Istanbul Noir - Mustafa Ziyalan [5]
If I had to describe what we experienced after that night in a single word, I’d say “fun.” It was a journey laced with anxiety, victory, and pleasure. Sometimes Xenia did such reckless things that I, fearful of the end of that magical dream, was compelled to rein her in. Her way of groping me, ignoring her boyfriend who stood with his back to us, planting a kiss on my lips before taking the stage, winking at me mischievously while sitting at a crowded table, well within her boyfriend’s field of vision, caressing my legs under the table sometimes … perhaps these and other dangerous games were expressions of the character traits her early Hollywood femme-fatale looks implied; but I was never as aggressive and courageous in keeping up with her as the men in those films. And that spelled doom for our relationship.
The show was to be staged in a crowded hall in Cairo. That was where I woke up from a sweet fantasy which had lasted for over a year. Nigel was moving about on the stage and in the hall in a fakir costume; he was levitating and performing some improvised exotic dance. Xenia would take the stage the moment the clarinet solo started. She’d be standing in front of the mirror which would convey the images, because the first few minutes of the show consisted of reflections. The audience would see her as an image appearing and disappearing at different spots of the stage. She’d wear a modernized version of a harem outfit, a bustier gilded with gold leaves, showcasing her fair skin with stunning generosity, and a flowing skirt, covered with glittering scales. Every time she made her entrance in that costume, an odd silence would fall over the audience, followed by deafening applause. We were used to it. Xenia was an angel, an image, an apparition which would disappear at once and materialize again somewhere else in the hall, only to disappear again. But that night when her turn came, Xenia did not go out in front of the conveyor mirror.
Suddenly the music stopped. Nigel came over to where we were. He glared at his girlfriend, who had grabbed me by the collar and was manhandling me. “What’s going on here?” he asked. Just as the woman was parting her lips to say something, a deafening, defiant roar rose from the audience.
I quickly took advantage of that window of opportunity. “She’s having cramps and asked me for a painkiller.”
I didn’t know how much of the lie Nigel believed, but he silently turned around, stepped onto the platform where his conveyor mirror was, and said, “We’ll start over. Please find a more appropriate time and place to take your painkiller.” His voice, strangely enough, didn’t sound angry. Nevertheless, I decided to be more careful from then on and to warn Xenia that she should do the same.
As it turned out, however, I didn’t have to. She managed to stay away from me for eight days following our show in Cairo. She preferred to sit next to her boyfriend, somewhere far away from me, to avoid looking at me, to avoid my eyes, all the while aware that they were on her. It seemed the love affair between the two of them had been revived. Xenia laughed with exaggeration, hugged and kissed him time and again even when Nigel was carrying on with his tasteless jokes like he had when I first met them.
As you see, everything I’ve told you so far fits the mold of Hollywood melodramas. I can tell you now that the rest won’t be any different. At least, up until a particular