The Black Rose of Halfeti

by Nazli Eray

  “The house is in Boyabat,” I said.

  “Is that far?” asked King Darius.

  “It’s considered far. It’s far from the big cities.”

  “I understand, a house off in some faraway corner,” said King Darius. “Women are like that,” he added. “If that house were in a big city, maybe everything would have been different.”

  I looked at him in astonishment. He had immediately figured out what the program was all about.

  “Man and woman,” King Darius murmured. “They never change.”

  THE ZINCIRIYE HOTEL MARDIN

  I went back to my hotel room late at night. After asking the waiter for a myrrh coffee, I flung myself down on the couch with the silk pillows. I had tired myself out today; getting up early to go into the dream, and watching all those television programs in King Darius’s palace in the heat had exhausted me. As I sipped at the coffee that arrived, I was planning to get into bed and have a deep sleep.

  I thought about the salon of the Night People.

  It was such an unusual place there. The old doctor and his friends . . . The things they talked about . . . the years not lived.

  I was thinking of them as I lay there.

  I had unlived years too. If the old men in the Night Salon succeeded in getting their unlived years back, I was thinking of applying to the same organization that they found.

  What was being talked about was something between a dream and reality. I didn’t take it too seriously, but then again, one couldn’t be sure. It could be some kind of truth stuck off in some corner of life, hidden from the eye.

  As I thought of these things my eyelids slowly grew heavy.

  The instant I closed my eyes I saw Hikmet Bey before me. Hikmet Bey from the marriage program. He was wearing the dark blue suit he had on during the program. He smiled a little at me. I could just make out the gleam of a gold tooth on the left side of his mouth. It was a pained smile.

  He was right in front of me. It seemed that he didn’t quite know what to do.

  He started to speak.

  “I was humiliated,” he said. “That woman humiliated me. I came all the way from Boyabat, it’s my fault, and I went there in front of all those people. I’m ashamed in front of my sons; they saw the program. I don’t know what I liked about that woman; then she said ‘I didn’t feel electricity’ and I don’t know what all, and humiliated me.”

  He took out small black worry beads from his pocket and began to tell his beads.

  “Don’t be upset, pay no attention,” I said.

  “Excuse me. At this hour of the night . . . Who knows what time it is? She touched my honor. What the woman said, that show, my wish to get married again at this age. It’s my fault. Everything got to me all of a sudden. If I didn’t tell someone, I would go crazy. Please, forgive me,” he said.

  “I understand you, Hikmet Bey,” I said. “Forget about this. Everybody experiences things like this.”

  “I have to see her again.”

  “Don’t see her. What would you do if you saw her?”

  “I would say the things I couldn’t say today. I wasn’t able to finish what I had to say. It was left half done.”

  I thought of something.

  “Go into her dreams. In that case, go into her dreams one night.”

  Hikmet stared blankly at me.

  “What dreams? She doesn’t see me in her dreams. She made me look like a fool in front of everyone.”

  “Go into her dream and talk to her,” I said. “You’ll feel better.”

  Hikmet Bey gave me a funny look.

  “This is not something that’s going to get fixed in a dream or anything like that,” he said. “I couldn’t tell her what I had to say. I have to go on that program again and talk to her again in front of everybody.”

  “How can we do this?” I muttered. I was sleepy. I couldn’t quite concentrate. My eyes were closing. Hikmet Bey in his dark blue suit started to wave in front of me like the image of a branch in water in spring.

  The door of the room slowly opened. I looked in that direction.

  The Black Rose of Halfeti had come inside.

  “Excuse me,” she murmured. She made a move to leave.

  She was very beautiful. Magnificent in her jet-black gown.

  “Come, come in,” I said. “Hikmet Bey . . . He has to go into a dream. Can you help him?”

  “Of course,” said the girl. “Whose dream is he going into?”

  “He has to go into the dream of a woman called Şule Hanım tonight . . .”

  Hikmet Bey was staring closely at this beautiful woman who had suddenly appeared in the middle of the night.

  “Please come,” said the Black Rose of Halfeti to Hikmet Bey. She turned to me. “Follow us with the seer stone,” she said.

  “Are you going to go into the dream too?”

  “Since he’s new I can’t leave him on his own,” she replied.

  The two of them left the room together.

  THE SEER STONE

  I searched through my bag and found the seer stone. I was buried in the silk pillows. Very slowly I started to stroke the seer stone, turning it over and over in my hand.

  An image suddenly appeared in the stone. I could see the Black Rose of Halfeti and Hikmet Bey quite clearly on the gleaming surface of the stone. They were on a side street, walking toward a twilight world. It was a place like the neighborhood down below here. There was laundry hanging from the windows. With no night breeze, not a branch was quivering. It was obvious that the air was as hot as blood. They had paused in front of an apartment house door now. The Black Rose of Halfeti asked Hikmet Bey something. Hikmet Bey nodded his head.

  I was looking with great excitement at what I saw in the seer stone. They had to enter the dream by walking through the passageway and the aperture of the cockpit that was covered by a curtain. I wondered why the Black Rose of Halfeti had decided to try to go into the dream by such an unusual way tonight.

  A little later I figured out what was going on. Hikmet Bey went into his house and quickly went upstairs and changed his clothes. Soon after that the light went out in the upstairs window and the man came downstairs. He had on a well-cut black suit and a new tie. The girl had waited for him downstairs. Suddenly I saw them in the passageway . . . Everything was happening very quickly. The young woman on duty said: “Come on, quick, the light went on! Be quick. The woman has taken sleeping pills. When she goes into a deep sleep, you can’t get into her dreams. Hurry! Hurry up!”

  With Hikmet Bey in front and the Black Rose of Halfeti behind, they pulled the curtain aside and dashed in.

  The seer stone suddenly went dark. No matter what I did I couldn’t get the light inside to come back. I was massaging it between my fingers, but it was pitch black. At one point I wondered if it had broken.

  The stone wasn’t working. I slowly put it down beside my pillow. This must be the magic of Mardin, the thing that had made it possible for me to have all of these experiences. I was vainly seeking to recapture the dream that had vanished inside the stone and bring it back.

  Then my head finally drooped down to one side in exhaustion. I fell asleep.

  LUIS BUÑUEL

  When I slightly parted my eyelids, I found Luis Buñuel at my side, staring at me. I became excited and sat up. “Welcome, Don Luis,” I said. “I’m going through a lot of things. Strange things . . . dreams. Entering and exiting dreams . . . Now I’m trying to solve the problems of a man called Hikmet Bey using the Black Rose of Halfeti. They entered a dream, and I was following it with the seer stone when it suddenly went dark. The dream vanished. I guess the stone is broken,” I said.

  “That’s possible,” said Buñuel. “I’ve never heard of this ‘seer stone’ before. There are magic stones like that in children’s fairy tales . . .”

  “But this is real!” I said. “It’s like a little touch pad screen. It showed me many things.”

  Bunuel took the seer stone in his hand and turned it ov
er and over.

  “What happened to the old doctor?” he asked.

  “He’s in the Night Salon. He and three other men took refuge there. It’s in Tunalı Hilmi, a place run by a woman,” I said.

  “You still have the erotic letter he sent you, don’t you?”

  “Yes. It’s in my bag. Inside my business card case,” I said.

  Buñuel said:

  “Look, look, there’s something visible in the stone.”

  I bent down and looked at the seer stone. Hikmet Bey, the Black Rose of Halfeti, and Şule Hanım were in a narrow, little bedroom. Şule Hanım had been caught without makeup and her peignoir nightgown was sticking to her body; she looked older than her age. Her face was a little puffy. She was sitting on the side of the bed, saying something.

  Hikmet Bey looked very smart in his black suit. He acted like he was a member of parliament. The Black Rose of Halfeti was unbelievably beautiful. She was next to Hikmet Bey. Şule Hanım was shouting, “What is this? What’s going on? Why did you come to my room in the middle of the night? How much more can I explain to you that I don’t want you? I just didn’t feel any electricity!”

  The Black Rose of Halfeti said politely:

  “We’re so sorry if we’ve upset you. We wanted to come into your dream. Hikmet Bey has something to say to you.”

  Şule Hanım, turning to the man, said:

  “What do you have to say?”

  Hikmet Bey gave a once over at the way the woman was sitting on the bed, her swollen face without makeup, her plump hands with no jewelry.

  “I didn’t get any electricity either,” he said. “I wasn’t able to say that on the program. So I said, let me at least get to her and say it to her face. I didn’t feel any electricity from you either. Zero electricity.”

  He paused for a second, then added:

  “Lose a little weight! The flesh on your back and waist is all dimpled.”

  Şule Hanım let out a shriek.

  “You low creep! God damn you! So you throw stones at the fruit you can’t reach, huh? You bum!”

  “And it seems you have a big mouth too,” said Hikmet Bey. “Good night.”

  He took the Black Rose of Halfeti by the hand.

  “Who is this tramp?” shouted Şule Hanım. “In my bedroom . . .”

  Her voice echoed out a little into the night, then stopped as though cut by a knife, and disappeared.

  They came out from the curtain. They were walking in the passageway now.

  Hikmet Bey said thanks to the girl. “That’s a load off my mind. Besides, I was turned off from the start. She’s just a crude, fat hag; she was after my house. Now I understand. My three-story house in Boyabat.”

  “Do you have a house in Boyabat?” asked the Black Rose of Halfeti. “Where’s Boyabat?”

  “It’s on the Black Sea, a pretty little place,” said Hikmet Bey. “It’s a district of Sinop. Like paradise. I’d be happy to see you. Come and visit, I’d be honored to host you.”

  “Thank you very much,” said the girl.

  “My house looks out on Cripple Pine Park,” said Hikmet Bey. “A person can relax there, as though you were in a different world.”

  They were slowly moving through the passageway as they spoke.

  Buñuel said:

  “What a fantastic scene. What happened? What ‘electricity’?”

  “The woman said on the marriage program that she didn’t feel any electricity from Hikmet Bey. In front of millions of people . . . It hurt the guy’s feelings. So he went into the dream and said what he had to say,” I said.

  Buñuel was laughing.

  The seer stone went dark again.

  “It doesn’t show everything,” I said. “It only shows parts.”

  “But it’s wonderful,” commented Buñuel.

  He was holding the seer stone in his long, thin fingers.

  “This is cinema,” he said. “True cinema. It’s as though it only shows the scenes that are full of emotion.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” I said. I was looking at him in amazement. He was holding in his hands the magic stone of the world he had himself created.

  “I followed you,” I said.

  “When?” he asked.

  “When the Black Rose of Halfeti went into your dream. You were standing there leaning against a beech tree. As though you were a part of the trunk of the tree . . . Suddenly it began to rain. The girl was in your arms. At that instant, lightning struck the beech tree. It reduced it to ashes.”

  Buñuel was staring at me.

  “It was an extraordinary moment,” he said.

  “Love,” he whispered. “Love . . .”

  KING DARIUS

  King Darius was filled with excitement. He had sent Alop the slave over early in the morning to bring me to the palace.

  We were sitting across from one another, drinking our rose sherbet in front of that amazing view.

  “The Arena program is on tonight,” said King Darius. “Uğur Dündar’s program. The continuation of what we saw last night. The ‘Organ Mafia,’ illegal kidney transplants, the kidney trade, and the kidneys removed from the dead bodies being prepared for cremation in the Indian city of Varanasi . . .”

  “You know every detail so well, Your Majesty, you astonish me,” I said.

  “I continually watch that channel. They give out this information in bits and pieces. I kept it all in my head,” he said.

  Alop the slave bowed respectfully in front of the king.

  “The time has come, Your Majesty; should I turn on the women’s chorus, sire?”

  “Turn it on, turn it on!” said King Darius.

  The slave gently touched the button on the remote.

  The Istanbul Municipal Conservatory Chorus and a Turkish classical string orchestra appeared on the screen. The women were very attractive, with rings on their fingers, pendants on their necks, and their blonde hair. They were rendering a song in one of the slow modes again.

  King Darius followed them in admiration.

  A slave refilled my rose sherbet.

  THE PASHA

  The Black Rose of Halfeti came to my room in the Zinciriye Hotel just about every night. She would suddenly appear in the dark of the night out of some shadow or crevice, and make her final preparations in my room if she were going to enter a dream, giving me information at the same time about dreams and people. I was accustomed to her now. She had become an indispensable part of the Mardin night for me.

  She had a lot of work to do. She couldn’t go into Buñuel’s dreams very often. She was fixing her hair in front of the mirror.

  “Spray a little perfume on,” I said.

  “Is it nice?”

  “It’s lovely. Put some on.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She picked up the perfume bottle in the shape of a crystal ball that was in front of the mirror and sprayed a little behind her ears.

  An exquisite fragrance filled the room.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s the latest scent from Versace.”

  “It’s wonderful.”

  “Where are you going now?” I asked.

  “The pasha asked for me,” she said. “I’m going to the pasha’s dream.”

  “Is the pasha still imprisoned?”

  “Imprisoned.”

  “When are they supposed to release him?”

  “He doesn’t know,” said the girl.

  “If you could only go into Buñuel’s dream.”

  “I’m thinking of doing that tonight after I leave the pasha,” she said. “I miss him so much.”

  “Ask the pasha. Have him let you go early.”

  “That’s what I’m going to do. Okay, I’m going,” she said.

  The door of the room closed behind her.

  The hot Mardin night fell wave upon wave on me, it seemed. I was left alone with my thoughts.

  I picked the seer stone up in my hand and gently began to run my fingers round it.

  The pasha ap
peared in the stone. His face was stern as always. The painting was framed with a carved wooden gilt frame. I realized that he was speaking with the old men sitting in the Night Salon.

  Everyone was looking with great attention at the pasha’s portrait from where they were sitting. It was nighttime again in the salon, which was illuminated only by a dim light coming from the lamp in the corner. The shadows were long. Outside, Tunalı was quiet and peaceful.

  The pasha said:

  “Seek your rights.”

  “We will, Pasha,” said the old doctor.

  “For goodness sake, don’t give up your unlived years. Go after them,” said the pasha. “If you have to, get a lawyer. Everything you need to do to follow up . . .”

  “Look, that’s absolutely correct!” Hıfzi Bey burst out. “Good for you, Pasha. That never occurred to us. If a man of the law defends our rights, we’ll get results more easily.”

  “Well, of course,” said the pasha.

  Şevki Bey said:

  “Pasha, I’m fighting back. I have a diaper, that ogre of a caretaker is waiting for me in the house, but I’m resisting. I’m holding on to the very edge of my life here!”

  “You’ll fight back, Şevki,” said the pasha. “You’ll fight on to the very end.”

  Mustafa Bey said:

  “I can’t quite make out the road that goes to Kızılay and Cebeci anymore. But I’ll resist to the end. Roads and places are all mixed up in my head; it’s all hazy, but I won’t turn back.”

  “Are roads and places important?” said the pasha. “Pay no attention to Cebeci. Forget Kızılay. So what? What good does it do to the ones who do remember?”

  “Right,” said the old doctor.

  “What good does it do the ones who remember, anyway? To remember the road to Kızılay . . .”

  Hıfzi Bey said:

  “So somebody goes to Cebeci without mixing up the way. Is this important? I ask myself. To get to Kızılay on the first shot . . . What does that show? Everybody’s in Kızılay. Everybody’s in Cebeci. But nothing happens. Absolutely nothing changes. I tried it myself.”

  “Yes, yes,” said the old doctor. “These things are relative. Somebody who can find Kızılay could get lost in a foreign country. Couldn’t get around without a guide. There’s no difference between someone who can manage these things and someone who can’t.”