21
SETTINGS
The winter of 1987 brought heavy snows. My aunt was seventeen years old at the time, and she was in love with the handsome developer. That winter the wooden house was going to be torn down so that the foundation could be laid for the new apartment building, winter being the season when such work was done. They had packed up the furnishings from that chicken coop and planned on staying with a neighbor, who would then stay with them in turn when their place was being built. In that way, they would all squeeze into each other’s homes as they waited for their own new ones to be finished. The fact that my grandma had traded her land didn’t disrupt that chain of events. The developer was helping out with the rent during the time when they didn’t have a place to stay, but they were trying to spend as little as possible of that money by finding temporary solutions for their housing problem. I’m not sure why I gave that technical and financial explanation, but there you have it.
In the end, however, because of the bitter winter, which would have made it difficult for them to move, the plan was postponed. Even if they had moved, the wreckers wouldn’t have been able to work anyways.
My aunt explained, “In one night, it snowed so much.”
“All the way up to our waists,” my grandma added.
Both of them would gaze out the window at an invisible horizon—they could each see it in their mind’s eye. In the winter of 1987, my aunt, the age I am now, had bundled up and was looking out the window. “Just look! A wild snowstorm.” My grandma was constantly stoking the stove so that they wouldn’t have to take the remaining wood with them when they moved.
My aunt would later recall that my grandma had said, “When we move, we’ll burn down the place and be done with it.”
“How long is it going to keep snowing? A week, a day . . . In that case, we may as well enjoy ourselves as best we can.”
When my grandma said that, they surrendered to the silence of the snow and did their best to enjoy themselves. The world was as soft as down. Daily life had curled up and gone to sleep beneath the blanket of snow, buried so deeply that not a single trace of its vulgarity or coarseness could be seen. Weighed down by the snow, the roofs of the homes started to creak and groan.
My grandma said, “It’s a good thing I went to the market yesterday.”
Before the snows came, the weather had been pleasant and gentle, with a mild breeze. But at one point in the night, it suddenly started snowing, and the clothes they’d hung up to dry froze. The sweaters had their arms held out, the underpants seemed to be stretched over thick thighs, the socks looked like they’d walk off on their own, and the trousers appeared to be doing the twist. All of them had come alive in the frost. My aunt went down to the garden at one point in the night to bring them in. When I say “garden,” don’t misunderstand; it was just a tiny outdoor area that abutted the neighbor’s garden. The houses, which had been built shoulder to shoulder and back-to-back atop Byzantine ruins, ran like a stairway all the way down to Fındıklı.
Buried in snow, the garden looked so beautiful . . .
The storm eased, and now the snow was gently coming down. It didn’t even seem like snow, but rather soft tufts of cotton falling from the sky. Softly. Slowly. And then? And then there was a hushed voice coming from the garden of the neighboring house: “Hey!”
My aunt looked. It was the handsome developer.
“What are you doing here?”
“My father asked me to come check on our properties.”
My aunt was standing there, holding the frozen laundry. It looked like she was clutching an armful of arms, legs, and torsos.
“Since when is this your property? First do some construction, and then we’ll see what belongs to who.”
“You look so beautiful when you’re angry,” the developer said. Or maybe I’m making that up. But what else could he say?
My aunt glanced up at the window, wondering if her mother could see her.
The developer went on: “There’s something I didn’t tell you. That was just an excuse. I mean, coming to look at the houses. I was standing in the garden of your neighbor across the way, watching you. As I watched you in the darkness, you looked so beautiful, standing by the window . . . A smile of peerless beauty on your lips as you gazed out the glowing window into the distance, watching the snow fall.”
Was he the one who said that?
That unforgettable developer of apartment buildings with mosaic-tiled facades, whose construction used beach sand in the concrete and swiped materials . . . Was he the one who spoke such words?
It was him. That’s what he said. And he even kissed my aunt right there on the spot. “Tomorrow I’ll be waiting for you at the bottom of the hill,” he said. “Make up something to tell your mom and come.”
My aunt was suddenly flushed with heat, set aflame by excitement. As the young developer walked away, his leather shoes slipping on the snow and his face tucked into the fur collar of his deerskin coat, my aunt watched him, her heart filled with love. She fanned her face with her hand. The heat was so intense that she opened her mouth in an attempt to cool down, and the snowflakes that landed on her lips melted almost with a hiss.
The next day she ran to meet her handsome beau.
Some kids from the neighborhood were sledding on the slope of the street. She looked around to see if there was anyone who might tell her mother that she’d been sneaking away, but they were all children. Pulling her shawl up over her mouth and nose, she thought, “No one would recognize me anyways,” and she started heading down Sanatkârlar Mektebi Street.
There wasn’t a single car on the streets, not even a bus. Life in Istanbul had come to a halt.
He was waiting for her.
“How did you get here?”
“I walked,” he replied.
Can you imagine it? He walked all the way from Sarıyer.
“How did you get home last night?”
“The same way. I walked.”
We’re all screwed! There’s no bigger liar in the world than a man in love.
After playing in the snow like children and having a snowball fight on the Golden Horn Bridge, which was completely empty, our sweet young man said, “Let’s find somewhere to warm up! I’m freezing.” Mr. Beautiful Smile. Mr. Thirty-Two Teeth.
He suggested that they take the Tunnel from Karaköy up to Beyoğlu. When they got on the single-car underground, my aunt was clutching her hands, which were freezing cold, but she couldn’t take her eyes from him.
Our sly fox proposed, “Let’s go to the Pera Palace Hotel.”
“I’m not dressed for it,” my aunt said. “It wouldn’t be right.”
“Why not, darling? We’ll get a room, warm up a bit, and have something to eat and drink. We’ll be able to sit and relax to our heart’s content.”
Whenever she heard the story, Aunt Hülya would ask, “But weren’t you afraid?” After all, she’d grown up in the same neighborhood.
“I wasn’t afraid. Why should I have been?”
They dried their socks and gloves, and then ordered two cups of salep to warm them up on the inside. Pulling open the sheer curtains of the hotel room, they looked out over the view of the Golden Horn, sitting opposite each other with their legs crossed. They listened to the radio, waiting for the television programming to start. Then they lay down on the bed and made out for a while. But when they both realized that they were quite hungry, they decided to order room service.
“Our food arrived on a wheeled cart just like you see in the movies, with a glimmering dome over each dish, which the waiter removed as if he was performing a magic trick. There was boiled peas, rice, and a fried chicken thigh, which hadn’t been cooked all the way through.”
I remember my mom and aunt asking, “That was it?”
After eating, they lay down on the bed and slept.
Again, the same question: “That was it?”
“Well, there must’ve at least been some kind of dry humping or
something.”
Only Aunt Hülya would say such a tactless thing.
No matter how hard she tried to compare that love story beneath the snow “to something that quickly melted” and revealed the bawdiness below, it wasn’t going to happen.
When my father’s sister said, “We thought that the time for us to be together would arise of its own accord,” it wasn’t a satisfactory answer, as indicated by Aunt Hülya’s question: “Seriously, how long can you keep fire and gunpowder side by side?”
My father’s sister knew she was going to be in trouble, as she’d left home at around noon and the evening call to prayer was already ringing out when she was on her way home. Our handsome hero accompanied her all the way to the garden of Cihangir Mosque, and along the way the two walked arm in arm.
“Are you going to Sarıyer from here?”
“No,” he replied, “I’ll stay at the Pera Palace.”
Years later, she realized that he’d stayed at the hotel the night before and then taken her to the same room where he’d slept, which should have been obvious when the hotel attendant whispered to him, “If ya kidnapped that girl, I’ll tell your father!” After all, Black Sea people always look out for each other, right?
As soon as she got home, my grandma grabbed her by the hair. That’s what she always did. That’s what they always did in those times. In ’87 model Cihangir neighborhood life, catfights were the norm.
“Where the hell were you?”
“Well, I’m here now . . .”
“Meaning that maybe you weren’t going to come back, is that it?”
“We had a snowball fight. I hung out with my friends; we walked around . . .”
“In this weather?”
So, where was my father when all this was happening? My father, who was studying archaeology at the time, had an inordinate amount of freedom concerning when he could come and go. That night, he was at the home of a French teacher from his old high school, as they often met up to talk. Many years later, that’s where he would meet my mother.
Like the snow, the clamor lasted until dawn.
There was a range of events that night, spanning from my grandma throwing a slipper at her daughter, which missed and fell into the stove, to giving her a resounding slap across the face.
But my father’s sister never confessed to where she’d been, so my grandma had no choice but to believe the lies she’d been told.
“If you’re going to muck about the streets like that, I’m not going to send you off to university.”
“What about my brother? He’s studying to get his degree, and he’s allowed to go out.”
“He’s a man.”
“But I’m a person, just like him. What’s the difference? I can come home when it gets dark. I’d understand if you said that you were worried. But right off you start accusing me of things.”
“What’s this business of spending time out walking around? How am I supposed to know what you’re up to? When it snows, wolves come down into the city. But these aren’t the four-legged kind! No, I’m talking about two-legged mischief and wickedness. Because snow is white. It’s innocent. Beautiful. You don’t dare set foot on it. All bad things happen in weather like this, when good people are having a good time with this or that.”
My grandma was right.
The wife of the American archaeologist came pounding on the door on a winter’s day. The city was buried in snow. That was the winter of 1975. My aunt was five years old.
When my grandma realized that the woman was her American rival, she thought, “How did the plane land in weather like this? I was afraid to go to the corner market for fear of slipping on the ice. So, how did that woman come here all the way from America?”
Crazy questions in my grandma’s mind. But there was the woman, standing there with a young boy. There was another detail that caught my grandma’s eye: they were both wearing nice thick coats and their feet were snugly booted. A man was standing there with them. He spoke Turkish, and was fluent in their language too.
Thankfully, my father was laid up, so he didn’t see that shameful exchange transpire. At the time, the husband—the American archaeologist—was in Ankara, chasing down funds so he could keep Hagia Sophia standing.
The American woman looked my grandma up and down, while she in turn put a hand on her hip and cocked an eyebrow. Her friends said that my grandma looked like Sophia Loren, whose films they watched at the open-air summer theaters. Of course, how would they have known anything about Marianne Faithfull? So she put on airs, doing her best to impersonate Sophia, the only actress with whom she was familiar. She lamented to herself, “If only I wasn’t wearing these stretched-out old socks and wool slippers.” The woman’s hair was done up in neat curls, her eyebrows perfectly plucked, her fingernails immaculately painted. My grandma, on the other hand, looked like a worn-out homemaker, despite the fact that a cleaning woman now came once a week and she had a wringer washing machine.
“What does it matter!” she thought. “The American loves me.”
“I swear to God,” she later said on her deathbed, “I didn’t seduce him. Sure, I liked him, but I didn’t make it obvious. Still, when he approached me, I couldn’t turn him away. I wanted to raise my kids as best as I could. The American liked my kids and enjoyed spending time with them. And I had a right to be happy too . . .” No, you’re not mistaken—that sentence concluded with some swearing.
“I’ve traveled a long ways to speak to you, woman to woman.”
“As if I wouldn’t have understood that without you bringing an interpreter!”
Not because she knew English, but because she was a good judge of character and immediately understood the situation.
“Out of politeness, I asked her if she would like some coffee.”
“Turkish coffee?” the woman asked.
“Your husband is quite fond of it too,” my grandma told her. “He wants it five times a day. I tell him that it will give him palpitations, but he doesn’t listen to me.”
But the interpreter didn’t translate that. Or if he did, it was most likely along the lines of “Turkish coffee very good for you. Clears the mind. You like?”
In short: the interpreter played a role in making sure that that potentially explosive meeting went smoothly. And then there was the money. A large roll of it. Exchanged from dollars.
“Take this and kick my husband out. Send him away. He needs to come back to America and be with us. It’s time to put an end to this double life he’s leading.”
Without a moment of hesitation, my grandma took the money. She sold her love.
“Rudolf”—by the way, I should mention that our adorable grandpa had European, even Russian roots—“mustn’t hear anything about this. I’ll talk to him myself,” the woman said.
A pause.
“Thanks,” she said.
“The madam says thank you.”
“Screw that madam and her gratitude!” my grandma said to the interpreter. “She paid me off for her husband, and now she’ll go away with him. I’ve got to think about my kids. That’s why I’m taking the money.”
My grandma didn’t like how the woman flashed her a phony smile of victory. The woman must have asked, “What did she say?” because the interpreter was the last person who spoke in the conversation. Who knows what he came up with as a translation for “Screw that madam”?
When the snow melts, all the filth is laid bare. Garbage, cinders, coal ash, frozen animals, carrion, remains. The way that my grandma sold out her so-called husband, her children’s sweet “father,” was no different.
“The snow melted and Rudolf came back from Ankara. He called and said, ‘I took the ferry from Haydarpaşa to the other side of the city, and now I’m at Hagia Sophia. Tonight I’ll come back to your place.’ Like a Turkish husband, he asked, ‘What should I bring? Do you need anything?’ I taught him that,” she added proudly.
The American taught her something too. Rather, something that Tur
kish husbands don’t say to their wives:
“I love you,” he said, and hung up the phone.
“Every day he proclaimed his love like that. But what do I know of love, of passion? Am I the only one at fault here? No. Everyone is.”
In any case, soon after that phone call, my grandma was standing in the middle of Hagia Sophia, holding the American’s suitcase in one hand while my aunt was holding on to her skirt, facing the American. Naturally, he was surprised. “Hayırdır?” he said, as he’d also learned to use that Turkish expression at inauspicious moments when you’re unsure of the outcome.
My grandma plonked the suitcase down in front of him. The sound echoed through Hagia Sophia, and a few tourists turned to look at them.
“Here are your things. Don’t ever come to my home again.”
She held out her hand, waiting for him to give her the key, but he didn’t understand. She wanted him to understand without her having to say anything. It was hard for her to ask for the key, to kick the American out.
“Give me my house keys.”
“I was on the verge of tears as I spoke those words,” she said on her deathbed, as her consciousness was slipping away. “I was shaking like a leaf, but Rudolf thought he was being confronted by a brusque Turkish woman. Although I loved him madly, I was acting like the most heartless person you could imagine. Normally, when he came home in the evening, he’d look after the kids while I set the table. I liked that fairy tale of a cozy home. I wanted it to go on forever. Sometimes I’d secretly weep in the kitchen, saying to myself, ‘What if he leaves?’ I’m not stupid. Do you think I didn’t know he had a family? He whispered it to me once. Fearfully. We were going to manage because we loved each other. He found me warmhearted and sincere, and I thought he was loving and affectionate.”
My grandma wouldn’t actually say such things, but in my mind that’s how I’d have her talk. Speak, sing like a bird! Who can hold you back?!
The Girl in the Tree Page 25
