The Black Rose of Halfeti

by Nazli Eray

  “Dear,” she said. “Let the man do whatever he wants in the dream. Don’t run away from him. After all, it’s just a dream . . . Nothing in it means anything, you know. If he wants to kiss you and such, just let him do it. In fact, if he wants to go even farther, just let him. Let him live his dream.”

  I started to laugh.

  A little later I was dressed. The Black Rose of Halfeti and I left the room together.

  THE MORNING DREAM

  We walked through the passageway that wobbled under my feet and got to the doorway that looked like the entrance to a cockpit. The young female attendant was there.

  “You will go in first,” she said to me. “When that light turns green go in slowly. You know, not too much excitement, nothing extreme, no sudden movements.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  The Black Rose of Halfeti was standing next to me.

  She was fixing her hair with her hand, fiddling with her pearl necklace.

  “The pasha?” she asked the young female attendant. “Who is this pasha?”

  “A pasha,” said the official. “He’s in a painting at the moment. Captive, in other words . . . But there’s nothing to worry about. You’ll go right into his morning dream.”

  “Do they listen to the conversation?” asked the Black Rose of Halfeti.

  “Be careful, and take care,” said the young woman. “That’s all I can tell you.”

  The Black Rose of Halfeti turned to me. “Did you see that?” she said. “I swear, a person could get in trouble. I don’t know what to do. Maybe they listen to us in dreams.”

  She was tense.

  “What if I don’t go into the dream?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well, after all, the pasha is captive in a painting,” said the attendant on duty.

  “The place where you’re going to meet with him is in a dream. These are abstract things . . . ,” continued the attendant.

  “Fine. Then I’ll go in . . .”

  The green light lit up.

  “You go in first,” the young woman said to me.

  I slowly opened the curtain covering the cockpit and looked inside. The old doctor was sitting in an armchair. His face seemed to light up when he saw me.

  THE SALON OF THE NIGHT PEOPLE

  I saw that strange, old-fashioned salon where the Night People gathered for the first time when I went into the old doctor’s dream just before dawn. Aside from the doctor, there were three other old men and a plump blonde woman in this Night Salon. The woman seemed to be taking care of the old men, continually bringing them something to eat or drink.

  I was in the dream. The old doctor stood up from his armchair.

  “Welcome,” he said. “You didn’t disappoint me; you’re here. Let me introduce you to my friends. Mustafa Bey, Şevki Bey, and Hıfzı Bey . . . We’ve been getting together here at nighttime for a while.”

  The woman said, “My name is Nilüfer. Please, sit down there.”

  A morning coffee was immediately put in front of me.

  The old doctor was very happy. I could see the pleasure in his eyes.

  This room, this old-fashioned salon brought back so many memories to me. The salon in my mother’s house on Yüksel Avenue in Ankara, the guest room in my grandmother’s house in Kızıltoprak in Istanbul . . . the color of the curtains, the armchairs, the low tables scattered here and there, the mirrored buffet in the corner . . . Everything was somewhat familiar, things I was accustomed to. The frosted glass ashtrays that looked like my mother’s ashtrays, whole sets of old-fashioned thin crystal glasses, goblets, and a set of water glasses in the buffet with glass doors, coffee cups with princesses with pink skirts in relief and delicate gold leaf around the edges. My eyes picked out the bibelots of my childhood in the dark corners of the salon . . .

  The old men were excitedly telling me something.

  The old man whose name I learned was Hıfzi said:

  “We were talking before you came. There are years in our lives that we never lived. Years that go by without a person being aware of them, years that amounted to nothing. We counted them up. Everybody has some. Fifteen years, twenty years . . . If we could just get them back, we could start our lives with those years and move forward. We realized this here, in these hours of the night. We’re after those unlived years of ours.”

  The old doctor turned to me. “If I could get my hands on those unlived years, I’d be very young,” he said.

  He smiled at me very meaningfully.

  UNLIVED YEARS

  The unlived years that these old men were thinking about as they sat in this strange Night Salon intrigued me.

  The old man in pajamas named Şevki said:

  “Look, it caught your interest too. I could tell from your expression.”

  Truly, these “unlived years” had caught my interest.

  “Years that weren’t noticed,” said Şevki Bey.

  “So then, the years of youth,” I said.

  “Yes, it could be the young years,” he said.

  I became lost in thought. I must have unlived years too. I wondered which ones they were.

  “A person doesn’t notice the young years when they’re young,” said the blonde woman. “Youth passes like a dream and disappears. Only after it’s gone does a person realize what youth is.”

  She took a little breath.

  “Prison years, years dragged out in a bad marriage, years of illness,” said the old doctor. “Years spent in treatment.”

  “Yes,” I said. “These are all years that are unlived. True. Fine, well who gives these years back?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” said Hıfzi Bey. “If we could only find that person . . .”

  “Maybe some organization gives them back,” said Şevki Bey. “It might be an organizational kind of thing. Then we would go and claim our rights from this organization.”

  The old doctor didn’t take his eyes off of me.

  I realized that my presence there that night in the Night Salon gave him great happiness.

  He slowly bent over to my ear. “I ran away from home last night,” he whispered. “I’ve broken all my ties with my past. I’m free now. Even if it’s late, I’m free. I wanted you to know that.

  “They’re looking for me now. But they won’t find me. I’m not going back home. I’m happy here. You’ll come to me once in a while, won’t you?” he asked. “You’ll come, right? Here, to this salon?”

  “I will,” I said.

  His face seemed to relax.

  A signal light above us started to flash.

  I raised my head and looked at it.

  An arrow that said “Exit” was blinking.

  I realized that it was time for me to leave the morning dream.

  Suddenly I found myself in the wobbly corridor without having said goodbye to anyone.

  The Black Rose of Halfeti was at my side.

  “What happened all of a sudden?” I asked. “I just found myself here helter-skelter.”

  “The dream ended,” said the young woman. “The doctor must have woken up. You left the dream.”

  “What did you do with the pasha?”

  “The pasha is an incredible person,” said the Black Rose of Halfeti. “I talked to him about Luis Buñuel. I told him how I was in love with Buñuel. I told him all about those unusual emotions I experienced, the moment when I saw Buñuel leaning against the beech tree waiting for me, the lightning striking the tree, the way I ran in fear through the Catalan graves, everything.”

  “Fine, well what did the pasha say?”

  “He listened to me with a sweet smile on his face.

  “‘How lovely. You’re telling me about love and passion,’ he said. ‘Just like in a film . . . Come to me again, tell me these unusual dreams and about these worlds that I don’t know, okay?’

  “‘Of course I’ll come,’ I said.

  “That means he wasn’t bored. He was listening to me in total admira
tion.”

  “Is the pasha really captive?” I asked the Black Rose of Halfeti.

  “Yes, captive,” the girl said. “A captive pasha. Inside the four walls of a gilt frame.”

  “Well then, what was his crime?”

  “He didn’t tell me.”

  KING DARIUS

  “Where’s my kidney?” asked King Darius. He was feeling his midriff and back with his hand.

  “There, Your Majesty,” I said. “You have two kidneys. Here and there.”

  “Hmm,” muttered King Darius. “On my two sides . . . I understand. Well, where’s my liver?”

  “Your liver is there, Your Majesty.”

  He felt the place where the liver was.

  “So my liver is here?”

  “Yes.”

  “These are important organs . . .”

  “Very important organs,” I said. “That’s why they pay a lot of money for them.”

  “Yes. But it’s a horrible thing to sell them. Stealing them is horrible too,” said Darius. “Where is the heart?”

  “Just here.”

  “The brain?”

  “Inside your head.”

  Darius said:

  “I’m going to give this a good thinking over. I’ve been living with these organs for years, and before I watched that program I had no idea they even existed. Well, these organs are inside, what do they look like? How do they find them and remove or connect them in their places?”

  “King Darius, this is a completely different subject. We’ll speak about that in good time. I’ll try to explain it to you as best I can.”

  “Fine,” said King Darius. “Sometimes I have a pain here.”

  I looked at the place where he pointed.

  “Your stomach,” I said.

  “Yes, it aches once in a while,” he said. “After meals.”

  “I’ll give you a tablet to chew; it might help.”

  King Darius was amazed.

  “All the things I’m learning!” he said. The stomach . . . stomach aches and a tablet that cures it. There are all these things that I didn’t know about in the world. It’s as though I moved into a second world after I got that television.”

  I was thinking that, truly, an incredible second world had revealed itself to King Darius.

  “I want to know and learn everything,” he said. “I don’t want to miss all this innovation, all these exciting things. I’m a powerful king. I own all of these lands. And I want to possess all of this knowledge as well. How can we do this?”

  I was trying to think.

  “Maybe you could go to a school,” I said.

  He immediately became interested.

  “To a school?”

  “To school in Mardin . . .”

  But then I thought, this would be impossible. The great King Darius could not start going to an elementary school in Mardin.

  “Stop,” I said. “We can find you teachers. One or two teachers . . . They’ll teach you what you want. Things connected to life, to the century in which we’re living . . .”

  “Where would we find the teachers?” asked King Darius.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “But we can find them. We also need a wise man. Someone who will stay near you and analyze your life and what you learn.”

  “So I need a wise man too . . .”

  “Yes, a wise man is necessary for you to maintain peace and quiet in your life, someone who will help you sift through all that you learn.”

  “Is what I learn going to unsettle me?”

  “No, but it could exhaust you, make you indecisive; it can affect you. Actually, I don’t know, Your Majesty,” I said. “But someone has to analyze all of the things you’re going to learn for you. For all the stones to fit properly in place . . .”

  “For all the stones to fit properly in place,” King Darius repeated.

  Suddenly he stopped.

  “What stones?” he asked.

  “The stones in your soul . . .”

  Alop the slave was by our side, listening attentively to all of what was being said.

  I was standing there thinking.

  Was it really necessary, I wondered, that King Darius learn everything that existed in life and that was talked about at that moment? Was it even possible?

  Impossible, as far as I was concerned. Not just for King Darius but even for anyone who had lived in this century.

  “You don’t have to know everything!” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because everything isn’t necessary for a person’s life and happiness, Your Majesty. Maybe you could learn the things that you like and that interest you, and improve yourself based on these things.”

  “Who knows?” said King Darius. “I don’t know what there is; whether there’s a lot or a little. I have no idea!”

  He thought for a minute.

  “I’ll keep on with the television,” he said. “As I look at it I see things and learn things.”

  “Well of course, keep looking at television,” I said.

  Darius pointed to Alop the slave with his hand.

  The slave turned on the television with the remote he was holding; as he pressed the buttons the images changed on the screen.

  The king asked me curiously:

  “Who’s this?”

  “The prime minister.”

  “Who are these?”

  “The beauties participating in the world beauty queen contest . . .”

  “What’s this?”

  “A travel program. Temples in the Far East. Gold statues of the Buddha . . .”

  “Who are these?”

  “Football players, a football match.”

  “Who is this?”

  “The prime minister again on another channel.”

  “Where is this?”

  “The interior of a palace on a domestic TV series . . .”

  “What are these people doing?”

  “It’s the program We’re Having Dinner. I’ll explain it to you later. It’s a contest.”

  “Hey, what’s this?”

  “It’s a marriage program, Your Majesty,” I said.

  “It’s all so interesting,” murmured the king. He was staring at the screen in astonishment.

  The marriage program had caught King Darius’s interest.

  He said to Alop the slave:

  “Find that man and woman from just now. It seemed there was some kind of agreement being made.”

  Alop found the channel where the program was being broadcast.

  A man and woman were sitting next to one another on the screen. There was a screen with hearts on it between them. The woman would be considered middle-aged. She was overdressed, wearing a low-cut, blue summer blouse. She had black sandals with tiny black stones on them on her feet. The man was older. He seemed excited. He was wearing a dark blue suit. They were interested in each other, but they had not seen one another yet. They were exchanging questions.

  The woman asked:

  “How many children do you have?”

  The man replied:

  “I have two sons, but they’re grown up. They don’t live with me.”

  The woman asked:

  “Why did you leave your wife?”

  “We couldn’t get along. We tried very hard to make it work but it didn’t work out. I’ve been alone for three years.”

  “Do you have a house?”

  “I have a house that I own.”

  “Retirement salary?”

  “Yes.”

  The woman asked:

  “Would you come from Boyabat to live in Istanbul?”

  The man said:

  “I would.”

  King Darius said:

  “This is very interesting. A man and woman. Side by side. Let’s look at this a little.”

  “Whatever you want, Your Majesty,” I said.

  The man on the screen spoke:

  “What do you look for in a man?”

  The woman thought for a moment.<
br />
  “Fidelity, generosity, understanding,” she said.

  The man said:

  “Would you think of living in Boyabat? I have a three-story house.”

  The woman replied:

  “I might think of it.”

  The audience in the studio began to shout, “Open it, open,” pressuring them to open the curtain.

  The man asked:

  “How many children do you have?”

  The woman said:

  “I have a daughter, she’s married.”

  “Are you making it a condition that we live in Istanbul?”

  “I don’t know,” said the woman. “I never thought of Boyabat. But a three-story house . . .”

  The announcer intervened. He gave a lusty look toward the camera. She was a nice-looking lady, and it was clear he had enjoyed doing the program.

  “Now I’m going to open the screen,” he said. “So that Hikmet Bey and Şule Hanım can see one another. Let’s see if there’s any electricity between them! Are they going to go off and have tea together?”

  Amid applause from the audience, the screen decorated with red hearts between the man and the woman opened.

  Şule Hanım and Hikmet Bey looked at one another.

  There was a silence.

  Şule Hanım bent her head down.

  “What happened?” asked the host. “Şule Hanım, what happened?”

  Şule Hanım jingled the bracelets on her arms a little.

  “I didn’t feel any electricity,” she said.

  Hikmet Bey seemed to collapse where he sat.

  “No electricity. I didn’t feel anything,” said Şule Hanım.

  The host intervened immediately.

  “Come, Hikmet Bey, let me take you over here . . .” If there were other contestants, he would introduce them and have them talk to Hikmet Bey.

  “Sit there, please, Hikmet Bey. Şule Hanım, let me take you this way . . .”

  The man and the woman disappeared from the screen.

  King Darius turned to me in excitement.

  “What’s going on here?” he shouted. “The woman didn’t want the man. The man wound up there all alone.”

  “Sometimes things are like this, King Darius,” I said. “There’s no electricity between the couples. Şule Hanım didn’t feel any electricity.”

  King Darius said:

  “What’s electricity? The woman didn’t like the man. She didn’t find what she was looking for when the curtain opened. What a shame for the man. In front of everyone . . . and he says he has a three-story house . . .”