Harem

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘It would seem like it, wouldn’t it?’ İkmen said softly. He leaned his head back still further and closed his eyes. ‘Yıldız is connected to Vedat and Hikmet Sivas. Zhivkov appeared there yesterday. The question is, what is the connection, if any, between Zhivkov and the Sivas brothers?’

  Chapter 20

  * * *

  When Süleyman and İskender left, Hulya broached the subject of Berekiah Cohen with her father, but the front door buzzer cut her short.

  The visitor, who was a short, middle-aged woman, had the reddest hair Hulya had ever seen. She wanted, she said, to see Çetin İkmen. Hulya led her through into the living room.

  İkmen’s face showed true surprise when he saw her. ‘Sofia Vanezis!’

  ‘You touched my breast in nineteen fifty-nine,’ Sofia replied as a shocked Hulya left the room and shut the door behind her.

  ‘I—’

  ‘Miss Yümniye Heper told me I had to see you.’ Sofia sat down heavily in the chair nearest the door. ‘Miss Muazzez Heper is dead.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ İkmen, who was unaccustomed to embarrassment of this order, rubbed one of his hands nervously across his chin. ‘Would you like some tea?’

  ‘Miss Muazzez always said I should never say anything and I never have,’ Sofia continued. ‘But now Miss Yümniye has told me that I must. So I will, but not all. Miss Muazzez said I must never tell all. I remember everything.’

  ‘Do you?’ İkmen sat down on the sofa opposite his guest and lit a cigarette. Sofia, with her swollen legs and stomach like a football, in no way resembled the girl whose breast he’d briefly squeezed in 1959. Only that red hair and that monotonous speech of hers, devoid of all emotion, were familiar.

  ‘Nineteen sixty-five. There was a room with no windows,’ she said, ‘gold cloth on all the walls, silk kilims on the floor, a very big bed, shiny sheets.’

  ‘This is the Harem.’

  ‘It is a place for sex. There was a man.’

  ‘And do you remember—’

  ‘I can’t tell you who he was. Miss Muazzez said no, under no circumstances. Miss Muazzez arranged everything so I could have some money from this man. He told me I had to forget what happened in that room with gold cloth walls, which I did. He gave me some money. I left. I was there thirty-one minutes. Exactly thirty-one minutes.’

  Sofia Vanezis had always been odd. Some people, like Yümniye Heper, said she was ‘slow’. But that was a very long way from the truth, as İkmen could now appreciate. Sofia Vanezis was sharp, observant and almost certainly, he felt, autistic. And, if he was right about this, as long as he didn’t ask her for her opinion about anything or ask directly for this person’s name, he might yet find out who he was. Autistic people couldn’t, İkmen had heard somewhere, lie. They were, in effect, slaves to facts, devoid of the ability to fabricate.

  ‘This man . . .’

  ‘He had black hair, brown eyes. He wore a blue shirt and black trousers. I know his name, but I won’t tell you that. I saw him in a film once, before nineteen sixty-five. Mama took me to see it in nineteen fifty-nine. I don’t know what it was called, I can’t read. Nineteen fifty-nine. When you touched my breast. September. I told you to. I let you. It was Thursday.’

  She rose, with some difficulty, as if to leave.

  İkmen, impulsively, leapt from his seat and blocked her exit with his body. The man, the Harem customer Sofia had serviced, had been a film actor.

  ‘Sofia,’ he said hurriedly, lest she interrupt him again, ‘this man you saw in the film in nineteen fifty-nine, who was he in the film? Not his name, but the character he played. Do you remember?’

  She looked at him without emotion.

  ‘I remember everything,’ she said. ‘He was Bekir, a very bad general.’

  Ahmet Sılay had used the word ‘evil’ as opposed to ‘bad’ when he’d talked about that particular film. Hikmet Sivas’s performance in the part had been, Sılay had said, truly awful.

  ‘Dad?’

  Hulya had come into the room and seated herself opposite İkmen without his even noticing.

  He looked up wearily and then smiled. ‘Hulya.’

  ‘Who was that woman?’

  İkmen sighed. ‘I don’t really want to talk about it right now, Hulya.’

  ‘Yes, but she said—’

  ‘I know what she said,’ he replied evenly. ‘And for the record I was twelve and she was about, I suppose, sixteen when the incident she mentioned happened. Boys touch girls and girls touch boys. It happens. Human beings, particularly young human beings, develop fancies for each other from time to time.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ She looked down at her hands which were clasped nervously in her lap. ‘Dad, Berekiah Cohen has escorted me to work a couple of times and we went to visit Dr Halman together at the hospital.’

  ‘Yes, Hulya, I know. What of it?’

  The girl looked shocked. ‘You know?’

  ‘Yes.’ Why did teenagers always think that their parents were completely ignorant about their lives? ‘You’re friends,’ he said. ‘What of it?’

  ‘Well, Mr Cohen, Berekiah’s father, wants us to stop seeing each other!’

  ‘But you’re only friends, aren’t you?’ İkmen watched her closely to gauge her reaction.

  Hulya duly lowered her eyes. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So there isn’t a problem then, is there?’

  ‘No.’ She looked up sharply now, with a challenge in her eyes. ‘But if Berekiah and I developed fancies for each other . . .’

  ‘Then that would be another matter,’ İkmen said. ‘You’re very young and as your father I would want some sort of assurance from Berekiah that he would treat you with respect. I am sure that he would.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t object to him because he’s a Jew?’

  ‘No.’ İkmen leaned forward and looked his daughter straight in the eyes. ‘But if Mr Cohen is worried because he fears you two might become involved then we have to respect his point of view, Hulya.’

  Tears suddenly sprang into her eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that the Jews of İstanbul have a very longstanding and honourable tradition in this city. Berekiah’s family fled here from Spain five hundred years ago and although they have always taken part in the life of our country, they have never married outside their religion.’

  ‘How do they know that?’ Hulya asked disdainfully as she roughly wiped a tear from her eye. ‘How can they know that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ İkmen replied with a shrug, ‘but that is what they say. And it is important to them, so we have to respect that point of view.’

  ‘Yes, but Dad, what I want to know is whether you agree with it,’ Hulya said urgently. ‘I mean, if I wanted to marry Berekiah, say, what would you do?’

  ‘Beyond placating your mother and wondering where I might get some money to buy you a bed and a kitchen, you mean?’

  ‘So you would . . .’

  ‘I wouldn’t stop you, Hulya. But Mr Cohen and your mother might and I would be lying if I said that I’d actively fight them for you.’ He sighed. ‘However, I do hope that all of this is some way down the line,’ he said gravely. ‘I trust the two of you are still just friends. To marry someone so different requires sober thought. One has to consider language – the Cohens speak Ladino amongst themselves, you don’t – and children and, like it or not, the opinions of others.’

  ‘You always used to say that you didn’t care what other people thought,’ his daughter countered with some petulance.

  ‘I don’t,’ İkmen replied. ‘But I have skin like a crocodile’s.’

  Hulya, in spite of herself, smiled.

  ‘I just don’t want you to get hurt,’ her father said earnestly. ‘Maybe you should stop meeting casually. It makes parents deeply suspicious. Ask Berekiah to come to dinner with us when your mother returns. Mr and Mrs Cohen will, I know, reciprocate. They might not like it, but they will do it.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Hulya looked down at her hands
again and sighed.

  ‘I’m saying that I think you should take things slowly,’ İkmen said. ‘Marriage, even without all the cultural differences we’ve been talking about, is a very big step. You have to be certain it’s what you want and that the man you wish to marry is someone you can spend the rest of your life with. Sometimes that takes time. As you have unfortunately discovered today, I had feelings for at least one other girl before I met your mother. But since I’ve been married to her, there hasn’t been anyone else. But you’re still very young.’

  ‘A lot of girls get married at my age.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but not usually ambitious, educated girls like you.’

  She looked gravely up into her father’s face. ‘I don’t think I want to be an actress any more,’ she said, ‘not after what happened to Hatice.’

  İkmen got up from his chair and went and sat down beside his daughter. He put his arms round her shoulders. It was good that she was no longer considering entry into the uncertain world of entertainment, but now that her attention had moved towards Berekiah Cohen, life was no less problematic. What was it with this girl? She’d never been easy – Fatma said she’d been born with an ‘attitude’.

  The sound of a door slamming across the corridor made İkmen jump. Bülent was up and about. Obviously still furious about having to surrender his bedroom, the İkmens’ other teenager was showing some attitude of his own. İkmen closed his eyes and hoped that his son didn’t decide to come in and have yet another argument about his room. He needed quiet in order to think about what Sofia Vanezis had just told him, and where he might need to go with that information.

  The tip of the knife was so very close to the main artery in her neck that Suzan Şeker hardly dared breathe for fear of bleeding to death.

  ‘I know that you told the police about our arrangement with your late husband,’ Ekrem Müren said as he moved the blade just fractionally away from her so that she could talk. ‘Who else would’ve done that? It had to be you.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘They arrested Ekrem!’ Celal, his brother, put in from where he was leaning against the kitchen door. ‘They let him go, but they did arrest him. They said we collected money from Hassan.’

  ‘Shut up wittering, Celal!’ Ekrem leaned into Suzan’s face, blasting her features with beer fumes. ‘I don’t actually care anyway,’ he said, ‘because our association with you is about to end.’

  Suzan, her lips quivering with fear, closed her eyes. So this was it. This was where she joined Hassan in whatever darkness and pain awaited the unclean soul in the afterlife. Her children would be orphans! Her eyes flew open at the horror of this image and she swallowed hard. How could she have been so stupid? One never spoke to the police about arrangements! Not even off the record. There was no such thing. Süleyman had used the information against her wishes. What had possessed her? The grief following her husband’s death? A desire to impress her father-in-law Kemal Bey with courage that his son had never possessed? She didn’t know. The only thing she was sure of was that she wasn’t going to beg these brutes for her life. It’s what they would want, but it was the one thing, given that no one was going to come to her aid from beyond the locked doors of the pastane, she had the power not to give them.

  ‘Do what you will,’ she said, looking fiercely into Ekrem’s eyes. ‘Just leave my children alone.’

  ‘Oh, we have no problem with your children,’ the gangster replied. ‘We have no further interest in this business.’

  ‘We won’t need to do shitty little collections like this any more,’ his brother boasted. ‘We’re going to be so rich, my dad says—’

  ‘Celal!’

  The younger man bowed his head and murmured, ‘Sorry.’

  ‘So you’re going to kill me.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Ekrem said. ‘No, no, no!’ Once again he pushed the blade upwards so that it just dented the skin on her throat. ‘No, you will have to pay us what you owe, but we’ve sold this business on.’

  ‘Who to?’ Suzan asked carefully so as not to jog the knife in her tormenter’s hand.

  ‘To a less, shall we say, experienced group of young men,’ Ekrem replied. ‘Far more unreasonable than us.’

  ‘Azerbaijanis.’

  ‘Celal!’

  ‘Well, she has to know.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Ekrem laughed into Suzan’s white face. ‘They’ll like you,’ he murmured softly. ‘I like you. Maybe they’ll let you pay them without money.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Look upon your new masters as punishment from me,’ he said. ‘And remember that if you ever cross them they will cut your children up in front of your eyes.’

  Tears burst out of Suzan’s eyes like the overflow from a swollen river.

  Ekrem smirked. ‘But now you must pay your debt to me,’ and he pushed down hard against her shoulder with his free hand.

  ‘But I’ve put all the money in the bank,’ Suzan stammered as she sank to her knees in front of him.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Ekrem said. ‘I’ll take payment in services.’

  He unzipped his trousers and pulled her head roughly towards him.

  It was far too hot to be out and about. Even with the shade thrown by the trees it was close, humid and uncomfortable. If he had any sense he’d be at home, drifting in and out of consciousness in front of some rubbish on one of the satellite channels. With both balcony doors wide open, the apartment he shared with Belkis could be very airy and there was a huge jug of iced tea in the refrigerator . . .

  Metin İskender looked across at the Malta Kiosk. He’d have to go up there soon and buy a cold drink, some of the diners outside were beginning to give him strange looks. He’d walked this path, just the section one could see from the kiosk, for some time. Up and down, his eyes trained on the ground and amongst the thick foliage beside the path. So far he’d found nothing. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting to see. A wooden trap door that sprang outwards when activated by some sort of device under the ground, a suspicious-looking drain cover, some odd and unexplained clearing in the foliage . . .

  But, he knew, it wouldn’t be any of those things, this mechanism that raised a man from the ‘subterranean passages’, as Mehmet Süleyman had described them. No, if attending that David Copperfield show in Paris had taught him anything it was that the best illusions were simple and involved the manipulation of perception. Somehow the eye was diverted from what was really happening to something far more interesting or active within the immediate environment. İskender sat down on one of the low stone walls beside the path and lit a cigarette. The main distraction in this environment was the Malta Kiosk itself. Always busy, especially at weekends and on warm summer evenings. Nobody who dined there was poor; indeed, when Zhivkov had appeared on the path in his pale grey summer suit with the fine Italian shoes, he had looked just like any other prosperous man out for a little al fresco dining. Not that Zhivkov had dined. He’d walked round the restaurant, following the path across the vine-covered loggia and then, presumably, down the hill towards the entrance on Ciraǧan Caddesi. İskender, though attended by a most concerned Belkis at the time, had nevertheless followed the gangster’s every move.

  He put his hand up to his forehead to wipe away some of the sweat that had collected there and then ground his cigarette out on the path. Now he just had to get a drink. He crossed to the veranda in front of the kiosk and ordered some water and a can of cherry juice. Sitting at the table just to the left of the one he’d shared with Belkis, he let his eyes roam down and along the path, picking out any salient features on the way. He was only just awake now. He hadn’t had very much sleep the previous night, tormented as he was by pictures of Nina Zhivkov’s severed head. Then at İkmen’s apartment, the three of them had feverishly tried to make sense of the many seemingly discrete and confusing events. As his eyelids drooped under the weight of what felt like iron bars, he was conscious of something niggling away at the back of his brain, but he didn’t know o
r even now care what that might be. He needed sleep whether or not he was in a public place.

  His chin had dropped down to his chest when the sound of a familiar voice made him open his eyes. Amazed, as people always are, at just how immediate the reaction to anything familiar is, he shook his head to clear it so that he could address his colleague who seemed to be just behind him.

  ‘You said eight,’ he heard the voice say as it passed beside him and began to move off the veranda.

  ‘Yes,’ the man who was with him replied. ‘Here at eight.’

  İskender, who had already seen his colleague’s companion in profile, quickly put on his sunglasses. Even underneath the large hat and the unaccustomed moustache, the nose and the fine eyes, just like his brother’s, were unmistakable.

  İskender watched fascinated as Vedat Sivas took Orhan Tepe’s arm in his and together they walked towards the loggia, using the exact same route that Zhivkov had taken the previous day.

  İkmen leaned forward onto his elbows and rubbed his hot face with the cologne Süleyman handed him.

  ‘We, or rather you, Metin,’ he said, addressing a travel-weary İskender who sat on the other side of the table, ‘should tell Ardıç.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  The kitchen descended into silence for a few moments as all three men attempted to deal with both the heat and the disturbing nature of what İskender had seen. Assembled for the second time that day, these officers were, they all felt, quite alone with the information that had come their way.

  ‘But can we trust Ardıç?’ Süleyman offered his cigarettes to his colleagues and then took one for himself.

  ‘I don’t know whether we can trust anyone,’ İkmen responded gloomily.

  ‘If Ardıç is taking instruction from Ankara,’ İskender offered, ‘then it’s possible that Tepe is part of that. He could be setting Vedat up in some way.’

  ‘True. Although Orhan, it would seem, has obtained rather a lot of money very quickly. He told me he has a credit card. But according to Ayşe Farsakoǧlu he paid with cash for their meal at Rejans, which included French champagne. I can’t see Ankara paying Tepe extra to do what would seem to be police work and is therefore his duty anyway.’