The Mammoth Book Best International Crime

by Maxim Jakubowski

  They hit traffic again once they reached the shore. The car slowed down. “Turn left, toward Asiyan.” Cavidan Hanm seemed to be in total control now. She cracked open a can of beer for herself. “Sorry, you’re driving.” At that moment, the young man felt certain this was all just one big nightmare. His knuckles were visibly white, even in the dim light. Truth of the matter was, though, this was only the beginning – he had no idea what was in store for him.

  The car obediently cruised forward toward their destination. The young man turned and stopped in front of Bebek Park. Just like every evening, the Bebek meatball vendor was setting up his stand in his white minivan, in spite of the contrary weather. Cavidan Hanm took advantage of their time in stalled traffic to look around, and she did so with gusto. It was crowded, as usual; even in this weather, all the benches in the park were occupied. Cavidan Hanm took a sizable sip from her beer; it had a sour, acidic taste, and she shivered a little as she swallowed. She reached for the bags on the backseat and took out a package: fresh walnuts. She silently congratulated herself; a prescient last-minute purchase, as it were. This time she offered some to her companion. The traffic stirred a little. They barely made it past the taxi stand in front of the Bebek Café when they had to stop again. The lodos did not seem to have impacted the hotel or the seafood restaurants here one bit. The valets were constantly stopping traffic to make way for the cars of customers coming and going. Tolga was quietly eating the walnuts Cavidan Hanm kept offering to him, after removing their delicate shells. She was sure no one had skinned or shelled or peeled anything for this boy and handed it to him, ready to eat, since he was a kid. Now he was smiling too. Finally, the valet impatiently motioned for them to drive on through. “Dear listeners, how about another tune from Ethel Waters? The woman says it ain’t her fault – she’s just living her life! That’s right, Ethel Waters here and ‘Don’t Blame Me’ . . .”

  They passed Bebek Hotel, Starbucks, Divan Bakery, and then the grocery store. Even if the whole world were to go haywire, the colorful fruit-packed trays of that grocery store would be enough to restore the illusion that everything was A-OK. Cavidan Hanm, turning to her right, pointed to the olive oil specialty shop and asked: “Have you ever shopped there?”

  “No,” said Tolga, laughing.

  Brightly lit windows, the headlights of standing cars, people going in and out of restaurants and liquor stores on both sides all blended together into one big blur; a single, gigantic organism quivering in the wind. They stopped again, where the waterfront houses ended and the sea began. The coats and the scarves of people crossing the avenue were flying in the wind. An old man laughed as he pressed down on his fedora. Now that’s a retiree, Cavidan Hanm thought. She was happy, giddy; she’d never felt younger. The whistle of the lodos blew in one window and out the other.

  An increasingly contented Tolga pointed to a man selling fish on the shore. “Beautiful, isn’t it? How bright and colorful they are, even in this weather . . . Do you like fish?” he asked.

  Cavidan Hanm looked at the round wooden trays on the stand and the neat rows of pink, white, and silvery fish displayed on them. Lamps and bundles of garlic suspended from the poles above the vendors’ carts swung to and fro in the wind. The fish seller was sprinkling water on lettuce, garden cress, radishes, and lemons. “Yes, I do. I like it a lot, in fact. And how about you? Do you like snapper soup? Red snapper? I should make it for you someday.”

  “My mom makes delicious snapper soup.” As soon as the words came out of his mouth, the young man knew he had said something wrong; he clammed up.

  Cavidan Hanm pretended she hadn’t heard him. What was the point of embarrassing the poor boy? He already regretted having said it anyway. “I just learned how to make it. But Pygmy loves it.”

  Curious, Tolga asked: “Pygmy?”

  “My cat. She loves my snapper soup.” She laughed again. “She’s so black, I bet you’d be scared of her if you saw her in the dark; she walks around like a pair of bodiless green eyes.”

  “Come on, why would I be afraid? I’m sure she’s adorable . . .”

  Beaten black-and-blue by the wind, the sea churned and foamed. The bus in front of them let out a hiss as it lurched forward, and they followed. Launched from the terrace of one of the seafront houses, an umbrella, a remnant from summer, blew over the road and toward the water. Spared, by the grace of God! The incident brought them closer; it was that special affinity shared by people who have survived an accident together. Just then the young man’s cell phone started ringing.

  “What’s that, Pnar? . . . Yes, I left early, I had a few errands . . . To Akmerkez . . . To buy a present for Mom . . . Unbelievable . . . I couldn’t find anything . . . What’s that? . . . Pnar, can I call you a little later? I can’t hear you . . .” He felt obliged to offer an explanation: “My girlfriend.”

  Cavidan Hanm found an excuse for joy in this revelation; so he wasn’t married after all! “She was worried, I suppose. I can’t blame her, I’d be worried about you too.” Was that a spark of desire she saw in his eyes? No, it couldn’t be, she must be mistaken.

  “Should we keep going? Is there any particular place you’d like to stop?” For the first time in his life he felt the comfort of being with an assertive woman, a woman in charge, a woman who made decisions for him. But then, there were many firsts in store for him that evening. Feeling submissive to the core, he waited for an answer.

  “There’s a parking lot by the water, across from the graveyard. Let’s go there. It’s always deserted after dark.” The traffic abated. She unzipped the jacket of her jogging suit a little further, just to get some air. The medallion hanging from her neck glinted for a brief second, catching the young man’s eye; Cavidan Hanm promptly took notice. The lodos was blowing through the giant trees along the roadside.

  Now that they had left the noisy traffic behind, the sound of the radio came to the fore: “We’ve reached the end of tonight’s program, dear listeners. We leave you until tomorrow – same time, same place – with Lena Horne and ‘Mad about the Boy’ . . .”

  Cavidan Hanm felt a tingling in her loins. Don’t tell me to give you a break; I’m a human being, and I know human beings have a tendency to lose it every now and then. Actually, it was pretty understandable. She’d never really had much of a sex life, other than a few rather tasteless flings with colleagues, and that was so far in the past now, her conspirators had faded into pale ghosts of her imagination. And throughout those long years, whenever she attempted to satisfy the urges of her body by herself, leaning against the cold walls of her shower stall, it wasn’t those inadequate lovers but her male students that she fantasized about. She loved the way they smelled so fresh, how their voices still cracked, their unruly attitudes, and their black-haired arms peeking out from rolled-up sleeves; she loved it all, at least as much as she loved this city. She threw her head back, draining the can of beer in her hand. She’d grown silent, perhaps out of shame for her thoughts.

  Tolga slowed down next to the cemetery, turned on his right-turn signal, and then parked by the water. The headlights illuminated the sea one last time before going out; the seagulls, caught in the circles of light, flitted about the sky like giant snowflakes.

  “I can have a beer now, too, can’t I?”

  Without breaking her silence, Cavidan Hanm reached down into the black plastic bag next to her foot. She took out a can, opened it, and handed it to the young man. She had avoided his eyes. The jazz program ended, and Tolga switched the radio off. For a while, they just sat there, listening to the wind howling wildly.

  I keep referring to the wind, I know, and perhaps you find it annoying, but there’s no way around it, because for me it’s the main character of the story. It was bolting through the sky in fits of madness, lunging down and surging back up, sending shivers through the evening lights, absorbing the familiar sounds of the city into its own roar. It dried lips, hurled anything and everything that failed to match its strength, weighed down upon
souls, made skin crawl. Tolga sipped on his beer, contemplating Cavidan Hanm’s profile, while she contemplated the seagulls lowering themselves toward the sea. One wonders what was on their minds just then. But then, it’s not hard to guess. Perhaps a jumble of thoughts coursed through Tolga’s mind—how he could possibly explain this delay to his girlfriend; his eleventh grade English teacher; the fact that he had to buy a present for his mother; how awful it would be to be out at sea in this weather; whether or not Cavidan Hanm’s medallion was in fact a locket, and if there was a picture in it; his girlfriend again; his mother again; even the project he’d turned in that day, and the likelihood of its success. Though these may not have been his exact thoughts, they were certainly something along those lines. He didn’t try to focus on anything in particular, and that was comforting to him somehow.

  He leaned back in his seat, took a big gulp from his beer, and got lost in thought again. He was back to pondering the matter of the presents; in fact, he was on the verge of actually making a decision. And he would have, for sure, if only he hadn’t felt Cavidan Hanm’s hand settle onto his crotch just then. At least he had finally eliminated the perfume, narrowing his options down to two: either the laptop bag or the cashmere sweater.

  “Do you mind if I touch you?” she asked nonchalantly, as though asking if she could roll down the window. Moreover, she went ahead and began unzipping the young man’s pants, without even waiting for an answer. And unzip them she did.

  Tolga looked in amazement at the fingers pulling at his boxer shorts. Would it be rude to ask her to take her hands off of me? he wondered. His manhood, though, growing beneath the woman’s touch, was betraying him. But she just wanted to feel around a little, right? It was hardly the end of the world now, was it? He slid down a little, made himself more comfortable. The woman’s hand was brushing over the heat of his flesh; she had lowered her head and was scrutinizing the thing in her hands with the curiosity of a child observing an insect. Tolga grew uneasy and glanced around. There wasn’t another person or car in sight. He tried not to think about the cemetery that extended up the hill on the other side of the road. He cleared his throat and, in a voice he thought sounded normal, asked, “Would you like me to turn on the radio?”

  “Oh yes,” said Cavidan Hanm, “but find another jazz program, will you?” She lowered her head and began stroking him again, picking up where she’d left off.

  His hands shaking, the young man turned the radio on and tuned in to a jazz station. The sound of a rebellious, unrepentant saxophone filled the car. Had to be John Coltrane.

  At that moment, Cavidan Hanm lowered her head further and took the young man’s penis into her mouth. I know, it sounds almost pornographic when I put it like this, but these things are just a part of life, they come so naturally. And as long as I’m telling you the whole story, why should I succumb to puritanical pressures and skip the details? Okay, so what was Cavidan Hanm thinking all this time? Well, first of all, she was wondering why on earth she had never done this before, and thinking how many more things there were that she had never done before, and how the world was just full of things she had never done before . . . She was intrigued by the taste; he must be a clean man, she thought, because she couldn’t detect even the faintest scent of urine. Curious, with the tip of her tongue she touched the clear fluid oozing from the tip of the penis; perhaps it was due to the aftertaste of beer in her mouth, but she found it to be rather sour. She cleansed her tongue on the shaft of the young man’s manhood, which was as hard as it could possibly get by now. Its skin, wrinkled at first, was now stretched tight, as if a larva inside was struggling to escape.

  Tolga placed his can next to the gear-shift. His hands were in the woman’s black hair now.

  Cavidan Hanm raised her head and peered up at him. Ignoring the pressure gently pushing down on her head, she sat up. She slipped out of her jogging pants with some difficulty, as she wasn’t used to doing this sort of thing. Bodies always seemed to grow larger inside cars, somehow. She kicked off her shoes, letting them drop next to the black plastic bag. She tugged on her panties until she’d peeled herself free. The rebellious notes of John Coltrane mingling with the whistle of the wind and merging with their wetness, Cavidan Hanm climbed onto the young man’s lap. She carefully gripped his manhood and placed it between her legs.

  For Cavidan Hanm, the young man ceased to exist. For her, there were only the seagulls, radiant against the blackness of the night, the strokes of blue and gray against the canvas of pitch black waters, the sea in its bubbling turbulence, the hell of the lodos. She didn’t notice how Tolga reached and unzipped her top and removed it. Only when he reached around for the clasp of her bra did she move to help him. She had only her socks and her medallion on now. Her breasts, made soft by time, sagging, defeated by the pull of gravity, lunged forward with yearning and met the young man’s mouth. She was rising and falling; she was taking the whole city in. This wasn’t an ordinary coupling. She imagined the city’s skyline, and went mad with desire. The manhood between her legs was every skyscraper of the city, symbolic bastions of power with blue-tinted windows, and crowns disappearing into heavy, low-lying clouds. That manhood was every intricate street she loved to stroll through, from Beyolu to Tünel. As she rose and fell, she whispered Istanbul’s name. The young man held onto her hips tightly, trying to help her keep her rhythm. That manhood was the winter evenings falling early on the city, the smell of roasted chestnuts, smog, happy lights of domestic bliss, dim street-lamps, bright signs, decorated trees, shopping centers, polished, shiny, illuminated a thousand and one different ways. “Istanbul.” She repeated the word faster and faster. That manhood was all the city’s markets with their endless spice displays, delicatessens bulging with pastrma, sucuk, wheels of kaar cheese, bluefish with bloody gills lying on red trays, the vivacious hues of quinces, pomegranates, and dates; tangerines, grapefruits, oranges sold from flatbed trucks, baskets of strawberries sold by the roadside, just right for making jam; the first plums of the season, still green and crunchy in wheelbarrows; green, unripe almonds, yellow and red cherries, again pomegranates, again quinces . . . tangerines . . . oranges . . . Cavidan Hanm let out a subdued scream and collapsed onto the young man. Perhaps she couldn’t take it anymore when the warm liquid squirted out of the young man and into her. After all, we’re talking about years and years of loneliness, which is easier said than experienced – and not even that easy to say. Supermarkets, convenience stores, butchers, neighborhood markets; bought, sold, cooked. Yarn shops, button shops, haberdasheries; Niantai, ili, Osmanbey; bought, sold, knit. TV game shows, entertainment programs, bedlam, bacchanals, emotion-commerce, TV series, movies, distant countries filling one with longing, romance, sorrows, lovemaking of others, watched, until one goes numb. Loneliness is a hard business, known only by those who experience it. Has someone said that before? A sentence so trivial, anybody could have said it. But on a New Year’s Eve, an evening in the lodos, in a dark park by the shore, in the cramped heat of a car with leather seats, with the seagulls dipping down and rising above the water, and the wind relentlessly battering the windows, in the extension, so alive, of a body, so fresh, loneliness could very well be killed.

  Cavidan Hanm was lying on top of Tolga, motionless. Tolga stirred uneasily. “Cavidan Hanm?” No answer. This whole encounter had taken on a rather unexpected shape, granted, but even so, this dose of romanticism was a bit too much for Tolga. He tried to right himself without disturbing Cavidan Hanm. “Thank you.” It sounded so raw, he thought, once the words were out of his mouth, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say. And besides, the weight of the woman’s body was becoming rather annoying. Finally, he became aware of the unsettling quiet. “Cavidan Hanm?” She wasn’t breathing. An ice-cold shiver went down Tolga’s spine. It just couldn’t be, no one could possibly be that unlucky. “Cavidan Hanm?” He stumbled over the words. Just then, his phone, which was lying next to the gearshift, started ringing. He stretched, reaching out a
s far as the body on top of him allowed: It was Pnar. What if he just didn’t answer? He did.

  “Hi, sweetie . . . I’m fine, I’m okay . . .” He turned his head, away from the smell of Cavidan Hanm’s hair. “Just wanted to get some . . . What’s that? . . . Yes, yes, to get some air . . . No . . . I’m upset about some stuff that happened at work, that’s all . . . No . . . Okay . . . Okay . . . Yes. Will do . . .” He hung up and took a deep breath. He checked for a pulse. He had to stay calm. He’d tell it exactly the way it happened. They’d believe him. There was nothing not to believe. It could happen. It could have happened. It could happen to anybody. He did his best to control the wave of panic rising in him, but it was growing too quickly, feeding off the whistle of the lodos, pulling the floor from underneath his feet. He tried to push Cavidan Hanm off of him. He grabbed her shoulders and propped her up; her head lolled to one side. In a final effort, he tried to haul her onto the passenger seat, but his foot got caught between the seat and the door. He let go of the body and tried to rescue his foot. At that point, he noticed her woolen socks. Trying not to gag, he yanked his foot free. Then the woman’s foot got caught on one of the CDs in the door pocket and sent the CD flying. He deposited Cavidan Hanm’s naked body onto the passenger seat, pulled on his pants, and zipped up. He was sticky all over. The inside of the car reeked of semen, but he decided against rolling the window down, with the wind blowing so forcefully outside. The woman’s head first hit the glove compartment, and then the door. The gearshift stick bruised her waist. You might think, Well, what does it matter anyway, now that she’s dead? It wouldn’t matter, of course, if every mark on her body wasn’t later considered evidence of battery. But as you probably guessed, Tolga wasn’t the kind of guy to dump a dead body – and one which had expired with uncanny timing – on a pile of wet cold stones and just leave it there, even if it did belong to someone he didn’t know, and even if he would have to pay by having his own life wrenched to pieces. After all, he had faith in the justice system.