THE CINEMA WITH ICE CREAM - Oktay AKBAL
THE CINEMA WITH
ICE CREAM
I know that my
story will seem like a tale to today's people. But I lived in this tale. The
adventures of the days of peace that are not so far at all has got lost among
the foggy, complicated memories; it is as if the child with white trousers did
not absentmindedly hang around the street where the cinemas are in a line facing
each other under the warmth, heaviness, and the low-spiritedness of summer noons
and he did not experience the excitement of a bandit film as looking at its
pictures!
In my tale, there
are no princes, fairies, Arabs whose upper lip reaches to the sky, wealthy palaces,
flying carpets, heroes who kill dragons with a sword cut, and dreadful witches
on broomsticks. I won't take the ones listening to my tale to the furthest horizons
of fancy and beyond the foggy distances. Only, I will tell a real adventure
that now seems unrealized and inexperienced even to its hero and that has lost
in the carelessness of the years before the war.
In the moments
that I gave up my hope for the people in front of the bakery in the dark nights
in the long years of the war, their generosity and kindness and that I felt
that my love for living was growing less, I sometimes consoled myself with the
memory of the large cinema with a big balcony that had traces of old days and
left a mark on the colorful world of my childhood.
This cinema was
an old friend of my childhood. Its roof was seen from the windows of the second
floor of our house. Especially during holidays, once a week I used to get to
its glass door decorated with pictures passing the dusty road with old-fashioned
houses around that links our house to the street. The people on the pictures
that changed every week were my best friends. I used to accompany the seamen
fighting in a cabin full of danger, get my horse over the precipices and drive
the car going at the maximum speed myself. Entering the cinema, I used to settle
on the single seat at the back and want to stay alone with my dreams and thoughts.
Waiting for minutes, the film used to start and finish after so many fights
and gunshots.
How terribly hot
that summer months were! The people were walking around with their jackets in
their arms and white handkerchiefs in their hands and rushing to the water shops
and sherbet sellers. The street with the cinema was becoming solitary gradually,
and the visitors were getting less in number. But the children of the other
quarter, a few maids of the quarter fond of cinema, naughty adopted children,
a few vagabond and I were going like before. The films having thirty sections
were displayed for only twenty or thirty people filling the hall as usual. Watching
films in an empty cinema was not so pleasing at all. The blows by the fist of
Buck Jones were delivered in vain. Tarzan was killing the lions uselessly. Even
in the most exciting scenes not a word was heard. In this way cinema lost its
taste gradually. Watching films in a very big hall alone started to frighten
me. And this was the reason for me not to go the big cinema for a few weeks.
One day I rushed
to the cinema after a long separation. While entering the hall after buying
my ticket, I stopped for a while. An ice cream seller put a chair inside the
door and lined up the cones and the cups on the table in front of him. When
he saw me, asking:" With vanilla or strawberry?" he got a cone and
filled it with two spoons of ice cream, and thrusted into my hands. In confusion
I was absorbed in watching the ice cream seller that I liked with his white
apron and cheerful remarks. He was offering a cone of ice cream and saying comic
things. The cinema was also solitary that day. Everybody was busy with licking
their ice cream except a couple very close to each other at a corner. On the
faces of all I saw the marks of happiness that had no reason. It was as if everything
changed suddenly in the similar flow of that hot summer days. The cinema with
ice cream put me in a tranquil frame of mind and made my fancies broad.
Henceforth, every
week I was waiting impatiently for the film change. Every Wednesday, once I
grasped the cone of ice cream with vanilla and strawberry from the hands of
the fatherly man delivering joy and happiness to the people in front of the
door, I used to take my seat at the hall and become lost in the flow of events
on the screen and the happiness of my friends. At that time nobody was aware
of the cinema with ice cream. It was hot, the sun was burning, and the people
were in the carefree state of the tranquil days. Nobody felt this unique happiness
except us the children of the quarter, a few vagabond, a few lazy adopted children,
the giddy maid, and the students of the military school and their flirts. And
most of them did not know that they lived in a tale, and they were unaware of
that they would turn into tale heroes after years. At that time I did not recognize
that this new feeling of happiness came from the ice cream of the fatherly man
in front of the door. But in these embarrassing and long summer days, due to
a reason that could not be recognized I felt that joy full of so many fancies
suddenly filled inside of me.
But whatever they
did, it did not work. On the contrary, the weather got hotter and hotter. Nobody
passed through the cinema street and visited the quarter of love and bandit
films. Still ice cream was sold, and we the children, the footloose, the vagabond,
and the maids filled up the cinema. Even a few more people joined us, and the
cinema that attracted the customers most along the street was our cinema with
ice cream. It was seen that there were twenty or thirty people in the huge hall,
and we understood that there were people in the dim of a few boxes as the fatherly
ice cream seller was carrying the ice cream cups on his tray to that side. The
owner of the cinema was pleased with this crowd, and from time to time he was
going out and showing off to the other cinema owners, and blowing the smoke
of his cigarette to that side.
However, this situation
did not last long. The small cinema at the opposite discovered a more brilliant
method. One day while walking along the street, I saw the people crowded around
in front of the small cinema. A hawker selling sherbet was sitting beside his
copper pitch and pouring sour cherry syrup into the glasses on the table, and
he was shouting with his cracked voice as:" Who comes drinks, who comes
drinks… Wonderful, taste it. Ice-cold, ice." Really the syrup looked so
excellent in the glasses that a few of the spectators could not wait and bought
upper balcony tickets and tossed down the syrup in one swing. Of course I also
could not help entering that small cinema on that day and drinking the ice-cold
syrup.
Thus the competition
that started accelerated day by day. The ice cream started to be more plentiful,
and the sherbet started to be more delicious. They were shouting, and trying
to beguile the customers. We the children of the quarter, the unemployed, the
vagabond, the adopted, and the maids were utterly bewildered. It was going so
exciting. But as I said nobody was aware of this adventure. Everybody was in
different states. They could not see this source of happiness under their very
noise, before their very eyes. Only we the vagabond of the quarter lived in
this exciting and unique world. Every day we used to rush to the street, and
go to see the new discoveries and to hear the new witty remarks of the ice cream
seller and the sherbet seller. Both were cheerful men. They used to walk around
in the streets, play backgammon at a café, have a friendly chat before noon,
and in the afternoon rush to their work.
How did these men
like the people of the ancient tales disappear suddenly? I could not understand
this somehow. The end of this unique adventure vanished among the hurry of those
days. The schools were opened, and the real life drew back us from this world
of poetry. It was as if with the first raindrops the ice cream seller and the
sherbet seller went distant towards the unknown places being dragged by the
flood. The people who did not know that a unique tale was experienced and was
over started to fill the cinema. No one could know and live through this unique
story that took place before the very eyes of everyone at the center of the
town.
I think that only
we the children of the quarter and the vagabond and the maids wearing unpleasing
make-up and the adopted girls with plump breasts will remember this story. But
none of them will know that the things they experienced in the tale world are
not different from the princesses having very beautiful eyes, flying carpets,
and the secret treasures of the ancient tales in the eyes of a child of those
years wearing white trousers.
Oktay AKBAL