“No. It’s not almost finished. The real story begins now.”
“In that case, professor, please lie down. If you don’t fall asleep, you can continue to talk. If you sleep, then you can give me a summary of the end of the story tomorrow.”
At first he seemed to object, then he agreed. I helped him to get undressed and put on his pajamas and then got him into bed.
The professor was lying on the bed on his side and I was sitting on the chair nearby. He continued his story in a tired, bitter voice.
He kept taking me to Romania, Germany, Istanbul, and Ankara with different people. I felt the pain, the excitement and then the images that sprang to life before my eyes slowed down and began to scatter. And Max’s voice fell silent. He was sleeping, breathing lightly but regularly.
I got up without a sound and looked out the window at the Golden Horn and the Saturday night traffic on Tarlabaşı Boulevard. I wondered if I should leave, but then thought that he might wake up and want to carry on with the story. On a whim, I took off my jacket and got into bed too. I hugged him from behind just as I had at the Black Sea Motel. I was also very tired. At first I thought he hadn’t noticed me but then without changing his position at all, he said, “Thank you.”
* * *
—
It’s dark inside the plane. The blinds are down, so I don’t know whether it’s light or dark outside.
A few people are waking up in the seats around me. More and more people are getting up to go to the toilet.
I’ll finish this chapter and then take a short break.
* * *
—
What are you thanking me for?” I asked.
“This will make it easier for me to tell the rest of the story.”
“This isn’t the first time I’ve embraced you, Max.”
“Yes, I know, thank you for that too. You saved my life.”
This time we were both dressed but I felt the same intense tenderness I had before. I rested my head against his back.
He was speaking almost in a whisper now.
I couldn’t hear what he was saying anymore, but I knew the recorder would be picking it up.
I must have fallen asleep as he talked, because the next thing I knew my phone was ringing, and it was almost noon. It was Ilyas, asking when he should pick me up.
“You don’t need to come to my house, Ilyas,” I said. “Come to Pera Palas at two, we’ll meet there and take the professor to the airport.”
“Very well, ma’am,” he said.
The professor was gone, but I could hear water running in the bathroom. After a while he came out wearing a white bathrobe. He smiled.
“How deeply you were sleeping!” he said. “Oh, that delightful sleep of youth…”
I got up too, had a shower, and felt better. The sleepless night, the drink, and the crying had given me shadows under my eyes and made my face puffy. I made a compress with the icy water. I didn’t want to appear ugly to Max.
After that we ordered breakfast from room service. We drank our strong, black coffee and ate our breakfast looking out over the Golden Horn. After breakfast we packed his suitcase, and then he handed me an envelope.
“This is the letter I mentioned yesterday.”
As I read the letter I felt a lump in my throat, and tears began to form in my eyes. Max had his back to me, as if he didn’t want to see my reaction. Then he walked slowly to the bathroom.
I quickly copied the letter. He emerged from the bathroom just as I was writing the last words. I handed him back the original letter, then folded my copy and put it in my bag.
“I’ll take good care of it, Max.”
He smiled. We sat in silence for a while, and then went downstairs. The hotel bill would be sent to the university but he paid the extras, that is, the food, drink, and so on. He was holding his violin case. A bellboy brought down his suitcase and handed it to Ilyas.
We got into the car and left. We said nothing until we got to the airport.
The traffic was relatively light because it was Sunday.
He kissed me on the cheek as I bade him farewell at the terminal and said in a low voice, “Thank you. For everything.” Then he walked away without looking back and disappeared into the crowd.
CHAPTER 14
I can’t describe the emptiness I felt after he’d gone. The world suddenly seemed a different place. As Ilyas drove me home, I looked out the window at all the cars, all the houses. So many people, all with their own stories and pasts, their tragedies and triumphs, none of which I would ever know.
When I got home I sat down, and decided I would do as little as possible for the rest of the afternoon.
I took the recorder out of my bag. Everything that Max had told me was contained in this tiny device. I was holding an amazing story in my hand. I felt as though I was about to discover the secret of life.
Max had said that he would tell the whole story but there was something missing. An important part of the story; maybe the most important part. A secret that he couldn’t confess even to himself. A secret that led to a lifetime of regret, and even to his cancer. I thought this secret was hidden in his unconscious mutterings in Şile when he kept repeating, “Forgive me, Nadia.” Several times, I wanted to ask him about it in Pera Palas, but I hadn’t dared to.
I’d learned so much in the past few days. About things that had happened in this country not that long ago, and what had happened in Europe within living memory. But I also realized I hadn’t learned nearly enough and that I needed to know much more.
But what did it matter if I knew what my grandmother had been through in the context of historical events? What did it matter if I knew what had occurred on specific days 60 years ago, 100 years ago, or 600 years ago? What was I going to do with the knowledge of what the people Wagner spoke of had experienced in this city? It could only be meaningful as a story about people.
The people rushing around at the airport, the anxious drivers on the road, the overweight women at the university, the people shopping in the malls, all of them had their own stories. We take as much interest in their stories as we do in our own, as long as each story is taken on its own merit. Each story is, in the end, the story of human experience, of all of our lives slipping away.
As I sat there, I remembered how bored I used to get on Sundays when I was a teenager. My father would watch soccer games on the black and white television, shouting excitedly whenever his team scored a goal. My mother would either be cooking in the kitchen or doing the crossword at the dining room table. My brother would be out, and I would have been out too if there was anywhere to go.
I felt the same way that day. Max was gone, and with him had gone the excitement, stimulation, and curiosity that had made me feel alive. Soon Ahmet would bring Kerem home, and we’d go through the same routine day after day.
I’d travel the same roads, see the same people, hear the same gossip.
Perhaps the only thing that would make my life feel meaningful would be to get involved in Max’s story.
There was also Süleyman. Had he intended to steal the violin, and if so would he take revenge on me for taking it back?
When Kerem came home he went straight to the computer. I told him that tomorrow was a school day and not to stay up too late. He just grunted OK to appease me, and I knew he had no intention of obeying me.
I didn’t have the strength to get him away from the computer. I dragged myself to bed, but when I lay down I couldn’t fall asleep. So after a while I turned on the light and began reading about the Struma.
Conditions aboard the Struma as it sat off the docks in Istanbul were grim. There weren’t enough bunks for everyone, and there was little room to move around. There was no bath or shower, and only one basin for washing the infants. Nor was there any way to do laundry. Worst of all, there was only one toilet for 76
9 people, and there was always a line at the door. So people began to relieve themselves on deck. The deck became slippery with feces and urine and there was an unbearable stench.
The doctors among the passengers had to deal with hundreds of cases of dysentery without access to drugs, and two of the younger passengers began to suffer from severe psychiatric distress.
The days began at four or five in the morning, and people took turns filling buckets with seawater for whatever washing could be done. Fuel was rationed, and they were able to make tea and cook food only once every three days. The rest of the time they ate small amounts of fruit and nuts. The children were given half a glass of powdered milk and a single biscuit.
Jewish organizations in Turkey, Palestine, and the United States were doing whatever they could to resolve the situation. Simon Brod and Rifat Karako, two leading members of Istanbul’s Jewish community, tried to persuade the authorities to allow the passengers to leave the ship and continue to Palestine overland.
The British government and its secret service made every effort to stop the Jews from going to Palestine and to keep the Struma affair out of the public eye.
Meanwhile, life aboard the ship went on, and the passengers did what they could to establish some kind of normalcy in their cramped and squalid conditions.
Two young people were married by the rabbi on the ship. Passengers arranged social activities to make the most of their time. Two musicians gave a concert every night. Classes in Hebrew literature and Jewish history were organized.
That winter was unusually cold, and fuel was rationed because of the war, but nevertheless the Jews of Istanbul built a fire on the shore to give the passengers moral support. They brought wood and tended the fire so that the passengers aboard the ship could always see it.
I fell asleep reading, and woke the next morning with the pages strewn across the bed. Then I launched into the same soul-crushing morning routine. But as soon as I got to work I sensed that something was different. The secretaries and janitors looked at me strangely and whispered among themselves. People suddenly stopped talking when I approached.
I assumed that Süleyman had been spreading his gossip. I didn’t, in fact, really care. It was their problem if they got some kind of twisted pleasure from telling each other I’d slept with an eighty-seven-year-old man. Yet at the same time I just didn’t feel I had the strength to deal with this kind of nonsense. Not now.
I sat down at my desk, looked at my overflowing in-box, then suddenly, impulsively, got up and walked out. I decided I wouldn’t come back for at least a week, and I didn’t give a damn about the consequences. I’d tell them I was sick, and if I had to I’d manage to get a doctor’s note somehow. As I walked down the stairs, through the campus, and across Beyazit Square, I realized that the past week had changed me, changed the way I saw things.
As soon as I got home I phoned the rector’s secretary to tell her I was ill and that I’d be out for a few days, and then hung up before she could say anything. The house was a mess, but I decided that I wasn’t even going to try to do anything about it.
After sitting motionless for a while I phoned Tarık.
“Do you want to get together this evening?”
“Oh,” he said cheerfully. “Has your old man gone?”
“Yes.”
“OK,” he said. “Should I pick you up at 7:30?”
“No, I’ll come to you.”
“All right,” he said. “Bye!”
Then I drew the curtains in the bedroom, got into bed, and went to sleep. I slept until late afternoon, and was drinking a cup of tea when Kerem came in.
“How was school?”
He mumbled something that sounded like “fine” and went straight to his room. So, it seemed our relationship was back to what it had been.
I drew a bath and got in, leaving the tap on a little because I found it soothing to hear a slight trickle of water. I closed my eyes, surrendered myself to the feeling of the warm water, and tried unsuccessfully to get a grip on the events of the past week.
After that I got dressed and put on a little makeup. I ordered some grilled chicken wings for Kerem, left a little money on the table, and went out. It was eight o’clock.
Tarık lived in one of those new high-rise luxury apartment buildings. The security guard must have been told I was coming; he accompanied me as far as the elevator. When I went up and knocked on the door, Tarık opened it himself. He was alone; in other words he’d sent his maid away.
His apartment was furnished in a cold, minimalist style. There was no wood, patterned fabric, or curtains to give it a feeling of warmth. Everything was white, and most of the furniture was metallic. But he was on the 27th floor and had a wonderful view of the Bosporus. I stood for a moment taking it in, the passing ships, the twinkling lights on the far shore, the Bosporus Bridge, the illuminated facade of the Kuleli Military Academy.
“Let’s have a glass of wine,” I said.
“I’ve got some white port for you.”
“Thanks, but tonight I feel like red wine.”
He always had good wine. That evening he served a very nice Italian wine called Amarone. He poured it into huge glasses. After we’d finished our first glass he kissed me, but I pushed him away. When he asked what the matter was I just said I wasn’t in the mood.
He didn’t persist. He just asked, “What’s happened to you?”
“I don’t know,” I said, a little ashamed.
It was true. I didn’t know what I was doing or where I wanted my life to go.
Later, sitting at a glass-topped metal table overlooking the Bosporus we ate sushi that Tarık had ordered from Istanbul’s best Japanese restaurant.
“So, your old man’s gone,” he said.
“How does he come to be mine?”
“Just kidding, honey.”
“That’s OK then.”
“What was he like?”
“It would take too long to explain.”
“Why?”
“In fact there’s nothing to explain. He was pretty much like all the other visiting foreign professors.”
I didn’t want to talk about Max to Tarık. Somehow I felt as if this would be a betrayal of Max.
“Now tell me how you can be so cheerful?”
“Why shouldn’t I be?” he asked.
“We’re in the middle of a serious economic crisis. The lira lost a third of its value in a single day. People are going bankrupt, committing suicide, banks are collapsing, businesspeople are getting arrested. You’re in the money business, how can you be so relaxed?”
“Because I’m smart.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, let’s just say I’ve learned a few things.”
“What kind of things?”
“It’s easy to learn, but you need strong nerves.”
He gave me a supercilious smile. He loved talking about this kind of thing.
“You can’t move with the crowd and you can’t panic.”
“Meaning?”
“When everyone buys, you sell, when everyone sells, you buy and you don’t panic.”
“Is that what you’re doing? Hasn’t the stock market hit bottom?”
He laughed out loud and took a sip of wine.
“No, on the contrary we’re all making money.”
“Me too?”
“Of course. You’ve been making more money than ever. While you were showing the professor around you were also getting rich.”
“How did this happen?”
“Everyone was scared out of their wits, buying foreign currency and trying to smuggle it abroad.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t buy any foreign currency. I left it all in Turkish lira.”
“Are you crazy? When the lira is losing value so quickl
y…”
“This is the secret,” he said. “Let me put it simply. The Turkish lira became so unpopular that overnight interest rates rose to 9,000 percent.”
“So?”
“I invested all my clients’ money, as well as yours and my own, in interest-yielding Turkish securities. Just think, you’re earning 9,000 percent interest every night.”
“But against foreign currency…”
“The situation can’t continue the way it is. The exchange rates will balance out. But even with today’s rates you’ve made a lot of money.”
“How much?”
“At least twice as much as last month. But be patient, I’ll make a lot more money for you. Most people don’t know this, but the biggest profits are made in times of crisis.”
I did the math in my head, and realized that if I tripled my money I might not have to work anymore.
Tarık raised his glass and said, “To Maya, one of the new rich.”
“Don’t use that phrase, I hate it,” I said.
“Which phrase?”
“New rich. The nouveau riche.”
“I don’t know French.”
“It means, new rich. But it’s used for rich upstarts, social climbers.”
“For goodness’ sake,” he said, “Stop this nonsense, rich is rich, there’s nothing old or new about it!”
Tarık was not one to appreciate nuance of any kind. All he cared about was making money and living his version of the dolce vita. Max and Nadia’s story, my grandmothers’ stories, these would mean nothing to him. Even if I did my best to explain, he’d understand nothing about what I’d been through in the past week. But at the same time, being with him had done me good. It had lifted me out of the gloom I’d felt myself sinking into. And learning that I was getting rich had certainly cheered me up as well.
He insisted on taking me home that evening.
I was feeling better when I entered my dark apartment, the only light filtering from Kerem’s room.
I wondered what Max was doing at that moment. He was probably sleeping because he hadn’t slept the night before. Despite his age and illness he was a very strong man.
Serenade for Nadia Page 15
