Many and Many a Year Ago by Selcuk Altun

Author:Selcuk Altun
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781846591099
Publisher: Saqi

Your absence is the other name of hell.

I’m cold, I’m shivering. Don’t close your eyes.

Libertad had lost its old dynamism; the perpetual economic crisis had caused links in the caravan of jewelers to be broken. The obstinate middle-aged Armenian caretaker we spoke to said he’d never heard of a Dikran Gumushian. Then I remembered Dr. Kaltakian. We rushed to Ariel’s office and bookstore to call him. The bookstore was as tightly organized as a military archive and smelled strangely of hay. I reached Dr. Armando Kaltakian on the fourth attempt. He sounded glad to hear that I needed his help. “If I can’t call you with the information you want in two hours, I’ll fax it to your hotel this evening,” he said. I decided to take a stroll along Corrientes.

As I emerged onto the spacious avenue I felt the same sense of relief I used to feel when math classes were over. I wandered along accompanied by gentle gusts of wind. Was this a mirage, or was I seeing in this faraway land shops that I knew window by window? Were these the cinemas and theaters that were etched into my memory by years of movie-going? Like Anatolia, the streets were saturated with people walking as if they were playing parts in a pantomime behind a giant lace curtain. I walked to the head of the street, where a musician in an orange velvet jacket had situated himself. His legs were amputated below the knees and, if you ask me, he was willfully murdering the melody of “Over the Rainbow” with his harmonica. I poured all the coins in my pocket into the tango hat in front of him, and he thanked me by winking at me twice. I entered the desolate café behind him and sobered up on bad coffee brought to me by a waitress who thought that Istanbul was the capital of Egypt.

I went back to the bookstore, but gazing at the shelves of tired books was making me sleepy. I selected Las Poemas de Edgar Poe and felt satisfied to have filled a gap in the library I never touched. I wasn’t surprised when Ariel didn’t give me a discount. As I was imagining a competition for the most attractive cover among the complete works of Nobel Prize-winning Jews, a fax message arrived:

Brother Kemal,

Master Dikran will be at a café called Confitería Ideal tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock. I tried describing your features to him but he said there was no need. He is from Istanbul and can spot a young Turkish fellow by the way he walks into a room.

Good luck.

Dr. A.K.

As Ariel was dropping me off at the hotel, he told me how he had met a Turkish bibliophile.

“I didn’t think he would know about the rare book dealers here. Anyway, he was middle-aged and looked like an Italian, though with a surly face. He said he wrote novels and essays under a pseudonym. His Spanish was more satisfactory than that of the Boca Juniors football players.

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