Yasemın Aydinoğlu: Istanbul Noir

“When Yani passed away, I soon lost my ability to deal with all the changes happening around me, the way everything was becoming so dirty, so vulgar. It even kept me from properly mourning the death of my husband. He was an only child. His death marked the death of this home. Your mother used to say, ‘The childless home neither laughs nor cries.’ That’s true. I could no longer feel, not like I used to.

“You were the first to agree to come, you know. They just followed. If you had refused, they wouldn’t have come, either. This meeting hinged on you.”

I remained silent, at a loss for words, and so she continued.

“All three of you came from abroad to meet with Anfi, an old woman already north of seventy-five. The lengths one goes to, to appease such long simmering guilt, right? And now fate beckons. It’s impossible to resist. A most definite rendezvous. You come, and you meet your end.”

“The arrangement in the photograph is a coincidence. That everybody... that everybody except the two of us is dead... it’s your doing...”

“I was the one who gave you the volumes of Les Pardaillan and Fantômas to read. You had the gift of language. Yani didn’t like to read as much as you. You were always good at math too. Your envy of Yani didn’t stem from any lack of yours, it was because you were so self-centered.”

“What about the hands, the hand that placed the glass in that hole, Anfi?”

“If it hadn’t been for the glass, you would’ve come up with something else.”

“That’s terrible, Anfi. We were kids. We’d all have gone our separate ways to college...”

Anfi ran her hand through her hair and sighed again, then she stood up and left the room. I imagined myself making an effort toward the door. But my legs were like putty. I peered helplessly at the corpses on the bed. It was true, Kevork had not changed at all. Over the years, since I’d last seen him, he’d put on perhaps a couple of pounds for each year, but otherwise looked the same. His red hair was as thick as before. Avram, though, was a different story. I probably wouldn’t have recognized him at all. But then they might have said the same about me, of course. I’d lost a lot of hair, and I’d grown a paunch.

Yani’s desk was exactly the way I remembered it, with its marble top, his snowball, his brass pencil case. It was then that I realized once more what a curse a strong memory can be. I couldn’t help but envy those with a more permeable sieve.

Anfi came back, this time with a glass made of china. I couldn’t tell what was in it. She took her place. Lifeless legs strained to move again.

“How unrecognizable this Sopalı Hüsnü Street has become, hasn’t it? It took Kevork a full hour to find the house. Oh, do you know what they brought as presents? Avram brought some luxury chocolate thins, and Kevork brought chocolate with cherry liqueur. Chocolate for the old Anfi. It reminded me of High Life Bakery. You boys used to go there for ice cream. That was the first thing Avram said. He hadn’t changed one bit. He summarized all his problems in a single breath. His boyfriend had left him for someone younger. Canada was a very boring place. He’d return to Istanbul in 2020 for good, and so on and so forth...”

I remained silent. Anfi took a few sips from the liquid in the glass and continued.

“Presents of quick, easy consumption, perfect for someone with both feet in the grave. Only you brought something for my heirs. For distant relatives. They’ll just sell everything and be on their merry ways. The fact that you brought an engraving of alpha and omega means a lot, doesn’t it? An implied suggestion to turn the page, yes?”

She was right. I nodded.

“You all wanted to become tram conductors when you were kids. Do you still remember? A second-class seat in the tram was five kuruş. A first-class seat was ten. All those shenanigans you boys did for a free trip used to scare me to death.”

“Yani used to pay and get on though. And then watch us.”

“He looked up to you guys so much. Too bad you didn’t have more time together...”

“That’s not why Kevork came to you, Anfi.”

“When he entered this room, he cried, and then he hugged me, sobbing. He told me how much he regretted it. Maybe a hundred times.”

“He lost his only daughter. He was devastated.”

“So he knew what it meant to lose your only child. It was his idea to organize this ritual, this communal confession.”

“This is no ritual.”

“What is it then?”

“It was an accident.”

Anfi murmured something I couldn’t make out and then finished what was left in the glass. She held the glass, pressing it against her face, and looked at the bodies. Then at me.

“What did you come all the way here for? To hear me say that I forgive you? And that Yani forgives you too? And that he’s happy now, up in the sky? Is that what you came to hear?”

“What did their deaths change, Anfi?”

“As you know, Yani is resting in Feriköy Cemetery. I visited him this morning. One last time. Like everything I did today... one last time.”

I looked at the glass she still held against her face. I thought she must have taken sleeping pills too. In this room, we were closing the book. Meanwhile, I’d grown even more drowsy. There wouldn’t be any drinking with Avram and Kevork at some neighborhood bar. No veiled pissing matches about who had more money or power. Most importantly, we wouldn’t be laying it on the table, dissecting that incident we never ever talked about, never even alluded to, in all those six years we were together afterwards. You pushed. We fell. If only you hadn’t pushed... It was your turn. When the time came, you let it all out. Well, you shouldn’t have kept quiet then. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t all be lying here now like bags full of shit.

“When Yani was born, our cat Sarman gave birth too. To three extraordinarily beautiful kittens. It was their first week. But then one morning, Sarman was extremely restless. One moment she’d be dashing toward the door, and then the next she’d be leaping at the window. It was like she was trying to tell me, Open it, I’m leaving . She just kept meowing and meowing. I finally gave in and opened the door. She stormed out and got run over by a car a few seconds later. Traffic was heavier than usual. But it’s like that when your time comes. It’s a meeting that you can’t postpone. I tried to feed the kittens milk with a dropper, but it didn’t work. They were too small. They died too.”

I had heard this story from Anfi before. Hearing it again at that moment, in that context, the impact of the omen was intense.

“If only you had opened the door five seconds later and... if only there hadn’t been glass in the hole.”

Anfi offered a smile that was half appreciation, half regret. “That’s not the point. It’s an irrelevant detail. He’d just be pushed again and again, until there was glass in the hole. And the door would be opened again and again.”

“Your logic, it’s flawed,” I said, in all sincerity. “It’s a biased expectation. Life, experience, they change the way we look at things. And now, what use is it, all of this—”

I stopped and looked into her eyes, the eyes of a woman who had left her mark on every phase of my life. And it was she who had determined its finale. I was amazed at the overwhelming power of that part of me ready to go along with it. For a moment, I wondered whether or not Monique would be sad when she heard about my death. She was the one I hurt most and argued with most, yet she was also the one I was once happiest with. Such is the human mind, a timepiece of fascinating inner workings.

“Don’t worry. There’s been a slight change in plans. Only you will wake up. In a couple of hours. You’ll have a light headache. An upset stomach too. Everything is ready in the storage room by the front door. Cans of kerosene. Set the house on fire and go. It should start in this room... There’s one more thing I want you to do before you go, though. I want you to promise me that you’ll bury that small box with Yani’s hair in it on top of his grave. That’s the only thing I want. If you had arrived on time, I wouldn’t have had the chance to tell you that I know, that I knew, how very capable you boys would be of feeling regret, and remorse. We are even now. Burn and go, okay? Don’t worry, the fire won’t harm anyone else. There’s just a condemned building to our left, and a garden with some old, dried-out fruit trees behind us.”