by Levi, Mario
About a year had elapsed in the meantime . . . a year that had assumed meaning through communications that had become less and less frequent. I had often visited her at that hotel room. We used to go now and then to have a cup of tea at the Hilton Hotel. For her, it was one of the rare places, a place of refuge she doted on, and that Istanbul was endowed with, thanks to the power of the imagination of its people. She could never understand me, the fact that I did not feel myself at home there. Products of fevered imagination and elaborate deceptions had besieged us then. We had lost men elsewhere and had been looking for them elsewhere. Our history had been written in different words with missing and omitted parts; it would be written by other people or neglected altogether. Yet, there was a place where we met, where we succeeded in meeting. A place that we could not define, that we did not feel a compulsion to express, where we simply wanted to live, where we preferred to live to the fullest possible degree. A time would come when I would feel nearer. Some of us wanted to abide, to linger, sticking to certain details or to believe that we did so. We had wanted with all our heart to let ourselves be carried away by the charm of transformations, of inevitable transformations . . . Monsieur Robert had spoken to me of those years particularly in this specific corner of his; what I have collected relating to those years was mostly concealed in those tea times and to what those moments had conjured up . . . Gradually ceding the essence, the meaning and the details over to our experiences more and more . . . He was in need of a witness, of a spectator . . . What I had been looking for was a storyteller or, in other words, the missing part of my story. He had to tell his story to a third person . . . on the issue of whether I had gained some ground in the present story, we were agreed. The place we occupied in it had some bearing for both of us.
Then . . . then another year went by . . .
It was the morning of the Passover evening we had celebrated without him. He had called early in the morning. His voice on the phone was that of a dejected but resolute man. “I’m leaving for London . . . I don’t intend to come back . . . ” he said. “As a matter of fact, I’ve got the intention to pop in. Wait for me; we’ll have a chat . . . ” It was a Sunday. The streets were deserted . . . not a soul was stirring . . . The city was still asleep like every Sunday morning that the world had bequeathed to me. As I was passing by a bakery, I slowed down to smell the overpowering odor of the fresh bread. This stirred in my mind the image of the small restaurant I used to frequent to eat soup. The taste of that soup appeared to have made a lasting impression on me. We lose so many things and let them sink into oblivion. Could it be that our failure to reconcile ourselves with a part of our past was due to our fear of encountering the shadows we had left behind? It was a sunny and clear spring morning. A day of rest one would relish after a substantial breakfast by stretching on a sofa to peruse the dailies in the warmth of the sun’s rays . . . Were such details so far removed from those people? It hadn’t taken me long to get to the hotel. A room at Sıraselviler not far from the illuminated quarters of the city, although far removed from its radiation . . . Was it true that stars died without emitting any sound? Why was it that we learned of the death of a star so long after? Why so late? A room at Sıraselviler . . . a spot where a multitude of memories, and their consequent virtual representations could be shared . . . The story of that room, of the events that took place in it with their postulated meanings had begun to take shape. The authors of the story were assembling once again, in this bright morning, for a few details, words and visions . . . once again . . . for the last time . . . for diverse oaths, lights, and deaths . . . When I tapped on the door, I got it into my head that I could never get rid of this story. It may be that in knocking on that door I had reached a new ending, but the voice within me, spurred by this end, suggested that the story would be carried off to different climates as well. I had come to know this sentiment well, this little hope to which I would often return to, with other people, for other people; a sentiment which I would share with them to the best of my ability. That may well have been the reason why I had desired to alter all of those things as if they had occurred without other people knowing. Would Monsieur Robert be able to return to those days without considering his alien state? I waited; I had tried once more to wait. The hotel’s corridor smelt of death like many old and derelict hotel corridors. A woman of about fifty with carefully combed white hair had just emerged from one of the rooms to hurriedly pass to the room opposite, talking to herself. Her thoughts, which she must have imagined to be quiet, would most probably continue when she entered the room. Whose room was it? What had she been looking for in the room she left, why had she quit it for another? How did she see herself, the individual who spoke ceaselessly to herself and who gave the impression that she could not get rid of that person within her? The possible answers to these questions would certainly remain a mystery to me. This event had caught me unawares, leaving me no time to face my own problems. The woman had long white hair and was wearing a transparent nightshirt which exhibited her breasts in full view . . . Monsieur Robert had opened the door as the woman entered the room. I had perceived hesitancy on her part from the sound of the steps coming from behind the door . . . the sounds of hesitancy, fatigue, expectancy, and of being led astray . . . Then we had glanced at each other. I know all too well that I shall never forget that moment. Our exchange of glances needed no further verbal expression. He had laid his palm on my shoulder. He had on his countenance that lamentable smile which would haunt me ever after. He wanted to tell me that I shouldn’t be too disappointed for him; could it be that he was trying to elicit from me some encouragement on the eve of his final departure? “Yesterday evening everybody had been looking for me,” I said, “I had a talk with Juliet; about your experiences. She said she was sorry for all that had happened to you,” I added, holding out to him a parcel containing leftovers from the evening before: spinach rolls, leek meatballs, and two duck eggs fried after having been boiled first, as well as unleavened bread and some jam . . . The intention was to enable him to recall that warmth wherever he went . . . “She sent this to you; she said it was your portion. She’d like to have breakfast with you some day. ‘I’ll prepare bimuelos for him . . . ’ she had said with a smile.” Everybody knew, and had to know, that that meeting would never take place. “I can’t carry more than those two bags,” he said, pointing to them. I knew it; I knew that they had been witness to a multitude of different journeys. A multitude of journeys, but different journeys, journeys in a different world to the one they knew . . . At this time they happened to flank him like faithful companions . . . This reminded one of the old clothes he would no longer be in need of. “There are so many things . . . ” he added afterward. To carry one’s past by assuming the identity of an enduring traveler . . . in other words, to know how to carry it; to feel within one’s heart the obligation to carry the burden of what remained of the past . . . This involved both living and transporting the story in a different fashion or in one single breath—to know how to stand the test of time in one single sentence; for our own sake, for the sake of that individual that we cannot dispose of; despite our best efforts . . . For other lives, for those lives that we believe we shall believe are with us forever . . . To know how to defy time in an inexhaustible sentence . . . With our acquisitions from other places, with our expectations, we will see that they are embodied within them. The paraphernalia Monsieur Robert would have required in the land he was proposing to start a new life in was rather restricted to him. His worry and discomfort was due to his indecision as to what he should take with him or not. His witnesses were there surely . . . Yet, how did he propose to go his own way, in the company of whom or in the absence of whom? To take any steps under the circumstances was disheartening, nay injurious. You might tackle the subject of life by dwindling it away, trying to share it with someone else. This had to be a feeling that would assume some meaning in the circumstances. But then again, in what esoteric words, sunken into
oblivion, had that land been embedded with now? Where had you last seen such a sentiment, in which individual? In that story you wanted to write? In which unassailable castle? In a story you wanted to write and rewrite even though you had already written it?
Objects, furniture . . . Jackets, shirts, neckties, shoes, handkerchiefs, cuff links purchased for different days and different nights, different places, and different experiences . . . Business interviews, notes of paramount importance, documents, catalogues . . . Business prospects brought to Istanbul with great expectations had always been of overriding importance in his imagination. Big business opportunities, likely to change the course of a farsighted businessman’s life . . . He could, for instance, set up a brokerage house which would buy and sell from the New York and Tokyo stock-exchanges. Through considerable bank credits thousands of gas masks could be imported at a very low price via India for the army, millions of syringes for state hospitals. A big coffee plantation could be bought in Brazil. One could also bid in tenders for construction projects in Nigeria benefiting from the funds offered by the World Bank. One could also be a partner in a casino. Offers were not lacking, payment facilities were sure to be obtained. Yet nobody, no one who was supposed to understand, would understand. The same thing had happened in many relationships, in the days and nights in many a country. He yearned to return to those different countries.
“Don’t forget to take with you your winter wear, your overcoat . . . You know, climates change all the time. You can leave with me what you will not and cannot take with you,” I told him. I had also mentioned in passing that he must not give up hope, that one day he might come back. I felt that he had a lump in his throat which prevented him from talking and that he evaded my glances. His wide imagination had narrowed. What exactly remained from the past thirty-five years of his life, from the city to which he had desired and was now obliged to leave a completely different person; from his city, of which every corner and street had something of him in it, which had left an imprint on his memory, although he felt somehow a stranger in it and considered himself a misfit there; from Edgware Road; from the Arab district; from the Indian businessmen; from the elegant restaurants; from that Pakistani cloth seller in Regent Street; from that stout janitor with a husky voice; from that heavy smoker from Trinidad in that modern flat in Yorgo Street who was up-to-date with all the car models to their minutest details and histories; from that aged Jew, a collector of pipes whose name I could never learn and who used to sell newspapers in front of the underground station at Marble Arch and who gave the impression that he had had a sedate life and was known to have the skill to transform the daily spectacles he had been privy to into wisdom and sapience; from that reformist synagogue; from İncila Hanım whom he had frequented during his lonely hours for the sake of the good old days and in order to forget his own cares and to borrow some money; and from Victoria Casino where many of his hopes had been dashed? Which would be, do you think, the parts that would stand their ground now, in terms of the visions left behind, the moments which he believed he had lived? The words that we want to forget now and then, which we believe to have been forgotten, remind us of that song of loneliness. We ought to resume once more making headway in our questions . . . to resume once more, with patience despite our vacillation. Did we ever expect that we could communicate to those people that language we tried to interpret, so that one day we could make ourselves heard? There were moments when I kept reminding myself that our clothes lived on without us, that they had to go on living despite the fact that they had been abandoned and left behind. He had long stared at his suits and jackets. He could take with him only a few of them. Then he had caught sight of his tuxedo. “I’ve got to take it with me,” he said, “for formal gatherings, you know.” Notwithstanding the fact that he knew all too well that he would never have the opportunity to put it on, that those parties had run their course, never to be resurrected. This was a bare reality for anyone who had had the desire to examine those days. However, he was in need of witnesses who knew the past well so that he might not lose confidence in those days he had lived, had been obliged to live, and had been linked to by a firm belief. He had told me a small anecdote as he was gingerly putting his tuxedo in his suitcase. It was a small yarn, a story that aptly reflected the life he built on fertile imagination, written on a background of ice. What kind of a reaction must one have experienced after having abandoned the castles of sand, built so painstakingly on the shore, left to their destiny? “O the old days, I distinctly remember, Princess Soreyya in Monte Carlo . . . ” he said. “She was standing around the roulette wheel. I’d made a fortune that night, an amount beyond my imagination. I’d gone near her. She had been losing. Having watched her for a while, I’d whispered in her ear and suggested a number. She had placed her bet on it and won. She kept on playing afterward on the same number, and swept the board each time. Then she had put a cigarette between her lips which I had lighted. She had glanced at me. She looked weary and tired. Yet, she had not lost her beauty. She held my hand and said: ‘You are a real gentleman.’ I was wearing my tuxedo that night . . .” Was the incident he spoke of the one I had seen that morning? Was that woman truly Princess Soreyya? Who can tell for certain? Actually, answering this question, whether true or not, was of little importance to me at all. What was consequential was the place that this recollection or fancy had occupied in my life. Princess Soreyya was the veracious heroine of a never-ending night . . . He had to take his tuxedo with him . . . that was the last I saw of him. He had preferred to go to the airport alone. He knew more or less the individuals who would be waiting for him in London. After all, he had spent thirty-five years there. He was going to get a modest retirement pension from the social insurance and live in a tenement house. The parks would be gorgeous to look at in springtime . . .
I knew well that once I left he would be gazing at his image in the mirror for a good while . . . with a forced smile on his lips . . . This, he believed, would permit him to know the person who stared back a little better . . . and enable him to get accustomed to his presence . . . an image reproduced on the canvas of the souls of those family members who could not take those forward steps had stirred Monsieur Robert in me, every time with new words, in the belief that the said steps would lead, or be expected to lead, to the materialization of certain lives, as seen through the lifetime of one man. An image that aroused in me the desire, the necessity to go forward . . . Where in that story had Princess Soreyya vanished? To whom did those nights belong? Who would be the wearers of those clothes, where would they put them on and for what purpose?
Perhaps the legend of that mirror will never come to an end. How many paths, songs, and prospects lay ahead?
A long time had elapsed in the meantime.
A bleak, dreary, and severe winter ended the year. The snow lay settled on the ground for weeks. We received no news from him. Neither a letter nor an address nor a greeting card on New Year’s eve, nor a midnight call . . . However, I still believe that he must be living somewhere in London and that he will return one day with new expectations. With new prospects, as a completely different person.
I have another belief; a belief which lends meaning to what I see, that makes it possible to fit certain words, sounds, and calls within me into a place very different from where the song associated with this mode of expression leads me regardless of my wishes, and which makes me think that a day will come when I shall be in a position to relate this misinterpreted life-story to others. This was surely another way of deferring the desire to relate it, to believe in the recounting of it. However, this postponement might give me the chance to brood over a certain number of my shortcomings. For instance, I can remember at such times, Lola and Johann pitching their tent in their own darkness. As a matter of fact my ties with İncila Hanım and Tahar Bey had been broken. It seems to me that there are certain things that I cannot define, things that have been left incomplete, that I have left incomplete on
purpose; things whose meaning is contained in a sort of secret joy . . . Can this be one of those expectations whose origins and boundaries have not yet been delineated and defined? Perhaps . . . Nevertheless, whatever the hidden meaning of such a question may be, I am inclined to think that in order to understand that vision of London better I will have to move on toward that darkness generated by the said shortcomings when the time comes and visit new solitudes. I must muse over İncila Hanım once again. I wonder what had this woman—who knew those journeys and that history much better than any of us—felt when she looked after Monsieur Robert in his old age? What moments had concealed what emotions? Whose nights were they? What was that which should not be lost, what could not be lost in that small flat?
What remains now is that big, thick envelope that contained “confidential information” and was meticulously sealed, that Monsieur Aldo had entrusted to Monsieur Robert long before he had set out for an unknown land. Monsieur Robert had given it to me that morning, saying: “Well, I’ve lived all that has been written there. What is written there can be understood only when one experiences certain feelings. The information contained therein is yours henceforth. However, you must promise me that you will open this envelope only after you have received the news of my death, or when you are convinced that I am no more.” I promised him that I would do so. “There is still a long time for that,” I said, and he smiled. That smile was the last smile of his I saw and I kept an image of it in my mind . . . . Then we had packed up and gone out. As he stepped out the door, he did not turn to cast a last glance at the things he had to leave behind. We did not hug each other. He had done his best not to speak more than was necessary when I helped him to put his last impedimenta into the taxi. It was evident that he was afraid to, lest his words leak those sentiments he preferred to keep to himself. As the taxi started to move he made a gesture with his hands as if to say: “What else could I possibly do?” waving his head to and fro. Did his looks connote a question whose answer was still pending, regret or despair? I don’t know, and I never shall. Nevertheless, I kept my promise. That envelope is still in that drawer just as it had been delivered to me. It is waiting for the right moment; just like certain moments await certain people and certain people await certain moments. I know, these are two different paths, regardless of our prospects, indifference, defeats, or small victories. Both require the experience of loves deserved, affections, lives, and solitudes . . . yes, the experience of loves deserved, affections, lives, and solitudes . . . Little joys that those bitter experiences have made us a gift of . . . to understand and to make others understand. I’m curious about the goals I will have accomplished when I feel I am ready to tear open that envelope. What can possibly be written on those pages? Can it really be a letter written by Aldo himself? . . . Or else . . . When I go over the relevant points one more time, I’ll feel myself inclined to think of the truth in the last lies . . . to believe once more in time and in poems awaiting their ages . . . to believe once more in earnest . . . at all events . . . certain things that continue to bleed somewhere anyway . . .