Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale

by Levi, Mario

  That day both of us had desired to remain where we were, resolved not to cross over the threshold. A short time after, she had settled in her armchair. “Well!” she said with her winning smile, “Aren’t you going to pour the tea for me like a perfect gentleman?” as though she was reproaching me. I knew what lay behind this subtle hint. She was in need of assistance at this stage of the ritual. Her hands were trembling out of control; it was getting worse; to hold objects was becoming more and more difficult. The diagnoses made by the doctors she had consulted had widely differed and the treatments they had respectively suggested had served no purpose. Everybody had his own way to deal with the problem. Was there an effective remedy available for her illness at the time? We had gone through difficult times over the course of which we had experienced despair and indefinable apprehensions, without even venturing to suggest an answer to this question. Once I had witnessed the following scene: during the days when Roza was in pursuit of a hopeful prognosis, she had addressed her elder sister, who had been trying to endear herself to her despite the distance that separated them, saying: “No sea che esto pagando por mis pekados Roza” (Roza dear, d’you think that this may be atonement for my sins?) and had grown silent for a while. A window which had insistently kept closed to those days had partly opened quite unexpectedly. It was a Friday morning and preparations were being made for the Sabbath. Éperlan aux prunes jaunes was to be served at dinner. The shopping was done by the maid as usual. Her husband was a long-standing customer favored by the well-known fishmonger from İzmir in the Eminönü Market who always put aside the fresh catch for him, usually eight pieces, weighing about one kilogram . . . The usual dish that followed this entrée was generally stewed meat served with eggplant purée . . . and, at times, a flaky pastry. This flaky pastry, the dough of which was kneaded with dexterous hands, was served during the Sabbath breakfast that brought the entire family together; the casual visitors from the neighborhood also partook, the taste tickling their palates for a long time. She had preferred to observe silence at a time when all the steps were taken or seemed to have been taken in the name of life and solidarity. This was the beginning of an era of sadness for both of them. While one of the sisters lived her own lie, the other was at a place far removed from the very spot she would have preferred to be, despite her despair. Whose fault was it? In whose world did it lie? In their little world, they could not possibly have heard such questions put forth by others in different climates from other stories, using other words. Even though from differing angles, some doors led to the same questions and feelings associated with each other. Some might call this a state of thralldom, some a blind alley and some just a simple trick. One could not easily allay the apprehensions it created and escape the nightmares it caused; consequently, one found himself committed. When one considers all these points, Madame Roza’s taciturnity might be interpreted as a sort of brooding which gave others cause to ruminate. The gap created by the silence gave way to contrapuntal flashes and recollections. One of those windows appeared to be hidden in the darkness of these recollections. Aunt Tilda’s question gave the impression of an escape from a remorse which seemed to contain some other death; death or a secret and inarticulate crime that one could not possibly disclose to a stranger. Madame Roza, through her introspection, may have desired to leave her sister once more in the lurch on her way to this bitter experience of the past. It was time for her to cook in the house she never had, nor ever would abandon, on any account. This was not merely an inexorable fate, exclusive to her. A woman, who could peep into the kitchen, even though through a window, was sure to find a part of herself in Madame Roza. The plays had been staged for this purpose and the stories had been reproduced to that end. As for those who had gone or had been dragged to other places . . . Well, the warmth of those houses was in fact partly due to this close observation, despite or because of the errors committed. After a short silence, she had said: “De ti para tit e keates estos penserios. Zavali di madre ya se merikiyava muncho por ti.” (You yourself are the author of your own problems. Poor mother, how she used to worry about you. She was afraid that you would turn out like Aunt Fortune. This concern had caused her end.) This talk had taken place when Monsieur Jacques had not yet shown up. Monsieur Jacques had an antipathy for Aunt Tilda, which he tried to keep concealed as best as he could; he believed that she was possessed, that the devil was nestled in her. Can it be that these impressions held their sway at the time of their encounter, during their coexistence in the midst of the ‘new family’? Who can tell! Glances that could not exactly be defined transformed so many feelings in that stream and eroded so many expectations gradually and stealthily . . . One could speak of a controversy between two individuals with an unshakable belief in what they considered to be their truths; their fantasies prevented them from seeing certain bare facts, and obliterated their need to understand. One day, Monsieur Jacques told Madame Roza that Aunt Tilda might come when he himself happened to be out. Could there be in the controversy another reason hidden in the depths that nobody dared to reveal or pass judgment on? Perhaps there was. However, the venue was not the correct place where one could delve into such a matter. A matter of such consequence may well have been one of those affects subsumed into the category of the flotsam and jetsam seen overboard. Partly due to this, I felt I was not in a position to inquire into the contents of those drawers and rooms. The doors were, in a sense, our doors; because of this, they should remain closed . . . in order that I might keep my visions alive . . . The person who constantly invited me to come back to that point was that aunt called Fortuné. One wonders who might have been the companions of this woman who had been so close to Aunt Tilda in the eyes of her mother, and to what places she must have been to in the past. Who had drawn the boundaries of this prohibition? How had she proceeded to it, after which episodes? Which abyss lay in the origin of that fear? Madame Roza had preferred to evade the issue. What Monsieur Jacques knew about this misplaced woman, forsaken and omitted, about this relative, seemed to have been padded out with wild fancies and interpretations. According to the visitors to the house, Aunt Fortuné used to wander the streets of the Princes’ Islands in her shabby attire, at times giving off the impression of a woman beside herself with rage, speaking loudly to herself, other times elated, humming a song, as though she wanted to draw the attention of the people to something beautiful that might have escaped their attention. Her hair was buzz cut. This styling had become for her a ‘barbering ritual.’ In this, she was assisted by an apprentice of about thirteen or fourteen-years-old from Alexandria, brought up in an orphanage who had never set his eyes on his parents and whose hobby it was to catch fish for cats. No sooner did she cry out “Boy!” than he dropped by her dilapidated house situated in the hinterland of the island, replete with articles of a nondescript nature, and cut her hair with electric clippers. And then . . . Well, there was no end to the gossip. According to one of the rumors, she was particular about the dishes she prepared only on days when she received visitors. The odors that emanated from the house were mouth-watering, although one could not exactly tell what she was cooking. According to another account, once the hair trimming process was over, she used to pull down the boy’s trousers and gave him a blowjob before having it inserted between her thighs. Who had invented this story, who had heard it from whom, nobody knew. As a matter of fact, no one thought it worthwhile to trace its origin. What had been revealed were simply events that had taken place there, for the sake of that scene. She had been mislaid, if one may say so; this strange aunt that the family members wanted to consign to oblivion had stayed there for an interminable number of years. It was said that she preferred to roam the deserted streets during the winter months, in the cold and damp and that she kept indoors during the summer, when she used to receive visitors. I had not deemed it difficult to guess the reason for this; I mean her settlement there on the island. Had it been her option to settle there? Or had she been compelled to go there by forces beyond
her control? Where had she been before she had begun to scuttle across the streets, what lives had she been living; what expectations had linked her to her loved ones, the ones she truly loved? Had there ever been dawns in which she had had perfect confidence? Had there been flowerpots bedecking windowsills in which she grew plants and flowers, taking meticulous care of them? Answers to these questions reached me through fragmentary recollections and visions awaiting expression. All that I could decipher was that her lawyer husband contributed to the newspaper El Tiempo with articles he wrote after work in the evenings and weekends; he had always aspired to embark upon a career in journalism, as he had failed to work his way up the ladder in jurisprudence; he had forsaken his wife and gone to live with another woman without offering any plausible explanation; this experience of abandonment was compounded even more by her son, who had left on the pretext that he had enlisted in the army, but who had actually departed for Havana for mysterious reasons and decided never to return home; and, what is more important still, was the fact that they had left no traces of themselves behind which might give a clue as to their whereabouts. According to one account, the son who had once sworn on oath that he would never leave his mother and who alternately exhibited an extroverted jovial attitude and an introverted sorrowful countenance, had, after his father’s desertion, indeed enlisted, but for some reason or another, his experiences in the army had compelled him to leave for Havana. All this had been so sudden that he had had no time to inform any of his next-of-kin of his venture; just like the heroes of fictions whose fantasies invite them to travel to distant realms. What fell to those left behind was to go on living their own fantasies; fantasies and adventures that remained undisclosed in Fortuné’s case for want or means of expression. As the years went by, during the days she spent in her small house at Kadıköy, when she had not yet committed the bric-a-brac in her garden to the flames, she said to the people around her that she stayed tuned to the radio news as she received coded messages related to her husband and son, and that she had to repair the island in order for them to return, time was against her, and that the plum tree seen from her bedroom window kept drawing nearer, threatening her life. According to this legend her husband had gone to Thessalonica for state affairs of paramount importance, while her son, having an eye for business, had engaged in the emerald trade and become rich. How far one could trust in the truth of these stories I cannot tell for sure; just like many stories the truth of which I cannot vouch for, and which I hesitate to tell to others, being destitute of any unimpeachable certitude for fear of being accused of stretching the truth. To the best of our knowledge Fortuné had last seen her son leave home rather apprehensively with his buzz cut. Could one trace the origin of this hairstyle which she had been wearing for years now as her latent rebellion against abandonment? Perhaps. It was an established fact that certain messages were conveyed through devious paths. I am not urged to utter this merely by the outward appearance of things, but also based on another detail which Monsieur Jacques had mentioned en passant. Fortuné wore an old fur coat during her wanderings on the island in the dead of winter. The funny thing was that she wore it inside out, the fur tightly wrapping her, the lining exposed to the cold air. What could be the plausible explanation for this? To give an indication of the fact that she had been ousted and consigned to oblivion? I’m aware of the fact that I can produce many answers to the same questions. However, whatever these answers may be, it seems to me that there is something very important concealed in this. It looked as though certain things had been overlooked in people’s haste to find something curious, the haste of those who were in a position to see the truth. Here was a call that would enable us to get to the heart of the matter. Had that illness originated from within the family, from a family she could not sever herself from and who haunted this poor woman to whom everybody attributed the epithet of ‘unfortunate’? Had her husband and son abandoned her because of her mental derangement or had she gone nuts after she had been forsaken by them? To the best of my knowledge, everybody preferred to leave this question unanswered. Nobody that I know of was in a position to perceive that boundary. Somebody had to be cruelly sacrificed to live such a life, condemned by individuals conscious of their own irrelevance. In order to survive one had to identify oneself with those in power and conspire alongside them. Fortuné’s body was reported to have been fished out by fishermen long after her eyes had been eaten by the fish. She had either thrown herself into the sea from a cliff or was murdered. It was Madame Eudoxia who had informed Madame Roza’s mother of the incident; Madame Eudoxia was the only person who was on intimate terms with the family, and she said at every opportunity that Fortuné had never strayed from the island throughout her time on this earth.

  Aunt Tilda had never passed comments about her aunt. Never had she whispered a word about her. Yet, these images had indelibly remained in her darkness that she kept shunning. I distinctly remember her footsteps; they seem to be more audible to my ears than ever before. The disease had progressed insidiously. Despite her efforts, she had never been able to control the shaking of her hands which she guessed to be the omen of a serious and foreboding end. However, it was not altogether impossible to find ways of escape in brief, periodic moments which might beautify the passing time in a figurative sense, if one considered one’s predilections in life, the means of escape or the inexhaustible and endless variability of the remnants of the imaginary world despite all that had been experienced in the meantime . . . even though certain hidden causes may have illuminated certain details differently over a course of time. This may have been the reason for her asking me—as I had been serving her like a gentleman by pouring tea in her cup—if I knew Rita Hayworth. “She was Orson Welles’ Lady from Shanghai” to which she had added “Gilda.” “She is still vivid in my imagination, her pulling off her gloves as she sang Put the blame on me boy . . . ” she added. “That was life, you know!”

  That was life . . . These words expressed regret, despair, and separation . . . Yes, that was life. “Which movie theater was it, Saray or Melek? Melek it was, I believe. Yes Melek . . . Josy had spoken about Monsieur Saltiel, about the days when his father used to pay a visit to his father’s workshop to have costumes made to order. Monsieur Saltiel was the former owner of the movie theater. It was one of the rare evenings when Josy had been talkative and jovial. Later that evening we had gone to a dancehall. We had reminded each other that the movie theater in question had once been the Skating Palace. Well I remember the song that Rita sang: Put the blame on me boy . . . Josy had a pallid expression. He knew he was sick. He was to disclose it to me in a couple of days. That was the last time we had gone to a movie theater . . . ” One lived one’s life by shaping one’s own image over the course of time, by fitting and adjusting the images that assigned meaning to one’s life to their proper places. You recall the story of the superimposed imagery, especially at such moments of flight, when you return to your inevitable solitude. Stories and secret chambers keep haunting you. Do you think you could open those doors once more after the lapse of so many years for the sake of those moments and individuals? Would you be able to abandon those glances and touches freely, even though you were to experience other such encounters? One enlivened, or tried to enliven, one’s imagery according to one’s own whims . . . to the extent one’s own boundaries and recollections permitted . . . Had it not been your desire to keep a part of yourself whole, notwithstanding your losses, for the sake of certain stories? This held true also for those words that delineated the boundaries of those images within us of certain people, didn’t it? Had we not tried to protect our words by secretly coming to terms with ‘that man’ we thought to abide within us forever, although we tried to wean him from our thoughts and attribute meaning to the words within our own sphere of action? I wonder to what extent could one vouch for the vernacularism of the French words spoken in a completely different climate in the piecemeal narration of a story. Which of these words can be cons
idered reanimated for whom and for where? Which of these words are rewritten, are desired to be rewritten? Our talks that were interspersed with Aunt Tilda’s occasional monologues could be found there once upon a time, and have returned. How many of these words remained over time, how many of them found a new life here? I’m aware that such questions may take me to a new story in the future and compel me to write an entirely new variant of this story. Nevertheless I feel myself obliged to believe in that world those words depicted. There were times when we had access to the new meanings that certain images had assumed. We had left behind a song to gain access to a life mislaid somewhere. In fact we were busy at that time writing our own script. We felt at home in our own film. Those shadows were our shadows, those voices our voices. Aunt Tilda’s monologues contained so many stories that invoked sadness in me. The movie theaters and the films she faithfully kept in the store of her memory, the man who had once been her husband, the skating arena where she had skated as a little girl, her resentments, regrets, and the images left unrealized were all there. “It’s true we hadn’t had another chance to go to a movie theater . . . That evening had been the last. The beginnings weren’t any different though. We had never had the chance of visiting those places as I would have liked. I think I had always expected an end. It looked as though in each of us there was an end. A diversity of ends, so many ends . . . We cannot deny that we had seen all those films; we had not missed a single one of them. Yet, as I’ve already said, none of our sorties had been as I would have liked. I would have preferred to be there half an hour before the program started so that I could meet a few acquaintances and exchange a few words with them, all the while not failing to show off my new costume. This should be the raison d’être of the movie theater . . . Josy was misanthropic, he shunned people . . . The movie theater Melek . . . Only Angels Have Wings with Rita Hayworth had been shown there I believe. Can it be that my memory is failing me? Or could it be that the film was running at Gloria? I don’t think so, no. That was a long time ago, however . . . ” It was high time now that certain images had to be consigned to oblivion. This was a process rather difficult to define. Had she been resenting her betrayal or was hers a sense of escape from the place to which she knew she would never go back? It may be that betrayal had been embedded in her memory, or perhaps it originated from one of the judgments in which she wished to have perfect confidence in and hoped to build a bridge between. To escape, to be a fugitive in the places she preferred to consign to obscurity . . . Were those words borrowed from a film’s soundtrack, those words duly preserved, those costumes no longer worn yet not discarded, and those recollections rewritten and regenerated during a nightmare so that clues to those regrets and to the reason for a bondage to a certain path could be extracted? It took me years to follow that trail with similar questions. This woman, whose story I believed I was able to tell succinctly, to a few people whose interest I hoped to arouse, had an all-consuming passion for movies for which she reserved a special place in her heart. In fact, she had come to me escorted by those images that had guided her life, since, to be frank, despite disappointments she had lived with her attachments, with trivia she could not give up. I was about to share a secret. Quite the reverse of what Monsieur Jacques and all of the Venturas and the Tarantos, whom I encountered quite unexpectedly, had thought, Aunt Tilda had remained faithful to her husband Joseph Rothman, the tailor. She loved with a love whose extent was to be discovered much later. She referred to him as Josy, which gave the impression that she was recalling him from a distant past. Solitudes, silences, unanswered questions that originated from the inability to part with a dearly loved one, whoever this may have been . . . Misunderstandings, misinterpretations . . . Life’s fragments, scenes failed to be enacted were for Aunt Tilda concealed in the movie theater, in that eternal screen of delusions. Now I feel I will be in a stronger position to maintain and conceal what has been conveyed to me regarding that place amid the pages of another book. Rita Hayworth and the elation she had caused when she had pulled off her gloves in that famous scene, the brightly lit splendor of the movie theater Melek, alias Emek, its new appellation, the dazzling beauty of Joan Crawford in costly fur coats, fated to be identified as “Miss Pepsi Cola,” the unforgettable Ingrid Bergman in the role of Anastasia and her tragic end, the scene in which she appeared divine which skillfully created the atmosphere of the Grande Duchesse, expected to be seated on a throne without subjects and her typical cough, Bette Davis’ eyes, Paul Muni’s laudable artistry, Edward G. Robinson as a gangster, Humphrey Bogart’s noble love, the fact that even those who played a minor role in that film were prominent actors and how she had sobbed at that scene in which La Marsellaise was sung, the lunches at the Atlantik, the pastry of the Lebon, the hats and the orchids, and the supermarket Au Lion d’Or . . . We had tried to relive the past on that boundary line that separated the past from the present, in full consciousness of the fact that we were no longer in a position to express and give utterance to our merriments and the insidious sadness and restlessness they contained, to the extent our recollections, locution, and remoteness permitted, taking into consideration all eventualities. Fragments had been deposited to different people at different times . . . This could be the reason why one had desired to live that imaginary scene to the bitter end. It may have been that those fragments had been shot in a different chiaroscuro in a different movie. With a view to raising the wall of that movie theater by placing its bricks carefully one on top of the other . . . aiming at discovering and finding that place in which we expected to rediscover ourselves in addition to those we had failed to see properly and had lost by now in some place or another, in the time we were destined to live. This may have been one of those stories that those who are content with ready-made solutions or those who enjoy stories of people nostalgic about the old days, damn with faint praise as soon as they have a cursory look at the introductory chapter. Such an attitude could do nothing more than cause such purveyors of hindsight to relive, quite against their own wishes, feelings of abandonment and betrayal. We were living at the time with our reformed faces that we were compelled to change . . . to be multiplied as a crowd. Where was it exactly, the spot where solitude began; can you remember when you had became conscious of your own solitude for the first time, after which glance and which touch? I’m inclined to believe that this is the way to get to the heart of the individual, the individual we try to conceal within us . . . If one broods over that dark path, certain encounters become nightmares. However, this was conceivably the only way to reach Aunt Tilda, the true Aunt Tilda. Her story had never been a story of nostalgia. The truth that transformed her into a lunatic, who should preferably be visited more often than not, in the eyes of those nearest to her should be sought in the dead end of the person she inhabited who could not observe her surroundings and times as others could. She had been one of those who had gone through streets, doors, and rooms by unexpected transitions and means, who had shifted from one time to the next as she pleased, who had tried to live in more than one time simultaneously, by giving them all their due, who listened to the voices in her head despite the losses and defeats she had suffered, not merely remaining an onlooker but being an acting agent as well, who had taken the risk to follow the dictates of those voices, who had been compelled to live her life by her own proclivities. What have acquainted us with these facts have been Monsieur Jacques’ sayings and Madame Roza’s reports and the confirmed rumors that swept over the town. This had been the same experience she had had during her youth when she had sensed in a transport of delight the inebriation caused by life, and during the days she spent with Joseph Rothman, in their short matrimony. The fragments of the past mislaid in others brought her back to me as a woman, a licentious woman who had known more than one man in her life. It appears that she had played a leading role in the days gone by, in big receptions and on weekend trips. Her irresponsible behavior had naturally disconcerted the conservative milieu around her, proud of their estab
lished customs. There was nothing incomprehensible in this. Those who had based their lives on the established order would, out of necessity, find it difficult to acknowledge the existence of people lost in reverie, imagining things they could never materialize in life. During those secret sessions, the family members had come to the conclusion among themselves that this girl, who had strayed from the right path and disrupted their fixed order, had succumbed to a serious malignancy, and thought that a marriage might, in the grand scheme of things, restore her health. Such was the power of conformity . . . Putting such a resolution into action might be considered a convincing victory for the people who were obliged to agree upon the correctness of the lifestyle they had adopted. There were a plurality of ways to cover up humiliating defeats, silently, surreptitiously as though one did not experience loneliness or betrayal, just like in several other climates, histories, and cultures in the world . . . One ought to take care not to feel that repressed turbulence, and what is more important still, not to let other people sense it.