Songs My Mother Never Taught Me (11 page)

I was sure that the swaggering Baybora would hand over his final payment with the words, ‘Has it ever occured to you how many thousand girls you could pull in for sex with this money?' (Yours truly sent one third of his earnings to the Society for the Protection of Historic Works in Üsküdar.)

For the first time in my life I set off on a very long journey. I took in Master Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar's favourite cities (Ankara, Bursa, Konya and Erzurum) and, tipped off by Ibn Battuta, I included historic Alanya. When I returned I felt as if I'd made a pilgrimage to Mecca before dying.

At the conclusion of our meetings in the lonely parks, Baybora would expect me to leave first so it would be impossible for me to follow him. But for this last commission I brought along the driver, Hozatlı Veli, as my assistant. I had rescued him from three religious fanatics who attacked him for smoking during Ramadan. Cross-eyed Veli, lurking in the shade, followed Baybora to his headquarters in Üsküdar's Fıstıkağacı district, and from the meeting-places Baybora chose I guessed he lived on the Anatolian side. I decided to set up base in Müneccimbaşı Street, which had no Ottoman legacy and was luckily not frequented by wealthy people dressed up as dandies or thieves. While we have so many splendid streets with forgotten names, I was pained to see neighbouring streets named ‘Yapma Bebek' (Baby Doll) or ‘Su Deposu' (Water Depot).

I knew I would dislike Baybora's house. The façade looked as though it hadn't seen a coat of paint since it was built and in the claustrophobic courtyard a stunted cedar tree and an old car passed the time together in harmony. Once I learned his real name I didn't think I'd need to inspect his life closely. While Veli and his gaudy taxi were on the lookout on the hill next to Nimet Doughhouse, I was remembering how my mother had never managed to fry the meat pasties to the right consistency. I ordered Veli to get out of his car and called Baybora on my mobile.

‘What's up, chief, were we partying in your dreams, or what?' he said.

‘A guy called Tufan rang me on this phone and asked me to join a new gang they're setting up. They'll pay a transfer fee of $500,000 and thirty per cent higher wages. Perhaps you've had wind of this?'

‘I hope you can hear yourself. So what did you say, Bedirhan?'

‘I didn't have to say anything. He said he'd call in forty-eight hours to get my answer. He spoke as if your gang was breaking up anyway.'

‘And where are you now, my brave friend?'

‘At home.'

‘Take care – don't move. We'll meet up in three hours at the latest.'

I knew he would immediately pass on my mischief-making message to the Executioner and that it would explode before him like a hand grenade. My aim was to make Baybora suspicious of his boss. We crossed to the European side, pursuing the grey Audi that Baybora mistreated like a poor old mule. Climbing the outskirts we reached the hills of Arnavutköy. He parked his vehicle on Beyazgül Street sloping down to the Bosphorus under a banner headed, ‘Third Suspension Bridge: Hayır, No, Nein, Non.' I laughed at his comical hopping walk and thought he might roll over. I sent Veli off and tailed Baybora.

I felt at home in the quiet street, as charming as market-places in the old Turkish films of the sixties, recalling a time long gone when life was relaxed and unhurried. Among the competing shop signs, the kebab shops clearly won the day. But as I approached the shore the Anatolian character of the market diminished, and it angered me to see a man from the Black Sea swaggering into the bakery.

Baybora turned right into the deserted Dubaracı Street, which was more beautiful than a dream. A narrow lane led uphill and was embellished with tall, well-kept timber houses, their balconies overhanging the street. I shivered in the name of my unresolved loneliness. The climb came to an end when I reached the turquoise-painted narrow façade of a tiny mansion. Baybora looked around, then leant on the doorbell. He entered, pushing aside the sturdy woman in an apron who opened the door. (I had four candidates in mind as Executioner.) Respectfully checking the Walther XIV hidden in my parka, I gave myself ten minutes to plan a raid on the mansion. Then the main door flew open, and a maid in her burgundy coat ran towards the side street. Did the Executioner prefer to meet his assistant alone? I approached and settled down to wait until the door opened and I could jump in. A little later, when I had raped the tired old lock with a pick, as Baybora would have put it, I found myself in a spacious living room. Baybora's angry voice penetrated a crack in the half-glazed door and as I approached I pricked up my ears.

‘Faking or not, for the last five years I've been telling you to get rid of this half-wit. Just give me the word and I'll take out this melancholic faggot ...' I could hardly wait till he finished his sentence. I plunged into the room and fired four bullets into the neck and ugly head of this vile fellow, whose real name I had never known in twelve years. I was astonished to see that the trembling man behind the antique table was Baki Kutay, my old master, the retired colonel and book restorer. He began to sob. I was embarrassed and sat down to wait in the seat Baybora had just vacated.

My finger was still on the trigger as Baki wiped away his tears with the sleeve of his stylish jumper and started to breathe thro

ugh his nose.

‘It's shame that made me cry, Bedirhan, not fear,' he said. ‘Even if you're not curious to know how I ended up like this, I'll tell you anyway. Then you'll put an end to my pain with a single bullet, all right, son?

‘Though they call me “Colonel” I was actually a major when I was thrown out of the army. My wife died of a brain haemorrhage while we were on manoeuvres at sea. They said she would have had a chance if I'd been with her, and when my handicapped daughter, who was very attached to her, fell into a deep depression I gradually began to lose my mind.

‘I was discharged from the army on grounds of unsuitability. No sooner was I free to enjoy rare books and Sufi music than I had news of the death of my naval officer son at sea. I'd always objected to his profession. Now I had to be strong and fight for the well-being of my grandchild. You yourself witnessed how I didn't give up even when my right arm was put out of action. But when I heard that Dalga, whom I'd nurtured so carefully when she was a young schoolgirl, had become the lover of a professor old enough to be her father, I gave up. I kicked her out with her flirt of a mother and took refuge in alcohol. The paedophile professor's wife was a close neighbour to me. Three months later she came to my house sobbing bitterly. She said that now Dalga had started an affair with her husband, we must find a way to at least save her son and my grandchild.

‘She was seething with hate and when she said she was prepared to pay $1 million to free herself from Mürsel forever, I asked for forty-eight hours to think about it.

‘People who are keen on books and materialistic never have any problem finding an excuse. Ada Ergenekon's proposal could be my first and last chance to combat the series of misfortunes that were destroying me. You and Emin, whom you know as Baybora, came to mind. I've always sensed a natural killer in your introverted personality, which may be genetic. Emin was my wife's cousin, may she rest in peace; when he was shot during an operation he couldn't accept minor police duties. He was unreliable and ambitious but while he waited to retire he had made crucial contacts in the underworld and the security forces. While investigating you we heard about the Tarlabaşı raid and our appetite was whetted. With the money I made from shooting the professor, I bought this mansion and Emin set out at once to furnish it properly. Hale committed suicide when she learned of the filthy business I'd got mixed up in, but still we wouldn't come to our senses. Thanks to your mother, I could achieve some of the things I'd been unable to for lack of money. For the last five years, Emin has been warning me to put an end to the business, but if I'd agreed I would have been signing your death warrant too. Believe me, I couldn't do that to you. Besides, I was curious to know where all this would lead.

‘And you turned out to be smarter than we thought, Bedirhan. I've lived a life of ups and downs and I'm exhausted. Today is my seventy-seventh birthday – whatever bullets you've left me as a present, son, I'm ready for them ...'

‘Listen, master,' I said, ‘although I've realized for years that I was being manipulated by one or two smart people, I've never reacted. We staged a play in thirteen acts and I believe I've had the most fun. Last month when I reached my thirty-seventh birthday and failed to celebrate it, I vowed to get to you for the final act. In spite of our forty years' age difference I don't feel any less tired or less guilty than you. There are enough bullets for both of us in this gun I'm putting in front of you. I'm giving you the chance to rid this planet of one or two filthy parasites ...'

He lifted the gun with his left hand and for a while he talked to himself. Did he try to laugh? I knew when I turned round and headed for the door that my master would choose to celebrate his birthday with a single bullet.

It was as though there'd been a blackout on Dubaracı Street. I turned into Beyazgül Street where an old fishmonger was setting up his stand.

‘You've taken care of the parasites, now it's time to settle your own account, Bedirhan,' I said to myself on my way down to the shore. I had the courage to realize that another whirlwind of excitement was heading my way. I was being swept up by the pleasure of fighting a duel with myself.

I was happy when I remembered my meeting with Gürsel Hodja next morning. My first task was to ask him if the word ‘melancholic' was an insult or not. Suddenly I felt as if I hadn't slept for twelve years. I found a taxi, its windshield covered with giant beads against the evil eye. On the protective cloth cover of the driver's seat were the words, ‘O Turkish youth! If you are a Fenerbahçe fan be proud; if not, submit.'

Your humble servant couldn't refrain from laughing, God forgive me!

My father used to be enraged by incompetent waiters who put on airs as if the customers might starve without them, by philistine librarians who couldn't read but did their best to discomfit booklovers, and by garrulous presenters of general-knowledge game shows, puffed up with pride as though they were the last surviving scholars on the planet. As for me, at the moment I can't stand those artificial-looking stewardesses who glide up and down the aisles like reluctant waiters.

The stewardess of the ‘business class' section was presenting the flight security precautions with the usual repulsive mimicry. I watched the pantomime which she had perhaps repeated a thousand times, an object lesson in understanding ‘how someone could be so persistently out of tune'. Although she was chewing gum, I warmed to the plump middle-aged lady in the seat next to me. She was coiled like a spring, ready to jump from her seat at any moment. She had the attractiveness that lies somewhere between beauty and ugliness; with her dark complexion and thick eyebrows, she seemed to be the daughter of a tribal chief from Eastern Turkey. I couldn't ask her if the elderly gentleman passed out on the seat to her right was her husband or not, but I gathered she was a princess descended from the thirty-fifth Ottoman Sultan, Mehmet Reşat. (Her great-great-grandfather's imperial watch is part of our family collection.)

I was anxious to tell my uncle what I had heard from Dalga. I'd missed the iodine-like smell of his claustrophobic attic flat in luxurious Maçka. I wasn't surprised to see Eric Gill's
25 Nudes
on the formica table in his pretentious living room. Uncle Salvador must have satisfied his weekly need for masturbation with the aid of these erotic drawings that were over sixty years old. I had to patiently listen to his observations on the Kangal Balıklı Spa before I could confide in him. He described how the eczema all over his body had been cleaned up in the thermal spring by a crazed school of fish, the largest 10 cm long.

He shook his head in disgust when he heard of the love between Dalga and my father, thankful he had remained a bachelor. Of the possibility that my mother had hired an assassin to kill my father, he said, ‘It's not impossible. Maybe this was why Ada, instead of mourning after my brother-in-law's death, was devoured by feelings of guilt. Arda, if your mother had gone to the doctor as soon as she noticed pain in her chest she wouldn't have died of cancer. She was inflicting a fatal punishment on herself by hiding her illness and didn't want you to guess that that was what she was doing.'

On the verge of a headache, I closed my eyes and held my sweating forehead. (Would anything I heard about my mother ever surprise me?) I had to start searching for my father's killer immediately. It didn't take long before I started to feel bad about concealing my aim from my uncle. Though I remembered that for the first time in my life I had reason to have feelings of self-respect, I was ashamed that my fate was driving me to an act of revenge.