It wasn’t easy to keep up conversation with the old man, because he kept interrupting me.
“Come to my home and be my guest tonight,” he said, “we have a lot to talk about.”
His proposal surprised me; I turned down his invitation with visible mistrust. I suggested meeting the next day. It was late; we got up and left. I took a cab and returned to my hotel.
The following day, at around 2 o’clock, I met Cevat Bey in Fener. We sat in a café, we talked very little. It was from him that I learned the name of my father’s and mother’s murderer: Kenan.
My memories of that time from my childhood were permanently etched in my mind: the decrepit walls of Dimitrie Cantemir’s palace, the stone wall of the Red Church, the narrow streets, the muggy, reclusive evenings, a history drunk with glory, and so on and so forth. Yet, for me, none of that was enough to explain away that particular night, and the way the neighborhood’s reflection gleamed so ghastly upon the dark waters of the Golden Horn. Cevat Bey finally spoke the words that I didn’t dare to say: “Are you ready to face the man who changed your destiny, Vasili?” Though the question sent an unfamiliar rage coursing through my body, I was a coward, frozen with fear. The visible change in Cevat Bey, though, was something else altogether: In that moment, he became a machine designed to resist, a machine built to withstand not only physical attack, but the impact of time. He motioned for me to get up.
We left. The heat, not at all tempered by the night, was unbearable. Later, it was said to be the hottest night Istanbul had had in recent years. I hadn’t slept a wink in days. In my exhausted state, I didn’t have the willpower not to follow him. Still, I was afraid. Not because I thought everything would be in vain, but because the meeting would drag me to the inevitable, to the very last thing I should do.
We turned into a street on the right, the last one before reaching the Greek Church of Fener. We were both silent. At that moment, Cevat Bey’s face seemed devoid of any distinguishing features, except for his huge eyes shining in the darkness. I doubt I looked much different; he must have been as afraid as I was. We went up to the third floor of a bay-windowed building. An old man of medium height opened the door. He was in his pajamas. Seeing me, a stranger, at his door, he peered at me closely, inspecting my face. His expression was one of dread.
“I brought you the son of an old friend,” Cevat Bey said. His voice was calm and reassuring.
We entered. The man told us to have a seat, to make ourselves comfortable. There was a grave sadness in his old face, as there is in mine now. I let my imagination wander through the past, through our blood-soaked home, and through Fener. To my mind’s eye I summoned the hilly streets of my old neighborhood, its people of different religions, different ethnicities, the flowers on our windowsill, flowers which obscured our view, flowers my mother adored, and pictures of the crucifixion of Christ, and the Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child, her head tilted to one side. It was as if that deluge of blood, which had turned my days and my nights into one long, monotonous, unbearable chain of hours, was seeping out the window that looked upon the Golden Horn, flowing into its waters.
“So why don’t you tell me now,” the old man said. “This gentleman, whose son is he?”
He was waiting for an answer, his desperation palpable. Cevat Bey gave the old man, who was now sitting on the couch, a solemn glance; then with a bitter smile he alternated, looking at the man, then at the darkness outside, then back at the man, etc. His demeanor was cold and professional.
“The son of a friend of yours, a friend of the past, and of the future,” he said.
Without a doubt, the truth could be summarized only in this way. Clearly, we were there to kill my father’s murderer. Kenan Bey no longer seemed anxious. He seemed to sense that this summary of the truth was not meant to be ironic or mere insinuation.
“Whose?” he said, smiling.
Instinctively I looked at the man’s long, slender old fingers. He could see that I was nervous.
“You tell me, young man,” he said. “Cevat’s always been like this, he’s so fond of suspense.”
There, facing my parents’ murderer, it wasn’t only anger that I felt; I felt sorry for him too. It was a strange feeling.
“Yorgo,” I said. “I’m Yorgo’s son.”
He had heard that voice, my voice, in which he saw his own death, in all its nakedness. The look in his eyes changed. His face transformed, and on it I could see the faint remains of the others’ now invisible, lost faces. I will never forget those eyes, the expression on his pale face. We were all, I imagine, thinking of death at that point. The most impatient of us was Cevat Bey. He was staring at me, silently. There was an odd respectfulness in his gaze, tinged with fear and sadness; you could almost inhale it.
I felt the rope in my pocket. At first, I was encouraged by the sense that my sadness was shared by Cevat Bey. But then this feeling dissipated and Cevat excused himself to the bathroom.
My parents’ murderer and I were listening to the sound of barking from the street. It was neither close nor aggressive.
“I like this barking sound,” he said. “It has a generous, tolerant ring to it.”
His neck was stiff when he spoke, however, and he was staring at the window with an unnecessary focus of attention. On a wooden table lay his glasses, medicine bottles, and a book. At that moment, he seemed to me such a miserable character, a second-rate hit man who had squandered his life away. The way he stood there so still and kept looking out the window, apparently lost in thought, all the nonsense he was talking, it seemed like it would go on and on until his fear had finally ceased. What he was saying was irrelevant, because what was about to happen would erase it all.
I didn’t say anything.
He continued: “I’m going to make something to eat. Would you help me?”
I wasn’t at all surprised. The fact is, people don’t really seek answers to all their questions. I followed him to the kitchen. It had a small window, which was halfway open. There were some plates lying facedown and a knife with a wooden handle on the marble counter. It was an unsettling image, the only things missing were the body of a murder victim and blood on the small, dirty rug.
I gripped the rope in my pocket. I was getting ready to strangle him, but then in a mad rage I grabbed the knife instead. The man stared into my eyes. He was petrified, his face was ashen, he couldn’t move. He struggled to stand. With his arms he held me in a tight hug. His fear was ferocious. The kitchen reeked of sweat.
That’s exactly how it happened. I heard the knife plunge into him and the moans escaping his mouth, which I had covered with my hand. Everything happened very slowly, yet it was over all at once. The act of killing induced a feeling of power, and nausea.
There is only one thing to do in situations like this. It is hard to pull off, but has undeniable advantages: You have to get out of there without leaving any clues behind. But how can one possibly undo what he has done?
Then Cevat Bey, hulking at the door, said in a cautious tone: “Keep the knife, leave the kitchen, I’ll take care of the rest.” He may have been grieved by this state of affairs, but he looked calm.
I didn’t leave the Pera Palace Hotel for two days. Perhaps the guy was actually innocent. I hadn’t even considered this. Perhaps, but my situation at that point kept me from considering such a possibility at length. I was anxiously awaiting Cevat Bey’s phone call. I had to know what was going on. Whether or not I’d be able to return to Fener or even stay in Istanbul depended on the news he was to deliver. The nostalgia I had felt for the city for all those years had morphed into something monstrous. What was I supposed to do now? That was the question.
On the third day, Cevat Bey and I met. We were walking along the shore and darkness was about to engulf Istanbul. The way he put it, everything was okay. His words weren’t burdened by shame or regret; in fact, they seemed almost poetic.
As the city gradually grew emptier, amplifying the background din, Cevat Bey
grew silent and withdrawn. Then, perhaps to quell his own uneasiness, he suggested we go to a meyhane. I agreed and we went to the place where we had first met. For some time we successfully skirted the incident that continued to fan my fears. But then, late into night, he said something peculiar: “Destiny made me do it again.” I was aware that there was still a lot that I didn’t know, but my fear was getting the best of me. I couldn’t ask. I just couldn’t. I had already decided to return to Greece, yet at the same time I felt I didn’t have the right, being as close to unveiling the truth as I sensed I was. It wasn’t easy; my memories were drenched in blood, and I was drowning.
As the night wore on, the supposed friend sitting across from me became a dark stain, his lips sealed, often covering his face with his hands. At one point I noticed he was breathing heavily and swallowing hard. When he removed his hands, I was unsettled by the glimmering trail that ran down his cheek and onto his lip—the path of a tear.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He obviously needed to get something out of his system. Then, finally, he mentioned a connection with an organization. He had been in jail for a while in his youth. His brother had been killed. He choked up while telling me about those dark days. I searched his gestures, his behavior, for signs that might shed some light, but all I saw was death, and the fear thereof. It wasn’t only his brother who had him so distraught; tears continued to well up in his eyes.
“I can’t get that night out of my mind,” he said.
“What night?” I asked.
He looked at me with sorrowful yet determined eyes, then he told me, the words falling slowly from his mouth: “The night the decision was made to kill your father.”
At first, I didn’t want to believe him. If I was going to hear the truth, it had to be the whole truth; I asked him to tell me everything.
“The three of us were members of the same organization, your father, Kenan, and me,” he said. He continued to drink as he talked. “Your father didn’t like what the organization was up to, for a lot of reasons, and so he split. That was betrayal, and the punishment for betrayal was death.”
I asked as nonchalantly as I could, “What kind of an organization was it?”
He hung his head, then called the waiter and ordered another drink. He seemed to want the rakı, which had already numbed his body, to rub him out for good, obliterate his very existence once and for all. His eyes were damp and bloodshot and he began mumbling. His face was covered with deep lines, like the threads of a spider web. He was trying to console himself with the din of his own words, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.
Then he went silent.
“Is that it?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Organizations, politics, you know … The hard part, once you’ve made all the pieces fit together, the hard part is really grasping what it is you’re fighting for.”
The past was consumed by an unquestionable void. But no, it wasn’t empty; whatever was there was definite and intimidating. Cevat Bey took another sip of his rakı and leaned back. He thought I’d understood everything, from his eyes I gleaned that much, but I hadn’t understood a thing. For a moment, I thought it would be a friendly gesture to take him home and tuck him in, but my curiosity got the best of me. “So who ordered my father’s murder?” I asked.
He leaned against the table and drained his glass in one gulp.
“I did,” he said.
His eyelashes weren’t moving, he wasn’t breathing. It was dreadful. An amorphous, indescribable moment. Then he stood up, calmly; he was no longer crying.
“Vasili, my son,” he said. “Let’s take a walk in Fener. You can take me wherever you want.”
A WOMAN, ANY WOMAN
BY TARKAN BARLAS
Yenikapı
An old friend and I are on the ferry, deep in conversation, washing the old days down with a few cups of tea. We talk about our junior high days, looking for movie theaters where they’d pepper the karate flicks with porn, and how lucky we, two smooth young boys, were to have survived those catacombs unscathed, and we laugh. Some of our tastiest memories have to do with our laying in wait for a girl, any girl, to practice the things we’d risked life and limb to learn about in those dark theaters. Tea helps the memories go down more smoothly, makes them easier to swallow. We were waiting for a girl. Any girl … Our kingdom for a girl …
It’s a deep conversation, of words and glances. I keep looking at my friend. The memories compound as we laugh. I recall that I hardly laughed at all back in those days though. I feel another sinister joke rising in my gut.
Just then, a guy who knows my friend from college walks up to us. We change the subject. I have a hard time taking interest. The man’s conversation is dull. Politics, the difficulty of making ends meet, earthquakes, and whatnot. My attention wanders away from the conversation and onto the waters outside the window. If I weren’t in the ferry, but on an open boat, I’d be throwing simit crumbs to the seagulls right now, I think. The weather outside is beautiful, the man sitting next to me is not. He’s a depressing rain cloud, interrupting and darkening my day.
Mercifully, we approach Yenikapı. On the pier I see men with hands like ropes. They look like they could grab a ship by one end and haul it in with their bare hands. Their job is a matter of life and death, and so they are animated yet earnest, running to attend the scene like surgeons, readying the pier for docking in the nick of time. I move quickly, dragging my friend away from the boring guy and onto the pier. Having extricated ourselves, we take to the streets.
Silently and swiftly, we make our way to the tiny bar beneath the railway, cramming ourselves into an already packed sardine can. We turn into two dirty beards, gawking at an erotic flick on a twenty-inch TV screen, lined up on high stools underneath fluorescent lights. Even though it is filthy and flickering, holding on for dear life, it’s still too bright for a place this obscene, I think. It is on to announce to the outside world that in here, everything’s all right.
A man eating rice pilaf with chickpeas from a street vendor, probably taking in a quick dinner before he heads home for the night, is glad that everything’s all right; he takes a peek inside the bar as he shovels down his final spoonful of pilaf, and relaxes upon seeing that the other members of his sex are not up to anything new. They’re just like he left them, right where they belong. Rakı is still the belle de jour. He wipes his greasy hands on his pants and disappears, leaving behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. Now you see him, now you don’t …
Inside the bar, the volume of the conversation is low. Eyes are squinted. The TV murmurs on. Droopy lips and gaping mouths stare at the small screen, where a couple is shown in compromising positions, until a train passes overhead, sending a quake through the bar and prompting the viewers to regain their tight-lipped composure.
My friend and I leave the bar. We go our separate ways, postponing a stroll by the water to another time. As I walk alone on the cracked sidewalks, I feel a desire to find a woman, to make the night bearable, to pour my heart out in the filthiest hotel room in the world. I see a figure standing next to the road. Someone whose back is turned to me, someone with long hair. Even the way I walk becomes more erect. I check my pocket to make sure I have enough cash on me. I croak out a hello with all the courage I can muster. When the figure turns around, my knees almost give out. It doesn’t have a face, but a deep, dark void, with pitch black eyes, eyes that are beastly—not human. What I had mistaken for hair is a black pelt enveloping its body from head to toe. I am scared shitless. It approaches, floating, feetless. A chilly vapor precedes it. And a muffled scream. Then a sobbing sigh. I lower my head, covering my face with my hands. I quickly turn away and start to run.
Without quite understanding what I have just seen, as if not yet feeling the pain of dismemberment, I slow to a walk. I’m stunned. I know it is following me, I can feel the cold vapors on my sweating back. I speed up again. I want to leave it behind, I want it to disappear. I want to be l
eft alone with the snack shops and their garishly colorful signs, with that dark, wilted guy selling sunglasses on the corner.
Suddenly I get my wish; I look behind me and it’s no longer there. Relieved, I continue along my way. I greet the guy selling glasses, and then pick up some sunflower seeds at the snack store, savoring the normalcy of a cliché exchange with the greasy-bearded guy at the counter. I try to reassure myself that everything’s all right. But still, I can’t shake that feeling.
Pounding the sidewalk, I start to get the shivers. There’s something strange going on. It’s like certain things are out of place on the street. Like certain things are missing. Like everybody’s so distracted by details they fail to notice that the huge building at the plaza has been removed, and because they can’t see it, I’m afraid of noticing it too. It feels weird, and creepy. I look around and notice that there don’t seem to be many women. I take a second look and realize that there are in fact no women. But I was just here yesterday and there were plenty of women; hailing cabs, returning from weddings with their husbands, sitting with their boyfriends in hamburger joints, whispering gossip and laughing boisterously. Girls revealing tattoos to one another, replicating vapid Hollywood banter, cursing their fathers. Of course, not all of them were lookers, but at least they were there, where they were supposed to be. I glance up at the apartment buildings, but there isn’t a single woman dangling a basket to the downstairs grocer. Could this whole thing be a curse? I prefer to blame the rakı. But I’m just not convinced.
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