now had a monogamous relationship, except that it was with a married man twice her age whom she met every now and then to share sex, a joint, and refuge from loneliness? How could she tell Armanoush that, if truth be told, she was a bit of a disaster?
Thus, instead of replying, Asya pulled a Walkman out of her knapsack and asked permission to listen to a song, just one song. A dose of Cash was what she needed right now. She offered one of the headphones to Armanoush. Armanoush accepted the headphone warily and asked: 'Which Johnny Cash song are we going to listen to?'
11 'Dirty Old Egg-Suckin' Dog!''
'Is that the name of the song? I don't know that one.' 'Yup,' Asya said gravely. 'Here it comes. Listen..'
And the song started, first a listless prelude, then country melo
dies fusing with seagull shrieks and Turkish vocalizations in the
background.
As she listened, Armanoush was too stunned by the dissonance between the lyrics and the surrounding setting to enjoy the song. It dawned on her that this song was just like Asya-full of contradictions and temper, utterly disharmonious with her surroundings; sensitive, reactive, and ready to explode at any time. As she leaned back, the murmur in the background dwindled into a tedious humming, pieces of simit disappeared in the air, a touch of enchantment wafted with the breeze, the ferry glided smoothly, and the ghosts of all the fish that had once lived in these waters swam with them in a sea of dense, viscous azure.
When the song was over they had already reached the shore. Some of the passengers jumped off before the ferry reached the dock. Armanoush watched this acrobatic performance with amazement, admiring the many talents the Istanbulites had acquired to cope with the pace of the city.
Fifteen minutes later the shaky, wooden door of Cafe Kundera opened with a strident tinkle and in walked Asya Kazancl, wearing a mauve hippie dress, with her guest, in a pair of jeans and a plain sweater. Asya found the usual group sitting in its usual place with its usual attitude.
'Hello, everyone!' Asya chirped. 'This is Amy, a friend from America.'
'Hello, Amy!' they greeted in unison. 'Welcome to Istanbul!'
'Is this your first time here?' someone asked. And then the others started to inquire: 'Do you like the city? Do you like the food? How long will you stay? Are you planning to come back?…'
Though they welcomed her warmly, they were also quick to go back to their standard posture of unremitting languor, since nothing could upset the sluggish rhythm that prevailed in Cafe Kundera. Those in need of speed and variation could simply go out, for there was plenty of that on the streets. Here it was about mandatory indolence and eternal recurrence. This place was about fixations, repetitions, and obsessions; it was for those who didn't want to have anything to do with the bigger picture, if there indeed was such a thing.
During the brief pauses between questions, Armanoush scrutinized the place and the people, intuiting where the name of the cafe came from. The constant tension between vulgar reality and treacherous fantasy, the notion of the outside people versus us people inside, the dreamlike quality of the place, and finally, the sullen expression on the men's faces, as if they were desperately ruminating on what to choose-either to carry the weight of disheveled love affairs or become half real with lightness-everything evoked a scene out of a Kundera novel. They, however, didn't and couldn't know this, being too enveloped, too much a part of it, like fish that couldn't possibly comprehend the immensity of the ocean in which they swam from the blurry lens of the waters surrounding them.
Likening the cafe to a Kundera scene only doubled Armanoush's interest. She noticed many other things, including the fact that everyone at the table spoke English, although with an accent and grammatical flaws. Overall they seemed to have no trouble switching from Turkish to English. At first Armanoush attributed such ease to their self-confidence, but by the end of the day she suspected that the facilitating factor might be less their confidence in their English than their lack of confidence in any language whatsoever. They acted and talked as if no matter what they said or how they said it, one could not really fully express the innermost self and, in the end, language was only a reeking carcass of hollow words long rotten inside.
Armanoush also noticed that the overwhelming majority of the framed road pictures on the walls depicted either Western countries or exotic places; feww had anything to do with what might fall in between. Having made this observation, she didn't quite know how to interpret it. Perhaps the flight of the imagination here was oriented toward either moving to the West or fleeing into an exotic land far away.
A swarthy, slim street vendor sneaked in, almost hiding himself from the waiters, who might have chased him away. The man carried a huge tray of unpeeled yellow almonds on cubes of ice.
'Almonds!' he exclaimed, as if it were somebody's name he was desperately looking for.
'Over here!' the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist exclaimed, as if responding to his name. Almonds would go perfectly with what he was drinking at the moment: beer. By this time he had already openly quit Alcoholics Anonymous, less on grounds of addiction than on grounds of earnestness, seeing no reason why he should call himself an alcoholic when he wasn't one. It didn't sound sincere to him. Instead, he had decided to become his own supervisor. Today, for instance, he'd drink only three beers. Having already guzzled down one beer, there were two more to go. After that, he'd stop. Yes, he assured everyone, he could manage such discipline without someone's pitiful professional guidance. With that kind of decisiveness, he bought four ladlefuls of almonds and piled them in the middle of the table so that everyone could easily reach them.
Armanoush's thoughts, in the meantime, were busy. She watched the lanky, lost-looking waiter take everyone's orders and was somewhat surprised to see so many people drinking. She remembered her blanket comment the other night on Muslims and alcohol. Should she now mention the Turks' fondness for alcohol to her pals in the Cafe Constantinopolis? How much of what was happening here should she reveal to them?
A few minutes later, the waiter returned with a large glass of frothy beer for the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist and a carafe of dry red wine for everyone else. As he poured the dark crimson liquid into elegant wine glasses, Armanoush took the opportunity to observe the people around the table. She figured that the edgy woman sitting next to and yet miles away from the bulky man with the bulbous nose must be his wife. One by one she examined the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist's wife and the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist, as well as the Closeted-Gay Columnist, the Exceptionally Untalented Poet, the Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies, and… she couldn't help staring a bit longer at the young, sexy brunette across from her, who didn't look like part of the group but seemed, if anything, awkwardly attached to it. Definitely a cell phone person, the brunette kept toying with her pink, glittery phone, flipping it open for no apparent reason, pressing on this button or that, sending an SMS or receiving one, absorbed by the small device. From time to time, she inched toward the bearded man next to her and nuzzled his ear. Evidently, she was the new girlfriend of the Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies.
'I had a tattoo done yesterday.'
The words were so out of context that Armanoush could not instantly grasp if they were addressed to anyone, let alone to her. Yet, either out of sheer boredom or in an attempt to befriend the only other recent addition to the group, the new girlfriend of the Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies was talking to her: 'Would you like to see it?'
It was a wild orchid, as red as hell, snaking around her belly button.
'That's cool,' Armanoush said.
The woman grinned, pleased. 'Thank you,' she said as she patted her lips with a napkin even though she hadn't eaten anything.
In the meantime, Asya too had been observing the woman, albeit with a far more disapproving gaze. Having met a new female, as usual, she could do one of two things: either wait to see when she would start hating her or take the shortcut and hate her right away. She chose the latter.
Asya leaned backward and picked up her glass between thumb and forefinger, observing the red liquid. Even when she started to talk she didn't remove her gaze from the glass.
'In point of fact, when we come to recall how long-standing the practice of tattooing is. . ' Asya said, but didn't finish her sentence. Instead she started a new one. 'At the beginning of the 1990s, explorers found a well- preserved body in the Italian Alps. It was more than five thousand years old. It had fifty-seven tattoos on its body. The world's oldest tattoos!'
'Really?' Armanoush asked. 'I wonder what kinds of tattoos were done back then?'
'Often they tattooed animals, the ones that were their totems… probably donkeys, deer, owls, mountain rams-and snakes, of course, I'm sure snakes were always on demand.'
'Wow, more than five thousand years old!' the new girlfriend of the Nonnationalist Scenarist of
