Joseph Kanon - Istanbul Passage

“I don’t want to go anywhere else.”

“You know when I was a virgin? When I was twelve. So it’s too late to be jealous.”

“You like them, the others?”

“Everyone wants to know that. Now you. Some yes, some no. I like it with you-that’s what you want to know, yes? Nobody really cares about the others, just ‘how is it with me?’ But they ask anyway. What are they like, the men who see you? They want to hear stories.”

“Do you tell them stories about me?”

She shook her head. “What could I tell them? Thursday afternoon-that’s all I know about you. Somebody who doesn’t ask me questions. Until today. And now what? Pay for the room. I pay for it. I told myself, if you ever get out of that place, you’ll have your own room, just yours, not in some house with people walking around. It’s mine,” she said, looking at the room. “I pay for it.”

“But this is how you pay for it,” he said, nodding at the bed, the tangled sheets.

“Yes.”

“Then I’m paying anyway.”

“Not for the room.”

Which is when he realized someone else was keeping her, their Thursday afternoons just extra cash, something to tuck away under the mattress. All the others just pin money too. Did the man know about him? The afternoons, the most private thing he had, seemed suddenly invaded, no longer safe. It became important to know. He even watched the building for a while, curious to see the others. Europeans, always in the afternoon, like him. Only one at night, a Turk who showed up at odd times, as if he never knew when he could manage to get away. Someone she kept her evenings free for, just in case.

“Why do you want to know?” she said when he pressed her.

“Does he know about me?”

“No. I told you that.”

“Or the others?”

“You think there are so many?”

He waited. “Does he know?”

She belted her robe tightly, reaching for a cigarette. “No. Why? Do you want to tell him?”

“You said you didn’t want to lie to me. But you lie to him.”

“Maybe I have feelings for you.”

“Now you are lying to me.”

She glanced over at him, then smiled wryly, and drew on the cigarette. “I’m a whore. That’s what we do. You’re surprised?”

“Tell me.”

“Oh, tell what? Leave me alone. He’s rescuing me. That’s how he sees things, a fairy story. He gives me this room. So I’m like a princess, somebody in a window. In a drawing.”

“And he’s the prince?”

She smiled again. “The pasha. He stole the building. An Armenian owned it. Remember the Varlik Vergisi , how they taxed the Jews and the Armenians and when they couldn’t pay they sent them to camps and took what was left? He got the building. So he gives me this room. No rent. But I pay for it with him. Is that what you want to know?”

“And he thinks you’ve given it up? The others?”

“He thinks I’m grateful. I am grateful. But I have to think of the future too. He gets tired of me. Anything can happen. He’s a simple man. A business in Şişhane. He never thought he could have anything like this, a girl in a room, waiting for him. But now he’s a big landlord. Rents. So it was the tax, maybe, that got me out of that place. Strange how things work.”

“Why strange?”

“I’m Armenian. He steals from an Armenian and he gives the room to another. I don’t think he knows. A woman-it’s all the same to him. So I lie to him. I don’t lie to you.”

“Why not?”

“I know who he is. A man who steals. You-I’m not so sure. You never tell me anything.”

He touched her wrist. “I don’t come here to talk.”

“Everyone else-I think that’s why they come, to tell me their troubles.”

“Maybe I don’t have any troubles.”

She raised her eyes, meeting his, and held them for a second, a sudden connection, not saying anything, not having to.

He met Ed Burke for lunch in one of the restaurants in the Flower Passage, a table out in the arcade, under the belle époque globes. Ed had ordered wine and drank most of it himself, Leon sipping a little for show, barely touching the stuffed mussels, his mind somewhere else.

“So when are you going home?” Ed said.

“What’s the hurry?”

“You don’t want to wait too long. The import business is finished. Where are they going to get the hard currency? Another year, it’ll be strictly domestic here. You should get out now.”

“I’m buying, not selling. They’re still open for business.”

“Until the fucking Russians get their hands on the place. What they always wanted.” He looked down the arcade to the Istiklal Caddesi, busy with trams and old cars. “Be a hell of a thing, won’t it, to see all this go.” He looked again to the street. “You know when I first got here, they still had the women in veils.”

Had Marina worn one, as a girl? But she was Armenian, so a Christian, something he hadn’t known before, another piece, like filling in an outline. What did she look like when she went out? He had never seen her in anything but her silk kimono, a swishing sound as she moved, smooth to the touch, like the soft flesh of her inner thigh. He looked up, aware again that Ed was talking.

“You hear about Tommy? It’s all over the consulate. Back to Washington.”

“Really?” Leon said, noncommittal.

“I thought you two were thick as thieves.”

Leon shook his head. “I helped him out with a deal once, that’s all.”

“What kind of deal?” Ed said, suddenly curious.

“Chromium. I knew some people in Ankara.”

“Well, that always helps, doesn’t it?”

“Always,” Leon said, looking more closely for something behind the words. But Ed’s face was the same, long and droopy, like Fred Allen’s, pouches now under the eyes.

“Board of Economic Warfare. That’s where he’s going. Except there’s no more warfare,” Ed said.

“So they change the name. It’s the government. You’re in the government.”

“Not where he’s going.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, you never thought Tommy might be doing something extra on the q.t.?”

“Like what?”

“Hush-hush stuff. You never suspected?”

“Tommy? Who’d trust him with a secret? Just hand him a drink.”

“You worked with him. Who knows, maybe you-”

“Worked. I put him in touch with some people in Ankara. That’s it. What’s this all about?”

“War’s over. What does it matter now? I’d just like to know. Was I right?”

“Ask him. How the hell would I know?”

“Of course, that’s what you’d have to say, isn’t it?”

Leon looked at him, then forced a laugh. “I guess it is. If I didn’t have a foreign wife. German, for Christ’s sake. I’m the last person they’d ask.” The Anna cover, still useful. “And I’ll bet they didn’t ask Tommy, either. With his big mouth. What you’re talking about-I thought all that was over at OWI. And I hear they packed up. So maybe we’ll never know.”

“OWI,” Ed said, nodding, not letting it go. “And the college. Remember early ’forty-two, all of a sudden Robert College gets a whole new group of teachers? You’d meet them at parties, they’d never talk about their classes.”

Leon smiled. “Maybe they came for the view.” A hilltop looking down at Bebek and the Bosphorus. Cocktail parties on the terrace in the evening light. Not what the founding missionaries had had in mind. “Come on, Ed. You see those guys doing parachute drops? Four-eyes? With Tommy? I never saw him open a book. I’ll bet he doesn’t even know where the college is.”

Ed smiled, a cat licking cream. “He’s giving a party there.”