Many and Many a Year Ago

by Selcuk Altun

“Those two drunks are newspaper columnists,” said Rifat Demren. “They belong to that class of journalists who regard lack of principle as a virtue and who write what they get paid to write. I turned down the bearded one’s programming suggestions, and pointed out that the wigged one was a plagiarist. Now they think they’re ridiculing me. If they see we’re ignoring them completely, they’ll shut up …”

  I wasn’t convinced. When it became clear that I was right, I sent Akif the waiter over to have a word with them. This time, words like pilot, pilaf, and piyaz began rising from the corner, from which I understood that Akif had been spreading rumors about me. With alacrity I stepped over to their table. They looked alarmed.

  “Are you looking for trouble?” I asked. The beard tried to rise, but I pushed him down like a sack of dirt. My hand was on his shoulder and I could feel him trembling. With my right foot I stepped on the other one’s left foot; he was holding back for fear that I would snatch his wig off.

  “Actually the cheap wine you’re drinking says more about the kind of journalists you are than your lousy prose styles,” I said. I took the bottle from their table and poured it in their plates and then over their heads. “I’ll give you five minutes to get out of here before I come back with a bottle of Sarafin and wash your faces in it. And if you’re thinking of stopping by my table on your way out, I’ll mop up the floor with you as sure as there’s a hell for media disgraces like yourselves!”

  I studied the dessert menu as they got up and left. I shouldn’t have said, as I started in on my chocolate halva, “Am I too set in my ways ever to become an aesthete, Abi?” The poor man felt compelled to say, “No, you’re beyond being an aesthete; you’re an intellectual with courage.” I consoled myself by remembering that it’s always the good guy who comes out on the bottom in the New Wave movies.

  *

  I assumed that this period of Balatian hospitality and gentility would end in due time, but I wasn’t really concerned about when that would happen.

  I no longer went in much for part-time idleness, with three days of my week now taken up by radio and journalistic responsibilities. I referred to my wanderings around the Golden Horn as “Strolling through Arafistan,” araf meaning something like the line between heaven and hell. These were occasions for me to plan my radio shows and essay topics. At Klass I had at least managed to find a crowd my own age; I was twenty years younger than the other DJs I’d met at the radio station, and thirty years younger than my concert companions. The editor of Klass was Halide Ishakoğlu, a fan of C. W. Gluck. This middle-aged woman wore a beret summer and winter, and would only answer to “Halhal.” She surprised me by discovering “the compassion of a lighthouse” in my eyes. Thanks to a slim volume (Ba, by Birhan Keskin) she brought as a gift when she came to my place once for dinner, I stopped belittling the younger poets.

  I read somewhere that there are over 4,000 pieces of music specially composed for pianists who’ve lost a hand through war, disease, or accident. Paul Wittgenstein, the pianist brother of the man Professor Ali called the last century’s most significant philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, suffered the amputation of his right arm after being wounded in the First World War, in which he’d volunteered to fight. Among the composers whom the wealthy Paul commissioned to write pieces for him—he was himself a student of Theodore Leschetizky—were Strauss, Prokofiev, Ravel, and Benjamin Britten. As I played the compositions these masters had written for the mediocre pianist, I thought of Sim and got goose bumps. I was annoyed with myself for thanking Allah that I hadn’t lost my hearing when my F-16 and I crashed to the ground.

  The next evening I was getting ready to go to Disco Eden when who should call but Haluk. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t understand the meaning of “You’ve made yourself missed” was “Come and read books to my bitter granddaughter.”

  “I’d like to be there with you,” I said, “but I’m working now,” and went on to tell him about my two jobs, even though the money I made from them both wouldn’t pay for a bus ticket to work. The following evening I was playing chess with Sami when who should call but Samsun.

  “Captain, my respects,” he said. “I’m not disturbing you, I hope?”

  “Good evening, Samsun. I’m playing chess with my neighbor. If you cut it short, maybe he’ll fall into the trap I set.”

  “Captain, I’m coming to Istanbul tomorrow. With your permission, it would be my honor to pay my respects to you tomorrow evening.”

  “If you’re not going to drag me back to Ayvalık by playing on my emotions, okay, Samsun. I’ll expect you.”

  “Oh, I would never be so bold as all that, Captain,” he said. It didn’t occur to me to suspect the unusual cheerfulness with which he uttered those last words.

  I had my nose buried in a book when two hesitant rings of the doorbell reminded me that I was expecting Samsun. His orange-green shirt and black velvet trousers were dazzling. Despite the thick coat of gel encasing his hair, he looked like an overweight jockey. He didn’t come in. Standing at the threshold, he looked down at the floor and said, “I have something to tell you if you won’t be mad at me.”

  “You rogue! I can promise you I’ll try, but that’s all.”

  “Thank you, Captain. You came down to us like a saint from heaven. We only realized how much we liked you after you went away. Poor Miss Sim fell into a big depression. That novel you two started reading … it wasn’t even half finished, Captain. She knew I was coming to Istanbul to see my army friend Muho, who is now a Kasımpaşa taxi driver, and asked if she could come along. She insisted, so I brought her. She’s downstairs in Muho’s taxi. If she could just be your guest until you get to the end of that novel …? If you say the word, I’ll bring her up. If not, we’ll take her back and take care of her ourselves. May you be happy in your life, Captain.”

  With the panic of a new mother who’s left her baby on the street I ran down the stairs cursing Samsun, who followed me with a grin on his face. The chunky young man leaning against a car, who looked like he was eating a cigarette, must have been Muho. He bowed his head gravely in greeting, as if he were a man on a difficult mission. I opened the wrong door as Sim emerged from the other one and stood waiting. “You look very chic,” I said, even before “Welcome,” and kissed her on both cheeks. Extending my arm to escort her to the entrance, I already felt the stress of having a blind female houseguest. Samsun followed us with Sim’s suitcase. At the threshold he whispered, “If it’s the will of fate, I’ll pick her up when the time comes. May the Almighty turn everything you touch to gold, Captain,” and tried to kiss my hand.

  Sim asked for a glass of water so she could take a pill. I left her on the living-room couch and rushed to the kitchen. She followed me in.

  “Kemal, I owe you an apology and an explanation. Since the day I lost my sight, the only time I ever had any peace was with you. And when I saw that with every passing day I was feeling more attached to you, I got scared. I was afraid that when your period of charity came to an end and you left, even the early days would look good by comparison. I rejoiced when my old friends called in the middle of my dilemma. I thought that if I shared my loneliness with them I could rescue myself from your spell. But I could hardly put up with those two pretentious wretches for a week. I felt that they weren’t really sorry for what had happened to me. With every giggle of theirs I remembered how expert they used to be in making up gossip about me at school. The only good to come out of that small-scale nightmare they brought on was that I remembered the sweetness hidden in your voice. On our way home from Ayvalık after we saw them off, I tried not to believe Samsun when he told me he’d seen my grandfather in tears over that quarrel of ours.

  “That night for the first time I analyzed my situation. Despite his excessive fondness for me, I was constantly quarreling with my grandfather—mostly because of what he did to my grandmother and father, and maybe too because he’s a man. I was ashamed of what I had done to this person who showered me with affection and was read
y to sacrifice everything he had for my operation. If nothing else I should at least have been able to live with him in peace. And expecting the people who look after me to make me the center of their lives was wrong too. I have to be content with what they can do, and I should certainly not be afraid of flirting in the dark …

  “I’d planned to come to Istanbul to buy clothes for the fall season and to stay at Banu’s house. She’s the painter who did that portrait of me on the wall in the living room; we supposedly pick out my clothes together. The day before we were to leave, she called and said she was going to Tokat for four days. But Samsun insisted on not postponing the trip, so I went along with him. Your uninvited guest will try her best not to be a burden to you until Banu Tanalp gets back to town. And if you feel like it you can go on reading Proust to me …”

  Two months before, when I was telling Professor Ali about what had befallen me in C., he said, “What you’ve told me reminds me of Yakup Kadri’s story, ‘A Blind Eye and a Blind Heart.’

  “Zeliha, a village girl blind from birth, falls in love with the imam Hafız Şerif. This man, who has no virtues other than a beautiful voice, is unaware of the situation. When he is appointed imam of a mosque across the sea, poor Zeliha follows him on foot ‘for the sake of breathing the same air as he does.’ She takes up begging at the door of his mosque. In a letter home to his village, Hafız Şerif writes that he has run into Zeliha and has done his best to help her, but since everything has its limits, the girl’s family should come and rescue her. Not even the story’s narrator knows how this bizarre passion ends … Kemal, son, you can’t be unaware that Sim has developed similar feelings for you.”

  Listening to Sim now, I was enjoying the thought that the professor had been wrong. My guest, whose four-day stay was looming larger and larger, was still trying to make peace with life. I didn’t bother to reassure her that I wasn’t upset with her. I suppose I’d already started my countdown to the day when I would hand her over in one piece to her friend Banu. At her request we took two tours of the flat, fifteen minutes apart. As she organized her closet she said, “Don’t worry, you won’t have to help me dress. I have a technique of recognizing my own clothes.” When she came into the living room on her own, she had The Guermantes Way in her hand. Opening it to page 103, she put it in my hand. We sat on the couch side by side. Once more I bowed to the splendor of this word symphony, eager to perform eloquently:

  What I required was to possess Madame de Stermaria, for during the last few days, with an incessant activity, my desires had been preparing this pleasure, in my imagination, and this pleasure alone, for any other kind (pleasure, that is, taken with another woman) would not have been ready, pleasure being but the realization of a previous wish, and of one which is not always the same, but changes according to the endless combinations of one’s fancies, the accidents of one’s memory, the state of one’s temperament, the variability of one’s desires, the most recently granted of which lie dormant until the disappointment of their satisfaction has been to some extent forgotten; I should not have been prepared, I had already turned from the main road of general desires and had ventured along the bridle-path of a particular desire; I should have had, in order to wish for a different assignation, to retrace my steps too far before rejoining the main road and taking another path.

  *

  The Sevil Barber Shop was the tiniest in the city and Taci was the slowest barber. I knew that I’d plunged into serious civilianhood when I began finding it odd that he refused to work without wearing a white shirt and tie. Taci only used his cell phone to quarrel with his wife, and deeply lamented his failure to find a nice Golden Horn girl for me to marry. I liked his daughter, who thought a sergeant out-ranked a colonel. I relied on Rabia, a veteran student, to help out with Sim when I left the house. The first day I came home as soon as I finished work at the magazine. I was eager to take Sim on a tour of her forefathers’ neighborhood and wanted to test my skills at creating vivid descriptions of Balat by following the changes in her facial expression. (On her first shift Rabia asked my houseguest whether she distinguished colors by sniffing them.)

  Sim smiled to hear that we were starting our excursion on Half Balat Street. We took our first break in front of a signless storefront at a crossroads that doubled as a recruitment office. Then on past the early retirees who sat idly on small stools or wandered among the miniature shops; the dispirited youngsters doubtfully eyeing the small Ottoman bazaar; the robust women hurrying along narrow streets exempt from the cries of happy children; the stuttering but melodious street peddlers; the old crones who cursed when they stopped for a breather at every third step up the hill; the area cutting in from the coast and rising to a level of greater and greater obsolescence, where I found passages of Buenos Aires sorrow and Venetian mystery: at which point I get tired of the sound of my own voice. Sim was growing tired too, so we rested on the edge of a dry Ottoman fountain at the top of the hill. Irked by the constant pressure of her arm on mine, I calculated that eighty hours remained before I would be rid of her.

  I gave Sim her medication when she woke. I read Proust to her. As a pleasant fall evening came on, we walked down to the shoreline of the Golden Horn. But when the time came to describe the luxuriant ivy and clumps of fig trees tying together scenes of havoc along the 1,400-year-old walls, I lost my enthusiasm: I remembered that Sim had been able to see until two years ago. I suppressed my comparison of the buildings in Galata, on the other side, to mercenary soldiers kept waiting hundreds of years for home leave. But I confessed that I’d been dreaming of going to Genoa to check the degree of its kinship with Istanbul.

  The evening ezan had to start up for me to realize how much I’d been talking. As we stood up to go, Sim remarked, “I guess the reason for the Golden Horn’s color is that it can’t decide whether it’s a river or a stream.” For dinner we went to Albanian Bahri’s place, where even the soup came in clay bowls. Sim didn’t seem impressed by the discovery of the childhood friendship between her grandfather and the restaurant owner. On our way out Bahri whispered in my ear, “Who knows which of Haluk’s sins this houri is atoning for?” We went over to Londracula, which I knew I would find deserted whenever I dropped in. I warned Sim that I was taking her to the strangest bar in Beyoğlu.

  She thirstily downed a glass of cognac before beginning.

  “I was so lucky to be reared by my grandmother. She was as refined and delicate as a porcelain figurine. She was my mother, sister, and best friend. My joie de vivre increased with every ‘Good morning’ we exchanged; and every ‘Good night’ came after a day made richer by her every gesture. The first thing she taught me was to love color—which was why I never believed she’d be able to cope with my blindness.

  “My father came to see us once a year, and my grandfather tried not to be at home then. As soon as my father and grandmother had greeted one another, the quarreling would begin. I knew that he held me responsible for my mother’s death. And I knew that he hated the fact that I looked so much like her. I was frightened of his erratic behavior and the wrong toys he always brought me. Despite his protruding eyes and gray hair he was handsome. I suppose I envied him because he looked like my grandmother. He had earned Master’s degrees in literature and computer programming, but not even his mother knew what his job was. ‘Maybe Yusuf has a very important position in the computer division of a secret organization,’ she used to say hopefully.

  “I decided he must be a high-ranking English spy when I heard him yelling on the phone in English, but changed my mind when he finished in coded Turkish. I wasn’t terribly sorry that we never saw him again after that summer between my second and third year of high school. He told me when we saw each other for the last time, ‘My daughter, I don’t know whether it was lucky for you that your grandmother first practiced her parenting skills on me, but it’s definitely a good thing that you’ve got your artistic mother’s looks rather than mine.’ I was annoyed that he referred to me as ‘my daughter’ but
also relieved, as it seemed to me another sign that he was leaving for good. We decided we would tell people he had died in a car accident. But I’m pretty sure he’s still alive and that, moreover, he comes once a year to gaze at me from a distance, like a perverted peeping tom.

  “The first time I shouted with joy was when I got the news that I’d been accepted by the Art Department of Mimar Sinan University. I knew I’d never become an important painter, so I set my sights on the academic world. I took more pleasure in observing than in painting anyway. After classes I’d visit an exhibition or two. It used to bother me if I couldn’t find a story or poem hidden in the paintings. I amused myself by working on my pet theory: the colors humans wear always clash; the colors nature wears always harmonize. I always found a way to meet painters whose work I liked and I never went to bed without reading from the biography of a master.

  “I was in my third year when I noticed the freshman Rebii, who always sat sketching in the library. He had a relaxed attitude and an enigmatic face. He was bohemian yet chic. I was impressed by the sketches of his that I sneaked a peek at, so I decided to introduce myself to him. He seemed to be an agreeable, well-mannered kind of guy. Since his father, the high-society dentist Nebi Güler, objected to his becoming a painter, he’d decided to be an architect instead. I gradually got used to taking the lead in our relationship—I guess I thought I was molding the passive Rebii into the ideal husband-to-be.

  “My grandfather must have told you about the accident. What really killed me was Rebii’s running away. I was afraid I would end up struggling alone in the dark when my grandfather succumbed to alcohol and my grandmother to death. You yourself know how I drove away a real friend who came to help. My psychiatrist—a collector of poor engravings—told me, ‘Those pills I gave you can only cure your headaches. You’ll have to find your real medicine in time and in yourself.’ Time did what it was supposed to do, but I was hopeless about myself until I heard that tribute to Ingmar Bergman on the radio. He was my favorite film director. Although I had trouble connecting with his dignified characters, they still looked magnificent to me. A sentence by Bergman’s son-in-law, the writer Manning Henkel, made me stop and think. ‘Bergman increasingly took refuge in music as his eyesight failed him,’ he said. I think this was the divine portent I was waiting for. I stopped seeing myself as the most pitiable girl on earth and a talent lost forever to the art world, and relaxed a bit. I reached a conclusion, as you know: peace with yourself, peace with those around you. Now the next test is my check-up in two months. I hope I won’t collapse if they say that another operation won’t help. But if they do say there’s hope, I don’t even want to know if the money we have left is enough: all I know is I can’t ask my grandfather to give away his olive gardens …”