The Lamppost Diary

by Agop J. Hacikyan

  Minutes passed. The creak of the classroom door heralded the arrival of the corpulent Father Matos, venerable head of the school. He walked in slowly, lending a sombre air to his unexpected visit. Between his fingers was his unlit cigar, which he usually smoked after lunch. His massive balls were as remarkable as the man himself: they bulged in his trousers like a pair of melons. He was regarded among the students and parents not so much for his testicular immensity as for his rustic speech.

  The class stood up. There was a sepulchral silence.

  ‘Sit down, my children,’ he said, smiling, his voice coming from somewhere deep in the stomach.

  The stale odour of the priest’s unlit cigar made Tomas think of the shoeshine boys who sat behind ornate shoe-black boxes lined along the wall of the Muslim cemetery, unlit cigarettes hanging from their lips. He eyed the saintly man up and down. To his memory, Father Matos had never entered the classroom without a sudden burst of rage. Today, on the contrary, his face bore a most unusual and curious expression. Garig made an effort to assume a faint, accommodating smile. The portly father raised his arms and broke the silence, as if pronouncing a ‘Hail Mary’ for a very special occasion.

  ‘I’ve come to bring you good news, my children!’

  The silence was so total that no one dared to breathe. Was he going to announce an early dismissal, or a trip to a museum, or to the nearby tram depot to see the antique horse-drawn trams? Or, something even more exciting, the imminent death of the arithmetic teacher?! The buoyant priest scrutinized Tomas, then turned to the class.

  ‘Yes, my dear children,’ his voice took on an amiable tone, ‘I have good news! I was told this morning that your friend Tomas’s sister has joined the host of angels. God has called her to play with the other angels up in heaven.’ He raised his arms again, as if, this time, to show the exact spot where she was busy with a skipping rope or playing hopscotch on the celestial pavement. ‘Let us now, my children, consider for a few moments the splendour of all the heavenly blessings in which the angels delight.’

  The boys could hear the faint ticking of the watch in Father Matos’s breast pocket, it was so quiet. Tomas retreated deep into the winged silence of the classroom. His vision was blurred; a veil had fallen before his eyes. A few of his friends dared to look at him in breathless astonishment. Murmurous voices gradually filled the classroom. More heads turned in Tomas’s direction. He was drowning in compassionate looks. They no longer looked on him as a friend. Tomas had entered into a covenant with the bearded Father as a result of his sister’s ascension to the heavenly ranks. It was a horrifying dream. Remote, distant, yet tangible, ready to devour Tomas, a drop of water in a tempestuous wave, driven away from everything. His anger – not exactly anger – was boundless, thrusting into his heart, sharp as burning needles. He looked at his friends: they were like extras in a crash scene; like figures in an effigy, reduced in size, shrinking ever tinier. He wanted to cry. He felt dead, motionless. The priest’s words made no sense. All of a sudden he leaped from his desk, dashed to the door, opened it, and ran out onto the street. No tram could race with him anymore. Like a stray dog, all he wanted was to find his mother.

  ‘Damn you, Father Matos! Fuck you! May God call you to play with His angels; they’ll kick your big, ripe balls and make them bounce all the way from heaven to the school!’

  Why couldn’t his parents have told him that his sister had died, instead of asking Father Matos to announce it?

  *

  Tomas kicked the half-open apartment door and burst into the hall like a frenzied animal. Prapyon, their maid, grabbed him firmly. He yelled and tore himself away, as from a flame, bounding towards the living room. No one was there. He ran to the dining room. Aunt Arminé heard the commotion and rushed in. Tomas looked at her, totally confused, as though she was a stranger. She bent over him and put her bulging arms around him, squeezing him so hard that it hurt. How odd for her to be there when his parents weren’t home. He was unable to utter a word; tears started streaming from his eyes.

  ‘It’s okay, Tomas, it’s okay. It’s good to cry,’ she said, stroking his hair with trembling hands.

  Aunt Arminé’s heart was made of sugar and love. Her voice was normally soothing, but Tomas remained frozen. All he wanted was to run away – from the apartment, from home, from parents, from school ... Everything was whirling around him, huge waves of hot and cold rushing through him. How could he know that his shock and despair might gradually win out one day? This was his first exposure to death and parental lies. He hadn’t realized that deceit was commonplace among Armenian parents – to protect their children from painful truths – and their lies, like persistent sores, never healed. His parents had lied to him before.

  *

  The days all seemed the same. Tomas refused to sleep, afraid of dreaming. Instead, snuggled up under an enormous eiderdown, he watched the shadows on the ceiling created by the headlights of passing cars. He listened to the ambulance sirens piercing the night. And often, in the darkness of his bedroom, he cried softly to himself, trying to escape the painful workings of his memory. He gave up saying his prayers. He was sure, though, that his sister’s watchful eye was upon him in the darkness.

  He wished that his childlike disguise was only a dream.

  A few days later, Tomas’s mother came home. Tomas was both pleased and angry. He took a few reluctant steps towards her to let her kiss him on both cheeks, which she did after hugging him tightly. Then he stood in front of her, shifting from one foot to the other just as he had done when he learned about Emma’s hospitalization from his father.

  A Sunday silence reigned over the apartment. His mother no longer talked, no longer drank, no longer ate. Occasionally she wore the weak smile of a convalescent. On the table beside her bed stood little Emma’s picture draped with white and pink ribbons. Her absence, like a malignant tumour, filled Tomas’s heart.

  Neither his sister nor his mother had gone to Switzerland. Emma had died before reaching the hospital. Right after her daughter’s funeral, Mother had been admitted to the Hôpital de la Paix, the French psychiatric clinic, and treated there for two weeks.

  The cause of Emma’s death was obvious to all the neighbours, friends, and relatives: the evil eye had killed her. It was common knowledge that evil forces brooded in the midst of envious and jealous gazes and were capable of destroying even the most innocent. Despite prayers, the intervention of the Holy Virgin, and the protection of the Almighty and a whole colony of patron saints, the evil eye had remained invincible. Their verdict was unanimous: Tomas’s parents would need much larger beads imprinted with blue eyes on a white circular background – the ever-popular nazar bonjouğu – to avert malicious spells. The bonjouk that they had – one over the entrance to the apartment and another hanging from the rearview mirror of their car – were much too small, especially at a time when the whole of Europe was at war and there was an epidemic of crime.

  Those who were blessed with some sagacity tried to convince Mama that Emma was with the good Lord and would be waiting for her in heaven. Their consolation thrust Tomas into a state of profound anxiety. What if Mama decided to leave soon and join her?

  His mother looked old beyond her years. The soft lines of her face had totally disappeared. She disguised her grief behind exaggerated affection for Tomas – always hugging and kissing him and wearing a forced smile. Despite his objections Tomas was under her surveillance from the moment he returned from school until he went to bed.

  Little by little Tomas’s anger dissipated into frequent exhibitions of disobedience and shouting; like the first jet of steam from a boiling kettle, each one lasted only a few minutes. His parents didn’t dare reproach him. Despite their extraordinary kindness, Tomas refused to forgive them. He couldn’t help feeling choked with bitterness at being deceived.

  Emma was with him day and night. She replaced the stars, brighter than galaxies. The passing years would turn her into a fanciful figment, never to be effaced –
her death, like a running wound, would never heal.

  2

  The world had plunged into darkness. There was a war going on – not where Tomas lived, but the same danger lurked everywhere. They called it the Second World War. Tomas didn’t exactly know what a world war was. Adults talked about offensives, defensives, landings, air raids, invasions, casualties, Germany, Italy, Benito Mussolini ... His parents didn’t want him to hear about the atrocities taking place in Europe. Every time the subject was raised Mama warned Papa, ‘There’s a fly on the wall.’

  Tomas gingerly checked the walls. There was no fly, not even a flea. Only occasionally were there a couple of flies, not on the wall but on the windowpane; their translucent wings would buzz for a few seconds and then they’d drop dead on the windowsill.

  Mama and Papa frequently spoke in whispers, which reminded Tomas of the silent films (without the perpetual flickering noise) the pupils watched one Saturday afternoon a month, projected onto the whitewashed wall of the school gymnasium. He tried to guess what the adults were saying by reading their lips and facial expressions, but without much success.

  On the surface life in Istanbul went on much as it had when the world was still at peace. The streets were no dirtier than before and people carried on gossiping, complaining and blaming the government for everything and nothing. But there were constant reminders of the war in the daily local papers, on the radio and on the weekly newsreels at the cinema. As the lights dimmed, the velvet curtain would open and the sign FOX-MOVIETONE would appear on the big screen with a special World War II sound track in the background: ‘Paris evacuates ahead of German invasion ... Churchill takes helm as Germans advance ... Gypsy victims of Nazi camps ... Maginot line, hard line, deadline ...’ Tomas watched everything attentively. The ushers scuttled up and down the aisles noiselessly, their flashlights darting over the carpeted floor, reminding Tomas of the searchlights that criss-crossed the sky like shimmering duelling swords every night, looking for enemy planes, migratory birds and falling stars.

  At home people pulled down the black window shades before turning the lights on. No household was allowed to use light bulbs stronger than 40 watts. The streets were pitch black, darker than they had ever been in their two-thousand-year history. The street lamps were never lit. Night watchmen patrolled the streets, making sure every household had its lights dimmed and its shades lowered. Tomas used a flashlight when occasionally they went out after dark. He had to cover its tiny bulb with a piece of blue crepe paper. For the last few days there had been a huge, glabrous moon, round and flawless, like a lantern hanging from the sky in the middle of Valikonağι Boulevard where they lived. It was so bright that the boy wished he could cover it with crepe paper.

  Often, as Tomas looked out the living room window in the evening, he found the peacefulness in the street surreal. It was like a peculiar stage set – a long alley lined with cardboard buildings on both sides containing a couple of vacant lots. The outside stillness made him recall his sister asleep for hours in his mother’s room: the telephone unhooked, a little handwritten note pinned to the apartment door so no one would ring the bell and wake the little girl.

  ‘Turkey is neutral; it’s not at war,’ everybody was saying, but the government had imposed a fully-fledged curfew all the same. Papa was convinced that the reason for the curfew was simply to give German battleships a chance to cross the Bosporus in the middle of the night, just as in the old days the bodies of murdered harem girls had been sneaked through the palace walls under cover of darkness and thrown into the choppy sea.

  The war unlocked the floodgates of partiality for many. Only recently there had been much rejoicing over a German victory. Tomas’s parents, in stark contrast, were distressed at the news. To Tomas, Germany, Poland, Russia, Czechoslovakia seemed zillions of miles away, on another planet, where no one spoke Armenian or Turkish.

  Despite lying to his son, Tomas’s father, Anton, was a warm-hearted, amicable man, tall and strong, a monument of authority. His employees called him chorbajι, boss. He took care of a legion of people: his wife, Lucie; his son, Tomas; Prapyon, their maid, who had outlived four robust husbands and a blind lover; and Noni, her mother and her two brothers, who lived on the second floor of the same building. Noni was like a second mother to Tomas, always present, always thoughtful and caring. Tomas often wondered how he could have two mothers. Everybody he knew – Armenian, Jewish, Greek or Turkish – including Jesus Christ, had only one mother.

  Only Tomas called her Noni; everyone else called her by her real name, Nouritsa, the Armenian word for ‘gift’. Depending on the day, the weather and his mood, he thought he loved her as much as he loved Mama. She had been part of Tomas’s family well before Papa and Mama had gone to bed to hatch their son. She might have even been there to supervise the copulation, making sure that everything went according to plan. In a way, she was like a supporting actress who often outshines the leading lady, with her blonde hair, green eyes, golden skin, small breasts and pronounced hips. She was a little younger and a lot sexier than Mama. Rumour had it that she had once been head-over-heels in love with a local Turkish police officer, but Papa had created turmoil by first threatening and then bribing the officer to leave Noni alone. Papa’s possessiveness had given way to a thousand juicy speculations at the time. Tomas had a tingling sensation every time he watched Noni swimming in her yellow two-piece bathing suit at the yalι, their waterside summerhouse on the Bosporus.

  His Mama, Lucie, was a brunette. Besides being a gifted liar, she had a tender face, dark brown eyes, brown hair and a pleasant voice. Tomas didn’t fancy her when she went swimming in her light blue one-piece bathing suit, nor when she bathed naked at the local hammam. She was taller than Noni, a few years older, a couple of kilos heavier and a lot less sexy.

  Papa ruled supreme in their household, but Mama provided Tomas with his daily share of exaggerated affection and frequent visits to doctors for sneezing, belching or twitching of the eyes. Since Emma’s passing away such visits had multiplied.

  Mama also wrote nice poems and told fascinating stories, mostly about her childhood in Yerznga.1 Tomas couldn’t always follow them, especially when every now and then she used the word chart, massacre. It was an ugly word, like fart. It changed the expression on Mama’s face. Papa’s family was from Afyonkarahisar.2 They had been quite rich. They had owned acres and acres of poppy fields, stables filled with horses, cows, goats and sheep, carriages, buggies, and a battalion of servants ... and a mineral water spring, the finest water on the planet (or so Papa claimed). Mama’s family ran a modest pharmacy in Yerznga, and benefited from lucrative contracts (whatever that meant) to supply pharmaceuticals to the local hospital and the military. The two families had at least one thing in common: they were in the drugs business. Papa’s family exported opium to Europe and America, contributing to the chronic numbness of the occidentals. Papa told everybody that in those days opium was used solely for medicinal purposes. Immediately after Turkey became a republic on 23 October 1923, the new government took over all privately-owned opium fields and exportation, while creating a lucrative drug trafficking operation for the population on the side. This generated a whole new class of people called ‘the opium rich’.

  A six-by-eight-inch sepia picture in an ornate silver frame sat on the ebony sideboard in the dining room: Papa on his white stallion, wearing a pair of beige riding breeches, a brown tweed jacket, polished brown riding boots and an Astrakhan kalpak that made him look even taller than he was. If he raised his hand he could touch the white clouds. It was Tomas’s favourite photo, a miniature Hollywood poster that exuded nostalgia. It must have been taken before 1915, before the government’s expropriation of the family domain, for in the background one could see the poppy-laden fields. His father looked like Gary Cooper in an officer’s uniform. He too was very tall like Papa.

  Everybody, friend or foe, said that Papa Anton had an audacious past – a perfect storyline for a romantic adventure novel. Some
even considered him a legend. Naturally this was a little overstated, but one thing was sure, he was an extraordinary driver. Some insisted that he had been driving since the Ford Motor Company put the first Model-T, the Tin Lizzie, on the road in 1908. His cronies also gossiped about Papa’s amorous conquests, comparing him to Casanova. Papa always wore dark three-piece suits, white starched high-collar shirts and plain silk ties. For Tomas, Papa was nothing short of a magician, whether he told him an outright lie or the whole truth. Baron Anton also prepared the most delicious breakfasts. He had acquired his culinary flair from the British in Palestine, during the Great War. He and his family had lived as refugees in Jerusalem for nearly five years. Following the Armenian deportations of 1915, they had ended up in the holy city instead of in Deir el-Zor,3 the Syrian slaughterhouse. How they had managed to find a safe route instead of joining the infamous death marches with hundreds and thousands of Armenian deportees was another secret Tomas was not privy to. Despite his relentless nagging and dogged questioning, Papa remained wordless. He only explained the significance of the tiny cross tattooed on the inside of his left forearm. It meant he was a Christian haji: he had been to Jerusalem and visited the shrine of the Holy Sepulchre. Many past dreams, visions, illusions, lovers and phantasms were inscribed on that little cross.

  Tomas etched tiny crosses in purple ink on his left arm to ignite his friends’ curiosity but nobody gave a damn. He tried it with blue ink, but it only stained his shirt sleeve and Mama got mad. The only way to get an authentic little cross on his arm was, like his father, to go to Jerusalem.