The Lamppost Diary

by Agop J. Hacikyan

  The passage of time only intensified Mama’s pain.

  Tomas was back from school. He used his key to enter instead of ringing the doorbell. He wanted to go straight to his room to hide his bruised face from Mama. As usual, he and his friends had been to Joseph’s to torment him. This time Joseph had managed to strike Tomas across the face with his blessed stick, which he always kept handy to drive away the menacing gang.

  Tomas heard his father and mother in the midst of a heated conversation.

  ‘She’s a lovely girl, five years old,’ Papa was saying.

  ‘I know she’s five. I know she’s sweet. She’s lovely. But I don’t care.’

  ‘Her mother was killed in a car accident, Lucie. She has no father. Her grandmother is too old to take care of her. She’ll end up in an orphanage.’

  Tomas remained frozen, listening to the conversation.

  ‘Lucie, think about it. It’ll be good for you, for both of us. Let’s adopt her before it’s too late. It’ll ease our pain. We’ll save an innocent child from misery.’

  They lowered their voices. Tomas heard only a few repeated phrases: ‘stepdaughter,’ ‘old grandmother,’ ‘Think it over ...’

  Tomas was horror-stricken at the idea of replacing his sister like a car after an accident.

  Mama shrieked suddenly, ‘No one can ease my pain. No one can replace Emma ... God forgive me, I’m refusing to help an innocent child. I’ll give her money, I’ll send her food, give her clothing. But I can’t fill my daughter’s bed with a stranger,’ and with that she walked out of the living room and came face to face with Tomas.

  ‘You heard us,’ she said.

  Tomas’s silence was confirmation of this.

  ‘I have you, my boy. I don’t need anybody else.’ She hugged him tightly. Tears ran down her cheeks. Then she noticed his face. ‘What happened to you, my poor darling?’

  ‘I fell at school. It’s nothing.’

  She ran to the bathroom for some cotton wool and iodine. By then Papa was also out in the hall asking the same question: ‘How did it happen? Were you in a fight?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t.’

  ‘Go and finish your homework. We’re having friends to dinner this evening.’

  Tomas couldn’t care less who they were having to dinner.

  *

  The question of adoption simmered slowly, but in no time at all the neighbourhood gossips had spread the news that the little girl in question was Tülay, the daughter of a Turkish mother and an Armenian father. Her mother was none other than Aysel, the most beautiful and illustrious exotic dancer in the country during the forties, who had been killed in a car accident on the Maslak Road. This young woman was the darling of the elegant nightclubs of Istanbul and the most in demand, highly paid call girl among the rich and famous. According to the gossip-mongers, Aysel had been seduced by an Armenian businessman and had given birth to Tülay during a brief foray away from the entertainment scene. And the businessman, they claimed, was none other than Anton, Tomas’s father.

  Such tall tales served to keep the local scandal-mongers’ creative juices flowing. They watched with interest as their stories gradually weakened and died over time and distance. Anton was immensely amused by this story about his affair with Aysel and secretly wished it was true.

  In actual fact the little girl was Armenian, and her mother had been killed instantly when hit by a taxi. Her father was a fly-by-night lover from out of town and no one knew his whereabouts.

  *

  Tomas’s parents were having the Abkars to dinner that night. Despite shortages of gasoline or bread coupons, they suffered no shortage of friends. The Abkars were late. Mama, superstitious as all Istanbul Armenians are, stuck a needle into the wall to encourage the guests to arrive quickly. The needle was supposed to prick the expected guests in their behinds to make them move faster.

  Mama and Papa saw the Abkars at least once a week, for dinner or after dinner, and played cards. Baron Melkon, the husband, owned a jewellery shop, and his wife Madame Perouse was a champion gossip. Her husband had had mumps at a mature age, so they were unable to have children; consequently, she devoted herself to rumours about all the Armenians who breathed within the city limits of Istanbul.

  Needles, nails, spikes or skewers made no difference. Melkon and Perouse arrived late, with the usual excuses and endless apologies: Melkon hadn’t been able to get home early because of the traffic, and Perouse’s mother had had a dizzy spell just as they were ready to leave.

  Tomas sat between his mother and Madame Perouse. He didn’t like her much. Her feet stank. Years later her image was still associated in his mind with the smell of Camembert well past its best. He liked her only when she read coffee grounds and announced weddings, unexpected trips, letters arriving with the swiftness of birds and dazzling kismets ...

  They were gathered around the rectangular dining table, a favourite place to settle all sorts of accounts. Their conversation was pessimistic, at times almost despairing, but they still had a good time. Like the rest of the minorities of the city, when Armenians got together they discussed the past – a kind of collective hallucination. It was like reading Arabic – starting from the end and moving towards the beginning. Despite their vague optimism about the future, a sense of doom was what gave them their kicks.

  They would occasionally rekindle the horrors they had experienced with relish.

  ‘I wasn’t afraid of the guards, not me; I’d go straight up to them and complain. Bullets were flying all around, but it’s funny, I wasn’t scared, not a bit,’ Perouse’s husband would say.

  His wife wouldn’t miss the opportunity to remind everybody that she was too young to remember the deportation.

  Tomas’s father would jump in, ‘You must’ve been either thunderstruck or, perhaps, retarded when you were twenty.’

  A heated argument about her age would then follow.

  Now and then they took out the old photo albums and studied each picture. The longer they leafed through the albums, the more they sensed a growing need to talk about bygone days, about friends and relatives who had passed away or others who had left for France and America. Some of the postcards they received from them were also kept in these albums, which told a story in themselves and served, as time went by, as obituaries.

  Tomas was bored to extinction. He had sat through so many dinners lengthier than the Last Supper, hemmed in between grown-ups. Children, regardless of age, weren’t supposed to leave the table while guests were still eating. And they all gorged themselves as if they feared an impending famine. After a while, Tomas’s imagination started to congeal; his head separated from his body and went on a pleasant walk. He thought of Auntie Elise’s upcoming visit. She was Mama’s second cousin and lived in Baghdad, the city of Ali Baba and the forty thieves. Tomas always had an amazing time when they came to stay. She visited them every summer with her two sons, Butrus and Issam. And her husband joined them for about two weeks at the end of August, before they returned home.

  *

  For Auntie Elise, the summers she spent in Istanbul were months out of time. She had left Istanbul as a young woman to marry Meshack Hannani, a successful businessman from Baghdad.

  Elise had met Meshack while touring France with her father and mother. The trip was a graduation present from her parents to their only daughter, who had completed her studies with flying colours at Notre Dame de Sion, Istanbul’s fashionable French lycée for girls. She wanted to study law but in those days strict social conventions made it impossible for her to do so.

  They had chosen to visit Divonne-les-Bains so her mother could partake of the thermal baths. The waters there might perhaps calm her shattered nerves.

  *

  Elise and her parents combined their stay at the Grand Hotel with frequent visits to the casino late in the afternoon. Before dinner they would play at the slot machines in the outer gaming hall. Then they would proceed to the restaurant for dinner, where they watched people (mostly
Swiss from Geneva and Lausanne) gamble away their fortunes around the baccarat and roulette tables operated by veteran croupiers in tuxedos and green mica eye-shades – ‘Faites vos jeux, Mesdames et Messieurs, rien ne va plus’ – then the buzzing sound of the little white ball as it hopped over the spinning wheel from fortune to ruin.

  On that particular evening, when the wheel slowed down the ball fell into a red slot and stopped in front of Elise. She had no bets, no chips to win or lose, but for Meshack it was an omen: she was the jackpot! He abandoned his chips and moved to the other side of the table to introduce himself to the young woman. Elise responded coldly and left to join her parents, who were busy watching the betting at an adjacent table.

  The second encounter took place the following evening in the main gaming room. Their conversation lasted longer this time and was followed by an unexpected invitation to her and her parents to come to luncheon the next day. Meshack didn’t believe in wasting time.

  Three months later Meshack made a special trip to Istanbul, and a day after his arrival, he proposed to Elise over supper at the Péra Palace Hotel. Without hesitation she politely rejected him. Her parents duly panicked. As far as they were concerned Meshack had been sent by God, even if she would have to leave them and move to Baghdad.

  ‘I can’t marry a man I hardly know,’ she tried to reason with them.

  ‘You’ve already met him four times. He’s educated, polite, rich, has good manners and comes from a prominent family. He can give you the life of a princess.’ Her mother paused to think of other qualities and distinctions.

  ‘Leave me alone, Mother. I’m not going to marry a man I hardly know,’ Elise shouted.

  Her mother was outraged. ‘Do you know how long I knew your father before we were married?’

  Of course she knew; she’d been told countless times.

  ‘For half an hour during the bridal viewing!’ Her mother sounded out of breath.

  ‘Times have changed, Mother.’

  ‘Fundamental things never change,’ her father interrupted in a calmer tone.

  ‘He’s at least ten years older than I am.’

  ‘What’s ten years, my dear girl. Time flies. You know we only want the best for you.’

  ‘Yes, and as time flies, he’ll get even older.’

  ‘He’s a great man, my darling, can’t you see?’

  Elise felt the familiar, furious urge to say something brutal. ‘Yes, you’re right, Mother. He’s great all right ... especially in bed!’ But instead, she walked out of the room.

  Her parents were very eager for this marriage to take place: primarily because they wanted to dispatch her out of the country and thus end her relationship with Levon, Tomas’s uncle. Elise had fallen in love with him immediately after his return from Paris, where he had studied art restoration. Since he was neither a doctor nor a dentist nor a lawyer, not even a well-off businessman, he was condemned to being considered unfit in the eyes of Elise’s parents. Besides (although not confirmed officially at the time), it was whispered that while Levon was in Paris he had been diagnosed with consumption – the classic disease of all struggling artists.

  Despite Elise’s promise to herself that she wouldn’t offer her life up for parental approval, her parents had the last word: Elise would leave for Baghdad if she didn’t want to be disowned by her father and mother. Marriages to men considerably older than their brides were quite common at the time, as long as there was money to bridge the gap. Imagine matching the modest means of Elise’s family with the legendary fortune of the Hannanis!

  Levon was badly hurt. He refused to see Elise. His friends tried to convince him that she had had no choice but he wouldn’t listen.

  On the evening of Elise’s departure for Baghdad a crowd of relatives, including Tomas’s parents, and friends went to see her off. She put on a brave and happy face until the train left the station.

  *

  A month after Elise’s arrival in Baghdad, the couple walked down the aisle to the prayerful murmurs of deacons, friars and bishops and the covetous eyes of Baghdad’s Chaldean high society.

  Now in her mid-thirties, Elise was still a captivating woman – with green, almost transparent eyes, and delicate features – always dressed in smart light-blue or orange silk dresses, and plagued day and night by admirers of both sexes.

  Her separation from Uncle Levon didn’t last long. On her first trip back to Istanbul to see her parents the two met, in spite of their promise never to see each other again. Three months after her return to Baghdad, Uncle Levon relinquished his post at the National Museum of Fine Arts, became the most inexperienced maitre d’hôtel of the dining car of the Taurus Express, and began shuttling between Istanbul and Baghdad. And Elise, faithful to her promise, regularly spent her summers in Büyükada, the largest of the nine islands in the Sea of Marmara, her favourite playground since childhood. She loved the aristocratic atmosphere of the island and, above all, she adored her weekends and occasional weekday rendezvous with Uncle Levon. At the end of August, when Elise and her boys returned to Baghdad, the island folded into itself and awaited the return of the lovers.

  While Elise and Uncle Levon were busy comforting each other, Butrus and Issam stayed at Tomas’s in the city. Rumour had it that Uncle Levon was the father of Auntie Elise’s first son, making Tomas and Butrus third cousins. And naturally, as Papa Anton visited Auntie Elise from time to time, the possibility of a covert affair between those two wasn’t ruled out either.

  *

  Tomas found Auntie Elise’s bedroom door ajar. He saw her standing in front of the mirror on top of the commode. She was wearing a flimsy chiffon chemise that barely covered her thighs. Her wavy brown hair hung loosely on her shoulders. Tomas’s first impulse was to run away, but her enticing thighs and well-shaped legs that tapered to graceful ankles kept him rooted to the spot. Everything was rising fast. She took off the chemise and turned around: a shaven crotch, breasts with dark, pointed nipples, and ... there it was, the long-sought compensation for living with liars! He covered the bulging crotch of his pants with shaking hands. Aunt Elise bent to pick up her bra from the floor. Her breasts trembled seductively. He felt a sudden expansion, as if billowing outwards. He held fast to the door handle. Throbbing, he gaped at the luscious details of Aunt Elise’s body, now totally revealed. She was no longer the aunt he knew; she was a voluptuous nude. His blood surged. He felt a warm fluid between his legs. Double cream ... double idiot ... and at last, eureka, a wet dream!

  Tomas woke up and sniffed the air. Aunt Elise’s perfume; she wore it around her décolletage. Every time she kissed him Tomas made sure to snuggle his face between her breasts, at least momentarily. His bedroom door was open. Papa and Mama and the Abkars were still in the living room playing cards.

  Tomas was confused but thankful to Aunt Elise. She had made him realize so stupendously and so moistly his first adult dream! His body was still throbbing. His pyjamas were wet. It was a soggy, ardent feeling. He had exciting news for Anya. Would she be as impressed as she had been when she saw his circumcised penis for the first time? That was a question of looks, he thought; whereas what had happened tonight had neither shape nor colour – it was simply a surge from childhood to adolescence. The following day, when Tomas told Anya what had happened, she giggled shyly.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Me too. I had my first period a month ago.’

  ‘Do you mean that thing?’

  ‘Yes, that thing.’

  ‘And the little white towels?’

  ‘Of course, I told you what they were for.’ She flushed.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

  ‘Because I’m not Tomas,’ she said, followed by another giggle.

  Part Two

  10

  Everything suddenly accelerated. The months couldn’t keep up with the days. Incursions and defeats spread faster than epidemics. After a long period of indulging his appetite for imperial conquest, Hitler started having bou
ts of indigestion. The German forces in Stalingrad surrendered. Pursuant to Atatürk’s advice Turkey tried to preserve its precarious neutrality. The Nazi concentration camps and gas chambers worked to their full capacity until Auschwitz and Birkenau were blown up by the SS. By then at home, black marketeers had monopolized practically everything, including the air they breathed.

  Kemal Atatürk, national liberator, founder of modern and secular Turkey, and first president of the Turkish Republic, following a long battle with cirrhosis, had died on 10 November 1938, at the Palace of Dolmabahçe in Istanbul. It had been a bleak day for the nation and a confusing day for Tomas, who ranked him third after God and Jesus.

  Atatürk’s portrait was in every Turkish home, shop and office, on stamps and bank notes, and in the minds of the entire population. His famous words were engraved on all major government buildings, and his statues dignified every public square. Tomas learned all about him in school. Children, regardless of age, grade, religion, language, complexion, height, weight or sex, had to memorize the great Ata’s extraordinary accomplishments that had set the country on a fast track to modernization. The hero of the Dardanelles, the Gallipoli campaign, the Gazi6 had rescued the country from the claws of ravenous, power-hungry Europeans. By the time Tomas was in grade four, under the strict tutelage of Yashar Bey, his history teacher, he had memorized an epic list of national advancements, improvements and decisive civic transformations.