Many and Many a Year Ago

by Selcuk Altun

  Like a teacher rewarding a student for an enthusiastic reading of her composition, I caressed Sim’s cheek. I didn’t much like the phony tone of my voice saying, “Something in me is happily telling me that you’ll see again. And don’t forget that I’ll be there whenever you need me.”

  Next morning we started Cities of the Plain. We discussed our misfortunes in a quiet Golden Horn café. Nobody else was in the cinema where we went to see Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s The Seasons. We were invited to the Uzels for dinner. I knew Sim would impress them. “She looks like Audrey Hepburn rehearsing the role of a blind girl,” Esther said, which sounded right when I remembered the looks she got from the men on the street. I thought my houseguest would be pleased by this delayed compliment but I was mistaken.

  For breakfast the next morning we dipped our fresh warm pide into Ayvalık olive oil, then with Cities of the Plain under my left arm we set out toward the nicely named Unkapanı. I narrated to her the misty Ottoman streets between Zeyrek and Horhor inch by inch and color by color. I read Proust to her in dim cafés under the pitying gaze of tactless retirees. I became self-conscious when I realized that I was producing a different voice and rhythm for each character. (Was this the ploy of a restless father expecting the daughter to whom he is reading fairy tales to quickly fall asleep?) We had lunch at Tirebolu Pide in Fatih. I raked the couple at the next table with my eyes when they stared at me for tearing Sim’s pide into smaller pieces. Sim liked wandering around the antique dealers’ shops on Horhor Street. She fell asleep as soon as we got into the taxi to go home. This time I didn’t have the heart to pull my shoulder out from under her head.

  I was relieved to hear why she’d turned down my invitation to go to a concert: she needed to get ready to go to her friend Banu’s the next morning. (I was now about seventy hours behind in my plans for Disco Eden.) Together we packed her suitcase, and I didn’t find helping her dry her hair so tedious. Reluctantly we finished the longest volume of Remembrance of Things Past.

  I had to admit that I was getting used to Sim. She was an agreeable person who knew when to listen and when to ask questions. For the first time since my infirmity I had revealed my own inner world to someone. Walking down Sofyalı Street with Sim on my right arm and her suitcase in my left hand, I said, “Let me remind you that we still have three volumes to go.”

  “I have The Captive with me,” she said. “I never thought we’d get past the fifth one.”

  “I’ll pick up the last two,” I said. “You’ve got three days ahead of you to make up for lost time with your Banu.”

  I liked the studio just inside the entrance of the gloomy han that housed pious foundations, trade unions, and the offices of never-to-be-retired lawyers. Was the mess in the studio compensated for by the Puccini opera surging from the stereo next to the antique stove? I almost started describing the colors and sorrowful tales of the huge paintings on the walls to Sim. Banu Tanalp was an attractive woman in her fifties with an elegant look that made one want to pull oneself together. When she told me that she was one of my listeners, I found her ironic smile less fearsome. Sim had already told me that she was an artist who didn’t strive desperately to be recognized. On her graduation from the Fine Arts Academy she had married a sculptor thirty years older than herself. It was an exceptionally happy marriage, envied by all her friends, lasting until her husband died four years ago. I was impressed by this artist with the mournful eyes, whose son had risen to the second-violin chair in a California city orchestra. Later I would understand why she had looked down at the floor when I told her I would come back in three days to collect Sim.

  *

  The inevitability of two-year-old magazines at the dentist’s and two-day-old newspapers at the barber’s. As I sat patiently waiting my turn at the Sevil Barber Shop, Taci seemed to be slowing down just to annoy me. A news story and photograph in a tabloid paper with unsolved crossword puzzles caught my eye: the well-known society dentist Nebi Güler’s historical mansion on Büyükada had burned to ashes along with everything inside it. The cause of the fire, in which no one had died, was under investigation. The fact that the museum-quality contents of the house were uninsured was emphasized.

  I went outside immediately and called Samsun on his cell phone.

  “Where can I track you down, you teller of tall tales?”

  “I’m in Istanbul, Captain, and with good luck I’ll be back in C. tomorrow.”

  “Did you and Muho burn down the mansion?”

  “I don’t get what you’re sayin’, Captain.”

  “I just read about it in an old newspaper. Sim’s old boyfriend’s mansion completely burnt to the ground. Thank God nobody died.”

  “The papers I could buy if I had enough money only cover fires in the boondocks, Captain. And in my book we ain’t supposed to light an empty house on fire and run away. I wish I’d been there when those Nebi and Rebii scumbags were at home so I could have shot their eyes out. But Haluk Bey wouldn’t let me go, Captain.”

  If I believed in Samsun’s innocence, I had no difficulty figuring out who the arsonist was.

  “Captain, if you please, I got somethin’ to tell you.”

  “No more than three sentences, Samsun, and let them be your last words. My mind is confused all of a sudden …”

  “Now we talkin’ man-to-man, Captain. I made up that story for Sim about Haluk Bey crying because of her, to soften her heart. (This worked.) To set her up for a stay in Balat, I asked Mrs. Banu for help, and so she pretended to go to Tokat. (This worked too, didn’t it?) My apologies and my thanks, Captain.”

  “If you were here I’d strangle you, Samsun! Are you practicing an internship in meddling, you interfering rat?”

  “If necessary, poor Samsun will sacrifice himself for you, Captain.”

  I knew that the Master of Twilight, Suat, wouldn’t be satisfied with arson alone if he had decided to punish the Gülers. I googled the name on the Net. The news that Nebi Güler was last seen in Cyprus with a model on his arm, and that the Nazmi Ziya paintings Aydeniz Güler had bought were fakes, was offered almost gleefully. It occurred to me how I might get some information on Rebii. I found his father’s phone numbers and went to Taksim. I found a wine-whiff-free phone booth and dialed the non-rhythmic number of the Güler Dental Clinic. The secretary broke off her canned response mid-stream, asking abruptly, “How can I help you?”

  I asked for Rebii Güler’s number, knowing that she would scarcely want to help.

  “Who’s calling?”

  “An old university friend of his, Sadık Kaçmaz. I wanted to express my condolences.”

  “He lives in New York now and unfortunately we don’t have his phone number.”

  “Okay then. How is he getting along, may I ask?”

  “Have you just heard about that horrible accident he had last summer?”

  “It would be a comfort to me if you could fill me in on his latest condition.”

  “Rebii Bey was walking in Manhattan that night when a motorcycle hit him from behind and knocked him down. Just as he was about to get up, a van ran over him. Both of his legs were severed at the knee, sadly …”

  I hung up, my head pounding. My inner voice probably thought it would soothe me to say, “Be patient until you meet your benefactor, that postmodern Robin Hood.” I went home and took two sleeping pills and went to bed. That evening I was playing chess with Sami for pizza. (Sim never liked him and once said, “This guy with the firecracker voice, is it fake art he makes?”) I was concerned when he met my bad moves with even worse ones.

  “Sami, I know my mind is confused, but what about yours?”

  “There’s a rumor going around the bazaar.”

  “The Grand Bazaar or the Mirror Bazaar?”

  “The bazaar says that when Professor Ali gets Sim’s eyes opened with an operation, you’re going to marry her.”

  “So then, Master Sami, did you step up and say, ‘Hey bazaar, I live in the same building as those two poor people a
nd I would know if there was anything between them. Lieutenant Kuray has taken a disabled person into his home for the sake of humanity.’ Did you?”

  “The young bazaar folk want you to have a big colorful Golden Horn wedding. I have some dollars saved up, and if necessary …”

  “I restrained myself when you said that Pink Floyd was more important than Tchaikovsky, but this is too much nonsense even for you, Sami. You’d better get out of this house, or lab, or whatever it is, and don’t come back for ten years even if I implore you!”

  Hayri Abi used to say, “Don’t use music like an aspirin by taking it only when you’re mad.” I looked in my drawer for money to go to Disco Eden, but there wasn’t enough, so I went down to the shore instead. I sat on the first bench I found and tried to make the best of the cool night air. For a while I listened to the cars hissing by in even intervals on the wet street behind me. Then the surface of the water trembled slightly, and I perked up as though I were about to see a ghostly sailing ship slip by like a Byzantine souvenir.

  *

  As we headed toward Asmalımescit I had a goal in mind that I kept secret even from my inner voice: to have a quiet, good-natured girlfriend who loved music and possessed a rich inner life. When poor Sim, for whom I would always have a prayer or two to spare, went back to C., I would begin a new period by undertaking a quest of the heart free of time constraints and ulterior motives.

  I was pleased to find Sim less cheerful than when I had left her. I cursed Samsun as I struggled to convince Banu that my feelings for Sim were those of a compassionate older brother. On the way back to Balat I had the feeling that Sim was preparing what she wanted to say to me. As we were putting her things in the closet I said, “I think of Samsun as a major character who pretends to be a minor one. Do you think I’m wrong?”

  “If I answered in a word it wouldn’t be fair to him. As a child he had problems adapting to C. He ran away from school when the other kids made fun of his name and accent. My grandfather, with a whip in his hand, taught him how to read and write and so saved him from prison. Samsun is devoted to all of us, but he worships my grandfather. When he was drinking in the bars until the early mornings it was Samsun who waited at the door, carried him home, put him to bed, and gave him his medicine. Another one of Samsun’s jobs is dealing with the migrant workers who pick the olives at harvest time. I think you already noticed how sorry he was not to be given the additional responsibility of family bodyguard.

  “He’s able to multiply four-digit numbers in his head. So as not to be an extra burden to us, he turned in an empty paper for his university entrance exams. He reads radical newspapers and magazines and strange philosophical books. He has a peculiar sense of humor. He goes to the mosque on Friday and fasts during Rammadan. And whenever he falls into his father’s folksy Turkish, he’s definitely up to something.

  “He never used the polite hanım in speaking to me until I started university. One day he came to my room and asked, very shyly, ‘Sister dear, do you think people have the right to fall in love just once?’ I think he’s still in love with the actress Meg Ryan. I’m worried that he might upset the applecart by doing something outrageous just as he’s trying to make things right …” (If Sami was Suat Altan’s Balat agent, then Samsun must be his man in Ayvalık. I no longer found this theory comical.)

  We finished The Sweet Cheat Gone and The Past Recaptured in a week. As we neared the end of the masterpiece, it felt as if both the writer and his characters were getting a bit bored. (Was it perhaps the author’s choice to consume the poetry like the last few grains of sand in an hourglass?) We went out every day as soon as we’d satisfied our reading quota. I could never be bored in the studio of the artist Sali Turan, who lived and breathed paint, or at the art gallery of Evin Iyem, an elegant woman with rapidly blinking eyes. At the concert I took Sim to I told her, “I won’t let go of your hand until the second I feel that you’re not bored.” I made her laugh by reading headlines I found in the tabloids left behind on the old ferries. At the Ahırkapı lighthouse forty ships sailed by before we noticed the rain falling on us. Together we took my latest article to the magazine office. When she was with me in the studio, my radio programs seemed more successful. She impressed Rifat Demren, as I knew she would. When she dozed off while watching a DVD of Ingmar Bergman’s “Winter Light” I carried her to bed in my arms. On her last day we rushed off to the Akmerkez mall to buy her a hat. I gave the useless and comically dressed short-legged salesgirl, who was simultaneously sneering at and pitying my houseguest, a look that said, “It’s because you know she’s worth five of you even in her present condition that you’re bursting with envy.”

  Samsun came with the Jeep to collect Sim and her three suitcases and almost collapsed with laughter when I said, “What’s 9,876 times 5,432?”

  “I used to feel bad at being treated like a monkey, when everybody I met tried to test my meaningless talent, so I started giving them perfectly wrong answers. But when they continued to be impressed, I started enjoying myself. They usually give me numbers from nine to two in descending order …” he said.

  I was happy to think that he’d ended his period of flattery. If he was trying to send me a message, I didn’t care.

  Sim said she would stay with me when she came for her check-up in six weeks time. Once I learned that she’d reached C. safely, I went out to Disco Eden, but it was closed. I didn’t feel like going home so I climbed the stairs of Radio Estanbul in the dark, knowing I would find Rifat Demren reading in what he thought of as his temple.

  “Rifat Bey,” I said. “After seeing Sim off, a weird thing happened to me. I’m irritated by the silence in my house, which I used to like just because it was silent.”

  “I once saw a documentary about the octopus. It seems that the male turns completely scarlet when he touches the female, perhaps out of embarrassment. The female, on the other hand, stops eating after laying her eggs and waits five months for her offspring to emerge. When she sees them slip into the water, she dies in peace.”

  He uttered a heart-rending whistle and returned to scribbling notes in the margins of his rare book.

  “Brother, I’m not sure I understand what you mean, but if you’re suggesting I’m in love with Sim, you’re mistaken,” I said.

  I woke up in a meaningless flurry of anxiety and felt like I needed an excuse to leave the house. I opened the living-room window to the pleasant crispness of the air and the gray sky. I put the Giuseppe and Giovanni Sammartini CDs in the beige bag that was a gift from Sim. I’d never walked to the station from home before. Along the way I realized that for the first time I’d left without shaving and eating breakfast. By the time I reached the Unkapanı Bridge I was missing the warmth of Sim’s hand on my right arm. I speculated on when the feeling would leave. I decided not to bother with my “quest of the heart”; if it was in the stars, the woman of my life would find me. I stopped at a deserted buffet at the Tünel plaza and called Sim while waiting for my toast and sausages. I felt more at ease on hearing her, but the joy in her voice unsettled me. I said that I owed her a “Thank you” and that she owed me an apology: “I enjoyed very much having you as my houseguest, but you’re damaging my relationship with my solitude.”

  While recording in the studio I had to convince myself that Sim wasn’t there too, sitting across from me. I listened to Adriana Varela over dinner, which consisted of a pastrami sandwich with pickled cabbage and a Malbec wine, followed by tulumba for dessert. I called Sami and said, “As long as you don’t mention Sim’s name, you can come over and I’ll teach you chess.”

  *

  Next morning?

  The thousands of musical notes flying toward each other from the four corners of my bed and the warm spring-like breeze wafting against my body were making me uneasy. I feared opening my eyes would cause me to miss a fantastic show. I turned on my side carefully, as if I were protecting a precious gift entrusted to me. And then the sublime nature of my inner voice dawned on me.
I’d been anticipating instructions from it in vain. It had turned away from me and departed. I realized, as my eyes slowly opened, I was a new man.

  I knew that her smiling image would greet my open eyes and I would feel her presence within me. Whether Suat Altan wanted it or not, I had fallen in love with Sim Erçelik. Having made this private announcement to myself, I leapt out of bed and threw myself face-down on the bed where she’d slept for a whole week. As I inhaled her fragrance I wondered whether the reason we got on so well was that she was blind. I felt like I was flying in the ocean and swimming in the clouds, growing lighter and lighter by the minute.

  I jumped up again and rushed to the study. I took down the big dictionary and bemusedly looked up the word “love.” (If my life were a novel, the preceding sentence would be erased.) I was reassured to see that I met the parameters of the definition. Still, I thought the word should have had a more earth-shattering definition in view of the uniqueness of each case. On a sudden impulse I read Poe’s “Annabel Lee” in Suat’s manuscript once again. It struck me that the phrase “Many and many a year ago” was sufficient unto itself as a manifesto of true love.