by Levi, Mario
An exile difficult to explain—wherein everybody lives their own estrangement in a different way despite sharing a common bond with those of their homeland—a tie that cannot be severed. Actually, in case one prefers to linger in that world, nourished through fantasy, it will be a long story which may enable the discovery of other lines of enquiry. Seen from this angle, despite all the accompanying adversities, it is worth suffering to the bitter end. Yet, one can’t live in reality to one’s heart’s content. To what extent this exile had been voluntary could never be articulated; you could not even imagine it. However, it was going to turn for Niko into an exile whose boundaries could be delineated more easily as a consequence of the renewal of the residency permits for Greek nationals that allowed them to continue living in the country during the sixties. Was this the end of that Istanbul tale of which the origin was unknown, lived by two people, never to be narrated in history books, which might seem to certain people as an episode in a legend lost in the darkness of the past? Those who had the privilege to have seen those days claim that Niko had gone to Athens with a mind to one day return. Had it not been the same for those uprooted from their homeland because of ethnic considerations or professions? Hope for a homeward journey . . . in order for one to carry the burden of life and postpone the crack of doom easier . . . On one of the days on the eve of his departure when Monsieur Jacques had visited him to buy a drinks cabinet with a mirror inside it, equipped with a mechanism that switched on a light bulb when opened—the odor of which bore witness to its use as a well-stocked treasury of drinks and a dressing table—he had said to him: “It’s a legacy of my father.” He had with some pride indicated to him the old phonograph records with ‘His Master’s Voice’ on them, making the remark: “Dating from the time of Monsieur Schur and the Geserian Brothers,” records he had entrusted to a friend whose name he did not mention. Monsieur Jacques had witnessed that rich collection of records that had not been inherited from his father alone, but also consisted of records he himself had bought throughout his life: Seyyan Hanım, Hafız Burhan, Münir Nuretting, Suzan Lutfullah Hanım, Neveser Hanım, tangos, Greek songs, Neapolitan songs, etc., all of these were entrusted to this anonymous individual. Taken into custody by the said person . . . with a view to returning them, of being able to return . . . with a view to seeing to it that the records might feel at home in their new location . . . However, the person they had been entrusted with, and the locality where they happened to be, have not been discovered to this day. The words exchanged between him and Uncle Kirkor at ‘their last supper’ also remain a mystery. All that is known is the fact that from that day on, both Olga’s, and, according to various witnesses, Uncle Kirkor’s introversions had somewhat intensified; on the other hand, the latter, who had not been frequenting his wonted pub for a good many years, had resumed his practice of celebrating certain days he deemed worthy to be remembered, or for smoking a water pipe clandestinely while he waited for Niko. Olga had heard him say to Monsieur Jacques one of those days, when the thought of being forsaken weighed heavy on him: “Decisions relative to the critical moments of my life have always been made by others.” If one lends credence to what was being said, he was in a dejected state; lonely, in despair and lacking in self-confidence just like the moments of expectation leading to the hours of water-pipe smoking. I believe that this moping, and especially this despondency, caused him to stay away from the pub for quite a while despite all sorts of thin excuses. Although he stayed away from the pub to compensate for this defect, he had not failed in guzzling a small bottle of raki with fish he himself fried at home nearly every Sunday. This ritual seemed to be the manifestation of a memory he did his best to keep fresh in his mind which he was loath to see consigned to oblivion. This was the story of an attempt or a wish to perpetuate a recollection or a ritual among his other associations. Niko had obliterated all traces that he might have left behind, he had neither written a letter nor sent a word. This had naturally given rise to all sorts of rumors about him. According to one account, Niko, unable to bear the absence of certain individuals he cherished, after having imbibed considerable quantities of alcohol, had committed suicide, throwing himself into the sea at Piraeus, confident that his body would be cast ashore; yet, according to another report, having settled accounts with his wife, he had gone to the USA to marry a rich widow who owned oilfields and had disappeared among the billionaires. Yet another story claimed that he was brought to Monsieur Jacques by Alexis the Bartender; according to this rendering of the story Niko had gone to ‘that woman’ in Thessaloniki, but had been repudiated by her for his having waited too long. Having gone mad at this cool reception, which had ruined the dreams he had been embellishing all these years, he killed her and spent his remaining years in prison smoking cannabis. Had Niko been the principal actor in either of the stories mentioned above? I wonder. To the best of my knowledge, Niko had preferred to keep aloof in order to be able to put up with his yearning for a life he had been torn from against his will. Uncle Kirkor’s attitude was no different. His rarer visits to the pub might be explained by his reluctance or concern about running into certain people. It was an elaborate deception. The conversation seemed to be at quite a different level of frequency. However, it seems to me that what particularly delighted Uncle Kirkor was this ritual at home, where he could turn his incarceration into a viable lifestyle, an unostentatious liberation. What remained for Uncle Kirkor was to justify this little ritual by talking about it or sharing it with certain people or reproducing it in some sense. His elaborate narration of how he had purchased the fish he fried on Sundays, how he prepared the salad and its dressing, and how he absorbed alcohol, most probably resulted from this need. He never neglected to boast about drinking a whole bottle of raki to its dregs, as if to give it its due. When I asked him when he would be kind enough to bring some stuffed mussels from home he kept silent. How could I have known that he could not possibly ask his wife for such a favor, that this might be interpreted as a silent revolt against his marriage that was harrowed with absurdities and senselessness, that he had actually been missing that ‘lost taste’ with an ever increasing appetite, one he had identified with his mother to whom he felt he was approaching and would have liked to be reunited with. Once, we were having dinner at Kireçburnu; it was an autumn evening. Madame Roza, Juliet and Berti were at the table; there were also two other individuals whom I do not want to mention, and who will never figure in this story from here on. Monsieur Jacques’ gaze was lost in the distance, he may have been looking at those big boats coming from Russia, or perhaps from Ukraine, having weighed anchor at the Odessa harbor, whose gangways happened to be astern. He had a sad countenance. I knew why. I knew who he had in his mind. These boats carrying different passengers arrived in Istanbul from the same direction . . . Among the snacks that had been brought to the table was also a dish of stuffed mussels. “The mussels are delicious!” I said; to which Monsieur Jacques had retorted saying: “You should taste the stuffed mussels made by the Armenians; they are excellent cooks! Kirkor’s mother never failed to supply us with that delicious dish whose flavor I could find nowhere else. Kirkor used to describe in detail, with great relish, how his mother prepared it. Poor Silva, alas, she wasn’t fated to see the marriage of her son. That had been her greatest wish in life . . . after that unfortunate accident . . . However, during the last years of her life they had made up; they were reconciled at last. Madame Silva was a very fat woman, obese and heavy. Was it a heart attack or asthma that had put an end to her life? I don’t know . . . Kirkor couldn’t ask Ani to prepare stuffed mussels for him after she came to know him. That’s rather strange . . . I think he thought stuffed mussels as a dish symbolized a warm home . . . Oh Bother! May she rest in peace!” These had been the words that Monsieur Jacques uttered that night; only these words, nothing else. His gaze was lost in the immensity of the sea. That was one of those nights during which nobody felt in the mood for conversation, when everybody’s imagination was w
andering somewhere else, when everybody knew that they would be lingering at the place their imagination had taken them. Berti asked at a late hour of the night: “Ever realized how every one of us is a child, in essence?” That was the proper sentence to best express the hours we were passing. I don’t know whether this was a source of remorse or pride. To this day I cannot decide. The story of a life full of deceptions, senselessness, and, especially, of absurdities . . . This was, in a sense, the summary of Uncle Kirkor’s life.
“Eat my arse, Niko” were the words he had spouted a few minutes before he died at the hospital where he was taken because of a heart attack on a cold winter morning; he had to be taken to the church to which he had never been in his life. Apart from Madame Ani, only a few individuals who worked in the shop had attended the funeral at that small church at Feriköy. Madame Ani had said in the graveyard that she was intending to go on a world tour but had died within four months because of a diffuse cancerous growth; these were the signs that epitomized the absurdities involved in these incidents. As though these things were not enough, years later we were to be taken by another surprise. Uncle Kirkor had a brother who worked as a waiter in one of the pubs at Kumkapı. I didn’t go to visit that man. I had the feeling that that place had best be kept a secret for the time being and would be made accessible in a different timeframe. I must not deny the fact that I was filled with a perverse joy whenever I came to think of it. No doubt, there was hatred, a profound hatred in that story. How else could one explain this hiding or dissimulation? Uncle Kirkor must have been greatly amused by concealing from us this significant secret. This was another aspect of the absurdity that was highly difficult to explain. Even though this may seem nonsensical, I believe I must trace the reason for his being at cross-purposes with Olga. How interesting her view of that story was from the old people’s house at Hasköy! When Olga had gone there he had whispered the following remark in my ear: “She has spruced herself up, the wench; be sure she is going to visit her man!” As a matter of fact, everybody felt himself obliged to make a remark when her attire was smart, elegant and sober. At times, her elaborate coiffure was the subject of astute observation. Inclining toward my ear, he said: “I wonder what number of dye she uses? Any idea how they dye a woman’s hair?” Sometimes he elaborated on his remarks and said: “You know what? She has invested a lot of money in her hairdresser!” I believe there was also a latent appreciation here. However, such an attitude cannot explain away certain facts. This seemed like a confrontation between a woman—a woman who tried to perpetuate the idea of nobility in her imagination together with her modest means, a woman who endeavored to keep Uncle Kirkor’s circle at arm’s length, partly for self-protection, a woman who felt herself more and more estranged from her milieu—and a man who had been obliged to carry the burden of destitution on his shoulders all his life and experienced his lack of competence in every respect and who had spent every effort to be on the up and up, something I know from first hand experience. I’d been a witness in the past to this hostility. What is regretful, however, was the blindfolded attitude of the players who had failed to realize their solitudes and common traits. Oh the number of opportunities missed! Despite their differences, Uncle Kirkor and Olga had exchanged a great many secrets. Olga had seen the reflection of Niko on Uncle Kirkor’s complexion. What Uncle Kirkor knew about Olga was far richer than the vestiges of those visits to the old people’s house at Hasköy. He had ventured on a new path without saying anything to anybody. This showed that he was an astute observer who knew how to keep track and infer a lot from the clues available to the extent that even detectives would be envious. Actually both of us had followed the same track. The same track . . . despite our different objectives, expectations and misconceptions . . . despite our diverging views . . . In order to be able to find out the real reason for our habit of putting up obstacles in order to protect us from those liable to injure us on this rugged path, clasping each other’s hands, appearing before them with the falsehoods and illusory manifestations we agreed upon, I had once spoken, or rather tried to speak, about the fascination killing gave one. Uncle Kirkor was certainly conscious of this meditation, of the concern for self-defense. To begin with, he was a friend of Niko. They were familiar with this idea, they must have been . . . All this reminded me of Yorgo who had over the years endeared himself to Niko; Yorgo had the knack to now and then pop up rather skillfully. I believe Niko got the gist of the matter. This may have been the reason for his excessive drinking and playing the role of drunkard. The only difference was that he had seen other places. Niko was reported to have said that he had died. He must have ventured on a drinking binge somewhere else. One should be lenient toward Niko for this falsehood. We are obliged to behave with understanding. Betrayal never received the approval of anybody. Nobody had succeeded in surviving by taking refuge in lies . . . However, frankly, what Niko witnessed after the heartache of his self-betrayal could not be denied. Yorgo had done something that he had failed to do and took the required step; the step that he had to take, a step that no one had dared to take before. Did he regret it? We can never know. The most pertinent remark had come from Monsieur Jacques who had said: “The most important thing for him was the raki which should exist everywhere he went.” No fertile imagination was needed for this . . . His mastery of the Turkish language was certainly a problem. Yet, I feel assured now. He must have eventually rescued himself. We all have to believe in this. One of us was going to appear on another stage. Yes, one of us was going to appear elsewhere . . . I wish I could have said this to Niko. Nevertheless, I’m still at a loss as to where I’m supposed to join that story in order that I may realize this little dream of mine.
Time to part
The detective work of Uncle Kirkor had given certain clues that allowed me now and then to keep abreast of matters in many other stories, thanks to which I had viewed those days in another perspective, not only those days, but also those places, which had enabled me both to live and refashion them. I had to grow up. Uncle Kirkor was aware of this, the other people who had been the heroes of those stories knew this as well. Everybody knew it, except me. I can’t tell now whether I was sufficiently grown up to satisfy the expectations of Uncle Kirkor. I must acknowledge the fact that I had failed to prove it. I cannot say why, because I don’t know what growing up exactly is . . . This fact had gained wide acceptance among them. They were sure they would be in a position to indicate the point once I had reached it. Their observations and interpretations were directed toward the spot they intended to specify . . . The meaning in their looks was directed at covering up the said place. If one took all these things into consideration, there was a writer lying in ambush, the author of certain stories acting as the conscious or unconscious agent of this automatic writing; this author who assisted me to shift from one story to another and knew how to open the doors for them. This seemed to hold true also for that story which had found Monsieur Jacques and Olga in bed together. This had been the case at least at the beginning, during the initial episodes of the story. It seems to me that that story, for Monsieur Jacques, had its inception at that small apartment of Olga’s at Şişli which looked like a sanctuary, or a country to which one had defected, which had over the years acted as a hideaway remote from the temptation of his prohibitions and their grip on his life. So it seemed to me. I was to be initiated into it gradually, by approaching the problem through different avenues; the novels I borrowed from the French Cultural Centre; unforgettable songs; conversations that lasted till the early hours under candlelight, inhaling the perfumed atmosphere; a story that involved refuges taken, refashioned by various days, in different ways, in multifarious anxieties and despair; a story that many people lived or imagined to live in their own lives, representations they always wanted to see . . . . Representations tinted by those days of expectations at the French College Notre Dame de Sion, by those spacious living rooms in the house at the Kuledibi Jewish Quarters, and by those unheated
bedrooms, long corridors, and smell of coke stoves . . . A few short bridges stretching to a lost time . . . A flawed Venetian vase with semi-obliterated designs, sweet yeast bread, cheese-toast baked in the oven, conversations exchanged in languages spoken the world over—German, Arabic, Yiddish, French—languages stripped bit by bit of their original meanings; a porcelain tea set of Czech origin with missing pieces, a small decanter with variegated hues, imitation Christofle cutlery kept especially for festive occasions, an anonymous still life the frame of which bore on its reverse side the address of a picture-framer in Pera, a bedspread, deep blue, that used to inspire Olga, when she was a young girl, to have a lie-in in the depths of the sea, a silver picture frame whose picture had been taken off and left untenanted for lack of a new photograph deserving to occupy it . . . It was certainly inevitable for these reconstructions to stir up new representations that were unexpected, just like that sinuous path that led from one story to another. One wonders how Olga could carry the burden of the wound that Henry had bequeathed to her, during those lonely nights that she tried to decorate with images in order to add some meaning to them from one room to the next. How could she carry them across into those new rooms in the company of that young girl she could not bring herself to kill despite all that she had done? What, after those long years, had brought Henry back to have a different sort of relationship and obliged him to confess that certain errors committed in the past might gain a footing all the same somewhere in his life? Her father’s principle argument was: “What is important for us is what we actually produced in the past, not what we are planning to do now or what we shall be doing tomorrow,” and had, after days of strenuous hardship, aided her success in imposing her tailoring skills on a restricted circle in a different climate; what should have been the words she used in order to explain the reasons for her irresistible and hasty approach to her boss, Jacques Ventura, a friend of her father’s, in the workshop where she had begun to work and wherein she had succeeded, in her days of dejection, in bringing about certain things for which she could no longer find, about that togetherness she imagined that could now never be realized, about that relationship, which, thanks to her deep attachment, had assumed meanings that she had been nourishing all her life? As time went by, as she proceeded on that road within her, the only path she could tread, she had begun considering Jacques Ventura whom she had started viewing as a man of destiny, not only as a prohibited lover, a spouse accepted at all events whether the conditions favored it or not or as a reliable companion, but also as a father figure whose compassion also included some unique elements. Monsieur Jacques was younger than Moses Bronstein. Yet, one sometimes preferred to live and let live in regard to certain relationships as one would have liked to see them. Despite everything, she had begun working in the workshop soon after she had lost her father. This might explain the void she experienced; it was a different kind of solitude. I distinctly remember, Olga had ventured out one evening and took the risk of returning home the long way when she had made the decision to follow that life, or, to be precise, those lives. She was offended. Offended and injured . . . But against whom had she taken offense? Against those who had caused her to live or not to live those days, against that woman whom she kept alive inside her, that woman whom she had to accept was barring everything? She couldn’t bring herself to decide on this. She had yearnings. These yearnings might well have been for those days past, irretrievable, irrecoverable, or they might be yearnings of an indescribable sort. I could understand that feeling. This was the feeling experienced by everyone who had to live removed from life, far away and abandoned. Olga felt dejected and nostalgic that evening. It’s true, she felt removed from those days, but smiled all the same. Time passing causes people to forget certain days, or incites one to live in a different fashion . . . Moses had died of pneumonia . . . Yes, from pneumonia . . . as if to display to his circle once more the absurd and meaningless nature of life; in his wisdom, having left behind and transcended their expectations realized or unrealized, he allowed those men to share and discover the man left inside them all . . . Olga was smiling that evening. She had a sad countenance which she tried to conceal; a sadness that her past experiences made even more beautiful. “I’m glad I’ll be meeting your mother,” her father said on his deathbed, “I’ve missed her so much. I know Schwartz also loved her. She suffered a lot but I had always been by her side.” This was a story of fidelity deeply experienced that Olga knew and understood even better as she grew older. That evening, in that room where there was someone else smiling at us from far away.