Fallen Idols is a memoir that begins in the radical sixties in Greenwich Village. The author, the young Leonard Schulman, is living on West Fourth street, just two blocks away from the young emigre from Duluth, Minn.. Bob Dylan.... The author of this charming and engaging memoir, already knows of the young genius, Mr. Dylan, having been exposed to early Dylan by his first love at Brooklyn College. The songs and life of Dylan are to affect our hero in curious ways. In the course of this book he comes to know two photographers--David Gahr and Barry Feinstein--who were close to Mr. Dylan. They tell him stories unheard of before the the great bard. Schulman comes to know other important people too--mostly through his work at Time magazine. How a Brooklyn street kid, got the job and his work at the magazine (for nearly 30 years) is a big part of the book. In the course of his life he meets many people whom he comes to see as 'fallen idols." One of the most important is James Wilde, Time magazine's most intrepid war correspondent. Mr. Wilde becomes a friend and mentor. In the nineties he travels to work for Wilde in Time's Nairobi office as a stringer. Here many adventures occur (worthy of a movie). There are other fallen idols. Too numerous to enumerate. But let me mention at least one--Vittorio Fiorucci--the monstre sacre and great Montreal artist. The creator of Juste Pour Rire's little green man. The book follows in the great literary tradition of Kerouac and Cormac McCarthy as he (Schulman) traverses--over a lifetime--wide areas of the globe--seeking and finding moments of joy and passion and nirvana. It is a journey that will excite you with the tears of things, as he seeks to find, along with all of us--permanence and love. (Another of his fallen idols is Norman Mailer and. . . oh, you'll just have to read the book.) But reader beware, Mr. Schulman's book is not for the faint of heart. So be careful. . . this book may knock you out. Like Hamlet advised "t'were as if a mirror were held up to nature." Human nature, that is. And it ain't always pretty.
Fallen Idols (lacrimae rerum)
A MemoirBy Leonard SchulmanAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Leonard Schulman
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4685-2582-3Chapter One
No, that's not true.
He had also told me that his father was a skinflint. And that was the reason for his false teeth. "Dad bought a new car instead."
A new car instead.
Haw! Haw! He enjoyed a good joke, even on himself.
We were yukking it up.
I had just arrived in Istanbul, the fall of '93. We are in the living room of his apartment in Kalamis on the Asian side of Istanbul. Wilde drinks down hot coffee with gusto. He enjoys good food, elegant surroundings, good music, good pot. Classical Turkish music is playing in the background. He fires up a big fat joint.
"You know, luv," he says to me with an easy smile, "have you ever heard the old saying that every-time an Englishman opens his mouth he makes another Englishman despise him? Well, it's true, luv; it's true."
And then poof, like smoke, he was gone.
He had a knack for making dramatic entrances and exits ... but soft! Where had the wry wag gone to? I peeked into his bedroom ... There he was—under the covers, fast asleep.
A few days later with On-Ke gone (she had taken the first jet out after I arrived) James Wilde, Time magazine's Turkish bureau chief, disappeared into the streets and bars of Istanbul. He was off on a horrendous, round-the-clock drunk.
We had had a few sane days together, catching up. The second night I was there he looked me dead in the eye and said the same thing to me that he had said both times I visited him in Kenya (1985 and l989). "You look funny," he said. "Lenny, be careful, don't go funny. Why not get a mail-order bride?" The pot was calling the kettle hot. (I was already more than halfway to "funny." If by ... what did he mean by funny?) I'd laugh it off.
Wilde and I had been tight for about six years in Brooklyn. Both of us Time employees. Wilde lived in Brooklyn Heights and me in Park Slope. We'd had a lot of fun together. This was one interesting dude and one of the few upper-level Time employees who'd allowed me into his personal life.
So as promised I flew from New York City to see Himself.
It was my first trip to Turkey.
Although I didn't know it at the time there would be more trips to Turkey in the years ahead. I would even move there after Wilde's death—on June 26th, 2008, in New York—and live in his daughter Siobhan's house for a year in the small town of Buyukdere, near Sariyer. The house was on Ahiler Sokak, down the alley, directly across from the Mayor's office. It was a three-story, ivy-covered brick building, a couple of blocks from the Bosphorus. From the roof I could see the water and the many fishing boats. From inside I could hear the street vendors calling, "Balik, balik." [Fish, fish]
A strange narrow house with oversized steps and a small dark backyard filled with hundreds of large leaves from the deciduous magnolia and the linden tree that grew there.
One day in the center of town I saw a horse dart out from behind a fence—narrowly missing me—run into the street, slip and fall down. This all took place in a heartbeat; in front of a bus stop, across the street from a small park. What to do? Finally a kid ran up, got the horse back up—not easy—and went off with him down the road. Where to? This was Turkey. How would I know? Follow him? To what end? Turkey. I liked the energy. I liked the vitality and the unexpectedness of it all. I liked the people, the kids who got up to give me their seat on the metro or the bus. The mosques, the minarets, the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. I liked the barbershops, the crowded tea shops, the bakeries, the bread shops, the fish restaurants, the cats that prowled everywhere. The street musicians. The jazz and blues clubs. The mama cat who gave birth in the back yard to a litter of kittens. The doner stands. The sea gulls and the crows. The orange juice stands and the nut shops.
What I didn't like were the slugs that came out every night and crawled around in my house, on the ground floor. I'd pick them up in a paper towel and throw them into the street before I climbed the two flights of stairs to where I slept on the top floor, on a mattress on the floor—the house bending and waving—and me dreaming, dreaming of what has been and what was still to come in the Turkish night.
Chapter Two
On our second night together Wilde had a story to tell.
Vietnam in the mid-sixties. A place he had spent twelve years both during the French occupation, and then the American. He had come back home and found his girlfriend impaled on a long green pole. The horror! The Viets had murdered her.
His narration of the tale was spine-tingling and, like Conrad's Marlow, he was a master story-teller: he related in precise detail how, with meticulous care, with great Zen-like patience and cunning, he had planned the assassination of the killer (disassembling and assembling the revolver until he could do it in the dark, do it in his sleep) and how he had carried it out—in his own sweet time and immaculate style—nothing would go wrong! The assassin of his Vietnamese girlfriend would be dispatched clinically; and without a hitch, it succeeded just as planned.
This tale was followed by another—a long, intense monologue with many winding corridors: a labyrinth of intrigue and madness; a hall of mirrors, a cat's cradle—about his servitude to a metaphysical Goddess that he called, "the Admiral."
He was raving mad.
This submission to the Goddess, he patiently explained with a cold, cruel smile, also took place in the killing fields of Vietnam. He said that he had met her in another dimension while recovering from a life-threatening illness, or injury, I forget which. Anyway, it was his fate to follow the many orders she gave him. He was, in short, her slave. Was this something out of H. Rider Haggard, or was it for real?
I have repressed many of the tasks he told me he had to perform. After his confession—for that is what it was—he put the fingers of his right hand deep into my throat and told me how easy it would be for him to rip it out. I believed him. You had to give the old boy his due. He certainly knew how to welcome a traveler to Istanbul—the home of the old Ottoman Empire—the city of murder, mystery and intrigue. Wilde had style.
Wilde had style in his personal life, too. The large upscale apartment was filled with his world-class antique collection: artifacts, religious objects and paintings, African masks, Persian rugs, many crucifixes, framed Islamic calligraphy and many prints of war and executions. An original Eames chair. A Lamu chair. Icons. Idols.
Jet-lagged and beat I fled to the bloody guest bedroom. Art from around the world. I recognized several of the bloody body of Christ on the cross paintings that he bought in Africa. He had enough to fill a wing at the Met. By contrast my storefront apartment at 175 Mott Street (this was a five-story tenement building that abutted the north wall of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral's cemetery) contained very little, mostly books, and my friend Bob Edelson, a one-time marketing executive on Madison Avenue (Kenyon and Eckhardt), now a photographer, who was staying with me, working as a street-vendor and selling his photos of New York City on the streets of Soho.
I don't think my head was on the pillow more than five seconds before I was in the world of dreams. That world in which a third of each man's life is spent, and thought by some to be a premonition of eternity.
Chapter Three
The following day Wilde and I traveled to see the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia museum. He was a top-notch host. Always ready to go the extra mile, share his knowledge, wisdom and experience, suggest places to go blah, blah, blah. We got there by ferry and returned the same way. We joined the mad throng of Istanbullus that were constantly jumping on or off the boat as it docked. Then for some horrible cheap tea that was always being sold on-board in small tulip glasses. Wilde insisted we drink it. Often he just spat it out—occasionally in front of the vendor. After a while I began to just turn it down. Wilde thought that showed no class. I didn't have class. Maybe he was right; after all, Wilde was my liege, my sovereign, my master.
That night, after dinner prepared by his houseboy, we decided to watch Lord Jim. We had high hopes for it, but it was a bomb. Shut it off about half way through. Our second choice was King and Country with Tom Courtenay as the British deserter and Dirk Bogarde as his military attorney. Wilde was riveted to the screen. Wilde could vouch for its authenticity. He knew war.
So the second video was a success.
A couple of days later we took a ferry to the Galata section of Istanbul and in a very old and very elegant apartment building we attended a party of Istanbul intellectuals, writers and poets. I met a young woman there, who looked like Jackie Kennnedy, and was the granddaughter of a Kurdish president who took over in a military coup in the '80s. A week later we had a brief, romantic night which involved a two o'clock-in-the morning pounding on the door of her late grandfather's apartment by what I believed were security guards. (It was a very elegant, old-world apartment filled with photos of her grandfather standing with people like Leonid Brezhnev, Pope John Paul II, Jimmy Carter.) I say "believed" because I never asked her who was banging down the door and also because she had told me earlier in the evening that she was engaged to a Brit—someone in Parliament—and so, of course, she would never be able to see me again.
Sometime during the course of the party, I was mysteriously approached, "The man you arrived with, is he your friend?" I nodded. She continued: "I was told by a mutual friend [Meltem Turkoz], who has not arrived at the party yet, that he's not supposed to drink; is that correct?"
That was the understatement of the decade.
"He's in the other room," she said. "I think you had better see for yourself." I accompanied her into the bedroom and, sure enough, James had a glass of booze in hand.
That's all it took: one sip. He was off the wagon.
Chapter Four
You know what they say: One sip is too many and a million is not enough. We hit the streets and he decided that he needed a haircut. A haircut! This was at about eleven o'clock. For some strange reason barber shops stay open very late in Istanbul. And there are a lot of barber shops. I don't think any city has more. I sat and waited as those lovely locks of silver were trimmed. The haircut was finished, he got to his feet. He dusted himself off and then, on winged feet, he suddenly darted out the door, leaving astonished barbers, and me, behind.
Leaving me behind to deal with the wrath of the barbers.
I paid them, what else could I do? And then headed out. I wasn't sure if I would find him. But there he was, down the street. The vibes were bad. The 63-year-old Turkish Bureau Chief of Time magazine cheating a barber out of a haircut? He didn't normally behave this way. This didn't bode well. "It was your fault, luvvy," he said. "Stepping into the bar on the way over to have a piss; I stepped in to see if you were all right and one sniff of the booze was fatal." I chose not to believe him although there was some truth in it.
We took a dolmus—in those days a big old American car with an extra seat squeezed in the back—to the ferry and then a cab back home. He somehow managed to get some sleep and the next day—while he paced—I tried to help get him into a hospital—we went to quite a few—but none would accept him on his terms. I remember one receptionist recommending that he go to A.A. That was a laugh. Talk about locking the barn door after the horse has been stolen. He stumbled off.
I saw him the first couple of days when he managed to find his way back home—his clothes torn and dirty, stumbling and incoherent: a pretty sad sight. During the days he was away I worried about him—but really, what could I do?—a stranger in a strange land—and so would occupy myself by reading from his extensive library, walking around the neighborhood, and swimming in the pool of the elegant building that he was renting an apartment in. (This was unusual. He almost always owned his home. But he was still new to Turkey; he would buy a house in Cihangir, a couple of months later.) His houseboy would arrive in the afternoon, do some cleaning, ironing, laundry, prepare my meal and ask after James. "Not back yet," I told him.
After a week Wilde returned. He'd managed to break the cycle before it broke him. (In a private clinic where he was restrained and put on an IV with sedatives, as per his instructions.) It couldn't have been easy. The next day—first thing in the morning—he's out in the pool swimming laps. Fantastic powers of recovery. He was good—he moved through the water like a snake. You only had to see him in the water one time to know that was his natural element. Made sense. He was a Pisces, a fish. I was also a water sign—Cancer—we had that in common.
Chapter Five
Wilde thinks I should see Ephesus, Lake Bafa and Bodrum.
Why not?
We're off with an overnight cruise down the Dardanelles to Izmir. On the boat he shows signs of paranoia; thinks that someone has been taking his picture while pretending to be a tourist. He confronts the photographer. Heated words are exchanged and he turns suddenly on his heel—no one could do it better—and walks away. "I'm on a PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party] hit list," he tells me; "I've got to be constantly on guard. Paranoia is my daily bread."
We stay in Izmir a day—not enough time to do much sightseeing—Wilde tells me that Kemal Ataturk did something here—I forget what—Wilde was a big fan—and the next morning we're in a rental, driving to the ancient Greek ruins of Ephesus. Two-way opposing traffic and the Turks are rocketing past at about an average 95 miles an hour. The sun was blazing hot. This went on for three days.
Mornings we leave the motel and he gets more and more manic in the car, smoking reefer after reefer. He's literally foaming at the mouth. He's shouting. He's laughing. He's spastic. He's throwing his arm and hand in my face to make conversational points ... It was just two years after the First Gulf War and he's stressed. "The Iraqis threw everything they had at the Kurds: tanks, jets, gun-ships, artillery ... and scattered them like chaff into Kirkuk. (Always depend on a maniac for a nice poetic touch.) "The ultimate war correspondent experience," he growled, "seeing a battle begin and end." Mutter, mutter, mutter. "I'm on their fucking hit list, man!" Mutter, mutter. Something about an old farmer who watched his donkey burn and was helpless to prevent its death. H'mm, h'mmm. When he wasn't muttering, he was humming like a bee. Wilde was alternately funny and raving at the same time—real vintage stuff—and meantime cars are racing past us—changing lanes and getting back in with just inches to spare—hell-bent on their vacations and on our fiery destruction.
Chapter Six
During the German Blitz of London James and his brother Derrick, were sent to the States. He told me that leaving England during the war had made him feel like a coward.
"We were sent to exclusive prep schools. My brother did very well—he was the smarter and the fairer—and he went on to graduate with honors from Lawrenceville, Harvard and law school."
Wilde, on the other hand was thrown out of Lawrenceville. "I was naughty and caught sleeping with the headmaster's daughter." He ended up at a progressive school—Solebury in New Hope, PA., and it saved his life. It was located in rural farmland, in Bucks County. "The Bauhan boys took me home with them into the bosom of their family. Sadly, it's a dream life which no longer exists in America."
Directly after Solebury, Wilde set out on a romantic life of adventure. He spent time in Europe working in refugee and DP camps, worked as a coal miner and a farm laborer and even spent "six horrible months" working as an assistant cook on a catcher ship in a Norwegian whaling fleet. In the '50s he was in south-east Asia: "My Harvard, Yale and Princeton" and "learned about war and love working for the French government.
"One's first war is the worst and best. Indochina was the last great colonial war with the Legion and troops from Senegal, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. Saigon [in the sixties] was a cesspool of gambling and opium dens, private Chinese militias and cheese and wine and fresh salad flown in everyday from Paris."
(Continues...)
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