Hotel Bosphorus (14 page)

“They couldn't hold on to him, that's why.” He was showing his skills as a lawyer. Mesut Mumcu wasn't innocent.

“So why did they arrest him?”

“To intimidate him. They thought he'd be scared, get upset and confess. Even you thought that. Mesut would never have anyone killed with a hair-dryer. Don't the police realize that? It's nonsense whichever way you look at it.”

“Why were you with him when he was arrested?”

“He sent for me. They visited his Istanbul house and office, and he thought they'd come to see me anyway. What's wrong with that? Does it mean the man's guilty?”

“No, I was just asking. Why are you getting so angry?”

“I'm not angry.”

I had no wish to continue this pointless conversation, despite the whisky and ice, and the views of Topkapı Palace, Haydarpaşa and the Prince's Islands. What did the Turkish ancients say? Whenever there's a noise, it's best to leave.

Whatever that means.

 

I crossed the Bosphorus Bridge, which I and Istanbul taxi drivers call the “first bridge”. I was listening to
La Flaca
, an album by Jarabe de Palo that Fofo gave me, and I made a resolution that for one day, or a few hours at least, I would put aside all thoughts of the murder and Batuhan. What I really wanted was to eat a proper meal, like green beans in olive oil, and have a long chat with Lale.

As I entered the house, I was greeted by a pervasive smell that made me realize my dream of a proper meal that evening was not going to happen. Lale had her sleeves rolled up and was about to embark on some Turkish creation based on an Italian recipe of pasta with garlic yoghurt.

“How did you know I'd be early?”

“I didn't. I was starving and I thought I'd leave some for you.”

“I thought we'd go out for dinner,” I said, almost crying. I guessed she'd bought that triple-coloured pasta, which was dancing so sadly and spiritlessly in the water, especially for tonight and she certainly wasn't prepared to throw it out.

“Don't be silly, not after all this work. Anyway I bought coloured pasta,” she said, mixing the rinsed strands with yoghurt.

As we ate our pasta under the walnut tree that shaded the tiny back garden, we both fell deep into thought. I knew very well that my friend Lale couldn't bear long silences.

“How is it?” she asked, meaning the pasta. She knew full well that I wouldn't say, “Awful.”

“A bit too salty,” I said.

“I wish I could retrieve every grain of salt I've ever wasted,” she said, more seriously than one might have expected.

“Where did that come from?”

“I've just found out. The cleaner Havva told me. Salt is sacred.”

“Well, there's no chance of retrieving the salt you wasted on this pasta. It would've been better if you'd agreed to go out for dinner as I suggested,” I said.

“Don't be silly. It's not that salty,” she said, laughing.

“Anyway, why is salt sacred?”

“I don't know. Havva doesn't know either.”

There was silence again.

“Maybe it has something to do with Lot's wife,” I said, my mouth crammed full of pasta in an attempt to fill my stomach.

“What's it got to do with Lot's wife?”

“When the family was fleeing after the Sodom and Gomorrah disaster, the woman looked back and was turned to salt. Lot and his two daughters did what they were told and didn't look back. Out of that enormous tribe, they were the only three to be saved,” I said.

“I thought Lot's wife was turned to stone.”

“No, I'm sure it was salt.” Lale knew very well that I could compete with anyone on Old Testament stories, so I thought she wouldn't continue with this argument. However, she did.

“Salt or stone, whichever it was, it was all because she wanted to see their property, which had burned to the ground in Sodom and Gomorrah. She looked at the city one last time because she couldn't bear to lose everything, isn't that right? I think—”

“No, she wasn't looking at their property. Where did you get that from?”

“Of course she was. She was looking back at their property for one last time, otherwise why look back?”

“Look, it's a dreadful, sexist, anti-female…”

As always when I was exasperated, emphatic Turkish words eluded me. I gave up trying to find the best word and continued.

“Of course it's always women who are after money and property. Of course it's greedy women who grieve over burning property. It's they who turn round and look, they who turn to salt. Whereas Lot wasn't bothered about property at all. He had no strong interest in money, valuables or property, because he was a man. Lot kept looking straight ahead. Naturally, that night in the cave, his daughters got him drunk and became pregnant by him. Lot was so drunk he didn't know
he'd slept with his daughters, yet he wasn't so drunk that he couldn't get an erection.” I was shouting the second part of the Sodom and Gomorrah story about how daughters would get their fathers drunk and sleep with them in order to propagate the family line.

“Calm down, please,” said Lale. “So what if women are greedy? So what if Lot's wife turned and looked at their burning property?”

“What if the woman wanted one last look at the city she loved? Don't you see the difference, Lale? Surely there's a difference between a greedy, avaricious woman and a woman who loves the hills and open spaces of the city where she lives, her house and garden, the honeysuckle by her front door?”

“Of course there is, but what difference does it make if Lot's wife looked back? Is that what we're arguing about?”

“This has nothing to do with Lot's wife,” I said. “It's one of many things people say against women, as if it's in their biological make-up. People say women care about valuables and property as if it were a scientific fact, like menstruation or childbirth.”

“Salt…”

“Stop talking about salt. There are certain anti-female prejudices and clichés. You know that better than me. Indeed you've said yourself that people ask if you find it tiring being publishing director of a large newspaper. Would they worry so much about you getting tired if you were a man, I wonder? I tell you, they wouldn't. Why do they care so much about you getting tired? If you stayed at home raising your kids like other women, you wouldn't get tired, would you? Women should do light work designed for women, shouldn't they?” I'd
gone too far this time, and I doubted that my example about Lale had anything to do with what we'd been discussing. However, at that moment I was in no state to put forward a sensible and coherent argument.

“You're upset, darling,” said Lale. She was maintaining that special cool-headedness that businesswomen have and refusing to engage in a war of words with me. I thought she should be proud of herself for that. In fact, it's the quality that separates me and my sort from her and her sort.

Lale gathered up the plates and went inside. I sat lethargically on my own in the garden for a while and then followed her into the kitchen.

“What happened today?” she asked. She was putting the dirty dishes into the dishwasher.

“I've been trying to count the stars, yet I don't even know how many teeth I have in my mouth. But hey, so what?” I said.

“That's a really nice saying. Did you translate it from German?” she said. Lale never admits that my Turkish is any good; she's always trying to catch me making a mistake.

“I don't know. My father used to say it. It means you haven't a clue.”

“Not having a clue, what does that have to do with anything, sweetie? You started doing this detective business as a hobby. Is there anything at stake here? No. If you don't uncover the facts of this murder, so what?”

“What hobby? You talk as if all I've done is look at a few toy guns this week. Someone has died and a murderer is still at large out there. You call this a hobby?”

“I may have used the wrong word. What I meant to say was that this isn't your job. You're not a policeman or
anything, are you? You're a woman who sells books in your own special way.”

“Let's change the subject. I realize you're just trying to calm me down but, believe me, there's no point. Anyway, my problem has nothing to do with my so-called hobby.”

“Then what is it to do with? Have you found yourself surrounded by sexist men?” I knew for sure that, as the evening wore on, the things I'd said in our argument earlier that evening would be used against me.

“You know as well as I do that what I said was true. They twist everything at women.” I lit one of the cigarettes that lay on the kitchen worktop and added, “If not everything, a lot of things.”

“I'll give you a column in our newspaper if you like. Your Turkish is bad enough. You wouldn't stand out as a foreigner among the other columnists. What's more, you're an infidel.”

“Why is my Turkish so bad?” I said, feeling irritated.

“You don't ‘twist something at', you ‘twist something against',” she said, as if she was the first girl to learn how to read and write.

“If you spoke German as well as my Turkish… Well, not German, because that's a difficult language. But if you learn to speak any language as well as I speak Turkish, I'll kiss your forehead in admiration.”

“Did you come to quarrel with me, Kati? If that's really why you came, you didn't pick a good time. I'm too tired to fight and anyway the English I know is sufficient for me.”

How come I'd resorted to competing with my best friend in this stupid way? “OK, fine, you're right,” I said, and immediately offered to make coffee to show there were no hard feelings.

“I can't drink coffee in the evenings any more. I'll have a weak tea. You don't need to brew it, there are tea bags in there,” she said.

I'm five years older than Lale, so if coffee stops her sleeping, think what it must do to me. I made myself some mint tea.

We sipped our tea in the living room on the middle floor of the house, and I told Lale what had happened with Batuhan.

“If you want to sleep with a man, then go ahead of course. Does Germany have an ethical rule that says you can't sleep with a policeman?” she said. Lale was still playing masterfully with my nerves.

“What's it got to do with Germany? My dislike of policemen runs much deeper than I'd realized. I didn't know I felt so strongly about them.”

“Ah, that's why you're so against prejudices and clichés.”

Remorselessly, she continued to rake over what I'd said at dinner; she was going to carry on probing until I caved in and apologized for everything I'd ever said and ever would say.

“Can't we have a bit of a break?” I asked.

“I'm trying to understand why you were shouting.”

“There's nothing to understand. I'm upset. You said it yourself.”

“Are you upset because of Batuhan?”

“I'm upset because I don't know what to do. In normal conditions, I'd want to be with a man, but because he's a policeman…”

“I don't know why you've made such a problem out of this. Do you want to be with him, or not? What have normal conditions or abnormal conditions got to do with it?”

“OK, but why don't I want to be with this man? Is the world awash with men who are good-looking, charming police-academy graduates?”

“Am I missing something here?” She suddenly narrowed her eyes and shook her head from side to side as if she'd made a big discovery. “Now I understand. You want my permission to be with this man. If I say, ‘What a nice man,' it'll put your mind at ease,” she said.

“Of course it would put me at ease, but I've been with men before without your approval.”

“But this time it's different. Use your head: it's not just your prejudice. You're thinking of the people around you. What would Fofo say? What would Pelin say? What would
çaycı
Recai think? You've become a real Turk! You're a Turk through and through!” This discovery amused Lale greatly. Laughing, she continued her monologue.

“What would your neighbours say, eh? If anyone saw him going in and out of your apartment in police uniform… What would everyone think? OK, I'll tell you what everyone would think. They'd think that Kati has found herself a policeman. I don't think anyone will stop talking to you because of this, darling. And it isn't as if he's a traffic cop; he's a policeman who works on homicides.”

“Inspector,” I pointed out. “And he doesn't wear uniform.” In fact, he looked better in uniform than in plain clothes, but it didn't matter. “And if he was a traffic cop, so what?”

“Well, this is what comes of refusing to read the papers. You don't know the results of a public-opinion research project that has rocked Turkey. Apparently, the professional group with the most cases of bribery turned out to be traffic police.”

“They found that every fifth person has bribed a traffic policeman,” I said, finishing Lale's statement. Even if I didn't read the papers, I knew everything and never missed an opportunity of demonstrating it. Lale again collapsed into peals of laughter. Ignoring her, I continued talking.

“But Lale darling, I don't remember that research rocking Turkey.”

Between her bouts of laughter, Lale was crying out, “Wonderful, wonderful!” just as she did whenever we met her grandmother.

“What is it? Tell me, then we can both laugh,” I said.

“What do you mean ‘every fifth person'? Speak properly. You translated that from German, didn't you? Where do you find these things? ‘Every fifth person.' Speak properly. Did you or didn't you translate that?”