Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale

by Levi, Mario

  It looked as though everybody had eventually protected or tried to protect Jerry, that they were conscious of the fact that he had deposited a part of himself in his new surroundings and that he valued his marriage. Under the circumstances, one had to consider, through a different perspective, the identity of the person to be protected. However, when I recall what Juliet had told me about it at the time, I cannot help thinking, barring all these options and the possible consequences thereof, that I’m almost capable at present of establishing a connection (which may be deemed to be due to a rather simple reason) between this and the fact that one could not probe into the heart of the matter, or, to put it otherwise, the fact that the reality of what had happened had been preferred to be kept undivulged. Monsieur Jacques had, in the course of that secret meeting that had brought the family members together, said: “We’re bound to keep this ruined state of ours within the family.” I can understand the feeling that this short sentence may have given rise to. When the right time came, people who stood wide apart would have to face this hushed ruin. Once more, heartache was being put off; mourning was being tried to be made more bearable through postponement. Nevertheless, I must not forget to note that those days were pregnant with another coming marriage, namely, the marriage of Berti and Juliet. What had remained with me revealed some other important images. Based on these remains, I can attain another image that seems to cover up both a new hope and a new mourning. Those must have been the days when wedding preparations had been carried out as they should. I feel bound to say that I had run into a traditional play at the point I had arrived. I had tried to observe from different angles the looks that attributed meaning to it. There were moments when our identity as spectators got mixed with our identity as performers; moments when we took up our identity as performers instead of filling our identity as spectators; and there were other moments which we wanted to perceive but were intertwined and lost in one another. Those looks dictated the story of those who wanted to abide in their satisfaction with those small victories. The identity of that person whose mystery of unreality was an enigma was destined to remain unsolved. The fact that a hat or a dress worn or a little gift presented in the synagogue had been the cause of so much talk for such a long time, or, which is more important, the existence of eyes that can perceive certain details properly were of more consequence. It was precisely for this reason that sorrow had tried to be buried in a play about happiness. It may be for this reason that other lives in other lands were built up wrapped in a secret melancholy in defiance of those realities. Madame Roza, on one of those days when the wedding dress was being tried on, was reported to have said, addressing the people who had told her that they were sure that the wedding party promised would be flawless, that she, as a mother, hoped that Jerry’s turn would come next. This was the most concrete evidence of her unwillingness to acknowledge his other life in another place. Jerry’s actual marriage could not be considered to have been consummated legitimately. It should be appraised as a passing fancy like the Cambridge affair of her first born. An ordinary affair, a fancy which would pave the way to a man’s proper matrimony that was meant to last a lifetime. This was, in a way, a cry addressed to himself in his own silence in a foreign language, expressing his wish to believe, and to convince himself of the correctness of what he had undertaken. Immersed in his own silence, to cry, to try to cry despite all the extraneous circumstances surrounding him . . . Apprehensions that were attempted to be hidden gave a different depth to this silence. She feared that Jerry might have fathered a child. Another mother meant another child, and, what is more important still, another world. To be able to trace the genealogy of the family was getting more and more difficult. Even so, she felt obliged to try to withstand it to the bitter end . . . A child might create difficulties for his return to the family. No return, no reunion was impossible. But what was appalling were the lacerations inflicted that never scarred. To dispel his mother’s apprehensions, Berti had said to her with a smile that she should not worry on that account. To begin with, there had been no child so far, and that most probably there never would be. Such a child was unimaginable in a land where a boy had taken refuge to escape from his past and where his intention had been to lose himself. Berti’s smile concealed a truth to which Madame Roza would never have access. When one thought of the location Jerry was in, one could do nothing but smile. There was no end to the smiles that expressed endless nuances of despair. Madame Roza had had no other question to ask. She felt her question had already been provided with an answer; yes, the answer she had been anticipating was given. By the way, there was a sentence which could have ambiguous meaning. Notwithstanding all the contingencies that could lead us to different stopovers in the light of a diversity of meanings, this sentence caused Madame Roza to remain outside its reality. All this I had learned from Juliet years later, on one of the days when the family had been shattered because of that serious dissension. According to her, Berti had withheld from his mother a very important fact about Jerry; a fact far more important than a prospective child, who, if he was ever to exist, would likely imply to her a secret which would sweep her off her feet . . . a secret imparted solely to Monsieur Jacques. This comparatively insignificant, but all the more important secret, capable of describing an entire life could not possibly be borne by a single individual who wore his heart on his sleeve. Those who had had similar experiences, who had had the daring to face them, could easily understand this. However, this step was not far from being conceivable if one recalled the things that those relations had deprived them of, although it required further clarification. Berti, who might have felt a secret wry joy in communicating to his father the reality about Jerry, had attempted to get even with his father and retaliate against the wall of impediments which he had once raised before him. There was no way of doing away with certain evils; this had been a perennial reality. Perhaps this was the reason for our inability to smother the shadows that loomed within us.

  Through these sentences Juliet had once again surged before me and showed her face which had left an indelible impression on my imagination despite the distance separating us. The words, expressing a different color caught over the course of ongoing relationships, were hardly expressible but should be taken at face value. Henceforth, she was disposed to evaluate the ‘Marcellina affair’ more composedly, not as a woman, but as a mother. I thought that Berti occupied a true place. I felt I ought to describe my account of the affair one day. I had imagined I would be able to revive that hope once more in that chamber, which I would appropriate and assess as being an integral part of me. However, one’s fancy sometimes led one to lose certain people. That detail which Berti had wished to share only with his father was destined to remain a mystery to us. There were still things that we would be imparted with and that we would have the privilege to see. Nonetheless, it had been our decision to nurture that secret in our own way . . .

  The milliner at Yüksekkaldırım

  In his last letter, Jerry had entrusted his family with a legend, if one may be permitted to qualify it as such. In the origin of that legend, which had induced people to create in their minds their respective heroes, was a wound that was associated, much against their will, with that memory. The images had evoked in me the vocabulary of others. The intervals between Jerry’s letters had grown larger and larger and their contents had grown smaller and smaller until they transformed into mere postcards before drying up altogether. Did this withdrawal into silence, this retrogression mean that the separation was to be everlasting, to be eventually transformed by death? As a matter of fact, there had come a day when even those brief phrases had also been spared. The silence that separated them must have be a quietude whose true meaning would reveal itself only gradually. All of a sudden, at the least expected moment, a letter had arrived; a letter whose aim appeared to be to impart the fact that the silence should be interpreted as having existed because of different points of view and different expectations a
s though echoing the voice of a third person. Jerry, in his letter, went on to say that the things that he had left in his homeland meant nothing to him anymore, that he was at present leading a life they could never imagine and that he would not come back to Istanbul, that it didn’t even occur to him to think about it. These lines connoted a definite separation. Jerry wished they would forget about him, as though death had separated him from them. He no longer expected any money transfers from Istanbul, nor letters, nor any messages or visitors. He had better be left alone as he preferred to deal with the challenges of life and their consequences by himself. They would do well not to ask him for an explanation as he was not disposed to give one in any shape whatsoever, and supposing he did, they would not understand it. He expressed that he was at peace such as he had never been before. They had no other choice but to believe the truth of what he said. This conviction might appease their grief. He, for his part, believed that he would be able to forgive their transgressions. It became clear that nothing could be learned about the things that happened to Jerry after the receipt of this letter; what he did, what kind of a life he led, for whose sake he lived, and last but not least, whether he was alive or dead. Everyone who knew him had to endure his or her heartache silently, trying to cover it up deep inside themselves. It must be noted that very few people had been imparted with this scanty information; among others, Aunt Tilda and Monsieur Robert, in the belief that they had a right to know, had been informed thereof. This attitude might perhaps be interpreted as an avoidance of certain fortuitous consequences.

  There happened to be another individual who, according to Berti, knew more than enough about this matter. This individual was a Greek milliner who ran a little quaint shop somewhere in the district of Yüksekkaldırım. Madame Roza was an old customer of the shop. As a matter of fact, she felt a deep affection for that woman, an affection similar to the one she had felt for Madame Eleni . . . to speak Greek, or, to live with the Greek language, even though for a very brief period of time . . . Could one imagine it possible to revive the ancient past and the lost children gathered together in a different destiny within this small bracket of time? His mother had had access to this magic through the door of this shop; it was quite probable that in the call of that sorcerer woman there was mixed the voice of this woman as well. Her frequent visits, for different reasons, to her during the wedding preparations undoubtedly had another meaning as well. Returning home from one of her visits, she had said that she had had a talk with Jerry. She had good news to impart to us. She said she had perceived warmth, peace, and affection in her son’s voice. It was the voice of someone who had attained his goal. One wonders if that virtual image reflected a sexual perversity. The intimacy of, and the friendship between, Madame Roza and the milliner had continued over several years . . . Their dialogues or seances had taken place in that shop. Their chattering or prevaricating had not leaked out. Different were the places and the individuals toward which despair guided men.

  Children of that sea

  Despair and the seeking of shelter that despair makes inevitable leads some men toward fevered pursuits. I’ve learned by now that from such premises I can have access to many a photograph of our lives. We had also attempted to live in different stories and individuals through the words and images that made up our personalities. In the first place, we were but strangers, visitors who were trying to understand, to feel, and to see. Then we had grown accustomed to our condition; when we found the real words in each other’s existence, we had made our voices better heard to outsiders and carried those people, in whom we had taken refuge, to others more easily. The story of this refuge was a long story, a hard row to hoe, a dramatic and gripping tale. My recollection of this story was consequential. A casual observer, an actor in the play, would attach, at this juncture, quite different meanings to all the presumed sentences uttered in the course of those days. There surges before me once again that old image, which, lending an ear to the voice of my dreams, I had forced the boundaries of my memory in order to be able to see. They had tried to survive in each other’s existence, in spite of themselves. The experience, the narration and the penning of their refuge was a difficult story indeed! In my endeavor to cast this observer and Monsieur Jacques in roles suitable to them, I have once again come across a new sentence or a sentence in whose novelty I should like to be deceived. That observer was no other than Olga herself, Olga the embodiment of solitude and unquenchable longing. That land had also concealed the hope of two individuals who had tried to take shelter in themselves. It is as though the heroes and heroines of that story were approaching nights I had not seen before, in search of that particular hope. Monsieur Jacques speaks and tries to describe his loss and the irredeemable things that Jerry took along with him. Olga pricks her ears again and even goes beyond listening. This mode of address was undoubtedly the most correct one. Under the circumstances, she couldn’t be ‘that woman,’ that good woman who knew like always how to listen and who inspired confidence while listening; she could also detect certain fleeting feelings in an individual who had born witness to a similar adventure from the opposite front. The details differed; they should differ anyhow. However, there were times when certain stories flowed into each other at the least expected moments despite the separation of individuals by time and distance. This was a miracle; a miracle that betokened the invariability of steps taken by certain people; their being doomed to take such steps. The sense of repetition meant, at all events, enslavement, a sort of predestination, a return to the past. Olga had, most probably, described or tried to describe Schwartz, the man whom she revered and who had shed a faint light on her solitude, on his overnight stays in winter, with whom she had an illicit relationship despite her resentment and in whose earnestness she continued to believe to the bitter end. This may have been the voice that had been a source of inspiration for Monsieur Jacques, which had contributed to his clinging to life almost to the very end of his days, an inspiration which had led him to the conviction that Jerry was alive and leading some kind of life somewhere else. It was as though a few moments and a few escapes had built up his strength anew. Now that I’m at it, I feel like reviving the picture of that togetherness within me and delving into the mystery hidden in it and conveying it to others. I feel like embracing those moments never to be forgotten, destined to abide somewhere forever. These moments inspire in me the idea that Olga had achieved domination over Monsieur Jacques, particularly through Jerry and his story. One cannot deny the fact that the sweet scent of Olga’s femininity and all its associations had their part to play in this. However, in order to explain such a long relationship under the prevailing conditions, one should look for other cogent reasons. One wonders if the spell had been broken after that serious wrangle in the shop. To provide an affirmative answer to this issue would be doing an injustice to Olga. I’m not disposed to perform such an injustice even though I may be inclined to do so. I feel I’m compelled to see the light about the transformations that occurred in me. To ignore or to obliterate those from the store of my memory are beyond the bounds of possibility. Monsieur Jacques would, after that fatal day, undergo a dramatic transformation that would wind his way toward wordlessness, toward his silent world and make himself feel nearer to his own death after experiencing so many others. Had the women to whom he had remained attached over the course of those days, with mixed sentiments, resentments, hopes, and regrets, latched him onto life? Could one devise other steps, steps invisible to everyone but Monsieur Jacques, to gain admittance to Jerry’s story? I think I might venture certain answers; even though the answers that I might try to suggest might be out of the ordinary; while doing so, I might indulge myself in other truths. Yet, what was consequential for me during those days was his determination to ponder over his lost son. In time, certain tales were given wide interpretations. He had told me once that the days when he would be well disposed to have a lengthy talk with his father were not far away. It appeared that he had a lot
to say about his fragmented family which he had been trying to integrate. He would feel then as though he had returned from a long journey. He would narrate all his adventures. It would be so comforting and soothing . . . I distinctly remember . . . we happened to be in the shop . . . It was an ordinary evening, having nothing uncommon or exceptional about it; an evening like any other. Having gazed for a long time at the photograph hanging on the wall behind his desk, he said, “the old man seems to have missed us.” Then he had stood up and, unhooking it from the wall, he had removed its dust and wrapped it up tightly. The portrait represented a typical Ottoman gentleman wearing a fez, equipped with a cane and an upturned mustache. It had been taken before he had set out in the dead of winter for a tour of Budapest and Vienna. It should be noted however that this would not be his last colloquium with the photograph. The unhooking of it from the wall was a sign of a parting of ways, of a retreat. Only Olga and Uncle Kirkor could have had an insight into this fact. I had no means of learning later what Olga had said to her four walls during her nights of solitude. The boundaries of the story I was supposed to write barred me from this. However, the words uttered by Uncle Kirkor are still in my memory: “We can still keep body and soul together!”