The Black Rose of Halfeti

by Nazli Eray

  The doctor muttered:

  “A shame! He must have been wetting himself. I told you. When you get diapered a different world begins . . .”

  “Oooh! I don’t even want to think of it.”

  The blonde woman said:

  “Now don’t even think of those things here. Just relax.”

  A sound came from the staircase. The woman opened the door.

  “Come in, Hıfzi Bey,” she said. “Welcome.”

  An old man with a walking stick entered.

  “I managed to get away again tonight,” said the newcomer. “I’m in seventh heaven. Let me sit down there.” He went over to the armchair in the corner and sat down.

  “Let me make you all some coffee,” said the woman.

  She disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. The doctor looked at the newcomer.

  Mustafa Bey inquired:

  “Are you coming from home?”

  “From home, from home,” said the man. “It was hard to get out. My wife, my daughters, the son-in-law, they were all in the house. I slipped out tonight while the son-in-law was watching the match . . . How about you?”

  “We slipped out of the house too,” said the doctor.

  “And we have no intention of going back,” said Mustafa Bey.

  “What did you used to do?”

  “I was a military doctor. I’m retired. Mustafa Bey here was an accountant.”

  “I was an independent accountant,” said Mustafa Bey.

  “Whereabouts do you live?”

  The doctor said:

  “Well, it’s close by, but I just can’t place where right now. When you cross the avenue . . .”

  “My house is in a confusing place too,” said Hıfzi Bey. “I come by taxi every night. A taxi from the stand at the corner . . . he brings me.”

  “We’re just new,” said the doctor. “We walked here. We were going to go to Kızılay. To Cebeci, but we couldn’t figure it out.”

  “Oh, it’s really difficult around there,” said Hıfzi Bey. “I haven’t been there for years. It’s a mess.”

  “You’re right.”

  The woman brought in the coffee on a shiny tray.

  She put the coffees one by one on the coffee table, in front of the old men.

  The doctor leaned over and picked up his cup of coffee. He took a sip.

  “Blessings to your hands. It’s very good,” he said.

  “I hope you enjoy it,” she said.

  “I have a girlfriend,” said the doctor. He leaned back in his armchair.

  The two men looked at him enviously. Hıfzi Bey asked in curiosity: “Is she young?”

  “Young and beautiful,” said the doctor.

  “How do you manage? I mean, how . . . to keep her around . . . ?”

  “Viagra,” said the doctor.

  There was a silence in the room.

  “Really?” asked Hıfzi Bey. “Why don’t you tell us about it?”

  “I’ve only been able to give her a letter so far.”

  “But even that is a great achievement,” said Mustafa Bey. “Were you able to write it yourself?”

  “I wrote the whole thing.”

  “How did you get it to her? It’s not easy. You’ve done the most difficult part.”

  “I left the letter in a mailbox.”

  “Oh, but did she get the letter? Did she read it?” said Hıfzi Bey.

  “She found it and read it. Because I told her on the phone where I had left it.”

  “That’s talent for you!” said Mustafa Bey. “To be able to do that . . .”

  “Yes. Luck helped. I gave her my own cell phone number.”

  “Was there a reply?”

  “Not yet. She’s thinking it over.”

  Mustafa Bey asked:

  “Where’s your cell phone?”

  “I forgot it at home when I was leaving. But anyway, I would have turned it off and not used it.”

  “You’re right; they find us from the cell phones.”

  Hıfzi Bey said:

  “If I don’t return, I don’t think anybody would even care. But, you know, old habits. I get in my own bed every night. My body’s used to it . . .”

  The old men were continuing their conversation as they drank their coffees.

  Noises came from the staircase. The woman went outside.

  An old man in pajamas came into the room.

  “I managed to escape,” he said. “The attendant got involved talking to his girlfriend. He went out into the hall to light up a cigarette. I rushed out and came here. I’m wearing a diaper.”

  “No problem!” the people in the room all shouted with one voice.

  “Oh, let me sit down over there!”

  Şevki Bey flung himself down in the nearest chair. He crossed his legs.

  “Let me bring you a coffee too, Şevki Bey,” said the woman. “I’m so happy you were able to come.”

  The woman disappeared into the back, where the kitchen was.

  Turning to Şevki Bey, Hıfzi Bey said:

  “Brother, this is a big success. You’ve pulled off a great thing. Being able to slip out of your bed and come over here after they put you in diapers . . . like coming back to life. And with that gorilla of an attendant at your throat.”

  “Like a prison guard,” said Şevki Bey. “They just hired him. He’s like a wrestler. Doesn’t care about anything, no feelings. He worked in a center for old people before this. He always has a cell phone in his hand, talking to his girlfriend. His name is Mahmut. He smokes a pack of cigarettes a day.

  “‘Son, look, you’re still young. You should value that. Don’t smoke that poison,’ I say. ‘Don’t worry, Pop,’ he says.”

  “Could you imagine that?” the doctor remarked. “Well, never mind, forget about all that now. Let’s enjoy the night.”

  Ephtalia the Mermaid was passing from one song to another on the 78.

  The night had settled down on the city. Lights were turned on where they should be, turned out where they should be too.

  Night was at its peak now. It floated in waves above the city like a printed black cloth.

  THE BLACK ROSES OF HALFETI

  I was stretched out on the bed in my room in the Zinciriye Hotel, amid the silk pillows. I gazed around at the high ceiling and the bare stone walls.

  The black roses of Halfeti were in a glass vase. Once put in water, they opened even more and gave off an incredible scent. My eyes rested on them.

  King Darius . . . The magnificent and eerie ruins of Dara . . . Mardin, which looked like a space ship from the terrace of the palace . . . These were all mysterious things . . . Suddenly I noticed that the black roses had trembled slightly. I stared closely at them.

  The black velvet Halfeti roses were moving. What I was witnessing was like a chick forcing its shell as it emerges from the egg, as it struggles to free itself from the thin envelope that surrounds it and come out into the world.

  An action, an effort . . . The black roses seemed to converge for a moment, and from within them emerged a woman. She then managed to extract herself from the bouquet of roses, and now stood in the center of the room in a black velvet gown. She straightened the blonde hair that fell onto her shoulders, and ran her tongue lightly over her gleaming red lips. She was very beautiful. I stared at her in amazement. She had pure white skin and a perfect body in her tight velvet gown.

  “Who are you?” I asked. She must be an artist, and seemed to radiate some kind of luminescence.

  “Who are you?

  “I’m the Dream Woman,” she said.

  “The Dream Woman . . .”

  “Yes, the Dream Woman. The woman in men’s dreams!”

  “I thought you were a Hollywood star.”

  “No, no,” said the woman. “I’m just the Dream Woman. The woman who embellishes a man’s illusions, whom he wants to conquer, whose existence he is aware of but whom he usually cannot attain.”

  “How very interesting,” I said. “What wer
e you doing in the middle of the black roses?”

  “I came out into the world from there tonight,” she said. “Black velvet roses, they’re so beautiful . . .”

  She looked at the black velvet roses in the vase behind her.

  “What do you do, how do you appear to men?” I asked curiously. “Do they imagine you?”

  “They imagine me, of course,” said the woman.

  She sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “I adorn their dreams. I enter their dreams,” said the woman. “I wander about in their dreams; I make love to them.”

  “It’s an incredible thing,” I said. “Does every man see you?”

  “Every man,” she said. “They all see me and desire me.”

  I was thinking.

  “Did you go into King Darius’s dreams?” I asked.

  She laughed in a sexy way.

  “I was thinking about going into his dreams tonight,” she said. “Who knows how intriguing his dreams might be? He’s a very ancient king. I’ll go into his dreams in a little while.”

  “There’s Luis Buñuel, a famous Spanish director. You probably have gone into his dreams!”

  “Oh, I’ve been in the dreams of all the directors,” said the woman. “That’s my job. I went into the dreams of the famous French director Roger Vadim years ago; when he woke up he made stars out of Brigitte Bardot, Annette Stroyberg, and Catherine Deneuve, one after the other.”

  “My goodness,” I murmured. “Well, let’s say you just inspired him.”

  She smiled a little.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “Do you always appear in the dreams of famous, powerful men?”

  “No, no!” said the Dream Woman. “I also enter the dreams of the old and the poor.”

  “The poor . . .”

  “Yes, I also go into the dreams of civil servants, laborers, people who get by on a little. They’re astonished to see me in their dreams. They invite me to sit in the best places, they’re all over me, the man doesn’t want to wake up. Sometimes I have a difficult time getting out of those dreams,” she said.

  What she said was mesmerizing.

  “The dreams of men who are used to beautiful women are much duller,” said the woman. “I go into the dream, he sees me and gives me a once-over. Then he either picks up on me or forgets about it, since he’s used to women like me. He doesn’t bother with me,” she said. “Sometimes I come out of those dreams feeling hurt.”

  “And what about a middle-class person’s dream?” I asked.

  “Well, that’s incredible! I’ve experienced unbelievable things in this kind of dream. The man whose dream I go into worships me.”

  She stopped for a minute.

  “I have many memories,” she said. “I’ll tell you . . . I went into the dream of an old man named Hıfzi the other night in Ankara—just by chance. All of a sudden! The man was amazing. Old. It was as though he’s living between two worlds. Hıfzi Bey . . . I’ll never forget him. I’m thinking of going into his dream again. Just out of the blue again!

  “The guy got younger in the dream, as though he were resurrected. It was something strange. I just went into his dream. I don’t know him, never met him.

  “He wrapped himself around me. It was as though he had thrown off the weight of years in an instant. He didn’t want to let me go.

  “‘Please come again!’ he said. ‘Let’s be together.’ There’s a group. They meet in the Night People’s house in Ankara. A group of old people who are on the brink of losing their memory. He told me about it, an old-fashioned salon. They cling to life there.”

  She paused briefly.

  “These things that Hıfzi Bey said really interested me,” she said. “I’m going to go into his dreams again. Hıfzi Aygün. He gave me his name. ‘Make sure you don’t mess everything up,’ he said. He’s retired from some place. I forget it now, but the world he described that night was incredible.”

  She stood up.

  She was fixing herself up now.

  “It’s time,” she said. “I’ll go into a dream.”

  She pulled out a little cell phone from within the folds of her black velvet gown.

  “There’s a message,” she said.

  She pushed a button and started to read.

  “Are you going to enter the dreams of King Darius?”

  The woman shook her head.

  “No, no,” she said. “A different dream has been set up for tonight. Dr. Ayhan. An old man from Hıfzi Bey’s group. They’re in the same salon now. You know, the one I just told you about.”

  I was intrigued.

  “A military doctor?”

  The woman was taken aback.

  “Yes,” she said. “A retired military doctor. But do you know him?”

  “I sort of know him.”

  “Well, I’m going into his dream now. The message came.”

  She fixed her hair, spread some gloss on her lips. She concealed her little black purse in the skirts of her gown.

  “I’m going now,” she said. “I’ll come again.”

  “Stop by when you come out of the dream,” I said.

  “You’ll be asleep . . . I don’t want to wake you up.”

  “No, no, I won’t sleep,” I said. “I’ll wait for you.”

  “Okay, say goodbye to me for now,” said the woman.

  She disappeared somewhere behind the roses.

  I was full of odd feelings. What the Dream Woman had told me had fascinated me.

  She could go in and out of every kind of brain. This was the most important thing a woman could want, as far as I was concerned.

  I didn’t know how influential she was. After all, she was, in the end, an illusion. But I could learn a lot of things from her.

  So the old doctor was meeting up with his friends in the Night People’s house. He must have escaped from home.

  DR. AYHAN’S DREAM GATE

  I was moving quickly down a narrow passageway. Along the sides old women and men and one or two young people were gathered waiting. It was a place like the jetway leading onto a plane; it wobbled slightly when I walked. I didn’t know exactly where I was going, but it was as though some force were pushing me from behind or pulling from in front.

  I asked an old woman waiting on the side, “Where is this? What are you waiting for here?”

  “The apron,” said the woman. “It’s the entryway to dreams. We’re mainly old mothers and fathers here. We’re waiting to get into dreams. You know, mothers and fathers don’t often appear in dreams.”

  “I know,” I murmured.

  “So you’re old mothers and fathers . . .”

  “Most of us are,” said the woman. “We’re waiting for a message to go into the dreams.”

  “Whose dream would you go into?”

  “I’m going into my daughter’s dream,” said the old woman. “I’ve been waiting in line for a week. My daughter is ill. If she sees me in her dream, she’ll pull herself together and improve a little. But it’s taking a long time, as you see. The line is very crowded, and the visiting period is short. And I’m just waiting here.”

  “Inshallah, your turn will come soon,” I said.

  I was running forward in the passageway now. Around me, waiting to enter dreams, were former mothers and fathers, a few children, a handsome young man I imagined to be an old lover, and a few men wearing hats. A strange, silent crowd of people . . .

  As I passed by, I inquired of a young man with green eyes whose hair was combed back, “Are you in the line for dreams?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Whose dream are you going to go into?”

  “I’m a former fiancé,” he said. “Former fiancé . . . a fiancé who left while still in love. The ring was cast off because of the mother-in-law. She’s in love with me. I’m waiting my turn. I’ll get into her dream and deliver my message.”

  I was touched by what I heard.

  “Why don’t you just see her yourself and talk? Wo
uldn’t that be easier?” I asked.

  “No,” said the young man. “How can that possibly be? Nothing is as influential as a dream. A dream can influence someone much more than real truths. Think about that.”

  I thought about it as I rushed forward. What the former fiancé said was right.

  A dream . . .

  I came to a doorway. This was a place like a pilot’s cockpit. It was covered with a dark-colored velvet curtain.

  The young woman standing by the door, whom I understood to be on duty, said, “You will go in a little while. Move quietly. Don’t talk too much. Gentle movements. Don’t stay too long. You can go in when the red light goes on.”

  “Fine,” I said. I fixed my collar, straightened my skirt. I had on the new patent leather shoes I had purchased from Kemal Tanca. They were gladiator shoes that wrapped around the foot like a cage, with thin heels. I had to be careful not to get caught anywhere. I wondered where I was going.

  “Whose dream?” I asked the girl on duty.

  She looked at the list hanging on the wall.

  “Dr. Ayhan Ozer’s dream. It’s the second time you’ve been called. You didn’t come the first time. That’s why we’re taking you in a hurry.”

  “I didn’t know I’d been called the first time,” I said.

  “No problem,” said the woman. She pulled the curtain aside.

  “Go in there,” she said. “The light is on.”

  I looked, and there was a red light burning above the door of the cockpit. I slowly stepped in through the opening in the curtain.

  It was a half-dark world. Dim. A little dreary.

  I went inside. It was a fairly large bedroom. The only bed in the room was standing against the opposite wall, covered with a silk quilt. The dark beige curtains were drawn. Next to the bed was a night table with a pitcher of water for the night and a glass on it. Only the little light on the table was lit. Its parchment shade was rather old; it gave an apricot-tinted light to the room.

  The doctor was in the bed. He was sitting there, resting back on two pillows.

  The Dream Woman in her black velvet gown was sitting at the foot of the bed. When she saw me come in she waved her hand.

  “Come, come . . . he wants you in his dream. He didn’t have any reaction to me at all,” she said.

  The old doctor saw me. He straightened up a little then.