Snow (56 page)

This is a prepared speech; he’s lying, Ka thought.

“The first person to become aware of the illicit affair—not counting the surveillance staff, of course—was Kadife Hanım. By now Ipek Hanım’s marital relations were troubled, and so when her sister came home to attend university, she used this as an excuse to move. Blue was still visiting Kars at every opportunity to ‘organize Islamist youth,’ and naturally he would always stay with his great admirer, Muhtar, so whenever Kadife had classes the two wild-eyed lovers conducted their assignation in the new house. This continued until Turgut Bey came back to Kars, at which point he and his two daughters took up residence in the Snow Palace Hotel. That was when Kadife, the leader of the head-scarf girls, took up her older sister’s game. Our blue-eyed Casanova managed to keep both women on a string for some time after that. We have the proof.”

With every ounce of his strength, Ka escaped Z Demirkol’s gaze, turning his now streaming eyes to the tremulous snow-covered streetlamps of Atatürk Avenue—they were visible from where he was sitting, but he hadn’t noticed them until now.

“I’m telling you this only because I want you to see that a heart of oatmeal gets you nowhere and you have no reason to conceal the whereabouts of this murderous monster,” said Z Demirkol, who, like all special-team operatives, grew more vituperative the more he talked. “I didn’t bring you here to upset you. It occurs to me that when you’ve left this room, you might be tempted to doubt whether what I’ve just told you has in fact been fully documented by the surveillance teams who have been bugging the city quite ably for going on forty years; perhaps I just made up a lot of nonsense. Maybe Ipek Hanım in her determination to protect your Frankfurt happiness from being darkened by any stain will manage to convince you it’s all lies. Your heart is stuffed with oatmeal and may not be strong enough to accept what I’m telling you, but allow me to chase away any doubt you might have as to its truth. I shall, with your permission, read out a few excerpts of some phone conversations. As I do, please bear in mind the expense lavished on this long surveillance operation and the time it must have taken the poor secretaries to type up the transcript.

“ ‘My darling, my dearest, the days I spend without you I’m hardly alive!’ That, for example, is what Ipek Hanım said on a hot summer’s day four years ago—August sixteenth, to be precise—and this probably alluded to one of their first separations. Two months later, when Blue was in town to speak at a conference on Islam and the Private Sphere of Women, he rang her from grocery stores and teahouses all over the city—eight times in all—and they talked of nothing but how much they loved each other. Two months after that, when Ipek Hanım was still entertaining the idea of running off with him, she said, and I quote, ‘Everyone has only one true love in life, and you are that love in mine.’ Another time, out of jealousy over Merzuka, the wife he kept in Istanbul, she made clear to Blue that she wouldn’t make love to him while her father was under the same roof. And here’s the kicker: In the past two days alone, she’s phoned him three times; she may have made more calls today. We don’t yet have the transcripts of these last conversations, but that doesn’t matter; when you see Ipek Hanım, you can ask her yourself.

“I’m so sorry to upset you; I can see I’ve said enough. Please stop crying. Let me ask my friends to remove those handcuffs so you can wash your face. And then, if you want, my associates will take you back to the hotel.”

The Joy of Crying Together

ka and ipek meet at the hotel

Ka declined the escort. After wiping the blood from his nose and mouth, he splashed some water over his face and, turning to the murderous villains who’d been holding him captive, bade them good evening, as timid as an uninvited guest who’d nevertheless stayed for supper. Like a common drunk he staggered down the ill-lit Atatürk Avenue, turning for no particular reason into Halitpa¸sa Avenue; and it was when he passed the little shop where, during one of his first walks through the city, he’d heard Peppino di Capri singing “Roberta” that he began to sob. It was here too that he ran into the slim and handsome villager who’d been his traveling companion three days earlier on the bus from Erzurum to Kars, and who’d been so gracious and uncomplaining when Ka fell asleep, allowing Ka’s head to fall onto his shoulder. It seemed all the rest of Kars was inside watching
Marianna,
but as Ka continued down Halitpa¸sa, he also ran into the lawyer Muzaffer Bey and later, turning into Kâzım Karabekir Avenue, the bus company manager and his elderly friend, both of whom he’d first met in the lodge of His Excellency Sheikh Saadettin. He could tell from the looks these men gave him that tears were still streaming from his eyes. All those times he’d walked up and down these streets, past icy shop windows, teeming teahouses, photography shops exhibiting pictures of Kars in better days, flickering streetlamps, the great wheels of cheese in the windows of grocery stores, he knew—even if he didn’t see them on the corner of Kâzım Karabekir and Karada˘g avenues—that his plainclothes shadows were there.

Before entering the hotel, he paused to assure the bodyguards everything was on track and did his best to steal up to his room without being noticed. There, he threw himself onto the bed and immediately broke down. When he had managed to calm himself, he settled in to wait, and though it was only one or two minutes before there was a knock on the door, it seemed longer than any time he’d ever passed, waiting as a child, lying in bed, listening to the sounds of the streets.

It was Ipek. The boy at reception had told her something strange seemed to have happened to Ka Bey, and she came straight up. When she saw Ka’s face she gasped and fell silent. Neither spoke for some time.

“I’ve found out about your relationship with Blue,” Ka finally whispered.

“Did he tell you himself ?”

Ka turned off the lamp. “Z Demirkol and his friends hauled me in,” he said, still very softly. “They’ve been taping your phone conversations for four years.” He lay down again, weeping silently. “I want to die,” he said.

When Ipek reached out to run her fingers through his hair, he cried even harder. Despite the loss they were suffering, they’d both relaxed—as people do when they realize they’ve run out of chances for happiness. Ipek stretched out on the bed and wrapped her arms around him. For a while they cried together, and this drew them closer.

As they lay together in the dark, Ipek told her story. She said it was all Muhtar’s fault; not only had her husband invited Blue into his home; he also wanted his Islamist hero to marvel at what a wondrous creature his wife was. Muhtar was treating Ipek very badly at the time and blaming her for their childlessness. And as Ka knew only too well, Blue had a way with words and so knew just how to turn the head of an unhappy woman. No sooner had she succumbed than she found herself frantic to forestall disaster. Her first concern was to keep Muhtar in the dark; she still cared for him and didn’t want to hurt him. But when the love affair started to flicker out, her main worry was how to extricate herself.

In the beginning, the thing that made Blue so attractive was his superiority to Muhtar: Muhtar made a fool of himself, talking so ignorantly about political matters that Ipek would feel ashamed for him. And even after she and Blue had found each other, poor Muhtar was still praising him, always urging him to visit Kars more often and chiding Ipek for not treating him with more hospitality and tolerance. Even when she moved to the new house to live with Kadife, Muhtar had no clue; unless Z Demirkol and his friends set him straight, he would never know.

Sharp-eyed Kadife, on the other hand, had worked it all out by the end of her first day in the city; her only real motivation for associating with the head-scarf girls was to get closer to Blue. Ipek, who’d been living with Kadife’s jealousy since childhood, was not blind to her interest in Blue; it was only on seeing the fickle Blue returning Kadife’s affection that Ipek’s own feelings cooled. And she saw opportunities: If Kadife was to become involved with him, Ipek would be free of him; and once her father moved to Kars too, she was able to keep her faithless lover at bay.

This account effectively reduced the affair with Blue to a mistake already buried in the past, and Ka might have been inclined to believe her had she not quite suddenly succumbed to some childish impulse and blurted out, “The truth is, Blue doesn’t really love Kadife, he loves me!” 

It was not what Ka wanted to hear, so he asked what Ipek now thought about this “filthy man”; refusing to be drawn into this subject, she reiterated that it was all in the past, and her only wish now was to go with Ka to Frankfurt. This was when Ka brought up Z Demirkol’s final claim, that she’d been in contact with Blue by phone in just the last few days. Ipek insisted there’d been no such conversations, and anyway Blue was too savvy to take a call that might allow his hunters to track his whereabouts.

“We’re never going to be happy!” Ka said.

“No, we’re going to Frankfurt, and we
are
going to be happy!” said Ipek, throwing her arms around him. According to Ipek, Ka believed her for a moment, and then tears returned to his eyes.

She held him tighter and tighter, and they cried again.

As Ka would later write, it may have been now, as they were holding each other and weeping, that Ipek discovered something for the first time: To live in indecision, to waver between defeat and a new life, offered as much pleasure as pain. The ease with which they could hold each other and cry this way made Ka love her all the more, but even in the bitter contentment of this tearful embrace a part of him was already calculating his next move and remained alert to the sounds from the street.

It was almost six o’clock. Tomorrow’s edition of the
Border City Gazette
was ready for circulation; the snowplows were going at a furious pace to clear the road to Sarıkamı¸s; Funda Eser, having worked her charms and spirited Kadife into the army truck, was at the National Theater, where the two women were rehearsing the play with Sunay.

It took Ka half an hour to get around to telling Ipek of the message he was carrying from Blue to Kadife. Throughout this time of holding each other and crying, they’d come close to making love, but fear, indecision, and jealousy intervened to hold him back. Instead, Ka asked when Ipek had last seen Blue; over and over he accused her of speaking to him every day; and then compulsion overtook him and he accused her of seeing him every day as well, of still being his lover.

Ka would later recall that while Ipek initially balked at his questions and accusations, angry at his refusal to believe her, later, when she came to see that the emotional undercurrents were more powerful than the words themselves, she began to answer him with more affection, and soon she herself would find the affectionate rejoinder soothing; there was even a part of her that embraced the hurt Ka’s questions and accusations were causing her. During his last four years, which he dedicated to remorse and regret, Ka would admit to himself that those given to verbal abuse are often obsessed by a need to know how much their lovers loved them—it had been that way with him throughout his life. Even as he taunted her in his broken voice that she wanted Blue, that she loved him more, his concern was to see not so much how Ipek answered him as how much patience she would expend for his sake.

“You’re only trying to punish me for having had a relationship with him!” said Ipek.

“You only want me because you’re trying to forget him!” said Ka. Looking into her face, he saw with horror that he’d spoken the truth, but this time he did not lose his composure. His outburst had renewed his strength. “Blue has sent Kadife a message from his hiding place,” he said. “He now says he wants Kadife to continue with her work: She must refuse to go onstage and bare her head. He’s quite adamant.”

“Let’s not tell Kadife any of this,” said Ipek.

“Why not?”

“Because that way we’ll have Sunay’s protection all the way through. And it’s best for Kadife too. I want to put some space between Blue and my sister.”

Ka said, “You mean you want to break them up.” He could see from Ipek’s eyes that she had ceased to humor his jealousy and he had fallen in her estimation, but he couldn’t stop himself.

“I broke off with Blue a very long time ago.” 

Still unconvinced by Ipek’s protestations, Ka held back this time and decided not to speak his mind. But not a moment later he found himself staring sternly out the window and telling her exactly what he was thinking. Anger and jealousy now ruled him, and seeing this only inflamed his misery. With tears in his eyes, he waited to hear what Ipek would say next.

“I was very much in love with him,” Ipek said. “But that’s mostly in the past now, and I think I’m over it. I want to come with you to Frankfurt.”

“Just how much did you love him?”

“A lot,” said Ipek, and settled into a determined silence.

“I want you to tell me how much.” Although he had lost his cool, Ka sensed that Ipek was wavering. She wanted to tell the truth, but she also wanted to assuage his pain by sharing it; she wanted to punish Ka as he deserved, but at the same time she was sad to see him suffer.

“I loved him more than I’d ever loved anyone before,” Ipek said finally, averting her eyes.

“Maybe that’s because the only other man you’d been with was your husband, Muhtar.”

He regretted these words even as he said them, not only because they were hurtful but because he knew Ipek would say something even more hurtful in reply.

“It’s true,” she said. “Like most Turkish girls, I’ve not had much opportunity to get to know a lot of men. You probably met quite a few independent women in Europe. I’m not going to ask you about any of them, but surely they taught you that new lovers wipe out old ones.”

“I’m a Turk,” said Ka.

“Most of the time, being a Turk is either an excuse or a pretext for evil.”

“That’s why I’m going back to Frankfurt,” Ka said listlessly.

“I’m coming with you and we’re going to be happy there.”