Gardens of Water (65 page)

The courtyard was dark, but she heard water running somewhere and she could tell it was filled with plants and trees.

“That man’s got a wife and kids in Üsküdar.”

“A new dog?” Serkan said.

“Yeah, the last one was poisoned. Someone threw a beefsteak over the fence with rat poison inside.”

“Your father’s still getting threats?”

“Yeah, he’s on some terrorist’s list. When he’s here there’s like ten men with wires hanging from their ears and guns strapped inside their jackets, but when he’s gone it’s just the dog and Yusef.”

“And Yusef’s girlfriend,” Serkan said.

“Yeah. Stupid little Ukrainian girl. He’s probably told her he owns the place.”

She had never seen a house like this. Inside, the marble was polished so that she could see their reflections as they walked toward the terrace in the back. It was cool inside, air-conditioned, and round lights were embedded in the ceiling and shone down brightly on beautifully framed paintings of shapes and color that seemed to represent nothing.

Attila drew open sliding-glass doors that revealed the water and the curve of the bridge above. She heard the rushing of the cars again, a distant honk, a foghorn on a ship. They lounged on leather couches near the open windows, and Berna fell asleep with her arms hanging off the couch and her breasts pressed together to reveal her bra.

Attila laughed. “Night-night, Berna.”

She didn’t move or make a noise.

With her head against Dylan’s shoulder,
rem was suddenly exhausted. She had a headache and when she moved her head it took a moment for her vision to catch up, rendering everything a blur before each thing fell back into its place. Out the window, the sky began to lighten, a shade of blue casting the hills as paper cutouts. She wondered if her father was up yet, if he had even slept. She wondered if her mother was snoring now, her arm clasped around
smail.

Serkan passed around a small white cigarette that wasn’t a cigarette. It smelled different and when Dylan inhaled, he kept the smoke inside his lungs for a long time before passing it back. Then Attila and Serkan got up and she and Dylan watched them climb a white marble staircase, Serkan holding on to the belt loop of Attila’s jeans.

“Goodnight, sweeties,” Dylan said.

“Get in your coffin before the sun comes up,” Attila said in an ominous voice, making Serkan laugh and press his forehead against his back.

“Let’s go out on the terrace,” Dylan said.

“I’m tired,” she said. “Let’s stay here and sleep.”

“C’mon,” he said, standing up and pulling her by the arm. “You’ve gotta see this.”

She blacked out a moment as he lifted her and he held her and walked her outside as the city opened up beneath them—the water, a blue mirror for the brightening sky, two oil tankers crossing beneath the bridge, the lights of the city on either side of the water, glittering like fallen constellations.

“Attila’s rich—like
rich,
rich,” Dylan said.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, but the pain was growing at her temples, a throbbing pain that was like her heart banging inside her head.

“I’m tired,” she said again. “My head hurts.”

“Let’s sleep out here,” he said, and led her to an outdoor couch next to a pool.

He laid her down and settled next to her, stroking her hair.

“Where does it hurt?”

“Here,” she said.

He stroked her temples and the pain worsened.

“Try this,” he said, and took her hand and pressed his fingers into the meat of her palm. He found a sore spot and pressed against it.

“Ow,” she said.

“Pressure point,” he said. “It’s supposed to hurt.”

He rubbed it some more and then his hands were on her back, stroking below her shoulder blades, pushing the edge of her shirt up her back.

“I love you,” he said.

She opened her eyes and looked at him. The sky was growing lighter now and she could see the red veins in his eyes.

“I love you,” he said again. “I do.”

She felt her heart jump, and with the excitement her vision blurred again.

He kissed her on the lips and she kissed him back and let his hands explore her bare shoulder blades. His palms were warm against her skin and she felt each finger pressing into the muscle there. He kissed her on the neck and somehow turned her over so that his leg was across her lap. His hands moved up her belly and the feeling on her skin was electric.

“God, I love you,” he said.

His thumb grazed her breast and she knew she would have to stop this soon. But her head was spinning now and her skin felt willing and the sky was growing a perfect blue and he loved her and that was all she had wanted for months, for a lifetime it seemed.

Then he was moving quickly, his hands here and then there and suddenly her bra was falling off her shoulders. Her head pounded and his hands were strong and she heard a siren screeching across the highway above her head. He was on top of her now and he said I love you and she heard him crying and then it hurt, hurt like she hadn’t imagined. Above her the siren moved away, and as she jerked her head with the pain she saw a man and a dog walking away from the pool, just two shadows beneath the morning shadow of the bridge.

Chapter 49

T
HE NEXT MORNING SINAN REPORTED SICK TO WORK, HID
the knife he had quartered the sheep with inside the pocket of his coat, and rode the buses with Marcus into the city. They sat in silence—the kind of painful silence that is full of angry things needing to be said—and from the window Sinan watched the folded apartment blocks along the highway. Whole kilometers of buildings had been tossed onto their sides, broken apart like children’s blocks, until there were only buildings with collapsed roofs and then simply buildings with little holes through the red shingles and then, when they neared the city center, buildings that seemed completely untouched.

They passed beneath the gray towers rising into the blue sky, the cables like steel spiders’ webs trapping the thin road high above the silver water. On either side of the bridge, the Bosporus slithered like a snake’s back between the wooded hills of Europe and the hills of Asia. The bus drove in the far left lane and Sinan peered over the edge toward the sea below where the hull of an oil tanker parted the water in front of it. He had always been scared of heights, and the dizzying emptiness between roadway and sea left his head reeling—they were neither on land nor in the air, simply riding a blade of metal fixed precariously between slopes of solid ground. He gripped the knife inside his coat pocket as though it would save him should the metal collapse.

Then the bus passed into the caverns of the city with roads swerving away like spokes on a wheel to meet hundreds of other roads. They would never find
rem in such a place. She would only be found if she wanted to be, and he suddenly felt the futility of everything.

They exited the bus, caught a taxi in front of the
kokoreç
restaurants, and rode the curving street up the hill to Taksim, where Marcus paid the driver five million lira while Sinan looked away and pretended not to see. Marcus led him down a side street, away from the crowds partying on
stiklal Avenue. They ducked into arcaded alleyways, cut between people drinking beer in the midday sun, dodged rickety tables full of tourists eating fish and
mezeler.
They squeezed through crowds in the Galatasaray fish market, the people gawking at tables of fresh meat sliced open at the bellies, the gills torn open like bloody jaws. Marcus moved so quickly through the crowd, sometimes pushing people out of his way, that faces became blurs; they could have passed
rem and he would never know it.

Then they were free of the crowds, standing at an L-shaped corner of a wide street that passed in front of the fortresslike British Consulate. They followed a tall stone wall capped with razor wire, past armed guards in white kiosks, their hats falling low over their eyes so it seemed they were machines meant only to pull triggers, until Marcus stopped at the door of an old apartment within sight of Galata Tower.

“Dylan still has his key,” Marcus explained.

Sinan expected to climb the circular staircase all the way to the top, but instead Marcus led him to a basement apartment where in the corner of the hallway, near the front door, stood a puddle of water that was as black as blood in the dim light. Marcus had trouble sliding the key into the lock.

“Damn lock,” he said. “Rusted inside.”

Sinan stared at the door, wondering what he would find on the other side, wondering what he would do when he found it. He gripped the knife in his hand and managed to slip it out of the leather with his thumb and index finger without revealing it to Marcus. Sweat beaded on his forehead and a rush of heat passed through his body.

Marcus shoved the door open. A light was on inside.

“Dylan,” Marcus yelled as he strode down the hallway.

Sinan’s heart beat in his ears; it pumped so loud and fast that he thought he might have a heart attack.

The apartment was small—one room sparsely furnished with brown couches, an attached kitchen, and a long hallway down which Sinan could see a bedroom and a bed with the covers turned back as though someone had recently awakened and neglected to remake it.

“They’ve been here,” Marcus said as he came back down the hallway. “They’re gone now.”

Sinan eased his grip on the knife, relieved that his strength would not be tested, but he watched the bed as if it might reveal its secrets, and as they walked out into the sun, the image of that unmade bed, the sheets thrown aside with a mocking carelessness, stoked his anger, like
rem herself had fanned the white-hot embers inside him.

Then Marcus took Sinan into a world he could never imagine existed. They searched the underground markets where kids wore black and pierced their skin with ink-stained needles and threaded silver hoops through holes in their noses. The hot passageways smelled of spilled beer and smoke, and music hissed from the open doors of music stores.

They searched dark shops, the walls lined with glowing skull posters and pentagrams and naked women with fangs for teeth. They entered a club without any windows and it was so dark inside it seemed the sun had never shone on earth. Teenagers drank and smoked at tables lit by dying candles, their pale faces turned away as though the flickering light hurt their eyes. If they found
rem here, she was already lost and there was little he could do.

Marcus screamed over the music to a man behind the bar. The man shook his head, lit a cigarette, and blew smoke in Marcus’s face. Then Sinan followed Marcus down a black corridor to the bathrooms, where he knocked open the stall doors. In one they caught a woman on the toilet and in another they found a boy with a needle stuck in his arm, his eyelids heavy, his pupils as thick and watery as honey.

They climbed the circular staircase, a helix of steps lined with melting candles, out of the basement passageway and exited through an inconspicuous door to an apartment building on a residential street. A man wearing a beard passed them, his cane clicking along the cobblestone street. Two boys kicked a soccer ball against the stone wall of a small cemetery, the turbaned headstones peeking above the masonry as though to see what the living were doing. It was the most average of streets—women leaning elbows on windowsills, lines of laundry flapping in the late morning breeze, a
simit
seller balancing a tray of bread upon his head and calling out to the hungry. Shocked, Sinan turned to look at the door they had just exited through. There was nothing special about it, nothing to indicate what was beyond its threshold. It looked like every other door on the street—faded blue with strips of paint peeling off the wood, a copper knocker shaped like a woman’s hand, a tiny window with bars pressed against blackened glass. On this street alone there were fifty doors just like it and he shuddered with the thought of where those doors might lead.

Marcus said something in English and kicked a heap of trash bags stacked in the street for garbage day. The bags ripped, spilling fish bones and chicken skin into the street, and three cats appeared to gnaw on the marrow. The bones cracked in the cats’ jaws.

“I don’t know where they are.” Marcus rubbed his temples.

“What has your son done with my daughter?” Sinan said. “What have you let him do?”

“I’m not happy about this either, Sinan,” Marcus said with surprising anger. “Besides, your daughter is as much to blame for this as Dylan.”

“No,” Sinan said. “She wouldn’t have thought of doing such a thing if you hadn’t been here.”

“And you’d still be sleeping in that cardboard tent near the freeway, eating rotten tomatoes and stale bread if I hadn’t been here.” He stopped, took a deep breath, and ran his hand through his gray hair. “The problem with you, Sinan, is that you live in a world that doesn’t exist anymore. You still think women don’t think for themselves. You believe there are boundaries people shouldn’t cross—Americans should stay in America, Brits in England, Kurds in Kurdistan, if such a place even exists. The world isn’t like that anymore, and you can’t escape the world. Your daughter knows that and you don’t yet, that’s why she’s gone, Sinan, that’s why she’s running around with my son. She wants to get away from you, and she’s
using
Dylan to do that. So don’t you for one moment think I’m happy about this, that I’ve caused this to happen in some way.”

More cats arrived and they climbed on top of the bags, swarmed around the spilled meat, and devoured it.

“You’re trying to hold on to your daughter, Sinan. And I’m trying to hold on to my son.”

Later, as they passed over the bridge once again, Marcus said, without taking his eyes from the window, “Our children are not ours. That’s our mistake. We think they are. It seems so for a while—a few brief years—but they aren’t. They never were.”