by Levi, Mario
You might get lost in Istanbul
Schwartz’s story in Istanbul, of which Olga has no recollection, had begun in those days when that wandering tailor was doomed to carry with him his destinies to ever new realms, with that forbearing woman from Riga who faithfully followed her husband wherever his path led, and subserved him when needed, at a time when they were getting to know and acclimatize themselves to their new surroundings. Those were the days when they, who could never have felt at home anywhere, were familiarizing themselves with their new street, house, rooms, walls and languages; those were the days that seemed new, refashioned, reclaimed—reminiscent of an incredible and inconceivable soap opera—in the hope that one of those long war stories that gave certain people new life, would be also written and carried to another plane. The time when that revolution had swept the immigrants to a completely different city, to a completely different life, where they could perpetuate their line of nobility only in their past history or within themselves; the time when the new visitors had imported into Istanbul not only their attire, but also their hairstyles, lifestyles, dialects, music, dances, and, in particular, their legends, thanks to whom the sea, the beaches, the Princes’ Islands were re-discovered; certain ‘jewels’—which had not previously been considered fashionable—at certain soirées; their low necklines, their gambling and prostitution customs, their traveling habits. Poverty had increased; the country was being secretly and slowly disrobed for all to see. According to the account of Moses, it was a clear and sunny winter morning, according to others, a freezing one; he was getting ready to fit the dark blue uniform on Signore Bompiani, director of one of the maritime transportation agencies who had divorced his wife with whom he had been married for twenty years and ventured to marry his secretary, that dark girl from Fındıkzade. A man passed by his small workshop at Tünel in a striking officer’s uniform decorated with medals and wearing a sabre . . . So far, so good! The strolling of foreign army officers in uniform in the streets of the city was nothing out of the ordinary at the time. Nevertheless, the man, after a short while, made an about turn, and, as though he was addressing the troops under his command, shouted “Achtung!” while he made as though he was firing at an imaginary target with an imaginary weapon under his arm. Dadadadada; an officer speaking German with such awkward gestures that he looked as though he had been thinking deeply about his own thoughts, feelings or behavior; (he was not unfamiliar with such cultures and representations. He readily understood that the man had been a member of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) was this the picture of a man strayed from his path, of someone who had ventured to taste a new life in a foreign country? This question might not have crossed Moses’ mind at that critical moment of their encounter. Yet, barring all that was experienced and ruminated over, one could not imagine that a man who had ventured to launch himself into alienation with all its potential snares, whether willingly or against his will, would remain indifferent to another foreigner, especially to a legendary hero that had come from the world of his childhood, to wit from his mother’s lost world. Thus, he extended an invitation to this outsider, expecting to catch a glimpse of another ‘moment’ without the least hesitation. The outsider responded favorably to this invitation as though he had been waiting for it, behaving with composure, in due decorum, befitting a well-disciplined army officer. So they got to know each other. The fact that the name of his guest who already seemed to have been a far-flung hero of an old story was Schwartz made the situation even more interesting. For Schwartz was a Jewish name. Moses in his turn had introduced himself; as a Jew, who, although he had not had a formal education in German, had considered it his vernacular; he was another Jew who had had to part with an important phase of his life in Odessa. It was as though they had been making headway toward a certain place, indescribable and nameless. But the really interesting account began when Schwartz began by telling of his adventures. The army was visiting the city with a view to conducting certain joint tactical operations with the Allied Forces, having in mind that a war would break out sooner or later, favoring the Allies, a war that was expected to last a fairly long time. They had been stationed here for the moment for an undetermined length of time . . . Then, something had happened, and he had been ‘mislaid,’ while the rest of the army had long departed, going back to Vienna. (Years later a writer, a friend of mine, was to tell me that soldiers who went to a foreign land were obsessed with the fear that they might be thrown off the scent of war.) According to the account of Moses—reared by his mother who had a perfect knowledge of German, and also from his years spent in both grammar and high schools—Schwartz spoke German flawlessly but with an accent. It would be reasonable to suppose that he was a true Viennese who had received a proper education in that capital city of culture. It was quite natural therefore that he would revive in his imagination one of those dreams that had sunk into oblivion: the avenues, the cafés, the forests, the Opera, the Waltzes, the emperor Franz-Joseph, and, last but not the least, the lieder that his mother used to sing for him on certain evenings . . . In other words, there was more than one reason for his taking an interest in his guest under the circumstances. But the fact is that none of these subjects had been taken up. Schwartz, mislaid in Istanbul, under the effect of that dreadful shock of being forgotten, was suffering from amnesia; he had forgotten his past, or had deposited it somewhere he could not remember. Neither a place-name, nor any clue to trace his identity was available. All that he could remember was that, as he told during the following days, he had been to a different land, somewhere in Poland, in a big farm-like place. Schwartz took him to his home that day and also briefed Eva of the situation. Thus, the story was also imparted to Eva . . . with certain details added, omitted or transformed. That night was followed by a number of days, a number of days and a number of nights. Life stories were exchanged; stories of lives occasionally mislaid somewhere. Whenever Schwartz began speaking of his story he never failed to insert a new detail into the narrative flow. He seemed to be a man in search of domicile. They asked him whether he desired to return to his motherland, to Austria or Poland. But they received no response. He simply smiled at them. His gaze was at the moment fixed on the statuette of the prancing horse that Eva had brought from Riga as a young girl that stood on the tripod next to the armchair in which he was seated. He seemed to be lost in reverie, in a faraway land. “The earth had such a delectable smell those summer nights. I miss it so much,” he was heard saying. In order to enable him to find his way back to his motherland, to his home and family, appeals were made to embassies. However, those appeals and attempts had all been in vain. They were told that no sufficient information was available regarding him; to be able to get in touch with certain authorities definite names and useful clues were needed which too seemed presently mislaid or sunken into oblivion.
A dead end had been the beginning of this incredible story. After some time had elapsed, it was evident that it would be inevitable for him to accept a new life, fit it somewhere between his other lives in the face of all probabilities, questions and suspicions. Schwartz would soon be proceeding on with his own story in the company of different people, in a different tale in which his past experiences and the claims made about his life would represent him like another hero of destiny deserving to be communicated and understood. This story would be jointly transmitted, its inception being forgotten, despite all likelihoods and suspicions. All the same, these measures would fail to prevent the calling into question of certain facts that might lend meaning to that meeting, and would, as a consequence of the conjectures that that meeting would have made, pave the way to completely different lives . . . How true were those accounts and to what extent did they reflect reality? For, Schwartz might well have been a wanderer, a self-exiled individual wishing to lead a life in a different country, somewhere in the exotic East, creating a lifestyle of his own. In this venture, he might have thought he would find a family who would receive him warmly and provide him with food
and shelter. Our fertile imagination deprived of all boundaries may lead us anywhere. On the other hand, the story may also have been the story of an artillery lieutenant as it had actually been pronounced. In such a story, the appalling conditions of war, the deafening sound of the guns and the nights full of terror or the picture of a dying companion who communicates to you his last wish before giving up his ghost might well have been the causes of his autism. You might call it a spiritual degeneration, a mental disorder or aberration. Under the circumstances, the story may well have been the story of a soldier mislaid and relinquished, who had begun to indulge himself in eccentric acts goaded by inclinations created by the cruelties of war, causing unrest among his companions in the army division, and who, by a justifiable and confidential order from his commander, had been abandoned to his destiny in Istanbul, rather than punishing him after duly court-martialing or detaining him under strict supervision. We can also interpret it as the story of a life desired to remain detached. If there had been a constructive alternative, would a future like this have found its home in a foreign country as an attempt at vengeance? When one wanted to forget a thing or a place, to really forget it with all one’s being, one usually succeeded over a course of time, no matter what the cost. However, life demonstrated, from time to time, the fact that you eventually passed the examination with flying colors. It would suffice that you did not forget the fact that you could gain acceptance in the lives of certain people in proportion to the merits you exhibited despite all your anxieties and anticipations. My thoughts having wandered in such peregrinations, it occurs to me now to imagine Schwartz as the hero of a story who had, at some point of his life in Istanbul, lampooned himself. This shows that there was in that story a life desired to be omitted and denied. Even though such a life was to be made public, at times interrogated by various methods, or imposed on that amnesiac traveler without baggage . . . It might thus be the subject of a dirty joke that involved shying away from a loved one, eschewing a betrayal; a huge, sick and cruel joke . . . We might also speak of the tragedy of a young man of a romantic disposition who revolted for the sake of an original ideal against his father of conservative views, which he interpreted as his raison d’être, the only alternative that had guaranteed his survival despite the centuries long exposure of his race to hardships, bitterness and injustice. In this picture, the father might come forth in the identity of a hero, as a man whose ideal had been to leave his modest textile factory that he had set up with strenuous efforts, consistent with the attitudes he adopted toward every business he handled. Could we embroider a story in which Schwartz, who, instead of accepting the lifestyle that industry proffered him, wanted to spend all his days and nights in that summer farmland to which the family took themselves once or twice a year, where they were reluctant to share the same fate with the people there and were in pursuit of worldly success. He missed those moments, those moments of brief eternal bliss . . . That hazarded, for the sake of realizing his objective, to launch a full-scale offensive against the conditions prevalent in those days and at a time when he thought he was on the brink of a victory that would pave his way to a lifestyle he thought ideal though remote from nearly all the amenities of civilization that the city would be fain to provide him with. He saw his territories occupied during the war by the enemy, irredeemably confiscated by others, by the men of another country in the name of another country, and who had not been given the chance of seeing in this picture his beloved dream of the future and the children that he expected to foster. Could the whole thing have resulted in his aspiration for a willful annihilation of the thing he thought he would be unable to give a proper definition? Why not? Given the fact that we have tried and done our best to lend meaning to the picture of that farmland within us . . . Other probabilities also occur in one’s mind fancied for other heroes at other times. Under such circumstances, other questions might well open the door to other lives and indicate the path that would lead to other stories . . . I’m inclined to say that Schwartz did know the essential questions that should be asked and the real answers to them, despite all that had been seemingly mislaid. However, as far as I can gather, people had preferred in those days not to ask any questions, but to keep them to themselves. The said guest, the traveler of this long path, was doomed to stay where he was; he had figured as a hero in a story in his actual identity . . . That feeling of resignation in human nature inherited from that long history, nourished with the charm of fate, with the existence of that lost world, with expectations built up and put off for its sake . . . Oh that odor of lives heavy with patience and reproduced infinitely! I prefer to believe that no questions had been asked relative to Schwartz; for instance, where he had stayed and what he had eaten in the meantime, that is in the course of the days, the weeks, perhaps, the months that had elapsed between his being misplaced and his arrival at Moses’ shop. Yet, this question was one of the key questions that would have enabled us to have access to that mystery. But they knew all too well that they owed their life there to their abstention from asking certain questions to others; let alone whether they asked them of themselves or not. One should know that every action or choice was preserved in a storehouse . . . There is another reality, a scene of life which I should like to believe to have been enacted. With reference to that scene, I’m trying to revive in my imagination what Schwartz had, most probably, after the lapse of a good many years, imparted to Moses and Eva, by the distortions he liked so much, or insinuations, that is, between the lines, if one may call them that—insignificant details containing pieces of information about what had been talked about. This occurred at a time least expected, when the tale followed its due course, when many a reality had found their proper place and became more familiar with each passing day . . . A time desired to be re-written during the lengthy and wide-ranging talks exchanged and extended in the company of cups of tea brewed on the stove until late at night. Tea, for Moses, was a secret bridge that united his past, his adolescence, with certain decisive moments in his present life . . . The tea, like his memories, had to be brewed every night anew. The cups of tea taken in that house at Kuledibi had opened the door to a different exchange of words among three people, namely Schwartz, Eva and Moses. They had realized during those long talks, after some time, why they had been and should have in fact been together . . . They had never dared to question the reason for this or speculate about it; they might have carried their experiences along with them as a native destiny; however, one thing was certain, they had understood better and better what they were supposed to understand. Olga, who remembered those nights as an onlooker, while telling this story, had wanted to draw my attention to this fact. Based on what she said, I see now that, in the spontaneity that that secret understanding provided, everybody present there had decided to contribute to this story with all his being. It is reported that a short time after his visit everybody there had literally mobilized to find for Schwartz, first a lodging and then a business which might contribute to his livelihood. There was nothing out of the ordinary in this, of course. This action was simply a token of the solidarity between two outsiders . . . A view taken from such an angle that what had been experienced makes the story actually simpler than it appears to be at first sight.