Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale

by Levi, Mario

  To be able to make a phone call to Lola

  Late in the evening, İncila Hanım was to sing a tango, an old, unforgettable hit . . . at a time when everything was being privatized, when everybody set off on a journey in a different direction . . . It was a valediction . . . an act or instance of bidding farewell that was suited to the meaning of that night in every respect, that suited every second, every word, every color, and every perfume it evoked . . . They were immersed in a brief but profound silence. Monsieur Robert’s wish to make a phone call to Lola, who lived in his former house in proximity to the house where they happened to be at the time, was thwarted. I distinctly remember it. His voice was tremulous as he was telling me what he had gone through in those moments of despair; he seemed to suffer from being unable to knock on that door. He distinctly remembered it. He experienced the same sensation on that Passover evening he had celebrated together with his family members in Istanbul . . . to make a call to Lola . . . How different everything had been years ago, how differently it had all started, had seemed and been represented! Years ago, the guests at the table had not yet met with death and had not been obliged to part with their family despite postponements. Those dreams had not yet been exhausted; those joys had not been lost at that time. At the time everybody was different, everybody looked at each other differently, everybody saw in the mirror, in their mirror, a different individual. Years ago, when he was staying at the Park Hotel with Lola, he had not felt himself a nuisance at that Passover table. They had been the subject of scrutiny for everybody. He had succeeded and would work his way up the ladder; at least it looked as though he would. He had become a legendary figure. Maybe he had wanted to make a call to Lola just to remind her of that evening. Then he had realized . . . At a moment when he was once more caught unawares by that person whom he actually wanted to forget, to shun . . .The whole thing was a stage play, what had been experienced was actually the scenes of an unwarranted play . . . Just like that evening when so many losses had been experienced . . . that evening when he had appeared to his family as a stranger . . . years ago . . . When one considers the plays enacted by the family members, plays which appeared different though they essentially remained the same, he had not even been admitted to appear in the scene, in a simple play written and enacted somewhere before with different words. He had been but a spectator, a mere visitor among them . . . To begin with, he was a person secretly envied for his successes and admired for his merits. Lands and individuals were lost because of the failures that followed . . . climates to which no return had been possible because of certain failures . . . To be looked at from different angles with different looks had been his punishment. The angle from which he was being contemplated was the place from which he had viewed his family at a distance, from the place where he had been exiled. He had once brought costly gifts to his nephews and nieces, to his elder and younger sisters. He had only memories to narrate and share with those present that evening. He had only been able to convey the image of that individual he had to abandon in a place laden with memories . . . That night belonged to him in particular. He felt himself a stranger even to those few people who had given him a helping hand, who enabled him to cope with difficulties during his hard times to the extent their means allowed. Even to those few people who succored him from different angles . . . to Roza, Tilda and Berti . . . Everybody was actually their own self; everybody empathized with the individual within themselves, the individual whose aspirations one could not materialize. By these means he possessed many sentiments which he could elaborate upon and nurture in order to enjoy his state of being a spectator as best as he could . . . all things considered, to be able to convey his memoirs to others, to share them with others was well-nigh impossible . . . Years had scattered these people over a vast area . . . He was an exile to them; exiled to such a remote realm that he could not bring himself to them even in his most difficult times. He thought himself to be beyond a mere spectator or visitor . . . An exile though he was . . . a hero of a legend built and nurtured by lies, wrong lives, wrong cities, wrong streets, and wrong houses . . . What had been lost in return was the family he sustained in London for years on end . . . a family that did not go beyond potential, beyond being but a fantasy . . .

  Now I have more than one reason for remembering in detail that Passover, in order that I can insert it at a different time, into a different story . . . Once more everything was reduced to order. Madame Roza had done everything to endow the table with the delicacies it deserved. The participation of her brother in such an evening after so many years had contributed to the preparations by endowing them with original color and meaning. The large family was there again and the topics of discussion were life in general, daily political developments, the beauty of traditions, Judaism, the fate of the Jews and last but not least, the history of the chosen people and their place in the contemporary world. Monsieur Robert had taken the floor. People listened to him when he spoke, everybody kept silent and tried to express, in one way or another, their admiration for him. They had tried once more to enter into a life they knew to be unattainable through a path they decked with imagination and petty jealousies. For, this was easy . . . for little lies no great sacrifices were required. They were in the midst of a scene that had to be enacted. They had praised him for his smartness. Everybody saw in him a part of themselves, an aspect of themselves they wished they could reveal. That might have been the reason why the talks had ended in a fiasco and had failed to attain the objectives pursued. I understand this better when I recall his occasional wandering attention toward the end of the meal, his drifting far, very far away, toward the voices in his head, and moving unconsciously and gradually away from the milieu he happened to be in; this was the result of his reverie. These were brief moments, very brief moments; moments he could have fit or failed to have fit with the remnants of lives mislaid in others and fragmentary visions from alien times. You did not have to put on your thinking cap in order to understand that he had gone to a place he could not share with anyone. For instance, in the last few minutes his attention had been drawn to the glass of wine in front of him. His forefinger had wandered around its edge. The glass was of one of those sets that were used on special occasions and gingerly placed on the table. Voices and sounds happened to have been buried somewhere. Those moments were mingled with those voices and sounds . . . There was a chance that Lola had sipped her wine from this very glass. Objects which breathed in and out with us were our witnesses that concealed our secrets stealthily in their own way . . . At that very moment, he seemed to figure in a vision alien to me, and seemed destined to remain so. In a vision alien to me with individuals I would never be able to establish contact with . . . Under the circumstances, all that remained for me was to patch up the fragments of knowledge I had gleaned from other people, from Monsieur Jacques, Juliet, and Aunt Tilda. One cannot deny the fact that to wish to linger only in fragments of a whole is something in itself, after all. Those fragments that were found could find their eventual places over a course of time, leaving aside all preferences and deeds. You cannot expect me to guess at this stage where I will end up as a consequence of my efforts. All I can say is that those who try to place him somewhere within themselves often fancy that they are watching an adventure movie as they look at that distant life from outside and feel somewhat elated. The life left as a legacy to me was the remnant of a life spent gambling big in Monte Carlo, in winning and losing considerable fortunes at those tables, in being unable to go to places other than St. Moritz for skiing, in being a member of one of the reputed golf clubs in London, in going on safari in East Africa, in obtaining tickets for privileged seats at Wimbledon, in feeling the warm touch of fur coats, in staying at the ancient and illuminated hotels of Venice, in eating at the most expensive restaurants in Paris, and making innumerable trips to Kenya, Brazil, and Nigeria. It seemed as though he had earned the money for the sake of enjoying life to the full . . . It sometimes occurs to me that l
osing was a kind of an aristocratic privilege under the circumstances . . . But to describe this little victory as one would have liked to after so many defeats and gaps was extremely difficult . . . The life he had led was a life that the people at that Passover evening could not have lived, could not have risked; a life completely out of the ordinary, a life left in the past. To the best of my recollection, nobody had dared to ask about the origin of the fortune that had enabled him to live such an exciting life. Everybody remained content to arrive at their own conclusions. To remain a mere onlooker was easier than trying to act and understand. The person, who could not take a step forward into an individual, took that step toward himself, into his own life eventually. Monsieur Robert had mentioned a couple of times that the secret lay in the coffee trade, in being familiar with the coffee trade, and in being able to correctly interpret the fluctuations in the price of coffee. After a few mistakes he had learned that the right place to go was Brazil and Kenya for good produce and what people one should contact and how to negotiate with them. There were innumerable stories he could tell about those places. He had once told us that he could never forget the mornings when the dawn broke early, of certain trains and the railways. He had spoken about the terror that those vast lands generated. He used to speak in broken sentences . . . in sentences left unfinished. It was as though he had lived there as a different individual, an individual he could not describe or convey to us . . . This enhanced the doubt in Berti; it assumed reality. According to him, the coffee trade was just one aspect of his business. One should delve into the core of that adventure. According to his account, his maternal uncle, for whom he had great admiration, had got involved with contraband. According to Monsieur Jacques, he was a swindler who had the gift of the gab that enabled him to establish critical business relations; a swindler who succeeded in inspiring trust in foreigners through his gestures. This inspired not only a temporary reliance, but also great confidence in his future transactions. Thus he lived in his dreamworld bedecked with original visions. He had his men . . . people liable to change, speaking different tongues, with different looks and different steps that he had befriended and believed to be the most reliable people in his life after all that he had gone through with his family. It was true that his extravagance enabled him to cling to those people, but beyond that it signified the collapse of those narrow bridges. When the people in his circle caught sight of his fancies, they didn’t hesitate to abandon him. When we tried to speak using the cliches which allowed other people to communicate with each other, we could see the reason for his loneliness and estrangement mirrored in his being the jack-of-all-trades and master of none. We must acknowledge, however, that his skill in finding new employment in new areas of business, his spawning of new ideas and hopes had enabled him to take different steps over the years. There was the question about what in him had caused his failure to take new steps after a certain point in time. For, he had no plans for the future that would have fixed him anywhere. This may have been the reason behind the loftiness of his ideals; ideals it would be difficult for him to pursue, to describe, to share with others. Nevertheless, he had not learned anything from these abandonments and forsakings, and had not moved away from that man within himself. It was a sad fact that what could be lived and acquired found no echo in others.

  These interpretations drew boundaries he could not and would not perceive. This was the place where he encountered his next-of-kin regardless of whether he wanted to or not. One should have a better insight into Monsieur Jacques’s joy that was mingled with the sadness he enjoyed there, whose origin might be traced back to his taking refuge. Berti was there, as well as those individuals that Berti had prepared the ground for, individuals like himself, individuals that he could not help seeing sprout. According to Juliet, whom I always wanted to imagine as one of the people who knew the place in question well, Monsieur Robert was a gambler who played big. His lifestyle and worldview were sufficient proof of this fact. This profession required, in the first instance, successful acting. Any individual who had the least initiation into dramatic art could easily understand that he had the remarkable capacity of creating little worlds. The journeys he had set off on to those lands were, in a way, other people’s journeys. An adventurer involved in international contraband, a daydreamer who tried to endear himself to his acquaintances with lies, or an actor who endeavors to invigorate people. While people tried to attribute to Monsieur Robert lives laden with nugatory criticism, they were full of admiration for him. He was an individual, censured, kept at arm’s length; someone who breathed more easily elsewhere, a relative who invited his acquaintances to partake—with their special merits and capacities—of the joy of a life that deserved to be concealed. Of all the family members only Madame Roza was persuaded that he traded in coffee, or she preferred to appear so. This conviction implied a necessity, to wit an indispensability, if one took into account the duration of that relationship. His sister needed at least one person in which to build up her trust. Life had assigned her the duty of an elder sister, the duty to protect her brother; she could not possibly leave this man who had been considered by many as the odd-man-out and treat him as a cast away to his destiny, whom she could not endear to the public. Robert, her beloved brother, might not have been conscious of this; however, if one meditated on the past, on their past, the disappearance of this sentiment somewhere between them was not so important. This sacrifice, this devotion made her happy. This made her feel that she had fulfilled her mission. She could not ask for more in this life. Moreover, not being conscious of the existence of such feelings was so much the better. She should not feel the burden of her sacrifice for someone to whom she had devoted herself. This was a critical point which was due to the fact that you assumed someone to be of your own species. Madame Roza had naturally gained considerable ground in this direction. Could one attribute the growing fatigue that she suffered (before the rest of the family) to the hardness of this undertaking which caused her to gradually loose her energy? Perhaps. Some of the family stayed in her life and some left eventually as a consequence of her situation. Here lay the reason why people wished to cling to life through relatives; the reason might also lie on both sides of a boundary which is impossible to delineate.

  Now, as for Aunt Tilda . . . All these comments, opinions, and escapades had no importance at all. The refined manners of her elder brother were sufficient to make him a gentleman. The number of men that had entered her life, who had laid down a life of finesse for her had been limited. This deprivation had led Monsieur Robert to a stage from where it would be easier for him to attain the truth: his life, his philosophy of life, what he had done for Lola, and her overwhelming love for a hero made him one of the romantic heroes of old whose like is no longer to be found—the story that had paved his way to this woman and made her a slave is supportive of this view. Those were the postwar years during which masses of people had begun developing new ideals and new hopes to help them survive despite the loss of so many lives. It was in such an atmosphere that Monsieur Robert, together with Monsieur Aldo, his business partner at the time, wandered all over the cities of Europe looking for business outlets. It was an unforgettable and unique era; a time in which unforeseeable people emerged from nowhere at the most unexpected moments and intruded on our lives. “What other people saw in films, personally I’d been an eyewitness of; I led a life of madcap adventure. O those days! Nobody would believe me were I to tell them!” he said one day, referring to those times. In these words, there lay concealed not only a sense of humor, but also resentment; even solitude. I would be bearing testimony to this solitude at an opportune moment, elsewhere, in stages. In this complaint, there was also a little boasting that resisted against the past. Those moments brought along a breath from distant lands without which one would have difficulty surviving. There was a different individual . . . “You know what, I’d been sent to prison in Milan,” he said, “I’d been incarcerated for four days and four nights ex
actly. Had it not been for Monsieur Aldo I’d be done for. I’d have stayed there for years probably and nobody would have been aware of my absence. Aldo got me out. He had influential contacts everywhere. Big business, you know . . . ” Monsieur Robert never referred to this subject afterward. He mentioned nothing about the act that had paved his way to jail. I chose to remain silent as always through such journeys in time to which I was occasionally invited. Words and questions would come to life elsewhere once again. I might have asked myself once again whether this was another story stored away in his memory, written elsewhere for other people. A recollection, an imaginary time desired to be stored and prolonged, the truth of which he could not even force himself to believe, let alone his listeners. Now that I am far removed from everybody, I can freely say it. Monsieur Robert had a knack for spreading lies. When I recollect certain circumstantial evidence, I’m inclined to surmise that he followed in the steps of an original guide, a guru, reminiscent of those legendary heroes of adventure movies, namely of Monsieur Aldo, for whom defeats and disappointments were hardly obstacles. However, I had to proceed on toward other sources. For, the traveler of that long adventure—who had cleverly lost himself in some time and space in accordance with the requirements of that little rumor that he had generated through his circle—had never taken part in our long conversations. When I try to place that past, it represents only certain details to me, I must say that certain questions had triggered in me little hope of attaining an idea of their shared past. Where had they met, how had they been introduced to each other, which dreams and journeys had been shared between them, and where, wherefore, and for whose sake had they parted ways? Who had they aspired to be at that time? All these questions are awaiting me in the dark labyrinths of that land I can never reach. In the blind alleys of dark labyrinths . . . for the sake of a few more dreams . . . for the sake of those few more steps within me . . . just as with other matters related to Monsieur Robert . . . in many of the people with whom I want to tell . . . Notwithstanding, what I have heard and with whom I could establish contact does not hinder my having a glimpse of the hero of that life even from a distance . . . Monsieur Aldo had been different people with different looks, had lived in the bodies of different people and figured in different photographs in those lives . . . He had remained in the mind of the people who had met him as a person versed in imports and who knew how to make the best of his life, and not only as someone who was a skillful poker player, a connoisseur of wines and of women. His creative talent that stunned people and which found its particular expression in trickery had earned him the reputation of being a man that opened all doors. His entourage had never doubted his mastery in fraudulent affairs. He cleared all sorts of goods at customs regardless of the regulations in effect. He was a well-known character in those surroundings. He was praised for his adage: “If you do it, so shall we.” Those were words used in critical situations; the words uttered in days whose contribution to the cause was well-known in advance, the words uttered in days when settling accounts did not present any difficulties. To see things at the right time had always been effective during those days . . . He was also remembered for his disappearing at times, during which nobody could find him anywhere; sometimes he was a Catholic Arab; sometimes a native of Beirut; sometimes a Levantine from İzmir; sometimes a native of Thesallonica; and sometimes a Jew from Istanbul. These were his own stories, the identities of people who had left with him their tales, their lives. His identity changed according to the person he wanted to be as well as to the time and place in question. Partly because of this, nobody could ascertain for certain his actual origin. He had spent the last days of his life in Barcelona according to some, in Goa, according to others. According to some, he had died of syphilis, and to others, he had been stabbed to death by a Syrian arms dealer. In the said story, he was apparently in the same bed with the wife of one of the people he transacted his business with. The man was overwhelmed by a sight he didn’t expect to see, and had lost control; he had deemed execution a suitable punishment. According to the account of certain people, this was a rather commendable death . . . Still, according to another version of the story, he had spent a life of luxury in a legendary manor house in Mexico City . . . This last version was, according to Monsieur Robert, the one he preferred to give credence to. He had never lost confidence in the master with whom he had collaborated once. To my mind, this was quite probably due to a connection concealed deep within himself, engendered by reasons that one need not to inquire into. Had that image in the mirror not taken us to places we didn’t want to go? Had Monsieur Jacques also taken heed of this dangerous admiration? It was not for nothing that Monsieur Jacques had said with resentment, and also as though he had taken offense, about his brother-in-law for whom he had some sympathy: that the teacher whom he emulated was a bad character. It was he that had been instrumental in his being introduced to Lola. The connection had been indicated to him years ago. One day, I would tackle the story of that path . . . I was well aware that certain words called us to certain secrets. I was waiting for that moment to occur. That moment that quite often shuts out our reality and opens up to reveal a place we are quite unaware of.