by Levi, Mario
Niko, the Waistcoat Tailor
I know well enough by now, that, in time, certain words are liable to assume a plurality of meanings. What I don’t know or am not sure about, however, is whether these words eventually hit the mark they aim at in defiance of the meanings involved. Now that I have set out to trace the path that led from Uncle Kirkor to Niko, I feel somewhat hesitant whether I should use a phrase I had been reserving for the story I have not yet penned: they had lived the poem of showing another place to another person . . . When I brood over the story in question, it seems to me that that sentence half-opens the door to another world. All the same, I can’t help asking the question despite this probability. I wonder how many people and how many lives can one person live through in a lifetime? I was to learn, one day, from Olga, during a seemingly casual talk, that the incidents which had occurred on that fatal day at Pera—which was in terminal decline, gradually deteriorating into Beyoğlu—which can also be considered as an extension of that awful awakening that compelled certain people at the least expected moment to depart for places they were reluctant to reach, had created a deep sorrow in Uncle Kirkor, the origin of a growing gap within him. In that story, it seemed as though everybody was trying to tell each other, at an opportune moment, certain things that were banded together. Certain things . . . lurking in the shade, of lasting remembrance, alive, in their own voices, things not consigned to oblivion . . . Just to see to it that those stories are conveyed to posterity, to avoid mass extinction, to secure their permanence in one way or another, in memories . . . “He is after Niko,” Olga said, as if disclosing a secret, with looks expressive of the fact that she had been among the material witnesses to certain situations in the past, on one of those days of Uncle Kirkor’s soul-searching, when he had absconded for a short time from the shop on the pretext that he was going to “drink some soup” while his actual intention was to knock back a raki, to be in pursuit of Niko, of a lost soul, although bereft of hope, not to sink into despair, to shoulder one’s past, as a sense of belonging to some place, to some person . . . Learning this from Olga (a fact that Uncle Kirkor had never mentioned during our morning talks) was for me, to be honest, a source of special grief. Situations revived and reproduced past stories even in their new places, stories that inevitably changed their makeup in someone else . . . What had exasperated me was not his reticence, the sense of alienation which I deemed to be quite natural given our relationship and the age gap between us despite the sympathy we felt toward one other, his preference was to relive the story all alone, in his own depths, far removed from his friends. However, it occurs to me now that in time we had developed a tacit understanding and begun sharing the different memories of Niko within us, as regards minor but important details, without imparting anything of significance to each other. Long after those days, years, very many years later . . . Uncle Kirkor had, I think, understood that I had come to know Niko by inference, by what I could glean from other people’s observations and verses. As a matter of fact, I had tried to intimate this to him. We had spotted each other’s secrecy on an extremely fine line of thought partly because of this. To carry on the story through different paths depended on us. Certain details we deemed important had already found us outside of our brief encounters and short visits. We had our shortcomings and little puzzles. The fact that we had been unable to properly tell each other of the inception and the progress of our stories relating to Niko was most probably due to our recourse to fantasy, just like in the case of many other narrations of ours. I was to experience a like feeling with certain other people who had imparted extremely long stories to me. In conclusion, we have to acknowledge that a great many people live and continue to live like the rest of us. Nevertheless, I think that this part of the story had a special attraction for us. For, we had already grown accustomed to evading certain facts, our facts. Evasions were our evasions, and the borders that we had traced were part of our lives. I could never learn, for this reason, when exactly had this story begun, and in particular, why. All that I know and can say is that Niko, introduced to me as a good drinking companion with whom one could share many a problem and dilemma, had taken part in this story through his identity as a waistcoat tailor carrying on his trade at his workshop on Aşir Efendi street. The workshop in question was a ramshackle construction whose creaking floor reminded one, at every opportunity, of its run-down condition. It had never occurred to Niko to replace the linoleum that bore on it the marks of endless stories, the footprints of a multitude of people, a linoleum, of which the color had faded away and the designs of which were wiped clean, while the torn bits and pieces caused the customers to trip. There was also a cat called Yorgo: a cat that looked as though it had been there since time began. It is said that Niko spoke to him in Greek so that the people present might not understand what he said. However, I never knew who those present were. Who may they have been? Visitors that popped in for various purposes or the customers or the other cats that now and then paid a visit, perhaps? Heaven knows! It’s a bit difficult for me to answer these questions as a hero of another story who had merely been a spectator watching from a distance. However, even though such a question may have been left unanswered, it provides enough clues to enable certain people to easily observe certain aspects of life. That means to go as far as the desired location, following the clues at hand, is again within our reach . . . It is said that Yorgo also relished raki. Niko had made a point of treating his chum with his allotted portion before shutting down the shop. Apparently, the cat knew very well the amount of water that had to be added to dilute the potion; any addition or reduction to his wonted quantity of water was immediately sensed since he refused to drink it. There was another man in the shop acting as assistant to Niko by the name of Şeref from the province of Urfa, a type who was spare with his words. He stammered; a blood feud had paved his way to Istanbul. This rumor could be interpreted differently, of course: was this a search or an attempt at removing one’s roots? Was this a question of a settlement of accounts or an avoidance of a reprisal? Nobody could come to a definitive conclusion. One day, this age-old visitor failed to show up. He had disappeared without giving any notice . . . Had he been disposed of? Was he going to meet his inexorable fate? Nobody knew.
These are the photographs I could gather from the collection, arranged in the order I saw fit, although I’m still at a loss to fix them in their proper places in Niko’s story. It appears that the starting point had been a neighborhood relationship and that the masks—which those who had their parts to play in their respective lives knew very well how to wear—appeared to have been adapted better and better with every passing day. It seemed to indicate that several individuals, after having converged at a crossroads in their lives, had continued to live collectively. After their departure from that crossroads, it seemed that certain photographs thus reflected a collective outlook. Certain photographs were looked at casually, most probably from a communal point of view, by those sharing all the tactile feelings and delusions involved; without them being conscious of where, what and how certain particulars had been appropriated at what level. Masks had been put on, remained unidentified . . . With a view to being able to remain hidden as long as possible among other individuals. As people imbibed their teas, their conversation based on ready-made prescriptions with empty political platitudes hardly involving private interests despite differences of opinion, they proffered immaterial solutions, taking care to pay due attention in order to keep remote from certain things. This was, in a certain sense, the categorical imperative of history; the consequence of a choice related to the sentiment that a particular place imparted to certain people through the inspiration of history. The places in question had either been previously pinpointed or the individuals in question were compelled to choose them for themselves. You might sometimes show reluctance in identifying those places. Football matches had, for a length of time, caused people to forget the worries created by the monotony of life and the ine
vitable bondage to monetary concerns. In those little worlds, the moments were lived in small steps; the invisible moments of life were spent along with those passing glances. Ears were lent to the elderly people in their identity as aged and were deemed worth listening to, while the young people were presumed to be promising to the extent they abided by social rules. Were they among the voiceless murderers, defenders of the status quo, lost in their little dreams they told no one about? At the time nobody could provide an answer to this question. After all, the world was a place of such sentiments where even pouring out one’s grievances to one’s friends was vented with insipid truisms, with platitudes that conveyed only a couple of unforgotten words, a far cry, reminiscent of a muted call . . . All these things were embodied in the relations that Uncle Kirkor and Niko had got entangled with, for better or for worse. However, in my estimation, barring all these cover-ups and efforts at concealment, they had their own particular stories that were inaccessible and incomprehensible to others. The intelligence I could obtain from different quarters intimated that there was in this a desire to proceed on toward such a story. The story was of two individuals, who had endeavored to act or continued to act, in one way or another, on other people’s stages, being at variance with each other or at least seeming to be at variance with each other; the story of two companions, each in search of a role for themselves that would enable them to carry the burden of those defeats and deceptions believed to be the fate of every mortal. I think these roles were performed as spontaneous acts, acts that might have been slyly masqueraded as self-defense. It seemed that they had performed on that stage their most important and successful roles. According to Olga, who had told me the story of their controversies with her own additions to, and subtractions from, the actual happenings. Uncle Kirkor, when he was in the mood on certain mornings, dressed Niko, renowned for his mastery in waistcoat tailoring, teasing him with remarks about his alleged habit of filching, imitating the local Armenian accent: “You rascal, waistcoat tailor! Tell me how many yards of fabric have you ripped off from others for your waistcoats today, you dirty infidel?” In return, Niko, in his local Greek accent, got even for this recriminatory remark by retorting: “Cad! Weren’t you a habitué of bawdy houses that catered, at Sabri’s place, in return for some consideration, to the lust of people of lewd practices?” This was, apparently, a nod toward the ‘filching’ of Uncle Kirkor by an allusion to a closely-guarded and shameful secret known to a very few people; to a secret dating back to an almost forgotten time, that was wished to be consigned to oblivion. The publicizing of such an offense was thus compensated for by the disclosure of other offenses. This was an intimidation tactic used for restraining both parties from further revelations. Barring all these things, that long stage play, that prank played on life, in other words that buffoonery that aimed to remain linked to the places in question necessitated the enactment and representation of those scenes. As for those offenses . . . had there been no such offenses there would have been no heroes; without them the heroes in question would not and could not even conceive that such creation had ever taken place. That moral order knew how to absorb and adapt to the said errors. The comments that have reached me from those times confirm my convictions. Thanks to the personalities of Niko and Uncle Kirkor, everybody had, after a while, found some happiness. Niko was partly justified in alluding to the bawd Sabri who had been instrumental in catering to the needs of the men of Istanbul at the time by opening the doors of perception for them, having it in mind to remind Uncle Kirkor of a time in his life which he preferred to keep secret from the general public. As a matter of fact, I had had some information about this past . . . According to the gossipers, Uncle Kirkor used to pay visits to a great many brothels on the notorious Abanoz Street. He had continued to pay his visits to the houses of ill repute, even when he had become old, when he married Madame Ani. According to some, this had a very simple, ordinary and specific explanation, although others considered it rather important. Uncle Kirkor had fallen in love with a woman there who had not only embraced his disability, but who had also taught him how to live with originality. One day, without saying anything to anyone, she left to work in a brothel in İzmir, and, according to the accounts of the residents of that notorious street, married a pharmacist’s assistant much older than herself, who earned his living by measuring the blood pressure of people in the surroundings area by means of an outdated sphygmomanometer, eventually settling at Karataş. This was the whole story, at least the story that had reached our ears. We could never learn the name of his lover. No definitive understanding could be ascertained as to the truth behind this story whose origin had remained a complete mystery, and whether this was exactly how it had played out or not no one knew . . . Nor could we learn how the news of her marriage had been received by Uncle Kirkor. All that one could ascertain was the fact that Uncle Kirkor had ceased to frequent the said quarters and retreated from view. This was the moot point that Niko had been harping on about. I know for a fact that he tried to establish the links from a distance while he was treading a path in a different time frame. I may have missed certain details, of course. Yet, looked at from this angle, I cannot deny the fact that I do sense some sort of treachery in this mnemonic.
As for the revelation of Niko’s petty larceny . . . I don’t think he had suffered greatly from the disclosure of his secret. This singularity of his had apparently, in one way or another, been known to everybody in his circle and eventually came to be seen as a pleasant extension of collectivity. This may have been a bonus due to the fact that it cushioned the blow of the teasing. His half-drunk state even in the middle of the day and his frequent lapses of oral hygiene had made him a laughing stock. One’s conscience had to be cleansed in one way or another in order to give way to other petty offenses.
Monsieur Jacques would confirm, years after my conversation with Olga that had enabled me to have an insight into the relationship between those two kindred-spirits, the reality relative to Niko’s ill-gotten waistcoat trade. The backdrop was of a different time, one pregnant with meaning. Monsieur Jacques, like many people who had lived during those days, had felt the need to comment on the changing values, values that were actually being gnawed away at the roots. The number of tailors who understood the sartorial expressions exchanged between master and apprentice was ever decreasing. “For instance,” he said, “here we have Niko, who, despite the fact that he is a liar and hardly keeps his promises and his shop stinks of raki, the jackets he tailors fit his customers perfectly. You can throw whatever you have, whenever you have it, into the bargain.” He had a way to smooth out the fabric he tailored. He wore a wry smile on his face. He was lost in the distance beyond any boundaries I could ever imagine. “He was a bit of a filcher, but anyway . . . ” he added afterwards. I had some difficulty in understanding what he meant by the word filcher. He may have used it in order not to insult a person of a time past, not to stain the memory a man had left behind. I think it was also a sort of sympathy. The same appreciation was also shared by Uncle Kirkor who happened to be there, and who had, benefiting from the opportunity, cut in, making the following remark for a friend he had lost: “The waistcoat bawd! He hardly knew how to play backgammon!” Monsieur Jacques had first cast a glance at Uncle Kirkor from above his spectacles. However, both had begun laughing at the same time at this remark. This was one of those guffaws that was deeply felt and well justified, a peel of laughter that embodied a kind of heartache. Monsieur Jacques had afterward said to Uncle Kirkor in imitation of Niko (that was my impression anyhow) something in Greek which I hadn’t understood. He had a smattering of Greek like all the Jews of the time. The remark had been confirmed by a nod from Uncle Kirkor. I’d felt this. One could feel that Niko was somehow present at the time, in a place to which I could never have access . . . Moreover, one had to dwell on the significance of the phrases used by Uncle Kirkor while referring to Niko, as well as to their associations. For reasons well-known to those who live wi
th another tongue, in addition to the so-called vernacular, he could not properly pronounce the word ‘backgammon,’ for instance, without provoking derisive laughter. Leaving aside all the remarks that one could allow oneself, one thing was acknowledged: namely his mastery of backgammon. Although it was said that he often cheated while playing hurriedly and manipulated the dice so that they fell as he would have wished, everybody who had played a game of backgammon with him knew how exhilarating the game was. The same exhilaration was shared by the onlookers as well. There was no doubt that he was topnotch. His most admirable characteristic was his inability to acknowledge defeat. His matches with Sedat the Arab, who teased him with swear words like “son of a bear” during their game (the bet being a cup of tea) gathered a whole crowd of onlookers.
The Joke of Sedat the Arab
I distinctly remember that Sedat the Arab was, in the first instance, a man who had sought to live the life he always imagined for himself in some other place, in such a place that people lived as if lost in a poem. He had traveled all over Anatolia in his minibus baptized ‘The Detective’ because of the initials ‘DT’ on the license plate; it was a minibus which he had to take to the service station every other day; he doted on her, even though she was already an old banger. He also took pleasure in displaying the various features of people’s faces by mimicking them behind their back, in the manner of a professional. This was his hobby, and, if one considers his attitude to life, one can say that it was finesse. He was full of life. Full of it! He had lived many a life, many a path ran through him, different nights and dawns that not many people could have lived. He hadn’t gone to university and had to shoulder the inferiority that this failure burdened him with everywhere he went, especially his failing to have become a doctor. He had to compensate for this frustration through his accurate diagnoses of many a disease that his friends suffered from and the therapeutic methods he recommended; and according to his own account, he had saved many lives. However, I interpreted this as a kind of joke, a joke that ought to lead us to a revision of the reality behind that failure. In my opinion, we should look for the meaning concealed in his outlook on life in those secluded and out-of-sight places where he lived. It looked as if he had spent more than half his life, or, to be more precise, of his life visible to me, on those secluded paths. When we noticed his absence, we were sure that he had set out for one of his usual journeys in Anatolia. Nobody knew what his destination was and when he would be returning—and by which particular direction. The length of his stays at the places he visited varied drastically; they were sometimes short and sometimes very long. All I can remember is that if one considers how often he engaged in such sallies, one would be inclined to conclude that he must have spent at least half the year on such voyages. This is why I think that he took his minibus not only as a companion, but also as his workshop and home, to wit his sanctuary. However, he was not the only person of this kind, for there were many people in his circle who sallied forth on such vagaries in different directions for different reasons. Yet, these were emotions which, although visible up to a certain extent, were not of the sort one could empathize with. Once they were experienced they became lost and gone forever; yet, they remained in certain people serving as repositories. In many a city and town, he knew the addresses of such places as pharmacies, post offices, hotels, cafés, unlicensed brothels, restaurants, etc. He had a vast knowledge about land routes. The road map in his mind was not the official map of the overland routes; it was exclusive to him. He liked to freak out now and then. I knew this. Those freak-outs involved other maps. We could read from the sorrowful expression on his face that he was to set off early next day. When he returned from his journeys, he stayed in Istanbul at places where he was recognized; he put in an appearance at varying locations of his choice before taking flight with a view to perpetuating his destiny, his wandering. He had no idea about when he would return. “The road tips us a wink . . . Source of livelihood, you know . . . ” It was his livelihood; that much was true. This was not all, however; Sedat the Arab enjoyed an almost legendary fame through the marketing of his merchandise and his collecting of valuables. This may be a feature that made him conspicuous in the eyes of others. To treat someone in a way that is calculated to please him, that’s what a decent person should do. But had he been decent himself? Perhaps not; but he had an uncanny ability to feel the pulse of his customers. There was no doubt about it; the crux of the matter lay in this. Thus, at the places he stopped, he persuaded people, posing as a refined gentleman from Istanbul, to buy his pharmaceutical products, or, if need be, as a lovable rascal, a pettifogger, whatever the circumstances warranted. He recited poems to some, while he harangued others about the country’s problems. He was a leftist with the leftists and a rightist with the rightists. As far as I know, he spoke Kurdish well, although he was not a Kurd himself. He knew how to perform the prayer of the Muslims although he was not a Muslim. Thus, by giving the supplicant what he wanted, he skillfully refrained from giving what he should actually have given. This was his petty revolt. I took cognizance of this fact years later when I managed to have a distant view of it. At the time I misread the signs, and results, of what was going on. However, in order for me to pass judgment on these happenings, other people must also be considered. The number of witnesses and followers of Sedat the Arab’s legendary fame was, of course, considerable. However, despite all of his renown and his modest achievements, he had been indifferent to saving money as far as I know. This stands as evidence to his other pursuits, of his goals and desires to see other places. As though this was not enough, he spent every penny he had on the treatment of his wife who was suffering from cancer. I still retain those days in my memory. The craftsmen in his circle had even collected money to subsidize his wife’s treatment. Sedat the Arab had realized, especially back then, how deeply he had been attached to her. According to the accounts of his next-of-kin, his mobilization was not simply the cause of a repayment of gratitude, but also one of the greatest disgraces of his life; a disgrace or a sense of defeat one can only acknowledge with difficulty . . . or a resentment, a resentment harbored against life, against days he could not turn to good account despite all his efforts, the days he thought he had missed and failed to make the best of . . . Could one establish a relationship between this bitter resentment and his sudden death of a heart attack in a small hotel room in a town near Istanbul where he stayed on his return journey from a long eastern sales campaign to celebrate his fiftieth year? Perhaps. However, what was still more important was the place where he died, where he succeeded in dying, rather than this question mark he had left unanswered. He had died in the place he cherished most, on the road . . . He had experienced in that town an original feeling he had never felt before; a feeling that showed us an attribute, a time, a part of which we had not been conscious of until then . . . The scene we had been faced with had puzzled us for many years. It looked as though this had been the performance of the last act of a play. Or, as if the play had ended in such a way that not even its actors could have foreseen, not being prepared for such a catharsis . . . The fact is that when he died, there was a woman with him. We had been told that the woman was a sophisticated pharmacist who was in an unhappy marriage. They had spent a passionate love affair full of sound and fury that had lasted for two years. We have this information from Vedat Bey, his cousin who ran a perfume shop, and who had gone downtown to collect Sedat’s remains. Vedat Bey described the lady pharmacist as a very beautiful and refined woman who knew how to listen to people. Everybody had more or less guessed what merit and character Sedat had found in her.