Many and Many a Year Ago

by Selcuk Altun

  Having resolved my crisis of joy, I called Professor Ali. He chuckled and said, “Let’s meet at the Marmara Café.” He didn’t take his eyes off the glass in front of him until I said, “My only fear is that, true, Sim won’t refuse me now, but one day if she can see she might leave me.”

  “I don’t think you rushed into this thing too quickly. Everybody around you was saying what a nice couple you’d make and how when you walked arm in arm you became almost one body. I knew you’d call me after she went back. I’ll make one and only one comment on this matter: just listen to your heart, my son.

  “Now here’s something else I have to tell you. Esther and I don’t intend to leave anything behind us when we leave this world. The house we live in is yours. Besides that, I’ve got a good buyer for my old flat in Balat. I made a deal with Ken Melling, an American translator and lecturer at Kadir Has University, to sell him the place for $185,000. Your new neighbor-to-be is a likeable person in his sixties. I’ll put the money in your bank account. It might come in handy for Sim’s eye operation.

  “Esther’s bridge partner Perihan has a physician son who is coming from Boston to Istanbul for five days for a wedding. Kamil is on the staff of a well-known eye clinic there, and if you wish, he’ll take a look at Sim’s eyes.

  My eyes filled with tears. “Professor, I don’t know what to say. This is too much.”

  “You deserve no less, son,” he said.

  Perhaps because of the heightened emotion, I gave him a quick summary of how Suat Altan had become my benefactor. Seeing that he wasn’t particularly impressed, I kept the part about Suat playing Cupid to us to myself. I walked him to the Taksim metro. There were tears in our eyes as we embraced goodbye.

  I dove into Sıraselviler Avenue on the heels of a nervous ambulance. Then I remembered that Rifat Demren’s favorite restaurant wasn’t open for lunch. I leaned against the Changa Restaurant’s closed iron door and phoned Sim.

  “I wonder myself what words are going to come out of my mouth,” I started by saying. “You were my houseguest for just ten days but what you left behind is ten years’ worth of yearning. I planned to infuse the joy of life into you because your eyes were shut, but you taught me to see a myriad of hues with my own eyes. When I go walking now I feel the absence of your warmth like a missing piece of my own body. Whatever I see in the city I feel like describing it to you in all its colors, and when I feel your absence something in me falls to pieces. You ruined my relationship with Bach and Vivaldi. Your eyes are the most alluring in the world, even if they’re not open. If I don’t say ‘I love you,’ it’s because it sounds too ordinary. And if you say ‘Yes’ to my coming to you, I’ll never leave you again, Sim!”

  “Yes, come immediately,” she replied. Staggered by the force of the fireworks that exploded inside me upon these words, I collapsed. When I opened my eyes again I was a strange bird. I got up and walked, and I was a line of musical notes. Swinging and swaying I made my way back home …

  The sturdy man I ran into on the stairs was Ken Melling. I invited him in for green tea and gave him a tour of the house. Standing before an out-of-the-way shelf in the library he said, “I don’t know rare books all that well, but there are two leatherbound volumes with coats-of-arms there that could be valuable.”

  As he left he said, “They’re about to start major repairs on my apartment. I’ll move in after the new year, and the first thing I want to do is to teach you backgammon. I’d better go now, you look as pale as a new lover about to meet his beloved for the first time.”

  IX

  Arrow met me at the garden gate. I sensed some reproach in the way he jumped up on me. I was wrestling with him for the sake of old times when Zakir appeared at the door of the annex. His bowed legs, discolored sweat pants and baggy sweater made him look like a character out of “The Pink Panther.”

  “Haluk Bey and Samsun have gone to İzmir on business,” he said. My guess was that his son had plotted this trip in order to leave Sim and I alone.

  “And I suppose Bereket and Renk have also gone to the village?”

  “They have, I swear on the Koran!”

  I imagined the olive trees that leaned back as I passed before them were like the gods of Mount Olympus who turned into forms of vegetation during sacred rites. Before I rang the bell of the stone house I shot a glance through the living-room window: Sim was listening to a small radio on her lap and—I hoped—waiting for me. She sat upright in her armchair as if posing for Banu. She was wearing a beautiful orange and gray dress. She looked as haughty as a model and as vulnerable as an abandoned kitten. I rang the bell determinedly, but had no idea what my opening lines would be. The door opened and I barged in wordlessly and wrapped my arms around her as tightly as I could. My mouth opened to speak, but instead I kissed her.

  “I’ll never forget that you’re a gift to me, Sim,” I said. She leaned her head on my chest, put her arms around me, and started to cry.

  I stayed at the stone house for three days, and on the fourth we went to Ayvalık to buy engagement rings. Haluk accompanied us. His expression seemed to say, “I knew from the first glance that this guy would be my son-in-law.” (Do we need to analyze this?) After lunch we all went to the village cemetery. Arrow tried to join the party, so Zakir gladly stayed behind with him: as far as he was concerned, the old suit he wore might as well have been a set of fetters.

  It was no surprise to see that the only monument belonged to Nalan. Her epitaph, carved in white marble in the shape of a book, read:

  You alone are near when you are far

  Loneliness comes from the road you go down.

  Haluk Bey knelt before the well-kept grave. As he cleared away the moss nobody else could see, he seemed to be bringing his wife up to date on recent events. We waited for him to stop crying before we put the rings on our fingers. He embraced us and said, “The reason you were both spared from these fatal accidents was to strengthen your togetherness.”

  Samsun took us to the Ayvalık station to catch a bus to Istanbul, stopping off at a gas station restroom on the way. The litter of radical journals and bedraggled fanzines on the front seat made me wonder what might be in the glove compartment. Thus Spake Zarathustra by Nietzsche, Three Anatolian Legends by Yashar Kemal, CDs by Leonard Cohen and the left-wing folk singer Edip Akbayram, Sudoku puzzle magazines: were these his carnival masks? Before I climbed onto the bus I told him, “I owe you a debt of gratitude because, while you were trying to save your lady from loneliness, you did me an even greater favor. But if I ever see you again in whatever mask you choose, I’ll make sure you regret it.”

  I almost added, “After, of course, I deal with your boss.”

  *

  Dr. Kamil Polat was a man in his forties with curly hair and slanting eyes; and he was tiny. Perhaps this was why, I thought, he tried to look like a rhetorician. He examined Sim at a clinic on the Asian side of Istanbul, where a medical-school friend of his worked. I appreciated the fact that he never referred to the erroneous treatment my fiancée had already undergone.

  “It’s a very challenging corneal disk detachment. It wouldn’t be an easy operation. And time is against her; she has to be operated on soon. I would recommend Dr. Carl Cooper. He is a partner in the Wishion Eye Clinic where I work and a legend in his field. They call him C. C. for short. His initials, you see, sound like “See, see” in English—a happy and deserved coincidence. If you’ve got $250,000 I’ll start begging immediately.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say but, “We’ll be grateful to you.”

  “I’ll call you in forty-eight hours. Otherwise my mother’s words—‘If you don’t arrange an operation for Sim I’ll never speak to you again!’—will come true.”

  Dr. Kamil Polat called when he said he would. Dr. Cooper had received the X-rays and other files and would operate on the morning of 19 January. We were to be in Boston three days before the surgery for a final examination. More good news was that he’d obtained a ten percen
t reduction on our bill. As the words Allah razı olsun rolled off my tongue, it didn’t occur to me that I had only $185,000 in my account.

  *

  I was taking Sim to visit the radio announcer Saadet Gülmez, her one-time neighbor in İzmir and an old high-school friend. I was excited at the prospect of at last seeing the labyrinthine interior of the Istanbul Radio House where he worked. But on seeing Sim’s young friend playing her voice like a virtuoso, I sneaked out of the gloomy building at the first opportunity; it would have embarrassed me to be introduced to her as a professional colleague.

  I walked toward the book dealer whom I used to see when I was staying at the Pera Palace. I had to find at least $45,000 for Sim’s surgery. Strangely, I didn’t think it necessary to make any plans beyond ascertaining the market value of the two books Ken Melling had pointed out to me in the library that day. On the inside front cover of the books was written N. ZERVUDAKI. I was glad that I had no time to think about how Suat had acquired these books that Count Noldolsky had inherited from his beloved’s husband. As I opened the door of the tiny shop at Galatasaray, a middle-aged man with glasses was holding forth: “No, it was Yashar Kemal who told the greatest love story of Turkish literature in The Legend of Mount Ararat.” The smiling book dealer and a young woman sitting on the only chair in the store were listening to him, but I couldn’t tell whether it was out of respect or just because he was a regular customer. He looked like a bureaucrat or a failed writer played by Peter Sellers. When his hand reached toward the two books I pulled out of my briefcase, I assumed that he was the dealer’s secret partner.

  “If these two masterpieces of the Ottoman era are to be sold for any reason other than marriage or illness, I’ll be heartbroken,” he said.

  “I’m suffering from both,” I said.

  “Then I can direct you to someone who can speedily solve your problem. There’s a small bookseller just five minutes from here on foot. ANKA specializes in rare and historical books, maps, and photography. Open by appointment only. The owner is İsmail Bayramoğlu. He’s a serious collector of Ottoman books in foreign languages. He lives in Paris and Istanbul and is an honest perfectionist. Shall I call him?”

  Despite the florid phrases of gratitude choking my throat, all I could get out was, “I would be glad of that, sir.” He went out to use his cell phone and I shifted awkwardly on my feet, too self-conscious to examine the books on the shelves. My new fairy godmother said, as he gave me the address, “Ismail won’t charge a commission if he can set a good value on the books.”

  I walked down Balo Street among the tiny buildings camouflaged in beige and gray paint and climbed the stairs to the third floor of one adorned in faded red. ANKA looked like a book museum. Had I seen this plain smiling man, Mr. Bayramoğlu, on the street, I never would have taken him for a world-class collector. As he took his cigar out of his mouth his age dropped from the forties to the twenties.

  “These books are important and in good condition,” he observed. “And especially if these coats-of-arms prove to be what I think they are …”

  He held a magnifying glass to the insignia. He sniffed the bindings. He put on his gloves and ran his fingers over them. He consulted other books, brochures, the Internet. After speaking in French to two different people on the phone he concluded, “These books came from the library of Emperor Napoleon the Third.” If I waited for the Paris auction I might get 130,000 euros, but there were Turkish customers who would pay 90,000 to 110,000 euros right away.

  I was trying to work out what that would be in dollars when İsmail, seeing my helpless expression, said, “I’m talking at least $125,000. When do you need the money?”

  “Tomorrow, if not today,” I said with quavering lips.

  He tucked a receipt for the books in my pocket as I left. Although I knew Balo Street was full of bars, the James Joyce Irish Pub had escaped my attention before. I plunged into the dimly lit interior, where I downed a double cognac and reviewed the train of events. If Suat Altan and/or his counterparts were really planning to push me into a blind cul-de-sac after first opening one door after another, I wasn’t going to let them have the last laugh. Whatever they might think, even if Sim left the operating room as blind as she came in, it would not matter that much to me.

  Next day, when İsmail Bayramoğlu called to inform me that he had deposited $125,000 into my account, my parting words were, “Sir, can you tell me who the man was who sent me to you?”

  “That was the retired banker Selçuk Altar. He dislikes the limelight, but in my opinion he’s one of the country’s most important book collectors.”

  I rushed to Yapı Kredi Bank to get my credit card limit increased to $185,000. I bought two open New York-Istanbul plane tickets and Sim and I went to the U.S. consulate to start the tedious rigmarole of obtaining visas.

  *

  During our last week in town we were treated like “brave conscripts.” The day before our flight, after taking Sim to the painter Sevinç Altan’s studio apartment in Galata, I dropped by Radio Estanbul to say goodbye to Rifat Demren and leave him six weeks’ worth of taped material to broadcast.

  I needed to drop a spare set of house keys off with Sami. He brought me linden tea and said, “They say there’s a ninety-nine-year-old woman at Ayvansaray who tells fortunes. The bazaar got together and had Sim’s fortune read. She said at least one of her eyes will be saved.”

  I couldn’t bear this.

  “Sami, are you a lousy liar or are you just imitating one? If you could only hear the sound of your own blabbering voice, your spirits would be the first to sink.”

  *

  Boston! The receptionist who checked us in to our hotel offered us a room on the twenty-fourth floor with a view of the river. I was slightly offended when I realized that the Wishion Clinic had recommended this luxury hotel because it was specially equipped for the handicapped. Sim went to bed and quickly fell asleep. I sat in front of the large window to view the cityscape at night. The Charles River, embraced by a body of light on either side, looked tame. I couldn’t help comparing it to the archaic Golden Horn that was lake, river, and sea all at once. I was glad the sight of the red lights glowing from our neighbouring hotel didn’t produce butterflies in my stomach as it brought to mind Disco Eden. I liked the soulless house next to it for the feeble light leaking out of one or two windows. A plane groaned overhead.

  Dr. Kamil Polat managed to make us laugh by playing the Fenerbahçe soccer club’s fight songs in his car on the way to the clinic. I loved the campus town feel of Cambridge on the other side of the river. I tried to describe to Sim the harmony of color and height between the brick buildings and the green vegetation surrounding them in the skyscraper-free district. It was reassuring to see the Wishion Clinic, composed of blue glass and gray aluminum, on the deserted Arrow Street. There for three long days, while Sim exhausted herself going into one examination after another, I meditatively roamed the building’s corridors. I prayed for the visually impaired who approached me with little steps, and said hello to those who extended an arm.

  On the evening of 18 January we were ushered into the presence of Dr. Carl Cooper. He was a gentleman in his sixties who seemed firm but fair. He inspired trust when he refused to give hope. “There is great damage to her left eye,” he said. “We’ll be very careful to avoid leaving any scars.” I went to the cashier to put down a fat sum as an advance. Not to seem disrespectful to Kamil Polat, I signed the release form without reading it. They told us Sim would stay that night in a private room. That evening Dr. Polat and I went to an Italian restaurant on Newbury Street with overly attentive waiters. He drank only one glass of white wine since he would attend Sim’s operation the next morning. As he dropped me off at the hotel he said, “Well, the good thing about eye surgeries is that they don’t end in death,” which did nothing to decrease my anxiety. Like an adolescent, I was on the brink of saying, “Kamil, I love Sim the way she is now. What if gaining her sight back is the cause of my losing he
r?”

  Back in my room I chose three cocktails at random from the minibar. I pressed against the window to look for the farthest point of light in this town that combined the skyscrapers of New York with the red brick of London. No more merciless a joke than losing Sim as she regained her vision came to mind. I imagined a narrative in which she abandoned me for the love of a genius painter. I wondered what Ahmet of The Legend of Mount Ararat would do in this case.

  They let me see Sim for five minutes before the operation. As they escorted me out I said, “If worse comes to worst, we can always start where we left off,” recognizing the cliché even as I uttered it. Dr. Polat asked me to return in three hours.

  Disturbed by the icy cold of the empty streets, I sought comfort first in the Lame Duck bookstore and then in Grolier, which carried only poetry. I bought Averno by Louise Glück for the sake of her beautiful name. As I wandered the Harvard campus it occurred to me that a school isn’t the most significant factor in one’s education. I took shelter at the Pamplona Café and drank organic teas whose names I was hearing for the first time. I experienced the juvenile ambivalence of a child waiting for his mother at the maternity hospital, excited about the prospect of a sibling but uneasy about sharing his mother’s love.

  At 12.50 I stood up and walked to Arrow Street. Dr. Cooper had already indicated that he could save Sim’s right eye, but I was worried about the next stage. Not knowing how well I could play the part of acting euphoric about a successful outcome, had I found a strategy worthy of Ahmet of The Legend of Mount Ararat?

  Kamil Polat gave me a thumbs-up and advised me not to embrace her too powerfully—as in the Turkish movies—when he allowed me to see Sim for ten minutes. I poked my head through the half-open door and said, “If my face is uglier than you expected, my body won’t bother to come in.” That she had put her pillow upright behind her and was sitting up was a positive sign.