“I’m very happy to have met you, Rita,” I said. “We’ve had a pleasant chat. I’ll come and visit you again.”
She looked at me hopefully. “You’re not angry with me?”
“No, why should I be angry? I enjoyed your company.”
“May Allah bless you!” she said and made the sign of the cross over her heart.
I thought, this is Istanbul. Someone saying a Muslim prayer and using an Orthodox gesture. The city of interwoven prayers, religions, and cultures.
I kissed her on both cheeks and went into the inner room. Madame Matilda wasn’t in as good shape as her roommate. She lay with her eyes half closed as though she were drained of life. She seemed to want to take leave of this world as soon as possible. But her mind was still sharp.
“Mrs. Arditi?” I asked.
She lay on her side with her face buried in the pillow. Without changing her position, she asked in a feeble voice, “What do you want?”
Her voice was so weak that I had difficulty hearing her.
“I’m Maya Duran from Istanbul University, madam. I wanted to ask you something.”
“Well, ask me then.”
“You used to live on Nasip Street in the late thirties?”
“Yes?”
“You had a neighbor at the time, Professor Maximilian Wagner. Do you remember?”
She turned slowly toward me and gave me an annoyed look.
“Why shouldn’t I remember? What do you want to know about him?”
“When the professor was deported he asked that his documents be left with you.”
“They were.”
“Where are they Mrs. Arditi?”
“Someone from the German consulate came and took them.”
“Who was it, do you remember his name?”
“I can still picture him, he had a sharp, mean face, but don’t expect me to remember his name. I think it began with an S.”
“Scurla?”
“C’est possible,” she said. “The name rings a bell.”
I was amazed at her memory. It was better than mine and I was less than half her age. I left the nursing home thinking about the two old women. Rita had really fooled me because I couldn’t tell a Greek accent from a Jewish accent, but I felt genuinely fond of her. I decided that should I reach such an advanced age, I would rather be like Rita than Matilda. In her own addled way, Rita was still enjoying life, but Matilda was waiting for the end like a prisoner on death row.
Then I thought about Max, who would die in six months, taking all his bitter, tormented memories with him. If I could at least find the Serenade it would bring him some consolation during his last days.
As I emerged onto the street, large snowflakes were drifting down. They had already begun to accumulate—on the streets, rooftops, branches, and even on people’s shoulders. Istanbul was so beautiful when it was blanketed by snow, all the harshness and ugliness was concealed, and it became a fairytale city—the mosques, synagogues, churches, and bridges covered in white—with a light mist drifting in the air, and the color of the Bosporus changed from blue to a magical teal green.
I walked slowly through the snow in pursuit of traces of Max’s tragic adventure. My destination was very nearby, but again I had some trouble finding it. Then, after asking around a bit I learned that once again the name of the street I was looking for had been changed. Ölçek Street had, I thought fittingly, been renamed Papa Roncalli Street. It was a narrow street running behind the Notre Dame de Sion School and the St. Esprit church, in a neighborhood that seemed to be inhabited mostly by Kurds from southeastern Turkey and Syriac Christian refugees from Iraq. Partway down the street I came to a large, walled enclosure that occupied an entire block. Inside the enclosure were a large garden and several buildings. I found that many of these buildings were occupied by Caritas, the Catholic charity organization, and included a school for the refugee children. One of the buildings on the upper side of the enclosure had a disc above the door bearing the papal coat of arms. A marble plaque, also bearing the papal coat of arms, announced in Latin that this was the Nunciatura Apostolica, and in Turkish that it was Vatican Embassy Istanbul Mission. Max had walked through this door, spoken to Father Roncalli and had a Roman Catholic baptismal certificate issued for Nadia.
So many of the countless throngs of people in this city had little idea of what had happened here. But then, until recently, neither had I. When I walked down the Grand Rue de Pera, renamed Istıklal Caddesi (Independence Avenue), I was too busy looking in shop windows to even notice the grand old buildings, let alone wonder about the countless stories associated with them.
Continuing on the trail of Max’s past, I hailed a taxi and told the driver to go to the Or-Ahayim Hospital on the Golden Horn.
As we passed over the bridge, I noticed that the seagulls seemed more lively and active than usual; they were circling around and diving into the water. Even though I knew they were after the migrating sprat, I somehow felt they shared my sense of joy and liberation. As we drove along the shore we passed the remnants of the Byzantine sea walls on our left, and on our right a Bulgarian church that had been built in Vienna, entirely of cast iron, and then shipped down the Danube to Istanbul.
* * *
—
The Or-Ahayim Hospital was a beautiful old building on the waterfront with a more modern annex next to it. I went through a gate in the iron railings, through the front door, and made my way through the crowds of patients to the information desk. I told them I was from the office of the rector of Istanbul University and asked to see the director of the hospital.
After a while, a portly, middle-aged gentleman arrived and greeted me warmly. When I told him I was there to do some research he graciously showed me around. Most of the corridors were lined with old photographs, and I asked him why so many of the men with Jewish names had the title of pasha. He told me they were Ottoman generals and officials who had played a role in founding the hospital. He also pointed to photographs of personalities such as Admiral Dr. Izak Molho Pasha, Dr. Izidor Gravyer Pasha, and Dr. Eliyas Kohen Pasha, and Atatürk’s doctor, Dr. Samuel Abravaya Marmaralı, who had also been a member of parliament. He also explained that the hospital had been built on a plot of land donated by Abdülhamid II in 1898. I asked him about the elderly ladies in pink I’d seen rushing about here and there. He told me they were volunteers, known affectionately as the Pink Angels.
While I was having coffee with the director in his office, I asked him which room Medea Salomovici had been in. He didn’t know. He didn’t even know who she was. When I mentioned the Struma, he confessed that he wasn’t very familiar with that story, but that Leyla, one of the Pink Angels, might be able to tell me more.
He had Leyla summoned to the office. She was a cheerful, healthy looking woman in her seventies. When I asked her about Medea she hesitated for a moment and then said, “No one ever remembers what happened to those people. Or rather, no one wants to remember it and no one ever talks about it. But I’ve been working as a volunteer here for a long time and I know which room she was in.”
As she led me to the room, I felt a strange sense of excitement. I felt as if I were going to see Medea herself, and that I would find the young Maximilian standing by her bedside, beseeching her for news of Nadia. But of course, it was just another hospital room occupied by a frail old woman who seemed to be struggling to breathe. I just looked around briefly, then closed the door, and left without disturbing her.
I felt somehow let down, felt I should never have come. What was the point of going to visit all the places Max mentioned in his story? I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible, but Leyla wouldn’t let me go until she’d given me a jar of the rose-petal jam that the Pink Angels made.
It was early evening by the time I left the hospital, and it was still snowing quite heavily. Rush hour was in full swing and I had tro
uble finding a taxi, but I finally got one and struggled home along the slippery, crowded streets. After feeding Kerem and cleaning up the kitchen, I went inside to read the rest of the information I had on the Struma.
It was a depressing story to read, and although I’d heard Max’s story, the information Kerem had gathered was a bit haphazard and random, and it was difficult to find the connecting threads.
There were pictures of the ship, which made it easier for me to visualize the story, the statements of residents of the coast near Şile who remembered the bodies washing up on the shore, the story of David Stoliar, the sole survivor, who’d clung to the wreckage with a Bulgarian crewman who died before the rescue, and who’d told him he’d seen the torpedo speeding toward the ship.
There were also some articles about the aftermath: the ensuing tensions between the Jewish Agency and Sir Harold MacMichael, the High Commissioner for Palestine; the protests throughout Palestine; the posters that appeared of MacMichael and the words “WANTED, murderer, Sir Harold MacMichael, High Commissioner for the British Government in Palestine, for the crime of causing the death by drowning of 800 immigrants on the ship, the Struma!”
Walter Edward Guinness, Lord Moyne, Britain’s most senior official in the Middle East, who had put pressure on Turkey not to let people on the Struma ashore, was seen as the main culprit. Lord Moyne was assassinated 6 November 1944. The assassins, seventeen-year-old Eliahu Hakim and twenty-two-year-old Eliahu Bet Zouri, were hanged on 22 March 1945 in Cairo Prison. When they were questioned in court as to their motive they said, “We were avenging the Struma!”
MacMichael survived an assassination attempt in August 1944.
It was only years later that the cause of the explosion that sank the ship was discovered. In the early 1960s, the public prosecutor of Frankfurt appointed Dr. Jürgen Rohwer, a military historian, to investigate the sinking of the Struma. He learned that the German Danube U-boat flotilla was not present in Black Sea at that time. Warships based in Varna were later deployed to escort and protect Italian tank supply ships, but they were not yet present in February 1942. The Struma had not been sunk by a German ship or submarine.
In the course of his investigation, Dr. Rohwer spoke to the head of the military history department of the Soviet Navy and learned that the Soviet submarine SC-213 had been in the southern Black Sea at the time the Struma sank, and that this submarine had sunk an unidentified ship 14 miles north-northeast of the Bosporus on 24 February 1942.
I also learned that the then prime minister of Turkey, Dr. Refik Saydam, had touched on the subject in his speech at the Turkish Grand National Assembly, 20 April 1942: “We did everything we could in this respect, we are not in the least responsible, either materially or morally. Turkey cannot be the destination of undesirable refugees. This is the course we follow. This is why we could not detain them in Istanbul. It is extremely regrettable that they fell victim to an accident.”
There was no doubt in my mind that this was mass murder. The governments of Britain, Romania, Germany, Turkey, and the Soviet Union had conspired in the deaths of at least 769 innocent refugee people, and then had avoided responsibility, and tried to pretend it had never happened.
Maximilian used to say, “No government is innocent!”
They had deported him so he would not be able to investigate this crime. His unexpected return to Turkey so many years later had to do with the Struma, and that was why they’d put security agents on his tail. That was why the British and the Russians wanted to know what he was doing in Istanbul.
Yet what did Maximilian, a lecturer at a university, and Nadia, a harmless student, have to do with all this? They would have lived a good, peaceful life together. They would have worked to advance their academic careers, raise their children, and be happy.
As I was thinking about this, I suddenly thought about the score of the Serenade. I was determined; I was going to find it. For me, searching for the Serenade would be to take a stand against the kind of mentality that had led to the deaths of these people.
It seemed very likely that the score of the Serenade was being kept in Nazi archives in Germany, together with the file and other documents taken from Istanbul University.
I got up and collected the papers that had scattered as I threw them down. There were a few things to clear away in the kitchen as well. As I went along the corridor, I saw that Kerem was at his computer. I felt a pang of guilt as I wondered whether I was neglecting him. I went over and put my hand on his shoulder. He pretended not to notice.
“Could you help me?” I asked.
He turned his head, looked up at me, and raised his eyebrows.
“Can you find out where the Nazi archives are stored? I really need to know and you’re so much better at this internet stuff than I am.”
He laughed, and seemed pleased that I’d asked him for help. I already knew part of the answer and could have found what I needed on my own easily enough, but I felt that his involvement was good for both of us and for our relationship.
He got to work right away, and called me about half an hour later to show me what he’d found. The International Tracing Service had been set up in Bad Arolsen, Germany, in 1955 to help the victims of Nazi persecutions and their families, and its archives contained 50 million reference cards on 17.5 million people. Its archive holds 26,000 meters of various types of records and 106,870 microfilms. To date the center had responded to 11.8 million requests for information.
I was sure that I could find Scurla’s report on Max there, and I was excited that I might be able to find the score for the Serenade. Bad Arolsen was a spa town about 45 kilometers west of Kassel. I was eager to go right away, and indeed, if possible, I was prepared to set out the next day.
Unfortunately, however, the next day my world was turned completely upside down.
CHAPTER 16
I was still in bed when the telephone rang. I’d been making the most of my sick leave and had been sleeping late every day. I knew somehow that whatever it was, it wasn’t going to be good. The telephone makes the same sound every time it rings, but sometimes it seems to have a different quality. You know somehow that it’s going to bring good news, or bad news. That morning the sound of the telephone ringing had an irritable, strident quality. I hesitated, then reached for the receiver.
The first thing I heard was Ahmet’s voice shrieking at me.
“What the hell were you thinking!? You’ve brought shame on the whole family. How are you ever going to look Kerem in the eye again? How are you going to face your parents?”
“Hey, slow down a minute, I just woke up and I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you feel any shame at all?”
“Look Ahmet, why don’t you just tell me what your problem is?”
“Shame on you, shame on you!”
“What the hell are you talking about? Why are you shouting at me like this?”
“Haven’t you seen the papers?”
“No, why?”
“Well, you’d better, you shameless slut.”
“Oh, go to hell!”
I hung up on him.
I was annoyed at being woken up this way, but I was also curious. Ahmet usually didn’t have the courage to shout and carry on like that—he preferred the passive-aggressive approach. What had got him so worked up?
I got up. Kerem had gone to school. When I glanced at the kitchen table, I saw that he’d eaten the breakfast I’d put out for him the night before. So at least I wasn’t going to go through the whole rigmarole of making sure he caught the school bus.
I rushed to the front door. The janitor left a newspaper on the doorstep every morning and Kerem never touched it. I opened the door, grabbed the paper, and began to skim through it. The usual political news, a picture of a pretty woman at the top right corner of the first page, celebrity news on the second page, on th
e third page, news of murder…And then I saw it on the fifth page. It was a medium-sized article.
SCANDAL AT
ISTANBUL UNIVERSITY
Once again rumors of scandal are rippling through Istanbul University. Maya Duran, (36) a university public relations officer, is alleged to have been involved in an illicit affair with a visiting American professor, Maximilian Wagner (87).
Another member of the university staff and a motel employee found the couple naked in bed together and described what they’d seen as “disgusting.” The news has stunned the university community.
Asked about his views on the scandal the rector said, “We are looking into the allegations, and the appropriate steps will be taken if they are substantiated.”
The university’s Secretary General said, “We can’t ignore allegations that would tarnish the university’s image.”
Professor Wagner has already left the country, and our reporters have been unable to reach Maya Duran for her comments.
I ran to the bathroom and vomited. I vomited until green bile came up.
When the telephone rang again, I answered out of habit. A woman’s voice asked for Maya Duran.
“Speaking.”
“I’m calling from the…”
I hung up before she could finish her sentence. The telephone began to ring continuously. I put the telephone on silent. The red light kept flashing.
I went to the kitchen, made myself a strong cup of coffee, and sat down to pull myself together and try to figure out what to do. This was a disaster—it was going to change my whole life. I kept telling myself to calm down, that allowing myself to panic wasn’t going to help anything, but I just couldn’t get a grip on myself. The coffee upset my stomach and I tried to eat a biscuit but I just couldn’t manage it.
Then I remembered the pills Filiz had prescribed for me. Something called Lexotanil. I’d been experiencing insomnia and I’d asked her for something to help me sleep. I’d never taken any, but the bottle was still in my bedside drawer. I found them and took a quarter of a pill right away.
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