The Dervish House (59 page)
Authors: Ian Mcdonald
Kemal snatches the shirt, turns away. He shudders as he takes off his football shirt. For an instant Adnan thinks he might cry and that would be the worst thing. Then he pulls the pure cotton over his turning-flabby torso, buttons it up, fixes the cuffs. There is work to be done.
But I saved your life and I saved your ass and you hate that
, Adnan thinks.
It kills you that you will forever be in my debt for that
.
But I saved your life and I saved your ass and you hate that
, Adnan thinks.
It kills you that you will forever be in my debt for that
.
He tightens his tie, adjusts his cufflinks to perfect symmetry. This is the true Deal Day suit.
In the Improving Bookstore Can once found a wonder: eleven huge leather-bound volumes, cheek to cheek on seldom-visited shelves, gold-edged pages thick with dust. The names on their spines were
The Encyclopaedia of Istanbul
. They went as far as G, but they were illustrated, so in their pages you could not just read about the histories of horse-carriages and steam ferries but you could see them, all drawn out, four to a page, and also Hezarfen Ahmet Çelebi who flew from the Galata Tower to Üsküdar on wooden wings, and the siege engines of Mehmet the Conqueror and harsh Ottoman tortures that made Can feel light-headed and strangely excited. His parents refused to buy them for him at any discount from the bookstore owner, but Can remembers vividly that the last wolf in Istanbul was shot in 1943 in the old graveyard at Eyup, and the drawing; a slobber-jawed, mad-eyed monster leaping on to the blazing rifles of the wolf-finders, who all have good moustaches.
The Encyclopaedia of Istanbul
. They went as far as G, but they were illustrated, so in their pages you could not just read about the histories of horse-carriages and steam ferries but you could see them, all drawn out, four to a page, and also Hezarfen Ahmet Çelebi who flew from the Galata Tower to Üsküdar on wooden wings, and the siege engines of Mehmet the Conqueror and harsh Ottoman tortures that made Can feel light-headed and strangely excited. His parents refused to buy them for him at any discount from the bookstore owner, but Can remembers vividly that the last wolf in Istanbul was shot in 1943 in the old graveyard at Eyup, and the drawing; a slobber-jawed, mad-eyed monster leaping on to the blazing rifles of the wolf-finders, who all have good moustaches.
Can wonders how sure Mr Koçu the writer was about 1943. He’s heard something with big claws and teeth and slobber snuffling and scratching around the end of the concrete pipe. He hugs Monkey closer to him. The machines give off warmth even in resting. Once the sun is down, concrete loses heat rapidly. He shivers and drapes his rainproof around him.
The extraction had been successful. That’s what they called it in games when they had to lift out the Star Troopers. The extraction. Like a tooth, or plugs from his ears. Funny now that he can hear anything and anyone, that Necdet had to talk to him silently, in lip-reading. It was dark by the time he worked back under the floor and down the interior wall and wormed out the ventilation brick. The Samsungs were silhouettes against the high yellow floodlights but outside the lighted areas the dark was deep. It had been easy to disengage Rat Baby and reinstall him on the back of the white van. They were terrorists. They had a plan. They might move before the police came.
Terrorists. The word made him feel funny; not scared, not excited, like both of those but deeper in his belly, right in the core of him, something hot and dark and strange, something Can and at the same time not-Can. Terrorists are old men with beards in robes and young men moving their hands like rappers. Terrorists don’t wear good jeans and boots and SuperDry. But at the same time he saw the guns and the boxes of serious stuff. Can can’t work that out. Terrorists are not supposed to be people at all.
He’d coiled Snake around his arm, unplugged the charger and rolled up the computer. ‘Thank you,’ he called to the teashop man. ‘I’m going home now. Home.’ The teashop owner didn’t charge him for the electricity. Can bought a plastic bag of sensible food from the store at the gas station and wandered along the dusty, street-lit roadside.
Call the police
, Necdet had said.
These people are terrorists. They have some insane plan
.
Call the police
, Necdet had said.
These people are terrorists. They have some insane plan
.
Call the police. Go home.
Promise me you won’t have any more to do with this
, Mr Ferentinou had said.
Terrorist plots don’t get solved by old men and boys; they’re solved by police, the security forces, with guns. You must promise me this or you can never come here again.
, Mr Ferentinou had said.
Terrorist plots don’t get solved by old men and boys; they’re solved by police, the security forces, with guns. You must promise me this or you can never come here again.
He broke his promise. Mr Ferentinou would never speak to him again. He can’t go home. Call the police then. But would they believe him? They must believe him. It’s the truth. But it ’s full dark now and he hasn’t seen another soul since the gas station on this business park arterial and the traffic never stops and the noise is just noise and louder now, closer and more isolating in the night. Can didn’t know what to do. Then he saw the construction site behind the security fence, the warnings and the diggers with metal shutters over their cabs to keep out thieves and boys, but most of all the concrete water pipes. No construction site fence can defeat a nine-year-old. The pipes were still warm with the heat of the day, desirable and discreet yet unoccupied by anyone else. No ashes or food packaging or coils of dried human excrement. If the terrorists moved, he could monitor them in privacy. No one would disturb him here. Can snuggled in and opened his backpack.
Now he’s eaten all his food and he’s getting cold and the concrete is hard and the curvature of the pipe won’t let him sit up fully and he can only lie in one direction and the last wolf in all Istanbul is out there or something worse than a wolf, like a tramp or a drunk or a Terrorist and he’s paralysed by the enormity of what he has to do.
Call the police!
Shaking with dread, Can switches on the ceptep and hooks it up. Now he’s visible to the communications world.
‘Police please.’
‘Putting you through now.’
‘Hello, hello, is that the police in Kayişdaği?’
‘This is Kadiköy police station. How can I help you?’
‘A friend of mine, he’s from Eskiköy, that’s over on the European side, he’s been kidnapped and they’re holding him in the Business Park off Bostancı Dudullu Cadessi.’
A pause. A sigh.
‘What’s your name son?’
‘Can. Can Durukan.’
‘And how old are you?’
‘I’m nine. He’s being held by terrorists, I’ve seen them, they’ve got guns.’
‘Terrorists, is it?’
‘Yes, terrorists, they’ve got some plan, they’re going to make an attack. You’ll need to get the army in, this is too big for just the police.’
‘Is it now?’
‘Yes, they’ve got assault rifles and bombs and everything.’
‘I’ll tell you what’s not too big for the police and that’s sending round a patrol car to give you a good hiding for wasting police time and misuse of a emergency line. It’s a serious offence, misuse of an emergency line, and in case you’d forgotten, sonny, we get an automatic fix on your location, so we can go round right away and deal with nine-year-olds who think it’s clever to waste police time.’
‘Then come round and I’ll show you it’s all true,’ Can shouts but the police officer has disconnected. ‘Something terrible is going to happen!’ The ceptep stays resolutely silent. Wrong wrong wrong. He did that wrong wrong wrong. He should have said he was a missing person. Mom and Dad will have reported it to the local police. They would have a crew car round to him like a shot. But they would just bundle him into the back and send him home. That’s the reason he can’t call Osman and Şekure, or even Mr Ferentinou. Home first, questions later. By the time he persuaded anyone - if he persuaded anyone - it might all be too late. The upstairs office might be empty. The van might be filled up with those crates and boxes and driving out through the gates. Necdet - what were they going to do with Necdet? Can hasn’t thought of that. No, someone has to stay here. Someone has to keep watch. Someone has to find a way to warn people, beat the Terrorists and save Necdet. And that has to be Can Durukan. It’s up to him.
Can hugs Monkey to him. Its heat is niggardly and he doesn’t know when he can recharge him next. He’s spent into his toe-of-shoe emergency money already: gas station food is so expensive, one hundred euro goes nowhere. It’s cold and he is a long way from home and he doesn’t know how much longer he can go on making it up as he goes along. How he wishes that wolf would go away.
Gold on black, stars above and the drifting constellations of ships and ferries against jewelled Asia. Across the Golden Horn, the neon of Eminönü and the floodlit pinnacles of the great mosques, crowned by wheeling flocks of seagulls. The taxi pulls off into the blur of lights along Rıhtım Cadessi, Georgios Ferentinou waits on the pavement, evening pedestrians pushing past him, enchanted by the night.
Georgios has never been to this restaurant. Georgios can’t remember the last time he was anywhere more grand than Bülent’s teashop. His has become the type of life that does not admit restaurants. He regrets that. He used to love going out. But the maps of Istanbul have changed and all his search bots throw up are the four-and-a-half-star pointlessness of customer reviews so he asked Bülent where he would go with his wife if they were to have a wonderful night. Bülent hasn’t been to this restaurant either but it’s by the water and has a Bosphorus side terrace and the staff in uniform to open taxi doors and take coats and it purrs with glamour. When that night of wonder comes, when the expense ends and there’s room for wants over needs; that’s where they’ll go: the Lale.
‘Sir?’ The cloakroom boy has stepped out of the golden glow on to the street.
‘I have a table reserved. Eight o’clock. Ferentinou.’
The maître d’ comes over and touches his ceptep. ‘Professor Ferentinou, welcome. You’re the first to arrive. Would you like a drink at the bar or shall I take you to your table now, sir?’
A moment of panic. Georgios had booked the Lale and then been vertiginous with fear. Would the clientèle be young and fashionable? Would it be too loud for conversation? Would people stare at his clothes? What narratives would they invent for the old man and the old woman at the Bosphorus side table? Would he know the social conventions? Would the maître d’ snark?
‘I think I’d like to go to the table now.’
‘It’s ready for you, sir. Please follow me.’
The maître d’ leads Georgios through the restaurant and he is a waddling bulb of a man and he is the oldest person in the room and his clothes are odd and ugly and look uncomfortable on him and the people at the tables are young and glamorous and well dressed and good looking and impossibly articulate and vastly more wealthy but there’s a spring in his step and a lift to his chin and a brightness to his eye and a firmness to his intent because he defeated Ogün Saltuk in his own think-tank, in front of Turkey’s fashionable minds, defeated him with his own weapons, wrested from his hands those weapons he had stolen from Georgios all those years ago. He defeated his ancient enemy and that makes him as young and strong and smart as anyone in Lale.
The table is beside the water, a railing between him and the Bosphorus. The water smells deep, as it does when the Storm of the Red Plums or autumn’s Storm of the Passing Cranes carry its scent up the hill to Eskiköy. Georgios is encircled in light. The candle lantern on his table. The glittering arc of the bridge. A cruise ship a glowing mosaic, moving slowly down the channel from the Black Sea. Aircraft, a helicopter, the navigation beacons of kitesails south in the Marmara. The water catches the lights and shatters them in ripples and glances. Looking down at the cat-tongue ripples, Georgios sees tar-stained polystyrene and an empty bleach bottle. But at every moment some fascinating movement of light seduces his attention. He feels beyond time and age.
‘Sir, your guest.’
Georgios stumbles to his feet. He’s sky-struck, night-mazed. He’s not ready for Ariana. But here she is, stepped out of forty years. He can’t look at her. He daren’t look at her. Georgios fumbles a bow, then comes out from the safety of the table to kiss her on both cheeks, in the European fashion. She smells of lavender and salt sea and sky.
‘Thank you, thank you for coming.’
The maître d’ scoops the chair deftly in behind Ariana. He catches Georgios’ eye in a glance that says,
I understand, sir, we will make it special, sir
. Now Georgios dares look at her. His last image of Ariana was of her walking off the ferry at Haydarpaşa in another century. He has carried that icon for forty-seven years. He looks and he can no longer remember that face. This is Ariana Sinanidis. Face thinner and lined by idealism become determination. Hair massive and dark and curling, hair he could bury his hands in, now made more dramatic by two streaks of grey framing her face. He had thought her eyes wouldn’t change, couldn’t change, but they are larger and the light in them more luminous. She carries herself with ease and grace. She is the mother of gods. The skin of her hands bears the minute lozenge-pattern of age, her nails are French-polished. Georgios sees no rings, nor the old imprint of one on the third finger of the left hand.
I understand, sir, we will make it special, sir
. Now Georgios dares look at her. His last image of Ariana was of her walking off the ferry at Haydarpaşa in another century. He has carried that icon for forty-seven years. He looks and he can no longer remember that face. This is Ariana Sinanidis. Face thinner and lined by idealism become determination. Hair massive and dark and curling, hair he could bury his hands in, now made more dramatic by two streaks of grey framing her face. He had thought her eyes wouldn’t change, couldn’t change, but they are larger and the light in them more luminous. She carries herself with ease and grace. She is the mother of gods. The skin of her hands bears the minute lozenge-pattern of age, her nails are French-polished. Georgios sees no rings, nor the old imprint of one on the third finger of the left hand.
‘This is a wonderful place,’ Ariana Sinanidis says in English. ‘Forgive me, my Turkish has slipped a bit.’ The shawl slides from her shoulders, baring them. A flow of warm air eddies in over the black water. It carries scents of rose and diesel fumes.
‘Of course.’ Georgios switches languages effortlessly. ‘I’m sure you’re finding Istanbul much changed.’
‘In some ways, I hardly recognize it. In other ways, not so much. The old apartments and old houses are still there. There are still some of the same shops. Some of the names and frontages have changed but they are still selling cigarettes and newspapers. There’s still a Lotto cart at Kazancı Mesjid. The fountain at Çukurlu Çeşme Sok still drips. Things look smaller and closer together.’
The sommelier enters the natural gap in the conversation. Drinks are ordered: Georgios water, Ariana a Scotch whisky, a man’s drink. She asks the sommelier for a particular brand. The sommelier doesn’t have it but suggests a similar distillery. It’s acceptable.
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