Black Day at the Bosphorus Café

by M. H. Baylis

  She listened calmly, only that faint tremor around her lips betraying her distress. She asked him for a glass of water and drank it like a child, in one go, gasping a little for breath afterwards. She took out a packet of cigarettes – new, the cellophane still on – and asked if she could smoke. He said he didn’t mind, and fetched her a saucer. She offered him one as she lit her own, her hands rock steady.

  ‘Never got the taste for it,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know you had either. But I suppose I don’t know you, do I?’

  ‘It was never supposed to be anything to do with the Toprak man,’ she said. ‘Or his son. I went to the factory next door, Spyridonidis Sons. He was the man I wanted to find – Bambos Spyridonidis. There was nobody there. I know it was stupid, but I’d planned it for so long, what I would say, what he would say… I couldn’t just leave it and try again another time. I forced a window open to try and get in, find something like a home address or a phone number for him. I was climbing up to the window when this old bald man started to shout from the factory next door. Then he came down. Kemal Toprak. He was very agitated – I could see he was breathing fast, pale in the face, shaking. He frightened me, but, you know, I was worried for him. He didn’t look well. I said I was a family friend trying to get in to find something. He said he knew that was a lie, because the factory had been emptied, Bambos had gone. He went back up – to call the police, he said. I wasn’t even sure he’d get back up the stairs. But I ran. I ran, and then I met you. I kept wondering if he’d died, that old man.’

  He’d thought it was a charming evening. In reality she must have been only a tenth with him. The rest of her panicking, going back over things, trying to keep it all in.

  ‘What did you want with Bambos Spyridonidis?’

  ‘Six months ago, a woman came into our office in Nicosia. I liked her. She said she’d been working as a nurse in London. She wanted to be a doctor, but in my country, quite often you need to pay someone to help you along the way. That’s why she’d been in London, trying to save up the money, you know. One night, in the hospital where she was doing the night shift, an old Greek man started to tell her about the old days. They often start talking in the night, when they’re lonely and frightened,’ Helena said. ‘You do notice that, on the wards. Around three o’ clock in the morning, when most people die and when most babies are born, then they start talking. This man was from Lepithos. The village of my parents. He told her a strange tale. About the cousin he’d hated. Not really a cousin – a second or third cousin, like a lot of people are in those villages. And you see, that was my father – his cousin – Achilles Georgiou. They’d fallen out a long time ago over a girl. They have a custom there, because there are so many brothers, and cousins: when two brothers, or two cousins, want the same girl, the younger one must defer to the older one. But it didn’t happen. Achilles was the younger one, but the girl preferred him. The girl was my mother, Calysta, and they got married. They had two boys.

  ‘Bambos hated Achilles, because Bambos was only a shopkeeper, and Achilles was a primary school teacher, and the old men would stand up when Achilles went into the coffee-shop, because they respected a teacher so much. Not just that – he hated him because he owned a thousand citrus trees, and two thousand more when he married my mother. That’s a lot of income, you see. In the 1960s the village really split, between those who supported EOKA, and wanted a union with Greece, and the Communists, who wanted nothing to do with Greece and the generals running it. Even the coffee shops, where the men go in the evenings, they split, you know, according to politics. But even though Achilles was a communist, they still welcomed him in the coffee shop that was for EOKA, because he was loved. And Bambos made a stand about that, and said he wouldn’t sell the coffee and the sugar and the napkins to them anymore. He just seemed to be filled with hate.

  ‘And then the war came, and the Turks. Achilles got his wife and the two boys out, quickly, to Nicosia. He was supposed to follow on, but something happened. Bambos had a good war. Even when the Greeks were forced to retreat from the north, he enjoyed himself, he said, ‘clearing’ villages in the south, on the Greek side, that had been full of Turks for centuries. He got rich from all the things he found, as the Turks escaped north.

  ‘One day, Bambos was in a village called Potamia, near to the Green Line, not far from Nicosia. Deserted in the fighting. Went into a store, to see what he could find. And he found Achilles. He was trying to get to his family in Nicosia, but he’d run into a unit of the Siyah Tilki. They’d raped him. Beaten him. Left him for dead. He was in the store, eating raw flour. Starving. Crazy. He didn’t even seem to recognise Bambos, just begged him to help, as a Greek brother. That seemed to be the last straw for Bambos Spyridonidis – that this cousin whom he’d hated, the centre of his world for so long, didn’t even remember him. He put a gun to Achilles’ head. Achilles begged him, said his wife was pregnant with a third child. Bambos shot him anyway. Buried the body in a pit, set light to the store. That was the story he told the nurse. I don’t know if he was sorry. Or if he just wanted to tell someone. In my job, I think sometimes it’s both. Or it’s neither. Sometimes, old men tell me how they took young girls. And they put words in, so that it sounds as if they are disgusted at what they did. But actually, they’re just telling me how they took young girls.’

  She looked at him. ‘My mother wasn’t raped. She was pregnant with me, but she got away without being raped. That’s why everyone said she was lucky. My father wasn’t. He was killed by his own people. It happened a lot.’

  ‘The nurse told me all this. I did a lot of checking. I found out what happened to Bambos Sypridonidis and all his money. I found out where his factory was. Maybe I got too obsessed. I spent too long, listening to those stories. Doctor Lund was better at it than me – it wasn’t his place, they weren’t his people. But once I knew, I had to come here. Nobody was going to stop me.’

  ‘But then Bilal and his father showed up at the community centre. So you ran.’

  ‘I was relieved the old man was all right, but I was afraid that he remembered me. What possible reason could I have for climbing through a factory window? The whole thing could have been over before I’d had a chance to find Bambos. So I just ran. Later on I found out from the community that Spyridonidis had had money troubles, and retired. Moved to Newcastle, to be with his daughter. I went there, in the end.’

  ‘But you sought out Bilal, too.’

  ‘I realised he was quite an important person on the council. There was a Turkish-Cypriot Business Circle, and I was due to give a talk there, and he was on the panel. I realised I’d be seeing him again, maybe his father, too, so it was better to face up to the truth. Explain what I’d been doing at the factory.’

  ‘So you saw him on Friday. The day he died. What happened? He didn’t believe you?’

  She shook her head. ‘You’re right. I arranged to meet him on the Friday. But I never went there that day. I saw him before. On Wednesday, when the coffee-shop collapsed. When I was helping the old man, then he recognised me. His son saw it, and most of all, Bilal saw how afraid I was. Later on that day, he got in touch with me. He was very upset, obviously, his father had just died. He sent me a text. And he said he knew my secret.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘On Thursday, I came back early from Cambridge, and I went to Bilal’s house at 4. He was busy. He wanted to go shopping. But he…’ She shook her head. ‘He didn’t know my secret at all! He’d seen me, just like you did, looking at the photograph on the wall. Kemal was one of the Black Foxes, sure. And the old man was afraid – he’d been very afraid ever since that wall collapsed after the explosion in Trabzon.’

  ‘Because Kemal had gone to Trabzon, and joined the police, like his pals in the Foxes, and when those bodies were found…’

  ‘Yes. Greek prisoners, abducted, taken to the mainland, imprisoned and then killed. By who? Police? Army? Prison staff? Intelligence units? And then what happened there last week – the old Chief of P
olice was shot dead, maybe to preserve the secret.’

  ‘Kemal was something to do with all those murders,’ Rex said. ‘He thought he could be next, after the Police Chief. Or the United Nations might take an interest, put him and his cronies on trial.’

  ‘And then what happens? A UN Investigator comes to town. Who snoops at the factory. Takes too much of an interest in the photo at the club. Recognises Kemal Toprak, is recognised by him. And even if the old man is dead, could still bring a case, destroy his name, destroy his son’s name and career with it. A whole different story. But wrong.’ She swallowed. ‘Just like the one you made up about me, Rex.’

  He looked down, but the truth was, he wasn’t embarrassed. He might have got it wrong, jumped to conclusions. But she’d lied. Their whole time together had been based on lies.

  ‘I didn’t touch Bilal. I understand – I guess you could believe anything of me. I know I have hurt you. But please believe me, I could never hurt someone like that. You know, Bilal even said, as I left him on Thursday, that he hoped I found some answers.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Bambos Spyridonidis died a week before I flew in to the UK. A heart-attack. In Newcastle, his daughter was so pleased to meet someone who spoke Greek, she clung onto me. There were no sons. He called the business that because he wanted them. If he’d had them, they might have defended the factory, she said, from the criminals who took his money, ruined him.’

  Rex nodded. This was the second person he’d come across now, ruined by criminals – extorting money. Helena rummaged for tissues in her bag.

  ‘How could I tell her what her father had been like? It has to stay where it is. I should have realised that before. It all has to stay. But the people it has to stay with…’ She looked at him, as if for help. ‘What do they do?’

  At the door, he asked her, meaning it, ‘What will you do?’

  She flashed him a sad, dull look. ‘It doesn’t matter to you now, does it?’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Over the years he’d developed a special way of ringing the doorbell. He often visited in the night, without notice, but one short ring and then another, slightly longer one told the nuns that this was him. Sister Florence, who never seemed to sleep, usually made sure to be the one who let him in.

  Rex was so used to seeing the tiny, grey-clad figure that he jumped back when a man opened the convent door instead: tall, gaunt, pale, with deep-set eyes seemingly made of amber.

  ‘Peter.’

  They shook hands. Peter wore a tool belt; behind him, in the hallway, was a ladder. He was fitting a smoke alarm. He indicated, through sign language, that this was at some crucial stage.

  ‘I… you… talking,’ he said, tapping a point on his wrist where a watch might once have been.

  The boxes had all left Sybille’s room now. It was bare as a cell. She had the BBC World Service on, something about Gambia’s punk rock scene. This had never been her sort of thing, and he was reminded once again of how she’d changed in the last few weeks – and how that change was about to stop forever.

  ‘So – big journey tomorrow!’ he said, in a way both bright and lame. She ignored him.

  ‘What time is Aurelie coming?’

  She appeared to be ignoring him again and then inclined her head and said, in a sonorous voice, ‘On the stroke of midnight.’

  ‘Feels like that, doesn’t it?’ He took her hand. Today, she let it lie limp in his. Did this hurt him more than when she squeezed it? All was pain, he realised. Her absence would be as painful as her presence. So what point was there in fighting it?

  ‘I’ll ask Sister Florence and I’ll be here.’

  She said nothing to that. In the end, he kissed her on her cool, unmoving forehead and left. Just as he closed the door, he thought he heard her say, ‘A mess,’ but he wasn’t sure.

  Nor was Sister Florence, who could only say that Aurelie was expected sometime after midday, and would call once she hit British soil. She, like Sybille, was too gloomy to engage with him. Rex had long suspected that, however involved with the life of the house Sister Florence might be, Sybille was her only true patient. She would grieve for her.

  The mercurial Peter was no longer in the hallway when he emerged, and Sister Florence had no idea where he was. Rex left, jangled and disgruntled, to find Peter, sitting on a bench among the trees, his face so white it seemed to be shining. He was encased in a huge, bright, new-looking parka, and smoking. He offered Rex his pouch. The second time he’d been offered tobacco, Rex noted, without knowing why that mattered.

  ‘Thank you for what you did,’ Rex said. ‘It must feel good, to have saved a life. When you couldn’t save the first one.’

  A pause as it sank in. ‘Yes, you were there at the shopping place,’ Peter said, finally, in a soft voice. ‘And I was there.’ He held out his thin roll-up. ‘Smoking.’ He patted his chest. ‘If I had good heart, I would quit, but…’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t do it. It is my great sin.’

  Rex remembered the younger Sybille and her packets of twenty, Marlboro-flavoured sins a day. Peter looked down at the ground.

  ‘Even at work, smoking. See? Painting Sky City rail. Painting Sky City balcony. Boss – a big black boss, big hat like a Dallas hat – he says, I see you again smoking, texting on phone, that shit, you… Sack!’ Peter descended into what seemed like minutes of coughing. With wet eyes and two pinpricks of colour on his cheekbones, he spoke again. ‘But I am smoking still. Painting. Smoking. Hear someone coming. I think – fuck, is boss. He tells to me, that black guy, someone is coming later to fit the door. I don’t know if it’s them, or if it’s boss back again. So I am throwing cigarette. From the rail, over door, where I am stand to paint.’ He bit his knuckle, adding, huskily, ‘It’s not door guy, and it’s not boss.’

  ‘It was a girl.’

  ‘A girl,’ Peter nodded. ‘I saw – so clear – like a photograph. My cigarette landed in… that girl’s… hood. I shouted to her but she kept to run. Running from someone. She run through the doorway… and my…’ He pulled his nose with his fingers. ‘I smell. I smell a petrol, then…’ He was silent, hands clasped, perhaps at prayer. ‘That girl is on fire. Screams.’

  ‘Where did the petrol come from?’

  ‘I don’t know. But… it’s on him, as well.’

  ‘On who?’

  ‘I run inside after her. Too late – she falls. People looking up. You.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘For many day and nights I keep inside a picture of your face.’

  ‘Me too,’ Rex said, then clarified: ‘I kept seeing your face.’

  The pale man nodded. ‘So I run away. Boss said to me, before job, anybody ask you question, you don’t know English, okay? Give Council Works telephone. I don’t want to be question, you know. Have to leave again. So I ran. Ran into sky.’

  Rex frowned, before he worked it out. ‘You ran into Sky City?’

  ‘Sky City. Yes. I turned corner, and I crashed into a man – running, very angry. He fights with me. Smells of petrol.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Short man. And a dark. Not a black. Like Tartar.’

  Rex’s heart was thundering. ‘What was he wearing?’

  ‘Don’t remember.’

  ‘Did he say anything?’

  ‘He did,’ Peter said, apologetically. ‘But I don’t remember.’

  ‘How did it sound? What he said? Like a man from here, from London, or a man from somewhere else?’

  Peter gave the question some thought, even closed his eyes again and seemed to pray for the answer, but in the end, he gave up. His cigarette was down to his fingers, but he kept on sucking at it. He seemed to want the pain, just as he wanted the cough. Rex understood the notion well.

  They sat together on the bench for a while longer, each lost in the scale and the detail of what had happened. He remembered Eric Miles, who saw the hand of God, not just in things of beauty but in moments of awful fate, comings-together so perfect only the
divine could have set them in motion. He understood Eric Miles now, as well.

  ‘The nuns are paying you well,’ Rex said, as Peter adjusted the hood on his new, warm coat.

  ‘Is not nuns. My friend is give it to me.’ He smiled. ‘Very angry. He says, I’m not gonna do nothing else for helping you now, Peter.’

  ‘Nothing else to help you?’ Rex homed in on the comment.

  ‘I ran to him at his University. First. After Sky City. He got a lot of money, my friend. He took me back to Minsk. Right the same day. Gave me money. He is my good friend – we know each other since Sunday School. But I couldn’t stay in Belarus. I went to see my priest. Priest says to me, you cannot hide from this. You must confess. So I came back to London. To try. I haven’t done it. My friend is very angry that I come back. I help you get away, he says, now why you come back? Crazy. But, still, is give me coat.’

  ‘You’ve confessed now,’ Rex said. ‘To me. And there isn’t a court in the world that would condemn you for it. It was an accident.’

  Peter stared at him. ‘There is no accident.’ A finger pointed steeple-like, to the sky. ‘God.’