Land of the Blind

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Er, well, yes it is. But the Party—’

  ‘The party, whichever one it is, is not the government,’ Kerim said. ‘Or it shouldn’t be.’

  He looked at the boys and smiled. They glanced at each other nervously. Were they members of the ruling party? Probably. And if they weren’t, then their fathers were. Kerim wondered what they’d do if they knew his wife was a lesbian, his lover, a transsexual. All life was in wicked old İstanbul and at that moment much of it was in Gezi Park, colourful, loud, proud and threatened. Kerim hoped that Sinem and Pembe were safe. He’d never seen his wife look so well as she had since the protests had begun. Together with Pembe and Madame Edith, she was out every day and the movement and the air were definitely enlivening her. Possibly if the talks went well between the Taksim Solidarity group and the Prime Minister, the camp wouldn’t be attacked again and maybe Sinem might meet a nice woman in amongst the trees. As it was, love and sex were the last thing on the minds of most people in Gezi Park. Tear gas and batons tended to focus the attention of the majority on simple survival.

  Kerim said, ‘I don’t think we’re going to find Mr Öden tonight.’

  One of the young men shook his head sadly.

  Anastasia Negroponte opened her eyes and saw a tangle of her own grey hair. She could see her room easily through it now that her hair was so old and thin – the yellow curtains her mother had made up back in the 1930s, the purple Hereke rug that a hunched figure was walking slowly across.

  A man, he was moving away from her, his back slightly stooped under a sack. It reminded her of that other man, the one who had taken Nikos and buried him still alive. Who had he been? Why had he done that? And why was she the only one who knew that Nikos had not been buried in Şişli?

  Because he had told her. The man without a face had said, ‘I will bury him for you.’ And because she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t tell him that her husband was still alive. And then later, Hakkı had come . . .

  The figure on the Hereke rug stopped. Was this part of a dream?

  He turned. He looked over his left shoulder.

  She froze.

  Then she screamed.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Çetin İkmen said.

  Yiannis Negroponte sprang to his feet. ‘My mother. You wait here!’

  He ran out of the salon and up the stairs.

  İkmen started to follow, but Yiannis turned. ‘I said stay here!’ he said. ‘She’s probably had a bad dream!’

  He heard Yiannis and the old man try to calm her down. But she screamed again and then she whimpered. There were so few İstanbul Greeks who remembered 1955 left in the city. Most of them had gone away or died. He wondered what her damaged mind saw and whether whatever it was reflected the reality of what had happened to her.

  He remembered his Uncle Vahan, Arto Sarkissian’s father, talking to his father about it. He’d been a surgeon and had been called on to try and save the lives of some of the 1955 riot victims. But not Nikos Negroponte. And he’d not been the only one. Vahan Sarkissian had run along İstiklal, leaving the dead, tending to the dying, falling over on the blood that coated the road surface. Çetin’s father, Timur, had been so ashamed of his own people that he’d apologised to every Greek he knew.

  He could hear the old woman crying now. How could he ask her questions?

  Yiannis ran down the stairs. ‘I’m sorry, Çetin Bey, my mother has had a bad dream and so she’s distressed. Can you leave asking her anything until tomorrow?’

  The basement was a suspected crime scene and so officers would be on site until the investigation was complete.

  ‘I know we can’t leave the house . . .’

  ‘No, you can’t.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  İkmen left the Negroponte house and strolled along slowly, cigarette in hand, feeling tired and emotionally empty. Could he, even if he tried, remember that red room from his childhood? When he’d first revisited the Negroponte House he’d felt that something was different. But was it that? He didn’t know. Something had been wrong in that house but he felt that it still was wrong even with the room fully exposed.

  Had Ahmet Öden, somehow, known about the red room? He had been so adamant about having the Negroponte House. İkmen had just thought that he was simply conforming to the arrogant way property developers behaved when they wanted a site. But was he? And how had he known if Yiannis had kept the room a secret? If he had. How had Ariadne Savva known about it? If she had.

  And whose blood was that on the porphyry slab in the red room?

  When he got home he had his dinner and then spent some time with the small box that contained all that remained to him of his mother’s possessions. This included her tarot cards, hand-painted by her grandfather, which expressed the universal principles of love, death, and destruction in terms of a rural Albania Çetin had never seen. They also gave him a good idea.

  ‘Do you know why she’s so bad?’ Yiannis said.

  Hakkı shook his head. He was grey and breathless. They’d both had to hold Anastasia down when Yiannis had given her another pill. It had taken it out of the old man. Now her eyes were closed again he sat down by the door. Yiannis joined him.

  ‘What happened? How did it start?’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought she was asleep, I was leaving.’

  ‘So she must’ve woken and seen you. Thought you were an intruder? Did she seem to be stuck in a nightmare?’

  ‘I don’t know! I don’t know!’

  She stirred.

  ‘Keep your voice down!’ Yiannis whispered.

  ‘But what I do know is I don’t think she should see Çetin Bey tomorrow. I think we should tell him she is too ill,’ Hakkı said.

  He looked over at the bed and frowned. ‘Because you think she is?’

  ‘Partly.’ He tipped his head to one side.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I don’t know what she knows,’ Hakkı said. ‘She lies up here year in and year out but what she knows . . .’ He shrugged.

  ‘She can hardly talk!’ Yiannis hissed. ‘Her brain is damaged. Where’s the harm?’

  Hakkı looked over at her bed now and said, ‘I don’t know. But if we are to keep this house we mustn’t leave anything to chance. She can’t talk to him, Yiannis. Ever.’

  Yiannis paused and then he nodded his head. ‘I’ll talk to her.’

  There was a subdued feeling in Gezi Park. Protest representatives had gone to Ankara at the request of the government and so all anyone could do was wait and see what happened. For the time being the police had pulled back. Peri walked past tents and fires, makeshift shops and even an outdoor library. The protest was still vibrant, but it was also tense.

  ‘Hey! You!’

  Peri looked around. Was someone calling her?

  ‘Nurse!’

  Possibly. ‘Yes?’

  A long brown hand on her shoulder made her turn. She recognised the face. It was that amazing, fierce gypsy woman, the lover of Ömer’s boss, Mehmet Süleyman.

  ‘Gonca Hanım.’

  ‘You are Sergeant Mungun’s sister,’ Gonca said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘From the east.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Gonca took Peri’s hand. ‘You must come with me.’

  ‘Where? What . . .’

  Gonca was strong, but Peri was stronger. She pulled her hand away. ‘Hanım?’

  Gonca put her hands on her hips. ‘I need a nurse,’ she said. ‘Don’t usually need one. But now . . .’ She shrugged.

  ‘A nurse for . . .’

  ‘One of my daughters is having a baby and I think it’s premature,’ she said.

  ‘What, your daughter’s having a baby here? In Gezi Park?’

  ‘That tent.’ She pointed to a conical military style tent. ‘She didn’t know she was pregnant until her pains started this morning. Neither did I.’

  ‘Does your daughter know how many months she’s been pregnant?’

  ‘No. She says not,’ Gonca said
. ‘The boy, the father, has been sniffing around my house for months. I’ve told her, when I see him I’ll beat him. Then we’ll have a wedding.’

  She lived in what some would consider ‘sin’ with Süleyman and yet clearly her children were expected to be more conventional.

  Peri looked inside the tent and saw a girl sweating on a blanket on the ground, surrounded by women who covered their faces when her eyes caught theirs.

  ‘Will you help us?’ Gonca asked.

  Peri opened her bag and took out a pair of latex gloves. ‘If the baby’s tiny or distressed I’ll take it to hospital,’ she said. ‘No arguments.’

  ‘None from me,’ Gonca replied.

  Chapter 28

  There were few silences between the wittering, stammering, senseless jabberings in his head. And when they did come, he shook, because he was in darkness now. The candle had gone out at some time he couldn’t name. He moved his eyes to prove to himself that he was still alive. A nibbling sound made him try to move his body, but he couldn’t. Had rats invaded his chamber? Had the old man and Negroponte sent them in to eat him alive?

  He hadn’t injected himself for – how long? He should be in a coma. Maybe he was? Perhaps that was what being in this place was all about? He wasn’t there at all. He was in a hospital somewhere, in a diabetic coma. He hoped the family hadn’t brought Kelime to see him. She’d be so frightened! He was all she had. If anything happened to him, what would become of her? Semih loved her but he wouldn’t want her in his life when he eventually married and had children of his own. His sisters tolerated her. Kelime would end up in a home. A very expensive home, but not a place where she’d be loved. She wouldn’t be indulged and so she’d scream and then they, the people at the home, would beat her. Because that was what people who ran homes for children like her did.

  Ahmet Öden’s eyes leaked. He couldn’t cry, he wasn’t strong enough. For himself he wanted to die. He’d already pissed and defecated all over himself. What was next? When hunger came again, would he start to eat his own flesh? Death had to be preferable to that and yet if he died all hope for Kelime would be lost.

  He wasn’t being rational. How could something that didn’t exist, be lost? Kelime had gone. She’d gone into a home already and he was going to die.

  Why was he dying so painfully? Hadn’t he been a good man? He’d always done whatever those who were senior to him had asked. From his father onwards. What was wrong with that?

  A voice answered him. ‘Oh everything’s wrong with that,’ it said. ‘You stupid fucking puppet.’

  Ah, Gülizar. His gypsy lover. He thought he felt his face smile. If he hadn’t gone out to get Viagra from that discreet little pharmacist in Yeniköy the night she had died how would that have worked out? But he’d had to go in the night. That night. In spite of Kelime and her sickness. He’d been out of the drug and he’d been aching to see Gülizar as soon as he was able.

  ‘Yes, I brought a goat for my father,’ Lokman Atasu said.

  ‘OK.’

  Kerim Gürsel had grown up in İstanbul but he knew how country people were because in recent years so many of them had moved to the city. Even if they only had a small flat, sometimes they had their most valuable animals with them. And when relatives visited they often brought a celebratory goat or a lamb to slaughter when they arrived. Hakkı Atasu’s son was no exception.

  ‘Where do you live, Mr Atasu?’ Kerim asked.

  A dour man in his fifties, Lokman had a wonderful face for suspicion. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘I’m a police officer,’ Kerim said, ‘just answer the question.’

  It wasn’t like him to pull rank, but sometimes that was the only way.

  ‘I live on my father-in-law’s farm just outside Van.’

  Very far east. Kerim looked around the small, dark room that, apart from a tiny kitchen and a very basic bathroom, was Hakkı Atasu’s only accommodation. Lokman’s three children, one of which was a baby, grizzled miserably in the morning heat while his wife, a covered woman with the eyes of a child, stared helplessly at the floor. Too tired to care.

  ‘Did you slaughter the goat or did your father?’

  ‘He did,’ Lokman said. ‘With Yiannis Bey.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At the Negroponte House. There’s no room here.’

  He was right.

  ‘Do you know where in the Negroponte House your father and Yiannis Bey killed it?’

  ‘No.’

  Yiannis Negroponte had said that he often used the porphyry slab that he and Hakkı had slaughtered the goat on.

  ‘My father cooked the goat in a tandır in the garden. We went for the feast later in the evening,’ Lokman said. ‘Madam Negroponte doesn’t like people in the house.’

  ‘Must’ve been difficult with the children.’

  ‘We stayed in the garden,’ he said.

  ‘So you didn’t see Madam Negroponte?’ Kerim asked.

  ‘I haven’t seen Madam for years,’ he said.

  Just for a moment the child-eyed wife looked up at her husband. Her gaze was unreadable. But Kerim noted it. Then she went back to bottle-feeding the baby.

  Nestor Negroponte had been a male version of those unmarried, impoverished aunts aristocratic and middle-class families had always had. There had been a woman of that sort in Mehmet Süleyman’s family, although she had had a flat of her own, which was unusual. Nestor Negroponte was much more typical.

  A cousin from an aunt who İkmen suspected had become pregnant out of wedlock, he had stayed in the house until 1955. Then he’d disappeared. He hadn’t been involved, as far as anyone knew, in any of the violence in Beyoğlu. He’d just walked out of the door one day and never come back.

  ‘He was . . . simple,’ the old woman said. ‘Child.’

  The photograph on her bedroom wall showed a man, probably in his forties, wearing a light coloured suit and a panama hat. Unsmiling, he looked confused.

  Yiannis Negroponte had stayed until İkmen had asked him to go. He’d said he was afraid to leave his mother in case İkmen’s questions upset her. But eventually she’d waved him away.

  ‘You never saw Nestor again?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Since 1955?’

  ‘No . . .’ She beckoned him to her. As İkmen got closer he saw that her eyes were wet. Was she still suffering from the effects of the bad dream she’d had that night?

  He walked over to her bed and sat down. She looked into his eyes. When she was young, she’d been incredibly beautiful. İkmen’s mother had always said that the world was in love with Madam Negroponte, and if the world constituted the men of İstanbul, that had been true. Nikos Negroponte had always had to keep close to his wife whenever they went to parties. Otherwise she’d be bothered by their unwanted advances. Even just with himself and his brother in the house, İkmen could remember how Nikos Bey always held his wife’s arm.

  ‘Madam Anastasia, what’s wrong?’ İkmen said. ‘I am not my mother, but I do have some of her sensitivity to atmosphere. There’s something not right in this house. Tell me what it is?’

  Slowly, she moved her eyes away.

  ‘I know about the red room,’ İkmen said. ‘I think I saw it when I was a child. Do you know why Yiannis has been trying to hide it in recent years?’

  She said nothing.

  ‘Was it to stop the archaeologists moving in? Preferable to property developers, I think,’ İkmen said. And then he stopped making what he considered chit-chat. ‘Madam Anastasia, a young woman died in a room made of porphyry. We found her body in the sphendone of the Hippodrome, but that is not somewhere dressed with porphyry and so we don’t think she was murdered there.’

  She looked at him.

  ‘Yes, murdered. That had happened in a red place,’ he said. ‘She gave birth to a child and then, we think, she was slaughtered. I want to know where the child is. I want to know if it’s dead like its mother or like your cousin Nestor . . .’

  �
��Mmm.’

  She’d begun to hum. Her body shook.

  ‘Madam, I know that something . . .’

  She wept, humming, her voice rising, her tears spilling over her eyelids and falling down her cheeks.

  ‘Madam, I don’t want to upset you,’ İkmen said. ‘But I know something isn’t right and . . .’ He put a hand in his pocket and took out his mother’s old tarot cards. ‘Remember these?’

  He heard heavy footsteps approaching from the stairs.

  ‘They were my mother’s. Remember Ayşe İkmen? The witch?’ he smiled.

  A thin, twisted hand took the pack from his fingers and the humming stopped.

  ‘Maybe if you can use these cards to show me . . .’

  The bedroom door slammed open. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I’ve been asking your mother some questions . . .’

  ‘I heard her whimpering.’ Yiannis Negroponte went straight to his mother and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘What are these?’

  ‘Tarot cards,’ İkmen said. ‘They were my mother’s. She used to read them for Madam Negroponte before you were born.’

  Yiannis made to grab them, but his mother pulled the pack to her chest, cradling them against her thin breastbone.

  ‘I brought them for her,’ İkmen said.

  ‘I know I perform “magic” but that’s just—’

  ‘I don’t know what I think about it either, Mr Negroponte,’ İkmen said. ‘But these are hand-painted Albanian tarot cards. They’re works of art.’

  The old woman looked up into her son’s face. ‘You want them, Mama?’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  He smiled. Then he looked at İkmen, ‘So now you know about Nestor Negroponte . . .’

  İkmen’s phone rang. He excused himself and left the room. It was Ali Bey from forensic.

  ‘Can’t give you anything on the blood we found at the Negroponte House,’ he said, ‘except a small quantity on the floor of that room was definitely not human. Anything the luminol threw up was trace. Sorry.’

  İkmen shook his head. ‘What can you do?’

  ‘Do? Nothing. We’ve found nothing of any forensic value. Take the tapes down and move out.’

  ‘I know,’ İkmen said. He sighed.