15 JULY
“What’s happened to your voice?”
“What about it?”
“Sounds different.”
“Maybe it is.”
“Have you been crying?”
“My voice is breaking.”
“Very funny.”
“I mean it.”
Ali squeezed the green telephone receiver in his hand; the thick cord was stretched across the room. The plastic shell of the receiver was coming apart along the join; he pushed his fingers between the two halves, felt the blood gather in his trapped fingertips and waited for something to come out of the receiver—a question, the right question. Valya breathed at the other end; there was a soft crackle.
“Mum? Are you well?”
“Yes.”
“What are you up to?”
“Working. I’m not one of those people who get up to things. I work.”
Ali ran the thumb of his free hand over the scars on his palm.
“I love you.”
“Come back some time—that’s all I ask. Were you thinking of coming back? Or are you going to stay forever? Is that it? You’ve emigrated without letting me know?”
Ali scratched his throat, his arms, the back of his neck. The dust in Cemal’s flat ate its way into your pores.
“You come and see me. It’s nice here, especially in the evening when the lights come on—we could sit on a roof terrace and look at the lights. There are sweetmeats here that are filled with mozzarella—you’d like them. They make them with chicken too. Just imagine, a piece of chicken, boiled in milk till it’s sweet. But we don’t have to eat those ones; we’ll eat the ones with mozzarella. They fry them in butter and sprinkle them with chopped pistachios.”
Valya said nothing and Ali counted the ivy leaves at Cemal’s window. The black branches grew along the frame and Ali was reflected in the green and brown leaves that stirred and quivered, fine as skin.
“It’s not safe to fly anymore with all that shooting,” Valya said at last. “And if they’re not shooting each other, they’re bombing each other—how’s the plane supposed to land? Why do you ask me to come and see you when it isn’t safe? Nowhere’s safe around there. I don’t understand, Alissa. Do you really think I don’t care that you live in a country where there are bombs going off all the time and lunatics gunning down hundreds of people at the airport? What’s the idea? That I just fly over and we go out for an ice cream?”
Ali saw two round, lashless eyes blink in the ivy. He stood there, watching himself.
“Alissa, you must go to the station and get a train. You’ll be with me in less than two days. Safe and sound. You like trains.”
He could feel the bed bugs burrowing away beneath his skin. His calves itched; he rubbed them against each other.
“It’ll be lovely. It’s a lovely journey. Get yourself some fruit and some of those sweetmeats with mozzarella, only don’t leave them in the sun wrapped in tinfoil or they’ll go bad. And bring one for me; I’d like to try them—just make sure you wrap them up properly.”
“Yes.”
Ali could hear Cemal in the kitchen. He heard his rubber soles drag on the tiles, his heavy tread. He wished he’d come and take the receiver out of his hand; he was afraid he might stand here like this forever otherwise, his throbbing fingers clawing the plastic.
“And just think of all the nice things you’ll see out of the window! All those countries rolling past—and the train will sway and the guard will bring you black tea. Make sure you have some change on you; you’ll need it. Do you have enough money? Would you like me to send you some? Would you like me to buy your ticket? I can do it from here.”
Cemal didn’t come out of the kitchen. Nobody came. Instead, Ali felt a scrabbling chicken crawling up his throat, biting into his vocal cords, sweating grease. His mouth was full of it.
“Don’t you want to know why my voice sounds like this, Mum?”
Ali tried to recall his mother’s hands, the soft, almost round palms, the far-apart fingers. He imagined those hands clasping his face, stroking it with their thumbs, undeterred by the stubble on his upper lip, the pimples on his throat. He imagined his mother kissing his eyelids, pressing his head against her shoulder and murmuring something about cartoon films and their next vacation together. The image didn’t hold; he tried to piece it back together again, but he didn’t even get as far as the bit with his upper lip.
“Text me when you get on the train. I’ll come and pick you up.”
Ali pressed the cradle down, but didn’t move. He heard the leaves rustle as they rubbed against the glass; he heard Cemal shuffle into the room—heard him talk, ask a question, take the receiver out of his hand, try to hug him. Ali fought him off and shook himself. Cemal grabbed him under his arms like a toddler and laid him on the sofa.
“What are you doing tonight? You ought to do something. Why don’t you go out?” he said. “It isn’t a good idea to sit around indoors in your state.”
“And in yours?” Ali hissed through his teeth.
“It’s like being with a rabid animal since you started taking that stuff.”
“I’ve always been like that.”
“Yes, it’s true.”
Cemal stroked Ali’s belly in circling movements, patted his thighs, ran his fingers over the red, inflamed boils on his calves, pressed crosses into the heads with his fingernails and stroked them flat.
* * *
—
Ali sat on the red sofa in the far corner of the club and swore to himself that if they played Nena’s “Neunundneunzig Luftballons” again he’d never move back to Germany. What was the obsession with that song? Didn’t people understand the words? Ali had once seen his mother dance to it; she’d crooked her arms and drummed her fists in the air, swinging her enormous bum—that was before she lost weight. He’d never seen anything so embarrassing.
Text me when you get on the train. I’ll come and pick you up. Yes, well.
And what did she mean by come back? Back into the loving arms of a woman who probably wouldn’t recognize him on the platform? He thought of Valya’s question—had he emigrated without noticing?
* * *
—
Kato was beginning to get on his nerves too. Every day it was the same: “How long are you going to stay here? What are you doing to find your brother? Are you really trying? Maybe I can help you. I’m sure I can help you. Please let me help you. I just want to know how long you’re going to stay, so that I know if—”
“If what?” Ali’s eyes were smarting; he beat his eyelashes the way a fly beats its wings and stared at the huddled body on his sofa. Kato hardly ever went to the club now—only when he really needed money—and most of the time he didn’t go anywhere at all, but holed himself up in Ali’s flat and ordered gadgets for the kitchen; it was driving Ali up the wall. Kato must be on the verge of losing his job, but that’s probably exactly what he was hoping for. It wasn’t clear how he’d earn money after that—but then, so much was unclear.
“I was only wondering.” Kato shrugged and returned to his book. He made it sound as if he’d been wondering what Ali would like for lunch. Recently he’d started wearing Ali’s clothes and asking whether he should grow his hair. Ali’s T-shirt, once Anton’s, hung askew on Kato’s narrow shoulders, and Ali felt like telling him to take it off then and there and get out of the flat.
He looked into Kato’s flat-boned face, flushed red over the cheekbones as if he had a temperature. He breathed out and in, out and in, and said: “Okay, listen, I’m going to toss a coin. Heads, I go back to Germany tomorrow. Tails, I stay here forever. Tamam?”
Kato grabbed the cushion he’d been leaning on, lobbed it at Ali’s head, got up from the sofa and stormed to the door. Before leaving, he snatched up the thousand-page book from the top of the chest of drawers and tried to hurl t
hat at Ali, but it was too heavy and landed in the middle of the room; they both stared at it, as if it were leaking. They looked at the floor, then at each other. Ali found himself laughing and Kato went out, slamming the door. Ali stood up, put the book back on the chest of drawers, got into his rubber boots, grabbed the bent five-lira umbrella whose spokes stuck out through the white nylon, and went out.
When it rained in Istanbul, it got into your bones. The wind shredded the umbrella almost instantly and Ali threw it in a bush even before he was out of Aynalı Çeşme. He pulled his jacket collar tighter, closed his eyes and wandered around the houses until he found himself outside Hassan Bey’s greengrocer’s shop, soaked to the skin, his fingers tinged with blue. He felt the hairs on his upper lip and wondered whether Hassan would spit on the floor again like the time before. He approached the shop door. The awning above him was full of water. Hassan was at the back by the register, polishing fresh plums on his sleeve. They looked at each other and Ali wasn’t sure whether he took him for somebody else—a new customer, a tourist who’d arrived over the weekend and taken a flat in the neighborhood. He found it impossible to say how he looked to others—completely different or pretty much the same as ever? Hassan came toward him, holding out a plum; it was soft and warm. Ali bit into it and the juice spurted onto his chin; he wiped it away with the back of his hand. Hassan smiled. He took Ali’s wet jacket and draped it over a stool. Hassan had gray eyes. Asking eyes. He turned them on Ali and they went into the back room.
* * *
—
Ali sat in the club, deep in the red sofa, trying to shake the memory of Hassan’s rough fingers on his hips. Then he threw back his head and looked at himself in the mirrored ceiling.
He had a dragging pain in his stomach and kaleidoscope sparks in his eyes. The music was like a swarm of bed bugs, like missing a layer of skin, like being on LSD. But he wasn’t on LSD—just testosterone, once a week.
He still had about eight hundred lira, enough for maybe another two months in Istanbul, waiting to run into Anton—and perhaps that was more promising than hanging missing-person posters in police stations. Cemal, bless him, had continued to ring his policeman friend regularly, and never failed to round off his long talks about life and his tirades against the president by inquiring about Anton. The day his friend had said, “It looks as if we might have your Russian. Why don’t you come by?” he’d almost had a heart attack.
Cemal and Ali had pushed each other out of the door, jumped in a taxi and said with one voice: “Sarıyer-police-station-please.” Ali almost bit the driver’s head off when they drove into a traffic jam, but it wasn’t his fault, was it—“Istanbul is Istanbul,” he said, chewing his tongue—and the problem with Istanbul wasn’t the high level of poverty, the bomb blasts, the suicide bombings, the attacks; it wasn’t that they were pulling down all the old buildings and closing down the newspapers. No, the problem was “trafik”—anyone could tell you that. They were stuck for an hour, cigarette smoke curling out through the wound-down windows.
When they got to the police station, it was soon clear that the young man wasn’t Anton. A Russian, yes, but not Anton. He didn’t even have brown curls; he was a sandy St. Petersburger with a nasal Petersburg accent and a certain gracefulness, and he sat on the plastic chair with his legs crossed, combing his hair out of his face with long, slender fingers and winking at Ali, while Cemal’s friend explained that he’d almost slit a Turkish boy’s throat. This other boy had said something about the Russian fighter jet that had been shot down—something along the lines of: We should have shot down more than just the one. Cemal pointed at Ali and said: “We’re looking for her twin. Do you think he looks like her?”
The Petersburger said to Ali in Russian: “Get me out of here. I’ll pay you back.”
And Ali saw Anton. Here at the police station, with all these phones ringing and voices shouting, and this sandy guy undressing him with his eyes, he saw his brother in the corner of the room, doubled up with laughter at Ali’s futile hope—his hope of finding Anton, his fear of finding him. Ali watched Anton’s image climb out of the window, then got up and went out himself without a word, past the loudly disputing men, past the Petersburger, past all the blue shirts, out of the police station and into the fresh air. Before him was a busy multilane road; he crossed it, without looking left or right, and sat down at the crash barrier. Cars hurtled past, honking and trailing black clouds of exhaust, children’s eyes glued to the windows. Ali was seething with anger. He was angry at himself—angry that he’d ever convinced himself that Anton might be found. His cigarettes were all gone. He watched the cars recede, his hands in his pockets, and he knew he wasn’t yet done with the city. It was still tugging at him, sucking him in; it wouldn’t let him go—not yet. Then again, he’d run out of P&S.
* * *
—
Ali was waiting for Kato, worrying his tesbih and watching the clubbers, especially the men. He sized up their broad shoulders and speculated about the length of beards that were barely visible in the reddish light. He studied the way the men held themselves, the way they stood, the way they leaned against the bar, and he took note of their habit of letting their arms hang at their sides. More than anything, Ali envied them their height; the testosterone was doing all kinds of things to his body, but he couldn’t hope for a growth spurt.
His ability to concentrate had changed; he was sharper and more focused, but had a shorter attention span, and at the same time he often felt weepy or irritable—usually both at once. He was hungrier than usual too—in fact he was always hungry; the muscles in his shoulders and arms and calves felt like worms that were getting plumper by the day, and his labia were growing longer; they now looked like a rose with a tongue sticking out. He wanted to fuck. He wanted to fuck long and hard. His back was strewn with adolescent pimples—a few more every day. He had his breaking voice more or less under control and was waiting for the hairs on his legs to grow.
His fingers fidgeted with the tesbih; he jiggled first one leg and then the other, threw back his head and looked at his reflection on the ceiling, then returned his attention to the stage, where Kato was dancing a kind of cancan with three girls. Ali wondered what to do with him. As he saw it, there were two possibilities: either he left him or he married him.
That really would make my mother wild, he thought, but it occurred to him, too, that Kato might like a big wedding. What was to stop them? They’d invite all the mishpocha—Emma, Danya, Etya, Shura—gather everyone together and get thrown up in the air on chairs and then apply for German citizenship for Kato. Ali thought of the only wedding he’d ever been to, and of how happy Elyas’s cousin had looked with her little chipmunk face framed by a white veil, like a comic-strip bride. He thought how lovely it must be if that kind of thing made you happy—being your own little wedding-cake figurine, having babies, having a house, having a dog, having a job, having a better job, visiting your parents every Sunday—just wanting to stay together in the first place.
Kato’s wig fell off his shorn head and he skipped out of line and put it on again with a laugh. Ali felt his skin smarting as if he’d been dabbed all over with methylated spirits.
That evening in the Lâleli club, he sat on the red sofa in the far corner, willing fate to decide whether he should stay in Istanbul or go back to Germany or disappear altogether—perhaps move on somewhere else, anywhere. Why can’t it work like that? Why can’t there be signs telling us: go that way, get on here, get off there, stay with this person, and for goodness’ sake don’t hang around here? Even one sign would be something—one small sign telling us we haven’t completely screwed up. What the fuck was fate invented for?
Ali decided that if Nena’s “Neunundneunzig Luftballons” came on, the matter was settled. It didn’t come on. Aglaja came on. Freesia and bergamot, pineapple, oranges, cedar wood and vanilla filled Ali’s nose, almost stifling him.
Aglaja swam
through the milky air of the club as if through a lake, surfaced right in front of Ali’s face and bared her teeth. He hadn’t realized that eye teeth could be so pointy. She looked right through him without seeing him. She was wearing a short dress that clung to her flat body like a scaly red fish skin, and high-heeled shoes that made her look even more like a child than usual because she couldn’t walk in them and tottered slightly. Or perhaps she was drunk. Ali stood up. He was exactly as tall—or as short—as she was; the colored light of the plucked-parrot chandeliers lit up their silhouettes. They were both pale; the Istanbul sun hadn’t managed to drive the sallow white from their faces, but Aglaja’s skin had a glow to it, Ali thought; it was almost phosphorescent.
Freesia and bergamot, pineapple, oranges, cedar wood and vanilla. What next?
Ali’s thoughts were coursing through his body; he was trembling all the way down to his knees. He tried to reach out a hand to Aglaja, but his hand wouldn’t obey. Aglaja couldn’t see him in the fog-filled bar. He tried to catch her eye, but she just stood there, staring; it looked as if she were suspended in the fog. Was he invisible or was she trying to work out who he was? He saw her red made-up lips, her open mouth, the pointy teeth peeping out, the red curls streaming up from her head, as if she were underwater.
Ali imagined everyone else leaving the room—imagined that there had never been anyone there but the two of them, but the room was full, and what would he say to her anyway?
And Ali remembered: the graffiti, the accordion, the tongue sticking out at the ceiling. She was the reason he’d stayed in the bar—the reason he’d stayed in the city. Aglaja was receding, moving soundlessly, her body more blurred with every step. Ali stretched out his arms to her and took a few steps; his body was obeying him now. Aglaja turned her head; it was nothing but an eye and it was the first thing to burst. Like a bubble. Then her phosphorescent arms burst too, her shoulders, belly, hips—she dissolved like a sherbet tablet. Fizzled and was gone.
Beside Myself Page 30
