I Cannot Get You Close Enough (8 page)

“No,” he said. “Don't make copies. Only read, please.” He took the money and stood very near to me while I opened the envelope and took out a sheet of paper and read.

Sheila had come into the country in 1979 and left ten months later on British World Airlines bound for Switzerland. Three months before she ended up in Amalie Archer's flat in London and seven months before she started trying to get Jessie away from Daniel. Later I learned that she had checked into a spa near Lake Lucerne as soon as she arrived in Switzerland. I could understand that. One day in Istanbul and I was ready for a cure. There is really no describing it.

She had listed her address in Istanbul as 15 Mutlu Sokak, meaning Luck Street, in the Bursa district of the city. The embassy directed me to a stand where English-speaking drivers could be obtained for extra lira and I hired a car with one such driver and directed him to take me to Mutlu Sokak. We drove down littered streets past beggars and street vendors and hollow-eyed children. We drove for forty minutes at a snail's pace and then for forty more and came at last to a building on a corner with apartments above a plumber's shop and a small market. I had told the driver I would pay him eight hundred lira if he found the place I wanted. Now I offered him eight hundred more. “The embassy knows you are with me. They are keeping much money for me to give you when I return safely. The money I have with me is for buying information. You must help me get this information. Do you understand this? Will you help me?”

“Yes, gladly,” he said. Then he laughed. “Who do you wish me to kill?”

We laughed together and my unease lifted. I decided he had decided not to rob me. We got out of the car and went together into the plumbing shop. Two men were standing beside a counter. An old man and a younger one. “Does the family of Makarios live here?” I asked, and the driver translated. The men looked at each other. Finally, the older one answered.

“What do you want with them?”

“I wish to find an American, who was here. A small blond American. I will pay much lira for news of her. To know where she has gone.”

“Does she owe you money?”

“No, her mother wishes to find her.”

The men looked at each other. “How much lira?” the younger one said in English.

“Very much,” I said. “If you tell me anything about her. Five hundred thousand.”

“Seven hundred,” the young man said.

“Yes,” said the father. “Seven hundred.”

“Done,” said I. Some children were playing outside the door. Three small dark girls and a taller boy. They were pulling a wagon. A fifth child was in the wagon. A very small thin boy with blond hair. His hair was uncombed and his clothes were rags. He was staring blandly at me. He was like a rag doll, a strange little creature. Perhaps hydrocephalic. Perhaps an albino. No, it was not albino hair. It was blond hair. Sheila. Sheila's son? My God, that thing is Jessie's brother. I looked at the baby, then looked away. I was trying to hide my excitement but the men had seen it. “It is her baby,” they said. “She left it here.” They looked right at me. The interpreter interpreted. “The grandmother cares for it,” he added. I reached into my bag to bring out lira. I was trembling.

“Tell me,” I said. “Tell them to tell me everything they know. They can have all the lira I have. A lot of lira.”

The men spoke for a few minutes, then the younger man went to the back of the shop and up the stairs. The children stood in the doorway. The blond child in the wagon had not moved or changed his expression. His head hung down on his neck. It was out of kilter, out of sync. My breath was short. I turned to the driver.

“There will be two million lira for you if you help me and get me safely back to the embassy,” I said. “Two million lira to stand by me.”

“You are safe,” he answered. “You are not in danger here.”

None of this is true, I told myself. This is some terrible coincidence. This child could come from anywhere. I am dreaming this is true, wishing this is true. No one from Charlotte could be mixed up with this child. I'm a grown woman. I write books. I fly on airplanes. I believe in man, I love my fellowman. It's too easy. It could not be true. Why would I want something horrible to be true? Bad karma, for me, for Jessie, for Daniel. Pity, Anna, please pity these people, please love this child.

A woman came down the stairs and walked toward us. An old woman of sixty or seventy. She swept past me and picked up the child and held him in her arms. He lay his head down into the hollow of her shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her neck. My breath came back. The woman stood before me. She began to talk very excitedly, directing her remarks to the interpreter.

“She says the child belongs to her,” he said. “She says you have no right to come here. That you must not speak to the child. She says your friend deserted the child and now it belongs to her. She says the child belongs to her son, Zeno. She is the child's grandmother. She wants you to leave now. She says we must leave the neighborhood.”

I held out my hands in a gesture of conciliation. “Tell her the child is nothing to me. Say I am not a friend of the mother's. I seek information to save another child the woman deserted. Say this is not the first child this woman has abandoned.”

The interpreter talked to the woman. She was stroking the little boy, her hand went up and down the child's head and spine, the old hand caressed the child and the child lay limp against her body. She listened and nodded her head. I held out a bundle of lira and she looked at it but made no move to touch it.

“Tell her it is for the child, to help with the child. Tell her to take the money, that we will never come and bother her again. Tell her I am going away and forget the name of this street.”

The interpreter talked to the woman. The men listened. The grandmother nodded and the interpreter handed the lira to her. I reached in my purse and took out the gold coins. There were ten of them. I gave one each to the men and the rest to the woman. “I wish all the information you have about this woman when she was here,” I said, and the interpreter repeated it for them. “If anyone remembers anything about her come to my hotel, the Hotel Ambassador, and I will give them more gold coins for information.
Many
lira.”

The woman continued to stroke the child. She put the coins and bills in a pocket of her apron. The men moved back, they watched her. Finally, she spoke to the interpreter. “She wants you to leave now,” he said. “It would be best for us to leave.” I nodded and smiled at the woman. I put everything I knew of kindness into that smile, everything I knew of understanding. She only looked at me and continued to stroke the child. He lifted his head and looked into her face. He raised his hands and put them into the hollows of her cheeks. He moved his face very close to hers. I thought of all I did not know and could not bear to know. I was ashamed of being there. I wanted to give them the rest of the money but I was ashamed of that too. The woman held the child. The men began to talk among themselves. I got into the taxi, in the front seat beside the driver, and we drove away. I could not look out the windows on our ride back to the hotel. I took off my glasses so I could not see the edges. I was ashamed of everything, the poverty and terror of the world. I should have let Niall come with me, I decided. I should not have come to this place alone. If someone had been with me there would be a witness. I could go back to the hotel and talk it over.

When I got to my room I spent an hour trying to call Daniel but never succeeded in getting a call through. Finally I fell asleep propped up on the pillows of the bed. I dreamed I was in a prison break. We had taken the building. Daniel and Niall and James and I. My brothers and I and a building full of men in prison uniforms. Some of them were men I had known, friends and lovers. At first it seemed a grand thing to do, to take the tall gray buildings and hold them with guns. Then Niall began to shoot our prisoners, then Daniel shot someone. Don't shoot anyone, I kept saying. Don't use the guns. We were on a subway. The prison was a subway. Soon the doors would open and the guards would come and take us to the courts.

When I woke the phone was ringing. It was Daniel. The operator had finally gotten the call through. “What's going on?” he said. “You shouldn't be in Turkey all alone. I'm coming there. Mother will take care of Jessie. I'm coming tonight.”

“What time is it there?”

“It's twelve noon. I'm at the office. I'll find mother and get on a plane. What are you doing?”

“I found out where she's been, Daniel. I just need proof of what happened here. Don't come. It's all right. If I need you I'll call you back. Give me a day. Call me tomorrow night, noon there.”

“What did you find?”

“She had a baby and left it here. I thought at first it was deformed. Now I'm not sure. Maybe it was only dirty.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Don't leave Jessie in that town with her and don't drink until I get there. If you want to help me, promise you won't drink.”

“What's that got to do with it?”

“At this point, everything. Will you promise?”

“I'm not drinking any more than I always do. You're nuts on that subject. Jessie's got a recital tonight, by the way. I'll tell her you called.”

“Send her some flowers for me. Not an arrangement. Roses or lilies, will you do that? Call Bobbie and tell him I said cut flowers and tell him what they're for. Not an arrangement.”

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine. Call me tomorrow. I'm hanging up.” We said goodbye and I hung up. I regretted telling him not to come but if I had to wait for him it might take me days to get out of this godforsaken city.

 

I ate alone in the hotel dining room that night. There were other Americans at a table in the corner and I wanted to speak to them but I could not. I have a terrible shyness around strangers in foreign countries. My life has been so complicated. I always feel I'll end up answering questions about my life. I loved a man once who could talk to anyone, anywhere, strike up conversations on planes or boats, and I grew lonely for him, wishing he were there.

If Francis had been with me he would have gone over to that table and introduced himself and told our problems to those people. They would have gone to work to help us solve them, delighted, as people always are, to lose themselves in someone else's stories.

After dinner I went up to bed and turned off the lights and fell asleep. Sometime in the night the phone rang and I picked it up and heard a man's voice. “Is this Mrs. Hand?” the voice asked. “Yes? Do not leave the hotel. Someone has information for you. If you stay there. If you do not leave.” Then he hung up.

When I woke in the morning I thought I must have been dreaming again and I called the concierge to see if there had been a call for me in the middle of the night. He seemed to think it was a question that did not deserve an answer.

I dressed and paced around the room and read everything I had with me. A book of Annie Dilliard's I had read a dozen times and an old
Time
magazine and all my airplane ticket receipts. I wanted to call Daniel back or Adrian or Celestine or Mic or anyone at all, just to talk, just to be in touch with some reality outside the life of Istanbul, but I was afraid to tie up the phone line. So I waited. I made notes on a yellow legal pad and read every word of the
Time
magazine, including the masthead and the ads. Then I lay down on the bed and pretended to be meditating.

At one o'clock the phone rang. “A boy is waiting for you,” the concierge said. “He said to come to the lobby.” I ran out of the room, forgetting my pocketbook, then went back in and got it, and ran down the stairs, too excited to wait for an elevator.

He was standing by the desk. A boy about sixteen years old, in a white shirt and black pants. “I come from Mutlu Sokak Street,” he said. “My father has papers that you want. Papers of your sister. How much will you pay for them?”

“How much does he want?”

“Two million lira. You give me the money and I will bring the papers here.”

“No. I have to see the papers first.”

“Okay then,” he said. “No deal.”

“Oh, no, I'll give you some. But not all until I have them.” He leaned back against the desk. The clerks were listening.

“No, you have to give me all.”

“I can't do that. How do I know there are papers?” I held out fifty or sixty dollars and the lira that I had in my purse. “Here, take this. Then bring me the papers and you can have the rest.” He took the money, looked it over, put it into his pocket, then shook his head. “I don't think my father will like this. I will see.” He turned away. The clerks behind the desk pretended to be busy. Then he was gone.

“He may come back,” one of the clerks said. “You should wait for him.”

 

It was two more days before he returned. I bought all the English magazines in town and sat in my room drinking Cokes and reading them. Wandering out every now and then into the city. It did not get any better. I could not learn to love it.

Late in the morning of the third day the boy reappeared. The concierge called me and I went down to the lobby with all the money I had left stuffed in the pockets of a linen jacket. The boy was waiting, with a small packet of letters in his hand. They were tied together with package string.

“Two million lira,” he said. He held them out.

“I already paid you part of it.”

“Two million. I have to make another trip in taxicab.”

I gave up. I reached in my pocket and brought out the lira and counted them out. I handed them to him. He folded the notes into his wallet. “My father said not to come to our house again,” he said. “It would be bad luck to come to Mutlu Sokak Street.” Then he bowed to me and handed me the letters. A lovely ancient impressionistic bow. Then he turned and left the lobby.