Enlightenment (23 page)
Authors: Maureen Freely
‘If you’re alluding to my article,’ Jeannie said. ‘Let me take this opportunity to apologise.’
‘For what, pray tell?’
‘For writing it. For driving you to it in the first place!’
‘Driving me to what, dear girl?’
‘Oh Suna. Stop it. You know as well as I do that I was the one who planted the idea in your head. You all adored him! You would never have suspected him in a million years! If I hadn’t stood up to Dutch Harding…
At the mention of Dutch Harding’s name, Lüset’s eyes bulged. ‘Suna! We must go!’ But Suna was busy lighting herself a new cigarette.
‘Who sent you here?’
‘As I said, I’m here to make it up to you. For years, I’ve agonised…’
‘Ah. How tragic. As you sat cracking your knuckles in the creature comforts of Harvard, you agonised.’ Suna’s voice was growing stronger now.
‘I’m sorry. I know there’s no comparison.’
‘So. How exactly are you hoping to help us?’
‘As I said, I’m a lawyer. I don’t work for Amnesty International but I…’
‘But let me guess,’ Suna said. ‘You are sympathetic to their aims, and you are here to observe a certain trial.’ She lit a cigarette and allowed the smoke to come out through her nostrils in the way Jeannie remembered so well. ‘Your father must be roasting in his own juices. Does he know that you’re here?’
‘He’s learned by now that he can’t tell me what to think or what to do.’
‘And what
do
you think?’ Suna asked. She leaned against the bar, languidly, as if to say she had all day. But as she surveyed the room, she saw something that made her stop short.
Following her gaze, Jeannie saw Jordan. He was in the corner, talking to a man, punctuating an important point with his cigarette. By the time she turned around again, Suna and Lüset were gone.
‘I did not think to ask myself what they were running away from, or why, when I turned back to find Jordan, he, too, had disappeared. Instead I sat there waiting stupidly for my shoe. And – just as stupidly – giving my shoe as an alibi to any man who approached me. When it was at last returned to me, one band of rejected suitors stood up to clap.
Back at the hotel, I couldn’t sleep. Just after two, there was a knock on the door. It was Jordan. Head bowed, stinking of smoke and whiskey. Blood all over his shirt. I cleaned it up as best I could and laid him out on one twin bed and put myself in the other.
When I woke up, at about eight, it was to the sound of the shower. A few minutes later, he came out of the bathroom, clear-eyed, chastened, and wrapped in a thick white towel. He padded across the room and sat down on my bed. “I’m so sorry, Jeannie. So very, very sorry.”
He was sorry because he’d not told me the whole truth. He now proposed to do so. He was not just here for the trial, he informed me. He was here to find out who killed Dutch Harding. According to that little bird of his, the number one suspect was back in town. He was a Soviet agent, a consular official with whom Dutch had had “dealings”. I stupidly offered up a name. Did he mean Sergei? “So Sinan knew him, too?” Jordan asked. I said everyone knew Sergei. “Even my father.” This last remark elicited a contemptuous snort.
When I asked why Sergei was the number one suspect, he fell silent. “I’ll know more after tonight,” he said finally. “If you want, you
can come along. We’re meeting in that discotheque across the street. But first it’s back to our old hunting grounds. There’s something I need to check out.”
By eleven, they were in a taxi, rolling down the hill to Dolmabahçe Palace. By half past, they were rounding Akıntıburnu and coming into Bebek. There was a strong north wind blowing in from the Black Sea. The Bosphorus was the same steel grey as the billowing clouds. Bebek was cold and damp. Most of the shops had changed hands but Jeannie could still make out Yalter’s Bookshop and Haldun’s Delicatessen and Mini Dondurma, the hole-in-the-wall ice cream shop.
The sun broke through as they climbed the stairs to look once more at Dutch Harding’s old apartment. It went back behind the clouds as they left Bebek to stare dumbfounded at the apartment building that stood where Nazmi’s should have been. They continued along the shore to what had once been Robert College and had now become Boğaziçi Üniversitesi, or the University of the Bosphorus. They walked up the Twisty Turny to the campus. The sky was clear above the terrace. The Bosphorus was bright turquoise; the castle and the houses on the Asian shore tinged with gold. But the wind was still harsh so they did not linger.
They made their way down the white walk to the cobblestone road to the
meydan
. There was the Pasha’s Library, or rather, there was the garden wall and the green metal gate with its little redbrick turrets. All they could see beyond it were the treetops. After a few minutes on the marble bench below the big plane tree, they walked up the alleyway to Chloe’s old house. It was now part of the International Community School. The janitor pointed them up the path to Damon House. They would, he said, find a Mrs Cabot in the ground floor apartment.
Amy Cabot answered the door the moment they rang the bell. She was fully made up, perfectly coiffed, and wearing a white lace blouse with a long floral skirt. The ready smile on her face and the smell of roasting meat told them that she was expecting guests. ‘Oh!’ she said. She put her hand to her mouth as her eyes travelled between them. But when Jeannie told her who she was, she said, ‘Yes, of course! But
goodness! What perfect timing!’
Though Jeannie had never been in this house before, she recognised every piece of furniture in the sitting room, every painting, photograph, carpet and copper tray. Amy, too, was not changed so much as artfully rearranged.
‘So tell me,’ she said in her hard, bright voice. ‘What brings you back?’
Jordan said, ‘Jeannie is helping me out with a piece.’
‘A piece of what?’ Amy asked.
‘I’m a journalist.’
‘What name do you write under?’
‘My real name,’ he said. ‘Jordan Frick.’
‘Oh! You wrote that wonderful thing for the
New Yorker
on El Salvador.’
‘Yes,’ said Jordan. ‘Now I’m hoping to do something similar on Turkey.’
‘Aha,’ said Amy. ‘How interesting. So tell me. Is this your first visit?’
‘No, actually, I was here for a few years about ten years ago,’ Jordan said. ‘In fact, we met. At Jeannie’s father’s house?’ She shook her head.
‘It’s nice to be back, anyway,’ he said.
‘Well, that’s really saying something, considering why you’re here!’ She swept off into the kitchen to fetch their drinks. There was someone else in there. Jeannie could hear muffled voices. A door opened, then it closed. There was the creaking of floorboards, and then footsteps on stairs. Jordan stood up and moved towards the door, but before he got there, the doorbell rang.
Within minutes, the room was full. Most of the guests seemed to be neighbours. They greeted each other like family but their eyes lit up when they saw newcomers. Upon being introduced, the flame died. ‘Good God!’ they said. ‘Gosh!’ ‘Gracious!’ Or ‘Yes. I read your article.’ Then silence.
When Amy asked if they remembered Jordan, they shook their heads. ‘So! What brings you back?’ Most backed away when he told them. Only two made an effort. One was a man named Thomas Ashe
whom Jeannie thought might have been a friend of her father’s and the other was Meredith Lacey, whom Jeannie remembered better, because she’d taught at the Girls’ College. Both claimed to be glad that Jordan was planning to write ‘the truth about Turkey’, though they were quick to add that most Turks were glad the military had at last stepped in. ‘Things were very bad by the time they did,’ Thomas told us. ‘Bus hijackings and drive-by shootings were everyday occurrences. If there was a clash between rightists and leftists, and people died, that was just a normal day. I myself got caught in the middle of a riot downtown the year before and was shot in the leg…’
Turning to Meredith, Jeannie asked if she remembered Suna.
‘Of course. I used to teach her.’
‘Are you still in touch?’
‘Not really, only now and again. Now that she’s…’ Here Meredith paused. ‘Of course, you must know all this. If you work for Amnesty, you must know her file backwards and forwards.’
‘I don’t work for Amnesty,’ Jeannie said.
‘And Amnesty doesn’t have a file on Suna,’ Jordan said. They never adopt people who’ve advocated violence. Which – once upon a time – she did.’
‘Yes,’ said Meredith. ‘Well, of course, you’re right.’ She glanced over her shoulder at the staircase that led downstairs.
Here they were interrupted by a firmly smiling Amy. ‘So tell me, Jeannie. How is your father?’ Jeannie brought her up to date without mentioning the Vietnamese housekeeper. She then asked about Chloe, about whom she had heard nothing since 1972. She’d had a hard time of it for a while, Amy announced chirpily. But now she was having a whale of a time in Venice, California. Having finally discovered her ‘calling in life’, she was now ‘seriously considering’ applying to medical school.
By now people had started leaving. When Jordan made to go downstairs to fetch their coats, both Amy and Meredith jumped up and pushed in front of him. They bounded back wearing crocodile smiles and bubbling with questions. Where were Jeannie and Jordan staying? How long were they in town? Did they have a free evening? ‘You must let us know,’ Amy said.
Jordan’s first words after she closed the front door on them was, ‘Fuck.’
He bounded ahead, head bowed, his hands in his pockets. He stopped at the plane tree in the
meydan
. ‘He’s in that house. I swear. He’s there.’
‘Who? Sergei?’
He threw his cigarette onto the cobblestones. ‘We’re going to have to go back.’
‘And say what – that we changed our minds?’
‘No, of course not. We have to have a genuine reason. As it happens, we have one. Because you forgot something. Didn’t you?’
‘Did I?’
‘I seem to recall that your father asked you to pick up some sort of box.’
‘And perhaps I really am my father’s daughter. Because the moment he said that, the dots connected. I saw what a fool I’d been. Who Jordan was, what he was really here for, why he’d brought me with him. I saw all this and, daughter that I was, I was damned if I was going to let him know.’
‘Oh, yes, the box,’ she said, ‘Gosh, I’d completely forgotten. To tell you the truth, I’d even forgotten I’d mentioned it to you.’
‘Actually, you didn’t.’
‘Then how do you know?’
‘Let’s put it this way. I am in touch with someone who is in touch with your father.’
‘Oh really? Who?’
‘I’m sorry if this sounds bad. It’s just that when you made your sudden offer…’
‘So what – you did a check on me? You spoke to my boyfriend?’
‘Actually, it wasn’t Mike,’ he said.
‘But you know who Mike is.’
‘Let’s get this over with, okay?’
So off they went, up the hill again. Amy looked very surprised when she opened the door. ‘A box?’ she said. ‘In my basement? No, I
don’t think so. But you’re welcome to take a look.’
‘I’ll do that, if you don’t mind,’ said Jordan. Jeannie waited at the door until their voices were too faint to follow. Then, very softly, she let herself out.
The Pasha’s Library was dark and the light was fading fast by the time she remembered where the wall was lowest. Though the drop was greater than she expected – for where she landed, someone had been digging. She climbed out of the trench and crept over to the gate. She had not been keeping watch long when Jordan appeared in the
meydan
.
‘He was not carrying a box. The slump of his shoulders told me that he’d not found Sergei either. But something about the way he moved told me he knew I was close by. Perhaps he could smell me.
A black Mercedes pulled up.
“Are you the Harkers?” Jordan asked.
They were sceptical until he introduced himself. “Good gracious,” said Mrs Harker. “What brings you to Rumeli Hisar?” He explained that he was an “old associate” of William Wakefield. “Goodness, that
is
a blast from the past! We knew him in Manila. How is he?”
“Living in Missouri,” said Jordan. “Actually, that’s why he asked me to drop by. There’s a box of records that got left behind, and he…”
“Gloria? Does that ring any bells?”
“Gee. I don’t know. Maybe you should come in and take a look.”
I was, I imagine, fully visible from the path. But that is the thing about that path. No one ever looks to either side.
They paused to admire the view before entering the house. I had no choice but to follow suit. When they turned their heads to the right, so did I.
They were looking at the wall, just where I’d climbed over it.
They were looking at the hole someone had dug in the ground just underneath it.’
The road down to the shore was steeper than she remembered. Or maybe it was her unsuitable shoes. They were covered in mud. They kept slipping on the uneven cobblestones but her terror pushed her forward like the wind. Her mind had room for one idea. She hailed
the first taxi and asked to go to the airport, but when she’d caught her breath enough to look into her bag, she saw that her passport and her ticket weren’t there.
Did Jordan have them, or had she left them in her room? When she got to the hotel and asked the man behind the desk for her key, he smiled and shook his head. ‘I have just given it to your friend.’
For lack of a better idea she went across to the Divan Hotel. Her first stop was the bathroom, where she tried to make herself presentable. The looks she got from the waiters in the pastry shop told her how dismally she’d failed.
She called for the bill. She still had no idea where to go. She walked down Cumhuriyet Caddesi in the direction of Nişantaşı. The wind was colder and stronger and laced with rain. The pavements were deserted and every other minute a car slowed down and a man would stick his head out of the window to make her an offer. Heading back up Cumhuriyet Caddesi in the direction of Taksim, she found a film theatre and went inside.
It was a Charles Bronson movie; she was the only unaccompanied woman in the audience. When various unkempt loners made themselves know to her, she returned to Cumhuriyet Caddesi and its honking cars. Passing a door with a bouncer, she recognised the discotheque where Jordan would be meeting his little bird that evening. If she waited till he arrived…
She took a seat in what seemed to be the darkest alcove, right next to the door. The place was empty, but after eleven, people began to filter in, and it was easier then to tame her swirling thoughts. She was grateful for the shadows and the distorting strobe lights, for Grace Jones and the disco queens, but as midnight came and went she began to ask herself why she was here.
By 1 am she had convinced herself that she had nothing to fear from Jordan. For it wasn’t Jordan who turned her stomach. It was her father’s shadow behind him. It was her own stupidity. By half past one, she had found her courage. She would go back to the hotel and confront him. Find out why he of all people was trying to dig up bodies, and who the hell he was trying to frame.
She searched the shadows for a waiter. And there he was.
