The Lovers

by Vendela Vida

  She screamed to everyone on shore. “A boy! A boy! Find the boy!”

  More men and women jumped in and swam to her. Maybe he had gotten trapped in the weeds below. If she could only feel some part of his small body, she could dive down, untangle him.

  She was thankful now to be surrounded by others—by men swimming, by a small fishing boat. She was growing weak. She needed them. Everyone tried to speak to her in Turkish, except for one man who spoke in Spanish. She told him that the boy was ten, that he was diving for shells. Suddenly she felt something against her leg and hope blossomed inside her, until she understood that one of the men diving underwater had encountered her calf. He swam to the surface, disappointed to see Yvonne’s face.

  Now the others were getting in the way. The splashing! Yvonne was afraid none of them would find him. She couldn’t tell how much time had elapsed—three minutes, or thirty.

  “Ahmet!” she yelled as she swam among and around the rocks. The water was rougher here, and she looked to see who could help her if she needed it. Many of the swimmers had now turned their attention to the docked boats, and were yelling up to the passengers, confirming, Yvonne assumed, that no boy had climbed aboard.

  She turned her eyes to the rocks and there she saw something. The kickboard. It was knocking against the rocks, each wave turning it round and round, like the hand of a clock.

  Yvonne sat upright in the basement of the Datça house, five towels pulled around her, shivering. She sat on a musty circular rug, in the dark.

  The fishing boat had rescued her. The current had pulled her toward the rocks, and two or three men had hoisted her up onto the boat. There had been so many hands upon her, under her armpits, her knees.

  When they arrived at the dock a crowd had gathered there, and on the beach. They were looking at her the way bystanders had after Peter’s accident. They thought it was her son who had drowned.

  But then there were others, the waiter among them. They looked at her as if she had submerged the boy with her own hands, her own weight.

  She had swallowed so much salt water. Someone gave her a thermos of tea, which she drank in small sips.

  She looked around for someone asking questions. She didn’t know whom she was searching for—someone official. There were no ambulances or lifeguards. A boy had drowned and—

  She spat out the tea in her mouth and vomit followed. It was pink and sinewy and attached itself to her hair. It covered her feet.

  The fisherman was wearing a bandanna around his neck, and he handed it to Yvonne. But the smell of fish, and the man’s sweat, made her vomit again. She looked up and saw faces staring at her as she stood in front of the amphitheater, vomiting onto the sandy white path.

  How long had she stood there, bent over, while they watched? How long had they watched without coming to her side? It might have been an hour. She didn’t want to consider that less time could have passed before she walked to her car.

  She had waited in her car. Doors closed, air-conditioning on. She waited with the engine running for five minutes, ten. She expected someone to come and question her, someone to come and stop her, arrest her, admonish her, punish her, scream.

  But no one did. They had all watched her vomit, walk to her car, and sit in the parking lot, and no one had done a thing.

  Even the fisherman who had rescued her and left her with his bandanna had returned to his boat.

  She had known when she was doing it that walking to her car might not be the right thing to do. She knew she might regret it. But the limbo, where no one was accusing or assisting her, had made things worse. Her brain seemed to be swelling in the heat. She cradled her head in her hands.

  She needed to go to Datça and think. She needed to be away from the sun, the stares. She needed cold water, shade. She needed stillness, the fortress of the house. She would go and think and come back. She waited for someone to stop her. She waited for someone to come running to the car and say the boy had been found. He was found and alive.

  She waited but no one came.

  When she got back to the house, she didn’t remember driving there.

  Inside the house she still felt trapped. Even the sun, usually meek through the windows, felt accusatory. She made her way to the basement. The pungent scent of the owl still lingered.

  She needed to think clearly. Think, she told herself. She knew she only had a limited amount of time to set things right. She had left Knidos without a word. That had been a mistake—she knew it now. She had known it then. She had behaved the way someone guilty would behave.

  But nothing had happened. He had gone into the water, paddled out, and then nothing. No sound. No splashing. No cries.

  She had watched him step into the water, closer to the rocks than usual. She had stepped in too, following his lead. Then something had punctured her foot, and she had gone back to the beach. When she looked up, she hadn’t seen him. How long had her eyes been averted?

  She told herself it wasn’t her money that had prompted him to swim farther out than usual. But she knew it was. She should have known better. She who had traveled widely, she who had never tried to bring attention to herself, to disrupt anyone around her with loud laughter or disrespect, had put too much pressure on a young boy. For shells. Shells that she had already known would end up back home in a drawer full of pencils and tape dispensers, or at the bottom of a fishbowl. The shells meant nothing to her. She had only wanted to please the boy.

  No, she had only wanted him to like her, to love her. She had wanted him to look at her the way Matthew and Aurelia had when they were young. Before Aurelia began ignoring her, and Matthew gravitated toward any family but theirs.

  Yvonne rocked herself forward and backward as she sat on the circular rug. Her arms were crossed in front of her body, each hand holding the corners of the towel. She was cold. She realized she was still wearing her swimsuit. She tried to pull it off, but it was wet and clung to her. She wrestled with it, twisting around on the floor, finally releasing herself. She lay on the rug, exhausted, naked.

  It was possible, since his body had not emerged from the water, that Ahmet had landed on the rocks and climbed to the top of the small mountain. Maybe he had been entertained by the fuss everyone was making. Yes, Yvonne thought, he was hiding up there, and the next day he would be at the beach, waiting for her as usual. He was a smart boy.

  She tried to keep this image in her head—of Ahmet the joker, the clever one, perched on the mountain. And she kept it for as long as she could before she began to replay the events of the day once more.

  The answer would come to her. She was sure that if she didn’t figure it out, she would go mad. Had a current taken him under and out? How long had the kickboard been circling against the rocks?

  The sun dropped and she remained in the basement. She knew if she went upstairs, the sensor would click the lights on. She didn’t want passing cars to know anyone was home. No one could know she was there.

  She slept on the couch in the basement, the towels pulled over her still-naked body.

  At the first sign of light, she rose from the couch to dress. She had to go to Knidos to see if the boy was there, if his body had been found, if an investigation was under way. She wanted to make it clear she hadn’t intended to flee. She drove to Knidos with the heater on. She could not get warm.

  Only two other cars were in the parking lot—neither of them police. The water was calm today. Yvonne sat in the Renault. She looked toward the beach, where she expected to see yellow tape, some sign of police inquiry, but nothing was roped off. All was the same. She looked toward the mountain above the rocks, where she had tried to convince herself Ahmet had climbed. The mountain was white and still.

  Her eyes continued scanning the beach for a sign. And then she saw it: something turquoise and familiar. Her dress. Someone had draped it over the railing of the restaurant’s deck.

  Yvonne stepped out of the car and hurried to it. It seemed like evidence—of what, she did n
ot know. But she needed to claim it.

  She walked toward the restaurant, her eyes still scanning the beach for a sign that something had happened. She approached the dress and was touched by how carefully it had been laid out to dry. Whoever did this does not blame me, she thought. Whoever did this does not hate me.

  Emboldened by a stranger’s kindness, she walked to the beach with the dress folded and tucked under her arm. No sign of anything.

  Was it possible she had imagined it all? She felt her forehead. It was clammy and reassuring. She was not well. Perhaps it had been a hallucination, the result of a fever. She walked to the front of the log, to the site where the boy had placed his towel the day before. The towel was gone. A good sign, she decided. She knelt on the sand and dug for a minute. Nothing. Hope rose inside her. A hallucination, yes. Anything else was impossible. A boy drowning in the ocean where he swam every day? Impossible.

  She moved a few inches over and dug another hole. Nothing but darker sand below. She tried a third time, halfheartedly, to search for any proof. She found it. A roll of euros. Fifty euros. Almost a hundred dollars. A ridiculous amount. Her disappointment blistered into rage.

  She didn’t know if she should rebury the money or take it with her. The dress, the money. It was all evidence against her. She took the roll and stuffed it into her pocket. She hurried back to the car.

  A voice called out to her. “You come back,” it said.

  Yvonne turned. The waiter. He had a rag in his hand, a visor on his head.

  “Did he go far enough for you?”

  Yvonne said nothing.

  “Ahmet told me you were his…how do you say? Patron? I’m wondering you think he went far enough for you?” He was walking quickly toward her.

  “I didn’t ask him to go,” she said. “I didn’t ask…”

  “You didn’t ask him anything, maybe.”

  Yvonne continued walking to her car. He walked parallel to her. “You don’t think he wanted to impress you, American boss lady.”

  “I wasn’t his boss,” Yvonne said. “I’m not his boss.”

  “Just remember. Not all of us are so eager to be your friend,” the waiter said, and stopped walking.

  She was quivering when she reached the car. Once inside, she immediately locked the doors. Driving away, Yvonne periodically checked her rearview mirror to see if she was being followed. She vowed to herself she would stop at the hotel and tell Ahmet’s grandmother the truth about what had happened. She would say she was sorry, that there was nothing she could have done. She had tried to save the boy.

  As she slowed near the chateau, she saw two figures walking along the road turn to look in her direction. She recognized them: the man and the woman who had been folding napkins the day Ahmet had taken Yvonne to meet his grandmother. Their eyes met Yvonne’s and she lifted her hand, not as much to wave as to say, Yes, it’s me. Here I am. The woman’s face hardened, and the man turned his gaze to the ground.

  She stopped the car and the man and woman continued to stand where they were without approaching Yvonne. Half a minute went by. The man, his eyes still averted, gestured to Yvonne to keep driving. He pointed to the road ahead of her. Now the woman waved her arms the way one would to a stray and bothersome dog. Go on, go home.

  Yvonne drove quickly, swinging around the curves until she found herself behind a row of cars, driving slowly. She considered passing them, but the procession was ten cars deep. She forced herself to be calm, to not drive too close to the blue car in front of her. A sign had been tied with rope to its license plate. She should have learned a few words of Turkish. She should have made an effort.

  The cars she was trailing were slow and close together. It was, she decided, a funeral procession. The man and the woman who worked at the hotel had been wearing dark clothes—funeral clothes. The boy’s funeral.

  She tried to recall what one did in a funeral procession. She turned on her headlights, and then turned them off. She wasn’t sure if it was right for her to join. She remembered a story she’d read in a newspaper about a mother who had killed her daughter and then herself. They had separate funerals, and were buried in different graveyards. Murderer and victim were to be separated in death, and thereafter.

  But she was not a murderer. She was a woman who had befriended a boy. She turned her headlights on again.

  The driver in the car she was following met her eye in his rearview mirror, and signaled to the right. A moment later, he pulled over to the side of the road, leaving room for Yvonne to park behind him. She followed his car. She felt ready to face any judgment.

  She stepped out of the car as the man walked toward her. He was not wearing dark clothes. He was smiling and said something in Turkish.

  Yvonne indicated that she didn’t understand.

  “You need something?” he said, and as he looked at her she saw concern spread across his face. She could only imagine what she looked like.

  “No,” said Yvonne.

  “You turn your lights on,” said the man. “I thinked you want something, you want me do something.”

  “Oh, no,” said Yvonne. “I thought it was a funeral.”

  “A funeral?”

  “Yes.”

  The man laughed. “It’s my nephew’s circumcision,” he said. He pointed to the sign on his license plate, as though it would explain something to Yvonne. “We left the mosque and now we go to the party.”

  “Your nephew?” Yvonne said.

  “Three nephews. The cousins—they all get circumcised together. They go on camel ride so they have a good memory, and then…” He made a snip-snip gesture and laughed.

  “I’m sorry,” Yvonne said. “I didn’t know.”

  “It’s alright,” said the man. “You are good?”

  Yvonne was not good. She tried to smile.

  “You are good,” he said. “Have a nice day.”

  Outside the house in Datça, a figure was pacing. Özlem.

  “Hello,” Yvonne said as she walked up the steps. She was filled with relief at seeing a friend. Her only friend.

  “Come,” Özlem said. “Let’s get inside.”

  Once they were in the house, Özlem locked the door.

  “So you heard,” Yvonne said.

  “Oh, Yvonne,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “What did you hear?”

  Özlem stared at Yvonne, as though debating whether or not to tell her.

  “It’s okay,” Yvonne said. “I need to know. The thoughts going through my head can’t be worse than what you’re going to tell me.”

  “They say you were friends with the boy who drowned.”

  “So he did drown,” Yvonne said. She was suddenly nauseous.

  “Yes,” Özlem said, pausing. “They think he hit his head on the rocks. Maybe he was stuck below on something. Maybe the motor of a boat. He is gone.”

  They were standing in the hallway. Yvonne sat on the floor. She buried her face in her arms, blocking out the light.

  Yvonne felt Özlem’s hand on her hair, stroking it. She tried to remember the last person who had done this. Her middle sister, at their mother’s funeral, had tried to calm her, console her, by touching her hair.

  “You didn’t know,” Özlem said.

  Yvonne shook her head, her face still in the fold of her arms.

  “I’m sorry,” Özlem said.

  Yvonne released her arms and looked up. “What did they say?” As she spoke, she grew concerned. She thought of the waiter in Knidos. Özlem looked at her, unwilling to speak. “Please,” Yvonne said.

  “Some people are confused why you come here by yourself, why you become friends with the boy.”

  “I’m not allowed to travel alone?” She was surprised by the sound of her own voice. It was deep, loud, ferocious.

  “I’m just telling you what I have heard.”

  “I know,” Yvonne said. “I’m sorry.”

  “They think you gave him money to die. They know your husband is dead too,
so they think something…everyone is just confused.”

  Yvonne stood and walked into the living room, where she paced back and forth between the bookshelf and rifle display.

  Özlem looked at her, then at the window. “I think you should be careful,” she said. “When I came here, I saw a television news crew leaving.”

  Yvonne seated herself on the step between the hallway and the living room. “What should I do?”

  Özlem responded quickly, as though she had given much thought to the question. “You need to leave,” she said.

  “And go where?” Yvonne thought of Matthew, his boat coming to pick her up any day. Was it tomorrow?

  “Get out of the country. Go home. It makes no sense to stay here when things are the way they are.”

  “I can’t just leave,” Yvonne said. “That makes it look like I did something wrong.” She pictured the woman who had killed Peter. Her pasty skin, her gray jeans. Her dulled eyes. The sight of her backing up from the scene of the crash, before she turned to run.

  “And his family,” Yvonne said, and covered her eyes again, this time with the palms of her hands. “I think I need to see his family.” As soon as she said the words, she knew she’d made the decision. “Do you know anything about them?”

  Özlem was silent. She knew.

  “Please,” Yvonne said. “Please.”

  “They’re from Cappadocia,” Özlem said. “From a small town in Cappadocia.”

  “What’s the name of the town?” Yvonne said.

  Özlem hesitated a moment, and then spoke reluctantly. “Ürgüp.”

  Yvonne asked her to spell it. Özlem removed a receipt from her purse. On the back of it she wrote down the name of Ahmet’s town and his family name and handed it to Yvonne. Yvonne stared at the receipt. She hadn’t known his last name. Yildirm.

  “I think you’re making a mistake,” Özlem said. “If I were you, I would do what I’m doing. Just leave. Go home.”