With this money, I bought a few modest little gifts for my wife, Pakize, and once again sent my older sister-in-law’s oud for repair (she was a music lover, and at the very least I knew this time the instrument would be returned to us promptly). I was also able, at last, to purchase a particular belt for my younger sister-in-law, who had mustered the courage to enter, for the fourth time, the beauty contest that put such a strain on our budget; Pakize wholeheartedly believed (99.9 percent of the time) that the belt, captivating as it was, would lead her sister to be crowned queen, although it barely managed to cinch the woman’s amply flowing gown. As for my remaining two liras, I gave them to my dear old friend Ali Efendi, an itinerant street peddler, who returned to me the watch of our neighbor and local shopkeeper Hulki Efendi, which I had pawned a few nights earlier so I could take the whole family to an open-air cinema.
This balustrade brought me, if only for a time, the comfort and powers of perception that had eluded me for so long. Yet the sadness in me endured. I had betrayed my past and, in particular, a childhood vow. I had always believed in the saintliness of the man who lay beneath the enormous turbaned tombstone that leaned just behind the balustrade, perhaps because of the mulberry tree right beside it, which had grown to such extraordinary size. When my mother was ill, I would go there every evening to pray and light candles in front of the balustrade.
But who could have imagined that four years ago, while wandering in and out of old antique shops—I’d do this from time to time, not with the aim of selling anything, but in search of objects and artifacts for the Clock Villa—I would stumble upon that piece of balustrade? If I had known its future price would be even more than the handsome figure I’ve already quoted, I would have seized it instantly and embraced it like a long-lost friend. But who would have known? The sneak caught on right away, despite all my efforts to show reserve. Perhaps he saw the way my hands were trembling despite my attempt to keep them hidden from view. Thus, after pouring most of my energy into haggling over an Indian lectern, I asked in a most offhand way for the price of the balustrade. “Nine hundred liras,” he replied. “A very important piece . . . from Konya . . . worthy of a museum, that one.” From thirty liras to nine hundred! Exactly thirty times more expensive. The square root of the sum, as my son would have said. Dazzled by the elegance of these figures, I nearly cried, “Done! Have it sent to my home,” but I rallied to counter with one hundred fifty. He groaned. I raised it to a hundred sixty. Then he claimed I was merely clowning. It was as if we had found ourselves in the same minaret but on different flights of stairs that passed through the same balconies as they twisted through the tower, and within the tower’s thick walls we could catch glimpses of each other trying to calculate just how we could meet exactly in middle, but he was slowly plodding down as I was storming up. I must have miscalculated, for Mandalin Efendi was fixed on a step much higher than my own, at four hundred seventy-five. Perhaps only to avenge myself of my defeat, I gave the man his money and bent over the balustrade to kiss its bottom, which still bore the marks where it had been scorched by candles in my childhood. There was no longer any reason to conceal the joy I felt in recapturing this fragment of my past. But I went one step further:
“Mandalin Efendi,” I said, “you haven’t proved yourself a very good salesman today. Indeed this piece is worthy of a museum, but I know better than anyone that it does not originate from Konya, and I also know you could have sold it to me for much more.”
Mandalin Efendi looked at me for a moment and then threw his arms up into the air as if about to fly away:
“Well, my good sir, what’s done is done, a sealed deal,” the Jewish merchant cried. “The better for you and the better for all of us . . . There are always other customers.”
Some might find it shameful that I took home, as private property, a piece of the Kahvecıbası Cemetery. This saddens me a little, I admit. There is something rather disquieting about the whole thing. But this is not to say that I can find no consolation in the affair. First, both the medrese and the mosque are no longer there. Thus there is no incontestable owner of the balustrade to whom I might be compelled to return it. It is true that by pinching the balustrade I might have had something to do with the demolition of the building itself. But as I’ve already explained, the structure was derelict beyond repair. And of course you already know of the circumstances that compelled me to remove the piece in the first place. My fellow citizens should find some consolation when they see the new apartment buildings that now stand on those grounds. The neighborhood has sprung to life. The way things are developing we can expect an entirely modern neighborhood within a few years. I applaud the modern man, and I too enjoy modern comforts and modern architecture.
It doesn’t weigh too heavily upon me to see cemeteries disappear or to see priceless, exquisitely carved and inscribed tombstones used as basins, ornaments over public fountains, or makeshift shelves on radiators. As for this coffeehouse proprietor Salih Aga, after whom the cemetery was named, I’ve known for some time that the man was not a saint. Despite my vows and all the candles I lit in that mosque, my mother still passed away; and so, saint or no saint, I’d never been able to forgive him. At this point in my life, I am not about to bemoan the fact that one can no longer find a single cemetery in the city center!
Modern life commands us to stay far from the notion of death.
And why not, good sir? Are we to live or are we to await death sitting down?
Returning to the balustrade, I was the first to discover this sublime work of art and to grant it the admiration it deserved. I was the one who marveled at its beauty. I was the one who later spotted it, there in the antique shop, and prevented it from falling into the wrong hands and being taken away by people with no understanding of its value. You might say I was even its savior. What could be more just than rescuing this objet d’art and taking it to the safety of my home, never again to be drawn into a wild adventure? And who would receive more pleasure from such a thing than I? Who else could descry his own past in its arabesque motifs or recognize the strange souls who once gave it life?
As I write these lines, I lift my head from time to time to let my eyes linger on the piece. Just a few steps beyond, under the cedar tree and the poplar beside it—this too I uprooted, from an old garden on the Bosphorus, and planted here—I can see my grandchildren playing with my youngest daughter, Halide, granted to me by the Almighty in my sixtieth year. They’re holding colorful little pails and shovels; no sooner have they filled the pails with sand from the garden than they empty them out. Though their nannies are watching over them—that moronic Swedish governess my daughter should never have hired to look after her children, and that sweet, ever-smiling, plump, wheat-skinned Asiye Hanım, whom I hired to take care of my dear Halide—I am well aware that they are nurtured and protected by altogether loftier beings. Yes, why would I lie, for I sincerely believe that Nuri Efendi and Abdüsselam and even Seyit Lutfullah in his disheveled robes—a gift to him from Aselban—are keeping the children company at this very moment. Who knows? The spirit who beckoned to Halide, who led her to the sundial at the center of one of the flower beds, her blue bloomers hanging so daintily from her short dress, who allowed her to fall where the rock gave way under her hands, must be none other than Nuri Efendi. I was not at all mistaken in naming her after the late Halit Ayarcı, at the behest of Pakize. As the days go by, she resembles him more and more. His lines appear on her little rose-petal face, in fact her temperament becomes more and more like his. Like him, she can bend anyone to her will; she can have anything she wants without asking.
This must mean that Seyit Lutfullah was not exaggerating when he spoke of the effect names can have on our destiny. I am quite sure that if I had given Halide another name, she would not seem so very much like my late benefactor.
X
Nineteen twelve was one of the most painful years of my life, as Nuri Efendi passed away at the very s
tart. His death set in motion a series of events that caused me no end of trouble. Returning from the funeral, I had to face the fact that I was already unemployed at seventeen. Up until the age of fourteen, I had managed to continue my studies at college, but after my friendship with Seyit Lutfullah intensified, I had stopped attending school altogether. I was adrift. School is of course extremely important for children. Above all else, it allows us to put off answering childhood’s most troubling question: what will I be when I grow up? School reminds me of a train that carries you to a destination—providing you arrive on time, make all the right connections and wait patiently for the journey’s end. But I had jumped off the train in the middle of a desert, far from my destination.
Gradually I became the subject of magnanimous and high-pitched concern. My mother never stopped asking, “What will become of this child?” And when entering into conversation with my father, the neighbors said, “Whatever will you do with your son?” Some thought I should concentrate on my studies, while others believed I should be schooled in a trade. But all were united in the opinion that my father had no choice but to take a forceful stand.
There were even those who said, “There’s no way that boy will ever find a job. You might as well marry him off.”
I too was asking questions, which is not to say that I was considering a career or a job or even remotely thinking about a way to earn money. But still there was this thing we call time, this thing we deem the day. And I had to find some way to make short shrift of it. Up until that point in my life, I hadn’t been interested in anything but watches and clocks; matters more profound than these were beyond my comprehension. I had acquired from the late Nuri Efendi a vast store of knowledge about timepieces and their vicissitudes, but I had never seriously considered the profession of horology. I was all thumbs. My hand-eye coordination was unremarkable; the two seemed to exist in entirely separate worlds. And I was a born amateur. I quickly lost interest in anything undertaken as work. A path would unfurl in my mind, and I’d meander toward it, leaving behind the work at hand. I had always been like this: at school, at Nuri Efendi’s workshop, and at the dervish lodge I visited with my father on Thursdays and Fridays from the age of seven. Yet I had to do something. So I began to work as an apprentice for a clockmaker just a little way down the road from Nuri Efendi’s workshop. The poor man was penniless and had almost no customers; he hardly made his daily bread. But he took me in all the same. He was even willing to give me a few pennies from the clock and watch repairs I undertook myself. But—just my luck—not one customer came into the shop on the days I worked. So, as master and apprentice, we sat opposite each other in silence.
Asım Efendi was not at all like Nuri Efendi. He possessed neither ideas nor any particular philosophy pertaining to watches and clocks. One day I felt I should share with him some of what I had learned from Nuri Efendi, but the man could not comprehend a word I said. When I said that watches and clocks were just like human beings, he cried, “Look here, I don’t humor that kind of claptrap!”
Meanwhile Seyit Lutfullah never left me alone. He had become accustomed to my assistance in his finagling with the world beyond. He would drop by the shop almost every other day and cry, “On your feet, look alive. An order has arrived. Onward to Etyemez!” Then he’d entreat my master to give me leave, and if he protested, Lutfullah would threaten the old man with his demons. Etyemez, Eyüpsultan, Vaniköy—in short, all Istanbul was ours. With a dirty turban wrapped around his head and his robes billowing out in the slightest breeze, Lutfullah took the lead, dragging his half-crippled leg in his wake, while I trailed behind in my bedraggled and patched attire, and we wandered the streets of Istanbul.
All the same, and for better or worse, I managed to work with Asım Efendi for a few months. True, the old man lacked a philosophy of timepieces, but he did know how to repair them, and he was able to teach me a thing or two. Sadly, I was forced, through an unfortunate turn of events, to leave his shop. One day Seyit Lutfullah absconded with a watch that was waiting to be repaired. When the crime was discovered, I was blamed. They detained me at the police station for hours. Finally they remembered that Lutfullah had come into the shop the day before, and he was promptly called in. In his defense the wretched creature explained that he had stolen the watch to buy incense to burn at the foot of the treasure of the emperor Andronikos. And he showed them where he had pawned the watch for next to nothing. He claimed he had done everything at the insistence of a spirit medium who had told him his quest would not move forward without the theft of such an object. Once it became clear that he was the true culprit, I was released. But I couldn’t just abandon the miserable fellow—I didn’t have it in my heart. In the end I thought of Abdüsselam Bey, and it was with his assistance that Lutfullah was spared prosecution for both drug use and theft. Abdüsselam bought the watch back from where it had been sold for a few silver coins, but Asım Efendi refused to take me back. And he was right: it was dangerous to keep an apprentice with such irresponsible and good-for-nothing friends.
XI
This episode with the watch would no doubt have had far more significant (and disquieting, even dangerous) repercussions at home than at the police station. But as luck would have it, a momentous event on the very next day shook our family to its core, igniting my father’s fury and raising my mother’s complaints to an unprecedented pitch.
This is how it always happens. Such crises never simply vanish of their own accord; other ones arrive to push the previous one aside, lightening the impact of the former and dissolving any possibility of blame. Thus only one day after my father had been summoned so abruptly to the police station to account for his son, my paternal aunt passed away. And just as she was being lowered into the earth—following the late-afternoon call to prayer—she sprang briskly back to life. This second catastrophe turned our lives inside out, and my father never recovered from the shock.
My aunt was the only family my father had in the world. And perhaps it was this enforced intimacy that led them to become so dramatically different in temperament, disposition, and even appearance.
My father was a vigorous man, the kind who could devour a stone. He had a colossal and consuming appetite for life. For him the universe was like a heap of grain to be threshed and sold, or at least that’s what those who knew him liked to say. But my aunt, she had been sickly since childhood. She was feeble, malicious, and self-absorbed. Though reasonably devout, my father had a cheerful disposition and a taste for music and conversation. My aunt, however, was dark and moody, fervently pious, proud, yet fragile—she was a miserable little woman who loved nothing more than to descry the work of the devil in the sensual. These two had but one thing in common: each lived under the weight of a terrible depression. My father was depressed because he was penniless; the man was forever chasing after chimeras, kept afloat by hopes of the impossible; my aunt was burdened by a meanness that propelled her into an existence so frugal she could barely make ends meet, despite a good-sized fortune accruing interest in the hands of money lenders, an assortment of stocks and bonds, her grand villa in Etyemez (left to her by her late husband, the warden of the street sweeper’s trade guild) and several Ottoman hans and hamams. In fact she never risked remarriage for fear she might lose her fortune, preferring to live like a lonely owl in her monstrous sixteen-room villa with no one save the half-crazed chambermaid she’d adopted as a child and an old servant who was just as fervent and mean as she was, not to mention a terrible busybody. It was no more than a week after her husband’s death that she put an end to my father’s visits, he being inclined to probe into her affairs. This is why we saw her only on religious holidays such as Ramadan and Kandil, when we would visit to pay our respects and kiss her hand. She also made it her custom to come and stay with us on the second week of Ramadan, as we lived closer to various mosques. Whenever we went to visit her, we were offered the cheapest refreshments, cakes, and cookies Istanbul could provide, and, a
long with mountains of advice and admonishments, we would be given tawdry little presents of nominal value. Yet when she came to visit, she expected us to observe full decorum in what we offered her, and when displeased she would fly into a gruesome rage. The prospect of having to host this bilious guest and her two servants would strike fear into our household a full two months before their arrival. Our aunt would never have been able to change her eating habits so dramatically from the moment of her arrival—suddenly she became ravenous—had she not followed a diet beginning on Saban, the eighth holy month of the Muslim calendar, which became ever stricter with the approach of the holy month of Ramadan. But nothing was more difficult than enduring the barrage of advice and criticism she dispensed over the course of the holy week.
Truth be told, she liked neither my father nor me. And it was a joy for her to make this perfectly clear. There was no doubt she considered us more legal inheritors than close family. For her, our household was nothing more than the lever of a great machine that groaned behind that terrible eventuality, death, when in fact, considering the finality of the affair, we were really the entire contraption itself. Weighed down as she was with this vast inheritance, my aunt couldn’t think of dying without recalling that she would be dying for our sake. She interpreted almost everything we did in this light, lambasting us even when we had spoken with the best intentions. Naturally all the advice she meted out on this matter revolved around her paranoia. Her favorite motto was, “The greatest mortal sin is wishing death upon someone other than oneself!” This despite the fact that no one harbored such a morbid desire, to begin with. My father took pity on his sister and even wished for her to be happy. After she was widowed, he strongly encouraged her to marry Nasit Bey. But my aunt refused even to entertain the idea, so convinced was she of the hunter’s moral repugnance. “I’m not looking for a man to gobble up my fortune,” she’d mutter. She even suspected my father of some deviant ploy in his wish to marry her off, especially since he had just arranged for my engagement to Nasit Bey’s daughter—though we were both far too young.