Baksheesh (3 page)

Selim remains silent.

“Is Chianti at that price ever drinkable?”

Selim remains silent.

I feel I want to scratch his face.

To put my fist through the windscreen.

To kick him in the eye with the heel of my shoe.

To force the dog ends in the ashtray into his mouth.

To smash his brains.

To throw the remains of his brain to the alley cats.

Argghh! Most of all, I hated myself!

“Stop the car. I'm getting out.”

He stopped immediately! See what I mean? As if we were playing out a lovers'-tiff scene for some lousy movie where a girl gets out of the car and bangs the door, hitches a lift and gets raped. Or something else awful happens to her.

A long list of swear words was building up inside me. In two languages. German and Turkish.

Of course I wouldn't actually swear at Selim, not out loud.

The fifty-dollar sea bass was still being digested in my stomach. Goodness knows which seabed it came from, but it had a very
grandiose name on the menu and was paid for by my lover, probably the highest tax-paying commercial lawyer in the city that year. I pulled out a wad of notes – with Turkish lira you always have to pay in wads – and left them on the seat as I climbed out. I wasn't going to slam the door. Everything was dramatic enough. Tragic. Disastrous. Pathetic even.

Before I closed the door, he reached over the seat and held my arm.

“Don't pull that ugly face,” he murmured.

His words were like a slap in the face. Pow! Right in the middle.

If only he had said something different. Something like, “Don't be ridiculous” or “Are you crazy?”

I closed the door behind me.

Everything else like house-hunting, the rubbish-collection tax I'd forgotten to pay for years and the stupid high-fashion heels suddenly lost all significance.

“Will you please get back in?” he said. He had now got out of the car and was standing next to me, holding open the door I had just closed and waiting. Waiting for me to get in. The money was still lying on the seat. If I got back in, I'd have to pick it up and put it back in my bag.

For that reason alone, I hailed a passing taxi. Just to avoid taking back that money.

 

I had an appointment with my accountant at 10 o'clock the next morning. Before leaving home, I checked to see if Pelin had arrived at the shop. She hadn't turned up at all the previous day. However, she was there. We don't communicate much by phone. Neither of us really wants to.

I applied some face cream that claimed to reduce puffiness under the eyes, but there was really no point wasting time in front of the mirror covering myself all over with such things so, deciding to ignore the cellulite, I put on my Jackie O sunglasses
and went to have a sugarless Turkish coffee at the Firuzağa Café near where I lived.

From there, I took a taxi to the accountant's. I quarrelled with the driver for going too fast. Turks are crazy drivers. They're always speeding off to some important business, without a second to lose. As if rushing will close the gap they've opened between themselves and the civilized world. Traffic lights have even been fitted with digital chronometers to show the number of seconds remaining before they change. They count backwards: 20, 19, 18… 9, 8, 7… We're living in a country where every second is of vital importance! The instant those pedestrian zeppelins – mostly housewives and bearded old men – see there are, say, seven seconds to go before the lights turn red, they start running like there's no tomorrow, just to avoid waiting for the green light to come round again. What on earth do they expect to do with the fifty-one seconds they save?

My driver was worse than the pedestrians. Taxi drivers are maniacs anyway. Even if they don't start that way, they become first-rate maniacs within a year of driving in Istanbul.

It was a good thing I hadn't brought the car and took a taxi that morning. My argument with the driver calmed me down. Even his snidest comments wafted over me like a shiatsu massage. Or aromatherapy. A jacuzzi with a bouquet of oils added. Fifteen minutes in the warm waters of a jacuzzi, followed by scented oils kneaded into the muscles, creating fragrant smells and settling the nerves.

I tipped the driver, something I would never normally do.

 

By about two o'clock, thanks to the cream I'd applied around my eyes, I looked like a new woman. I was sitting with Pelin, silently chain-smoking. It was a sluggish day. We had only sold three cheap paperbacks. I decided that unless some miracle occurred in the next half-hour, I'd phone Lale. The right side of my
head was numb with pain and I'd just taken a couple of aspirin. Having eaten nothing since the sea bass the previous evening, I realized my stomach was starting to rumble. And the aspirin had done nothing for my migraine.

I desperately wanted to be the sort of woman who gets in a fluster over finding a place for her five-year-old daughter at the nursery of a well-established school like the German High School. I wanted to be making phone calls all over the place seeking out influential contacts. That was the kind of problem I wanted in my life: problems suitable for my age.

I wanted to be one of the women with highlighted hair who complain about their snoring husbands, wear lamé ballet pumps, vote for social democratic parties and live in an apartment block with a swimming pool.

I wanted to be aiming to lose a kilo in weight, just one kilo, to smoke those long, thin women's cigarettes with flowers in the filters, to read Danielle Steele, to complain to my female friends that sex with my husband was over, and to cry as I listened to Mariah Carey.

My mobile phone rang. Just once, then it stopped.

With feverish, almost shameful excitement, as if hunting for treasure, I went into the mobile's menu to see my unanswered calls. There was one number. Not Selim's, because he kept his undisclosed and it never showed up on the screen. This was an actual number.

Quivering and trembling, I called it.

 

My caller turned to be Kasım Bey. The bribe-taking civil servant from the National Real Estate Bureau.

Love it or hate it, the telephone connects people to life. After speaking to Kasım, I felt better. We were to meet that evening at the same time and place as before. Just having an appointment with someone, anyone, made me feel better. I ate two toasted
cheese sandwiches, drank some tea and went to the chemist for migraine pills. I didn't call Lale. She was depressed enough anyway, so I refrained from loading her with my problems. Now, once again, I could love my friends, enjoy luxury make-up products, revel in the fact that I wasn't the mother of a five-year-old girl, and not feel obliged to smother myself all over with cream. I also loved the fact that I wasn't married and had no problems in my sex life.

I walked from Kuledibi to meet Kasım Bey in Sultanahmet, along streets cooled by downpours of rain a few days before. I adored Sultanahmet and Yerebatan Sarnıcı, the ancient underground reservoir. I often used to go there if I was feeling very depressed, even worse than on that day. The water dripping from the ceiling would comfort me. Yet, isn't that a form of torture? Is it in fact possible to use absolutely anything to torture people? Can torture consist of something that would normally give pleasure?

I stroked the external reservoir walls that jutted out onto the pavement, as if they housed a sacred place or a sepulchre. The officials looked at me strangely as they tried to close the doors at the top of the steps that twisted and turned as if going down a bottomless well.

 

Kasım Bey and I were drinking tea and talking about the forthcoming elections. I was trying to work out which party he'd be voting for, but I didn't ask him. However, Turks have no qualms about asking each other such questions, not even about how much money they earn. Kasım Bey kept complaining about the difficulties of managing on his low public-sector wages. It was clearly a preamble leading up to a request for a bribe. Finally, he named a sum, saying that it wouldn't be just for himself, but that he had to distribute it to others who would see the job got done. They would share it. Meanwhile, I was converting the sum he had named into euros. It wasn't unreasonable. He wanted three
hundred euros, twice the amount of the increase demanded by my landlady. So little. So cheap. I was going to pay it anyway, whatever the figure, because it would give me the chance to buy a property and escape the tyrannies of landladies for good. If it didn't work out, it would merely be a gamble that didn't pay off.

I went to draw some money out of the bank, and Kasım Bey waited for me at the tea garden. He had with him a list of four addresses in the Kuledibi area that were about to be turned over to the Treasury.

“The court case is still ongoing,” he said. “When it's over, they'll be put up for sale. Have a look at them, miss, and we'll go for whichever one you like best.”

 

Before returning home, I called in at the Cactus Café, where I collapsed onto a bar-stool by the door like some lonely old tramp and ate a Mediterranean salad. It was my favourite salad, almost an antidepressant in itself – soothing for the nerves.

But, like all small pleasures, the pleasure of a Mediterranean salad didn't last for long.

I'd been better off when I was single, without Selim, before he had even entered my life. I had hope then. I had that secret hope of starting a relationship that would last for ever. I also had a few dates. I certainly wasn't like this, torn to pieces and suffering like a wounded animal.

I pressed my hand against my ribcage as if I were in physical pain. Was it possible for a wounded heart to have physical manifestations? Had I forgotten all about the scars of my long singleton days? Had I forgotten how a single word could reverberate in one's head? Over and over, like a stuck record. I opened my mouth wide and let out a silent scream. As I did when I was a child. Like the screams I used to make in my room under the bedclothes.

Why did that quarrel seem so important? It wasn't even a proper row.

I shan't drone on about how I passed that night. I was brought up to believe that people should work through their crises on their own and never show defeat. It was a stupid petit bourgeois mentality, but it had been drummed into me. Or maybe being petit bourgeois was genetic and had nothing to do with nurture.

 

I felt quite good in the morning, which was a surprise. Life is full of surprises! Isn't it surprising that people can't even predict their waking mood? I felt as if I'd just spent years with shaven-headed priests in a Buddhist monastery where spiders were spinning webs over the monastery doors. I felt as if I was flying, as if I weighed no more than seventeen kilos. However, I pulled myself together, or at least most of myself.

I dressed colourfully in a green blouse that revealed a bit of cleavage, a sand-coloured skirt with a slit at the back and red slingbacks with ridiculous heels. I looked like a girl on the make again, but this time with orange hair. I felt the orange hair gave me more chance of finding a man to grow old with.

 

As soon as I left the house, I realized I wasn't quite together enough. It was obvious, because I could hardly keep myself upright.

 

I felt blood oozing down my legs as I walked towards my car. Warm and sticky. Alarmed, I felt my legs with my hand. It was just sweat. Sweat! A physical reaction to mental or emotional suffering. Whenever I was in that sort of state, I would feel as if some part of me was starting to bleed, but of course it never did.

 

I got into the car and put my foot down on the accelerator. There were four addresses to find. I needed to keep focused on apartments. I could do it. One of the addresses Kasım Bey
had given me the previous day might turn out to be my future home. If I didn't like any of them, my money wouldn't be wasted of course, because he would keep finding others for me until I found one I liked.

“We're not conmen, miss,” he had said with sincerity. Should one believe the assurances of a civil servant who accepts bribes? The truth is I didn't know. Paying bribes wasn't a daily occurrence in my life. I had no occasion to do it. Why would the owner of a little bookstore need to bribe anyone?

Contrary to expectation, my stomach had not heaved as I handed over the bribe money. I hadn't felt any self-disgust when I gave the wad of money to Kasım Bey. Many of my acquaintances paid bribes – maybe that was the reason.

Selim!

With superhuman effort, I stopped myself from letting my thoughts get locked around that name. I needed to find an apartment to keep my mind focused. An apartment that would mean using up all my savings, selling my car, getting loans from my mother and brother. Yes, an apartment.

Look at me. Had I even thought of buying an apartment until a few days ago? Hadn't I been looking for a place to rent? How quickly I'd warmed to the idea of buying property, stacking up debts all over the place and putting down roots in this city.

I was in no mood to get stressed about finding a free parking place, so I decided to pay up and leave my car in a little car park close to my favourite tea garden in Kuledibi. From there, I went on foot to find the addresses. The first two buildings looked very disappointing from the outside. But the first was better than the second. It was a detached, narrow-fronted house, probably with a garden at the back. I'm talking about a proper house, not an apartment block. A family with countless children was living in it, which would mean having to force them out if I were to buy it.

The third address was just behind the second, in Papağan Street, one of the streets that opened onto Kuledibi Square. I'd passed it countless times, not just the street but this very building, and each time I'd gazed longingly at it. How come I hadn't realized that one of the addresses on Kasım Bey's list belonged to this building?