The Debt of Tamar (17 page)

“Selim Osman, the doctor is ready for you,” the receptionist called out a few minutes later. “Straight ahead, fourth door on the left.”

He put down the paper and headed down a narrow corridor tiled with yellow and white, checkered squares. He was instructed to remove his clothing and change into a blue gown. As usual, he was slightly embarrassed when it barely reached the midway point of his thigh. A few minutes later the nurse came in and took his blood pressure. She asked a series of questions, nodding sympathetically as Selim went over his symptoms with her for the third time in several weeks. “Headaches, night sweats, blurry vision.”

A week later, Selim received a phone call from Denize. “The doctor wants you to come in.”

Selim opened his leather planner and flipped to the calendar at the back. “How’s this Wednesday?”

“Can you make it in this afternoon?”

“I’ve got a meeting later today.” His eyes scanned the pages of the calendar. The week was completely booked. It hadn’t been easy, but he’d finally gotten an appointment with the deputy minister, Abdul Gurat, one of the most powerful voices on the council. He was one of the few men with the power to pardon the novelist who was facing imprisonment for his “Crimes against Turkishness.” Selim had discovered that Gurat actually rented office space in one of the buildings he owned. They were to meet later in the day, at Gurat’s home in Etilar. He intended to cut the minister’s rent almost to nothing. He hoped this gesture might help “convince” the minister how unjust imprisoning the man would be. He knew the system was not perfect, but it was the only way to get things done.

“Selim, the doctor wants to see you some time today.”

“I need to clear up my schedule. Next week is wide open actually.”

“It’s about your test results.” Denize cleared her throat as though she were about to say something else.

“All right, I’ll be there in an hour.” He put down the phone and called his receptionist on the intercom.

“Call the minister, cancel my appointment.”

“
Effendi
, it was not easy to get that appointment. I doubt he’ll want to reschedule. He’s a very proud man.”

“Tell the minister an emergency has come up.”

“But,
Effendi
—”

“Just do it.”

An hour later Selim was at the clinic. For the first time Denize did not ask him to change into a pale blue gown and wait in an examining room, but rather, she showed him into the doctor’s office, a small space, just big enough for a desk and two chairs.

A car alarm sounded outside. The doctor rose and made his way to the window overlooking the concrete parking lot below. He peered out for a moment, then shut the window, effectively muting the shrill sound. Dr. Ehrlich shook Selim’s hand and gestured for him to sit down in a maroon upholstered chair. It was considerably lower than the armchair Dr. Ehrlich occupied, and Selim felt uncomfortable as he tried to straighten his posture.

“It’s a very rare form of cancer,” the doctor explained, as his spectacles bobbed up and down with each frown. “It didn’t even occur to us at first. You don’t fit the prototype at all.”

Selim allowed his body to slump into the deepest part of the cushion.

“Sinus cancer is typical in men over the age of sixty. It affects almost exclusively people of oriental descent. No one could have imagined.” The doctor told him these things gently, trying to assuage the shock he expected from Selim, a shock that never came, because Selim had expected it all along. There was a five percent survival rate. The doctor explained that the term “survival” referred to people who lived five years beyond their diagnosis.

It felt very natural that he should be dying. Cancer lived in the empty spaces behind his cheek and nose and jaw. It had spread and infected the bone structure throughout the left side of his face. It was still less painful than the guilt. Unlike cancer, the guilt had spread throughout every bone in his body.

All these years, he had held himself responsible for Ali’s death. His mother had held him accountable, and although his father had never admitted it, he knew
Baba
had felt the same way. All of Istanbul knew he was to blame. Selim knew it too.

And so, he was not surprised to learn his pounding headaches and night sweats were symptoms of a disease that would surely kill him. He wasn’t frightened by this news, or angered in the least. On the contrary, Selim felt a profound sense of relief, as though he’d been holding his breath and could finally take a deep, soulful sigh. For the first time since his brother’s accident, he felt a sense of order in his universe, a sense that everything was finally as it should be. A life for a life. This realization filled him with calm.

“I know you must be feeling so many different emotions right now. Do you have anyone you can talk to?” he heard the doctor ask.

He thought back to the video games he and Ali had played with as children.
Baba
had brought the games back from overseas business trips in America, and all the neighborhood boys would come to the Osman villa in Ortakoy to watch Selim and his brother battle with green aliens that took away lives just by zapping their neon bug-eyes. In English, the words “Game Over” would come across the screen. “You’re dead,” Ali would scream. “My turn!” Selim’s thumbs would ache and his eyes would sting from long hours in front of the television screen. In the end, he was usually relieved when the aliens would come with their spinning saucers, shine a light over his bleeding human remains, and zap him into a galaxy far away from home.

Game Over.

Then he’d be off to the pantry to stuff his mouth with sugarcoated almonds and chocolate cherries, before brushing his teeth and heading to bed.

“Talk to me. What’s going through your head,” the doctor pressed on. “Selim, say something.”

He looked into the doctor’s eyes and smiled sadly. Dr. Erlich had been the one to sew up his elbow as a youth when he’d fallen while trying to jump the fence surrounding the pool. He pumped Selim’s stomach at age five, when he’d drunk a bottle of liquid soap because it smelled like cherries. He set Selim’s broken leg after the accident and tended to the burns along his arms and torso caused by the scalding pavement he’d laid on before the ambulance arrived. He’d tried to resuscitate Ali, he’d tried...

Dr. Erlich’s lips were moving but Selim only caught snippets of what he was saying. “Treatment in New York…experimental surgery…” Soon, the room was quiet, except for the rustling of the ceiling fan overhead. Dr. Ehrlich handed Selim a glossy white folder entitled “Coping with Cancer.”

Selim stood up and the two men shook hands.
“There’s a lot to think about,” said Dr. Erlich, “but the New York surgery, if you turn that down, there’s nothing left but a few months.”

Selim thanked the doctor, then left the room
.

“
Game over
,” he whispered under his breath, before closing the door behind him.

“I love you,” Ayda whispered one night, five months after they had begun their affair. He gathered her body in his arms, stroked her dark hair between his fingers, and answered only in his mind.

In the weeks leading up to his departure, she began to sense a distance brooding between them. He was more easily agitated than ever before, turning cold and distant for no apparent reason. He hadn’t told her about his visits to the doctor, the diagnosis, or the surgery scheduled at the end of the month that was likely to kill him. He didn’t know how to tell her any of it.

“My agent says there’s a leading role for me in a feature film,” she said one night while getting ready for bed. “Did you hear me, Selim? A real movie. I’ve wanted to get out of television for so long.” With her back towards him, she addressed him through the reflection in the vanity mirror. “Most of the filming will be done in Germany.” Her eyes scanned his face for a reaction. She opened a drawer, removed a hairbrush, and smoothed her thick hair back into a neat bun before making her way over to the bed. “I told him I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t want to be away for six months. There’s so much I would miss here.” She loosened the tie of her robe and let it fall to the floor in a small heap.

“Like what?” He turned to her as she tucked herself under the sheets. “Istanbul is an awful place. You said yourself you wanted to get out of television. This is your chance.” He reached for the clock and set the alarm. “There’s nothing here for you.”

“Nothing?” Her voice was barely a whisper.

He thought of the novelist, his unjust imprisonment, the absurdity of a conviction based on “Crimes Against Turkishness.” He thought about his dead brother and his parents’ abandonment. He thought about Ayda and what she’d gone through to survive. These past few months, he’d almost been happy. That was then…“The whole goddamn country is going to shit,” he said after a minute.

“What’s going on with you?”

“I’m just saying, you should get out while you can.” He offered her a kiss as though it were a chore, before flicking the lamp switch and saturating the room in darkness.

He lay with his back towards Ayda. These days, he treated her with the same misguided adoration with which he had quarantined the Stradivarius in his study. He was afraid to touch either one of them. He was determined to ensure that nothing again would ever be damaged on his account. The instrument was silenced. The instrument was safe.

“Goodnight, Selim.” Ayda’s voice cracked a little when she said his name.

“Goodnight.” In his mind, she’d become nothing more than a warm body in a cold bed. Was there ever a better antidote for pain than feeling nothing at all? He thought of the Stradivarius. He thought of Ayda. Without his touch, they would both endure.

When she was sure he’d fallen asleep, Ayda made her way in the dark across the room to the dresser by the window. In the first drawer, she withdrew a book and squinted to read the metallic print on the binding. “Tolstoy.” She got back into bed, flipped the switch on the reading lamp and began with page one.

Vronsky and Anna occupied the place in her heart that was reserved for dear friends and old childhood memories. She skimmed through the pages as though just popping by to check in and say hello. She’d grown fond of Anna over the years. Her hot-blooded desire, her overt foolishness. These were characteristics Ayda found wholly endearing. They were traits so thoroughly human, so gloriously commonplace; she found comfort in their follies. As she read, she became overwhelmed by the extraordinary powers of the human experience. The ordinary forces of man that impel him to act so irrationally, to risk everything, all for love. She was impressed by these characters’ capacity to feel. Desire, jealousy, love and loathing. She’d become well acquainted with them all. One could say she knew them intimately. Even more intimately than the man with whom she shared a bed.

In the morning, Selim headed to his office for the last time. He wrote a check for the electricity, cable and phone bills. “I’m taking a few months off,” he told Miro, his office manager and the second cousin of his estranged mother.

Miro just stood there, wide-eyed and not fully comprehending.

“So you’ll be in charge of identifying new investment opportunities and strategies. All final decisions will go through you,” Selim explained.

“Selim,” Miro spoke cautiously. “This really isn’t the time for gallivanting around Europe. We’re about to close the deal with Gulhemet for the new shopping mall. The whole thing might fall through if he finds out you’ve skipped town.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Miro sat in the chair at the foot of Selim’s desk. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on here?”

“Just taking some time off. I was over at Gulhemet’s office just yesterday and had him sign off on the documents right then and there. The shopping plaza’s a done deal. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Despite Selim’s reassurances, Miro looked worried.

“I have no doubt you can manage things here on your own. You’ve got big things ahead of you, Cousin.”

“
Effendi
, I don’t know what to say. It seems you’ve made up your mind.”

“You don’t need me, Miro. You’ll be fine.”

He left the office shortly after, then headed to the hotel to say goodbye to little Emre and his father.

“I’m going on a trip,” Selim explained to Emre. “I brought you some things.” There was a box of building blocks, chocolate sweets, a soccer ball and some children’s books.

Emre’s eyes lit up. “Thank you, Brother. Thank you!”

“Why don’t you sit with us while we have our dinner?” Mr. Bogra invited Selim as he boiled peas and carrots over an electric stove.

A small table was set with paper napkins, plastic plates, forks and knives. Selim thought back to the years of his childhood, when they’d all have dinner at six o’clock sharp, he, Ali,
Baba
and mother.
Baba
would stroll in from work in his Italian suit and place his briefcase by the door. Mama, always in a pretty dress with her hair coifed high, would beam with pride when her husband entered through the front door. She’d offer him her beautiful white smile and a kiss on each cheek, before beckoning him to the dining room, where a steaming buffet awaited.

A wave of sadness passed over Selim. Emre stood in an oversized purple T-shirt that came to his knees. His skinny legs poked out like sticks and his dark eyes were wide and gleaming. “You look so much like my brother,” Selim thought aloud.

“You have a brother?”

Selim said nothing, just looked away and headed for the door.

“Please stay with us, please!” the boy called out as he followed Selim down the hall trying to catch up.

Selim only picked up his pace.

“Slow down, Selim! Slow down!” Emre called out.

The memory of an engine roaring cut through him. “Leave me alone!” Selim snapped as he rounded the corner at the far end of the hall. When he reached the lobby, he stopped then turned back slowly.
Slow down, Brother! Slow down!
His heart was beating fast. He made his way back up the dark hallway towards Emre. The boy was still standing in the same spot, under a florescent light panel, with tears in his eyes. Selim crouched over and put his hand on Emre’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. Selim spotted Ozgur peeking out into the hallway. He swallowed hard, then took a deep breath and turned back to Emre. Selim kissed his forehead and left without another word.