by Levi, Mario
Brooding over these things, shuttling to and fro between the past and the present, he directed himself toward the bedroom trying to feel the weight of his steps on the floor. He took off his pajamas and put on his jockstrap. He had expected that a surgical intervention would fix his inguinal hernia and his health would be restored once and for all. However, the hernia on his right side had been superseded by another on his left. It was too late now for another operation. He had to cope with it one way or another. After all, this was a congenital condition. His father had had the same problem, so had Nesim; they had had to handle it under very different circumstances.
He put on his shirt and trousers. He tied up his necktie fastidiously. He put on his shoes using a shoehorn which he had been using for years now, he polished them . . . just like in the days when he used to go to his shop. He put on his vest and buttoned it up. He was ready to depart. He looked at himself once more in the mirror. His suit appeared to be too large. He had lost a few stone and had himself decreased in size. Yet, the suit itself had defied time. “After all, British stuff,” he thought. He recalled his experiences in London, that Italian restaurant in the proximity of Marble Arch, the illuminated windows of the department stores. He had also left many an unfulfilled memory with others. He hadn’t been able to share some of his days with people he would have liked to commune with. All these reminiscences gave him a very heavy heart. Well, what had been experienced had become part of the past; and what had not been put into action had not been the order of the day. What had been lived might at present be communicated to others. To take shelter in recollections . . . with a view to somehow walking farther and dying less . . . despite all anticipations and the surfeit of well-known delusions that had become love objects . . .
He made for the balcony. He drew the curtains, the French doors, and the shutters. Thus he removed the covering objects that had protected him against the darkness of the night, from the hostile, threatening looks of others. He went out onto the balcony into the open air. He wasn’t wrong. The dawn was promising a clear and sunny day. The twittering of birds indicated that the dawn was breaking for others as well. He listened to the birds. At least these chirpings were the same as ever. “It’s time that we moved to the island,” he thought; it was time to stroll along the waterfront . . . Another winter had gone by. Berti must have seen to the garden; flowers, herbs, and trees needed tending and affection. Formerly, he used to take care of all these. When April arrived, he used to take a gardener with him and go to that house on a warm weekend when the sun had begun to warm up the houses, the rooms, and the garden itself. To tend the flowers was an act as laudable as taking care of a loved human being. The affection one displayed was rewarded; the flowers and the trees were in fact more faithful and generous compared to humans. Violets displayed incomparable colors to the people who took good care of them, the four o’clocks with fragrant yellow, red, or white flowers opened late in the afternoon and the sweet basil fragrance made breakfast a treat. The linden tree pervaded the atmosphere with its unforgettable scent. The plum tree blossomed every year and produced juicy fruits . . . without fail, in contrast to the fruit trees that gave their fruits twice a year. Every year . . . to the best of his remembrance, or so he wanted to believe anyway . . . the plums were small, of a yellow tint but tasty . . . small yellow plums that were the essential ingredient of the fish dish: gaidropsarus mediterraneus . . . Yes, Berti must have tended the garden by now . . . but what if he had failed to do so; one had to be lenient toward him. After all that he had experienced, one should be more tolerant. The disaster that had separated them had in a sense drawn them closer. Berti himself might be unaware of this. Berti had no idea of this new sentiment. Anyway, this wasn’t so important. Rejuvenation and restoration of youthful vigor was out of the question now. Getting a new lease on life was a thing of the past; just as they lacked the energy required to tend the garden; the garden of which he could be but a spectator from now on; a spectator trying to distinguish the scents of flowers and fruits . . . through the odor of weeds; weeds of wild growth. He suddenly felt a cool breeze graze his cheeks. “You must be careful not to catch cold; recovery at this age would surely be a problem,” he said to himself. It was his own voice that he heard; it was the voice of his solitude and apprehensions. The day was just dawning. He went in. He left the French doors wide open; the room needed fresh air. He had already lain open his bed and the weight of the night to enable them to get rid of their stuffy atmosphere. As he went into the sitting room, he carefully closed the door of the room behind him, the room in which he was to perform his morning prayer . . . The first thing he did in the sitting room was to pull the curtains, then he settled himself in his usual armchair casting a glance outside: the street looked deserted, janitors with their baskets hanging from their arms and a few students were the only hoi polloi of the streets; there were also a couple of other people, early risers who seemed to be in a hurry. These were his early risers, with whom he had established a connection of which only he was aware; he saw these early risers rushing every morning at the same hour, in the same street, through the same window. These people had their own lives, their own stories, and their own fates. He didn’t know them; he had never addressed them nor would he ever do so in the future. This was his sphere of taboo in a sense. In the street he saw that three women and two men were heading, independently from each other, for seemingly predetermined destinations. One of the women worked in a bank, the other was a nurse. The third was working with a Jewish importer, employed as a secretary and an accountant. One of the men was a silversmith and had a shop in the covered bazaar. He seemed to be well off; he led a life far removed from the ebb and flow of the day without entertaining latent revolutionary impulses, being content with modest weekend diversions. He was married and believed in principles associated with the left. The other individual was a young practitioner; he was a bachelor and seemed a perfect fit as a candidate for marriage to one of those girls, for instance to that nurse; if only someone had introduced them to each other, of course. It was a pity that everybody followed his own way; their paths never crossing, unfortunately. The precinct of each one of them was delineated within a wound-up time. If, by chance, they happened to be late, it caused worries in him. He had always been an early riser himself, which had made him successful in life.
Having carefully watched his usual figures and making sure that none of them were missed, he allowed himself to retire and perform his morning prayer. The first part of his prayer he performed in Hebrew, which was followed by a prayer in Spanish. The words were the same words. It was the sine qua non of the ritual. The part in Spanish was a sort of communion wherein he fancied his God as an all-powerful and reliable protector, as a father. God high above had almost human characteristics and looked as though He was more real. He prayed and graciously asked Him to bless him with a painless death, and Berti, Juliet, Nora, and Jerry with all the happiness possible and the Promised Land as well as with peace the world over. Men had to remember the origin of their essence in order that inhuman, heinous crimes could be put an end to. He did not forget to thank his Protector for having delivered him from the concentration camps. He might, as chance would have it, have settled in France, like his brother; but providence had so desired that he stay in Istanbul, which was a blessing and for which his gratitude could never be expressed enough. He had been a witness to deaths just as he had been to the day’s peaceful atmosphere. He did his utmost to make the best of these bright days he had been blessed with now. He prayed for the souls of his beloved, so that God favored them with eternal bliss in paradise and fervently asked Him to be delivered of his soul when the hour came, without too much suffering. He was, at the same time, the Father of Benevolence, yes, of Benevolence. At that moment he felt as though he was mixing up his words, or rather as though he could not recall them. He felt dizzy; having recovered from his momentary giddiness, he had to repeat his wishes . . . The very fact of remembering his peo
ple in paradise made his voice tremulous and sound more sonorous while whimpering at the same time. There were so many of them that he had seen off to that place . . . when he thought of them, it occurred to him that he had lived long enough and was already sick of it. But that was providence, which he could not possibly meddle with for fear of a major trespass. When he had concluded, he felt terribly exhausted from having been in the presence of his God, from having supplicated Him with all his might, and from searching for the exact words he should use in his appeal. He became erect and tried to relax a bit, closing his eyes. Mixed apparitions rushed before him. Visions of the past and of the present all mixed in a medley. To dispel them, he opened his eyes. He had to make a point of continuing to cling to the days he actually lived. There were nights in which he could not refrain from moving away from the visions it brought along. Those visions should be enough for him. He gingerly stood up, took off his tallith, kissing it and putting it by the Morning Prayer book which he read every Sabbath. “Une place pour chaque chose et chaque chose a sa place” (Every place has its occupant and every thing has its place) he said. This maxim he had learned from his math teacher, Monsieur Nathan, who initiated to his pupils the secret of a disciplined lifestyle during their last year at the Alliance. The school called Alliance Israelite Universelle on Yazıcı Street commanded a sea view. The wind blowing from the South was always an event; the strong southern wind caused the cancellation of the boat shuttling services between the coasts of the Bosporus, which made it impossible for Monsieur Nathan, who lived at Kuzguncuk, to cross the Bosporus over to the European side of Istanbul where the school was. Monsieur Nathan was notorious among the students for his harsh strictness, which was the way of living he had adopted. For him, to lead a disciplinary life was tantamount to revering people and above all himself. For him the key to success was discipline. It was his wont to say every now and then during the course of admonishing his students relentlessly that the virtues of discipline were innumerable. During his harangue, he occasionally farted, whereupon he tried to shake the lectern to cause a greater noise than his eruption. The noise muffled the noise to a certain extent, but could not prevent the fetid odor from spreading over the entire classroom. To corroborate the inescapable stench, he announced with a rueful countenance that the students had better open the windows, complaining of the stinking classroom, urging them to breathe some fresh air whenever they could and to play a lot of sport, as it was absolutely necessary for their health. He went on haranguing on the merits of a healthy, long life. These sermons flowed without the smallest rambling. Monsieur Nathan was self-restrained in this matter also, self-disciplined in other words. The adherence to a pattern of behavior characterized by mechanical repetition induced Menahem, who sat by the window next to him on the row, Menahem el de loz maloz eços (Menahem the devil), to immediately open the windows as soon as he saw the oscillation of the lectern which had caused the entire classroom to roar with laughter. He was rewarded for this benevolent act and good deed on his part after a few minutes by a slap on the neck by Monsieur Nathan, whose habit it was to amble amongst his students while discoursing. The slap also caused the whole class to bend over with suppressed laughter. This was followed by Menahem’s acting out the role of a student wronged and unjustly treated, saying: “Mais, mais je n’ai fait rien, Monsieur!” (But, I’ve done nothing, Sir!) And as Monsieur Nathan silently closed the window with a wan smile on his lips, had not failed to retort to Menahem’s observation “Une habitude, une simple habitude, Monsieur” (Out of pure habit, Sir; simply out of habit, no ill intention, none whatsoever!). In every incident in the school Menahem played a walk-on part. Everyone in the school was predisposed to believe that the culprit of all crimes committed had in some way or another Menahem as an accomplice. Once, during an interrogation by the disciplinary committee of the school for one of the usual offenses committed by Menahem, the glass pane at the entrance of the school was broken by accident and one of the members of the committee in session could not help announcing in a loud voice: “O, Menahem again!” As a matter of fact, it was Menahem himself that had recounted this event to them . . . O those good old days! This enfant terrible was to be phenomenally successful in life and become hugely wealthy. Yet, it should be expected that such characters indulge in things far from commendable; actually, his name was mixed up with a case of contraband condoms, followed by a case of murder. His later exploits were to remain a mystery. Traces of each other had been irrecoverably lost from that day on. That was a long time ago. This was one of the phrases he was to repeat frequently. He knew the story of those who were destined to lose each other while treading that long path all too well. People believed they had an insight into the meaning of these phrases and stories, and being convinced of this, thought they were allowed to use them. He had lived; he had been obliged to go on living despite losses, yearnings, and resentments. This may have been the reason why he failed to express his feelings from this very sense of having lived. He had not had the opportunity to set eyes on Menahem ever after, nowhere, nowhere he thought he might. Could it be that he was still alive? Was that boy from the old days the same boy? Who could tell? Everybody had left on in their own path, paying their own modest contribution and receiving a modest reward in return, growing up, aging, and being buried in its insulated silence. Why deny, he had finally understood the value of Monsieur Nathan’s maxim: “Une place pour chaque chose et chaque chose a sa place” as he grew older. This golden rule had been of great service to him in his business life. He could not deny or ignore it. Yet, this rule belonged in a different time, to another aspect of his life, conflicting reactions give rise to discontent and regret. The place was not always the right place, the place to be singled out because it had prevented him from living or letting others live elsewhere. But that was it . . . there was nothing to be done about it . . . a story lived and gone by. His faithfulness to the discipline he had been submitted to, imposed by Monsieur Nathan, had exerted its influence on his laying the breakfast table overnight; which, after all did not require great effort. It consisted of a clean napkin, a plate, a teacup, and the breakfast itself consisting of a couple of pieces of toast, some jam, and cheese, whose butter and salt content was almost nil. Sometimes he took a cup of tisane of linden flowers, at other times a cup of hot milk. Everything had diminished in quantity. He remembered that the jam he had prepared with dried apricots was nearly finished. He ought to make a call and ask Berti to buy roses for him at the Çiçek Pazarı flower market. The prices had lately gone up, it’s true, but he could still enjoy this luxury. A kilo of roses would do the job, enough to last for six months. To this end, there would be some activity beforehand in order that he could take his time, the process preceding the jam making at home. These preparations were part of his quiet pleasures. Once the roses were there, they would be taken out of the paper bag with due care to be strewn on a sheet of newspaper previously spread out on the table; whereupon before putting them in boiling water their stems would be clipped with a pair of scissors. The scent of roses would pervade the air. Yes, he would not fail to ask Berti to buy him some roses. It was the season . . . indeed, the season! Formerly he used to prepare the jam together with Madame Roza, He used to sort out the roses and fastidiously clip their stems with the Dunlop scissors he had bought in England. That scissors had gotten lost. A swarthy lean man who used to carry a basket containing roses that dangled from his arm used to pass by when the season was in. I think he was called Salomon. Salomon? No, no, that was the fisherman, who traveled about from one place to another on Fridays selling gaidropsarus mediterraneus, solely in the early hours of the morning. The custom required this. The meals had to be ready by noon. No meals were prepared on the Sabbath. However, even this custom had been abandoned in time. The fish by that name was the preferred dish of the Jews which was eaten accompanied by a ritual. This was known to the fishermen of the area who made their rounds in the Jewish quarters. The fish was cooked and served with yellow plums. The
fishermen also sold yellow plums. But they bought from him only fish, which displeased the fishmonger as he made greater profit from the sale of yellow plums. “Esta vez la avramila esta para shuparse los dedos . . . Le dae un poco?” (I’ve got excellent juicy plums, would you like me to give you some?) was the comment he usually addressed to Madame Roza. The latter’s humorous retort was “Nosotros no tenemos menester de tu avramila kazıkçı! Ya tenemos en la ğuerta al karar ke no kerez!” (I have no need for your plums, trickster! We’ve got plenty in our garden, enough to spare). At times such remarks infuriated Salomon who once had said to Madame Roza: “o se le seko ayinda el arvole?” (Not dried up yet, your plum tree?), to which Madame Roza had rejoined: “No se seko’No se seko! Y tu ke no sekes inşalla paşa’ Ayde, kaminos klaros!” (Not yet! Not yet! I wished you remained as perpetually fresh as my plum tree!) Such witty repartees were an everyday affair in those days, although words and expressions differed now and then. This jocular exchange of witticisms contributed to the pleasure derived from nearly every daily activity. At present, caught in life’s current, other jokes continued to be cracked to add color to the dullness of daily life; jokes and witticisms would persist forever. “Would they, really?” he suddenly asked to himself in a moment of unexpected skepticism. Then he gave up philosophizing, although his lips continued to move, repeating the same syllables with bated breath: “Jokes to continue to be cracked . . . ” The jokes he spoke of were those that had remained fresh for them, jokes that involved those that had silently departed. The feelings harbored there were of the sort experienced in a small world that looked hermetically sealed, in which everybody could see everybody since there was no other alternative . . . By the way, the name of the guy that sold roles leaves was not Salomon; it must have been Mordo . . . oh, no! No! He just couldn’t remember it. This wasn’t the first time that his memory was failing. He could not help laughing at himself. His laughter indicated that he was now looking at life through a different angle; this was proof of his egocentric predicament. There was no sense in dwelling on the lapses of his memory that had caused his failure to remember the name of the flower man. Eventually, he would also, like many people from the past, be remembered for his trade rather than for his name; for the effects that the syllables of his name would engender rather than their intrinsic entity. Those that had gone through life having experienced those sentiments, and the spirit that their memories and voices had left behind . . . This must have been the interesting thing about the life beyond. Eventually, bargaining with the fisherman and the florist was no sweat! Contention was their art; both knew the real worth of their goods, but to be on the safe side, they took precaution right at the start and named a high price for their produce; they took a special pleasure in haggling; their customers were not unaware of their ways. However, the stage had to go on for the sake of age-old habits. The hucksters drove a hard bargain, but so did the customers. There was, however, a rule for this, like in every other bartering. The limits had to be respected. He distinctly remembered. Madame Allegra, the neighbor opposite, had quoted a price far lower than rock bottom; the vendor, taking this offer as an insult, had countered without the least scruple of being heard by the people around and said: “Tamam . . . ke me trayga el çukal i se lo inchere!” (All right, get me your chamber pot so that I may fill it up!) At this likely reaction on the part of the vendor, Madame Allegra had wished the earth would swallow her up, and, shouted in his face: “You cheeky impudent Jackanapes!” as she slammed the door and went inside. This had caused a general glee among the listeners. They were at home. It was a warm morning in May . . . Rosita was still a small child. She had been staying with them. She had asked what ‘Tchukal’ meant. Having been told what it was, she had burst into laughter. Rosita was a charming little girl with deep blue eyes . . . O that fate! O the inhabitants of that street . . . they were no more, alas! Among others, Madame Allegra . . . She also had vanished into thin air along with her memoirs. One of her sons was in Milan and was engaged in commercial transactions. Another of her sons was a practicing psychiatrist in Geneva, to the best of my recollection. They rarely wrote to their mother to whom they sent enough money as to enable her to lead a comfortable life. She had a maid by the name of Kader; she happened to be the janitor of an apartment nearby. She came to work at her apartment as a charwoman. One day, after seven years of marriage she had been ousted from her home, accused of barrenness with the intention that she be sent back to her village. Having been deprived of all possessions, save for a bundle that contained all her belongings, she had to take shelter in Madame Allegra’s home. She had been left penniless and as she had been illegally wed by an Imam, she could claim nothing from her husband in the eyes of the law. On the other hand, it should be noted that Madame Allegra had been suffering from loneliness. This had been the beginning of their companionship which was to last for years. She was to carry on her odyssey either in that house or at a different place, behind a different door accompanied by different awakenings and slumbers. These two women had different origins and had had to leave a significant part of their lives with different individuals, burying it in their vocabularies. Kader was at an age in which she could easily have been her daughter. Despite their initial conflicts of opinion, they had eventually learned how to lead a symbiotic life. It may be that the link that connected them to each other was their betrayals. He remembered them strolling arm-in-arm in the streets. Kader was to remain in that house for many years afterward. Long after, she had said “yes” to the marriage proposal of Selami Bey, a retired gentleman from the Land Registry, in whose presence everybody in the district showed self-restraint mixed with some sort of diffidence, and moved to another house . . . As a matter of fact he had been instrumental in bringing about this liaison. Selami Bey, with whom he had a passing acquaintance, had had a confession to make to him. It was early morning . . . Selami Bey had told him that for the first time in his life he had felt himself close to a woman. This woman had a striking likeness to a little girl, a traveling companion, a figure from an old story, who used to pass by every morning in front of his window in the arm of a blind man begging in the streets, to the accompaniment of the melancholy songs he sang. She was very little and had sorrowful looks. He had wished to adopt her, but had failed to set eyes on her after that morning. It was high time now his wish should be fulfilled. Selami Bey’s voice sounded plaintive but affectionate; it was kindly and soothing, full of yearning. Although he could not make head nor tail of what he had been told, he had inferred that his sentimental attachment to Kader was full of genuine emotion. This partly explained Selami Bey’s relinquishing his greeting to certain people on certain evenings. Those were most probably the hours when he recollected the little girl in question. Selami Bey had disclosed to him his secret for the first time. Something hitherto kept secret was being revealed to him. Upon his return home, he had spoken about this incident to Madame Roza. To decide was not so easy. They could not guess the reaction of Kader at such a proposal. To begin with the age gap between her and Selami Bey was enormous, which could not be overlooked. On the other hand, was such a relation to be formed, Madame Allegra would be returning to her former solitude. Nonetheless, Selami Bey’s insistence had greatly impressed him. She might, after all, try another individual and lifestyle. It was Madame Roza that had broken the news to Kader. She knew all too well how to behave and act in such delicate matters. Kader could not conceal her astonishment and the tremor in her voice; she had inclined her head toward her breast, and after a moment of silence, she had said with a weak smile, that she had lost the greater part of her youth, that something had died within her years ago, but added that on certain nights she felt the lack of a male companion. Her voice was tremulous as she made this confession; she was hesitant as usual, as though exhausted, as though she wanted to conceal certain things. It may be that she had imagined herself in Selami Bey’s arms, experiencing her womanhood. But who could tell that Selami Bey was one of those men who divested himself f
rom his robe before going to bed, putting on merely the trousers of his pajamas and penetrated women by pulling them down. Her power of imagination could not go farther than that. After this important avowal she said to Madame Roza: “My name ‘Kader,’ meaning ‘Fate,’ suits me well. Please tell Selami Bey that I’m ready to give my hand to him. I don’t expect that he would like to be a father at his age.” Her words bore the traces of a deep sorrow, of a deception whose roots lay deep in her entrails in addition to a little latent hope. As she was trying to initiate herself to the idea of marriage, she was looking for someone to partake of her unavowed sense of deficiency which she had been keeping concealed; she had never recovered from the grief she felt for having failed to give birth to a child with her first husband, in her first marriage. She had acknowledged that her womb was a wasteland. She acknowledged the fact that her fate had reserved a barren and arid terrain in her which the lies and deceptions that surrounded her, would never let her explore. Could it be that time had enthralled her in vain? One must note, however, that she had been raised in a tradition according to which barrenness could not be attributed to men. Her state might be due to a lifestyle in which emotions were unnecessarily impaired, nay killed, and lives were extinguished because of absurdities. The victims had unduly paid the cost of their deceptions without being given the chance of self-defense, resignedly, without raising their voices. One wondered who the true victim was under the circumstances. Customs and mores were responsible for the gradual extinction of lives. To provide an answer and suggest a solution would thus be impossible for a long time to come. What actually remained were the concrete incurable wounds that the individuals received. The injuries received but not given voice to . . . for the sake of upholding the traditional lifestyle. A short time after the exchange of these words, Kader and Selami Bey were married in a modest and solemn wedding ceremony. Kader’s witness was Madame Allegra, and Selami Bey’s best man had been himself. Following the exchange of formal words, everybody had repaired home. The paths of Madame Allegra and of Kader gradually bifurcated despite the proximity of their living quarters. The same was to happen when they were to move into a new house. Their contact was to grow less frequent as time went by; so did the telephone calls, eventually; their old ways and neighborly relations gradually declined till they ceased altogether for the sake of their private lives, forgetting the bygone days. Although there had been no break in their relations as the Rosh Hashanah joined them; actually everybody had lived his own life. Madame Allegra never failed to show up on the first or the second day of the Jewish New Year and brought them her specialty, apple jam with mastic that she prepared with her small hands as though it had been her duty. Apple jam with mastic . . . Everybody was aware of its meaning. Everybody shared in the jam in question that was meant to contribute to the sweet course of the coming year. There was no point in discussing such evident issues as everybody knew it and tried to go on living for the sake of that past. Madame Allegra didn’t have to announce beforehand the visit she was going to pay. On the other hand, there were people whose custom it was to gather together at certain homes for the sake of rendering the platitudes of life more meaningful. If so, why had there been a hiatus between the family members which had caused a break in relations? After having shared so many moments, communions, and joint experiences how come that they had succeeded in surviving without having seen and talked to each other. Who, in the meantime, intruded on their privacy? Well . . . that was life after all. Willy-nilly, such things happened. This appeared to be the rule enabling them to cling to their new places. In this whirlwind, in their efforts to make them believe in themselves, the price of those omissions was paid, naturally. Differing languages and climates had never been able to prevent the same people from enjoying the same experiences.