The Serenity Murders

by Mehmet Murat Somer

  That was her ultimate threat. To leave me, not to come back ever again. She used the same threat every time I gave her a little “constructive criticism.” She had said the same thing when I cautioned her to be more careful after she washed my two cashmere sweaters in the washing machine, reducing them to the size of baby clothes, and burned my La Perla lace G-string trying to iron it. It was a tiny little G-string; it hardly needed ironing.

  “It’s up to you,” I said furiously, recalling all her past accidents. “Don’t come if you don’t want to. In fact, don’t come at all, ayol! I don’t want you to, not anymore.”

  I didn’t even begin to catalog all of the things she had dropped and broken over the years. Thanks to her, I made routine, trimonthly visits to the Paşabahçe glassware shop.

  “No, no, you’ve got the wrong idea. I didn’t mean—”

  “Look here, Satı,” I said. “Please don’t come again…I’m tired of your threats.”

  Certainly I would be able to find a cleaner who did less damage than Satı.

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” she said. “That’s not what I said. I’m happy working for you. I said my mister was complaining, but I cut him down to size. I’m the one who makes a living here. I ought to have the say around here. But what’s he do? He idles about at the coffeehouse all day, waiting for work to fall at his feet, and then comes home to boss me and the little ones around. I ain’t taking that, nuh-uh.”

  Now I was listening to her own personal version of a feminist attitude.

  “I can come tomorrow if you like. I’m free. I’ll finish off what’s left. I’ll give every inch a good scrub. You don’t have to pay me. Better than being home, sniffing that man’s stinky feet…”

  I gave in.

  Hüseyin had made the pasta with tuna.

  20.

  It was best we get ready and go see my eccentric tarot card reader Andelip Turhan before it got too late. Yes, our psycho had given us until midnight, but I wasn’t about to stay at home all that time in a paranoid state of mind, madly searching for secret traces he might have left behind. Then again, what else could I do but be paranoid? He had entered my house (twice!), and was watching me. Veni and vidi had been accomplished, but vici—not yet. I wasn’t going to let him. No way!

  This time Hüseyin and I showered together. We dried each other’s backs. We whistled and shaved side by side.

  “Have you started working out?” I asked him.

  He’d built up some muscle since I’d last seen his naked body up close.

  “You like?” he responded, smiling at me in the mirror.

  He had slyly struck a pose when he noticed I was looking at his body, sucking his tummy in and opening his arms slightly to the side to reveal his lats.

  “Nice,” I said, as I carried on shaving.

  “I sit at the wheel all day. I noticed my belly was starting to show…Hüseyin, man, I said to myself, the only solution is to get yourself a gym membership. It’s been eight months. I go three days a week, in the evenings, regularly. I’m not looking too shabby now, am I?”

  Everyone enjoys being admired.

  The first unpleasant surprise was in my underwear drawer. All my bras had been cut up into shreds. When Hüseyin heard me cursing up a storm, he rushed in to see what was wrong, and didn’t ask a single question when he saw the lacy shreds in my hands.

  “Goddamn bastard,” he hissed through clenched teeth.

  Oh, well, I’d just have to go braless until I had a chance to buy new ones the next day. I could go without breasts. Audrey didn’t have breasts her whole life. The singer Nükhet Duru was as flat as a board until she got new apple-shaped ones. I never was after Jayne Mansfield–style rocket tits, or grand ones like Dolly Parton’s or Nigar Uluerer’s, anyway. Elegant fullness always seemed sexy enough for me.

  I got dressed quickly, still mumbling to myself. What a barbaric method he had chosen. Not even psychos in movies did things like slashing underwear anymore. Hüseyin put his clean clothes on too. We were both dressed in black, from tip to toe.

  “Men in Black,” I said cheekily.

  Of course I wasn’t expecting him to understand or remember the film. He wasn’t one to go to the movies much, as he was always driving his cab, trying to make a living.

  “You mean the agents that chase those aliens…” he said, surprising me. “What was his name? The black guy with the cute face. You know, the one who’s a singer as well…He has video clips too.”

  He really did know him.

  “Will Smith,” I said.

  “That’s the one,” he said, snapping his fingers.

  Andelip Turhan lived in one of those tiny apartments in Levent that banks had built to give as prizes. Before the government relinquished its control over interest on deposits, banks lured new customers by having drawings to give out presents to their depositors. My aunt who was a banker used to tell us all about the lotteries whenever she was recalling her career. She’d then go on about how Istanbul used to be. Back then, apparently Levent and Etiler weren’t in vogue like they are now. No one fancied living there. The only people who lived in the area were a few antisocial and artsy types, a category into which my aunt lumped anyone and everyone who, to her, gave off an air of strangeness, and to which homosexuals too naturally belonged.

  As soon as Andelip Turhan opened the door, a dense cloud of incense came wafting out. A different stick must have been burning in every corner of the itsy-bitsy flat.

  I had warned Hüseyin beforehand about Andelip’s weird taste in fashion, but not even I was expecting this. She was wearing a long navy kimono that brushed the floor. Compared to Ponpon’s kimonos, which were embroidered on the front and back, Andelip’s rather plain kimono might even be said to qualify as perfectly acceptable. But instead of a sash she was wearing a lace garter belt around her waist. Over the kimono! And as if this weren’t enough, she had attached tiny handkerchiefs of different colors to the belt’s stocking clasps. She had four on each leg. She had pulled back her curly hair using a cord made by tying the same color combination of handkerchiefs to each other. With a different ring on each finger and countless bracelets on her wrists, the woman looked like a walking Christmas tree.

  She put on a little show for us, twirling twice right where she stood, so that her stocking clasps and the handkerchiefs attached to them lifted into the air and seemed to take flight.

  “Cute, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “Very,” I said, thinking the look on my face wouldn’t give me away.

  I’d always wondered who could possibly wear those clothes by wild designers like Vivienne Westwood—I didn’t need to anymore.

  “Darling, wearing special clothes is an essential part of tarot rituals. Clothes that you wear only during tarot readings. And mine is this garter belt and colorful handkerchiefs that help balance energy. Why else would I be dressed like this? Right, sweetie?”

  The scent wafting from the apartment combined with the view before him was clearly making Hüseyin have second thoughts. I had to grab him by the arm and shove him inside as I introduced him to Andelip.

  “Yes, this is him,” said Andelip, adding, “I recognize his aura,” as she stroked the confused and wary Hüseyin’s face.

  Just two more steps and we were in the middle of the apartment.

  “Please excuse me, this place is a mess. My thoughts are so preoccupied with you two I couldn’t even tidy up. I see you in each and every reading. This isn’t normal at all. Then again, what is? Right, sweetie?”

  The overfamiliar “sweetie” was directed at me. She wouldn’t address Hüseyin, whom she had only just met, as sweetie. I swallowed my irritation.

  The mess she was talking about wasn’t a mess made over two or three days. It seemed there wasn’t a single closet in the entire apartment. Everything was just lying about. The TV was on. A muted Kevin Spacey film was playing.

  “I was watching a film while I waited for you.”

  She fished the rem
ote control out of the mess with the kind of expertise that only comes with practice, and paused the DVD.

  “I’ve seen it God knows how many times already. I know it by heart.”

  We looked for somewhere to perch. Alas, the huge divan by the window and the two armchairs next to it were buried under heaps of junk. Accessorizing the divan was a mountain of magazines, newspapers, clothes rolled up in balls so that you couldn’t tell what was what, bits and bobs all tangled up, and at the summit, an orange. Now, that’s what I call a still life.

  “Please, sit down,” she said.

  She must have thought her place was the lobby of the large and spacious Hilton, with its rows of empty seats and aisles you could walk down for miles. When I reached out to move the thing I thought was a blanket from the armchair next to me, I realized it was a jacket made from a blanket.

  Andelip held her arm out.

  “I’ll take that.”

  It would take an eternity if we went about removing the things on the armchair one by one. She threw the jacket onto the divan, and then, shoving a few things aside, made room for one buttock, while the other squashed against the precarious mountain of magazines and balled-up clothing.

  Mimicking the host is a general rule of good manners. I pushed aside the pile on the armchair to make enough room for me to keep my balance, and seated myself.

  Hüseyin stared at the humongous mess around him, not knowing what to do.

  “Good thing you turned up,” said Andelip. “I’m receiving strong signals already.”

  The smell of incense was strong enough to burn the back of one’s throat. I coughed.

  “Is it the incense?” she asked. “Or is that a cough of skepticism?”

  When she asked me to follow her into the kitchen, I thought she wanted me to help serve the treats she had prepared for us. I was wrong.

  She took a whirl on the spot and gave flight again to her colorful handkerchiefs. Her spin cornered me by the refrigerator.

  “He is a pleasant and clean-cut man. But isn’t he a bit young for you?” she asked.

  She had suddenly triggered all my conscious and unconscious defense mechanisms.

  “We don’t have that sort of an attachment.”

  She stared right into my eyes, as if by boring into them she would succeed in seeing the truth of which she was convinced.

  She tapped my chest with her finger.

  “Actually, that’s what I want too…Someone who’s not going to question me about what, where, how, and from whom I learned what I know.”

  I had no intention of asking such a thing. Just because she was going to tell our fortune didn’t mean that I had to know all of Andelip’s bedroom secrets and how she developed her mysterious skills. If, however, this intimate moment we were having was meant to prod me to share my secrets—well, she had best not get her hopes up.

  “I really am sick and tired of every man I’m with asking me where I learned the tricks I know, who I’ve slept with before, what I’ve tried, how I became such an expert…”

  I think she was flattering herself—I wasn’t biting at her need to share her secrets with me. I had no desire to know her area of expertise.

  “Someone plain and simple like this one could do me good…You understand what I mean, don’t you, sweetie?”

  “Of course,” I said, to cut her short and keep her from prying any further.

  “Men always ask,” she continued. “The young ones ask because they’re curious to learn, the old ones because they fear I might be more experienced than them. But you’ve got the best…”

  What she meant by “the best” was of course a mystery to me.

  The table where she would do the reading was located on a veranda that had been enclosed after construction, and which she preferred to call her “office.” The entire space was enveloped in dark red velvet curtains. The massive walnut table was covered, as per tradition, with a black silk tablecloth, and on the table, in a chest with a velvet inner lining, wrapped again in a black headscarf, the tarot pack awaited us. She had placed an egg-shaped bloodstone, which she said increases clairvoyance, on one end, and on the other a natural unworked lapis lazuli, which she said enhanced psychic activity.

  When Hüseyin, curious, reached out to touch the lapis, which glittered eerily in the light of the burning candles, Andelip stopped him.

  “Crystals,” she said, “they’re unbelievably powerful…But please don’t touch. They’re filled with my energy…”

  Hüseyin, who was trying to figure out what sort of sorcery, witchcraft, or exorcism he was caught up in, quickly pulled his hand away and seated himself in the chair that Andelip had pointed to.

  “The cards are actually more active after midnight, but when we’re dealing with signals as strong as these, it doesn’t really matter.”

  She studied Hüseyin, scrutinizing him carefully, before we got started. She narrowed her eyes and stared, opened them wide and stared, closed them tight, lifted her chin, and stared. And then, finally, she announced the result of her examination.

  “You need to be cleansed, dear. I’ll do that for you another day.”

  A puzzled look fell over Hüseyin’s face. His eyes asked what exactly needed cleansing; did cleansing mean “doing away with someone,” like it did in Turkish slang? If so, how would it be performed? His confused expression said, I don’t quite understand what I’m supposed to understand. Yes, I could read all of that simply from the look on his face.

  “She means your energy,” I said, trying to keep it as brief as possible. “You know how everything in the universe has its own energy…”

  “You mean aura,” said Hüseyin, surprising me for the second time that day. He must have taken a crash course in general knowledge since we’d last slept together.

  “Yes,” I said, smiling a smile of satisfaction, “aura. Andelip can see people’s auras.”

  “Not always,” Andelip corrected me. “Only if I concentrate properly. Or if the person in question is strong.”

  Just as Hüseyin was about to puff up thinking his aura was being complimented, “Burçak’s energy is extremely powerful. That’s why we definitely want him in our Reiki sessions,” explained Andelip. “I think that’s why I got stuck on him today…His energy has an effect on me. It has an effect on my cards.”

  Andelip closed her eyes, then opened her right palm and waved it about, as if searching for something in the empty space between us.

  “He doesn’t know it, but his energy is tremendous. It reaches all the way to here, look…”

  She was pointing to the empty space approximately seventy centimeters away from me.

  “Sweethearts. We’d best begin. My head is throbbing.”

  With utmost reverence she reached out to the pack of cards in front of her and unfolded the black silk in which the cards were meticulously wrapped.

  “In normal sessions I use a mythic tarot deck because it’s more posh and intellectual, but yours is a different situation. I’ve chosen the Rider-Waite deck, which has become one with me over the years. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t the one doing the choosing. I put all the decks in front of me and waited, thinking it was going to be Celtic tarot. But, lucky you, it was my favorite deck that spoke to me instead.”

  Hüseyin’s eyes continued to widen in disbelief. He stretched out his leg underneath the table and gently kicked me.

  “I’ll do the ten-card Celtic cross spread. We won’t open the last card if you don’t want to…”

  As Andelip looked at the cards that she turned over one by one, she groped for a strand of her curly hair, pulled on it, took it between her lips, and began slowly chewing. Once she’d finished sucking one strand, she’d find a different one from a different area, and the process would begin all over again.

  The lovers card was reversed; the moon and wheel of fortune were right side up.

  “Someone who is madly in love,” she said, tapping the lovers card with her index finger.

  It was
impossible to miss the smile spreading across Hüseyin’s face.

  “At the same time, a warning against enemies. You have a dangerous admirer,” she said, placing her hand on the moon card. “It’s as if he’s walking toward the dark. The dark…It is impossible for him to escape…He’s delusional.

  “As for the wheel of fortune…The most difficult card to interpret. Events beyond their own power…Marking the end of an era…New, inescapable events await you…Things that are beyond control…Could be good or bad…But it’s usually not auspicious when paired with the five of swords and moon card. Close…Very close…Someone very close to you…”

  The hanged man was also reversed. Andelip tapped it with her index finger a couple of times as she chewed on a particularly thick bundle of hair. She lifted her eyes from the cards and seemed to stare into infinity over my shoulder.

  “A loss…Warning against a loss…Inability to see the truth…Oh, I don’t know! Three of swords, warning…Warning! Warning! It keeps appearing…Prepare for something undesirable…”

  I gulped. I was short of breath, as if someone had placed a heavy stone on my chest. Hüseyin had finally stopped trying to play footsie with me; his cheeks aflame, he stared at the card in the middle without blinking an eye, watching Andelip’s ringed finger as if hypnotized.

  “The devil card…Reversed…Disastrous inclinations! Uncontrollable powers…Actions for which explanations are denied…Fear! Damage of unprecedented proportions…”

  I held my breath and listened. Just when we had reached the most vital point, we jumped from our seats at the sound of car horns rising from the street. The silence of the tarot ritual had been broken. The noise grew louder all of a sudden, even though we were at the back of the building. People were screaming and shouting. The doorbell rang.