Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale

by Levi, Mario

  When her stare was lost in the distance, I pictured her imagining the vast green meadows and the fields of daisies that stretched far and wide. Panting, she was heading for one of her islands; she had difficulty breathing and felt a sense of constriction in her chest as she was often subject to fits of coughing. These symptoms reminded me of the asthma attacks I had as a child. I wasn’t the only one who suffered those never-ending nights of silence.

  That little lie

  These are the photographs dating from the days of Aunt Tilda’s brother’s stay at her home; snapshots I can never forget. Monsieur Robert, deeply touched by his sister’s hospitality, had warmly embraced his little sister and was reduced to tears. He disregarded the risk he ran to distort his legendary image because of a moment of vulnerability. At the time, the hotel room in which we had long talks and the tea hours we shared that enabled us to coexist despite our differences was not yet there. We had not yet seen each other; we had not yet felt the need to mutually open those doors. Aunt Tilda was to tell me about that emotional scene years later, when she eventually believed that I had familiarized myself with her brother. During that time, during which she had invited and received him with all his encumbrances and without reservations, she merely told me the story she had been keeping in her breast, her emotional experiences and joy; communicating to me in Istanbul the virtual image of the London adventure. No one else but Aunt Tilda could depict the flotsam and jetsam of that tale. It was a day when her elder brother was out to strike important deals. We were alone, the two of us . . . As she displayed to me the costumes, shirts, and underwear meticulously arranged in the wardrobe in the room she had tidied up for her new guest with the charm of a naughty girl who was not without a somewhat demure demeanor, she had made the following remark: “As you may well see, they’re all premium products.” She seemed to be vindicating something, to cast away all doubts, more than ever. She had gone into the kitchen to prepare her first meal in many years . . . after so many years . . . to make her guest feel at home. Despite all her efforts, her stoic stance, and her endeavor to clad the days in a different garb, her joy, nay her exuberance, would be short lived; like all strong emotions, this experience would also run itself out naturally. Within six months of his moving into his sister’s place, Monsieur Robert would one day pack up without any pretext or desire to account for his sudden decision and said with an apologetic tone that it would be better for him to live elsewhere. The hotel room at Sıraselviler would be a later growth. Aunt Tilda had at first reproached herself for having failed to have been a perfect hostess, blotting out all other postulations. All she had done had been to express her sadness at his departure, observing that she had done everything to provide for his comfort. Whereupon her brother had tapped her on her shoulder and said that the world they lived in was corrupt and that all the habiliments, illuminations, and dark nights had but one purpose: to cover up the raging depravity. What was going on in the world could no longer be grasped by those who had preserved their pristine chastity . . . Well, this world was calling him. That was all he could say. He felt that the only advice he, who considered himself to have failed to give his little sister what was expected from an elder brother, could offer was to suggest to her to keep her childhood innocence despite all the untoward events likely to beset her. The world was in dire need of people with the hearts of children; more than ever . . . regardless of whether the world was aware of this fact or not. Aunt Tilda had reacted to her brother’s comment with an eerie silence; she had presumed that her brother was quite probably handling important business deals that required an irregular schedule. After all, serious business made one pay through the nose. Her dejection had been compensated, however, as she felt a sort of pride mixed with disappointment; she had thought of film stars constantly in direct confrontation with death . . . She had, in fact, lived many years in their company. This had offered her a crumb of comfort and facilitated her alleviation of this sense of defeat. The truth lay elsewhere; of which she would be confronted much later, when she was to learn that her brother had gone to London without any intention to return home. The fact was this man whom she had idealized was burdened with a crippling gambling debt and was facing ferocious clashes with the creditors who threatened his life. Being afraid that his sister might also be involved in this dirty affair, he had decided to beat them at their own game by roaming elsewhere.

  Aunt Tilda was sick with disappointment when she learned this secret from her elder sister years later. This had made her feel like a castaway. The resentment she felt seemed to linger in her when she, after a lapse of many years, had decided to impart it to me. The fact was that she thought she could do something after so many years, in the face of his magnanimity of purpose and action, despite his lack of confidence . . . Had he so desired, she could do something, at least she could try to, if the whole matter was a question of money. Yet his voice, the voice he had wanted to make heard in different places with different accents had become unfamiliar to her; he was used to living amidst a tumult of voices among which he could not make himself heard; he had been beyond the reach of her, she who had become a stranger to it.

  A sharp bend in the road

  When she learned about her brother’s plight, Aunt Tilda decided to sell the two shops at Mahmutpaşa. Everybody connected in some way or other with these shops had pulled a long face, as each of them had his or her own memories of them. Aunt Tilda saw to it that Monsieur Jacques knew nothing about it despite the reiterated protests of Madame Roza. Her aim was most probably to achieve something on her own for the first time in her life and to experience the joy of breaking with the past, with the things to which they attributed some value. I think it is easier at present to believe that such considerations had not been taken into account by the family at the time. This may have been the reason for the inconceivable reality hidden behind the eccentric behavior of the problem child, Tilda. So long as we didn’t take the risk of inquiring into the real problems, we could not go beyond a certain boundary. This seemed to be a legacy dating from ages ago, which featured, among others, thousands of marches and hundreds of thousands of words. We had been accustomed to carrying this legacy with great patience. It may be because of our attachment to this heavy, onerous burden that we often ignored our encounters with apathy. The real mystery surrounding Aunt Tilda’s unaccounted for decision to sell those shops was never unraveled. The only explanation, ventured as a result of investigations conducted by Monsieur Jacques, was that in this resolution a rogue of advanced years by the name of Bedros, notorious for his handling of intricate solutions to certain problems, through his influential connections, had been instrumental in the precipitate sale of the shops in question at prices much lower than their actual value in no time. It seemed that Aunt Tilda had paid a great price for her need to seek refuge in people to compensate for her solitude in which she had been confined in the wake of her brother’s unannounced voluntary exile. The matter was not cleared up.

  The incident was surely not without precedence for Aunt Tilda; she had already experienced such desertions. It has never been easy to have access to people’s idiosyncrasies at certain given moments of our predilection. This had to do with the steps we are supposed to take toward both our fellow man and ourselves at a chosen place marked by those idiosyncrasies. The boundaries may undergo changes because of words and representations that were believed to have been mislaid at unexpected moments but were not, just like our own inner islands; this fact makes it easier to recognize ourselves. To reach the boundaries of Aunt Tilda had never been easy for anyone. My intuition, along with my efforts to patch up certain fragments enabled me to make a landing. From this vantage point I can visualize the commencement of the split that evening. Aunt Tilda would be experiencing henceforth a series of separations in the wake of that original severance. However, a fatal incident had paved the way to it; its bearing involved not only Tilda but the entire family; for Madame Roza died. This would cause t
he other family members to share this separation each in his or her own way.

  The picture will become clearer in your mind if you think of the great distress felt by the crowd of people at Madame Roza’s funeral and the associations involved. The deceased was a woman who had done her best all her life to hold together everybody who had won her affection. The fact that she was considered an elder sister, a superwoman to whom one could revert for the solution of problems even though they were insignificant and she was compelled to keep other people’s secrets, must have been due to these efforts. Her death had left a huge gap in the family that nothing could fill; a gap to be interpreted, defined, and clarified differently by each of them. Her absence would induce everybody to take cognizance of and experience the unbridgeable gap that had been insidiously brought about between her and the rest of the family members. It wasn’t for nothing that Monsieur Robert, staring at the death notice in the paper, had commented that: “The best of the family alas is no more . . . Now, everybody is on their own . . . ” Henceforth every member would be experiencing his or her own rupture and withdrawing to their own silence. This held true for Monsieur Jacques, Monsieur Robert, and Aunt Tilda as well as Madame Estreya who had years ago outlined her solitude. This death had caused Monsieur Jacques to withdraw within himself more often; Monsieur Robert to set off on a one-way trip to London; Aunt Tilda to feel estranged in that house where she used to reveal her private concerns to the family members present; and Madame Estreya to abandon the place where she had spent her childhood and adolescence, consigning to oblivion even the traditional religious holidays. Henceforth, everybody would live through Madame Roza in his or her own way, in his or her world in the midst of his or her reversals of fortune, regrets, and little victories.

  Aunt Tilda had mentioned a series of mishaps over the course of the days that had led to the death of her elder sister. She had faced an attempted rape by a man at night in the street; she had found the corpse of the cat of the retired ambassador Sinan Bey, her neighbor, at her home; a plainclothes police officer had, one night, knocked on her door and conducted a search of her premises, the search warrant he had produced intimated that intelligence was received to the effect that prostitution was practiced in the house. Who were those people hidden behind dreams, who were the heroes of certain nights and solitudes? Such a question could only be answered in proportion to our proximity to those dreams, of course. However, we were far removed from those dreams during those days. The dreams that those days had made viable to a certain extent were related to another story which seems lost to me at present. This was her last story, the last beautiful story deserving to be told. It was about a neighbor of hers. The hero of the story was an elderly Russian gentleman. He spoke German, Italian, and French perfectly. He recited poems by Lamartine, Victor Hugo, and Alfred de Vigny. A lover of music, he played the violin. He was an enthusiastic devotee of the romantics. It seemed that he was distantly related to Oistrach, the great violinist. They might go and see him whenever they wanted to. They might attend a performance at the Moscow opera. However, the man was notorious for his opposition to the regime in power. Such a visit might involve risks, not to mention the problems that would await them on their return to Istanbul. To begin with, the landlord had filed a court case against his friend to evict her. They were firmly resolved to put up an effective defense. Czerny, the lawyer, was planned to be appointed as counsel; but she doubted if her declining means would suffice to cover the consultancy fee. She could no longer purchase gifts for her friends on their birthdays like in the old days. It would never occur to an outsider to consider these points deserving of attention. Only those who knew her could perceive the bitterness the situation gave rise to. She had made a point to add some flavor to her insipid life by such trifles. She never forgot a single birthday of her friends. Even though the people involved might have no recollection of their own birthday, Aunt Tilda would never fail to remind them of this. Her last gift to me was given on the eve of her withdrawing into the seclusion in which she was compelled to live in the company of the voices and sounds she could not divulge to anyone. It was an evening during which she had brought a couple of silver candlesticks from home, something that she desired to transport from the past to the present. She had begun to distribute pieces from her past among her acquaintances . . . She had let herself be swept up by the tidal wave and grown careless of her attire; she no longer put up her hair, let alone had it dyed. What was happening was so different from the exciting episodes we shared during those hours at tea. Aunt Tilda had given up taking care of herself and had no longer any claim to picture postcard prettiness. She set before the eyes of some family members, with great difficulty, her actual accoutrements and companions in order that they might understand the new dreamworld she inhabited, a scene at odds with her former appearance. It was a scene in which no one would have liked to appear or play a role. The stage was one on which she played the leading part in her life, a stage likely to lead to the valley of the shadow of death with a grim sense of foreboding. The spectators shared this grim sense of foreboding. However, there was a climactic moment during which reigned a deathly silence that hung over the entire audience; no one among the anxious spectators knew for sure whose end had come.

  What we had been watching were but the visual representations of a decline, of a downward trend that made itself more conspicuous from day-to-day. It may be that what we had been watching so far and had been witnessing varied considerably among the audience who had been, in one way or another, off-stage. She no longer invited me to her place as often as she had before. The hours of tea were shorter. Occasionally she asked me to tell her about what I had been writing; she wanted me to get married and spoke of marriageable wallflowers; the prospective brides were girls that had attracted her attention during picnics and who exhibited a feminine charm that was difficult not to be tempted by, especially in springtime; some played the harp with great dexterity, some were ballerinas, some were plumpish with a fine voice, and some desperately lonely; in a nutshell, those were the girls of her past she wanted to transpose to the present. They were her acting partners on stage. She suggested that she would be pleased to talk with them if I so wanted. I, on my part, taking care not to offend her on any pretext, used to respond somewhat favorably to her suggestions with such phrases as: “Why not?” “If you like.” “Not a bad idea at all!” “But the question remains where and how?” she used to giggle, covering her mouth with her hand, with a mischievous air, blushing with shame like a young girl who starts to recognize her femininity for the first time; those were moments when she laughed heartily. After such bouts of laughter she suddenly grew silent, a smile lingering on her lips as though she continued to converse with the invisible presence of certain people. At such moments I realized that it was time for me to leave; to depart, leaving her in communion with her imaginary beings, despite the fact that I knew that she would remain seated in that position behind closed doors for hours on end.