by Selcuk Altun
In the mosque courtyard I patiently traced, stone by stone, the geometrical tomb of Rumi Mehmet Paşa, Grand Vizier from 1466 to 1469. Clumps of couch grass had invaded the slope of the family tombs. But between the sunken mosque walls and the cornerstones of the street the sloping building site seemed more level. A vigorous blanket of mallow-like weeds spread 150 metres around the young plantation. The space between the mosque wall and the neglected building to the east of the site, which autumn rains had turned into a sea of mud, was separated by a barbed-wire fence. I’m indebted to the heroic street cats for the idea of climbing over that rusty fence two metres high to the street below.
Forty minutes beforehand, I hid my grey cap and false beard in a nook to the right of the fence. I was concentrating on The Syriacs in History when the victim’s taxi arrived. He deigned to get out of the shabby vehicle, muttering at the poor driver. Scrutinizing both ends of the deserted street I leapt into the bushes. Between us was a space of perhaps thirty metres. I drew Walther II, in the name of God, while the professor was putting on his hat, and fired six bullets into the chest and heart of the man who could multiply five-digit numbers in his head. Leaping over the wire fence, I landed first in neighbouring Parlak Street, then ran on into Şemsi Paşa Road. I jumped into an old taxi heading for the Unkapanı Bridge with ‘Old Chap, Business is Crap’ written on the back window. At the spot where I’d chucked away Walther I, I committed Walther II to the blessed protection of the Golden Horn. Baybora had warned me, ‘Don’t look at the newspapers for two weeks.’ While I was failing mentally to convert into Turkish lira the $150,000 I would earn in exchange for those six bullets, I had come to the Valens Aqueduct erected in ad 373. Was it nerves? God forgive me, I remember I began to laugh ...
A
A pleasant autumn was approaching. As the evening ezan rose from mosque to mosque I stood up from the desk and went out onto the balcony. I don’t know a more strategic point from which to observe the monumental trees. Beyond the field of red and white tulips that surrounds the pool begins the display of cedar, pistachio and chestnut trees and oleanders. The family’s favourite plant was the absurd Japanese persimmon that sheltered under the wall. My father praised the apple-like fruit of the tree that loses its symmetrical leaves before winter. As the orange fruit of the bare plant gleamed in the dusk he would declare, ‘This is the painting by Nature that defeated René Magritte.’
As the ezan died away, the wind began to wander here and there. I was sheltering in the room where I could sit back comfortably at my father’s desk. For the first time I noticed the pencil case of Armenian silverwork in the middle of the bulky wooden desk. Beside it was the bronze statue of Eros, a span high, which my mother, searching for a present for my father’s sixtieth birthday, had asked Selçuk Altun to buy at a Sotheby’s auction. It seemed I had failed to notice the sorrowful face of the naked object. Authentic icons were scattered throughout spaces on the bookshelves – silver vases made in Iran, a miniature yacht in a bottle, knick-knacks of half-naked naiads, grotesque porcelain figures, a giant bee imprisoned in an amber egg, three dried seahorses and a ruby globe scattering flaming light onto the shelf of dictionaries. As a first-time museum addict I would examine the date (19 June 1990) of the fall of the Berlin wall, and a heap of rubble, including early Byzantine coins. On a shelf containing the works of Aulus Gellius stood a glass cube engraved with one of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s aphorisms. And above the science volumes, on a shelf that included a handwritten fifteenth-century work on geometry, a young shark, three and a half spans in length, stuffed with cotton, was waiting patiently, open-mouthed.
In the drawing room, before starting on the first bottle in the drinks cabinet, I made a quick, guilty search of the desk drawers. In the lower left drawer lay a forgotten copy of A King’s Story, the autobiography of King Edward VIII, who abdicated in order to wed an American widow. Inside the front cover I caught sight of the cassette of a work by Dvořák, my father’s favourite composer. Beneath ‘Songs My Mother Taught Me’, the fourth section of Op. 55 – the Gypsy Melodies – were pencilled three question marks. (Suppose I hadn’t been curious about the bulge in the book?) The colour photograph, postcard size, which fell to the floor had been taken under an arbour on my ninth birthday. On either side of my father, Dalga and I were putting on a smile for my mother’s camera. I was shaken by painful feelings and quickly shrugged off the effect of the alcohol that had failed to anaesthetize my body. I imagined the tired pine needles flying skywards in a disciplined formation, and travelled back in hope to twenty years ago. Stroking the wings of Eros, I whispered Bufalino’s poetic aphorism, ‘What sad days those were, the happiest of my life.’
Until her breasts began to appear, Dalga and I used to wrestle, no holds barred, pushing and shoving and horsing around. Unfortunately she was four years older than me. When I was ten I realized we were physically different, and at eleven I fell hopelessly in love. If the ancient doorbell rang – two short rings, one long – for the swimming pool, I enjoyed an additional pleasure. When we were sunbathing together I would make an excuse to go to my room, where I would masturbate as I stared intently through field-glasses at every inch of her long plump legs and her strong round hips.
In our neighbourhood, her silent mother Sıla, whom my mother called ‘the Francophone with half a talent’, was my mother’s close friend and bridge partner. She had lost her naval-officer husband in an accident while he was on duty, and she and her daughter had taken refuge with her father-in-law. İfakat kept asking if the little Georgian beauty was taking an interest in the assistant head of the lyceé where she taught French, although he was married and younger than herself.
My father didn’t like Dalga’s churlish grandfather, who busied himself with the restoration of old books, and declared, ‘The megalomaniac dotard’s sweat stinks of glue and his soul of cellophane.’ Her one-armed aunt Hale survived on tranquillizers accompanied by non-filter cigarettes, read long novels and wept copiously. It was five minutes’ walk to our mansion and they were content that we didn’t often visit their haunted house.
‘Dalga, take care not to let go of Arda’s hand.’ Of all my mother’s orders, that was my favourite. We would go together hand-in-hand to the film or play or concert she had chosen. As Dalga’s long slender fingers touched mine my heart trembled and flew off in a series of fantasies. Even though we were inseparable for six years, I gradually got fed up with people who thought we were brother and sister.
She would pull my hair like an older sister and declare, ‘I can’t imagine any girl who wouldn’t shag you for those blue eyes,’ and I’d scan her charming face in a panic. When I stammered out that she looked like Cleopatra with her snow-white skin, her deep dark eyes, upturned nose and smooth hair, she would say, ‘Sod off!’
I knew that when she completed her education at the American High School at Üsküdar I would be at a loss. In her second year of school she was captain of the girls’ volleyball team, but when she was suddenly transferred to Fenerbahçe, I immediately became a Fenerbahçe fan. I went with Hayrullah our chauffeur to every match played by the Fenerbahçe Women’s Team. Sometimes my father joined us. He liked Dalga and sometimes helped her with her homework. I would pray silently all through the match and if Dalga made a strategic mistake I’d be on the verge of tears. The stress I felt when she had the ball, and all the spectators stared at her legs and hips, continued even after the match.
‘Couldn’t my mother arrange to send Dalga to matches in a tracksuit?’ I asked, and my father would laugh scornfully.
I was always praying that the water would be cut off in Dalga’s house. Then she’d come and bathe in my personal bathroom. (My mother had had panes of glass fitted in two upper corners of the lavatory door – she wanted to keep an eye on me even there.) As soon as I heard the sound of water, I would stand on a wobbly chair and glue my eyes to the door, tracing every inch of her naked body. İfakat knew that I was aware of her own secret relationship with Hayrullah, and
when she caught me at it she’d giggle, ‘If you fell and broke a bone you couldn’t even cry.’
Once while we were watching a romantic film on video together, Dalga said, ‘I’m in no hurry to fall in love, but if I ever meet the perfect man you’ll be the first to know,’ and my heart sank. After this declaration I was deeply depressed. (If she came one day and whispered in my ear the name of some volleyball player, and I didn’t die of a heart attack, then I’d kill myself.) Maybe if I did everything my mother asked, Eros the Angel of Love would save Dalga from the perfect man and award the prize to me ... My accomplice İfakat advised, ‘When you begin university the age difference between you will get less.’ When my height reached 1.77 metres I could admit proudly that I’d loved her since I was ten ...
In her last year at the American High School, Dalga and her mother left Çamlıca without telling anyone. My mother said, ‘Sıla had big problems with her father-in-law. They’ll visit us as soon as they’ve settled down.’ But before we had time to miss Dalga, we lost my father. Without a goodbye, Dalga’s grandfather and aunt also departed and I knew I would hear little from my mother when I enquired about her again.
I never fell in love again after Dalga. Being in my mother’s shadow it wasn’t necessary, because my mother did my thinking for me better than I did for myself.
As the wind died down I went out onto the balcony to face the evening ezan. I watched the wind’s querulous fight with the date-palms and its persistence in the star-protected sky. Bored, I focused on the cityscape on the other side. I tried to share my grief with the fading points of light that leaked from 10,000 dwellings. ‘I wonder in which one Dalga is making love with the love of her life.’ I had to shake myself free of my paranoia. Suddenly I had a brainwave. I decided on the attractive idea of not guessing what would happen next. Even though my height stuck at 1.75 metres, I would look for her. If necessary I would find her by pacing the streets of Istanbul. Thanks to sleeping pills, I had remained in bed for seventy-two hours in a lethargic stupor, and had even begun to hear Dalga’s tantalizing voice. Whether she was laughing or crying was all the same to me.
B
According to the Venerable Omar, Our Lord the Prophet uttered the following sayings:
‘When you come upon a sick man, ask him to pray for you. For his prayer is like the prayer of angels.’
Ibn-i Mace
God bless my first victim! With the money I had earned I decided to move to the tranquil district of Üsküdar, which I had come to know well through my explorations. The dignified Ottoman soul still pervaded streets with awe-inspiring names. When I saw those dry but elegantly carved fountains, the mottled tombs and the fine mosques built for pashas, my zest for life returned. Meeting an old lady resting at the top of a hill muttering prayers, I could ignore the screaming children in the historical garden now reduced to a wood depot. Modest young girls in headscarves coming out of these wooden buildings immediately lowered their eyes to street level. There were pious grocers still patiently persevering in lonely basement shops. I was pleased that no other space could be converted into a dull coffee house where idlers also gamble. On the easygoing streets with their commercial signs, people walked slowly and solemnly, while on the wider roads I observed retired bureaucrats washing their old cars with exaggerated ceremony.
In Ottoman Turkish, tephir means ‘steaming’. When I saw the wooden house with its carved façade in Tephirhane Street, adjacent to Eşrefsaat, I repeated my favourite prayer three times and swore to give up my miserable work.
The estate agent told me, ‘Rezzan Ergene will show you an apartment to rent: she’s the granddaughter of an Ottoman pasha,’ and my knees trembled. I knew that the landlady, who was over seventy, would give me the once-over. I remember climbing up the to the fourth floor, with great respect for the old polished staircase. Regal Rezzan whispered that the furnished apartment belonged to her son Gürsel, who had a psychological problem that had kept him in hospital a long time. His personal belongings were locked in a sparsely furnished room. A partly empty mahogany bookcase in the sitting room was, of course, of special interest to your humble servant. I found myself almost blessing Baybora for helping me to acquire a place of my own for the first time in my life. When Rezzan, in her comical make-up, heard I could pay six months’ rent in advance, she began to address yours truly as, ‘Bedirhan, my dear man’. And when the estate agent realized I didn’t want a receipt for his commission he plied me with advance information about the Ergene family.
‘Rezzan is on the floor beneath you. She lives with her daughter Emel, the divorcée. She sometimes works in one of those palaces turned museums. When Rezzan’s late husband first entered the Ergene family he was given the family name. This lawyer, who died the day the ruling political party was established, managed to be a member of the Turkish Parliament for two consecutive terms, one year on the left, one on the right.
‘Throughout history this parasitic family has first exploited the Ottomans, and now our Republic. Twenty years ago they sold their summer homes in prestigious Salacak and made a forced landing in our neighbourhood. I don’t think any of their properties remain, except a dilapidated workshop at historical Sultanhamam and this building. Gürsel, a prominent member of the family, was studying philosophy in the US when his mother made him come back to Turkey and he fell into a depression. The poor, honest gentleman is three years younger than Emel, who’s in her fifties, and for the last two years has been having treatment at La Paix Hospital. When Rezzan moved here from Salacak, she made every minute hell for the family she controls.
‘Her brother Renan, who has looked about fifty for the last twenty years, lives on the second floor. A confirmed bachelor, he came into the world to make fun of it. He went to university in Paris and returned five years later, still a second-year student and, having done almost no work, somehow managed to retire. He is perpetually annoyed with his elder sister. He imagines he’s a talented harlequin and magician. He has made the ground floor into a studio for repairing stringed instruments but it has become a central meeting-place for down-and-out gamblers.
‘You seem like a suitable young man. If you pay your rent regularly and steer clear of the Ergenes you’ll be all right. They’re eccentric people, but with aristocratic manners.’
The poncy estate agent seemed put out when he saw I wasn’t alarmed by his tirade. But I had certainly warmed to my neighbours, who I hoped wouldn’t disturb my privacy.
I confess that when I registered for a British Council language course in İstiklal Street, it was really just to read the great thriller writers like Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Patricia Highsmith in the original. But I couldn’t get to like noisy İstiklâl Street or the motley crowd on the course who’d joined only to chase after promotion or to find a mate. They laughed at my pronunciation of the word ‘cafeteria’. (But permit your humble servant to inform you that he got the highest grades in his written exams.)
Guided by my mentor, who was himself addicted to thrillers, I was destined to become acquainted with the works of many good writers, including Georges Simenon, Eric Ambler, Graham Greene and Cornell Woolrich.
I was going to be working three times a week at a secondhand bookshop called Zarathustra. Sami Sakallı, associate professor of literature who was chucked out of the university for his left-wing views, wise bookseller, author, editor and translator, had said, ‘Whenever you want, there is work for you here in this poor little shop.’ I would have accepted the minimum wage so as not to offend him. My master was known as ‘Nietzsche’ because of his fierce facial expressions and I am sure he was quite pleased when I rose to greet him when he entered the shop. I soon grew accustomed to the small secondhand book business with its narrow interests. On Saturdays, when Sami took part in absurd polemics with his turncoat fellow-travellers, he emerged as a humane man of principle. I was proud of the fact that we were one of the rare bookshops in the market that didn’t resort to selling secondhand school textbooks when busin
ess was slack. Due to my master’s illness and family problems, I pretty much ran the shop on my own, completing my own library by buying books above the market price. But before three years were up I’d abandoned the struggle to keep this unrewarding job, which I had thought ideal for me. I just couldn’t handle the financial side of things.
His ideological and financial problems, his superficial wife and vagabond son, his smoking and drinking, all conspired to give my master cancer. After his death, his ungrateful son, Kuzey, is said to have sold the 7,000 books in Zarathustra’s by the kilo, in order to pay off his debts to a moneylender.
In Ahmed Hamdi Tanpınar’s masterpiece, Five Cities, he introduces the Istanbul of previous centuries as ‘a city of great works of architecture, of little corners and surprise landscapes. In these, the heart of Istanbul is to be found.’ On Sundays I used to visit the monuments that were still extant, in those ‘little corners and surprise landscapes’ that had the luck to survive in the suburbs of Istanbul. I would compose prayers as I traced them, stone by stone, and wished for patience with a humanity that was useless as bird droppings.