“Zeynep …”
“Nee.”
“Are you sure? I thought maybe he wouldn’t show up …”
She reached out and gently caressed the girl’s cheek. “Yes, dear. It’s all over, finally.”
“Is an extra body going to be a problem?” Hasan asked the now ashen-faced Ali in a low voice.
Ali continued to stare at the bodies. Hasan was a little surprised that Ali, a veteran of the business, seemed so flab-bergasted by this minor glitch in their plans, but he didn’t make a big deal out of it. Actually, he could understand where the guy was coming from. After all, they were all in this unexpected mess together.
Ali didn’t answer Hasan’s question, so the latter continued.
“It was an accident, I swear. It wasn’t planned. The goddamn guy was here when we arrived, just lounging in bed. Then he made his move—he pointed a fucking gun at us, the idiot. You can guess the rest. There was nothing we could do. We thought the house would be empty; we were taken by surprise.”
There was a brief silence.
“We’re not trying to fuck with you, Ali. You trust us, right?”
Ali snapped to, as if suddenly awaking from a bad dream. First he looked at Murat, and then at Hasan, who was waiting for him to respond. The bewildered look in Ali’s eyes had been replaced by the resolute gaze of a man who knows exactly what to do.
“Okay, it’s all right. What’s done is done. Like you say, what’s the difference? So it was one body, now it’s two. You guys bag one of them, and I’ll go get another sack from the truck.”
Hasan and Murat glanced at one another. They could both tell that they were thinking the same thing: He’s gonna make a run for it …
“Let me come with you,” said Hasan. “I could use the fresh air.”
His suggestion was clearly not open for debate, and so Ali did not object. They didn’t speak at all on the way to the truck. Their eyes darted right and left, scoping out the surroundings, but there was no one to be seen. A taxi swiftly passed the truck and continued along its way.
When Hasan and Ali returned with the other sack, Murat had already tied the arms and legs of both bodies. It would be easier to bag them that way.
“I couldn’t care less how it happened,” Ali grumbled. “You got us into this mess, so you carry these bastards out of here. Anyway, I have a bad back.”
Hasan laughed. “All right, Ali. No problem.”
Murat wound the remaining string into a ball and stuck it in his pocket. The extra body was heavy; carrying that sucker wasn’t going to be easy. “Should we make two trips?” he asked, though he doubted Ali would agree to it.
He was right. “Let’s not take any chances. It’s almost morning.”
“I agree,” said Hasan. He glanced around the room, saw the tea glasses and the cigarette butts. “Plus, we’ve still gotta clean up the blood and all this other shit. You go first, Ali, make sure the coast is clear, and then we’ll bring ’em out.”
Hasan and Murat loaded themselves up with one sack each and walked to the door. They figured Ali would open it for them, but he didn’t. A few seconds passed before they turned to look at him. What the hell was he waiting for?
They froze stiff. He was pointing his pistol straight at them. A Glock 17, with a silencer. Hasan’s mouth fell wide open. Their guns were at their waists. But their hands were full.
“What, you take me for some kind of fool or something?” Ali said.
He sent the first bullet into Murat’s forehead. The young man toppled backwards like a felled tree beneath the weight of the sack he was carrying, hitting the wall before collapsing with a thud onto the floor. In a reflex Hasan opened his arms, releasing the sack from his hold. He cast a glance at Murat’s lifeless body before turning to meet Ali’s gaze, the latter’s eyes blazing with inexplicable rage.
Just one extra body … We didn’t do it on purpose …
He took a bullet right between the eyebrows and collapsed to the floor next to Murat.
Ali had a sour taste in his mouth when he slid in behind the steering wheel. He coughed up a ball of phlegm and spit it out the window. He cursed those fucking bastards who’d gotten him messed up in this bullshit. What the fuck—to knock off Kâzım Aa’s one and only son? Talk about gall …
They make a man sorry he was born …
He was glad now that he hadn’t met the client. Four bodies would be found in that house come morning. Four men who’d shot one another. Nobody would ever know he’d even been there. Nobody.
Especially not Kâzım Aa.
Close call, he thought as he pressed down on the gas pedal. Houselights had already begun to dot the twilight sky as the truck made its way downhill.
* * *
The young woman was standing with her face to the strait, watching a gigantic ship float by. Its lights looked so beautiful. She wondered what it was like to be inside, watching the shore from out there. Actually, all she wanted to do was go somewhere far, far away, someplace so foreign that everything she had experienced here would cease to exist for her.
“How are we going to pay those guys?” she said, her voice heavy with concern. “I can’t stop thinking about it, Zeynep. If we don’t pay up, those guys will never leave us alone. I mean, they’re murderers for God’s sake. I’ve scraped together a little here and there but … it’s not very much.”
Her voice grew slightly shrill and she seemed to turn into a little girl, like she always did whenever she got excited.
“I’ll get some from my Dad too. I’ll lie about what it’s for, tell him it’s for school or something. Or that I’m sick. I don’t know. But I’ll come up with more. I promise.”
“There’s no way we could ’ve afforded it,” Zeynep said, shaking her head. “You can’t even imagine how much they were asking for, sweetheart. Even your father couldn’t have gotten us out of it, believe me.”
She thought of Hasan’s expression, the way he had drooled when he stared at her legs. She doubted the asshole would ’ve made do with just the money, but she didn’t tell Nee that.
Nee turned around and gave Zeynep a frightened look, all the blood suddenly drained from her face.
“Don’t worry, baby. I took care of everything.”
Zeynep took a puff from her cigarette.
“I told you about that mafia godfather, the one our asshole did business with—Kâzım Aa. Well, I had a little talk, a little more than a talk, with his son last week, and invited him to the house. An hour before your appointment. He’s no different from all the other assholes. He wanted me to be his mistress, to make me part of his harem. He would ’ve taken care of my husband, too, if I’d asked, I’m sure of that. But for what? Why save myself from one animal just to go and be a slave to another? Believe me, from now on nobody’s going to make me do anything I don’t want to.
“Anyway, our boys wouldn’t recognize him; they’re new in Istanbul. And I’m sure that when our boys burst in, he reached straight for his gun. He’s the panicky type. So he wouldn’t have left them any choice. He keeps a gun under his pillow even when he’s making love, can you believe that? They’ll never be able to show their faces in Istanbul after this, trust me. Kâzım Aa would skin them alive. They either hightail it out of here or they’re finished. Simple as that.”
She took a deep breath.
“If they do cause us any trouble, I’ll make sure the aa gets wind of their names. I’m sure he’d believe me and not them. I’ve even made up a story already, just in case.”
Her eyes wide, Nee peered at the woman standing next to her. She felt extremely grateful, but also ashamed. And now, after what she’d just heard, she felt a slowly growing sense of admiration too.
“I’m so sorry, for everything,” she said in a low voice, like a child who’s just broken a toy. “He told me you would get divorced, that your relationship was over. But when I learned the truth … I hated him. I swear, I was going to be out of your lives, if only he’d left me alone.”
/> “I know, sweetheart,” said Zeynep, smiling. She reached out and ran her hand through Nee’s long red hair. Nee gently leaned in toward her.
“You weren’t his first lover. I couldn’t even count how many there’ve been. But even I wasn’t able to leave him, so how could a little angel like you possibly have done it?”
She thought of all the beatings she’d taken, all the slaps to the face, for some bullshit reason or another. But now, all that was over.
Zeynep slipped her arm around the waist of the younger woman, who snuggled up next to her, resting her head on Zeynep’s shoulder.
Two large seagulls passed in front of them, so closely that if they’d reached out, they could have touched them.
PART II
PUSHING LIMITS, CROSSING LINES
THE SMELL OF FISH
BY HKMET HÜKÜMENOLU
Rumelihisarı
Semile Abla had a bad habit. It was a habit that tormented her so much it gave her stomach cramps. But other than that, she was a fairly carefree woman. No one had ever heard her complain, not even when her knees ached on rainy days. She was just grateful to have friends who came knocking at her door frequently enough to make her forget her loneliness. She had enough money to buy meat twice a week, and a house with a roof that never leaked in the winter. In fact, according to Nalan, if Cemile Abla would only, finally, sell her two-story wooden home, she’d have plenty of money to squander for the rest of her life.
“Your house stands out like a rotten tooth in the middle of all these new ones,” Nalan had told her. Nalan was a tiny woman whose hair had begun to thin out a couple of years before, but her skin was still as smooth and shiny as could be. She and Cemile Abla had been best friends ever since they were kids. Their mothers—may they rest in peace—had been neighbors for fifty years. When her oldest son got married, Nalan sold her house in Rumelihisarı and bought a new three-bedroom apartment in a faraway neighborhood—and, as she had told Cemile Abla, she’d made enough money off the deal to pay for her son’s lavish wedding to boot. Nalan’s was the one and only house on her street that hadn’t changed hands to be demolished and replaced by an expensive apartment building with a view of the Bosphorus.
Cemile Abla’s wooden house stood all alone, tall and proud at the top of the stone stairs, a bastion of the past. The neighborhood real estate dealer was constantly at her heels, yapping like a newborn puppy. If he could just convince her to sell, he’d make a small fortune on the commission alone.
But no matter how suffocated she felt by the profusion of restaurants along the shore—a new grand opening every week!—the throngs of graduates of the nearby university storming in for Sunday breakfast with their entire families in tow (Nalan complained, saying they probably didn’t have any eggs of their own at home), and all the automobiles jamming the avenue, Cemile Abla was determined not to sell her house—no matter what. Luckily her friends’ and the real estate dealers’ insistence never went beyond harmless banter; she knew deep down that if they’d pressed her just a bit more, there’s no way she could have said no.
Cemile Abla had gone shopping at the supermarket to get ready for the guests she was entertaining that evening. For her everyday needs she went to the little ant-infested grocer down the hill, but on special days like this one, she preferred browsing the big stores with their wheeled carts and long corridors illuminated by glaringly bright lights. It gave her that same dizzying sense of exhilaration that she used to get back as a senior in high school after a reluctant visit to the amusement park, at the insistence of friends.
She had decided to offer her guests chocolate cake and canapes on white bread with tea. Having bought a jar of the most expensive cocoa, a container of French mustard, and a few of what the man at the deli counter told her were the best cheeses of Italy, she headed home, inhaling the scent of the Bosphorus along the way. From a short distance away, her eyes met with those of Captain Hasan, and she smiled. Captain Hasan must have come back from fishing early, for it was uncommon to see him on the shore at that time of day. He was sitting on a low stool on the edge of the sidewalk, an extinguished cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth, leaning over, trying to teach the scrawny boy he’d recently hired how to tie knots. His red and blue boat rode the gentle waves just behind them. (“A person who has a ship, not a boat, is called a captain,” Cemile Abla had complained at the age of seven. Her father had patted her head and replied, “If that’s the way Hasan likes it, then what’s it to us?”)
“I’ve got a three-and-a-half-kilo bluefish for you,” Captain Hasan said joyfully. “Caught him at the crack of dawn, he must’ve been drunk, fell for it hook, line, and sinker!”
“Thanks, but my refrigerator’s already crammed full,” replied Cemile Abla, placing her bags on the ground on either side of her. “Give it to someone else, it would be a sin to waste it.”
“No way, it’s for you. Nobody else knows how to cook it right. They’d make a mess of the poor thing … So, you want me to bone it or you want to do it yourself?”
Cemile Abla took a deep breath, turned her eyes to the clouds, exhaled, and answered, “I’ll take care of it. Thanks.”
It was said that nobody along the entire Bosphorus could clean a fish as well as Cemile Abla. It was from her father that she’d learned to work a fish so deftly. On her way home from school, she used to stop by the stand that once stood on the right side of the pier. There she would remove one squirming, restaurant-bound fish at a time from the shallow tubs of water and cut off their heads and tails before scaling and skinning them; the bigger ones she would bone as well. When she was still too short to reach the counter, she’d prop herself up by standing on an old cheese tin. Then she’d run home and watch cartoons for half an hour, munching on some bread and jam that her mother had prepared for her, before starting on her homework. Actually, if she’d gone straight home instead of stopping by the fish stand, she would have had an extra hour to watch cartoons. But she was more fond of the knives and the fish than she was of TV. With each day her fingers grew a little more used to the tools, her wrists stronger, her movements more graceful. Nothing could take the place of that odd feeling she would get. Every now and then her teachers would scold her because her hands smelled of fish, but it was worth it just to see the proud smile on her father’s face as he watched her working at the counter. And it wasn’t only her father who held her in such affection; she’d become the apple of everyone’s eye, all the way from Ortaköy to Sarıyer. Awed by her love of fish and her skilled mastery of the knife, each and every fisherman, young and old alike, saw Cemile Abla as his own ideal daughter, sister, or even wife. And the fact that her father was the famous Ali Reis didn’t hurt either.
The scrawny boy was off in his own little world, watching a sports car drive by, when Captain Hasan slapped him on the back of the neck. “Get off your ass and help Cemile Abla with her bags!” he yelled. “You some kinda idiot, boy? Do I have to tell you everything? And wrap that fish up.”
“There’s really no need, Captain Hasan, I can carry the bags myself,” said Cemile Abla. “They’re not heavy anyway.”
But she knew what would happen. The man would insist, and once again she wouldn’t be able to say no. Cemile Abla was annoyed with herself. Sometimes she even hated herself for giving up so easily, for acquiescing to things she really didn’t want to do. But no matter how hard she tried, she could never manage to say no when people persisted with her. She became horrified, thinking that if she said no she’d be thought rude, or that she’d insult the other person, or hurt their feelings; she’d get a lump in her throat and her palms would grow sweaty. She wouldn’t be able to look the other person in the eye; she just couldn’t stand the thought of how that person’s eyes would dull with disappointment as soon they heard the word “no.” And so that was her constant dilemma. She’d have to drink that third cup of coffee despite her heartburn, go shopping with the girls even if she preferred to do so alone, go picnicking at Kilyos with her old neigh
bors even though she really didn’t feel comfortable wearing a swimsuit.
Simply because she loved them so much, because they made such a fuss, because they insisted.
Actually, these things were the least of her troubles. What really got on Cemile Abla’s nerves was how her friends pressured her to get married, how they were constantly introducing her to potential grooms.
In her youth, Cemile Abla used to love to walk to Bebek and get a cherry-vanilla ice-cream cone, sit on a park bench with a dog-eared Sait Faik book, and just relax. But nowadays, in front of the ice-cream stands stood long lines of bronze, blonde-haired girls, pot-bellied boys, and odd, shaggy dogs of a sort she had never seen before. Cemile Abla had begun to feel like a stranger in her own land, as if at any given moment she might be caught and deported. But instead of worrying herself over nothing, she’d made a resolution not to venture beyond the cemetery, the boundary of white marble separating Rumelihisarı from Bebek, during normal waking hours. She would go for walks in the wee hours of the night, once the fancy dining high-lifers and the bar brawlers had hopped into their cars (which were usually parked on the sidewalk and nearly toppling into the sea) and gone home, once all the apartment lights had been turned off, once all the dogs had stopped howling.
What she liked most about these walks was the fishermen. Because of the wall of wedding boats blocking access to the shore, not many fishermen, other than Captain Hasan, stopped by these parts anymore. But there were a few who, as if by some unspoken agreement, would draw their boats ashore in the shadow of Hisar on moonlit nights and, if they happened to be in the mood, reminisce about the old days for hours on end. Sometimes they’d lean on the old cannons at the base of the towers. It made Cemile Abla happy to see them as she walked along the deserted sidewalks and the asphalt roads now devoid of passing cars. She’d join them when invited; there was no need to insist. She would join them not because she couldn’t say no, but because their conversations reminded her of her father. She’d sit down on the old blanket they’d have spread out on the ground, sticking her legs out to the side and bending them just so, and then she’d cover her knees with the edge of her topcoat and sip on the half-full tea glass of undiluted rakı that they’d offer. It was during those hours that the fishermen, so reticent during the daytime, would wax talkative; they’d discuss sea currents and schools of fish, they’d tell stories about the adventures of Ali Reis, ask Cemile Abla how she was getting on, and then, when dawn began to break, they’d get back into their boats, their minds at ease, knowing that they had done their duty and tended after the daughter of the great man who preceded them. Then they would head out into the foggy waters of the Black Sea.
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