The Debt of Tamar

by Dweck, Nicole

  And while he dreamed, she wandered into nearby museums. She passed through white halls of Greek sculptures. Faces that looked like Gods, bodies that were indestructible. She saw Selim in every statue. She passed through the Impressionist hall and let herself be absorbed in the fluid moments that were forever captured in those paintings. Dances and glances and kisses that lasted only for a second, but lived forever in vertical love.

  Hannah Herzikova had transformed the bitter starkness of room 301 into a vibrant, bustling art gallery, where patients and doctors alike stopped in to marvel at the beauty of the world she had created. Through her paintings, Selim was transported through time and space to the outside world. Through her, he was transported home.

  He began to dream in different colors. Iridescent hues of violet, blue and pink. They drifted to an ancient world on the wings of Khalil Gibran’s Prophet. He spoke to her about Istanbul and Turkey. He told her how the streets were winded and a bit crooked but lovely and really very charming, much like her smile.

  In his dreams, he was visited by the words of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, words of love he had written for a Polish slave that he later made his bride and queen. Verses whose truth came upon him in soft waves that lapped gently against the dreamscape of his mind. The words of the poem came to him in pieces, like scattered sea treasures washed ashore. Bit by bit, he found them gleaming.

  Throne of my lonely niche

  My wealth,

  My love,

  My moonlight

  You are my most sincere friend, my confidant, my very existence,

  My Sultan, the most beautiful among the beautiful...

  My sweet rose,

  The one only who does not distress me in this world...

  My Istanbul,

  The earth of my Anatolia

  I'll sing your praises always

  I, lover of the tormented heart

  I…

  I am happy.

  She sat by his bedside until he dozed off.

  He found himself cradled in the supple stems of a weeping pomegranate tree, with a girl, a child really, but he loved her, he loved her…the sky darkened and he felt a sudden sense of dread that he would lose the girl, that she would look up to the clouds and disappear forever.

  Selim sat up, half lost in a dream, half lost in a memory. “Don’t leave me again.” His fingers reached out for her.

  “I’m not leaving.” She pushed in close and brushed his hair away from his ear. “ I never have.” As soon as she heard her words, she sensed they were untrue.

  34

  There it was, day in day out. A tin box that Davide Herzikova had cradled in his lap before his passing. The box held the jewels of his existence and the proof of his being—his memories.

  But the man was gone and the box, a mausoleum of fossilized mementos not quite living but not quite dead, was relegated to the far end of the room. Hannah had left it there alongside the portrait of her father. She’d come and go often, side-stepping the box as though it were yesterday’s paper, or maybe, tomorrow’s.

  Selim reached for a pen and sketched geometric shapes on a napkin. Soon he was scribbling letters, then letters became words. Mother. Father, Brother. To whom did these words belong? He studied the letters he had inscribed. A.L.I. He gripped the pen in his hand until his knuckles turned white. Who inherits memories or are they lost to the dust? Do they belong to a single man, to any man, or are they free to roam the world entire? He opened his eyes and with his pen, put shape to these thoughts.

  The sound of Crocs slapping against the floor tiles startled him momentarily. He looked up to find a nurse in his room carrying a clipboard and taking notes in her folder.

  Selim nodded in the direction of the box. “Would you do me a favor and hand that over to me?”

  She pulled her thin lips back into two pink threads. “This one here?” She let out a little squeal while squatting to retrieve the box from under the chair.

  “That’s it.”

  Selim examined the box. Plastered on the lid was a poster featuring a pin-up girl in a polka-dot dress with a blood red rose tucked up in chestnut hair. Selim drew his fingers across the curled up edges of the parchment trying to smooth them down as best he could. He wondered about the poster. He wondered about the man.

  Tenderly, he lifted the lid while considering his own memories. Would they die with him or would they, by some act of celestial kindness, be passed on to live in the consciousness of another? Who would inherit the Osman Secret Chronicles? They had been passed from generation to generation, from one man’s heart to the next man’s mind. Centuries of wisdom and recollection had been preserved and passed down throughout the ages. Those memories deserved to be salvaged. But what of a man who never had any children?

  What of a man who had taken away the life of a child and all the memories he would never live to have? He looked down at the words he had scribbled on the napkin.

  Mother. Father. Brother. Ali.

  Gently, he folded the napkin and tucked it away within the pages of a hefty book beside him.

  Returning his attention to the box in his lap, he sifted through dozens of photos and discovered a grey-scale world framed by white perforated edges. He lifted up a picture of Davide Herzikova as a youth. With his prominent chin and curious eyes there was no mistaking him. Beneath the white-hot sun with a steamship in the backdrop, he stood beside a husky boy with a keloid scar above a sagging expression. Selim flipped the photo over. 1958.

  He went through the others. The same boy was in nearly all the pictures though it was clear he’d not yet suffered the injury that had left the space between his eye and brow mutilated. He studied that boy and as he did, he had the strange sensation that the boy was studying him too. He felt his shoulders tense up as a hot cramp spread up along the back of his neck settling behind his ears and along his jaw. It’s just a picture he assured himself. Just a shadow of a boy, not even a boy. And yet, he could not shake the strange sensation that the boy was watching him. Slowly, he lifted his chin to discover an elderly man standing in the doorway leaning against his cane.

  There was no telling how long he’d been there.

  Selim dropped the photos back into the box and secured the lid hurriedly.

  “Edward Rumie,” said the man in the grey hat. He peeked his head through the doorframe then looked around as though he were lost.

  His fleshy antiquity seemed familiar, like the worn pages of grandfather’s Hafez poetry collections. He had lines from too much laughter, his thick mouth accentuated within etched parentheses. His eyes were a mystery though, shielded from view by the oversized, opaque lenses of his black wraparound glasses.

  The man took a few steps towards Selim’s bedside.

  “Do I know you?” Selim asked. He was sure he didn’t.

  Mr. Rumie made his way to the wall opposite the bed and set his attentions on one particular abstract mural. “I’d be surprised if you did,” he said in a thick, French accent. “Mind if I sit for a minute?” The joints in his knees cracked as he lowered himself onto an upholstered chair. “I’ve been trying to find someone.” The elderly Frenchman suddenly seemed distracted.

  Though he couldn’t see his eyes, Selim was sure the man’s gaze was on the lid of the box, inspecting the girl in the polka-dot dress.

  “Whose is that?” The man seemed startled.

  “The box?”

  “Yes the box.”

  Selim leaned over and slid it under his bed. “It’s mine.”

  “Yours?”

  “Mine.” His voice was firm.

  “Right.” The man scoffed. “That’s a French pin-up from 1958. I’ve only seen one in my lifetime. Well two, counting that one.”

  Selim shrugged his shoulders.

  “It’s from the Marais. I should know.”

  “Then it’s from the Marais,” Selim acquiesced before turning away.

  “So that’s your box.” The man leaned forward and smacked his lips together. “Ma
ybe you’re from Le Marais. Maybe you speak French too?”

  “I do.”

  “Like a Spanish cow, I bet you do,” the man mumbled under his breath in his native tongue.

  “There are as many as five official languages spoken in Spain,” Selim replied in near-perfect French. “Another three that enjoy recognition status and two others that are used unofficially.”

  The old man’s pout flattened out into a wry grin.

  “And I wouldn't underestimate cows,” Selim went on blithely. “They’re highly intelligent creatures.”

  Beaten at his own game, the old man shrugged then turned his attention towards the works on the wall opposite the bed. He gestured toward the paintings before turning back to Selim. “Not bad.” Floor to ceiling, the paintings looked like mosaic tiles in a sanctuary.

  “Not bad at all,” Selim replied.

  “Who did all this?” His voice took on a tender tone.

  “A friend.”

  The man quietly contemplated this. “Good friend.”

  Selim nodded. “The best.”

  “You’re very lucky.”

  Selim hadn’t thought of himself as lucky. He said nothing.

  “I’d have done anything to be loved like this.” The old man seemed to be talking only to himself.

  After a few moments, he picked up his grey hat and headed to the door. When he reached it, he turned to Selim and with his cane, drew an imaginary circle in the air. “This,” he said, pointing with an air of instruction. “This is a labor of love.” His cane came down quietly. He smiled, tipped his hat, then left the room.

  35

  Edward Rumie returned just a few days after his initial encounter with Selim. Without a knock he burst in once again and made himself comfortable in the chair by the bed. “I want to meet the artist,” he began without the courtesy of a salutation.

  “Nice to see you too.”

  “Where is she?” the old man huffed.

  “I see you’ve been brushing up on your manners.”

  “I’ll wait. Do you expect her to be back soon?”

  “You know there are set visiting hours.”

  “I guess she’s busy. Yes, she must be very busy.”

  “Do you wander around the hallways harassing every foreigner you come across?”

  “I don’t discriminate,” the man said pointedly.

  Selim sighed than turned his attentions back to his newspaper. “I don’t know when she’ll be back.”

  “Mind if I wait?”

  “I don’t mind.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes while Selim flipped through the newspaper. He discovered a half-page article detailing the latest turmoil surrounding the Turkish novelist’s imprisonment on the charges of “Insulting Turkishness.” A peaceful protest had turned violent and tear-gas was unleashed on a crowd of marching university students. A large photo depicted a man with multiple piercings and a young girl in a headscarf holding up a sign that read “Free Taguc! Free Speech! Free Turkey!” Selim read on and learned that the trial was postponed yet again, and that the author faced up to three years in prison for depicting an Armenian character as a victim of genocide. He was the third writer to be charged with violating Article 301 of the Turkish criminal code.

  Selim thought of Gul and of the canceled appointment that could have freed the man from prosecution. And still, even then, it would not have been enough. There were more writers and journalists that were being prosecuted for speaking their minds. He could not buy everyone’s freedom. Perhaps he could start a petition pushing for the abolishment of Article 301.

  The bleeping of monitoring equipment interrupted his thoughts bringing him back to reality. He looked up.

  Rumie sat opposite his bed examining him as though he were a cadaver.

  “Mind taking off those glasses? I feel like I’m sitting across from the Terminator.”

  The old man seemed pleased. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “Why?” Selim shook his head limply. “Look, do you plan on sitting here all day?”

  “I have no other plans. Nowhere to be.”

  Selim closed his eyes as though the act of not seeing might make the man disappear.

  “What time did you say she’d be back?” Rumie looked at his watch then glanced up at the door.

  “I didn’t say.” Selim allowed his gaze to wander throughout the room settling on one strange object at a time before moving onto the next.

  A porcelain sink with a crack in the base.

  An empty gurney.

  An oddball Francophile opposite the bed.

  A spider making his way across the television screen.

  A hand-sanitizing dispenser with liquid dripping to the ground.

  A heart monitoring device. His eyes lingered on that machine. Its luminescent stems and black backdrop reminding him of days past when as a boy, he would play with the glowing pegs of his the Light-Brite set.

  Once, long ago, he was just a boy.

  Once, he was a child.

  A wave of sadness passed over him as he realized the Osman dynasty might end here, perhaps in this very bed, beneath a coarse white sheet between two metal rail-guards. He had no children and as Dr. Rosen had delicately informed him, the treatment would most likely leave him sterile, if he survived.

  “Well where is she when she’s not here?” The old man asked suddenly.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You don’t know?” His foreign accent bristled at the tip of his tongue.

  “You’ll have to ask Hannah.”

  “Ask me what?”

  The two men turned to find her leaning in the doorway, sunglasses riding low at the bridge of her nose and a blank canvas tucked under the arm of her denim jacket. “What’s going on?” She stripped away her glasses and let her bag fall to the ground as she made her way over.

  “You’re here.”

  “I’m here,” she echoed. She wove her fingers through a wild halo of hair before making herself comfortable at the edge of his mattress.

  Edward Rumie stood and made his way towards her. “Hannah?”

  “Hi.” She examined him curiously.

  Rumie reached out and shook her hand. “I’m a big fan of your work.”

  “Thanks.” She kicked off her ankle boots and tucked her legs up under her. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

  “Edward Rumie.” He handed her his card. “I have a gallery in Chelsea.” He smiled when he spoke exposing a row of ivory teeth, crooked and gleaming as piano keys in motion. “We’re having an emerging artists showcase. A new artist every other month. I really like what I see here.”

  She shot Selim a questioning glance before turning her attentions back to Rumie. “You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  “I’m old and ugly but it’s the first time I’m being confused with a dog.”

  “That’s not what I meant—”

  “Americans have been calling us frogs for decades, mais un chien! Well that is a first. A first for everything!” He smiled jollily.

  “All I mean is that it’s really not my thing.”

  “Success is not your thing? Or art is not your thing?”

  “You’re twisting my words.”

  “They’re your words not mine. And I don’t aim to twist I aim only to illuminate, so my dear, please be a bit more specific. What is it that is not your thing?”

  Her smile faded as she turned to Selim. “Who is this guy?”

  He folded his newspaper and dropped it on the tray. “Truth be told, I don’t know much about him. He seems to like harassing foreigners.”

  “Damn it!” Rumie glared up at Selim then lowered his voice to a growl. “I already told you, I don’t discriminate.”

  Selim’s eyes beamed with bemused curiosity.

  “That’s enough.” Hannah spliced the space between them with her painted fingertips. “Look,” She turned to Rumie and smiled politely. “It’s really sweet of you to offer me something like this. I a
ppreciate it, I really do, but it’s not right for me.”

  Rumie seemed disappointed. “May I?” He reached for the newspaper on Selim’s tray, then tore away the front page. He began folding its corners as Hannah and Selim looked on. After a minute, he handed her a rose fashioned from the paper Selim had been reading earlier in the day. “I do not accept your answer,” he said while heading for the door. “I need at least twenty-five, maybe thirty pieces!” His voice trailed behind from the hallway.

  *

  The night after his first chemotherapy session, Hannah sat in the dark with her knees at her chest, watching him sleep and listening to him mumble. He shot up suddenly—his body choking—desperate to rid itself of the contents of his stomach and the poison in his blood.

  She reached out to him.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m here. You’re going to be fine.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Everything’s ok.”

  “Forgive me.”

  “Are you thirsty? How about some water?”

  “You have to forgive me.” He was still very much asleep. “Ayda.” He took hold of her hand and squeezed. “Is it you?”

  “Shhh. Try to rest now. I don’t know an Ayda.”

  “Ayda?” His voice was frantic.

  “I’m here, Selim. It’s Hannah.”

  His breathing slowed.

  “It’s really you?” A quiet moment passed between them. “Ayda?”

  She swallowed a knot rising in her throat. “Yes,” she lied.

  “Ayda.” His voice was a whisper.

  She took his hand and brought it to her lips.

  “I’m so sorry.” She could barely make out his words.

  “Everything is going to be ok.”

  “You forgive me?”

  “I forgive you.”

  “Ayda?”

  “Yes, Selim?”

  “You love me?”