Many and Many a Year Ago (7 page)

Thanking the good professor, I asked to be excused. I got the spare key from Aunt Cevher and rushed back to my apartment, where I immediately cancelled my credit cards. After a long hot shower I called the locksmith and watched while he changed the locks. Then I slept for two hours listening to Mozart sonatas. I got up and went to Le Cave in Cihangir, where I bought two bottles of good imported wine. The professor welcomed me in his red apron. His living room was filled with the music of Nat King Cole and the aroma of fresh warm butter. The professor set a good table. He smiled at the two bottles of wine and I felt a bit embarrassed. The food was perfect and the service impeccable, yet I sensed he wasn't fond of praise. My respect for my neighbor was growing with every sip I took. Summarizing my life story for him—with the exception of being underwritten by Suat—released a good deal of my negative energy.

“May I ask whether the lovely lady in these photographs was your … wife?” I said while opening the second bottle.

“You can decide for yourself what she was to me,” he replied, staring for a while at the picture on the wall furthest from him. “I went to the Robert College School of Engineering in 1959. That was the year the engineering school first accepted girls, as I was to learn from Esther Ventura, who was standing behind me in the registration line.

“‘Let me buy you lunch,' she said. ‘Just to be nice.'

“From that moment we became, like the poet said, two halves of one apple. We were hardly apart until the day we graduated. Since there was no girls' dormitory on campus in those days, she lived in a wooden house in neighboring Hisar with her friend Suna. It was a thrill for me to walk her home in the cool of the night after a long study session at the library.

“She was a spirited girl with a great sense of humor. Maybe she wasn't the most beautiful girl at the college, but she was the most popular. As she was a chemistry major, we didn't have all that many classes together. At class breaks I would meet her in front of Hamlin Hall. She would spot me from 300 yards away and start running toward me, yelling ‘Aaa-liii,' and it would feel like a curtain of fog was lifting from my eyes. But it was also a little embarrassing because I imagined the eyes of the whole campus on us as she threw her arms around my neck. We were considered a model couple by the other students. They knew what time we'd be going to which canteen and would save our favorite table for us. Esther always had a greeting for everybody and a joke for the waiters.

“We never fought, and only once did I have to lay down the law to her. It was after our first-year finals. She made a proposal that shocked me—she wanted us to show up in swimsuits and dive into the Bosphorus in front of the Bebek gate of the campus. Of course I was angry when I realized she wasn't joking.

“‘Then I'll do it on my own,' she said.

“‘Look,' I said. ‘If you go swimming in a place where even the drunks don't dare to fall in, you'll not only cause a traffic jam, but you'll be known as the crazy lady of the school. I can't let you go down in Bosphorus history like that.' I walked away and left her sitting on the bench.

“Next day, at the time of the morning
ezan
, the windows on the tennis-court side of the men's dormitory were full of boys craning their necks to see what was going on. It was Esther. She was at the front door yelling my name at the top of her lungs. I knew she wouldn't stop until I went down.

“‘What's all this?' I said.

“‘I couldn't sleep. What would you have done if I'd dived in?' she said.

“‘I don't know, I might have transferred to Middle East Technical in Ankara,' I said.

“Quick as a shot she hooked her foot behind my leg and flipped me onto my back, then jumped on me and started pinching my cheeks.

“‘What! So you think I wouldn't follow you?' she shouted, whereupon the crowd of spectators burst into a round of clapping and cheering.

“During summer vacations I worked as a so-called intern at my sister's company. I'd send Esther flowery letters signed ‘Aliye,' the feminine version of my name, and she would secretly send me postcards from the magical European cities that she toured with her mother. I read them five times a day.

“For three years, we lived a dream-like existence. Then, in the summer before our senior year, we decided to get married, as we intended to go to America for Master's degrees. Esther knew it wouldn't be easy to get permission from her pious Jewish mother to marry a Muslim boy, but we were prepared to spend a while in Ä°zmir softening her up. We waited until the end of finals to bring up the subject. I didn't worry about my sister—she was carrying on with a company manager who was married, after all. As for my father, his response was, ‘Well, if you think you've found the woman of your life, what can I say?'

“So the mission of tearing us apart was left to Esther's mother. In our farewell scene Esther said, ‘I couldn't care less about her threats to disown me, but she vows that if I marry a Muslim she'll commit suicide. She never really recovered from my father's death, you know. She's dependent on me. You'd be appalled if you saw her. She curses me and weeps, weeps and curses me. You're the only man I can ever love, Ali. But …'

“And that was it.”

“More because it was in New York than because of the scholarship they gave me, I chose Columbia for a Master's in industrial engineering. I believed my wound would heal in that great city, and I wasn't wrong. Still, as I struggled with the city and the school, Esther remained like a clot in my blood. The following year I ran into her old housemate Suna on a flight to Istanbul. She hadn't been all that sorry to hear that Esther and I had broken up. Anyway, this dumpy, disagreeable woman was nattering on about Esther marrying a Jewish fellow and emigrating to Buenos Aires. I said, ‘If you're passing on this gossip to make me feel bad, you needn't bother—it won't work,' which shut her up.

“During the three years it took to complete my degree my sister Oya's lover divorced his wife, married Oya, and was divorced by Oya. I taught in New York for two years and then returned to Turkey for my military service. My sister by then was living with my father in his new Maçka apartment with the Bosphorus view. I was assigned to a military translation project at General Headquarters in Ankara. My father, in a burst of delayed affection, wanted me to visit every weekend. I decided not to return to the States when I learned from my sister that he had cancer. I finished my military duties and took a job at my old school, which by now had been nationalized as Boğaziçi University. Oya had risen to director of one of her company's divisions. On hearing how much I was earning, she arranged some consulting work for me. That New Year's Eve my father passed away. It never crossed my mind to think about matters of inheritance.

“In the 1970s the ideology wars hit Boğaziçi like every other Turkish university. Maybe I should have gone back to Columbia. Anyway, I was tidying my desk in preparation for summer vacation one day, when who should walk into my office but Esther? I acted as if I wasn't shocked. We said our hellos like distant friends; she smiled a guilty smile. She was still attractive and elegantly dressed. The weight she'd put on had only added to her sexiness. It was odd to feel so horny after all that time. She heard me tell the secretary to cancel any further appointments and asked if we could meet next evening in the Hilton Hotel lobby.

“‘I'll die if you don't come,' she said.

“I didn't expect a miracle, but of course I was curious about what she would say, so I went. She'd made reservations for dinner on the terrace and it wasn't long before she was telling me everything. Her mother had tried to marry her off but she wasn't having any of it. She met a man called Eli Arditti who whisked her away to Buenos Aires. She was glad to go, thought it would get her out from under her mother's thumb.

“First he tried to go into partnership with his cousin in Buenos Aires, and when that didn't work out, he set up an export business. He lost a fortune. Yet when they returned to Ä°zmir he managed to sweet-talk Esther's mother into another loan. She sold her apartment building to fund a jewelry business with an Istanbul Armenian. Esther was expecting that to fail too.

“She felt trapped, she said. She couldn't divorce him because of her daughter Stella, who was seven at the time and adored her ridiculous father. She couldn't take the money she inherited from her mother's rental properties out of the country for regulatory reasons. So she holidayed in Istanbul each year, then bought rugs at the Grand Bazaar with what was left and sent them back to Buenos Aires to sell.

“She told me all this like it was some kind of joke. It reminded me of her goodbye speech nine years earlier. I couldn't get a word in edgeways, not even to offer my condolences for her mother who had passed away. I asked the odd questions alright, and nodded when I was supposed to. To be honest, I was surprised that she wasn't offended by my diffidence. She dragged me up to her room with a view of the Bosphorus to show me Stella's picture. Reluctantly I took it in my hands. It really irked me to see how handsome her husband was. There was something of Alexander the Great about him. Stella seemed to have inherited her father's looks. She was as pretty as a china doll. I felt a sudden urge to flee. I reached out to stroke Esther's cheek goodbye and she grabbed my hand.

“The next morning we left for Cappadocia. It surprised us to discover that we were as passionate about each other as if we'd been separated for nine days rather than nine years.

“Every June for thirteen years she came to Istanbul. Every year I waited for her. We went on dream holidays, as carefree as two university students in love. We never brought up our problems—we lived in the moment and never thought about how it might end. By then I was a professor and my sister was nagging me to marry. I somehow found out that Esther had had to sell her last property. She mentioned once that Eli had gone into the used-car business. However naïve her husband might be, I never believed that he completely bought Esther's story about having to visit Istanbul every year to collect the rent from her apartment.

“On her last two trips Esther stayed at three-star hotels. She was happy for me to pay for everything. She was having trouble hiding her uneasiness. On that last trip, as though it were something to brood about, she told me that her daughter had become Miss Argentina. That night I had a dream. Her husband was speeding along in his sports car, crashed and died. As soon as the funeral was over Esther and I would get married …

“She'd never given me her address or telephone number, for fear that I might call her. When she didn't show up in June of 1987 I was almost in tears. Early in July—which is ‘Tammuz' in Hebrew and means the month of tragedies—I ran into her childhood friend Luna, whom Esther visited whenever she was in town. She had bad news for me: Esther and Eli had been killed in a car crash.

“I collapsed on the spot. From that moment on I could be little more than a zombie. Esther was the vital half of my body and soul. The inner paralysis that lay in wait for me was too horrible to contemplate.

“My sister ignored my depression. As far as she was concerned I had brought dishonor to the family because I had turned forty-five and was still unmarried. I couldn't bear it. I decided to move out and asked for my share of our inheritance. She swore that our father had left no cash and when I found out for myself that she wasn't lying I felt sick. I also learned that the law prevented me from forcing the sale of the apartment. I left on bad terms and moved in with a widower colleague of mine who lived in university housing. Your apartment's former owner, Izak, had been a school friend of Esther's and mine. When he told me that the flat beneath his old place was up for sale I bought it, heedless of the debt it would saddle me with. I moved here about twenty years ago.

“The pain of losing Esther eased little by little. I couldn't mourn for her because she'd locked herself within me. We fell asleep in each other's arms at night; in the morning she was the first thing I saw in the mirror. It made me feel good when I heard her voice in my ear or noticed her smile across the table at a restaurant. If I heaved a sigh, I murmured her name along with it. If the music was anything other than her favorite Nat King Cole I didn't listen to it. Whenever I heard the
ezan
I turned my face toward the city walls and stared. If I went out, my legs would involuntarily take me to our old hangouts. Esther was no longer my illegitimate wife for a month each June, she was my beloved who lived and breathed with me twenty-four hours a day. She might leave the room when I was lecturing or reading the papers or watching TV, but then she would re-enter and passionately embrace the whole of my existence.

“I'm sure I haven't expressed myself very well. But to make a long story short, my dear neighbor, my beloved's death turned the flame of love in my heart into an eternally glowing ember. To honour her memory, I retired and went into seclusion here. Now I teach part-time and translate romantic novels under a pseudonym, though it does worry me that I might discover a deeper passion than my own …”

The professor's words had left me moved. Under that mask of melancholy was a philosophical heart, and what he wanted to convey to me was that I shouldn't dwell on my sufferings but, like Tanya from Lvov, persist in the search for true love, regardless of the outcome. Who was it said, “Ah, how sad they were, the happiest days of my life”? Well anyway, those words were on my mind as I returned to my study and put on Brahms' Sonata No. 2.

A book fell from one of the library shelves. It was
The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
. Inside it was an envelope containing six photographs stuck together with Scotch tape. On the front of the first three were question marks; on the other three were “X's”. The pretty girl smiling at the camera must have been Suat's girlfriend, the one who died in the fire. On the back of each picture someone had written, pressing hard with a red pencil, a different stanza of Poe's mysterious poem.