by Levi, Mario
At times I am inclined to believe in the power of that moment when I think of its advance toward certain individuals that reach me. It seems to me that I can better explain the coincidences and the encounters that seem inevitable . . . Coincidences and meetings that seem inevitable . . . If we rely on Monsieur Jacques, he said that everything had started during an ordinary trip to London. Monsieur Aldo had mentioned a fair lady singing in a nightclub in Soho, in addition to the affairs to be attended to and the addresses that were not written down but had to be memorized before setting off on the journey. A nightclub in Soho . . . Could it be that the adventure, that dragging had started there? Maybe. Some people desire to see, to glance at the different aspects of evasions from their respective angles . . . How else could we explain the fact that we imprison our heroes exclusively within our own delineated boundaries? That may be one of the reasons why I want to believe in those songs sung or desired to be sung, to flow into those days, to the profound depths of those people. The woman, who had sung those songs there, was said to be a woman who had come over to London to rewrite her life, trying to forget as best as she could the devastation in Hungary. She had succeeded in escaping—by a stratagem she had devised, after having lost her husband in the concentration camps where everybody had succumbed to different ends—to London with her two-year-old son whom she wanted to save from that cold breath they felt approaching, despite attempts at escape from the dark days looming ahead, despite omissions. A woman, who had started to work in such a business, trying to forget her upbringing in Budapest, her excellent background in music and dramatic arts, the splendid life she had left behind. She tried to think that it had been a dream, persuading herself, with stronger emphasis every day, that all moral values could have been omitted, if need be, believing in the fact that there were no values after all that deserved the attribute of infallibility. She had made herself a new little entourage that formed a circle around her, a circle of admirers; a woman, who made her presence felt wherever she entered; a woman who had been obliged to leave behind all that had held dear and valuable to her, just like every stranger that had gone through difficult days but had to put up with them all the same . . . Monsieur Aldo had told his student about that woman by stressing certain details. He had given him a strange warning when he handed him the address of that nightclub: “There’s a song that Lola sings,” he told him, “which may have a profound effect on you. Do everything with her, enjoy her in every possible fashion, but don’t ever marry her.” This warning gave him food for thought that aroused in him a strange feeling. This wanderer who had succeeded in acting out the role of a different person or to embody the character of a different individual in every city, who could never build up the family he aspired for, had, for some reason or other, felt the necessity to speak of marriage as an expected development, even as a perilous act, while mentioning a little adventure or the possibility of a little adventure. Could it be because he had felt that his traveling companion, his young partner, who, succumbing to the charm of his cherished dreams, might blow up his world, and, fascinated and infatuated by her charm, delude himself that he had found in Lola the woman of his dreams which would eventually lead him to a dead end without return? Could it be that he was convinced after all those years that imagination might induce one to take wrong steps that entailed the payment now and then of heavy compensations?
Was Lola’s marriage with a young man like Monsieur Robert, endowed with refined manners and a tender heart, who enjoyed life to the fullest and was liable to be easily seduced by her charm, the result of her innate ability to perceive that it would be wise to join her life with a man, expecting that he would be a father to her growing son? Was she a person whom he could trust with the many things he aspired to in life, inspired by what the women he had left or had to leave in the past had provided him with? Could it be that Lola was concerned about the likelihood that she would make him unhappy after some time, this vulnerable creature often removed from actual reality, with his heart on his sleeve? All or none of these questions could be put in regard to this relationship. Any one of these questions . . . or any new questions . . . To bring forward, present, or exhibit such questions again, and even more at that, was not so difficult, given the fact that we had no possibility in hand other than what our imagination had provided us with; this was an amusing game after all that had enlivened new lives within us; an amusing game that secured our enduring attachment, causing us to take refuge in our deceptions . . . especially if you have opted for that hidden spectator who tries not to make his presence felt while watching those scenes that arouse critical points in you. In brief, to decipher Aldo’s attitude toward this relationship, his viewpoint, under the dim light of memory, was not possible. This might lead us to another question. For instance, could it be that this warning had been made, in contrast with the meaning that those words explicitly conveyed, to arouse matrimonial emotions? I believe the answers to this and other questions lie hidden in his relationship with Lola. However, as far as I know, nobody has succeeded in learning anything about this relationship. In this part of the story we were face-to-face with an adventurer who knew how to keep a secret between himself and the heroes of that story. This was the hardest part he had learned to play in the long path he had trodden. His figure seems to emerge before me now, though from a distance. With whom and with which particular era of history had that man—who, with his imposing stature, was eager to veil himself behind mysteries—wanted to come to terms? Still another question that awaits an answer was the one which involved a purple-brown Cadillac that Monsieur Jacques had mentioned having seen whenever his path crossed Beyoğlu. There were incidents that joined or connected each other in various intangible and unspecified ways, and that lived more often than not for the sake of those coincidences, to wit, of those encounters . . . When I ruminate over these things, I understand better the world that Monsieur Robert had discovered or believed to have discovered in Lola. After all, everybody desired sooner or later to take steps toward the images they conceived in their dreams. The pity he felt for his fellow beings was partly self-pity. When you tried to touch a fellow being who you believe to have left behind more than one life, you thought you would have access to those lives that you had failed to live in one way or another. Stories elaborated on by yearnings, fantasies, and lies . . . There are so many reasons to knock on the door of certain prospects . . . There would be no end to embarking on quests for things that would compensate for some defect . . . A short while after that first night Lola and Monsieur Robert decided to get married during a simple ceremony without informing each other’s family members, next of kin, and last but not least, Monsieur Aldo. After that first encounter, on his path toward that dearth, he would try to bring up the issue of Johann with paternal care, the child begotten by her from another man with whom she had established a marital relationship, learning of the paternity from a different source for the sake of love, of his first and only love . . .
Robert & Lola, Lola & Robert . . . the solitude of two individuals, two individuals who had been able to convince themselves of the fact that they—who had come from different worlds, whose roads would converge—could unite . . . Was that all? I don’t think so. However, in order to understand the story further and to be able to retell it, I had to gain further ground. The authors of the story had desired to perpetuate this march from where they found themselves . . . When they had come back to Istanbul to celebrate the second anniversary of their marriage, the descriptions of their clothes, the nightclubs they frequented, and the room that commanded a panoramic view at the Park Hotel had dazzled his friends. That was the beginning of the legend. He had spoken about big business in London and about the life he was leading there, with the greatest delight. He had been successful in this. Even though he might not have openly said so, he had done his utmost to create in them this image. They contemplated coming to Istanbul more often, to play tennis at the Dağcılık Kulübü and swimming at the Sipahi Oc
ağı . . . The game had to be played by the book . . . However, these small trips were destined to be rarer and rarer as the years went by, and were to come to an end eventually. It seemed as though their trips to Istanbul had drawn a parallel with the course their relationship followed . . . dwindling to a speck. It would take Monsieur Robert thirty-five years before he could return to the city he had always wanted to abandon, for reasons he could not disclose not even to his next-of-kin, to the city where he was born and which he could not obliterate from his mind. Monsieur Robert would be known to everybody to be living in London or somewhere else in the world . . . in a distant land; the postcards, letters, and money he had sent to Aunt Tilda were proof of this. Was everything as it actually appeared? Indeed, were they exactly as they were known? Breaking with his family was his way of making headway toward the life ahead. For example, he would remain a stranger to the family, to his own small and living family, the family he had fancied to start, remaining a mere appendage despite his passionate love for Lola which the years had not eroded, notwithstanding all sorts of hardships, trials, and challenges overcome for the sake of that love, despite the affection he had shown to Johann for pity’s sake. He would realize that his affection for and temporary attachment to his family were actually frustrating him; he would take cognizance of the real life reflected by the lights of the cosmopolitan city, its buses and its subway, of real life, of himself and of the different aspects of solitude. The nights that Lola and Johann held long conversations behind closed doors were, as he had told me then, the nights he felt himself very lonely, as though forsaken. Was this a sort of betrayal? Those were the nights during which he would let himself be tempted by gambling, during which he would take refuge at gambling tables that would call to him as a sanctuary; those were the nights when he would be their creator, if I may say so. This passion would last for years leading to big gains and big losses . . . sharing the fate of notorious gamblers involving huge sums of money, unforgettable critical moments, intense emotions, vivid recollections. Recklessness was his ruling passion; you could see him fly off the handle, and then suddenly transform into fits of delight the next moment. “A pit was being dug beneath my feet, but I did my best to shut my eyes to it,” he told me one day. It seemed as though he tried to tell of the resentment that betrayal had engendered within him, partly blaming himself for his good will. The tergiversation had not been directed exclusively at Lola and Johann; the family he had left in Istanbul which he considered a last refuge, from which he had never wanted to part and never intended to burn bridges with, had also been involved in this treachery. He had built his life on lies for a good many years and spent many years at gambling tables. Johann would one day leave for America with his girlfriend, relying to a certain extent on the relations he had established in the world of cinema, to see if his luck as a producer would hold. Before he had set out for America, he said: “You’re a very good man. But you made glaring errors in your life, very serious errors. Your biggest mistake has been to marry my mother.” He answered in return: “I couldn’t help it; I was head over heels in love with your mother.” “I know,” replied Johann, “but the fact is that my mother had experienced so many deaths in her lifetime and had lost the capacity to fall in love. She herself had told me this; she must’ve told you as well. That was not difficult to understand. Why haven’t you seen this? Don’t tell me you were blinded by your love for her. We know well that we lie flatly in the name of love; we take refuge in blatant lies, pretending to love. Both of us know this for a fact, even though we are different human beings with different personalities.” Was that the moment to disclose his secret—which even those who knew him closely would place somewhere quite different from where it usually belonged, and share it with others—the secret which he had been carrying for years regarding his matrimonial tie, painstakingly, without hope? Could the talks he might hold from then on enable them to see each other in a different light, relapsing into silence? Who knows? All that he knew was that he could not put into words, despite strenuous efforts, what he actually wanted to convey. It was like the feeling that an individual would experience standing before the door of a person whom he had been yearning to see for a long time, but was incapable of knocking on. Johann would have understood him; he would have been one of the people to whom he could address, convinced that he would get to the bottom of what I would say. I can draw these conclusions because I had been imparted with the secret in question. I was the third person involved at the moment of separation, at a different time of parting. He had finally succeeded: what I had learned would enable me to look at Lola from a different angle, who had carried, throughout her life, the deaths that appeared remote and alien to everybody else. One might call this a kind of nobleness, despite all the pains it involved. One yielded to an intimately related person, to one’s own hell, in the first place. The life that he had led, that he had chosen, had undoubtedly taught him this. This may have been the reason why he expected a reaction to his narrative. A reaction of which he would know nothing, and which, he would feel hidden from, a reaction of which Monsieur Aldo and his family in Istanbul would be ignorant of as well. This secrecy would one day hold true for those he would know in a different climate, as a completely different person. This was the main stipulation in our agreement. Only one question would do; one single question. A question which would take us to another coast, to somebody else’s coast; the rest lying within the precincts of one’s imagination . . . We might venture, for instance, to ask him about the ways he exercised his manhood in trying to understand him a little better. What were the different methods of experiencing one’s virility, of favoring a woman whom one passionately loved and was attached to? Johann might desire to provide an answer to this from the outside, from a different emotional locale. However, they had preferred, like others, to keep silent or to attach meaning to their reticence in different stories. “A person in love never loses hope, without the slightest doubt,” he said, after gazing for a while with a smile. He had merely said this in a murmur, bending his head toward his breast, to the individual he wanted to consider as his own son, but had to leave to tread another path. “You’ve done a lot for me, but I’m turning my back on you,” said Johann after carefully placing the photograph album in his suitcase. Then he added: “However, our élan vital, the vital force that upholds us is evil, don’t forget that! My mother had nothing to give to another as far as I know. What she needed was affection and love, without giving anything in return: an unrequited love. That’s why I hated her.” A mere smile had been his response to these words. Had his silence originated from his hopelessness or from his inability to give free rein to that suppressed and repressed anger he always tried to conceal? They had to pay dearly for this alliance; they had hung on each other with great force thereafter. That was the only moment when they had experienced friendship and affection. The moment of separation once and for all, they would not even communicate by word of mouth henceforward. Such moments had been experienced by others who knew, and had been obliged to witness, what true separation was and how to survive it. This might, in a way, be considered the call of the wild; the call of the wild that could be transported by other people to other stories by means of original feelings and visions . . . Johann had decided to set out on a path of evil that night. He had had a conversation with his girlfriend who had come to fetch him, and who looked like a fashion model with her elongated umbrella, camel hair mantle, and purple-brown scarf. This was a conversation, during which both interlocutors remained strangers to each other; one of those conversations held when one had nothing better to do; just idle talk, in other words. “America is waiting for us, ready to give us an Oscar,” his girlfriend said, “we’ll be back as soon as we get it.” “Before we have grown old, certainly,” said Johann, “before beginning to look at this city through American glasses . . . ” and they had grown jocular. Yes, everybody was a stranger to everybody. What and who were they laughing at? “Write to me,” said Johann before lea
ving. “Do write. I mean, if you feel like it.” He added: “Remember me to Susan!” He wished that the Susan to whom this compliment was addressed had been Susan Hayward. A sad smile had appeared on both their faces. Once more they agreed on a common issue and were caught in an unexpected moment. “All right, old man,” said Johann, “I will, if I see her.” These had been his last words; the last words exchanged between them . . . This may have played a part in keeping them in his memory . . .