Wearily he started walking again, stopping every few meters to peer into some unobtrusive place that just might be the lair of the shy and retiring Turkish post office. And for a short time this rather humorous pursuit both filled and entertained his tired mind. It recalled several once well-loved surrealist comedy shows from his youth: shows where ill-assorted people routinely hunted down haggis or worked ceaselessly in clothing mines. It was nice being in that old childhood comedy place again—it was safe, completely devoid of any semblance of the adult creature that he was now. For one tiny moment, he even smiled—properly, fully, just like he had done when he had been a child.
But then, quite suddenly, there was a doorway surrounded by the customarily numerous Telefon booths, and there, also, was a very wide-mouthed gap in the wall—specially designed for letters.
Having found what he had been seeking, Robert then returned his attentions to the letter in his hand. Once he put it inside the box he was committed. If discovered he could consequently experience the full force of the law against him. At present he was innocent and, although suspected by Ikmen, there was nothing concrete that could connect him to the old Jew’s murder. If he posted this letter, however …
If he posted this letter and were discovered, some people, including Ikmen, would see it as the act of a man who has something to hide. The fraudulent aspect of the thing would be almost as nothing to what the police might perceive as his motive for doing it. If this man Smits had definitely had a hand in Meyer’s murder he could justify it, but …
But if he were to do what Natalia wanted he would have to believe that, wouldn’t he? And besides, who was to say that it wasn’t true? Unbidden, the image of Natalia running away from him through the streets of Balat rose up large as life in his mind. It made his hand and the letter that it held shake violently, signaling that if he didn’t act in some manner soon, he would be unable to do anything.
In order to spur himself forward to the act that he had known all along had to be done, he whispered under his breath what should be his belief—his personal catechism.
“Smits did do it! Smits killed Meyer! Smits killed Meyer!”
Like some sort of mantra he repeated and repeated these phrases, his eyes tight shut, aware only of moving forward ever so slightly, until …
The movement of someone behind him or perhaps even the noise of a car starting caused him to stop muttering. Now the letter was no longer in his hand and for a second or two he cast about wildly to see whether he had dropped it on the ground. But then, just as suddenly, he knew that he hadn’t. The post-box wore far too satisfied a look upon its blank wide-mouthed face for that.
It was done. He had done it. Yet as he turned around to move away from the scene of his crime, he felt very suddenly, but also very certainly, that he was being watched. If this type of paranoia had not been such an old “friend” he would have given it more thought. But, for once, he dismissed the feeling and then set his feet in the direction of the Bosporus and home.
Chapter 14
The day after a sleepless night can seem interminable. Logic says that you should try and stay awake until the following night in order not to disrupt the normal sleep pattern. In practice, however, this is hard. Even when something interesting is happening, the hours seem to drip by. It’s like having a terrible hangover without the riotous pleasure of the night before. The body screams for sleep and aches in protest when it is denied.
Robert Cornelius felt a wreck. After finally screwing up the courage to post the letter the previous evening he’d thought that he might feel better. But he hadn’t. Nervous tension before the act had given way to anxiety after. He’d spent most of the night sitting on his bed, smoking and going over in his mind what he had done and the myriad possible results of his actions. None of them had a firm base in reality, of course. But then he had felt for some time that his hold upon that was becoming shaky.
He shuddered. The last time it had happened had been after the divorce. He knew why, of course, but the lead-up was still a blur. Had it been weeks or months? The big incidents: finding that man in bed with Betty; the attack—they were clear. But the rest? Friends and family knew more than he did, they talked about it too. Bits of himself had been bandied about the stripped-pine living rooms of Socially Aware flats in Stoke Newington and Finsbury Park.
Somewhere in his head was a big black box with all this shit inside and it was locked. Robert liked it that way. When he’d come to Turkey, he’d left the key behind him. He’d left it back in Islington where it belonged, on its home territory.
Even now, and despite his current anxiety, he still didn’t want to open it. But there was a bad feeling. He knew it wasn’t external, it was too familiar for that. He couldn’t put it into words however hard he tried. The nearest he could come didn’t make sense. It was a darkening. Nothing about him was clear, even in the sharp brightness of the midday sun; things had blurred edges, smeared and broken lines. He was looking at the world through a dusty, tobacco-stained curtain that showed him shapes, lumps of flesh and concrete and metal, but no detail.
Although he wouldn’t even acknowledge it to himself Robert knew that meeting Natalia had pushed him across some sort of unseen border. The subsequent journey had been a familiar one. A woman; a drawing away from friends; extravagance; acceptance of the unacceptable. It had been just over a year, a slow descent. But was it? The man, the lawyer, he’d found in Betty’s—his—bed all those years ago was surely only the culmination and confirmation of what he had known all along. Betty had used him from day one. Five years he’d had of that. But he’d done it so willingly! He’d given her everything she wanted, turned not one but two blind eyes, even though it hurt like hell. He’d grown into a doormat, something pliant and comfortable for her to scrape the soles of her boots on.
He was doing it again. But this time he was aiding and abetting … No, he couldn’t be certain about that even now. He had no real proof. The evidence of his eyes meant nothing. He had to try and remember that. And that day in Balat had been odd, climactically as well as other things. In retrospect it seemed like the darkening had deepened on that day. Of course it hadn’t really, he knew that, but it was comfortable to think that it had. A new black box had been forming in his mind all night and he reminded himself to throw such musings into it. Natalia was in difficulty, that was all that mattered. That was the only fact.
Robert put his hand on the telephone, but he didn’t lift the receiver. It was, by his reckoning, the eighth time he’d done that since dawn. He’d never used her telephone number before, but he wanted to. He knew she’d be pleased with his efforts on her behalf, she had to be, it was going to make everything OK again. Better than OK. She couldn’t escape now because he had done this for her. Where he went she had to follow because he possessed knowledge. He couldn’t form the words that damned her, but he knew.
Robert picked the receiver up and dialed her number. He didn’t have to refer to anything, he’d already committed it to memory.
* * *
“Carelessness.”
Nicholas looked up from his paper and stared into the darkness that surrounded the great gilded bed. “What?”
“I was careless, with talk. We think sometimes, quite wrongly, that people can cope with the truth when they cannot.”
He folded the newspaper up and rested it in his lap. “To be fair, we never dreamed that your stories would have such an effect.”
She looked down her nose, contemptuously. “You lace the word ‘story’ with what I feel is an element of doubt.”
He sighed. “I have always had doubts, Mama, you know that.”
“So you think that your own mother is a liar?”
“No.” He paused for a moment. “No, I don’t believe that. What I do believe, however, is that Uncle Leonid lied or rather elaborated—”
“You really believe that?” Her expression was one of pleading rather than anger now. The look of one who wants what is being said to be d
ifferent.
Nicholas looked down at the floor. “Yes, I do really believe it, Mama, and in the light of what has happened now I think that you must at least attempt to come to terms with it. For our sake and for your own peace of mind.”
“And how,” she said archly, “do you think I might achieve this?”
“I think that we should go to the police and tell them everything that we know.”
Quite unexpectedly, but entirely without mirth, she laughed. “With the odious Reinhold Smits placed fairly and squarely at Leonid’s apartment on the day of the murder? Are you mad, Nicky?”
He leaned forward, the better to see and, hopefully, persuade her. “Ah, but we know that Mr. Smits didn’t kill Uncle Leonid, don’t we?”
“We know nothing of the sort!”
“But we do!” Now he was losing his temper—a bad and possibly unwise thing to do with Maria, but he just couldn’t help it. “You’re lying, Mama! Assuming that Mr. Smits was at the apartment at all…”
“I neither want, nor need to hear it again, Nicky!”
“But—”
She held up her hand to silence him. “Whatever happened and who, for whatever reason, perpetrated this crime is entirely irrelevant. We must, at all costs, protect who and what is of our own blood. That is, as you know—”
“More important than anything else?”
“Yes! Yes!” Her eyes blazed with a fire that was both angry and something else too—something not quite in control, something dangerous.
Nicholas had, of course, seen this before but, his own brief anger now spent, he returned her gaze with only a sad shake of the head. “No, Mama, you are wrong. Our blood is the same as everybody else’s.”
“So then why, my brave young son, have you lived this lie for so long?”
“Because,” he replied, “when I was young, I knew no better, and by the time I grew old it had become a habit that I just couldn’t break. I didn’t want to hurt you, Mama, or the others. Sometimes when you have lived your whole life inside an illusion, it is better to stay there. But there are also times, like now, when it is expedient not to, which is why I am talking to you now.”
He went to take her hand, but she pulled it sharply away from him. “When we go home—”
“We’re not going ‘home,’ Mama! And the more preparations you make poor Anya perform for that ‘great day,’ the worse she becomes! Besides, all the rest of us are home. Even if the police hurl us all into prison for the rest of our lives, we are and always have been home!”
“You’ve lived as a Russian all your life!” She was mocking, scornful. “You know as much about these Turks as you do about men from Mars. You dress like a Russian, speak like a Russian, think like a Russian.”
“My father was Turkish.”
Maria raised her eyebrows and a sneer clouded her features. “That was an unfortunate expedient. If I could, I would have avoided—”
“Oh, yes,” he snapped, his voice now filled with bitterness, “I know all about that, Mama! Your efforts to put that right included me, remember? The results of that led directly to where we are now!”
“No, no, that was right! I still stand by that decision! As I have said before, I was considering the condition of … I was far too loose with talk of an alarming and spiteful—”
The door to the apartment swung open and slammed against the wall. Both Maria and Nicholas looked toward it. A tall slim figure stood silhouetted against the light from the hall. Something long and thin swung and creaked rustily in its left hand. Far away, three floors down in the dining room, the telephone started ringing.
Nicholas put his head in his hands and spoke with great patience and deliberation. “What have you got there?”
For a moment there was silence, as if Nicholas’s words had not been heard or had just disappeared into nothing. Maria squinted at the figure, forcing her failing eyesight to pierce the darkness. “Is it a chain?”
She looked at Nicholas. His face was blank. “Don’t ask me, I—”
“Bicycle chain.”
It was a flat monotone of a voice. A man’s but without vigor. Its tone was deep and rich, but its content was dead and dry as a piece of discarded bone.
Nicholas muttered something under his breath that only he could hear. The telephone stopped ringing. He looked at his mother accusingly, but his voice was directed to the figure in the doorway. “Go and put it back in the cellar then.”
“Don’t you…” The flat voice tailed off into a whine. It cut itself short.
“I will see it later!” The force of Nicholas’s words made his head tremble on his neck, like a puppet’s. His eyes left his mother’s face and burned through the darkness.
The figure in the doorway turned. The chain rattled slightly with the movement. Far away, down the stairs, a woman was laughing. Her voice sounded warm and humorous, as if she were pleased, overjoyed even.
Nicholas and Maria listened to the sound with interest. It was unusual, especially now. Heavy boot-shod feet clumped noisily down the stairs. Although barely audible it was still possible to make out the sound of the attendant chain bumping and jingling against the banisters. If it carried on it would chip the paintwork. But neither Maria nor Nicholas moved or spoke to alert their recent guest. They both knew what a waste of energy it would be. Some things, even some unpleasant ones, were best left. This was one of them and so was their previous conversation.
Nicholas sighed. “Sergei won’t be up today, Mama, he’s not so good.”
She laced her fingers together under her chin and cleared her throat. “Accident?”
“No, no. I think—” He could hear running footsteps advancing up the stairs. He put his hand to his forehead and cringed. “Sweet Christ! Back again!”
“What?” For a moment she couldn’t hear it, but as soon as she did, she nodded her head and sighed deeply. “Oh.”
Her son looked at her from between his fingers, his voice bitter. “Yes, ‘oh,’ indeed, Mama! Well you might ‘oh!’” He sunk his head down deep into his shoulders and waited. His mother stared at his neck with black hatred.
The footsteps got louder. They bounced from step to step as if excited, as if they were anxious to get somewhere, tell someone something.
“What do you think, Nicky? Another artifact from the cellar? Another item of useless trivia?”
Nicholas’s voice drawled into a sneer. “Not all so useless, Mama.”
He knew she’d heard him, but she chose to ignore it. She often did. More often than he felt she should.
The running footsteps clattered into the room and Natalia, breathless but excited, stood before them, her thin cotton skirt billowing up around her legs like a sail.
The old woman and her son relaxed slightly. The girl looked bright and happy.
Maria reached under the covers for her cigarettes. “Well?”
“Oh, Grandmama, Uncle Nicky, it’s—” She walked over to the bed and sat down. She was fighting to breathe, but at the same time she so obviously wanted to tell them something. “It’s—”
“Well, come on!”
Nicholas snapped. “Oh, for God’s sake let her catch her breath, Mama!”
“It’s, it’s Robert—”
Nicholas frowned. “Robert?”
“This English boyfriend Natalia has been … you know. The one she—”
“He’s sorted out the police!” It came out in a rush, even breathless she couldn’t contain it. “There’s a letter, he … he sent … It’s … Look, it’s all right now. They’re going to think…”
At the back of Nicholas’s mind a small warning light sprang into life. “Letter?”
Natalia put her hand on her chest and took a deep calming breath. “Yes.”
“What letter?”
The girl smiled, but her uncle didn’t smile back. “Robert wrote to the police, anonymously, but claiming to be some Nazi who knows and applauds Reinhold Smits. It’s full of Nazi opinions and things and, well, it tells the p
olice exactly what Smits is and gives reasons why he dismissed Uncle Leonid and hints at why he might have killed him. I told him all he needed to know myself and—”
“Is he mad!” Nicholas could feel a layer of darkness closing about him and he didn’t like it. Where was it all going to end?
Natalia laughed. “No, he’s in love! He’d do anything for me. Anything.”
“Does anyone even remotely connected with this family ever tell the truth?” Nicholas got up from his chair and then threw it to the ground. “Well, do they!”
His mother’s voice was stern, a warning. “Nicky!”
He looked from one woman’s face to the other. His head pounded and he could feel sour tears of rage starting to sting the inside of his eyes. “You are digging a hole, all of you! Unless you stop we are all going into it! Can’t you see?” He pointed one long, trembling finger at Maria. “You! You can stop this, Mama! The police can be here in five minutes—”
“And ruin my last chance! What is mine to—”
He screamed at her. “Mama, when you get ‘home’ they’re going to put you in a padded room and throw away the key, if you’re lucky!” He turned to the girl. “Natalia, I order you—”
For an old woman Maria put a lot of force behind the hard-wood cigarette box that hit him in the face. Not only did it smart and bruise, it also broke the thin skin just below his eye. Red wetness dribbled slowly down his cheek. Nicholas put one shocked hand up to his face and touched his flowing blood. It stained the tips of his fingers, settled and crusted around the backs of his nails.
When he looked at them again, the two women appeared to him like witches, smiling, amused at what they saw as his weakness. The matriarchy. The family had always been one, despite everything. Even the old stories were full of it, what the wife did, the mother. The sainted, hallowed mother. He’d often wondered why they didn’t just castrate their men after they’d had enough babies. All the power traditionally associated with manhood was obviously theirs.
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