Our eyes met, and I waited for her to go on. The ill-fated girl’s name was Semra. She always gave us gum when we were little. She didn’t have a father, and her mother was always passing out. It was from her that I first heard the word vagina. I decided not to mention that just then. Anfi silently continued stirring the liquid, which was building to a bubbly cream at the top.
That unforgettable Sunday a black Buick had driven through the puddles and splashed mud on us. Our clothes were ruined. But Yani remained spotless. He just stood there with a grin on his face; he was holding a purple plastic water gun he’d won in a scratch-off a few minutes earlier. A single five-kuru scratch-off and he of course got the biggest prize. Meanwhile, we’d emptied our pockets and won nothing but a few stale candy bars.
That was Yani for you. When my hand pushed him, it was on behalf of all of us. It was an act of envy. After all, he’d just fall in, make a face, and then come chasing after us with that water gun, right?
That the hole happened to be filled with glass delivered our most deep-seated wish. The barber, that son of a bitch, had turned our fantasy into reality, though in our heart of hearts we never would’ve wanted for it to come true. Those shards of glass cut a life short, relieving us of that cross we bore, the cross of Yani’s good luck, only to burden us with something much heavier. A can of regret, a can of worms.
While Anfi was splitting the froth between our cups, I thought about how I hadn’t been wrong in imagining that Yani’s death would profoundly alter the future of his close circle. I checked my watch. Five after 9. I was sure Avram and Kevork would agree. Together we had learned just what it meant to pass the days without Yani. Everything had a different tone now: daylight, colors, the sweetness of little white lies, the thrill of mischief, the marvel of jokes, heads sent spinning by movie reels … The change was potent and palpable. It couldn’t all be due to feelings of guilt alone.
“Would you like some liqueur?”
“What kind?”
“Tart cherry. I made it.”
“Sounds good.”
Anfi put two slim glasses on the same tray she had set the cups on before, took an unmarked bottle from a lower cabinet, and filled one of the glasses to the brim with a cherry-colored liquid. Then she stooped and took another bottle, presumably of the same. There were three clean glasses on a dish rack to the left of the sink. The liquor was being downed fast around here, I thought.
I took the tray from her and proceeded to the living room. We sat down. Anfi raised her glass, and I responded in kind. “Here’s to the good old days.”
When I saw her drain her glass in a single gulp, I followed suit. I have a sensitive palate. Whenever I go out with friends, I’m always prompted to be the first to try the wine. I noted some subtle flavor in addition to the cherries, alcohol, and sugar. It wasn’t bad. A kind of spice, perhaps.
Anfi looked into my eyes, smiling. “For a moment there you looked so much like your father. A taller version of him, of course. He had a temper, but he also had a heart of gold. During the riots of September 6 and 7, for two days he stood guard in front of the passageway where our store was and wouldn’t let anybody through. He took off time from work to do that. And he sent a friend to mind the pharmacy, God bless him. You wouldn’t remember. You were four years old then.”
“My father used to talk about those things when he was drunk sometimes. Yani stayed at our place for two days. I still remember, because we gave him my bed.”
“So you remember that too. And then … well, our stores were still standing at the end of it all. We picked up where we had left off.”
The way she paused and sighed at that moment clearly indicated, to me, that they in fact had not picked up where they had left off.
“Fifty years, just like that … Good thing you were late. It gave me some time to think … No, not to think, but to see things anew. Come with me.”
When she stood up I automatically followed. My head was feeling a bit heavier. I remembered that liqueur often had high alcohol content. I didn’t exactly have a good tolerance for alcohol, and to top it all off, I was drinking on an empty stomach. I looked at the cups of coffee, which we hadn’t even touched.
“Let me show you.”
It was an intensely emotional moment. At first I figured she meant the photographs. We went into the hall, and I thought I had assumed correctly. We were going to Yani’s room. She opened the door, the first to the left. The curtains were drawn and it was dark inside. She turned the light on. It took me a few seconds to grasp what I was seeing. The icy fingers of terror began stroking my neck. My instincts told me to run. But I couldn’t.
Clearly, we would not be able to address the matter of this Yani Museum, in nearly pristine condition after some forty years. Two adult males were stretched on Yani’s bed, faceup. The redhead’s eyes were slightly open. He had a black jacket and a burgundy shirt on. Avram, totally bald now, had closed his eyes tight, as if cringing from a blow. His goatee was matted with dried vomit. His right pant leg was rolled up to the knee. The feet of both men were extending out of the bed by ten inches or so; both had their shoes on.
“They arrived at 2 o’clock sharp. We talked. I served liqueur to them too. Enough Seconal and risperidone per person. It was a painless journey to the other side. I got rid of the pharmacy eleven years ago, but my apprentices, bless them all, never fail to show the proper respect.”
“The second bottle.”
She nodded. “Do you still remember Nejat?”
“Nejat with the pencil mustache.”
“Good memory! He never married. I turned my pharmacy over to him. After my first brain hemorrhage. It happened two more times after that, but I survived. Seeing these days was in my stars.”
“But Anfi, why?”
“It’s rather difficult to explain, that whole process. The pressure of those moments when the darkness within strains to get out. And does. One might say … Now, how are you feeling?”
My knees couldn’t carry me anymore. The nausea I’d been feeling since I laid eyes on the bodies was beginning to subside, but I was about to collapse.
“Come and sit. There are some things I want to tell you before the last page is turned.”
She took my arm. For the first time I sensed her body odor overpowering the lilac scent she was wearing. Those two yards to the chair felt like an eternity. I put up no resistance. Though she tried to hold me up, I collapsed onto the chair in a heap. My head snapped back, but fortunately did not hit the wall too hard. Pain was a volatile liquid, evaporating fast.
“You really have gotten heavy. You are okay, aren’t you?”
Her face was very close to mine. Breaking free from the fear that I was about to slide into the dark hole of my demise, I nodded. She smiled, her eyes full of compassion. Of all the women in my life, nearly every one that I had picked myself resembled Anfi, in one way or another. I thought about telling her. But I couldn’t.
“Why? Why all this … ?”
She eyed the two on the bed, sighed, and sat down at the foot. The bed gave a jolt, and the bodies moved, as if to make room for her.
“Kevork came. Two months ago, I told you. His only daughter had died of liver cancer. His wife had become an alcoholic. He was very sad. He told me, ‘It’s like we’re all cursed or something. We have to put an end to it.’ He was a little tipsy, he’d been drinking vodka that day, but he was still making sense.”
“It was an accident, Anfi.”
“The only two people left from that photograph. They are in this room.”
“There is a whole world out there beyond this room.”
“That’s right. If you’d made it this afternoon like the others, there would be three of you lying on this bed now. But since you were late, I had time to weigh the consequences of my actions … and … I changed plans. You remember the gardens, and the meze sellers in this neighborhood, don’t you? I was a baby during the fire of 1929. My father’s two shoe shops burned down in that fir
e. I’m told my mother used to pray every day at Hagia Dimitri Church over in Feriköy. I once took you and Yani there on Christmas. You were five. You kept insisting that you light each and every candle. You threw a tantrum. I didn’t know what to do. Everything changes so fast and …”
Barely conscious, I struggled to make connections between all the things she was saying.
“When Yani passed away, I soon lost my ability to deal with all the changes happening around me, the way everything was becoming so dirty, so vulgar. It even kept me from properly mourning the death of my husband. He was an only child. His death marked the death of this home. Your mother used to say, ‘The childless home neither laughs nor cries.’ That’s true. I could no longer feel, not like I used to.
“You were the first to agree to come, you know. They just followed. If you had refused, they wouldn’t have come, either. This meeting hinged on you.”
I remained silent, at a loss for words, and so she continued.
“All three of you came from abroad to meet with Anfi, an old woman already north of seventy-five. The lengths one goes to, to appease such long simmering guilt, right? And now fate beckons. It’s impossible to resist. A most definite rendezvous. You come, and you meet your end.”
“The arrangement in the photograph is a coincidence. That everybody … that everybody except the two of us is dead … it’s your doing …”
“I was the one who gave you the volumes of Les Pardaillan and Fantômas to read. You had the gift of language. Yani didn’t like to read as much as you. You were always good at math too. Your envy of Yani didn’t stem from any lack of yours, it was because you were so self-centered.”
“What about the hands, the hand that placed the glass in that hole, Anfi?”
“If it hadn’t been for the glass, you would’ve come up with something else.”
“That’s terrible, Anfi. We were kids. We’d all have gone our separate ways to college …”
Anfi ran her hand through her hair and sighed again, then she stood up and left the room. I imagined myself making an effort toward the door. But my legs were like putty. I peered helplessly at the corpses on the bed. It was true, Kevork had not changed at all. Over the years, since I’d last seen him, he’d put on perhaps a couple of pounds for each year, but otherwise looked the same. His red hair was as thick as before. Avram, though, was a different story. I probably wouldn’t have recognized him at all. But then they might have said the same about me, of course. I’d lost a lot of hair, and I’d grown a paunch.
Yani’s desk was exactly the way I remembered it, with its marble top, his snowball, his brass pencil case. It was then that I realized once more what a curse a strong memory can be. I couldn’t help but envy those with a more permeable sieve.
Anfi came back, this time with a glass made of china. I couldn’t tell what was in it. She took her place. Lifeless legs strained to move again.
“How unrecognizable this Sopalı Hüsnü Street has become, hasn’t it? It took Kevork a full hour to find the house. Oh, do you know what they brought as presents? Avram brought some luxury chocolate thins, and Kevork brought chocolate with cherry liqueur. Chocolate for the old Anfi. It reminded me of High Life Bakery. You boys used to go there for ice cream. That was the first thing Avram said. He hadn’t changed one bit. He summarized all his problems in a single breath. His boyfriend had left him for someone younger. Canada was a very boring place. He’d return to Istanbul in 2020 for good, and so on and so forth …”
I remained silent. Anfi took a few sips from the liquid in the glass and continued.
“Presents of quick, easy consumption, perfect for someone with both feet in the grave. Only you brought something for my heirs. For distant relatives. They’ll just sell everything and be on their merry ways. The fact that you brought an engraving of alpha and omega means a lot, doesn’t it? An implied suggestion to turn the page, yes?”
She was right. I nodded.
“You all wanted to become tram conductors when you were kids. Do you still remember? A second-class seat in the tram was five kuru. A first-class seat was ten. All those shenanigans you boys did for a free trip used to scare me to death.”
“Yani used to pay and get on though. And then watch us.”
“He looked up to you guys so much. Too bad you didn’t have more time together …”
“That’s not why Kevork came to you, Anfi.”
“When he entered this room, he cried, and then he hugged me, sobbing. He told me how much he regretted it. Maybe a hundred times.”
“He lost his only daughter. He was devastated.”
“So he knew what it meant to lose your only child. It was his idea to organize this ritual, this communal confession.”
“This is no ritual.”
“What is it then?”
“It was an accident.”
Anfi murmured something I couldn’t make out and then finished what was left in the glass. She held the glass, pressing it against her face, and looked at the bodies. Then at me.
“What did you come all the way here for? To hear me say that I forgive you? And that Yani forgives you too? And that he’s happy now, up in the sky? Is that what you came to hear?”
“What did their deaths change, Anfi?”
“As you know, Yani is resting in Feriköy Cemetery. I visited him this morning. One last time. Like everything I did today … one last time.”
I looked at the glass she still held against her face. I thought she must have taken sleeping pills too. In this room, we were closing the book. Meanwhile, I’d grown even more drowsy. There wouldn’t be any drinking with Avram and Kevork at some neighborhood bar. No veiled pissing matches about who had more money or power. Most importantly, we wouldn’t be laying it on the table, dissecting that incident we never ever talked about, never even alluded to, in all those six years we were together afterwards. You pushed. We fell. If only you hadn’t pushed … It was your turn. When the time came, you let it all out. Well, you shouldn’t have kept quiet then. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t all be lying here now like bags full of shit.
“When Yani was born, our cat Sarman gave birth too. To three extraordinarily beautiful kittens. It was their first week. But then one morning, Sarman was extremely restless. One moment she’d be dashing toward the door, and then the next she’d be leaping at the window. It was like she was trying to tell me, Open it, I’m leaving. She just kept meowing and meowing. I finally gave in and opened the door. She stormed out and got run over by a car a few seconds later. Traffic was heavier than usual. But it’s like that when your time comes. It’s a meeting that you can’t postpone. I tried to feed the kittens milk with a dropper, but it didn’t work. They were too small. They died too.”
I had heard this story from Anfi before. Hearing it again at that moment, in that context, the impact of the omen was intense.
“If only you had opened the door five seconds later and … if only there hadn’t been glass in the hole.”
Anfi offered a smile that was half appreciation, half regret. “That’s not the point. It’s an irrelevant detail. He’d just be pushed again and again, until there was glass in the hole. And the door would be opened again and again.”
“Your logic, it’s flawed,” I said, in all sincerity. “It’s a biased expectation. Life, experience, they change the way we look at things. And now, what use is it, all of this—”
I stopped and looked into her eyes, the eyes of a woman who had left her mark on every phase of my life. And it was she who had determined its finale. I was amazed at the overwhelming power of that part of me ready to go along with it. For a moment, I wondered whether or not Monique would be sad when she heard about my death. She was the one I hurt most and argued with most, yet she was also the one I was once happiest with. Such is the human mind, a timepiece of fascinating inner workings.
“Don’t worry. There’s been a slight change in plans. Only you will wake up. In a couple of hours. You’ll have a light headache. An upset st
omach too. Everything is ready in the storage room by the front door. Cans of kerosene. Set the house on fire and go. It should start in this room … There’s one more thing I want you to do before you go, though. I want you to promise me that you’ll bury that small box with Yani’s hair in it on top of his grave. That’s the only thing I want. If you had arrived on time, I wouldn’t have had the chance to tell you that I know, that I knew, how very capable you boys would be of feeling regret, and remorse. We are even now. Burn and go, okay? Don’t worry, the fire won’t harm anyone else. There’s just a condemned building to our left, and a garden with some old, dried-out fruit trees behind us.”
I don’t know if my mouth said anything to Anfi. I was on the verge of sleep. My eyes were no longer open to the room. My thoughts were scattering like a harem of women at the sight of a strange man. As darkness fell upon my mind, in spite of everything, my will to live and see the flames was letting out its final, weak roar.
Unfortunately, regrets, however strong, cannot roll back time.
THE HAND
BY MÜGE PLKÇ
Moda
In a dolmu on the way to Moda. That’s where twelve-year-old Nazlı’s story begins. Nazlı, a delicate name for my delicate little girl.
Her mother and I separated early. It just didn’t work out between us. Yet we were so in love! Or at least that’s how I remember it being, at the beginning. I always wanted Nazlı to remember things that way too. That day, we had met at the Kadıköy piers and were making our way to the Moda dolmues when Nazlı asked me if people got married for love or money. Why? I asked. Because I’m in love, she said. At that moment I felt a twinge of pain, deep down. Like any father of a daughter, I was a little shaken up at first. I felt very clearly then and there that I was not prepared to share her with any other man, but I kept this sentiment to myself. Love is important, I said, but you have to have money too. I said it like it was some trivial remark. Like I usually did. And which I would so desperately regret later. She was a little angel. A little girl. This time, though, I decided to play down my hopelessness. Actually, dear, I said, it’s not about money; love is all that matters.
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