Simenon in Turkey | Les Clients d'Avrenos (1935)

Cover of Turkish edition. Obviously designed without reading the book. The bar is in Balikpazari not in Eminonu.

"...Issız sokaklarda ağır ağır yürüyorlardı. Saat sabahın dördüydü. Göğün solgun ışıkları günün doğmak üzere·olduğunu gösteriyordu. Nouchi: "Arkadaşların pek ilginç kişiler değil," dedi. ;'Onları sık sık göruyor musun?" "Oldukça." "Her gün onlarla olduğunu açıkça söyle!" Doğruydu bu. Ama Jonsac bunu söyleyemedi. "Her gün değil." Kızın inanmadığını çok iyi anliyordu. Akşam yediye doğru eski İstanbul'un dar sokaklarına saptilar. Köprünün ötesinde Balıkpazari'nin arkasındaki Avrenos Lokantası'na girdiler. 

İki basamak aşağıya indiler. Salonda on kadar masa ve mezelerle dolu bir tezgah vardı. Duvarlar sarıya boyanmışu. Jonsac, girer ginnez akadaşlanyla karşılaşu; onlara yer açmak için sandalyelerini geriye çekiyorlardı. Birbirleriyle her akşam aynı yerde karşılaşan kişiler olduklari anlaşılıyordu. "

Mavi Boncuk |

Simenon[1] in Turkey | Les Clients d'Avrenos (1935)[2]

She doesn't like love - In an Ankara cabaret, Bernard de Jonsac becomes acquainted with a young dancer, Nouchi.

The adventure of a strange couple, made inseparable by their very contradictions, serves as a framework for the evocation of a life of nonchalance and delicate debasement within the framework of the Bosphorus. The point of view is that of a narrator foreign to his characters.

Characters

Bernard de Jonsac, French. Dragoman (interpreter and commission agent) at the French Embassy in Stamboul. Single (at the beginning of the story). 40 years.

Nouchi, young Hungarian dancer, 17 years old

Lelia Pastore, young girl from the rich Turkish bourgeoisie, 23 years old.

In an Ankara cabaret, Bernard de Jonsac becomes acquainted with a young dancer, Nouchi. The young girl asks him to take her away: the next day, they go sleeping for Stamboul, where Jonsac does little work on behalf of the French Embassy. They live together in the hotel, as comrades, despite Jonsac's wishes. Then, like Nouchi, with no fixed abode or job, risk being deported, they get married. But the young girl refuses to consummate their union.

Jonsac and Nouchi dine at the restaurant run by Avrenos, where a certain “milieu” is found: a crooked banker, a nobleman ruined by the new regime, an artist, a journalist. At one of them, they smoke hashish while reciting poems. These outsiders, with whom Jonsac has been familiar for a long time, all become more or less in love with Nouchi. One evening, Jonsac meets Lelia, the friend of a Swedish diplomat named Stolberg; the latter abandons her to pay court to Nouchi. Lelia wants to drown, Jonsac barely prevents her. The next day, she tries to poison herself. Jonsac becomes more and more intimate with the young girl. Nouchi encourages him to seduce her. He brings it home and abuses it: Lelia jumps out of the balcony and smashes her pool; she will remain paralyzed for life. But Jonsac's Turkish ambassador and friends hush up the affair.

One night, when he no longer hoped for it, Nouchi offered himself to him, inert - and it will always be so. She may be surrounded by men, but she doesn't like love. A memory of her poor adolescence traumatized her ...

With a refined appearance even if not very affluent, distinguished in his ways and with the habit of always wearing a monocle, Bernard is not a prominent official, but he is precious for the ambassador:

"... it would not have been easy to find a dragoman to his height, a sufficiently distinguished and at the same time unpretentious French

man who knew the Turkish language and customs well."

Nouchi is smart, much more than her age would suggest, she is not beautiful but, as my grandmother would have said, she is like. He fascinates, imposes himself among Bernard's flaneur and low-income friends who often meet in the restaurant in Avrenos, sniffs the air and gives taste to everyone:

"Those with money, who want to have fun, invite two or three girls to their table, eat and drink without counting the bottles. And then the others, […] like all of Jonsac's friends, who have nothing to do in the evening and go to sit in a corner to stay there as long as possible, ordering the cheapest drink."

One of the two most interesting aspects of the novel is the comparison between the very tough protagonist and Lelia, a girl of the upper middle class, apparently uninhibited and self-confident, actually held back by a very good education and a romantic and inconclusive conception of life. . The other aspect is the bewitching atmosphere of Istanbul, beautiful and evocative on both banks of the Bosphorus, its nature suspended between modernity and tradition; the city and the way of life it induces in all the characters is a sort of penetrating, unnerving spell, which seems to imprison everyone, inhabitants and tourists: Bernard, Lelia, Stolberg, all arrive in Istanbul, thinking of leaving, sooner or later. But they remain, dissatisfied and E never go away.

"Nouchi had believed she could break the circle and had not succeeded. She too needed the indolent rolling of the caiques on the Bosphorus, the moonlight at the Eyup cemetery, the purple sunsets on the Golden Horn ..."

[1] Georges Simenon is a French-speaking Belgian writer born in Liège in Belgium on February 13, 19031 and died in Lausanne in Switzerland on September 4, 1989.

Georges Simenon is the fourth most translated French-speaking author in the world. He started journalism at a very young age and, under various pseudonyms, cut his teeth by publishing an incredible number of "popular" novels. In 1931, he created under his name the character of Commissioner Maigret, who has become world famous, and still at the forefront of detective story mythology. Simenon was immediately successful, and the cinema was interested in his work from the start. His novels have been adapted across the world into over 70 films, for theaters, and over 350 television films. He wrote 192 novels under his own name, including 75 Maigret and 117 novels which he called his "Romans durs", 158 short stories, several autobiographical works and numerous articles and reports. Insatiable traveler, he was elected member of the Royal Academy of Belgium.

[2] Les Clients d'Avrenos, TV adaptation by Philippe Venault, screenplay by Emmanuel Carrère, with Jacques Gamblin, Carlotta Natoli and Claire Borotra (1996).