Read Online Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale by Mario Levi - Free Book Online

suffered—certain relations that Bronstein could not reason, despite all his efforts—had matured Jacob, as far as he could tell, before his time. One should be prepared for such hardships and separations in life. They set out altogether on different journeys. They knew this song; they had learned it and they would master it with practice. This separation must have been partly facilitated by this irresolution. One could not foresee the development of things at the start of this new journey. All they could understand was that they were expected to know how to uphold their prospects and to reassert the ineluctability of fate. The family was to reunite some time in the future. They believed, they wanted to believe in this. To cherish such hopes, to believe that life was always possible. Olga had not forgotten. During one of those nights when they had all been together enjoying their belated meeting and referring to those days in Alexandria, Jacob’s father had said: “We had learned the meaning of abandonment, resistance, and deprivation.” It seemed as if a poem was concealed in these words, for the sake of change, a meaningful and original path. A poem that could convey a meaning for those who had been left behind . . . The story relating to Jacob had lingered in him as a puzzle, pregnant with questions and suspicions, in addition to the poetic inspiration that the beautiful paths it had opened had brought about. This puzzle would, in time, assume an altogether different hue, on the day when the tale would have returned to him from somewhere he least expected and with a person he least thought of. The adventure of the Bronsteins had begun on a summer day . . . Those were the days when a great number of people were suffering from the consequences of war . . . Those were the days when the little woman from Riga had a tremendous desire to play the piano.
    To be able to speak Yiddish in Kuledibi
    Of old, travels lasted a long time; long enough to make those who resolutely set out fully conscious of the hardships involved. We can perhaps better understand that sense of adventure, the vessels that weigh anchor at their respective destinations along the course traced and bequeathed to us by those stories, by reviving in us, at our pleasure, the image that those long nights left in us, thus resuscitating those days for a redeemable world.
    On his way to London, toward a new destination, Moses was to pay a short visit to his cousins in Istanbul. In all of the correspondence between him and these cousins, who had emigrated from Odessa to settle in Istanbul, a prospective reunion, on the occasion of a religious holiday celebrating faithful Jews, was often discussed. This yearning had assumed greater significance as the years went by. The incidents related to the different lands, different feelings and different lives they had diligently kept in the stores of their memories, memories that had acquired greater worth. Good times they were!
    The friendly reception of Bronstein in Istanbul was sensational as it marked the beginning of a new tale, the beginning of an enthralling, amazing, poignant and, at the same time, sad story . . . For, the very first incidents at the outset indicate that the vicissitudes of the fifteen years that had elapsed in between had, according to other people’s accounts, been spent quite differently. Cousin Norbert Feldman, thanks to his mastery of foreign languages, and his making optimum use of an entrepreneurial genius at the right time in international relations, had been able to sign lucrative contracts in foreign countries, and the Ottoman Empire had in return awarded him contracts in the field of road construction, thus enabling him to amass a great fortune. The convertible parked on the seashore was sufficient evidence of his wealth, nay, of his opulence. This was part of the ritual; those years lived in different places and with different people had to be displayed in one way or another. You could