by Alon Preiss
Natalie, perplexed: “What a thing to say.”
There seemed nothing more to add.
“Anyway,” Daniel said, “it’s just very nice, I think. Standing here at 6:30 in the morning, drinking coffee.”
“Yes,” she said, with her little smile, which, he reminded himself, he loved so much.
He was remarkably proud of his wife; that was certain. He had once been proud of the fairly frequent double glances she received from men. But now she taught twice a week over at Parson’s, her paintings now might fetch up to $10,000. Galleries around the country displayed her work. She was contributing substantial sums to their little nest egg, which he found remarkable when so many artists spent their lives earning practically nothing. He had created all this, in a way; she had patterned her career after his early path, but her concentration held. It meant something to her. And she was eternally pleasant, devoted to their marriage in a businesslike way that kept things humming along smoothly. Daniel heard no complaints about his office hours, or about anything at all. For his part, he didn’t burden her with his worries over the specks of blood he occasionally coughed up into his handkerchief, a symptom that would vanish, he was certain, when he finally gave up smoking and drinking, which would require a small bit of will-power but was otherwise imminent. Her affection for him was apparently genuine, as was his for her, but each had long ago lost sight of what was going on in the other’s mind. How, he would wonder, can I love a woman I no longer know?
On the number 6 train, Daniel looked up from his New York Times, spotted a young woman standing near the exit, staring at him. He thought for a moment, then thought again – this young woman, pretty at first glance, but mournful. Maybe she was just staring. Then she approached. “Daniel,” she said, and he remembered. This was Rachel, Henry’s girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend, or widow/ex-girlfriend – there wasn’t really a word – and Susan’s friend. Then Daniel’s eyes bulged as his head filled with childish memories of hugging and kissing Henry’s girlfriend on the couch while his best friend was out on the New York streets in search of coffee. Anyway, Daniel thought, as Rachel came nearer, she was hugging and kissing me, I was just the drunken recipient. That was his story, anyway.
“Rachel!” he said, “I can’t believe it! You look great!”
“What have you been up to!” she exclaimed, trying to sound equally enthusiastic. “Where are you working now?”
“Same place,” Daniel said.
“That’s a long time. Doesn’t that mean you’re partnership material?”
Daniel glanced away and muttered, “Well, I’ve been held over once already, and I can’t really ... you know ....” He just didn’t know what to say to that. “Anyway, how have you been?” he finally stammered.
“I was engaged for a while,” she admitted, “but I broke up with him. Just wasn’t right, I guess. Better to realize it before the wedding, I suppose, even if feelings are hurt. I don’t know.” She went on. Daniel was barely listening. He thought about some work he had to get done at the office on the ever-expanding Edward Bear mess, and then a few thoughts passed through his head about a play he had seen over the weekend. Rachel’s words were repeating, forming a pattern. His gaze drifted back to her.
“What?” he said stupidly.
“How is Henry?”
Daniel said, a little shortly, “He’s no longer with the firm.”
That was true.
“I would have thought you would still be in touch.”
“No,” Daniel said. “When someone leaves the firm, he’s gone, forever. Hearing from him again would be unexpected, you know. Impossible.” He was thinking about the dead, about all of them. And about Henry.
“That’s very surprising,” Rachel said. “He was your friend.”
“When people leave, they’re gone. Just gone. The rest of us need to get on with our lives. What is a friend, after all?”
“That’s sad. That’s all I can say.”
Daniel agreed that this was sad.
Daniel asked about Susan. “I hope she’s doing well,” he said, and it sounded, even to him, a bit overly worried, as though her condition might be a matter of genuine concern, as though she might never have quite gotten over the shock of losing a man like Daniel, even after all these years.
Rachel knit her brow. As the subway ground to a halt at the Astor Place stop, memories seemed to be racing through her mind. Finally, she sneered. “Screw you.” And hurried off the train, into the sea of people shoving through the subway station.
A while later, Daniel convinced himself that the unlikely conclusion of the conversation had not even happened.
The subway stopped at Bowling Green, and his pre-work respite ended.
At 10 am, a letter arrived from the Environmental Protection Agency, enclosing a Consent Decree signed by the other polluters, agreeing to an expedited schedule for cleanup at the New Jersey site. He read through the document, and his panic grew with each page turned. The consent decree was constructed to punish Edward Bear, and not even the EPA would deny that. He’d provoked Rhonda in their very first meeting, he’d underestimated her intelligence, and now he would pay. The other polluters would clean up part of the site, but their agreed liability was unrealistically small. That meant only one thing: the EPA would sue Edward Bear for the rest of the cleanup costs. The other polluters had been given contribution protection, so if the court ultimately required Edward Bear to clean up the site, it couldn’t sue the other polluters for their fair share of its expenditures.
Daniel knew what to expect next: a furious phone call from the client. He buzzed his secretary, warned her that he would need a moment or two to gather his wits when Percy Edwards called, and he instructed her to gauge Percy’s mood any way she could. At noon, the call came. “He’s hysterical,” Janet said, and Daniel thanked her, took three deep breaths then picked up the phone.
“Hello, Percy,” Daniel said, waiting for the explosion.
“Jesus, Daniel,” the agitated polluter shouted, “what is happening to this case? Every time I blink, it seems as though it’s going to cost us another million dollars!”
Daniel waited a moment; he didn’t want to give the appearance of interrupting his client.
“Let’s not get emotional about this,” Daniel said. “We can throw plenty of numbers around – another million dollars, or whatever – but it’s not actually helpful or meaningful.”
“What’s this consent decree?”
“Well,” Daniel said heavily. He looked at the document on his desk, flipped through it, bending and mangling the pages. “It appears that all the other PRPs signed on to the settlement offer made by the EPA. Except for Edward Bear, and, of course, Plastic People. They didn’t even ask me, you know, Percy. It’s bad faith, that’s what it is. Bad faith.”
“Did you know this was coming?”
“I knew something was coming. I just thought it would be a little less ... vengeful is, I guess, the right word.”
“Everyone I talk to says this defense you’ve constructed for us is a crazy, stupid idea. Local counsel’s playing along, but they think you’re a moron.”
“Crazy and stupid ... I think at this point I’d have to say it’s a long-shot, Percy, but not crazy and stupid. Now it’s our only chance to avoid massive penalties. Five years ago it was a splendid idea. But now it’s ... well, I’ll admit I’ve lost a few times with this argument.”
“You’ve been laughed at by the EPA, the magistrate, the district court.” Percy had a right to be angry. They’d lost their challenge in the district court over a year ago, and their last chance was the appeal pending in the Third Circuit. “How can we get signed on to the decree?”
“If you don’t want to fight this anymore,” he said, “I can call Rhonda Cantor and say we want in.”
“Will she agree?”
“I doubt it.”
Daniel waited for Percy’s next comment.
“Can we try to settle?”
“We
can,” Daniel said, “but if we were going to settle, we should have done it years ago. Every step we took beyond that initial PRP meeting made the costs of losing more expensive. I explained that to you at the time.”
“All right, then,” he said. After a moment, he added, “Let’s just try to win, for once, OK?”
At three in the afternoon, Natalie called.
“It’s been driving me crazy since you left,” she said. “Why did the story about the German Neo-Nazis killing Turks remind you of Emmett? Was he a Nazi? Is that why he killed the partner with a hammer?”
“He didn’t kill the partner,” Daniel said. “No, he’s not a Nazi. He’s in Turkey. That’s why I thought of him.”
At that very moment, Emmett was indeed in Turkey, in the bustling city of Istanbul, lost in the Beyoglu neighborhood, somewhat East (or was it West?) of the Bosporus. Emmett pulled out his compass and paused and thought about it. It didn’t do much good. Emmett was in Europe, on the cusp of Asia, standing in a strangely extensive fish market located in a side alley, watching leather-jacketed men and women barter and shout, as bass and flounder flipped about on wooden tables. Beautiful women walked by, one after another, and Emmett just stood and stared. Istanbul was the leather capital of the land of leather, factories chugged out whatever pollutants are created by the treatment of leather and it all hung in the air, around the fish, settling in his lungs. Car horns honked, leather soot sank to the ground, fish flapped about gasping for water-air and beautiful women walked by on all sides of him. He took one step backwards, overwhelmed.
And suddenly, as he stood staring, a hand pulled his arm, and he moved out of the way, just as a truck swept past. He turned to his savior and faced two ancient eyes which peered out from beneath a dusty veil; he remembered he was in Istanbul. Thank you, he said, and she scurried off.
Foreign lands leave the traveler with more questions than answers: Would a veiled woman have been as fearful in any Muslim country, or just here in Turkey?
“We are not monsters,” the director of the Istanbul Film Festival said at the opening press conference. He was so tiny in this huge room, miles below its towering ceiling with intricate gold leaf. He lit a cigarette. The room was already filled with smoke. Then, to emphasize his point, he repeated himself. “We are not monsters.” He looked angry. The Western reporters began scribbling, and his eyebrows knit crossly. “I know what you will do,” he said. “You will all lead your story in the same way. ‘We are not monsters, said the little man with the cigarette.’ The implication will be ironic. You will make my statement ironic thus implying that all Turks are monsters. That is what you think, and how can I change your minds? I am only, as you say, a little man with a cigarette. Yes,” he added, “Turks smoke a lot of cigarettes. I know what you think of that.” He took a deep drag on his cigarette, held it in his lungs for just a moment, then blew it out rebelliously. “Turkish prisons are not nice things,” he said. “American prisons are not nice things. No prisons are nice. And let me remind you Americans that we do not have a monopoly on gunning down our own citizens.” He took another deep breath, stared at his cigarette, seemed to make a conscious decision to abstain. “I hope you will learn from your stay here that we are human beings, not monsters. And I hope you will return to America and tell your Alan Parker what I think of him, and tell your Peter O’Toole that I hold him in contempt.” When he uttered the names of the British director of Midnight Express and the British star of Lawrence of Arabia, he lowered his voice, his face betraying both disgust and regret, as though he had been forced to recite the most obscene words he knew and feared the social consequences.
Why the fear in the veiled woman’s eyes? Was it her individual shyness, or her fundamentalist modesty, or was she actually afraid Emmett would inform the Veil Police, thuggish fascist secularists who would accuse her of being an agent of Iran, of smuggling fez caps into the country, of taking Ataturk’s name in vain? Ataturk’s spirit hung heavy in the air. A.k.a. Mustafa Kemal, the Macedonian, bisexual, alcoholic founder of the Turkish Republic who re-made an ancient people into an image of himself, quashing all dissenters before dying in a babbling, impotent cirrhotic haze. By the end, Emmett knew, though no one here would ever say it, their great leader was nothing more than an old lecher with a God complex, hoping for some renewed glimmer of virility in his final weeks. (What do you admire most in a woman? Ataturk was once asked, and the Father replied, “Availability.”) The military worshiped him as a symbol of sexual purity and long-gone family values, perhaps because by the end of his life, Ataturk’s conquests were few; he could, in fact, manage no more than to bathe his would-be mistresses before passing out. It was indeed a far cry from Ataturk in his middle years, when, as legend had it, he once deflowered a young Zsa Zsa Gabor before lunch without even stopping to catch his breath. Zsa Zsa claimed never to have recovered from her teenage tryst with Mr. Kemal, and henceforth gave herself wholly to wild sexual abandon, vainly trying to recapture her Night of Love with a God. Thus, if not for Ataturk, the world would indeed have been a very different place.
His picture was everywhere, his spirit the seam that held the country together, his smiling goddish face justified the massacre of Kurds and Armenians, the torture of dissidents, the banning of fez caps.
“He is beloved by the people, even today,” the Minister of Culture had told Emmett two days earlier as their van left Istanbul International Airport. As the old man spoke about Ataturk, there was a larger-than-usual crinkle in his ever-crinkly eyes. They swept past the slums that surrounded the city, caught glimpses of urban peasants wandering through side alleys. The Minister’s van careened by Topkapi Palace, with its spires and steeples, the symbol of the Ottoman Empire, the glory of the Sultans and the poverty of the people, that Ataturk had sought to wipe out. Today, yesterday, everyday, dispassionate guides hurried American, Japanese and European tourists by the rooms in which the Sultan’s harem had once lived, pointed out where they had bathed, where they had prayed. “This is where the Sultan slept,” they would say. “This is the window from which he waved to his subjects.” The guide in this modern republic did not judge the long-dead Sultan, did not explain why it was necessary to destroy everything that he represented, or why it was somehow permissible to extol to visiting tourists the glories that were once Turkey. Did the guide know that in precisely six days, when Turgat Ozal, the current president of Turkey, would collapse and die after an exhausting trip to the Baltic Republics, the people would laugh and wear bright colors in celebration? Were the people happier when their leaders were gods who lived in palaces? Would tourists of the 22nd century looking back on the last thirty years of the 20th find anything to celebrate? Had the glories of history died with the Sultans? Does the freedom to condemn and ridicule deprive future generations of their birthright, the legends of the past?
The next morning he ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant, runny scrambled eggs and wieners under bright fluorescent lights. The festival director was sitting across the table from him. “I was appointed in 1981 by the Ministry of Culture, that’s true,” he said. He shoveled a forkful of eggs into his mouth, then took a drag on his cigarette without swallowing. He exhaled, and bits of egg drifted through the air, riding the smoke. “No one has ever questioned my part in the military government. I was a force for tolerance. I was a young man, only thirty, and I was an idealist. Perhaps I was too brave, I admit it, too foolishly brave on behalf of my beliefs. I stood up to them when it was most dangerous to do so. Now that period is past. The generals are retired. We can say what we like, and do what we want. It is a new Turkey.”
“Your current president was part of the military dictatorship,” Emmett said. “He was a player in the coup. He’s opposed anti-torture statutes when they came up for a vote. He turned a blind eye to the oppression of dissidents.”
The advisor blinked. “I don’t want to discuss such things. This is breakfast.” Then he shook his finger angrily. “Don’t speak to me about torture, anyway. As
an American you should know that we Turks do not have a monopoly on torture.”
Emmett left the restaurant and wandered the dusty road toward the Sineplex theater, where he was catching a 10 am show of Chernyy Glaz, a film from Turkmenistan, directed by a Russian named Anatoli Rostislavsky, a bearish man who’d made films extolling Socialism, anti-American spy flicks, funny screwball comedies, and anything else to prop up the regime, until the exact moment when it was painless and even beneficial to become a strident, daring dissident.
The lobby of the theater was almost completely empty. A journalist from Kazakhstan was trying to arrange for a translation, discovering, to his chagrin, that the film was in Russian with French subtitles. “I was told available,” he was saying, in fractured English, to a woman at the popcorn stand. She replied, “You’re from Soviet. Why no Russian?”
“I am not from Union Soviet,” the journalist said, which was not technically correct. “I speak only English and Kazakh.” He smoothed back a wisp of straight black hair, and leaned forward solicitously. He was in his mid-thirties and looked Chinese
“I cannot help,” she said. “If you want Kazakh, go outside, find Kazakh. Everyplace, Kazakh, see everywhere. Find one for self.” She seemed to be disgusted by this, the alleged flood of Kazakhs into Istanbul.
Inside, there were only three other audience members. The Kazakh critic kept staring at his watch, then squinting up at the screen. He did not seem to have resolved his translation problems. As they sat in the theater, waiting for the film to begin, an official of the People’s Labor Party in Dargecit, a hilly town in Mardin, was admitted to the local hospital “all in pieces,” as a nurse would describe it. A bank employee in Bismil was nursing his cracked ribs as he screamed for his torturers to come and revive his brother, who had been beaten beside him during the night and was no longer moving. A woman was burying her husband, and her eight children their father, a poor farmer, shot ten times the day before yesterday by government soldiers on the steps of his house in the Gurusuk district of Ayranci village, in full view of his family and his furiously barking dogs. Finally, Emmett noticed with relief, the theater lights began to dim. He hoped the movie would be a good one.