He still made it into my top twenty, if not my top ten. His physique alone earned him that much. In terms of performance, though, he’d be somewhere near the bottom.
Kenan had helped my tensions to evaporate, if only superficially. Before he’d made it down the stairs, I was already in the shower. That’s when the lights came on.
Chapter 20
Taking the taped interview with Buse, I went to the answering machine. The machine informed me I had five messages, but I decided to listen to them later. For now, all my curiosity was focused on the tape. To avoid any interruptions, I unplugged the phone. If there was a persistent caller, I could always answer using the cordless one. I began listening intently. The interview started with an exchange of pleasantries. Buse referred to the nymphomaniac lady journalist as efendim.
She summarized the changes she’d gone through, how she’d developed over the years. In excruciating detail. The pain of getting one’s face depilated, not to mention the expense. The swelling and the resulting inability to work with a disfigured face. How much it stung when her cheek was so much as touched, et cetera.
She began talking about her family. She’d lost her father when still a child. He was much older than her mother: It was only natural that he had made an earlier departure. The way she had acted as her mother’s “eyes” from a young age. She believed in any case that male children raised solely by their mothers were likely to turn out homosexual. Her own story seemed to corroborate that theory.
Her mother’s blindness allowed her more freedom for sexual experimentation than was available to most of her peers. The first trysts were innocent, the sort everyone has: peeking at other boys in the toilet, playing doctor, falling in love with her chemistry teacher. As she passed through adolescence, however, they took a more serious turn. At age sixteen, she lost her virginity.
And the first name was uttered. Yusuf, one of the older boys in her class, was screwing her on a regular basis. Our girl immediately fell in love and began dreaming of marriage. The boy, however, entertained no such thoughts. In fact, because Fevzi regularly showed up at his house to harass him, he would beat her.
So was this “Yusuf” the person I was looking for? Had that skinny, penniless schoolboy developed into a paunchy, middle-aged power broker with a determination to cleanse his past of any unsavory elements? It was entirely possible. There’s no shortage of respectable businessmen with humble backgrounds. He may have rashly jotted down his feelings for Fevzi in a diary of the sort kept in those days primarily by girls and queers. At that age, no distinction is made between carnal attraction and romantic passion. The two are often confused. Many unhappy marriages can trace their downfall to the point at which passion ends without being replaced by true affection and friendship. Those who can’t bear to terminate these “sociological marriages” end up terminating their own prospects for personal happiness.
The journalist jumped in here, emotionally declaring how well she knew that to be true. The slight slurring of her words revealed how far through the bottle she had got. In the background, Buse could be heard drawing deeply on her marijuana cigarette.
Following this “catastrophe,” Fevzi started sleeping with anyone who crossed her path. Having accepted that life was shit, she was determined to revel in all its filth, wilfully soiling and debasing herself in the process.
The dramatic tremor in her voice gave Buse away. Those last few lines had been rehearsed and painstakingly polished in order to produce the desired effect on the listener. We all produce pretty-sounding accounts to explain our past behavior, particularly the more sordid bits.
From that point onward, Buse’s speech became so slurred as to be almost unintelligible. The joint she had been smoking had woven its spell, and she was high as a kite. Like I said earlier, I’m completely inflexible on the subject of drugs. I don’t like them one bit. Not only do I not use them, I keep my distance from those who do.
By the time she graduated from high school Buse considered herself adequately experienced and practiced. In fact, the actor Semih had even taken her to a film set.
Semih was a second-rate thespian with a well-known soft spot for young boys. Buse couldn’t possibly add much to his already shady past. There would be no reason for him to resort to blackmail.
The young Fevzi had a walk-on role in that film. Later, Semih handed her along to the hardened, alcoholic leading man, Atilla Erkan. While that particular side of him was a well-kept secret, he, too, was fond of hairless youths. He took Fevzi to a back room during filming and, without undressing, just unzipping his fly, took her. Then he slapped an autographed photograph into her hand. She claimed to still have it as a memory of that day, that particular screwing. In his time, after all, Erkan had been a minor celebrity.
That’s right, I dimly remembered an actor by that name. He was as untalented as he was handsome. There’d been no sign of him for years. He had married and divorced a series of beauty queens. He beat one of them so badly he finally appeared again on the tabloid front pages he had missed so much. The abuse of his wife was probably an expression of his suppressed homosexuality. Women very often catch their husbands in compromising situations. Often they don’t fully understand, or they refuse to understand, the implications. They make a scene without taking into consideration the ramifications. That may have been what triggered the savage beating. Thanks to Fevzi, yet another tabloid riddle had been solved.
Whatever happened to Atilla Erkan? If he had been reduced to playing in third-rate television series I wouldn’t have known. Considering my general lack of curiosity about him, it was unlikely anyone else cared. Were someone to attempt to blackmail him, he’d have nothing to lose. I struck him off the list of suspects. There’d be no point in kicking someone who had already sunk so low.
Semih and Atilla were followed by a succession of middle-aged men. In fact, one of Semih’s cronies, a film extra, had begun peddling Buse. When the customer was finished, he’d pronounce her “nice and slippery,” have a go, and then pay her.
One night, she was taken to a party at the mansion of journalist Korhan Türker, where she was one of a bevy of young men in ladies’ underwear circulating among the guests. Korhan Türker and his cronies were playing poker. Fevzi had been instructed to wear a flesh-colored pair of lace panties. Another boy wore only a garter belt, his bits flapping as he sashayed about. The boys were occasionally pulled onto laps, pinched, fondled, and screwed. Then the card game would resume. The stakes were suitably high for such an illustrious group of men. Fevzi was pulled under the table. She gave them all blow jobs, for which she received generous tips. As she returned home early that morning her bottom was purple from all the pinching.
At this point in the tape, the lady journalist was boiling over with rage toward her editor. I was impressed by her range of colorful curses. She said she would do all she could to expose Korhan Türker, one of her paper’s most illustrious contributors. She had him by the balls now. In any case, he was a total turn-coat. She hadn’t known anything about his interest in boys. He had a wealthy wife many years older than himself, and would stage stag parties when he sent her away on holiday. If confronted with his past parties, he would absolutely dismiss it all as fantasy. He was that shameless. It wasn’t as though there were any credible witnesses to the debauchery. The contents of the tape wouldn’t stand up in a court of law. The other men at the party would naturally not come forward. In any case, well-known journalists had achieved a certain degree of immunity and protection in the form of mutual censorship.
I didn’t agree with the lady journalist here. The name I was looking for could well turn out to be Korhan Türker. Buse had mentioned letters and photographs. Even if they hadn’t had a relationship per se, a single revealing photograph from the party that night would suffice. Letters would be icing on the cake.
Meanwhile, Buse found herself earning more and more, and climbed the social ladder accordingly. There was no hot spot, no fashionable holiday destination, s
he hadn’t visited. Women, as well as men, occasionally required her services. Lesbian lyricist Suat had taken her to Bodrum, then on a “blue voyage” cruise of the Aegean. Buse enjoyed a fling with the cabin boy, but was unable to escape the clutches of singer-pianist Mahmut Gürsel. That “character”—the term was meant to be derogatory—was as ugly as can be, but hung like King Kong. He’d screw her at every opportunity. It’d hurt like hell each time, but pock-faced Mahmut would ignore her cries. “No one can hear you out here,” he’d mock Fevzi, as he climbed onto her again. An exhibitionist, he’d usually have sex on the deck. In front of everyone. A glass of whiskey on the rocks in one hand, Suat would laugh raucously while she looked on, smoking.
Our lady journalist interrupted to confirm that the singer-pianist was a well-known exhibitionist. In a voice trembling with emotion, she pointed out that even onstage he would remove his shirt, citing the risk of heat exhaustion, in order to treat the audience to the sight of his muscular hairy chest and bulging biceps. She had heard the rumors about his penis. And yes, she had been intrigued, even fantasized about him a bit. But God, he was ugly.
Intimidated by the fame of these men, Buse/Fevzi said nothing. But each time was a painful ordeal. The cabin boy with the heart of gold—who was clearly a latent homosexual—would comfort her afterward, alleviating her suffering with caresses and massages.
“It’s not the size, it’s the way it’s used,” said the lady journalist sagely. Oh, really? Of course size is important. I mean, who’d compare an eggplant to an okra?
Thus ended the first side of the tape. Next came a great deal of idle chatter and homespun philosophizing on sex, the sordidness of women, and the treachery of men. Both the interviewer and interviewee were unable to speak clearly. Buse made little sense as she wandered aimlessly from subject to subject. She would certainly have found it expedient to later deny all she had said.
Then Buse/Fevzi launched into a diatribe about her determination to establish a brave new life. She started focusing on her body and the journey to full-fledged womanhood. Any progress would be expensive. Just as she set off on this transformation, she met Süreyya. He was young—in his late thirties—but still much older than Buse. A real lion of a man. Not exactly handsome, but strangely compelling. Buse asked if he wasn’t still as charismatic as ever.
The voice of the lady journalist was barely audible, as she was quite far from the microphone. Using the answering machine as cassette player made it even more difficult to hear her. While I couldn’t understand what she said word for word, the gist of it was connected to Süreyya. She was incredulous. She just couldn’t believe it.
Who was this person by the name of Süreyya that both Buse and the interviewer seemed to know? I continued listening.
The affair had lasted for years. It had been kept a total and complete secret. Buse would make an appointment to meet him at his house, where he lived alone, and would sometimes have to wait for hours to see him. She would then spend the night. If Süreyya had meetings to attend, or business out of town, he would sometimes be gone for days. He was very much involved in the party at that time. He would tell Buse not to see anyone else, to stay at home and wait for him. He was extremely jealous.
Party? What party was that? Who on earth was this Süreyya and what was his involvement with a party? I found the answer before my mind had even completed asking the series of questions: The second-ranking man at Hedef Party, Süreyya Eronat! I switched off the answering machine. I needed a moment to let it sink in: Hedef Party and Süreyya Eronat. The words ran in circles through my head. It couldn’t be! I realized my jaw had literally dropped; my mouth was wide open. I went to the bathroom to splash cold water onto my face. It didn’t do the trick. I drank a glass of ice water.
Hedef was one of the leading conservative parties. Its principles and platform were based on the role of the nuclear family, and it would not budge an inch on the question of the man’s traditional role as head of that family. While it wasn’t official policy, the party was associated with manly men at their best. It was anti-just about everything. Queers were at the top of the list of the abominable, no more than bugs to be squashed. Indeed, if the Hedef Party had its way they would all be executed.
Such is the enormous gulf between theory and practice. The second in command of that same party was a full-blown pederast.
Most of the members of the party were men. While there may have been women in symbolic positions, I had never heard of them.
The least likely element of their “macho man” image was homosexual relations. And Süreyya Eronat, the vice chairman of the party, was a homosexual! With that knowledge came the risk of death. Documentation would make a fatal end that much more certain and swift. The hairs rose on the back of my neck as I thought about it. Sofya was right, even just knowing about it was dangerous.
Using this documentation for blackmail! It was an act of suicide. Surely it wasn’t possible that our girl Buse had stooped to such a thing. It was far more likely that in a fit of nostalgia Süreyya Eronat had recollected the photos and decided to retrieve them. Either that or he sent his men. The emergence of the pictures and letters could spell the death of the party. Their chairman hadn’t been seen in public for quite some time. Although it wasn’t spoken of openly, everyone knew that Süreyya Eronat was in control. He was the real power behind the throne.
Eronat’s private life was of considerable interest to the press. He had married young, but lost his wife in a terrible car accident a few years later. It was hard to believe that he remained in mourning for the rest of his life, but everyone went along with it.
Of his two children, one was married. They lived very private lives out of the public eye. His son had moved to either Canada or America. The daughter had married, produced grandchildren, and quietly maintained her role as efficient housewife and self-sacrificing mother.
It was said that Eronat lived with his widowed mother and aunt. He went on nature walks and rode horses in his spare time. Holidays were spent at the hot springs with his mother and aunt. He was never photographed in shorts, a swimming costume, or peştemal. I couldn’t remember ever seeing a photo of him when he wasn’t wearing a tie. There was never any mention of a relationship. In fact, there was never so much as a suggestion that he may have had a love life. It was as though there were no evidence of any kind that Süreyya Eronat had ever been involved with anyone, either as a young widower or at present.
Because he was so feared, no one dared to indulge in gossip on the matter.
And my poor Buse, that dignified girl, had ended up his victim. And her blind mother may have been his victim as well.
My curiosity had been rewarded, but I just hoped I wouldn’t have to pay too steep a price for it.
I couldn’t decide whether or not to listen to the rest of the tape. Additional information would just put me more at risk. The more I knew, the greater the likelihood I would one day let something slip. Could I be certain that one day, in the arms of a lover, perhaps, or in a general rage over something, I wouldn’t lose control and reveal all I knew about these extortionist pimps? We’re all such unpredictable creatures! There’s no knowing what I’ll blurt out. Even if I weren’t so outspoken, I’d surely wish to share my secret with someone one day—I couldn’t possibly keep something that juicy to myself. I’d lose all sense of self-respect. My self-assurance would be shattered. I wouldn’t be me.
I pushed the play button. I was in too deep to stop now. Buse’s voice continued:
“But he was always so jealous. Especially when it came to me. Don’t do this, don’t visit there, don’t go out at night. After a while he began helping to cover my living expenses. There was no way I could have survived on my mother’s pension. Do you know how little she gets? I really pity old folks, they’re barely able to stay alive.
“Anyway, thanks to Süreyya we were comfortable. Anything and everything, even kuş sütü, bird’s milk, was mine for the asking. He was always so gracious about i
t. A real gentleman. After a while he started visiting me at home. He adored my mother, and she was fond of him as well. He always made a point of kissing her hand and chatting for a bit. She appreciated it. In the beginning she didn’t really understand my relationship with him, but after seven years she must have had some idea. You see, we were like a family. I was crushed when we separated. She comforted me. How many mothers would do that?”
Hmmm, now, that was interesting. Süreyya Bey and his male lover’s mother. A typical relationship between a mother-in-law and her groom. I’d never met Sabiha Hanım, but I could visualize the scene. The blind mother, a rather vacant smile on her face, sits in her favorite rocking chair. Her blank eyes stare at the ceiling. Right in front of her, in the throes of passion, are her son and Süreyya. They make love in absolute silence. The mother’s eyes are lowered, unseeingly looking straight in their direction. They bite their lips and continue, not making a sound. When they’re finished, Süreyya kisses the old lady’s hand and thanks her for her hospitality. The scene is straight out of a film, but I can’t remember which one. If asked to identify it on a game show, I’d be eliminated.
Yuck! It was so difficult to imagine Süreyya Eronat having sex. From what I’d seen of him in the media, he was the type who had seemingly gone beyond the carnal, who had either transcended sexuality or had been of an asexual nature from the start. There are few men that I would identify that way, but he was one of them. His behavior, speech, mannerisms, gestures, clothing . . . everything. There was not a trace of anything even remotely sexual about him.
The Kiss Murder Page 12