The Lamppost Diary

by Agop J. Hacikyan

  Among the recriminations flying in both directions was the suggestion that the two American sergeants had been tortured while under arrest. Banned by the court from discussion of the trial, the Turkish press made no direct reference to it. A news magazine nevertheless published a feature story illustrated by a picture of the US Ambassador, with references to his previous involvements with shady government figures.

  Tomas was found to have been nothing more than an innocent victim, but because of the initial charges, even though they were false, he was asked to relinquish his post and return to Istanbul. He was paid for five weeks of employment, but that wasn’t enough to pay for his passage across the Atlantic.

  Anya had a difficult time holding back her tears when she went to meet Tomas off the train.

  *

  Anya was leaving for the States the next day. She hurried to meet Tomas at the children’s park in Nişantaşι, their favourite rendezvous. It was the first Wednesday in September, before the twilight hour. A long line of empty swings swayed languidly, drawing unfinished sketches. The sand-pit was empty. His mind busy with Anya’s imminent departure, Tomas caught the fragrance of something: the last wild chestnuts, lime running through the trees, the musky scent of black earth, of moist grass, and the smell of separation.

  It was time to say goodbye to Anya – a moment he had never been able to entertain as a possibility. They were both frightened.

  Tomas had been invited to Anya’s the night before – a final rehearsal for her grand departure in less than forty-eight hours.

  Lately, Tomas’s letters to her had been much longer. It seemed necessary for him to explain over and over, in writing, the exact reason for his dejection and anger. Lately, every time he looked into her blue eyes he saw a new Anya. He was disheartened to the extent that it was even possible for him to hate her. Was it jealousy? He shut his eyes to prevent himself from imagining her with someone else: an all-American athlete – another A-student who could satisfy her intellectually and sexually.

  Anya arrived twenty minutes late.

  ‘I stopped at the bank,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think there would be such a long queue.’

  They hugged as if she were already at the departure gate, about to leave. She was wearing her usual pair of jeans and a white blouse.

  ‘Let’s walk,’ she said.

  Conversations lose their import when walking. As they began to stroll down the length of Valikonağι Boulevard Tomas had the strange feeling that the pavement was moving faster than his feet and he was falling behind.

  ‘My parents are sorry that we’ll be separated,’ she said, looking Tomas in the eye, ‘for a while.’

  ‘For a while!’ Tomas’s voice changed.

  She stopped. She held his arms firmly. ‘It’ll only be for a while, Tomas. You’ll join me in a year’s time at most.’

  Tomas didn’t reply.

  ‘You wouldn’t let me turn down my scholarship.’

  ‘Of course not. I’m not blaming you, Anya,’ he lied again.

  ‘I’ll miss you so much, Tomas.’

  ‘You’ll get used to it.’

  ‘You’re stupid!’ She let go of his arms.

  ‘I know I am.’ He clasped her and pulled her head to his chest.

  ‘I think I’m the stupid one; I can never love anyone else.’

  Tomas remained quiet. He had considered different ways to make her stay – all of them impossible, even childish. He had thought of piercing a hole in the condoms he used, to make her pregnant. As an easier option, he considered flunking their senior year (a mutual suicide); but she would never agree to that. Or, even better, they could marry secretly and then tell their parents – Anya’s parents wouldn’t dare separate their daughter from her husband – but that could never happen.

  Anya also thought of ways to put off going. She could have a severe nervous breakdown, more creditable and easier than many other alternatives. She had studied all the signs and symptoms of emotional collapse in psychology. She had worked so very hard it was feasible that she could have burnt herself out. As for the symptoms – fatigue, insomnia, headaches, apathy, tearfulness, melancholy – she could feign those. She even considered the risks: shortness of breath, panic attacks, extreme anxiety and possible suicide.

  She first tried indolence. She claimed she felt listless and fatigued. She refused to work, to wash or to eat. At the end of the third day, despite her resolution, she returned to her habitual self and became more active than a honeybee or an over-agitated flea. She showered twice a day and ate three hearty meals, plus snacks in between. As for melancholy, that came naturally; she didn’t have to pretend. She was saddened every time she thought of her departure, which was approaching with breakneck speed. But her behaviour didn’t seem to rouse her parents’ concern.

  Tomas was aware of the danger. ‘I want you to stop,’ he said.

  ‘Stop what?’ Anya asked.

  ‘Feigning melancholy.’

  ‘I’m not feigning anything.’

  Tomas refused to recognize that that was her heavy-hearted response to reality. After her departure he would also sink into a depression that might trap his spirit for a long time.

  ‘Yes, it will only be for a while,’ Tomas lied once again and took out the stopwatch and handed it back to her.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You’ll need it to time my arrival.’

  Anya smiled. She moved her hand nervously up to straighten her hair and down to flatten the collar of her blouse and quickly changed the subject. ‘Did you know that American universities have been admitting women to medical schools for only eight or ten years? I don’t know if I’ll be good enough. I’m sure there’s still a lot of prejudice against women med students.’

  Tomas pulled her closer and kissed her. ‘You will be, Anya.’

  The people who were hanging around in front of the community centre scowled at them disapprovingly. A young mother grabbed her little girl’s hand and led her away from such a brazen display of obscenity.

  They held each other tightly without uttering a word.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Tomas whispered.

  She looked at the passers-by on the opposite pavement and then lifted her eyes to meet Tomas’s gaze. ‘But where?’

  ‘Behind the elm trees in the park.’

  *

  The following morning, in spite of his mother’s insistence, Tomas refused to go to the airport to see Anya off. She didn’t expect to see him. She was leaving at ten o’clock for New York via Amsterdam. Her courses at Johns Hopkins were to begin in a week. She would send him a telegram from Baltimore the moment she arrived.

  Part Three

  21

  As long as Tomas registered as a full-time university student he could dodge military service. He had, however, to make some money if he was going to join Anya before it was too late. Her words rang in his ears every time he recalled their last meeting in the park: ‘I’ll wait for you but don’t think I’ll wait for ever!’

  It was early Monday afternoon. Tomas walked into the reception of Titash Import-Export Inc. in Karaköy’s business quarter. A young secretary and an older accountant were busy typing. He gave the receptionist his name.

  ‘I don’t know you.’

  ‘Of course you don’t know me,’ Tomas replied.

  ‘Then why are you here?’

  He laughed instead of answering.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’

  ‘Because you’re funny.’

  She didn’t appreciate the joke. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’ve got an appointment with Mr Ayhan Kemal, for the translator’s post.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so before?’

  ‘Sorry, my fault.’

  She looked at Tomas disdainfully. ‘Do you know English?’

  ‘Yes, I know English, as well as Swahili and Inuktitut.’

  She was confused momentarily, then she said, ‘Yeah, you must be okay then.’

  She
stood up and walked to Ayhan Bey’s office, wiggling her hips beneath a short green skirt.

  Tomas waited motionless until she came back and asked him to go in.

  Ayhan Bey was a small, fragile-looking man who looked as if he had just been released from hospital after a long illness. He asked him to sit in one of the leather chairs facing a glass-topped desk with family photographs.

  Tomas explained that he was looking for work so he could carry on with his studies.

  ‘You’re in luck,’ Ayhan Bey said, leafing through a large black book. ‘The post is still open.’ He scratched his pointed ear. ‘The job is yours. You can either work here or take the work home. There are lots of guys running after this job.’ He slammed the big black book shut.

  Tomas was surprised that he had been offered the job without even an interview.

  ‘You were recommended by Mr Novotni, the owner of my favourite dining club. You can begin today.’

  For a moment Tomas heard only the clack-clack-clack of the adding machine and the rumble of the traffic on Rιhtιm Caddesi. Then he remembered having written to Anya about the vacant post. It was a peculiar satisfaction: as if the man had slipped a one-way ticket to Baltimore into his pocket.

  Afterwards, Tomas strolled happily along the wharf watching the ships that were anchored off shore unload their cargo onto large barges. Cranes zigzagged in the air, creating tangled shadows on the surface of the sea.

  Tomas was convinced Anya was thinking of him.

  22

  Tomas read Anya’s long letters with shifting sensations. He kept himself distracted by studying, translating, reading very long novels, writing, running and having a few drinks with friends at Barba’s.

  Barba Yorgo’s tavern was one of the quaint little bistros at the end of Çiçek Pasajι, the Flower Archway, where people went to laugh and chat over dozens of plates of savoury mezés and succulent Istanbul specialities. The tavern consisted of a large, plain room, its walls covered with cheap paper, the designs on which had faded over the years. It was furnished with old wooden tables and chairs, beer barrels with square marble tops surrounded by low three-legged stools, and a walnut pendulum clock with a Roman-numeral dial. The patrons were as eclectic as the fixtures: journalists, cabbies, craftsmen, artists, writers and minor merchants. Itinerant musicians, vendors, pimps and catamites circulated freely drumming up business.

  Drinking at Barba’s was synonymous with raucous chitchat, hours of eating, even with melancholy and nostalgia which had no equivalent elsewhere. First you’d feel so very low that you’d keep on drinking. The universe would drift at a leisurely pace towards a lonesome nowhere. Then, resigned and unreserved, you’d meander inch by inch from nostalgia to yearning, while losing everyone around you, including yourself.

  Barba Yorgo was a short, middle-aged, congenial man with a raspy voice – more Doric than Ionian because of his solid long neck and the large bold head that topped it. He loved rumours, rakι, retsina and the whining melodies of laterna.

  It was the first Thursday in April, twenty-five days before Anya’s birthday and a few days after Easter, when Tomas entered the tavern. Barba greeted him with his usual resonant yassoo.

  ‘Your friends aren’t here yet,’ he said, an unlit cigarette dangling between his lips. He went to prepare a table for him.

  Instead of changing the white paper Barba wiped it with his blue apron. The permanent stains on the paper served as the day’s menu: red stains for pickled beets, oil stains for fried mussels or fried lamb brains; light orange blots guaranteed brown beans in olive oil; thick grease heralded marinated grilled lamb chops or koukourech, stuffed sheep intestines; and green smudges were signs of spinach with fried eggs.

  Barba appeared to be in a bad mood.

  ‘What’s going on, Koumbaros?’ Tomas asked.

  His eyes misted over. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What do you mean, nothing?’

  ‘Never mind, Toma ... it’s because I couldn’t celebrate Easter.’

  ‘Why, what happened?’

  ‘My nephew, Spiro, you know the one with the butcher’s shop in Pangaltι, and his wife, Eleni?’

  Tomas didn’t know them.

  ‘They were supposed to take care of the tavern while I was away.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They called at the last minute and said Eleni’s mother had made her peace with God and decided to die.’ He raised his arms, as if asking for help from on high.

  Tomas chuckled. ‘What do you mean, she decided to die?’

  ‘Toma, my friend, that fucking bitch, Eleni’s mother, Kyria Rika, is old. Much older than her eighty-one years. And she lives from Easter to Easter. As soon as she’s made it through one Easter she’s convinced that she’ll survive till the next one. But on Good Friday this year she had a vision that she would be dead, like Christ, by the latest on Easter Sunday.’

  Tomas couldn’t help laughing.

  ‘Don’t laugh, Toma, don’t laugh. It’s not funny. That bitch is a Greek tragedy. She puts Aeschylus, Zeus, Hercules to shame. When you get old and lose it you’re kaput.’ He slid his index finger across his throat. ‘Kaput. Finished. Know what I mean?’

  ‘Did she die?’

  ‘Die?! She rose before Christ did. Now she’s more alive than ever. Smoking like a chimney, gorging herself like a pig ... Christos anesti, Christ is risen, my Toma. You should see the bitch! She could outlive the Holy Trinity. Kyrie eleison. Christos anesti, my friend.’

  ‘Christos anesti, Koumbaros.’

  Why Tomas called him Koumbaros instead of Barba is a story in itself. Not too long before that, Tomas had finished a translation and decided to treat himself to a few drinks before going home. Barba came over and sat down to have a glass of wine with him. Tomas asked, just for fun, if Barba would like to be the godfather at his wedding.

  ‘Are you getting married?’ Barba was thrilled.

  ‘One day,’ Tomas replied.

  Barba asked him if he had a bride in mind.

  ‘Yes, she’s six thousand miles away, in America.’

  ‘Oh, America! Love shrinks distance, my Toma,’ the man sighed. ‘I’ll be your godfather, your koumbaros, you can count on me, but you’ll have to bring your bride here.’

  At Armenian and Greek weddings the wife of the godfather automatically becomes the godmother. Therefore, Agnes, Barba’s wife, had become his potential godmother.

  Agnes, normally the only woman in the restaurant, especially on weekdays, was a lovable, obese woman with red cheeks that looked like they’d been coloured in with crayon. With her grotesque, figgish bottom she toppled bottles, spilled glasses and broke plates every time she shuttled between the kitchen and the tables. She had a pretty face, rounder than a full moon, and was a couple of decades younger than her husband. Rumour had it that she was secretly in love with Nouri Bey, a very handsome young jeweller, one of the regulars. Whenever she caught sight of him coming in all of her flesh was gladdened and set in motion.

  Barba Yorgo had asked his Uncle Spiro, who lived on the Greek island of Corfu, to find him a young wife. A quiet, beautiful girl, he wrote, not brash like Istanbul girls, and without too many western ideas: someone who would be content to let her husband make the decisions. The uncle didn’t waste any time. He wrote Yorgo a long letter extolling his niece Agnes’s qualities, emphasizing that she was a virgin, like her namesake. He also enclosed a couple of pictures of her, one in a reception dress with a ribbon around her neck, taken after her brother’s engagement party, and another in a rather risqué black two-piece bathing suit on the beach, with a couple of fishing boats in the background.

  And before you knew it, Yorgo, the eligible bachelor, sent Agnes a one-way train ticket to Istanbul. Within a month his bride arrived at the Sirkeci train station accompanied by a huge trunk of dowry, including two large bags of mandola, caramelized almonds. And thus Koumbaros Yorgo and Agnes married in Panagia Greek Church, close to the tavern.

  *

  The tavern
wasn’t crowded, due to the heavy rain. Tomas’s friends didn’t show up.

  Arif the dolphin trainer was at his favourite table next to the kitchen, busy as usual rejecting any unfamiliar or new sensations, eyes firmly fixed on the past. He believed things were, wanted things to be, as they had always been. He hated people greeting him, disturbing his solitude.

  Tomas moved to Selim’s table for a little chat. Selim, a sallow Tartar, was a stand-up comedian, a part-time clown when the circus was in town and a formidable drinker. He was the only one who asked for a new glass each time he poured himself another glass of wine. It gave him the impression that each glass was his first drink and so he could go on drinking indefinitely. Sometimes he drank so much he could see his nails turning yellow to match his jaundiced complexion.

  Selim greeted him with his favourite prelude to any subject: ‘The days are getting shorter.’ His eyes were filled with despair.

  ‘How’s the entertainment business going?’ Tomas asked.

  ‘Bad, very, very bad,’ he replied, ‘really bad. People don’t seem to enjoy my jokes any more.’

  ‘I’m sure they do, Selim.’

  ‘Unfortunately a comedian can shut laughter out for good without even trying,’ and he guffawed loudly, as though to dispel the truth of what he had just said.

  Selim was also a dream dreamer – he insisted that he could dream the dreams of others ... especially after a long night of hard drinking followed by hours of peaceful slumber without toothache, because he always had terrible toothaches. ‘I personally have nothing to dream of. So I dream the dreams of others,’ he would explain, bringing his fingers to his painful gums while starting to narrate a series of fantasies, visions, illusions and reveries, all of them peculiar. He called it Selective Mutism. ‘Ahmet, my friend, is a very experienced heroin addict and has extended fantastical dreams. Every time I wish to enjoy a rerun, he charges me dearly. If I refuse to pay he deletes the ending. He’s a bit crazy.’