Undaunted, the transvestite continued to chase after him. “Where are you running off to, sweets? You some kind of idiot or what? I won’t take any money from you. C’mon,” she said, her feminine wiles back in full gear.
He stopped and turned around; he glared at the transvestite, furious. But the look the transvestite was giving him was that of a smitten schoolgirl; she smiled bashfully.
She tottered backwards a step or two when the fist hit her chin. The amorous sparkle in her eyes was quickly replaced by something else entirely. “Are you crazy, man? Why are you hitting me?” she screamed. She glared at him, not like someone who’d just taken a punch to the chin, but like a disappointed lover. “I just thought I’d pay you back for your help is all.”
He was about to unleash another punch when he thought better of it. It occurred to him that he had never talked with a real woman, besides his mother. If it were a woman standing across from him, and not a man who looked like a woman, would he still beat her? Would he still have run to the woman’s rescue if he’d known when she was being beaten that she wasn’t a woman, not really? He didn’t know, his mind couldn’t handle it, couldn’t process it. He’d let his stepfather, his prey, that bastard, he’d let him get away! And for what, for who?!
“Come on, let’s make up, sweets,” the transvestite said, extending her hand.
His fists landed on her shoulders. The look in her eyes said she’d put up with anything, anything from him; with each blow to her shoulders she took a step back, but she didn’t resist. She didn’t say a word.
“Get the fuck out of here … Go! Don’t get me messed up in your fucking bullshit!”
Late that night, he lay in a cold bed in another bachelors’ room when his dick, the existence of which he was almost completely oblivious to except for when he had to pee, stood straight up in some kind of rebellion. It was screaming, defying him like some neglected child. The transvestite’s thick lips, painted blood-red, her sullen eyes peering out from beneath those long lashes, her legs shining beneath the streetlamp, her panties and ass peeking out from beneath the skirt that rode her hips, were all frighteningly real, right there before his eyes. That look she’d given him, as he’d been shoving and tormenting her, he thought it might rip a hole in his thin skin. Perturbed, he rolled over.
There he was, never having slept with a woman, never even having held a girl’s hand, and though there were dozens of female models, singers, artists that he could be dreaming of, it was the dream of some faggot that had awoken his lust, and this infuriated him. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t banish those stubborn thoughts from his mind, couldn’t make his cock, which stood rock-hard before him as if to question his authority, submit to his will. A saying he’d heard during his military service came to mind just then: A soldier is like a cock: If you pet it, it stands up; if you beat it, it sits down. As the image of the transvestite danced before his eyes, he wanted to beat the shit out of his dick. But his sperm sought release; it wouldn’t stay put. In a huge explosion, the sound of which he could have sworn he heard, he came onto the transvestite’s face, his liquid flowing in streams like blood from a bullet wound. As the semen, its stifling scent rising to his nostrils, flowed down between the transvestite’s fake eyelashes, her entire body trembled in small spasms.
The next night, he had positioned himself at the corner of the street where the hotel was, feeling the malice in his bones, and the switchblade in his pocket, when he took a nasty blow to the neck and fell to the ground. Before he could even open his eyes, two thugs had beaten him unconscious, sending him on a slow descent into a deep well, lulled by a barrage of expletives.
In a dream, wrapped in tulle-like desire, he was innocently kissing and sucking his mother’s breasts, as he lay on her chest. Until the warm, peaceful dream was interrupted by the pain in the back of his neck and a salvo of bitter curses.
When he opened his eyes, he couldn’t tell right away if he was in the lap of reality or still in the lap of the dream. A hand with long red fingernails was wiping away his tears. His head was on the chest of the transvestite he’d wrestled with the other night, and his hand was on her breast. He looked at the transvestite’s large hands, her blond hair, and her eyes, both excited and content, radiating the confidence of a lover who only a few hours before had unveiled her repertoire of sultry games. Then he saw the transvestite’s naked body, and the shriveled cock in a mass of long pubic hairs. When he saw that he, too, was naked, he leapt out of bed. He wasn’t dreaming!
When had he gotten naked? Who had he ever shown his body to? To his mother, when he was a child and she used to wash him, and to the nurse at his physical before doing his military service. He’d never been naked in the presence of anyone else. Now here he was, the sparse hairs on his chest, his stomach shrunk with hunger, his loins all sticky.
He was both in pain from the beating he’d taken the previous night and in agony over finding himself in bed with a person who had a cock. He could have killed that transvestite right then and there. But first he had to find his switchblade. Where was it? Where were his clothes? His pants, his military underwear and undershirt … He began searching the room like a madman. The transvestite quickly pulled herself together; she drew the red bed sheet over her body and tried to explain. She said she’d found him near dawn, close to the hotel, in a pool of blood and urine, on the verge of freezing, delirious and mumbling. Of course she recognized him right away. She picked him up and carried him straight home. She figured since he’d been wandering around that hotel with a switchblade in his hand for days, he must have an enemy, a score to settle, someone he was after. And so that’s why she didn’t take him to the cops or the hospital. So … what? Had she done something wrong? Could he just calm down a little?
But there was no calming him down. “Where are they?” he screamed, spewing a muddled list of demands. Where were his pants? His shirt? His jacket?
“I washed them. They haven’t dried yet.”
He’d lost his virginity. Inside he was still raw, pure, naïve. And he was yelling at the transvestite like a rabid animal. But the transvestite, for whom every day was virtually an act of suicide, didn’t seem at all frightened by this comely young man; on the contrary, he brought a flutter to her heart. She was only too willing to play the role cut out for her in this performance, or so it seemed. She immediately brought him his damp clothes.
First he put on his pants, then he realized he’d forgotten to put on his underwear, so he took off his pants again. This time he put them on in the appropriate order. Then his T-shirt, his shirt, his jacket … He ripped his switchblade out of the transvestite’s hand.
He was walking out the door when the transvestite yelled after him, like a desperate mother to her stubborn child, “Don’t leave like that! You’ll catch cold!”
His past was a fog, his future a dead end. The gaping hole within him continued to grow. While his mind was busy thinking about how to take care of one dirty mess, his body had been sullied by another. Now no matter how much he scrubbed the damp clothes that clung to his body there in the winter cold, the dirt would never wash off.
And now, in that bone-chilling cold, his head spinning with hunger, in the face of a browbeating storm, and still without anyone to fend for him, he was walking amongst the crowd on Mercan Hill, going forth, unable to protect his feet from the melting snow, his ears from the boisterous salesmen, his shoulders from the blows of passersby, his eyes from the umbrellas.
And you can’t be a hero when you don’t have a dime to your name. It was a moment when he wished to die. But he couldn’t. He could not possibly pass from this world without first killing. He owed it to his mother. If he didn’t do it, what would he say on the other side? How could he possibly look his mother in the face?
“You still want to pay back your debt?” he asked when the transvestite opened the door. With his weakness he betrayed his masculinity, with his tongue he betrayed his soul. His body was full of defects, his self
was full of the transvestite, and his tongue was vapid.
“I thought I did,” the transvestite responded flirtatiously. She stepped aside, inviting him in.
When, chilled by the morning frost, he entered the living room, a wave of cigarette smoke and incense sent his head spinning. Why had he missed the transvestite? Why did he want her? Because she stirred his juices? Because she was the only person in his life who had ever reached out to him? Because her home, her bed, her food was warm? Or was it because he was actually dealing with himself for the first time?
They made a pact. They made a pact with the wordless knowledge and the profound pain of being alone in this world from which they had long ago been severed, and which would never take them back.
He was waiting in the darkness of the bedroom, the switchblade in his pocket.
Several days and several nights had passed, but his stepfather had somehow managed, again and again, to avoid falling into their trap. Either the transvestite’s timing was off, or the stepfather just wasn’t drunk enough when she made her move. Sometimes he ignored her because there were others with him. The transvestite devoted all of her time, her energy, her concentration, and her care to seducing the stepfather, seeking out every opportunity to make the big catch. Finally, that night, she’d collared him, drunk and eager.
When he heard the key turn in the lock, he held his breath and ran his fingers over the switchblade again. The light came on. The transvestite didn’t call out to him, which meant that the old man was with her. This time, tonight, she had brought him. God willing, she had brought him. He sat up straight again, swallowed, held his breath. He heard some voices, some laughter; he pricked up his ears, but he couldn’t understand a word. Just some drunkard spouting expletives, and the transvestite’s trite responses. Then, footsteps. The living room light seeped under the bedroom door. The footsteps stopped. The living room door squeaked but didn’t close. Every now and then the transvestite burst into laughter.
“Would you like something to drink, sweetheart?”
“Do you have any rakı?”
He quietly opened the door, having taken off his shoes so they wouldn’t squeak on the parquet floor in the hallway. He pressed down on the switchblade’s button—chaak. Making his way down the hallway, he counted silent prayer beads in his head: Kill him, kill him, kill him … On the inside he was now like a small child poisoned with hate. He felt neither the fear of death nor the fear of killing. He was flushing the poison of fear out of his system by taunting death, by challenging it. His fear would be dulled to the point of irrelevance once he’d finished the job and disappeared into the night, light as a bird.
He approached the living room, leaning his ear in closer. He could hear his stepfather’s voice. “Oh baby, yeah, go on, bitch—faster, faster!” Tormented, he wavered there before the door of decision. Finally, he slithered through the half-open door, silent as a snake. That’s when he saw his stepfather sitting on the couch, legs spread wide, head thrown back, eyes closed, and the transvestite kneeling in front of him sucking the head of his cock, which she held firmly in her hand. She was raising and lowering her head in a swift motion, doing all she could to revive the dead.
He watched his stepfather sitting there in a state of complete and total submission. His throat stretched back, bared, the thick veins popping out, begging to be cut. Just a few steps later, with a swift motion, he thrust the switchblade into his stepfather’s neck. Dark red blood spurted out impatiently. He stuck the blade in again, and again, twisting it firmly. With each stab the blood continued to flow, though never quite as much as at first. It was as if he could hear the blood draining out of his stepfather once and for all. Then, still holding the switchblade, he stepped back and observed his stepfather. The old man made a wet wheezing sound, and his eyes shined, no longer with hate, but with amazement at the courage of his namby-pamby stepson.
The young man held the bloody switchblade and continued to look his stepfather right in the eye, as if wanting to be absolutely certain that he had paid his debt, that he had finally avenged the loss of his mother. Across from him lay a hairy, disgusting, cowardly slab of meat that had nothing to do with the mother in his mind, and all of the values that he attributed to her.
One last wheeze and the body became a corpse.
It was only then that he paid any attention to the transvestite, his loyal partner, his quiet helper. The transvestite had abandoned the stepfather’s shriveled one-eyed snake and turned her head, with an expression of submission and blood splattered all over her hair and face. Her eyes shined with both fear and regret, but all the same, they told him: We are partners in destiny, made of the same clay—we are one. It was a look that proclaimed to him, If you want, we can run away from here, together—you hold the reins in your hands, I don’t care if the disaster you’ve created for yourself consumes me too …
He looked at the transvestite’s messy fake-blond hair, at her determined eyes, seeing the threatening gleam of her gaze that contrasted with her compassion; he looked at her bloody face, and at the blood-red lipstick smeared all around her full lips. Her scorching honesty, which aroused a sense of gratitude, and of indebtedness, stirred something else inside him—an unsettling truth. It was now obvious to him that he had walked through that door, and that there was no going back, and that now he stood on the threshold of yet another point of no return. It was a horrifying moment, when he realized that he derived pleasure from pleasures he had never experienced before. A moment when he surrendered to his true desires, the ones he had run from and hidden, hidden from and ignored. A moment of defeat at the hands of the realization that this startling, frightening, abhorrent passion existed within him too.
AN EXTRA BODY
BY BARI MÜSTECAPLIOLU
Altunizade
Hasan took a puff from his cigarette. “Have you ever seen an anthill?” he asked. “I love ants. They’re just so damned hard-working, those little creatures. They can keep walking up and down the same path for hours, carrying all kinds of shit to their homes—twigs at least twice their size, things to eat, all kinds of stuff. And they never, ever get sick of it. Put your foot down in front of them and they stomp right over it, or walk right around it. It doesn’t faze them, not one bit; they never get tired of obstacles. I adore those little bastards.”
Just then, an ant zigzagging along the stone floor paused, as if aware that it was the topic of conversation; its legs trembled slightly, then it continued along its way.
Murat scratched his cheek and licked his chapped lips.
“They’re just animals, man. They don’t have a choice; they just do what they’ve always done, what the rest of them do. They’ve been around forever, but have they tried to figure out an easier way to carry those twigs? Pick it up with your mouth and carry it, just like your daddy did—geniuses, fucking geniuses! I mean, shit, man, thousands of years and the dudes haven’t made one bit of progress.”
Hasan scowled at the younger man. He felt an odd rage build up inside of him, a rage that he himself couldn’t understand, as if he were the butt of some nasty joke. “Ants are not common animals,” he said, stressing each word. “They’re a lot smarter than many of the assholes I know.”
Murat gave him an uncomprehending look and shrugged.
“Fuck it …”
Murat chuckled good-naturedly. “You want another tea, man? Your glass is empty.”
“No thanks,” Hasan replied. “I’ve had enough today. And you shouldn’t drink so much of that stuff either. You’re gonna get sick.”
“It’s not like we’ll die from drinking tea, man,” Murat said with a chuckle. “We’ll be dead long—”
“Whatever,” Hasan said, cutting him off mid-sentence. “Just don’t drink so much.”
Murat’s eyes moved to the bed where Hasan was perched. “This is so fucked up. How are we gonna get this guy out of here?”
Hasan turned and looked at the figure lying on the bed. He was a bulky man in his thirties
, with thick black hair, naked except for a pair of boxers. He had a chiseled face, the kind a lot of women find attractive. The hole in his head hasn’t cramped his style at all, Hasan thought, like it’s some beauty mark or something. His face was perfectly clean below the nose, but his eyebrows were crimson with blood, and his legs and one of his arms were covered in it too. Hasan’s hand went to his waist, out of habit, just to check on his reliable old Glock 35 and the silencer next to it. He’d never been able to shake off the anxiety he felt after a hit—fear that he’d forgotten his gun at the crime scene and the police would trace it back to him and nail his ass. The scenario had plagued him ever since his very first job.
It’s been decades, and I still haven’t made one bit of progress.
“You sure there’s no saw or anything up there?”
“No, man, I looked all over. I looked up there too. Not even a bread knife. I looked for a sack, but there’s nothing except these grocery bags. Barely big enough for the dude’s head. I’ve got me a good pocketknife here, but …”
Hasan smiled at the younger man’s joke. “So if we can’t cut him up, we’ll just have to lug him out like this. Let’s just hope Ali brings an extra sack.”
“Ali’s gonna be pissed …” grumbled Murat.
“Well, fuck that. What the hell can we do about it? It’s not like we did it on purpose.”
“Yes, I want him dead. I’ve never wanted anything so much in my entire life. No matter what, you absolutely must finish him off, not just wound him. He’d know I was behind it and that would be the end of me. You will make absolutely certain that he’s dead, right?”
“Don’t you worry, Zeynep Hanım. We’ve been doing this for years.”
Istanbul Noir Page 6
