by Selcuk Altun
He lifted the gun with his left hand and for a while he talked to himself. Did he try to laugh? I knew when I turned round and headed for the door that my master would choose to celebrate his birthday with a single bullet.
It was as though there’d been a blackout on Dubaracı Street. I turned into Beyazgül Street where an old fishmonger was setting up his stand.
‘You’ve taken care of the parasites, now it’s time to settle your own account, Bedirhan,’ I said to myself on my way down to the shore. I had the courage to realize that another whirlwind of excitement was heading my way. I was being swept up by the pleasure of fighting a duel with myself.
I was happy when I remembered my meeting with Gürsel Hodja next morning. My first task was to ask him if the word ‘melancholic’ was an insult or not. Suddenly I felt as if I hadn’t slept for twelve years. I found a taxi, its windshield covered with giant beads against the evil eye. On the protective cloth cover of the driver’s seat were the words, ‘O Turkish youth! If you are a Fenerbahçe fan be proud; if not, submit.’
Your humble servant couldn’t refrain from laughing, God forgive me!
A
My father used to be enraged by incompetent waiters who put on airs as if the customers might starve without them, by philistine librarians who couldn’t read but did their best to discomfit booklovers, and by garrulous presenters of general-knowledge game shows, puffed up with pride as though they were the last surviving scholars on the planet. As for me, at the moment I can’t stand those artificial-looking stewardesses who glide up and down the aisles like reluctant waiters.
The stewardess of the ‘business class’ section was presenting the flight security precautions with the usual repulsive mimicry. I watched the pantomime which she had perhaps repeated a thousand times, an object lesson in understanding ‘how someone could be so persistently out of tune’. Although she was chewing gum, I warmed to the plump middle-aged lady in the seat next to me. She was coiled like a spring, ready to jump from her seat at any moment. She had the attractiveness that lies somewhere between beauty and ugliness; with her dark complexion and thick eyebrows, she seemed to be the daughter of a tribal chief from Eastern Turkey. I couldn’t ask her if the elderly gentleman passed out on the seat to her right was her husband or not, but I gathered she was a princess descended from the thirty-fifth Ottoman Sultan, Mehmet Reşat. (Her great-great-grandfather’s imperial watch is part of our family collection.)
I was anxious to tell my uncle what I had heard from Dalga. I’d missed the iodine-like smell of his claustrophobic attic flat in luxurious Maçka. I wasn’t surprised to see Eric Gill’s 25 Nudes on the formica table in his pretentious living room. Uncle Salvador must have satisfied his weekly need for masturbation with the aid of these erotic drawings that were over sixty years old. I had to patiently listen to his observations on the Kangal Balıklı Spa before I could confide in him. He described how the eczema all over his body had been cleaned up in the thermal spring by a crazed school of fish, the largest 10 cm long.
He shook his head in disgust when he heard of the love between Dalga and my father, thankful he had remained a bachelor. Of the possibility that my mother had hired an assassin to kill my father, he said, ‘It’s not impossible. Maybe this was why Ada, instead of mourning after my brother-in-law’s death, was devoured by feelings of guilt. Arda, if your mother had gone to the doctor as soon as she noticed pain in her chest she wouldn’t have died of cancer. She was inflicting a fatal punishment on herself by hiding her illness and didn’t want you to guess that that was what she was doing.’
On the verge of a headache, I closed my eyes and held my sweating forehead. (Would anything I heard about my mother ever surprise me?) I had to start searching for my father’s killer immediately. It didn’t take long before I started to feel bad about concealing my aim from my uncle. Though I remembered that for the first time in my life I had reason to have feelings of self-respect, I was ashamed that my fate was driving me to an act of revenge.
When I rose to leave, my uncle, happy as a child on his way to the amusement park, started to tell me about his proposed trip to distant museums with El Greco paintings.
On the pretext of bringing him the controversial books my mother had not been able to get rid of, I made my first – and last – visit to Selçuk Altun in his soulless office. I knew that when I asked for his help in getting detailed information about my father’s police file he would give me the once-over and make me feel small. He made me an appointment for the next day with the director of a fashionable illustrated magazine of culture and the arts, which either flattered the party in power, if necessary, or blackmailed it if not. The lady, whose unusual name (İz Bozok) reminded me of Dalga’s, would be able to help by introducing me to the legal correspondent of the conglomerate’s newspaper. While he talked to her on the phone I examined a literary magazine named Serendipity from a pile of printed material on the next table. (And as I memorized the rules for entry to a poetry competition run by the magazine, a marvellous idea came into my head.)
In forty-five minutes starting from the evening ezan, I invented the following poem by choosing single lines in chronological order from each of Oktay Rifat’s fifteen books of poems written between 1946 and 1987 – the title is my own:
Stolen
In the tumult of your life
In my nightly fantasies my daily thoughts
Never ask what is this blue
There’s a salty sea-smell in the air
Like houses like rooms far off
Only doors remain poor doors
We hid in the deepest shadows,
At the window, I saw loneliness in the depths
A white cloth on the table, a copper bucket, then your face
Now no bright water, no green night
The moon was racing, cicadas chirp
Houses empty, empty light, empty streets
Not rough, not hurtful
The sea suddenly comes close
When I shut my eyes.
I read ‘Stolen’ twice and decided to try my hand at a free version of haiku also. From the titles of poems in the poet’s last three books, namely Speaking to the Sun, Naked and Dumb and A Great Summer, I assembled the following in ten minutes:
Three Triplets
I
Candles and night
A tooth by the bedside
I leave to sleep
II
Poem’s arrival told
Old letters
In the old armchair
III
Garden and sea
Marsh and sky
Leaves again.
(I sent in my collages to Serendipity’s competition. I thought the name Rifat Toktay and the attractive address I picked from the telephone directory – Eşrefsaat Street, Üsküdar – would bring me luck. When the results were published five weeks later I was not surprised to see that I had come first in both poetry competitions. The prize-winning short story I read was a poetic piece titled ‘I Want to Write when I Read, I Read when I Cannot Write’. I was certain that Sima Etkin, the signature at the end of the story, was the pen name of the woman who had committed suicide because she couldn’t live with what she had written. I was shocked when I saw that the address given was the now abandoned apartment block where Dalga’s family had lived. Perhaps fate was telling me that I would find a writer instead of a hired killer.)
The surly caretaker in Şehbender Plaza’s noisy neighbourhood gave me a knowing look and directed me to the seventh floor. Beyond the swing door was a platform the size of an Olympic swimming pool with dozens of young people, mostly girls, running around in a panic. The widest area partitioned off by glass belonged to İz Bozok. I hesitated when I saw her leaning on the oval table and talking on the phone. My quick, searching gaze took in the long dark face and huge eyes of a short-haired young woman with a prominent forehead. I realized she had seen me and was waving me in with the ruler in her hand. As she rose without cutting off her conve
rsation on the phone, I thought her blue velvet trousers and blood-red shirt suited her tiny body. She gave me a soldier’s salute as she laid down her ruler, then shook hands and pointed to the armchair nearest the desk, her lips miming ‘Excuse me.’ The sexy tone of her voice revealed a witty, incisive style, and I thought this was the kind of girl my father would have wanted for me. Noticing she had begun to examine me, I focused on the panel behind her on which hung a poster of a Sumo wrestler. I tried hard not to listen to the end of her conversation by distracting myself with the slogans on the poster above her desk: ‘Citizen, Don’t Ignore Those Who Spit on the Ground – Those Who Overlook the Law – Those Who Spoil Our Peace and Quiet – Those Who Show Every Kind of Disrespect. The Society for War on Disrespect.’
(My eyes congratulated the Bozok girl as she scolded the so-called painter who, not content with pulling strings to get an exhibition in a public gallery, was pressing her to arrange an interview in one of her magazines.) Noticing I wasn’t smoking, she asked, ‘Would you like a cup of rosehip tea as a reward?’ I was ready for her question, ‘Do you mind if I ask why you’ve waited twelve years to delve into the file on your father’s assassination?’
‘If I can, I want to write, or ask someone else to write, my father’s biography. While my mother was alive I wasn’t brave enough to take a long look at the detective part of the affair. I lost her recently and wanted to talk with the police before my enthusiasm for the project faded.’
‘I’m very sorry about your father; it seems he was an incredible human being. He was not only a great scholar, but during the last fifteen years of his life it was his pronouncements on our progress and socio-economic conditions that reflected the state of our country best. I’ve heard that some of the television programmes he appeared in are now being used as material by university faculties of communication. He was certainly an oracle ...’
After immediate contradictory feelings of pride and humiliation, I was convinced that if fate had so decreed, this gamine of a girl would have been smitten with my father at first sight. We exchanged summaries of our lives until our insipid drinks were finished. (She was impressed by the fact that I hadn’t become fodder for the paparazzi.)
She thrust a piece of paper into my hand as if she were giving me a tip, and I took that to mean that our first meeting was about to end. The piece of yellow paper the size of a visiting card carried the address of a shooting range in Altunizade; it belonged to the retired chief commissioner of police, Adil Kasnak ... I felt uneasy when I heard that he would expect me in his office after Friday prayers to discuss the Mürsel Ergenekon conspiracy.
İz Bozok accompanied me to the main door. Standing by the magazine name-plates, she said deprecatingly, ‘Unfortunately we don’t publish any magazine worthy of your calibre.’ ‘What other publications are there, apart from the satirical magazines?’ I asked. On leaving her office I had noticed she was wearing ridiculous sandals with the Fenerbahçe logo. (My mother would have been horrified.) And it was then I decided to win over, any way I could, this delightful girl with whom I felt I had been friends for ten years.
‘After you’ve seen the chief commissioner we can meet again. Don’t hesitate to call.’
(In reality I wanted to say, ‘Can I invite you home to discuss the results of the official meeting with the police and show you my father’s library?’) But as I foolishly watched her delicately scratching her knee, I heard myself murmuring, ‘Thanks for your interest.’
I was taken aback when I saw the instructions, (‘Get ready! Take aim! Fire!’) as though I had arrived at the Abu Ghraib prison. But the ramshackle shooting range was as harmless-looking as a deserted police station. Suspiciously I approached the room from which the sound of music was floating through a half-open door. Behind a rough table under a wall sat Adil Kasnak, a massive hunk of a man, reminiscent of Anthony Quinn. His body spilled over the chair and seemed to be resting on the table as his left hand waved his amber prayer beads and summoned me in to him. Garish postcards were scattered on a glass coffee table next to the chair where I perched. Behind Kasnak was a portrait of a smiling Atatürk in a fur coat. (I felt myself begin to sweat.) In heavily accented Turkish he quizzed me about my life. As his eyes checked me over and he began to grin, I gave up explaining why I wanted to investigate my father’s file. His bead-counting slowed down, he sighed noisily and, his body relaxed, he began to utter each separate word distinctly, as so many officials do.
‘At the time of Professor Mürsel’s murder I was a newly recruited superintendent in the Criminal Investigation Office. I followed the progress of his file until I retired and I even remember its number. The conspiracy had been planned by experts; they picked a suitable time for the event and a place that was isolated but near a main road, and not a single clue was left for the ballistic team to follow up. Your father, who was caught in front of the Rumi Mehmet Paşa Mosque, was often seen hurrying through the streets by people in the neighbourhood. We found your late father’s jaunts through the dark byways of Üsküdar quite bizarre. Your mother fiercely denied the possibility of une affaire de coeur and claimed that he researched even stranger localities for his studies. God forgive me, but what an aggressive woman she was, she insisted emphatically that her husband had been threatened and shot by a gang of fanatics. According to her, your father had never taken the situation seriously enough to inform the police ...
‘The so-called gang that undertook the job, and whose name I’ve forgotten, was never heard of again. But my gut instinct is that the event was not the work of a gang.
‘I wonder if the soul of your father haunts you in your dreams because his death remains like a pair of his own unsolved equations, but I’m certain of one thing, that you personally want to find his killer.
‘If you accidentally came across his killer I’m equally sure you wouldn’t know what to do. Don’t take offence, but even as you sit there listening to me, you look uneasy. You don’t look like a young man of this country! You seem like someone who grew up in a time capsule till he was twenty. I’ll bet you’ve used the exemption policy and paid up to postpone your military service for as long as it takes, and you’ve never handled even a toy gun. Did you ever get mixed up in street fights when you were a kid, or kick your opponent in a game of football, eh, you celebrated Ergenekon?
‘Believe me, son, there’s not a single clue in your father’s dossier you can follow up. It’s just a hypothesis of mine, but take a piece of advice from a Black Sea chap. The bigger the city of Istanbul grew, the more of a shallow village it became. That’s why it’s always the same three hundred people who attend official ceremonies, important concerts and exhibitions, the favourite restaurants and places of entertainment. I wonder if the city’s underworld is any deeper and more sinister than we think. If five people were to find out you were looking for your father’s killer, they’d be so keen to let others know, that the number would double in five minutes. You can be sure the second will exaggerate the story and pass it on immediately to twenty more. If the murderer or his organization are still in business, they’ll hear the news faster than any news agency could broadcast it. If you think of the gossip doing the rounds of the banking and media worlds, the likelihood of my hypothesis increases. One evening when you go back to your mansion in a good mood, perhaps some bastard with a Kalashnikov will be waiting for you, son.
‘I strongly recommend that you make friends with a gun. An academic makes a poor fighter but a good marksman. If you’ve picked up the slightest scientific knowledge from your father, within four months in our shooting range you might even be able to reach the level of one of our high-calibre marksmen. Then you’ll find you’ve gained in self-confidence and learned eventually how to shoot without thinking, like a Zen philosopher. Finally, my son, guns are less dangerous to have as friends than women.
‘We charge $240 a month for three sessions a week. If you don’t ask for a receipt you’ll get a 10 per cent discount and won’t have to pay VAT.’
I felt almost guilty when I woke up without depression. Remembering it was already Thursday morning, I cut my nails. According to İfakat, cutting your nails on Monday meant you’d suffer torments, on Tuesday that your child would die, on Wednesday that bad news was in the offing, and to cut nails at night shortens life. I don’t believe in superstitions, touch wood, but suppose İfakat was right for once? I enjoyed the old chauffeur Hayrullah’s surprise when I summoned him to visit our main office. Apart from the meetings of the Board of Directors, which I attend on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I am not involved in the daily business of administration. Today I had a personal meeting with two bankers from Harvard (concerning the world logistics of putting three Ukrainian ballerinas on the stage). Then I made a telephone call to İz Bozok. My heart beat faster when I heard her warbling voice, ‘You’ve stirred my journalist’s instincts. I was going to ring you tomorrow anyway.’ Plucking up courage, I invited her to İskele, our family restaurant, for Saturday evening and began to laugh when she answered, ‘Afterwards will you show me your father’s books instead of his stamp collection?’ I thought to myself that if Dalga heard her she would comment, ‘My dear Arda, this girl will certainly give in to you at the first opportunity.’
