The Dervish House (25 page)

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Authors: Ian Mcdonald

BOOK: The Dervish House
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‘We’ve got our half of the Koran.’
‘Oh yes? And he’s going to look at this and say, how is this an article of incorporation? And you’ll say, well the other half of this gives ownership of fifty per cent of the company to a small-time grey nano dealer who’s at best disappeared and at worst might be at the bottom of the Bosphorus. And he will say, don’t waste my time. And this is why you need to do it professionally from the get-go. From the start.’
‘Just as well he hated the project then,’ Aso says. Against herself Leyla giggles. Wedged into a tiny shitty citicar like segments of an orange, oppressed by tall trucks and big buses and arguing about the evolutionary future of nano-enhanced humanity. She could be drawing up marketing plans for kids’ toys.
‘Is this a Kurdish thing?’
‘What?’
‘Being deliberately contradictory?’
‘It’s an Aso thing.’
Again she giggles.
‘You do good giggle,’ Aso says.
‘Ah,’ Leyla says, cutting him off. ‘You assume too much Mr Besarani. Do you need to go straight back to the office?’
In her peripheral vision she sees a wide smile break like a new season.
‘Why do you ask, Ms Gültaşli?’
‘Because I want to call in somewhere and introduce you to some new friends called Mr Shoes, Mr Shirt, Mr Haircut and Mr Manicure. And while we’re on that, I still need that employment contract.’
 
‘Children, here’s a surprise for you,’ Pinar Hanım says. Can looks up from his desk. He had let his gaze wander. He doesn’t need to lip-read and so doesn’t always keep his eyes on Pinar Hanım’s porcelain-perfect face. Not paying attention enrages Pinar Hanım. She’s not allowed to hit you now everyone’s in the European Union but she wields ostracism, personal hurt and sarcasm like a three-rod nunchuk in a kung fu video. Can pays attention now. A surprise. Now that every eye is on her, Pinar Hanım says, ‘A very special visitor, come back to see us. Come on in, Bekir.’
Can sits straight upright at his desk at the back of the class. Bekir, best of friends and rivals, the only one who Can recognized as a match and a brother, the only one in Yildiz Special School who showed any curiosity about this teeming city that spun around them, the other cities it contained and the other worlds beyond them. They’d been buccaneers, criminals, superheroes and pains-in-the-ass. They’d always had their hands up first with the right answer, the answer that was more than right because it went outside Pinar Hanım’s lesson plan; the too too clever boys at the back of the class. Three months ago Bekir got into his parents’ car at the gates and never came back. When that happens there is only one place he could have gone to: Gayreteppe Clinic. It makes the deaf hear, but it takes them away from the family of Yildiz School. Can is the hearing boy in the deaf school who can’t leave that way. They fix hearing, they can’t fix hearts.
‘Bekir has come back to see us all,’ Pinar Hanım announces. Bekir twists his foot uncomfortably. He knows he is a traitor. He has given up his identity in the nation of the deaf. ‘Say hello, Bekir.’
‘Hello,’ Bekir speaks weakly.
‘Bekir has something special to tell us, don’t you, Bekir?’
‘I’ve been to the doctor’s.’ He still hasn’t lost the alien croak of the profoundly deaf who have never heard the sound of their own voices. Everyone knows where he’s been.
‘And what happened?’ Everyone knows what happened.
‘They made me able to hear.’
‘Isn’t that great, everyone? Let’s all clap hands for Bekir.’
The loud applause is like a soft wave running over Can’s toes. Bekir peers at the back of the class, looking for Can, a message to him, hey, are you there, it’s all right isn’t it? Still friends? It’s all right.
You’re the same as me now
, Can thinks.
Not deaf.
It’s too hot today for recess outside so Can and Bekir sit at the back of the classroom and tap away on Can’s laptop. The stream of cool, kind air from the air-conditioning rattles the torn foil lid on his cup of ayran.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Solving a murder.’ So, it’s not a murder, but someone died.
‘Cool. Can I see?’
‘If you like.’
Bekir stands over his shoulder
‘What are you posting?’
‘A bit of a robot.’
‘What robot?’
‘The robot that chased me.’
‘You got chased by a robot?’
‘Yes but I got away but it fell and broke a bit off and I have got a number.’
‘You’re going to post it on bot dot net?’
‘I have a lot of friends on bot dot net.’
‘All they do is talk on bot dot net. They’re fan boys. They don’t know anything. You want to know if anyone knows what the serial number means. Here.’ Bekir leans over Can and rattles keys. A new page opens.
‘Gladio dot tee arr. That’s like Deep State conspiracy wonks.’
‘And what do you know about the Deep State?’
‘Mr Ferentinou tells me.’
‘Your Mr Ferentinou is Greek and probably a traitor. And even if they are conspiracy wonks, that doesn’t mean they don’t know anything.’
‘About bots?’
‘About everything.’
‘Where do I register?’
‘Here.’
Tippy tippy tap. He’s in. Two minutes later the photograph is posted from his ceptep on to the forum. Can’s a conspiracy theorist now.
Strapped into the Gas Bubble as Mom whirls him home from Yildiz, Can presses face and palms to the window. Istanbul whirls past in a kaleidoscope of colour and movement and tiny revelations; the cascading domes of a mosque in the shifting perspectives between two modern glass and steel towers, a man pushing a hand cart up a steep alley overhung by balconies, the poster of pop-star Semsi in those tight-tight glittery red pants that never fail to thrill Can. He touches lips and tongue to the glass to touch the vibration of the engine, the bass rumble of the city. People stare at him, Look! It’s the Windowlicking Boy! That’s what you think, but what none of you know is, he’s really the Boy Detective, in disguise.
His ceptep vibrates. A reply to his post. A conspiracy wonk, a Grey Wolf, a bot freak, has identified his shard, right down to the shipping number.
 
‘Would you look at that?’ Adnan Sarioğlu says to his wife on the private quay at Sedef. ‘It’s got a little sling under its ass to catch the shit. Does it shit pearls or something?’
The boat was a vintage Italian Riva; polished mahogany and green leather, effortlessly luxurious and fast. As it rounded the harbour beacon and dropped down into the water to burble up to the mooring, Adnan and Ayşe could see the caleche waiting under the antique Ottoman gas lamps.
‘What’s the nag and cart about?’
‘It’s the law out on the islands. Motor vehicles are banned.’
‘What do you mean “the law”? He owns the island. If he wants, he could have a Lamborghini sitting there.’
‘Only two seats in a Lamborghini,’ Ayşe said.
Now the driver helps her up in her deadly heels on to the small and perilous step and up into the carriage. Adnan slides his hand down her calf.
‘I feel a seam.’
‘Of course.’
Adnan climbs in beside her. The four-wheeled caleche bounces on its C-springs. Adnan settles back into the upholstery. He breathes in old leather and horse and the herbs and musks of the island. Gas lamps curve away from the harbour in a zigzag up the unseen hillside to the greater congregation of lights high up against the airglow: Ferid Adataş’s house. Adnan can make out vague music. Billie Holiday.
The driver mounts the box seat, clicks and flicks his whip. The matched pair clop forwards. The sudden jolt sends Ayşe into Adnan. They giggle. They’ve giggled since the Riva pulled away from Eminönü. Adnan hates boats and dark water. Ayşe knows he would only giggle if there was something of which he was more nervous.
I’m with you
, Ayşe thought.
You’re not alone here. I’ll look out for you, guard your flanks, take out the snipers. We’re a team.
Folded in the caleche’s skin-soft buttoned leather, Ayşe whispers, ‘The left side horse has got a hard-on.’
‘He’s not the only one.’
‘I believe it’s called Coachman’s Lob,’ Ayşe says. ‘It’s from the particular rhythm of a horse-drawn carriage. It’s an occupational hazard, so I’m told.’
Adnan falls sideways, helpless with suppressed laughter.
‘Look at the fucking size of that. It’s like a fire-hose. Imagine trying to trot with that slapping between your legs. Now this, however . . .’
Adnan takes his wife’s hand and moves it toward the erection in his tailor-made suit pants. Ayşe laughs, then her eyes widen at the sudden touch of Adnan’s fingers on her thigh, high up inside her skirt, light and shocking, an electric butterfly.
‘What are you doing, you Anatolian savage?’
‘Just checking.’ Adnan traces the line of the seam up the back of Ayşe’s leg. Leather, silk, finger, silk, skin. Layers, sheers and veils. She’s always found the tiny denials of silk, of sheer nylon and lace and butterfly gauze, so much more arousing than simple skin on skin. Silk mediates, sheer nylon turns every touch into a caress, an opportunistic slip of the hand into romance. She feels Adnan’s hand tense at the thrill zone where stocking ends and bare, warm thigh begins. He’s more direct, the transition from one state to another, from veiled suggestion to promise, exciting. ‘You know, that seam really does go all the way. That’s proper quality, that is.’
Yes, and a proper turned heel, but I don’t expect you to notice that
. The heel of Adnan’s hand is hot and hard against the silk triangle stretched over her pubis.
‘When the deal’s done,’ she whispers. By the time he gets into that dining room, Adnan will be a pillar of constrained energy and charisma. Every eye will be on him, every ear tuned to his least word. This isn’t dinner, it’s war.
Ayse snuggles close to Adnan in the embrace of the skin-warm leather.
The caleche stops and sways. Hooves stamp on cobbles, harness jingles. The house is a subtle geometry of intersecting planes and elevations, presenting many facades, hard to grasp as a first impression. It offers no welcome, no obvious means of entry; windows are narrow horizontal slits. From the terrace cantilevered out from the hillside comes a suggestion of movement and conversation and vagrant Billie Holiday. The driver unfolds the carriage step. His antique Ottoman style uniform, the carriage and the horse with their faintly ridiculous fly fringes over their eyes, are magnificently incongruous against this aggressive modernity. Adnan takes a deep breath of the night air. Thyme, sage, dust and salt, honey and sweat.
‘Smells like Kaş.’
A small black rectangle appears on the unbroken white wall.
‘Adnan!’ Ferid Adataş’s handshake is freely offered and as firm for a woman as a man. ‘Mrs Sarioğlu; how lovely to meet you.’
‘Erkoç,’ Ayşe says. ‘I go by my maiden name.’
‘Of course, forgive me. Well, welcome welcome. How was your trip?’
‘Very low carbon,’ Adnan says. He nods at the caleche.
‘What you gain on the carbon you lose on the methane,’ Ferid says. He laughs at his own joke. As they cross the cobbled courtyard Adnan whispers into Ayşe’s dark hair,
‘I’m just going to say, you look un-fucking-believable tonight. Absolutely stunning. I don’t care who’s in there; nothing - no one - is going to come within a whisper.’
Ayşe squeezes Adnan’s ass.
Drinks are served on the terrace. Ferid Bey’s other guests are Mr Munir Güney and his wife Nazat, General Barçin Çiller and his wife Tayyibe, Professor Pinar Budak and her husband Ertem. Munir Bey is a prominent bureaucrat in the European Commission in Brussels. He specializes in trade and tariffs. General Barçin Çiller is a field commander with recent active service on people trafficking patrol along the Iraqi border. Pinar Hanım is Professor of Literature at the Boğazici University, specializing in women’s divan poetry of the eighteenth century. Ayşe memorizes each name and face as Süreyya Adataş introduces them. Women introduce women, men introduce men. It looks like etiquette but Ayşe senses a more strategic game: isolate her from Adnan. Süreyya Hanım has her trapped in the corner of the terrace. Across the dark water of the Sea of Marmara, Istanbul glows, veils of lights drawn about her. Ferries are fast-moving constellations on the black sea; the big ships slow-moving clusters of red and green. High above, underneath the stars, the riding lights of sky sails wink slowly.
Ayşe rests her glass on the stainless steel railing. Air eddies across the terrace and for the first time in weeks she feels cool. She leans over the rail, attention seized by small shapes in the low brush. ‘Are those bones?’
‘Dogs, Mrs Erkoç,’ Süreyya Hanım says. ‘The island has an unusual history. Back in the 1920s, the new Istanbul Municipal authority was concerned about the huge population of feral dogs terrorizing the streets. Old women were being savaged, babies dragged from prams, drunks found half-eaten in the gutters in the morning. Once they rounded them all up they realized there were far too many to terminate in one go, so they brought them all here, dumped them and let dog nature sort it out. Within a year not a single dog was left. The gardeners are forever turning up bones.’

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