the wedding of one of Haydar’s army friends where both had been guests of honour: Madam Ruj because she had brokered the marriage – the bride, being a Karaite Jew, had come under her constituency – and Haydar because he had saved the bridegroom’s life by carrying his wounded body through the Chinese lines during the battle of Kunuri, despite being hit himself. (In military terms, Kunuri has become a legend: the Turkish contingent, surrounded while collecting shell-cases that could be sold as scrap, had had to break the encirclement with a bayonet charge. This astounding feat had left them with heavy casualties. The fact that the shell-cases were being collected for a fund for the families of fallen comrades had compounded the tragedy.)
The wedding had captured Istanbul’s imagination. Celâl, the bridegroom, had ended up a paraplegic; his bride, Sara – four years older and so plain as to be considered unmarriageable – had lived a reclusive life working in an old-people’s home. Yet, within days, the couple had fallen deeply in love. In a letter, Haydar had described the fairy-tale atmosphere thus: ‘This wedding is a portent for a better future, both for the country and the world. I now know Mazal is my destiny.’ (There is a haunting double entendre here. Mazal means ‘luck’ in Hebrew.)
And so they, too, had married. In Las Vegas, of all places. During Haydar’s tour of the United States, as a hero of the Korean war, to promulgate the importance of NATO. Haydar, who hated such jingoistic razzmatazz, would not have gone but for Madam Ruj’s categorical refusal to marry openly in Turkey.
The secrecy, I immediately assumed, had been to protect Madam Ruj’s career. For that was the time when Haydar’s campaigns for a world government were being severely censured; matchmaking and politics were hardly compatible bedfellows.
But Dan, reassuring me that the people, stirred by Haydar’s integrity, would have taken the couple to their hearts, divulged the real reason: her obsession with the need for celibacy.