Gardens of Water (68 page)

Chapter 53

T
HIS TIME HE WOULD USE THE KNIFE.

All that night he stood outside Marcus’s tent and waited for Dylan to come out. He would catch him on his way to the toilets, stab him in the dark while everyone slept, slice open his throat so he would gasp and gasp and gasp until it was finished.

He stood there in the shadows and waited until the air was filled with snores and the Dipper slid behind the black mountains. He stood there in the cold, his heart still pumping hard, his hands sweating, until a ribbon of red, like an open wound, appeared in the sky.

But there was no movement in the tent and when the sun was well above the mountaintops and people had risen to eat their breakfast, he realized that neither Dylan nor Marcus was in the camp anymore. Even if they were, Sinan would have to kill the boy now in broad daylight, in front of people’s children. He felt more than willing to do so, even savored the idea, but the American and his son were gone.

“
WHERE IS SHE?” NILÜFER
said when he returned.?

smail was wrapped to the neck in his bag, but his eyes were open, watching Sinan.

“Gone.”

“Where?”

“She’s gone, Nilüfer.”

She looked at him closely, checking his eyes to see if it were true. She turned and stared at the white wall of the tent a moment, holding a flute of tea to her lips but not drinking. Then with firm precision she slapped the glass against the floor of the tent so that it made a muffled pop. She sat for a moment with her flattened palm against the broken glass before picking every piece off the floor, placing them in the palm of her other hand like they were splinters of priceless jewels.

smail watched Sinan for a moment, his eyes unblinking, and then turned and tugged the bag over his head.

Chapter 54

S
HE DIDN’T KNOW HOW FAR SHE WALKED, BUT SOMETIME IN
the afternoon she made a decision and once that decision was made it was as though all her organs stopped pumping and her body felt quiet.

She climbed the hill that led to the highway and stood with the men who waited for the bus into the city. They smoked and talked while cars blurred by. She noticed one man watching her, his eyes falling on the spot of blood on her skirt. She untied her scarf and handed it to him.

“Here,” she said. “This is yours.”

He wouldn’t take it. He turned away and smoked his cigarette.

She laughed and dropped it at his feet.

She didn’t take the bus, but instead hailed a taxi.

“Beyo
lu,” she said.

“Beyo
lu?” the taxi driver said.

“Yes, to meet my husband. Hurry, please, I’ll be late and he’ll be angry.”

The man looked at her strangely, but threw the car in gear and sped down the highway.

She rolled down the window and felt the wind in her hair and watched the fractured buildings of the broken towns become the red roofs of the suburbs until the city exploded in yellow and pink high-rises, their glass windows shining in the sunlight.

The taxi followed the highway around Camlica coming into Üsküdar and she could see the water, a huge gash through the middle of the city. The strait glistened like a river of silver sparkles. It looked very beautiful to her suddenly, a distant, separate beauty, as though she were watching it on a movie screen.

The taxi came around a hill and in the distance, just poking out over a rise, she caught a glimpse of the bridge towers. Tomorrow was a military holiday and the span was draped with red flags, the banners furling in the wind. The tower disappeared again behind a hill, and her stomach turned. Her heart skipped strangely and she couldn’t stop shaking her legs.

She noticed the cab fare, the yellow lights counting out thirty million now. The driver’s eyes filled the rearview mirror. She didn’t have even one lira on her.

She bit her fingernails and tried to calm down.

Then the taxi barreled down the grade that led to the bridge. Her view of the towers was unobscured now—gray and graceless, standing like cement gates. Cars rushed on either side of the taxi, just inches away, raced down the grade toward the bridge growing larger and uglier in the windshield. She bit through her nail to the skin on her thumb but the pain didn’t matter.

She remembered the lyrics to the Radiohead song she had loved.

Ben burada degilim. Bunlar ba
ma gelmiyor. Ben burada degilim.

The music echoed in her head, the floating guitars, the undulating bass.

I’m not here. This isn’t happening.

The music was like the soundtrack to a movie and that’s how she began to imagine this. This was her movie. She had the lead role. The audience would cry when she did this. She imagined her mother and father in a plush theater, dabbing their eyes in front of the brightly lit screen.

K
sa bir süre içinde gitmi
olaca
m.

The cut in the hill opened up to the mouth of the bridge. She could see the line of cars at the tollbooths on the east-side lanes and beyond that the Bosporus like a sheet of polished metal between hills.

“Stop here,” she said.

The taxi driver looked at her through the mirror.

“You’re meeting your husband here?” he said.

“Yes.”

He looked at the road and then back at her. His eyebrows nearly poked him in the eyes.

“It’s illegal,” he said. “You have to wait until the other side.”

And then the taxi was on the bridge and she thought it would be impossible. That’s not how the movie ended. She sang the lyrics in her head again, the drifting bass, the levitating strings. She wanted to float; she wanted to be weightless.

They passed the first tower and she watched the water, blue now, ripe as a bruise, infinite as the sky, flow beneath the bridge. The desolation crept back into her. She couldn’t do this. She had made a decision and now she wouldn’t be able to do it.

Then up ahead red brake lights flashed and the traffic slowed.

The driver watched her through the rearview.

In a little while, I’ll be gone.

Traffic was coming to a stop just on the other side of the rise in the middle of the bridge. The taxi slowed and the driver changed to the middle lane of traffic, right between an Ulas delivery truck and a
dolmu
full of passengers.

The taxi stopped.

A motorcycle raced between the taxi and the delivery truck, nearly shearing off the driver’s side-view mirror. The driver stuck his head out the window and screamed at the motorcycle.

At that moment, she threw open the door and jumped onto the road. The edge of the bridge was just a few meters away. She ran around the delivery truck and almost got hit by a moving bus. As she dodged the bumper, she glanced behind and saw the driver getting out of the taxi and running after her.

She had one lane left to cross. She could see the edge and the huge bolts that held the cables in place. She looked over her shoulder and the driver was closer now, gaining.

“Stop,” she heard him say.