Many and Many a Year Ago

by Selcuk Altun

  “Is it always the world’s way to shower gifts on charlatans?” he thundered. “That Istanbul commie first caused Hasan to be thrown out of university, then came here and took advantage of him as if nothing had happened. By the time he left Mahmudiye he had turned the lives of two families upside-down …”

  “Sir, please, calm down,” I began, not knowing how I was going to finish, and went on with something like, “If we can join forces to find this rogue, Batumlu, maybe it will help heal old wounds.”

  I paused hopefully.

  “Just a second,” said Talat, and left the room. When he came back minutes later he looked more relaxed. Flourishing the old cellphone in his hand, he went on. “You can meet with Hasan tomorrow morning at nine at his shop in Eskişehir. Patience Stone Carvers is in the old caravanserai next to the Sefa Hotel.”

  The Sefa Hotel’s gracious hospitality bored me. I chose a Tartar restaurant for dinner. After that I went to a bar with a trendy name and sat with my iPod in my ears while I watched the men watching a football game on TV. By the time I put on my pajamas I was tired of the hotel. At the last minute I’d thrown Tales of Detective Dupin into my travel bag, but it too failed to interest me. I turned an ear to the rhythm of the traffic on the street below. The receptionist, who persisted in mispronouncing the name of the hotel, had said that Patience Stone Carvers was one of the “strangest” meerschaum shops in the city. I nodded off finally while absorbed in what seemed to be a map on the ceiling.

  The basement of the Yediveren Caravanserai, which apparently hadn’t been painted since its opening, was full of small shops selling forms of meerschaum. The display windows, choked with ornate pipes and gaudy souvenirs, were dazzling. Patience Stone Carvers, however, did not have a window. The apprentice who let me in whispered that his boss was on the phone in the back office. I looked over the items on the shelves while I waited. I’d never seen anything like these human and animal figurines, these grotesque objects and delicate masks, anywhere, not even in the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul. Perhaps the craftsman’s intention was to reflect the honor of pain. Even I could grasp the patience required in their execution. They were bursting with details like the lines and cross-hatchings in a bleak graphic novel (though perhaps I was reading too much into them to see regret in the mask-like faces).

  With a wide smile Hasan Gezgin welcomed me into his spacious studio. He reminded me of those old portraits of Genghis Khan. He treated his tools like his children. It was disturbing to reflect that he’d spent his entire life in this shadowy hermit’s cave. Clearly he had already thought about what he was going to say. I suppose the reason why he focused on the meerschaum snake on his table as he spoke was to try to minimize the tension he felt. When ginger tea was brought in, he began, carefully, to speak.

  “My father was the foreman at the Yelkovan Horse Farm, the first privately owned stud farm in the area. The owner was Nabi Tabur. He was the richest man in Eskişehir; and his wife Safiye Hanım, the daughter of a Tartar chief, was said to be the most beautiful woman.

  “The Tabur family would spend weekends and entire summers at their villa on the farm. They had a daughter, Nalan, who was as pretty as a picture. She was a year and a half younger than I and we used to play together, but I never dared to look into her beautiful blue eyes. Still, because I could make her laugh I believed she was in love with me as I was with her. I had a large head and pudgy body and when Nabi Tabur called me ‘Fatso,’ my father would laugh behind his hand. I think he was disappointed I wasn’t going to be a jockey.

  “Nabi Tabur took over my education after I finished primary school at the top of my class. On the advice of his Istanbul attorney I entered middle school at Galatasaray Lycée in the city.

  “Haluk Batumlu was the most charismatic kid in our class. He was smart and daring and he took it upon himself to protect the outlandish Anatolian students from the Istanbul bullies. Nobody had the guts to ask him why his father was in prison.

  “By the time we were in seventh grade Haluk, myself, and a boy called Halit Mesutoğlu from Tirebolu had become inseparable. I was proud to be one of the ‘3 H’s,’ as we were known at school. Haluk was our leader; thanks to him our school days were a happy time. His mother, Aunt Selma, seemed to be generally dissatisfied with life. She’d taken on housekeeping chores for a White Russian refugee by the name of Count Vladimir Nadolsky who was stuck in Balat because of a hopeless love affair. The count was more than a kindly benefactor to Haluk: he treated him like his own son. He coached him for two hours every weekend in fencing.

  “In my opinion Haluk was the most handsome guy around, yet he had little interest in the girls who chased after him. We all thought his newfound interest in Nazım Hikmet in our last year at school was a passing fad. In those days—1950s Turkey—just quoting from a Hikmet poem could make you a traitor to your country.

  “We were together again in the Political Science department at Ankara University. I wanted to become a district official. By that time I’d awoken from the dream that Nabi Tabur would allow me to marry Nalan after I finished school. Vlad wanted Haluk to become a diplomat; and Halit planned to work with his father, a hazelnut grower, after getting a degree in finance. We lived together in a gray apartment in Cebeci—the doors, the windows, even the courtyard was gray. There was nothing by Nazım Hikmet that Haluk hadn’t read, and he’d started in on a few other banned left-wing books as well. At the bottom of his dresser drawers you could find a Stalin poster or two. Of course we didn’t abandon our leader in his new enthusiasm. We pretended to be interested in the books he brought home, and I managed to familiarize myself with those Hikmet poems that were like three-dimensional paintings. Haluk’s mother passed away during our first year. The next year the police arrested us and kept us in over night because of those illegal publications. We were expelled from school even though the case never went to trial, and this, I think, shattered Haluk’s dreams.

  “Back at the farm, I didn’t meet with the reception I’d hoped for. Nabi Tabur and my father thought my friend had victimized me. They decided I should do my military service and then come back to work at Tabur’s flour factory. Haluk came to Mahmudiye in May 1956; Vlad had thrown him out of the house when he learned why he’d been expelled. Haluk decided to run off to Moscow but wanted first to say goodbye and to apologize to my family for what had happened. My father was touched by this gesture and invited him to stay with us. That invitation was to be a turning point in the lives of many people.

  “Nalan and Haluk fell in love at first sight. The Tartar beauty easily vanquished Haluk’s notion of love being a bourgeois fantasy. I took a perverse pleasure in assisting their exchange of love letters and observing their love play on the riverbank. When her sneaky brother caught them together, I hid Haluk at a friend’s place in Mesudiye. They wouldn’t let Nalan out of the house after that. The family was on at her to marry a pharmacist, so the lovers decided to elope. Haluk asked Count Nadolsky for money but he never got a reply. So the lovers pooled their pocket money to try to make their way to Halit’s. How Nalan jumped from a second-floor window to meet Haluk … it’s a long story. Anyway, they went off to Tirebolu while I caught the first bus to İzmir to go live with my sister. Halit and I parted without a chance to say goodbye properly. It’s been fifty-odd years now and I’ve had no news of any of them …

  “The passion between Nalan and Haluk was too cinematic to last. Once they got through the money they’d borrowed from Halit, Haluk probably joined up with his comrades; and Nalan was, no doubt, taken back into the bosom of her family after a tearful apology.

  “Perhaps I can show you my permanent collection, Lieutenant? Let me explain why you won’t see any nudes or horses in it …”

  But I didn’t let him finish. I didn’t need to see his collection. I’d seen enough of the self-pitying expressions on the pieces I’d studied while he talked.

  *

  I ducked into the first Internet café I found and was annoyed to find there were no free
terminals. I commandeered a computer from the only youngster who wasn’t surfing porn sites. My plan was to get some information on Tirebolu, famous for its hazelnuts, and clear out of this tired town.

  I took the last train to Ankara and spent the night at the Sheraton, where I’d met Fuat. I ate at the old establishments—kebab at Hacibey, rosewater lokum at Ali Uzun’s. Next morning I couldn’t face traveling by plane, so I boarded the Trabzon bus with tickets in my hand for adjacent seats, thus saving myself from the interminable questions of a fellow passenger, but unfortunately not from the sighs of the prayer-bead-twirling man behind me. Luckily I slept until we got to Samsun. I was enjoying the lovely villages between Ünye and Tirebolu when the man interrupted my reverie.

  “Ah can see yew ain’t ever seen Çayeli before,” he declared in a thick Laz accent.

  The ticket booths at the Tirebolu bus terminal looked like beach cabins in a black-and-white movie. Once I collected my bag, which was handed to me as if it were a sacred relic, I raised my head, excited to form my first impressions of the town. The small bridge between me and a hill covered with handsome buildings divided the town in two. With good will I approached the venerable taxi waiting at the roadside sporting a bumper sticker, “Hurşit from Harşit.”

  “I’m looking for Halit Mesutoğlu,” I said hesitantly.

  I could have kissed the driver’s slicked-back hair when he said, “Get in, brother, I’ll take you to his house.”

  We climbed the hill somewhat laboriously, zigzagging up the narrow deserted streets. The driver was quick to declare that he was a student at the Open University, and then asked if I was a magazine journalist.

  “No, no,” I said. “I have the happy task of asking Mesutoğlu for a friend’s address.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that the finest old Greek mansion still standing in Tirebolu belongs to Professor Mesutoğlu and the Istanbul magazines come here to take pictures by the hundred, so I thought …”

  We wound our way through a silent neighborhood of decrepit houses and stopped on Terzili Street at the top of the hill, in front of an imposing pink and gray piece of history. Before ringing the bell I turned, at the taxi driver’s suggestion, to regard Tirebolu as it lay spread out below us. The panorama struck my eyes, then my soul.

  The door opened and I was greeted by a man of otherworldly ugliness.

  “The professor’s gone to Giresun,” he said. “He may be back in an hour. Write down your number and the reason for your visit and he’ll call you if he wishes.” The way he stared and muttered as I scribbled a hasty note brought to mind the hunchback of Notre Dame.

  I thought I might as well explore this mysterious town while I waited for Halit Mesutoğlu’s call. On the taxi driver’s advice I set out walking along Terzili Street. In one of the many ramshackle gardens with mossy stone walls I thought I saw a small flock of sheep that had somehow escaped the butcher’s blade. Where the street went over the top of the hill I could see the crowns of a group of ancient pines. I shivered to think how far their roots must descend, down to the base of the cliff. At the other end of the street clusters of pink and well-scrubbed schoolchildren were walking home as proudly as the self-conscious sons and daughters of exiled aristocrats.

  Mid-afternoon seemed interminable here and the people on the street appeared neither happy nor sad, content with the swinging pendulum of their moods. I left the center of town in search of a restaurant that served the local delicacy, pide, with Trabzon cheese, and saw a hearse sitting at the side of the road, out of gas.

  I was finishing my pide when the call came. On our way back to Terzili Street I learned that Aleko, the man who’d met me at the door, was the last Greek in Tirebolu and that the confirmed bachelor Halit Mesutoğlu was a professor at a French university. Every summer without exception he came back to his hometown; he was early this summer because of the death of a close friend.

  The professor was standing waiting for me as I stepped out of the lift on the third floor. His white hair was combed back from his forehead and his eyes were deeply set. He wore a purple cotton shirt and white denim jeans. His hands were clasped behind his back, as if I might readily be dismissed. I greeted him with military courtesy, looking him in the eye and nodding my head. The great hall into which I was escorted looked like an antiques warehouse. I skirted the silk carpet on the floor. It was a good thing that he sat me down in the armchair at his desk, as the view from the balcony would have distracted me too much. Professor Mesutoğlu called Aleko and issued orders in a melodic language spoken probably by only a hundred people on earth. I knew enough to keep quiet until the grotesque servant reappeared. Soon he did so, grumbling and pushing a cart on which were a bottle of cognac, two glasses, a plate of cornbread, and some chunks of bitter chocolate.

  Halit listened to me with apparent disinterest. On learning that Haluk Batumlu was due an inheritance in the U.S., he simply said, “That son of a bitch.” He was amused to hear that Hasan had become a master of meerschaum. When the cornbread was finished he refilled our glasses, lit a menthol cigarette, and frowned. I sank further down in the old armchair.

  “For three days after I started school I cried secretly in the restrooms,” he said. “The Istanbul kids always picked on the few Anatolians in their classes, and I was no extrovert. Haluk took me under his wing. He was the charismatic and rebellious class leader. I, in turn, loaned him money. Hasan, who that unruly bunch nicknamed ‘Fatso,’ joined us at the price of becoming the Sancho Panza of the trio. Though Haluk was the one who introduced us to brothels and bars, I continued to associate him with dreamy Hollywood stars. What I understood about him was limited to the knowledge that he never knew his real father, for whose imprisonment he made up noble reasons; and that his mother, a proud Kurdish beauty, entertained a platonic love for Count Nadolsky. I saw for myself, with a certain sadistic pleasure, the nature of the love-hate relationship between Haluk and the count, who swaggered as if he’d never taken off his gilded uniform and who didn’t refrain from beating our leader with the riding crop he’d brought from Russia.

  “Hasan withheld from you a critical detail of our detention in Ankara. The plainclothes cop who arrested us threatened us with torture and imprisonment if we didn’t give him the names of every communist who’d ever come to our house. When we walked free without so much as a slap in the face, I assumed that Hasan had sung like a canary. As we left the police station I spat in his face. The poor guy just bowed his head.

  “Haluk showed up in Tirebolu in the summer of ’56 with this Tartar beauty. As he stammered out an apology my father stood staring, mesmerized, at the lovely girl with the apple-red cheeks. Not only did he instantly lend the money Haluk requested to keep them afloat for two years, but he also sent the fugitives to Trabzon the next morning in his own car. While Haluk’s lady friend was settling herself in the car, he and I had an interesting conversation. We were walking arm-in-arm when he turned to me and said, ‘I was the one who talked.’ I was stunned. The heroism of the friend whom I’d idealized for nine years melted into nothing. I grabbed him by his dirty shirt collar and said, ‘You sorry bastard. I won’t spit in your face because I respect my own spit too much, but by God, that god you don’t believe in will damn you to hell.’ I’ll never forget the disgusting smirk on his face as he turned back to the naïve girl he would abandon at the first opportunity.

  “Back in Ankara that jerk used to bring in books and broadsides hidden under his coat and say, ‘If you read these well, you’ll be a communist; if not, you’ll be an anti-communist.’ Well, I’ve become a realistic socialist.

  “I never really left Tirebolu. I spend summers here with my childhood friends. I’ve spent too many mornings gazing at French menus and longing for nothing more than a Black Sea pide with white sheep cheese. The vision of chef Hayri’s meatballs and hunchback Halide’s ice cream never leaves me.

  “The year I completed my PhD thesis—1965—my father told me that Haluk had paid off his debt with int
erest in two transfers, six months apart, from Ziraat Bank in Ayvalık. I don’t know how much this will help you. I imagine Count Nadolsky wanted to ease his conscience a bit. Who knows, maybe the inheritance will prove a turning point in the lives of Haluk’s innocent children—if he has any.

  “I sent an apologetic letter to Hasan but it came back marked, ‘No forwarding address. Return to sender.’ Before I go back to Grenoble this time, maybe I should drop by Eskişehir …”

  The professor invited me to view the nude male sculptures he’d brought back from France along with the Fikret Mualla drawings he’d purchased from the artist for the price of a glass of wine. I delicately declined.

  On the drive back to Trabzon the delicate filigree of mist before our eyes slowly lifted and I felt like a Byzantine choir was rising to a crescendo in the hush after the afternoon ezan. To the right of the highway a sequence of heavy buildings hunkered between the sea and the mountains. We soon found ourselves in Trabzon again. As we said goodbye in front of the Zorlu Grand Hotel, the cab driver said, “For the love of Allah, brother, don’t hide your talent under a bushel. You’re a detective!”

  *

  I couldn’t book a decent seat on the Ankara-İzmir bus, so I convinced myself to fly. As I boarded the plane I was sure I would hear my inner voice announce, “Welcome aboard the ox-cart of the skies. Have a nice flight.” The bumper sticker on the taxi I took from İzmir to Ayvalık sported a rhyme, “This super taka / Made in Karşıyaka.” It was Greek to me. The swarthy driver, Sadi, pointed out twice that he was a middle-school teacher who had taken up driving to pay his credit card debts. On hearing that it was my first visit to Ayvalık, he automatically began, “Neighbor to the Mount Ida of Homeric myth, Ayvalık is a paradise of sea, forest, and fresh air. One of the world’s premier olive-oil centers for the last two hundred …” I closed my eyes; I wanted to play Brahms’ ‘Hungarian Dance No. 1’ to myself. We stopped for a snack at a gas station and Sadi asked what I did. I told him I was a detective. I vowed there and then, amidst the smell of gasoline and piss, to go home on the first bus if I failed to find Haluk Batumlu.