Authors: Ian Mcdonald

The Dervish House (65 page)

BOOK: The Dervish House

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Georgios Ferentinou drags Can towards the line of army vehicles. The woman walks up to the soldiers. She smiles and raises her hands to the necklace at her throat. She looks startled. The soldier taps his gauntlet. Then the other soldiers seize her, wrestle her to the ground, tear off the necklace and cuff her.

‘Help me!’ Georgios Ferentinou shouts. He is at the end of his strength. Orange-armoured troopers break from cover. Two take Can, one helps Georgios back behind the lines.

‘He needs an ambulance. It’s his heart!’ Georgios shouts. He can just hear approaching sirens over the helicopter din.

‘We’ll look after him,’ says the soldier who helped Georgios. The soldier raises his hands, releases seals and takes off his nanohazard helmet. It takes Georgios a moment to recognize the face for he last saw it in circumstances so different that the incongruity beggars understanding. It is Major Oktay Eğilmez and Georgios last saw him on the deck of the Kadiköy ferry.

‘It’s as well somebody paid attention to you, Professor Ferentinou.’

‘The boy . . .’

‘We’ll look after him. Medic.’ A soldier in orange, his helmet off, looks up from cleaning Necdet’s bloody hands. ‘When you’ve finished, please check over Professor Ferentinou. Our tip off was accurate, it was gas. We just never thought it would be nanotechnology delivered through the supply system.’

‘Who are they?’

‘We’ve no idea. They’re not on any of our watch lists. We’re making their equipment safe now. They’re a technologically sophisticated crew, and that alarms us. We have one prisoner, that’s all we need.’

The ambulance has arrived. Blue lights pulse. Georgios watches the paramedics roll Can on to a gurney and load him into the back of the vehicle.

‘I need to go with him’

‘As soon as we’ve checked you out, we’ll get the police to run you down.’ Major Eğilmez removes a glove. ‘I’ll be glad to be out of this thing, I’m telling you. Thank you, Professor Ferentinou.’ He offers his hand. Georgios, still dazed, soldiers and vehicles and helicopters and casualties whirling around him, accepts it. ‘Well done.’

Major Eğilmez bows briefly to Georgios and goes to talk with Şekure Durukan. Soldiers help her into the back of the ambulance and close it up. Sirens wail briefly, the ambulance moves off. Soldiers zip the bodies into bags. The police unwrap incident tape and corral refugees. Radio crackle. People mill. Mustafa sits on the kerb with Necdet, one arm around him, the other holding his hand like an old, true friend. Georgios stands alone. The helicopters lift from their stations in beautiful synchrony, bow to each other and peel off across Kayişdaği.

A ceptep is calling.

Leyla Gültaşli pulls the pillow over her head. It has a cool side. For the first time in weeks, the pillow has a cool side.

The ceptep is still calling.

Let her enjoy a few more moments of being a goddess.

By the time Ceylan-Besarani’s scattered staff made it by their diverse means to Bakirköy the word had spread and most of the building was in the apartment with fruit punch and beer for the drinkers and sweetmeats. Leyla could hear the music from the street as she swung the Peugeot into its parking space. Party poppers and streamers and a gauntlet of silly string greeted her entrance. The din was of police-summoning levels, had there been anyone left within earshot to complain to them. Uncle Cengiz pumped her hand and pumped her hand and bellowed congratulations she could not hear. Aunt Betül hugged her. Sub-Aunt Kevser hugged her. Cousin Naci, her self-appointed bodyguard, cleared the crowd in the living room to allow Leyla on to the balcony to receive the thanks of Great-Aunt Sezen. The old woman kissed her on each cheek. Then family friends and freeloaders all fell silent as Leyla presented the matriarch with both halves of the Koran. The old woman took them, spoke the Bismillah and put the sundered pieces together.

‘Never let them be disunited again,’ she said. There were tears on her face. Leyla found she was bawling. Cousin Naci was grinning and crying at the same time. Then someone put on the old
arabesk
music, the good kind, the country kind that gets everyone dancing and the girls were up in a line, tops pulled up to bare bellies, nodding and laughing to each other and moving it moving it moving it to the beat, then the boys were up in a line with their arms up and though Uncle Cengiz was like a lump of masonry Cousin Naci was a great mover, light on his feet as big guys so often are. All that taekwondo. They beckoned Aso, he shook his head - no no no nanotechnologists don’t dance - but again they beckoned come on come on come on get up and this time he did and watched their feet to get the steps. He was a dreadful dancer but Leyla saw his heart in it, and a light in his eyes. Then the girls replied with an old Ibrahim Tatlıses remix and Aso cried that he knew this one, he grew up to this one, his mother sang this one around the house and he stood in front of the line of aunts and sub-aunts and cousins and danced and Leyla thought
That’s for me, isn’t it?
In the midst of the mad dance Leyla noticed her ceptep was calling and she slipped out into the comparative quiet of Great-Aunt Sezen’s balcony. Demre calling. Her mother was proud of her, her father was proud of her, her sisters were all proud of her, all that money hadn’t been wasted. She got teary all over again.

Then Yaşar finally arrived with Zeliha who had made-up and dressed up and turned from office grump into some mad glam vampire and again the party poppers and the silly string and the confetti flew. The uncles and the aunts and the neighbours stayed in the living room dancing around to
arabesk
but the young ones put the sing station on in the main bedroom and Zeliha took the mike and became a smoky-voiced, tortured torch-singer.
Where’s my contract?
Leyla shouted at her but Zeliha was deep in her diva. Two hours later she was still singing. There was no one left in the bedroom but she needed no audience other than herself.

Aso whirled Leyla home through the hour of parties. Taxis and Mercs. Short dresses, coloured shoes. Sharp young men with precision stubble. The hip and the beautiful spinning from club to bar to club.
All Istanbul is celebrating
, Leyla thought.
And Istanbul is mourning, and Istanbul is dreading and Istanbul is hoping. Istanbul is everything
. It was four a.m. when the Peugeot hummed into Adem Dede Square. The air was cool. The silence was immense. Aso could feel the djinn, packed like running fish, waiting, watching, neither good nor evil.

‘You know, I’ve never asked, but where do you live?’ Leyla said.

‘I’ve got an apartment out in Bostancı,’ Aso said. Home, family, significant others. Leyla has never thought of Aso having a life outside nanotech.

‘How’s Yaşar?’

‘He’s staying at the house.’

‘What about Zeliha?’

‘Oh, she’s staying on the folding bed in Aunt Betül’s room. Yaşar’s been poking her for months.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

Aso hesitated to close the car door.

‘Oh, yes, I meant to say.’

‘Yes?’

‘I think we might, you know, keep you on full time.’

A ceptep is calling. Calling and calling and calling. Leyla pulls the pillow around her ears but it won’t shut out the sound. Answer me answer me. She flings the pillow across the room.

‘Yes!’

‘Leyla, it’s Yaşar. Özer Gas and Commodities has gone bankrupt.’

The page is calf vellum, four hundred and fifty-three centimetres by two hundred and twelve, twenty-two millimetre binding margin, verso. The body text is from the Pentateuch, the Book of Ruth, Chapter 4, verses 14-22, a genealogy of King David. The text was written in a fine Ashkenazi hand some time between the late twelve hundreds and the early thirteen hundreds in central France or southern Germany.

The Pentateuch text is set out in a central panel framed by three decorative pillars forming two arches. The space within the pillars is filled with vine decoration, a sinusoidal plant stem sprouting small fan-shaped leaves. The stem on the right column is more richly textured, with a central spine and banding. The head and tail of each stem unfolds into a fantastical beast, matched serpent heads meeting under the Pentateuch text at the bottom, more fabulous creatures altogether at the head. On the left a winged dog-creature crosses a trefoil-ended tongue with that of a winged chimaera of goat and giraffe. The outlines of the beasts, the snakes, the vines and flowers, the pillars and arches and fine detail, are all written in micrography. They are built from lines of minute text, so fine it strains the naked eye. The text is
masorah
, commentary and traditional wisdom customarily written in the margin of the page. The artist here has playfully turned it into decoration. Worlds within worlds.

Ayşe Erkoç looks long at the micrographic panel before hanging it on the wall. It is her favourite piece in the collection, the one from which she would never be parted. She would face fire and weapons for the Ashkenazi micrographic panel. She remembers buying it at an auction with the last of the money from her father’s will. Before the Ashkenazi panel she had only eyes for illustration. After it she walked for months in a world made from words, spelled from letters, a world transcribed from the mind of God on to the receptive surface of the earth.

Ayşe and Hafize have distributed the boxes across the semahane according to the wall space their contents occupied. Ayşe sets the Ashkenazi Pentateuch in its place. Behind it in the box is the Constantinople Golden Canon Table, an early illuminated concordance. The glass is cracked. The Directorate of Antiquities and Museums has no respect for old and beautiful things. Ayşe lifts it, looks long at the beautiful medallion busts of the four evangelists. They are worked in gold. She puts it back in the box.

Adnan is underneath desks hooking up power and wireless.

‘I’m good at doing books too,’ he says. His good jacket is hung over the back of a chair to keep it smart. The briefcase of bearer bonds is laid flat on the seat. ‘Or maybe you need someone to drive a bit of a bargain? All reasonable offers considered. I’ve suddenly made myself unemployed.’

‘You’ve got four million euro. You don’t need a job.’

‘I’ve got four million I need to get rid of quickly, painlessly and easily, before Maliye Bakanlığı and the FRA start sending audit AIs to take a little look at the spending patterns of ex-Özer traders. Who’s made off with the tea fund, awarded themselves a little golden send-off, passed off twenty million euro of cheap Iranian gas as best Baku. Had you thought of expanding the gallery, maybe move it out of this place somewhere a little less like a morgue?’

Ayşe turns on him.

‘It’s finished here,’ she snaps. ‘The damage is done. I always said it’s reputation first, reputation last, reputation always. I just didn’t think that reputation would be mine.’ She goes to the cluster of fine old early Republic era desks at the centre of the dance floor. ‘I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. No, love, Gallery Erkoç is over. I’m going to sell on the stock.’

Hafize looks up from arranging a wall of miniatures no larger than her thumb.

‘You found the Mellified Man,’ Adnan says. ‘That has to count for something. It’s a fucking legend. It’s like the Sword of the Prophet or the Holy Grail.’

‘I got half of Istanbul’s antiquarians arrested. I got my old friend Burak Özekmekçib charged and he may lose his licence and Ahmet and Mehmet looking at six years and a multi-million euro fine, and I walk clean away, without stain or taint to my character. How is that going to look to them? What are they going to think? We can never talk about this. Whenever the name of Ayşe Erkoç is mentioned, it’ll be the name of a traitor. But . . . but . . .’ Ayşe squats on her heel so that she can look Adnan, sprawling on his back, strangely vulnerable like an infant in a cradle, in the eyes. ‘But, despite all that, I tasted the Mellified Man.’

‘How did he taste?’

Ayşe loves in Adnan that he knows when to be serious.

‘Sweet. The sweetest thing. Nothing will ever taste the same after it. I think I understand Barçin Yayla. Nothing in the world could ever look as bright as the secret name of God. There would be colours no one had ever seen before. That’s why he could contemplate burning his eyes out with acid. It would be an act of supplication to God. I don’t believe in God, that option isn’t open to me.’

‘We could get out of Istanbul,’ Adnan says. ‘Just go, start somewhere new. Back to Kaş, I could set up a couple of businesses, maybe an outdoor pursuits centre, mountain bike, hike, kayak, scuba. By the time I’ve paid enough bribes to keep the whole thing quiet, I might get some change from four million.’

‘Darling; sun, sea, me. No. I don’t do outdoors. I do beautiful things, lovely things, rare and precious things. Istanbul is me. I evaporate if I go beyond Bursa.’

Adnan sits up, points TV-presenter pistol-fingers at Ayşe.

‘By the way, that yalı: could we put that on hold for a year or two? The first thing they’ll start looking for are property sales.’

Ayşe sits down on the foot-polished wooden floor of the semahane beside Adnan, bodies touching naturally, intimately.

‘Darling, you can put the yalı on hold permanently. It was you wanted it. I never liked it.’

BOOK: The Dervish House

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