Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale

by Levi, Mario

  Could there be fragments of him left in all these words, in these wishes expected to be realized in a foreign country? Could the sentiments that accompanied this last encounter be considered among the true feelings that a father might be willing to convey to his son, despite the distance involved? Errors and human beings . . . He had returned to the stage play, to the scenes he would forever bear in mind; it looked as though he had been caught unawares by the night once again . . . He had meditated on the mistakes he had made in life; he had thought that his life resembled a poorly written play, poorly enacted, and poorly performed. He had gone outside. He had strolled aimlessly in the streets for hours on end, trying to smother those voices within him, paying no attention to the rain pouring down. This was a sight that mirrored what he had been feeling. This event was consistent with what was being experienced. Afterward, he had acted out one of the unforgettable scenes of the play . . . one of the most unforgettable and genuine . . . All alone; despite those ships, those seas, those lands . . . This was the scene in which he was trying to float the ship he had fabricated using a small piece of paper he had taken out of his pocket in that pool at Trafalgar Square. The square was almost deserted in that late hour of the night. It looked as though everybody had taken refuge somewhere. His sister had taught him how to make that ship out of a piece of paper; years ago, when everybody was a child, when Trafalgar Square was but a name in their minds . . . He had watched it drifting and dreamt of ships caught by a storm in vast oceans; the only ship he could have boarded was perhaps a ship made of paper designed to float in the pools that adorned the squares of that city. His gaze had rested quite a while on the ship that the rippling water drifted away. This scene he had also watched in one of the movies which had obsessed him, a movie in which he fancied himself as the star. The film, like all films, was lost to memory. He knew the reason why. “I’d played roulette. It was strange. I bet like mad, and the more I played the more I lost. That night my loss might equal all my losses up until then, I can’t exactly tell you the amount now,” he confided to me, speaking about the experiences of his lonely life. In the morning he had spoken on the phone with Lola, telling her that he intended to leave the house and that they better not see each other again. It was the morning of Johann’s departure. The timing was unfortunate. He might have stayed by her side a little longer, to say the least. However, none of them was in a position to think of such a nicety. They knew all too well that they followed different paths. These were the first steps that would lead Lola, a woman who had seen hard times in other lands and who had lived as a failed hero in many stories, to a psychiatric clinic. As for him, well . . . Thirty-five years have elapsed since then. He was leaving things behind him where they belonged. He had proved to be daring enough to be able to confess to himself the incidents of that morning only later, reassessing them according to the climate in question. He was well aware of the meaning of the steps he took. This was the first and the only victory he had achieved in this relationship. Now he was hard up. He had squandered his money through gambling. He had not given up his conviction that he would continue loving Lola passionately despite all the adversities he had gone through, that a time would come when he would be pursuing her as he had done in his youth, that wherever she would go, he would be on the trail . . . Those little victories had not been in vain. This might get him nearer to the reality in the mirror. How eccentric certain people were, how versatile were their relationships, and how mercurial were the forms they assumed, quite different from their actual image. One is inclined to ask for instance who would be the person or the image one would have liked to cling to when one felt that the days one lived and one had been obliged to live were drifting away. He had asked himself this question when he had moved to a district remote from those illuminated quarters of the city; he had tried to find an answer, what image, what person? Certain places had occupied his mind in particular. During the days when everything was in order, or seemed to be, he had asked, in one of the outlying districts quite removed from where his life was spent, the illuminated life he spent had appeared to him in a completely different aspect. In the meantime, everything had changed: the nights, the streets, the odors, and the faces. There was still the possibility of glorious days. Yes, those days might still be saved. Over the course of one of those days he had found the opportunity of being engaged by prominent concerns as an adviser, as he was well informed about the world’s coffee market. Yes, an adviser . . . at least temporarily, during the days when he had not severed himself completely from that life. He had to keep up appearances. His companions in the offices where he worked never knew that he lived in an outlying district. He had told them that he had been put up at the The Grosvenor Hotel. He had prepared everything. The aged receptionist by the name of Mr. Jefferson, whom everybody knew and who resembled a nobleman, whose life had been spent in manor houses, with his accent, demeanor, and poised behavior, was a close acquaintance of his. Mr. Jefferson was one of those gentlemen who knew the meaning of a life lived in resignation. In this section of the story, he had to behave assuming such an identity . . . appearing solely in this identity . . . This must have been the reason which aroused in some the desire to probe for a closer look. The game was an old one, if one considered these points. For instance, nobody should know that he had lived elsewhere in other stories. They had met at an Italian café near the hotel. It was a holiday . . . a holiday during an ordinary weekday. They were in their ordinary attire and spoke without mincing their words. They exuded warmth; years had passed since they had cemented their friendship. Mr. Jefferson had asked him why he had been absent so long from the evening teas. He had told him simply that days had elapsed, had removed him more and more to the furthest corners of the city, to a London that looked alien to him. He was no longer the same old Monsieur Robert . . . Then he had added that he had felt the need to carry on the struggle, to experience that sentiment, at least. He desired to preserve the Monsieur Robert that other people did not know, the one they could not and would not be able to perceive. Mr. Jefferson had told him that much could be done for the said Monsieur Robert, for the sake of the good old days, and that one should believe in the many ways to deal with exile. They were seated at a table in a café in the proximity of the hotel. The coffee odor mingled with the scent of fresh buns . . . It was morning . . . a morning no different from any other morning, even though certain mornings dawned reminding one of other horizons, or gave one such an impression at least . . . He had kept his promise and did his best for Monsieur Robert, who tried to refresh those mornings. Mr. Jefferson’s task was to tell those who asked that Monsieur Robert was out for a meeting and wasn’t expected back for a long time, and that, should they care to leave a note, he would be only too glad to deliver it to him as soon as he was back. Mr. Jefferson had also informed the night attendants of the scheme. To keep up appearances as much as possible was de rigueur. It may be that those moments were his last; he had desired to communicate them, to make them tangible, at least. Their encounter had taken place at least in one of the acts of the play . . . in their identities as two honest individuals . . . as two individuals who believed they had found the truth in their little lies . . . that might befit a revolt to those who could risk to rebel . . . then . . . then they were to disappear nonetheless. One day, at a time when the ‘then’ had a quite different meaning for me, at a time when I was trying to allot the roles my actors were to play, I went to The Grosvenor Hotel. I was led to London guided by the memory of a person who had been instrumental in making me live a night which would stay with me forever, which would gesticulate the death of a part of me. As for gambling, it was a glaring error, a suicide, let alone being a sin, throwing oneself down a chasm in all consciousness. Madame Roza’s formulation of this sentence—based on a platitude, on a well-known point of view and on an understanding supplied by experience by his beloved elder sister—was the typified expression of a great many people left with diversified sentiments and a multitude of exper
iences. Throwing oneself headlong down a chasm . . . Was the problem related, in any way, to the storm raised at those tables, to the failure to take stock of this fall and to the connivance of it? To a secret pleasure derived from the severance with Lola’s small family? He had never been willing to provide an answer to this question; he would never be able to do so.

  This was one of the moments when he was confronted once again with the fact that he would not be able to tell of what he had gone through, even to his closest relations. Everybody had reserved a place for the lie relating to him. Everybody had known him to a certain extent. We had desired that some of our lies remain unshakable, to abide forever wherever they were to carry us along. Everybody had contrived a truth out of that lie. In this belated return, nobody had believed or couldn’t bring himself to believe that he had been as alone as he had depicted himself to be, that he had been forsaken and had foundered. Undoubtedly the fault lay partly with him. During the days that followed his return to Istanbul, oblivious to the time when he had said to those closest to him that he had lost everything; that he had come back to Istanbul for important business affairs; that his briefcase contained valuable papers and contracts waiting to be signed; that his past experiences, the credit he enjoyed in a multitude of prominent banks across the world could solve all sorts of difficulties; that he had come from London to his birthplace that he had not visited for a very long time for a brief stay during which he purported to fix a couple of affairs and that he had effectively established contacts with otherwise inaccessible people. Yet, all his expectations had remained limited to those interviews and the topics discussed during those conversations. His attractive business prospects had not attracted due attention, they weren’t clearly understood and had remained a dull, dumb show. These were the last scenes of the play enacted in Istanbul. The same had taken place when he went to the Sipahi Ocağı Club, where he hoped to say hello to a few old acquaintances, during the nights he went out to gamble, while he made business offers based on his wild imagination, even when he stayed at home or when he bought expensive gifts for Tilda, his ‘little sister,’ whose origin God only knew . . . The lie was being carried on in every way . . . Well, everybody was in need of such a lie. Everybody who could not disclose their darkness to people was in need of such a lie . . . everybody who was acquainted with the idea of detachment . . . everybody who wanted to see life not where he had to relive it, but at the place of his predilection. Would that morning dawn once more from somewhere new and unforeseen?

  What had been experienced ‘with them,’ what had been desired to be collected for a new place after so many years seemed to represent the fragments of an adventure of no return . . . fragments of an adventure whose dimensions would not cease to grow in another being, accompanied by alien elements and distances. This was the moment when Monsieur Robert had cast a glance at me during the recitation of the Hagada on that Passover evening, all the while smiling faintly at the wine goblet before him. I thought I had caught him unawares, seeing him as a man of a completely different ilk. Then I had realized that Juliet had had a part to play in this. She was staring at us. We had arrived at that moment with diverse feelings that carried with them the memory of diverse people. Notwithstanding, we had felt that we had met somewhere removed from that old rumor, that the dinner table brought family members and families together. The words were once again incarcerated within us, they constituted obstacles that barred our way to that individual we were in pursuit of; they were our borders we could not cross, that we could not describe. What was risked was a talk that three individuals preferred to hold in their restricted and closed states, during which every contributor addressed himself in the first person; notwithstanding we had taken an important step forward in this segregated time . . . even though we were not in a position to see each other as clearly and as we ought to have done. I always wanted to believe that Monsieur Robert had made a call to Lola. New resentments could be obliterated after all those resentments. Was it possible that in that interview, a return, a return to a life to start anew had been discussed? Who knows? A man eventually learned, could not help learning, what certain returns brought and took away after a certain point in time.

  It would take a long time before I could have an insight into the truth . . . a very long time . . . at a time when I was to be obliged once more to carry the results of belatedness in an individual . . . That was the first evening that Monsieur Robert had seriously considered going to London in order to get lost for good, aside from the dreams that he might have had about the prospective experience with Lola . . . to London, to that place of exile, with the intention of never returning to Istanbul . . . He had a nagging feeling which he could not define, which he could not articulate, that was tracing this path for him . . . Madame Roza’s disease had not yet been diagnosed; she was not yet burdened with crippling debts; jobs prospects had not been reduced to nil . . . Those disastrous days that marked her downfall were not yet looming ahead despite the disappointments already experienced. Yet, what had been observed in that play that evening had also revealed the image of that path not yet taken. She would not be obliged to live with that individual denounced by her family, in the city where he would retrace her steps. The city where she had spent thirty-five years of her life had seemed closer to her when weighed against this sentiment. She was left there with these visions.