The Black Rose of Halfeti

by Nazli Eray

Buñuel opened his eyes a little from where he lay on the stretcher.

  “Go, go,” he whispered.

  We didn’t know what to do. The stretcher was placed in the ambulance and they closed the doors.

  The ambulance drove away, sounding its siren.

  The Black Rose of Halfeti was distraught. She was covered all over with blood.

  “This is a nightmare,” I said. “We went into a nightmare. Come on, let’s leave.”

  I was very upset. Trembling all over. My nerves were shattered.

  We started to run along the dark graveyard path holding on to one another. The wind had come up.

  The deep green branches of the cypresses were waving, and the wind made a low roaring sound among the old gravestones and the trees. This was a different world within the world.

  We were struggling to get away from there with all our strength. I came face to face again with the statue of the woman that had had the flowers left in her lap.

  “We’ll go this way,” I shouted. “Otherwise we won’t be able to get out of here. We’ve lost our way among all these gravestones.”

  We started to run, hand in hand, to the right.

  We turned and went around and came back to the same spot, as though the old cemetery had taken us in the palm of its hand.

  “We’re never going to get out of here,” the Black Rose of Halfeti moaned.

  “We will. Just don’t let go of my hand,” I said.

  We were sweeping around in the deep, dark whirlpools of death. I realized that.

  These aged, worn stones that hadn’t been visited for perhaps half a century confused our vision, sending us strange signals from the other world; this Catalan cemetery was trying to pull us in like a suction cup. We were covered with sweat.

  “We have to get out of here before nightfall,” I cried.

  “This is such a weird place!”

  I called back, “It’s a corner of Buñuel’s soul, the fears of his childhood, and the weight of death that he feels over him. We have to escape from here!”

  My foot caught on a stone.

  I fell down full length. The Black Rose of Halfeti let out a scream.

  My head was touching the earth. I had fallen on top of a grave. Out of the corner of my eye I could see little dead plants on the grave, the moss on the edge of the stone, and yellow marigolds.

  “Get up! Get up from there!” the Black Rose of Halfeti was shouting. “The grave will take you in! Get up!”

  With a final effort I managed to sit up. The sweat coming down from the roots of my hair flowed into my eyes. I didn’t know that a grave could have such a powerful magnetic force. The earth stuck to me like a suction cup. It wouldn’t let go.

  “Stand up! Get up! Quick!”

  I was able to get up to a kneeling position.

  I read the name that time had begun to erase from the stone at the tip of my nose: DONNA ELVIRA.

  The Black Rose of Halfeti pulled me by the arms with a last effort. I slowly drew away from DONNA ELVIRA.

  I was covered with earth.

  “I was dying,” I murmured. “What a strange thing, I was dying . . .”

  I had managed to free myself from the pull of the grave.

  “Donna Elvira,” I muttered.

  Suddenly we saw the damp and slippery snakeskin slowly waving in front of us. We passed through it and ran to save our lives.

  “We escaped,” I whispered. “We escaped.”

  My knees gave way. I sank down in the passageway.

  THE SEER STONE

  We had come back to my room in the Zinciriye Hotel. The Black Rose of Halfeti collapsed on the couch and was crying hysterically.

  “Don’t cry,” I said. “They’ll save him. I’m sure of that.”

  “What if something happens to him?” she sobbed. “How would we know? They took him away in an ambulance.”

  “He’ll get well,” I said. He’ll recover. I feel it.”

  She was in a terrible way.

  I took the seer stone in my hand and slowly touched it. I was lost in thought. It frightened me to be that close to the place of death.

  Human life is bound to a thin cotton thread. I felt that once again. We had run in the whirlpools of death and only managed with difficulty to get ourselves out of that deep, dark silent world.

  The seer stone slowly started to light up. I looked at it anxiously.

  The Black Rose of Halfeti asked nervously:

  “Is there any news from Buñuel? Can you see the hospital?”

  A woman appeared in the depths of the seer stone. She was an unusual woman, a dark beauty. She had a melancholy expression and a beautiful smile that added mystery to her face. I adored the purple velvet gown she was wearing. It was embellished everywhere with starched pieces of tulle and lace.

  I had never seen this woman before. I looked closely at her.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I am Donna Elvira,” said the woman. “You visited my grave today. I wanted to thank you.”

  “Donna Elvira!” I said. I recalled the name that was on the tombstone of the grave where I had fallen.

  “You were in that grave in Luis Buñuel’s dream . . .”

  “Yes!” said Donna Elvira. “That’s a very old cemetery. Luis Buñuel used to play with his friends among the graves when he was a child, and this unusual world both frightened and fascinated him.”

  “Donna Elvira,” I said. “We almost didn’t get away from that grave today. We went down one path after another as though we were in a labyrinth. It was hard to get out.”

  Donna Elvira nodded.

  “That’s what death is like,” she said. “It’s very hard to escape from it. Different kinds of energy in the grave pulled you and confused your mind.”

  “That’s exactly what happened,” called out the Black Rose of Halfeti, who was sitting beside me. “My spirit was totally confused there.”

  Donna Elvira said:

  “I’ll come to you again. I’m being pulled back to my place now.”

  The image slowly began to fade.

  A little later it had completely vanished.

  Donna Elvira was gone.

  “What an incredible thing,” said the Black Rose of Halfeti. “The woman inside the grave you fell down on.”

  “Yes, an old graveyard that had a great effect on Buñuel when he was a child . . . That’s how you get into his dream.”

  “We should have asked the woman about Buñuel . . .”

  “We’ll hear from him,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

  THE ROADS TO CEBECI

  The lights had come on in the Night Salon. Outside, darkness had fallen like a coating of coffee over the city. Like a freshly brewed pot of coffee. Thick and moist. It obscured the Night Salon, these old men, and who knew what else. Underneath this mantle a thousand things were happening now. In fact, the interior of the darkness was teeming with activity; the night had thousands of invisible eyes and unknown ears.

  Now was the hour of love, passion, and murder.

  People who lived in flashing lights and shining worlds, who never felt the night or darkness, had long since merged into this multicolored night; there was sadness in dark corners and the lights had long since gone out in the houses of the poor. The streets had emptied and the police stations had turned on their dim lights.

  Everyone was living his own night now. The endless terrifying night of the mentally ill and the brief brightness of a flash of light were very different things. The night had rocketed through the city from end to end like a bullet shot out of a gun.

  Dr. Ayhan said, from where he sat:

  “Years ago, when I was at Konak Maternity in Izmir, a woman came to the hospital. She had broken her ankle. I paid special attention to her. She stayed in the ward. She didn’t know anyone in Izmir. What a strange woman she was. She had absolutely no connection to the city. A strange traveler, a peculiar stranger. I was very young. I fell for her,” he said. “She had no place to go
. When she got out of the hospital I brought her to my mother’s house. Then one morning she ran off without leaving a single trace behind . . .”

  “Allah, Allah,” said Şevki Bey. “Who was that woman, I wonder?”

  “Who knows?” said the old doctor. “I really wanted to have her. At that time I was like a spear gun. Twenty-six years old. The woman was older than me, but very attractive. I hadn’t ever met a woman like her before. It was as though she had come from another world to Izmir, to Varyant. I caught her a couple of times staring for a long time at the Cordon bayfront in astonishment. Like she was seeing the world for the first time . . .

  “Who knows what happened? Where did she go off to that morning?” he asked. “The one I’m in love with looks like her. Her eyebrows, eyes, the way she stands and sits. Just like her. As though I found her again years later.”

  “Life is so strange,” muttered Mustafa Bey.

  Hıfzi Bey said:

  “Let’s go out tonight and go to that Cebeci.”

  “But we’ll get lost on all those confusing streets in the darkness of the night . . .”

  “Why should we get lost, friend?” said Hıfzi Bey. “There are four of us. What one of us forgets, another will remember. Let’s go to that Cebeci.”

  “Okay, we’ll go tomorrow night,” said the old doctor.

  “No, that’s no good; by not going and not going, we might wind up never being able to go at all,” said Hıfzi Bey.

  “He’s right. We may never get to go to Cebeci.”

  “Well this is really terrible, then,” said Şevki Bey.

  “What’s that?” asked the doctor.

  “A lock on the brain,” said Hıfzi Bey.

  The blonde woman brought in their tea on a tray.

  “I brought your evening tea,” she said. “That’s enough of these philosophical conversations.”

  The pasha was in the wall. He coughed a little inside the frame.

  “Yes, Pasha,” said Mustafa Bey. “Did you want something?”

  “Come over here,” said the pasha. “I have something to say.”

  The four old men slowly moved closer to the pasha.

  The pasha began to speak slowly.

  “The lock on the brain, the lock on the door,” he said. “Both of them are awful. I have no lock on my brain, but my door is locked. So then I can’t do anything.”

  The old men said to themselves:

  “A lock on the door. That’s an awful thing. You can’t get out of a locked door. Even if you know the roads, it doesn’t do you any good . . .”

  “Oh, these are depressing things, locks, cells,” said Hıfzi Bey. “Let’s talk about other things.”

  “Okay, let’s talk about other things,” said Şevki Bey.

  “Pasha,” said the woman. “Would you like a sip or two of tea?”

  “With pleasure,” said the pasha.

  He turned to the old men and said:

  “And don’t you make too much of a big deal out of going to Cebeci. You go from here to Kızılay, and then from there to the right.”

  “Is that all?” asked Hıfzi Bey.

  “Yes,” said the pasha. “Yes, that’s all. From here to Kızılay, and from there to the right . . .”

  “So that’s the road to Cebeci . . . ,” said Hıfzi Bey.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “It seems so easy,” said the old doctor. “Unbelievably easy. Why did we make such a big deal out of it?”

  “Who knows?” said Hıfzi Bey. “We just did.”

  “From here to Kızılay, and from there to the right,” muttered Mustafa Bey.

  THE DAY WHEN THIS LIFE WAS NO LONGER MY OWN

  Şevki Bey suddenly hollered:

  “Listen to me!”

  Everyone in the Night Salon was taken by surprise. Inside the painting, the eyebrows of the pasha arched slightly. The old men sitting in the armchairs in the salon were confused.

  “Listen to me!” said Şevki Bey again. “I remembered. I remembered something. I remembered the day when this life wasn’t completely my own anymore! I can see everything very clearly in my mind right now.”

  “What day was that?” asked Hıfzi Bey.

  “It was the day when my caretaker really gave me a rough time,” said Şevki Bey. “My eyes weren’t seeing so well, and I wet myself. He came hulking over me.

  “‘It’s your fault I got stuck hung up here. I can’t enjoy my life, my youth, old man!’ he said to me. He threw the soiled cloth into the garbage.

  “‘My whole life is cleaning shit,’ he said.

  “I was in shock as I listened to him.

  “‘But you get your money,’ I stammered.

  “‘This isn’t something you can just pay for.’

  “‘Then don’t do it,’ I said.

  “‘I’m hungry!’ the guy shouted.

  “For a moment I was afraid that he was going to do something to me. If he wanted to, he could easily kill me.

  “I stayed quiet.

  “He suddenly turned to me. Now he had a childish smile on that churlish face.

  “‘I shouldn’t burden you with all this,’ he muttered. ‘It’s not your fault. You’re senile.’

  “At that instant I felt like an ocean was welling up within me, horses rising up in the air,” said Şevki Bey. “I needed him, and that was the terrible thing. If that bear knew my dreams, what I wanted to do, my desires, he would be amazed. The will to live got even stronger in me that night. I came and I’m going, but I’m still alive right now. I didn’t want to see a lot or do a lot. I was a prisoner and he was the guard. I wondered how I could escape from this awful cage. To flee . . . to be free again . . . to have the courage to dive into life even though I’m a sorry wreck!

  “The whole plan formed in my mind right then. I was going to get free from this clink, from this gorilla of a guardian.

  “That night I ran away from home just before dawn,” he said. “I made it. I wound up here. So here I am with you!”

  He took a deep breath. It seemed as though he leaned back in the chair, where he had been sitting ramrod straight.

  What Şevki Bey had said in such excitement affected everyone.

  Mustafa Bey said:

  “I had a guard too. It seems like exactly the same person.”

  “It’s getting to be morning,” said the pasha in a low voice from inside his gilt frame.

  “There were many days when we felt that life didn’t belong to us,” murmured Mustafa Bey. “Days and years when we felt that life didn’t belong to us . . .”

  “As though they were both the same thing!” said the old doctor. His voice was pensive.

  “Maybe that’s what life is,” said the pasha from within the frame. “Maybe that’s the sum total of life. But leave it; don’t think about these things now. You’re alive now and you feel happy about that, don’t you?”

  “Yes!” shouted Şevki Bey. “I’m happy to be alive and to be here in this night!”

  “There,” said the pasha. “That’s the other half of life.”

  The blonde woman came into the room.

  “Let me turn on the radio so you can listen to it,” she said.

  The pasha said:

  “Let’s hear the news. The news.”

  The woman turned on the news.

  Everyone in the Night Salon started to listen to the first news of the day.

  “In the world today,” muttered the old doctor. “Let’s see what they say.”

  DONNA ELVIRA

  “Don’t cry, my dear. Don’t cry anymore. Look, Luis is fine. His eyes are open,” Donna Elvira was saying. She was stroking the Black Rose of Halfeti’s hair. “He’ll get better. He’ll be completely well.”

  “Where is the wound?” asked the Black Rose of Halfeti. Her face was filled with anguish; her eyes were all swollen.

  “He was wounded in the shoulder. He lost a lot of blood, but he’ll get over it.”

  I was following these two extraordinary wome
n from where I lay, looking inside the seer stone, which I turned slowly in my hand.

  “Do you know him well?” asked the Black Rose of Halfeti.

  “I’ve been watching over him since he was a child,” said Donna Elvira.

  “So you know what he was like when he was a child?”

  “Yes, when Luis was a little boy he used to play in the cemetery with his friends. He was very naughty and impossible to control,” said Donna Elvira.

  “I’ve taken care of him since then. One morning he left white flowers on the grave. As though he sensed me,” she said. “He was a very sensitive child.”

  I heard Buñuel’s voice in the background.

  “Have them prepare a painkiller for me!” he called out.

  He was lying in an iron hospital bed. At the head of the bed there was a bronze crucifix on the wall.

  His beard had grown out a little. His face was pale.

  Two nuns in white rushed over to the bed.

  “Where is Buñuel staying?” I whispered.

  Donna Elvira said:

  “In the Catholic Nuns’ Hospital.”

  “How strange,” I murmured. “As though he were in one of his own films . . .”

  They gave him the needle.

  Buñuel had turned slightly to the side now where he lay. The young nun at his side was looking at him with a mixture of admiration and affection.

  “Do you feel well?”

  “I’m a little better,” said Buñuel.

  The Black Rose of Halfeti jumped up from where she was sitting.

  “I want to go in to him!” she cried.

  “We’ll go to him in a little while,” said Donna Elvira. “He’s going to sleep now.”

  And truly Buñuel gradually closed his eyes and drifted off into a deep sleep.

  The nun in white bent her head down a little and looked at him.

  “Who is this woman?” the Black Rose of Halfeti called out. She was in a rage.

  “She’s a nun,” said Donna Elvira. “She’s waiting to see if he has a temperature.”

  “How strange,” commented the Black Rose of Halfeti. “This is a person from his own world. This nun in white . . .”

  “Yes,” said Donna Elvira. “There are always nuns like this in his films.”

  The interior of the stone became muddled all of a sudden. The connection broke. After I massaged it for a while, I put the stone down.