Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale (46 page)

After a brief sojourn at the hotel, Berti had moved to his lodging at the residence hall of the college. It was a rather large one, well lit with a fireplace. It would not take him long to learn to kindle the fire. The delight in watching the flames and listening to the cracking noise that the burning logs emitted during the cold winter nights would remain fixed in his memory. He was to spend long, interminable nights in this room, nights of growing expectations, self-analyses, self-criticism, and solitudes. It was the city’s desire that those who intended to reside so long in such rooms should undertake the examination and observation of one’s own mental and emotional processes; it looked as though such rooms and voices were for the shadows destined to abide in inner recesses. There were scenes that certain stage plays had indelibly imprinted on the minds of certain people, standing the test of time. Had it occurred to Berti to inquire about the former tenants of the room, into the life stories of those that had preceded his occupation? This question had never arisen in my mind before. In those days, different touches brought about different needs—gaining meaning and taking shape according to those needs. The same might hold true for the bicycle Berti had bought from a secondhand dealer for taking long trips a few days after he had arrived in the town. However, I was then in pursuit of other photographs which I believed were dated from those days; I had the misconception that I could have access to those things that were concealed in the photographs in question. All that I can infer now from the data available was that the bicycle had aroused in him the desire to be heading for freedom . . . a symbol of liberty; just like the way that thousands of people in other corners of the world conceive it. Those narrow paths that this conviction had guided us into had perfectly suited our ends in those days. We resembled those people who failed to find their desired places and were continually in search of them. The delusions were the same delusions; the deceptions were the same deceptions; the fabricated expectations postponed to facilitate the living of the present were the same expectations. The only difference lay, I think, in our pursuit of other towns at other times, in our desire to retire to other towns . . . to take flight, to abscond . . . to make a break for a life amenable to transformation, a new life to be reborn . . . To dispel the darkness one finds himself surrounded by, even if only for a brief time, to go back to the light, to be reconciled with certain people, to be able to have been reconciled with them . . . to be at large, to be always at large . . . This must have been the aspiration of those people at the time, the aspirations toward a real life to be unfolded and elucidated. To flee, simply to flee . . . as though there was another life; hoping to find other ways to live elsewhere, other colors, other odors and breaths in other nights. There had been so many souls that had given credence to this utopia at the time and during the days that followed, to this chimera . . . just like Berti who had wanted to step into the lives he imagined to be different, while carrying his solitude laden with fresh hopes. To be in pursuit of nonconformity was perhaps a way to free oneself and get out of the clutches of that contrapuntal death that stands ingrained and latent in one’s breast; one had to consider also that in order to understand the fact that the extrinsic streets that assumed meaning with differing linguistic worlds did not, and could not, lead to that world; one should be aware of the short life of butterflies, shorter than generally presumed.

I wonder if one could surmise that Marcellina, from Mexico City, who had come over to Cambridge to study English, might have been conscious of this fact. The prevailing circumstances would take, in time, the protagonists of that adventure to a diversity of destinations. The answer to this problem had remained anchored there; it was embedded in those travelers whose place of abode gradually killed them. Berti had encountered Marcellina for the first time at an open-air pub frequented by a mass of students. Was this the exact moment when the story had begun? Was this place the very spot where they had run into each other? For instance, what particular sentences or words, during a time long forgotten, had preceded which particular sentences or words; for instance which particular glance had been eclipsed by which darkness; to which particular glance did those voices belong, the voices that had failed to reach their ears? Here is the right time to mention the fact that the bridge called ‘The Mill’ was the venue where students got together. Why not recollect those places where certain lines crossed over in total disregard of what had occurred there. There was a stream flowing underneath the pub. That was what set it apart from conventional drinking places, especially in odd and whimsical ways. Their initial encounter had been through the exchange of furtive glances . . . of sidelong glances . . . of flickering glances . . . of covert glances . . . Glances cast imperceptibly through clusters of people, at the most unexpected moments. In my capacity as a spectator to this story, I must say I could stand to experience such glances myself. Berti had tried to conceal his identity as usual while he narrated this story to me years later. Marcellina had cut a dashing figure with a warm smile in her eyes, which added to those glances, prolonging those moments. Those moments, with their fleeting glances, had managed to catch them off-guard. There was no scarcity of other people and other voices trying to be heard at the time; at a time when those present were all strangers. Then, one day, they did meet. They happened to be at the same pub over the same stream. They had beer and talked about their respective countries and about their expectations from the town into which they had wandered. It was a Thursday evening. This may have been the reason why Berti had attached a special value to Thursdays. This may have been the reason why we were wont to do our Istanbul walks on Thursdays. Whenever I think on this, I feel sad. It occurs to me now that most of the steps we had taken on the said path had been quite unconscious. Had it not been so, the path might well have led us to other shrouded parts of the story. When he had learned that Marcellina was Mexican, he had tried a new way of verbal communication with her in his adulterated vernacular, Spanish. This new way would assume even greater meaning when I gave myself the task of remembering more vividly the remaining imagery of an old story. I understand better now the warmth that Berti must have felt in the use of that broken language. The first step was then taken in that confidentiality of parlance. What followed was but platitudes although every relationship produced its own poem
sui generis
. The first thing they did had been to go on long walks, roaming the streets of the town—its
purlieus
. And one day their hands had clasped each other. One wonders the reason why all these recollections that had made their way through a crowd of reminiscences and were carefully preserved in a secret corner were of such great pith and resonance? Why had the adolescent who had transported these images to an unpredictable future not been relinquished? What stories, what heroes that had generated these questions in me, had the protagonist of the story been chasing? Who was Berti, anyhow? Who was I? Who were we? And who were the people in those photographs dating from our childhood? I’m perfectly aware that these questions must remain unanswered, that certain questions already contain the answers in their privacy. Now, I must recall a dream at this juncture. Having come from different corners of the earth, they had brought about a passion they would prefer to perceive as original. After all, everybody ought to have a story he might be disposed to tell to a third person, sometime in their life. Certain foreign cities might aspire to such experiences. Certain foreign cities might aspire to such sentiments. After all, it was not always easy to make a guess about the reality of this irrelevance and the meaning that one attributed to it. It was terra incognita in a way, a kind of intuition that prohibited all transgressions which indicated a flight that had the ultimate aim of self-discovery. Those who had lingered in different episodes or interludes of the story were once again in pursuit of a chimera not easily shared, with a view to forgetting their deficiencies, even though for a fleeting moment. The aftereffects of this chimera might well pave the way to the poem we jealously keep deep within ourselves and are reluctant to divulge to others. This may have been the reason why I couldn’t forget what has been transferred to me. They had forged the habit to meet two or three times a week in order to understand this empathy better, viz. this love. Could one interpret these meetings as a sort of predilection having no precedence due to undecipherable parameters? The essence of passion connotes effort—some time spent shaping the course of the actually lived time, directed at recapturing the past or inserting a different timeframe into a given period; or perhaps this is simply delusional. This delusion might well mislead one to live the day at night and the night in broad daylight; while this, in turn, might bring about new fallacies altogether. How would you explain then living according to a plan or customary ritual with reference to a particular past and the walls that surrounded it? Marcellina’s justification was that she had to work hard; while Berti had had no objection to this course of action, in fact it had never occurred to him to thwart her design. There seemed to be a kind of puerility in this, a puerility indestructible, a puerility that one would like to prolong forever. They would thus strive to seize each other’s paths and appropriate them; leading a life unmindful of the nature of their sentiments and of what they had hoarded in their depths. Berti was to make ground in understanding Marcellina’s Spanish. Marcellina would borrow expressions from Berti’s. It was as though it was imperative that they stood fast in the warmth of this language and used it to communicate their feelings to each other, saying that they lived and wanted to live for each other from now on. English would prove inadequate to express their feelings; English was their second language. They had recourse to it when they fought, when they preferred to exercise restraint.

To the best of my knowledge, this was partly due to one’s experience with relationships one came to know over the course of one’s life. Berti had never kept it a secret that he had faced many ordeals in his life. His puerility, honesty, and magnanimity were ingrained in this attitude. I sometimes feel like crying about certain things I cannot define whenever I view this relationship from this angle. Actually I know why and for whom I cry, why, for whom, and when . . . At such moments I prefer to keep silent . . . to lapse into silence, for my own sake, in full cognizance of the fact that certain silences are in essence contrapuntal. I wonder whether Marcellina respected these points in their relationship. An individual I chanced to meet years later would be in a position to give me a hint to this effect. However, I had so many reasons to keep my door shut to the realities I was not capable of facing at the time. To breathe fresh life into certain representations despite all the deceptions that they implied was important and preferable to me in this relationship. One should not expect a different reaction from a person who was of the opinion that certain stories would be highlighted by certain little poems and who was obsessed by this idea. What Berti had told me during our walks, in the hope that a given time might be perpetuated forever in another, for reasons I could understand, were important for me for this very reason. Among the snapshots he had brought for me, there were also souvenirs of visits abroad. Their modest dreams had taken them to Venice on vacation where they had the chance to gaze at pigeons, cats, and the waterways. They had also traveled to Amsterdam where they had seen the canals; to Belgium where they crossed over the bridges of Bruges. These trips concealed an important point of which Berti was unaware, one which was beyond the capacity of his perception. Had he been perceptive enough he would have noticed that all these lands contained inland waterways. I wonder if such premises can get me anywhere. One thing is certain though; I do not feel prepared to provide an answer to the point in question, especially now that I’m far removed from the heroes of the story. Under the circumstances all I can do is to have confidence in another day; thus, I can better fit myself into those picture frames. The British lifestyle and philosophy had become a diversion for them, a source of light entertainment. At such moments they felt more attracted to each other. They were seeing people whom they considered strangers that belonged to somewhere else. Their consigning to oblivion each other’s uniqueness in such a haven was a natural consequence of their flights. The fact was that both their dreams had been living outside London, in a small town removed from the stir of society. Berti’s dream had been a long one, kept fresh up until the day of his graduation. In the history of flights, everybody was left to their own devices; there was no escape from this fact.

Was Mr. Dyson a mere tutor?

In that little town far removed from the people that Berti considered his family—from those people he considered his next-of-kin, cut off from their rooms and their mutual glances and words, where he tried to discover the more tangible boundaries to his freedom and where he went for long-distance bicycle rides through its meandering paths on cool and clear mornings, which aroused in one the impression as though one was going on foot in another town—he had gone through a successful term of studies in addition to a passionate love affair. Mr. Dyson who was not only a tutor, a lecturer who guided his individual studies, but also a mentor who tried to guide Berti through the arduous journey ahead of him, he had a piece of advice for his apprentice during those last days when he had to carry the burden of all the consequences of separation which could be fathomed only after many years had lapsed: “try to forget whatever experiences you may have gone through up until now along with your hopes and aspirations for the future. This is not the end of your studies. You must be prepared for further discoveries.” In this advice there seemed to be concealed a subtle hint about a long-lasting prospective education. One wonders why Mr. Dyson had desired that his pupil be equipped with different outlooks on life when he was going back to Istanbul. In order that he might have an insight into the wisdom hidden in progressive education? The reason for this desire had never been discovered by Berti even when he felt he was about to seize it. This was not difficult to understand. Every step taken, or failed to be taken, conduced further steps. He was of middling talent. In the face of this offer—interesting enough in itself, but, whose meaning could not be sufficiently elucidated, being affect-ridden under the circumstances prevailing at the time—he had owned that he felt obliged to solve the problems relating to Istanbul first of all despite the available means and potential opportunities. He intended to go back home and make the necessary preparations for a life to be shared with Marcellina. He was aware that he had to take up the challenge of a new life struggle, a new and desperate struggle involving other responsibilities. He knew and could foresee what waited him in the country of his birth where he had developed all the representations, dilemmas, and obsessions of his childhood and adolescence. The power was still in the hands of others despite his successes and ostensible superiorities. The problem had to do with this power, in fact, with the relationships created or killed by this power. Mr. Dyson was well aware of this. Those who had had the ingenuity to put up a struggle in a diversity of countries, where disparate tongues were spoken and where those who had been imprisoned in their books at different periods of time undoubtedly had a word to say. The gist of the matter lay in whether this struggle carried conviction or not. They had to consider these and never forget them. Berti felt obliged to discover the real drive that had compelled him to return. Was he risking a new subjection caused by a new fallacy rather than taking up the challenge of a new struggle? He may have been dodging certain things, the definition of which seemed abstruse. Mr. Dyson had found his pupil’s relationship with Marcellina to be a mistake. It seemed as though in his relationship with Marcellina there were tracks of another invisible path which had to be discovered. He was persuaded that he would reveal this secret one day. It was too late however. Until then he would merely say that he felt he was at a dead end. The prevailing circumstances called once more for brooding silences. He was aware at least of the fact that it was too risky to transport and revive his cohabitation with Marcellina in another city. The life they contemplated together would never materialize. The best thing to do would be to just leave what one had gone through where it belonged, safe with all its riddles in case he might try to delve into the recesses of his suspicious mind. One thing was certain: he was not going to leave for another city. The story of the hero who couldn’t tear himself from his streets must already have been committed to paper. This was an old story; a man’s quest for re-discovery, a man figuring in some memories he had long forgotten. Those who had an insight into the story, who could empathize with it, would be those who would sooner or later have understood his desire. Berti had failed to understand the advice of his tutor at the time; for four years he had been sharing his expectations, merriments, and long-term prospects with Marcellina. It was as though he had discovered a completely new color; his confidence in women had been restored. Although their encounters had not been very frequent, they had taken full advantage of their situation, sharing the moments they had spent together. Unlike his friends, he had not had many love affairs. Marcellina had satisfied his needs, she had been successful in opening a door in him. Something no one had ever achieved before. What he needed was to be understood, for someone to attempt to understand him despite his concealed contingencies and dashed hopes. His efforts to sustain himself in a foreign land should not be underestimated. It was evident that his means were limited. His skills for having insights into men’s psychology and generating warmth in them were far from matching his success in academic terms. Now I understand Berti’s position much better
vis-à-vis
this relationship. Dilemmas often lead men to a diversity of antipodal points . . . We must note, however, that, while he brooded over these things, he was trying to enjoy a sort of superiority at the same time. Things that were desired to be seen, things that were desired to be displayed should take fresh roots in a different altitude, taking into consideration the point already reached. Berti’s sole concern about those days had its origin in Marcellina’s attempt at interpreting her lack of success in her academic work by reverting to conflicting statements and prevarications, at least to the best of my understanding. Having completed a two-year language course, she had first tried chemical engineering, then biology; however, her attempts had proved to be in vain. The underlying reasons were her experiences and the choices she had made in life, the motivation for which she was at a loss to explain. To be able to convey something or to get to the bottom of it? To perceive or to cause others to perceive? To touch or not to touch? Had Berti pondered the fact that certain sentiments in certain relationships had barely perceptible boundaries? I can’t possibly hazard a guess. All that I can remember from those days is the story of an unfulfilled expectation. I can view it from quite a different angle from that of Mr. Dyson. Circumstances that were dictated in a completely different timeframe associated a completely different man in my mind, one inevitably transformed by his predilections. Berti had exhibited to his tutor a persona alien to me, a persona about which I can make bare assumptions. It was quite probable that this man was someone who could not have had access to the exact meaning of those words. This may have been the reason why Mr. Dyson had felt it incumbent upon himself to state that their talk would quite probably be the last talk they would ever have. Just before they parted, as he shook his student’s hand, he had touched Berti’s shoulder with his other hand, trying to inspire in him the beauty of having complete confidence in somebody. He had not failed to state that he would be very pleased to see him back and that he would never forget his responsibility in that respect. Both would cherish the memory of that day. It’s true that no such return had ever taken place, but the connection would never be severed. They had kept up a correspondence even though it was on a sporadic basis. It’s true that certain relationships were confined to letters, yet these letters, considering the words they contained, gave life to those relationships, to relationships that became more lively than tangible ones and were well worth speaking about. The past portended this; our books and legends had highlighted it in order that we could have a better insight into it. Words in somebody’s ear, casual observations on life . . . Just to make it intelligible how he lived. Mr. Dyson was a homosexual. However, he had never made a cynosure of it; he had nevertheless felt obliged to make people feel that due to his inversion he had to adopt a different attitude, which alienated him from a good many of his friends. He had had the opportunity to state on different occasions that everybody came to this world with a purpose in life. The amplitude of this mission was difficult to define. With time, man seized the meaning of certain niceties, sometimes when it was too late. Should Mr. Dyson’s invocation be interpreted differently, perhaps? Probably. Even upon receipt of the last letter, it had not occurred to Berti to ask about the foundation stone lying at the base of a good many relations and to secure a safe balance on it. Therefore, there had been vast penumbras in his relationship with his tutor which still maintained their importance and were recalled now and then. He, for his part, had failed to grasp the meaning of this insistence; he could never understand the reason why such a suspicion was entertained about Marcellina, the reason why he had had the courage to tell so much about himself to others. Could it be that the said penumbras, the area containing things of obscure classification, had been charted on purpose by Mr. Dyson, who knew his student so well? If one considered its reverberations through me, this likelihood might well have been taken into account and ignored. Nevertheless, barring the past considerations and judgments, I feel myself obliged to say that Berti’s relationship with his tutor had been transported to a distant future just because of these shadows. Marcellina’s place had been fixed during those talks. It was fated that they would never meet again upon his return in spite of their expectations, passion, and the common past they shared. It may well be that both had foreseen this. Yet, introspection was not a simple process. To go on living one’s delusions seemed to be far easier sometimes, just because of those times. Berti had been able to detect his place in that delusion and find the sovereign remedy for his irrelevant life, but only after a good many years had gone by. That was the place he had failed to see despite all his efforts, the place Marcellina wanted to occupy. What sort of a place was it? Was there such a place? How come they had been resigned to their silences so easily after the separation? These were Berti’s usual questions, doomed to remain unanswered, but which cropped up at the least expected moment. One could not deny of course the flights that were inherent in this. The enigmas left unsolved and the willful omissions of certain points were probably due to this. Those mysterious homicides had been committed in this very way in these stories. Those silent deaths and those silent births had coexisted with these solitudes and were preserved as such. Yet, time caused people to grow old regardless of the place they occupied. Berti had one day received a short letter. The sender was a stranger. He informed Berti of the death of Mr. Dyson from a heart attack. They had stayed in each other’s memories across widely distant lands for many years through an exchange of questions they occasionally remembered. To the letter was attached a photograph, a spectacular photograph touched-up and well presented with excellent developing. Lines and shadows had focused on the porch of a house by the side of a dimly semi-lighted path, illuminated by a red glow. The letter stated that the photograph was attached for Berti’s attention. A couple of days prior to his passing he was reported to have said: “I finally got it, after many years of expectation.” The undersigned said that he was a “very close friend” of Mr. Dyson. Apparently, he had spent his last years in union with this man. No need to say anything further. Notwithstanding this closeness, he confessed that he could not make head nor tail of the mysteries that this photograph concealed and the words uttered. He was but a messenger. A man having the mission to carry messages, a person appointed by a testator to execute his will and to see its provisions carried out after his death. There were other words to be transmitted as well, ambiguous words uttered before departing. “This photograph belongs to him . . . Just send it to him . . . He’ll understand . . . ” said Mr. Dyson for his student whom he could never forget. After pronouncing these words he had stopped for a brief moment before continuing: “I hope he will.” These words must have had some meaning exclusively for the two people involved . . . A letter was again looking for its place in the story.