The Black Rose of Halfeti

by Nazli Eray

  “You could be thirty years old,” said Mustafa Bey.

  “Thirty years old!” cried the woman.

  “If you take away the years you couldn’t live, the years they took from you, you would be thirty years old.”

  “Youth!” shouted the blonde woman. “When I was on top of everything; the years when life hadn’t pressed me down!”

  “Well that’s it,” said Mustafa Bey.

  “Well, how can we get those spent years back? How do we do it? Where do we get them?” asked the woman.

  “That’s what we’re figuring out,” said Hıfzi Bey from where he sat. “Where to apply.”

  The doctor said:

  “Oh, if I could go back to those long ago years of mine. I’d found love too. I was crazy with desire for her. Always on my mind. Who knows what I would do if I could go back to those years, to Izmir, to my years at the Konak Maternity Hospital . . . ?”

  MARDIN

  I had gone back to my hotel room. I was thinking of going back to the Dara ruins after I rested a little and tidied up. There was a minibus that went to the ruins from the bus stop; I had seen it when I was coming in.

  I bought the purple ring in the shopping passage. It was on my finger.

  The seer stone was in my hand. I had been turning it over and over since yesterday. Nothing at all happened. It was just a gleaming, transparent stone. It was probably broken. I have to tell King Darius about it. It was obvious the stone wasn’t working. I tossed it into my purse.

  There was a knock on the door of my room.

  “Come in,” I said.

  The door crept open. The Dream Woman slowly slipped in. She looked very nice. Her wavy blonde hair was a little in disarray, and she had a black velvet gown on. She was barefoot. I saw her shapely white feet and her toenails painted with red polish.

  “Come in, come in,” I said. “Where have you been?”

  “Please, don’t even ask,” she said. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “I’m coming from the dream of the Spanish director Luis Buñuel. I’m completely dazed. What a world that is! For one thing, it was very hard to get into; you know that curtain at the end of the passageway, well, when you go into Buñuel’s, it’s made out of snakeskin. It must be special order. It’s a strange thing, slimy, repulsive, and grisly. Wet. Like pushing aside some huge snake to go inside. But very erotic. I felt strange. It’s a dark world, and his dream is too. I went through ancient Catalan cemeteries, and there was a grave whose cover had slid loose and the jet-black hair of a woman was flowing out from the grave. I shrank back in horror. There were statues of male and female saints, a courtyard. I just couldn’t get to Buñuel’s dream. Women, men, film workers, a film set . . . At one point I got past that too. Long, long lanes, bordered with dark cypresses.

  “Just as I was thinking, ‘The best thing to do would be to just go back, to get out of this dream,’ I went right into a church. There was a Mass going on. I sat down in one of the back pews and listened to an aria sung by a young black nun in a contralto voice. I suddenly felt emotional. I was about to cry. When the aria finished, I slowly went outside. This strange world had just swallowed me up inside it. I was going around in it, but there was no sign of Buñuel.

  “There was a blonde woman sitting in a huge leather chair. The kind who’s cold as ice. Just an armchair there in the middle of the air. The woman was sitting. She looked down at me. A half-full glass of whiskey in her hand. She gave me a look.

  “‘Who are you?’ she said in a caustic voice.

  “‘The Black Rose of Halfeti!’ I blurted out. It just came out of my mouth. The woman was surprised by the name. I could tell by her eyes.

  “‘Where are you coming from?’ she asked me.

  “‘The last place was Mardin,’ I said.

  “She was completely astonished.

  “‘What are you looking for in Mardin?’ she asked in amazement.

  “‘I walk around there,’ I said. What was I supposed to say?

  “The woman responded, ‘What are you walking around here for? Who are you looking for?’

  “‘I’m looking for Luis Buñuel,’ I said.

  “She suddenly got up from her armchair.

  “‘What do you want with him?’ she yelled.

  “‘I went into his dream,’ I stuttered.

  “‘You can’t go into his dream,’ the woman shouted. ‘Just any woman can’t go into his dream.’

  “‘Why not?’ I said. ‘Dreams are open to everyone. As far as I know.’

  “‘No, go back outside,’ said the woman. ‘You cannot go into Buñuel’s dream!’

  “‘Who are you?’ I asked.

  “‘I’m Silvia Pinal,’ she said.

  “I had never heard this name before.

  “‘Are you his wife?’

  “‘I’m his lover,’ she said.

  “The woman was jealous. She was going to cause a scene. I realized that. I was about to go back when I heard a voice behind me.

  “‘Who were you looking for?’ it was asking. I turned and looked, Buñuel. A dark man. He was leaning against the trunk of a tall beech tree and looking at me.

  “‘Come closer, please,’ he said.

  “I was frightened. He was very strange.

  “‘Silvia Pinal is getting angry,’ I said.

  “Buñuel smiled.

  “‘Forget about Silvia Pinal,’ he said.

  “I slowly walked over to him. I had come under the beech tree. He took me by the hands and pulled me toward him. He buried his head in my shoulder and in my hair. He smelled me as you would smell a flower. As though he was drawing my scent into his lungs. Then he slowly released my body. I felt like I had gone into a river and come out.

  “‘Okay, leave,’ he said. ‘Be careful when you go by the cemetery.’

  “I was very affected by him. He smelled of tobacco and gunpowder. It was hard for me to leave there. His odor remained in my nostrils. I ran back on the roads that I had come on. I ran with all my strength as I passed by the Catalan graveyard. The graves had changed. It was as though I were on a different path, and I suddenly felt death. There, in that century-old graveyard. I ran as fast as I could.

  “I got to the snakeskin hanging across the passageway. It was wet. It was a masculine thing, difficult to explain. I slowly pushed it aside and came out. I was shaking like crazy.

  “I’ve never experienced anything like this in a man’s dream in my entire life. I really reacted to it.”

  The Dream Woman was in a state of excitement.

  “It’s not easy to go into Buñuel’s dreams,” I said.

  “You have no idea how upset I was,” she said. “That half-dark world. Those ancient, shadowy memories. I think they were in Spain, that blonde woman. The cemetery . . . that revulsion I felt there. The way I ran through those unending labyrinths, and Buñuel . . . It was completely other,” she murmured.

  “A male scent. Tenderness. Strength and searching. That short embrace he gave me.”

  She stopped for a minute.

  “I’m going to go into his dream again,” she said.

  “I want to run straight to him through those worlds again.”

  She paused.

  “That damp thing at the end of the passageway,” she said. “You know, that curtain . . . Maybe that was part of Buñuel. Warm and wet . . .”

  She stretched out on the bed and closed her eyes.

  “You go into so many men’s dreams,” I said.

  “But this man had an effect on me,” she murmured.

  THE BLACK ROSE OF HALFETI

  She had stretched out on the bed. Her head was buried in my pillow, and the black gown radiated out over the pure white sheets. Her eyes were half closed. I gazed at her for a while. She looked so beautiful, so alluring.

  “If I go into Buñuel’s dream right now, would it be a mistake?” she asked me spontaneously.

  “You were just there,” I said.

  “I know, but I m
iss him,” she said. “In a strange way I want to see him again.”

  “Then rush right into his dream,” I said.

  She sat up from where she had been reclining.

  “Should I really do that?”

  “Hurry up, go in.”

  She got up from the bed. She fixed her hair in front of the mirror.

  “I’m going,” she said.

  “How will you get in?”

  “I’ll go in through the jetway corridor.”

  “What if he’s awake?”

  “He’s asleep, I know,” she said. “I have to get in before he wakes up. Let me catch him!”

  She ran out the door.

  The Dream Woman had fallen for Buñuel.

  I lay down on the couch, and rested my head on the silk cushions.

  The ceiling of the room was so high and airy.

  Looking around, I was imagining things, half-asleep and half-awake. A thousand and one things were going through my mind. I had asked for a rose sherbet a little while ago and the waiter brought it. I took a sip of the sherbet. The seer stone was in my hand. It was still shiny and transparent, with nothing inside.

  I must tell King Darius about this. The stone must be defective. I still hadn’t seen a thing inside it.

  I was slowly stroking it, and my eyelids became heavy.

  Suddenly a tiny movement in the stone caught my eye. It was just a little flicker. It might have been the shadow of my face.

  Now I looked more carefully into the seer stone. I saw the Dream Woman. The picture became quite clear, and as I massaged the stone with my fingers, the image drew nearer and receded. I noticed in surprise that the transparent stone, the crystal ball in my hand, was like the screen on a cell phone.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised at all by the stone. It was like the twin of the cell phone in my purse. I was carrying around what was virtually the same thing in my purse, so there was no reason for me to be amazed by this magical stone.

  I carefully began to follow the image in the stone. The Black Rose of Halfeti was running in the darkness, down a narrow road bordered on either side by tall cypresses. It must be a side road in a Catholic cemetery. It was so creepy and depressing. It reminded me of a painting that had been hanging on the wall of an old house for years.

  The woman was out of breath; she had gathered up her skirts and was running quickly down the narrow cobblestoned path.

  Suddenly the cypresses opened up. Now, across the way, I saw Silvia Pinal sitting in a large Morocco leather chair.

  Silvia Pinal was wearing a black silk slip, and her blonde hair fell down over her shoulders.

  “What are you looking for here?” she shouted at the Black Rose of Halfeti.

  “What are you hanging around here for, you piece of trash? Didn’t I tell never to come here again?”

  She dashed the whiskey in the crystal glass in her hand in the woman’s face.

  At that instant, rain started to pour down inside the seer stone. I saw how the lightning lit up all the veins of the stone.

  It was an extraordinary sight. Suddenly Buñuel appeared. He was leaning against the thick trunk of a beech tree, surveying the scene.

  When he saw the Dream Woman, he opened his arms. The woman flung herself into his arms like a ball that has been thrown quickly, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. As another flash of lighting came from the electricity between them. At that moment a bolt of lightning struck the beech tree with a great roar. The tree turned into ashes.

  Buñuel took the woman’s face between his hands and stared into her eyes. They were unaware of anything else. They hadn’t noticed the lightning bolt. The rain had fallen on both of them, and they were soaking wet.

  What an incredible scene this was. Something unbelievable. Buñuel and the Dream Woman were embracing inside the seer stone, just standing there. Buñuel leaned down and kissed her on her lips.

  I stared in great excitement at Buñuel and the Dream Woman in their close embrace inside the seer stone. The half of the beech tree that still stood was charred as black as coal. The other half was a mass of ashes that the falling rain was washing away down the narrow path.

  “She’s in love with Buñuel,” I murmured to myself. “This must be what they call lightning love.”

  The image in the seer stone started to cloud over slightly. A little later it became very unclear and vanished. The stone reverted to its former state.

  I would not forget the unbelievable image I had seen for the rest of my life, I knew that. The beech tree next to the cemetery, the rain pouring down, and a man and a woman in an embrace . . .

  “What’s going on?” I thought. “What happens in dreams . . . But maybe what I saw was real.”

  What I had seen in the seer stone didn’t seem like a dream. It must have been real.

  I slowly closed my eyes.

  KING DARIUS AND THE GLOBAL ADAPTOR

  I must have overslept. When I awoke, it was well after noon. I quickly got up and dressed. I checked the seer stone; it was transparent, still and gleaming, with no images inside. I placed it carefully in my purse. My cell phone was turned off. I turned it on and glanced at the incoming messages. There was an account summary from the bank and an invitation from the perfume store on Tunalı Hilmi for skin care. Also an advertisement for a new perfume that had just come on the market.

  The new perfume was called “Enchanting Love.” I turned off the phone again and dropped it into my purse.

  I went upstairs to the terrace to get something to eat.

  That incomparable view of Mesopotamia spread out before me. As I sipped my coffee, I looked at the peaceful, quiet view, at the nearby minaret of the Şehidiye Mosque, and at the line of the horizon that disappeared in the distant sands of the desert.

  Alop the slave silently came up the steps and stood there by my side.

  “Alop!” I cried, startled. “I didn’t notice you. When did you come?”

  “I came just now,” said Alop. “You were having breakfast, and I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “I’ve finished my breakfast.”

  “I’ll take you to the palace. King Darius is waiting. They set up the television.”

  “How is it, is it working?” I asked out of curiosity.

  “It’s working,” said Alop the slave. “The pictures came up. King Darius has the remote in his hand and wants to ask you some questions.”

  “Let’s go to the palace right now,” I said.

  Shortly afterward we arrived at King Darius’s palace. Alop the slave took me by the arms and pulled me up into the dark room on top of the earthwork walls.

  There was a team working in the archeological site in the distance. That section of the archeological area had been closed to visitors. An ancient tomb had been discovered. The archeologists were all excited. They were looking at the top of the stone sarcophagus visible in the deep pit they had dug. I wanted so much to be there and learn to whom this grave that they had discovered belonged. I had heard that they were unearthing statues and graves, one more interesting than the next, in the ongoing excavations in the Dara ruins.

  They hadn’t yet informed anyone about these discoveries that illuminated this period of history. They were still quite new, and there was no one around except a not very large number of individuals interested in one or two old grave chambers and the skeletons inside them. I was able to get information from the little village girls who played all day long among the ruins.

  When I first came to the ruins three days ago, they told me that a glass crown belonging to the queen and a valuable ring had been found in a large burial chamber that had been opened.

  “The crown was made of glass. When they washed it, it was gleaming in the sunlight,” the little girls said in excitement.

  They spent most of their days in the Dara ruins. They knew the places where the archeologists had excavated, the burial chambers and the statues they found. The lives of the little girls were mingling with the lives of peop
le who had lived in these ruins thousands of years ago, as though they were an inseparable part of their everyday lives.

  I was walking behind Alop the slave down the hall that led to the splendid stone hall where King Darius’s throne stood. The air was very hot. It felt even hotter in the ruins.

  The sounds of men’s and women’s voices came to my ear.

  I looked at Alop the slave.

  “Does King Darius have guests?”

  “No, madame. Those voices are coming from the television,” said the slave.

  I moved ahead, filled with curiosity, and reached King Darius’s broad terrace.

  Alop the slave said:

  “The king is over on the side, in his chamber. The men who came from Mardin Arçelik set up the television there. They plugged in something they called a ‘global adaptor’ to the wall there. The put up an antenna on the left-hand side of the ruins. They concealed it a little next to the stones. They pulled in something called electricity from the Dara Café, by the gate of the ruins. I asked the men who came, and I learned all these things so I could explain them to you.”

  “Thank you very much, Alop,” I said. “You’ve learned marvelous things. That ‘global adaptor’ must be something new. It’s the first time I’ve heard of it.”

  “They attached it to the wall,” said Alop the slave. “It can be used anywhere in the world and regulates the electricity. I think it’s being used in our palace because it suits our world, the world in which we live.”

  “That must be it,” I said.

  It must be an adaptor that connects this world and the other world, I thought to myself.

  So then television could work in this very old palace that belonged to centuries past. And they pulled in the electricity from the little café next to the ruins. Its name was the Dara Café, and it had two tables and chairs. The first day I came I was thirsty and had a fruit soda there. I bought cookies and chewing gum for the little girls who were showing me around the ruins.

  We were advancing along the hall.

  There were sounds coming from King Darius’s rooms. It was obvious the king was playing with the remote, as though he were channel surfing. The clouds of sound and conversation were swirling around and moving in the air, providing an incredibly strange atmosphere in the darkness of the stone cavity. For a moment it seemed to me that the centuries old walls around me had started to speak and were talking to each other.