I like hardware stores. They have the remedy for every predicament you can think of. Manning the counter was some boy still wet behind the ears. He did his best to help me out. He found a wire for me, the closest thing he could find to a piano string. I bought some duct tape and a stout hammer handle. A small saw, some sandpaper. I thought of the headline: Scalpel. I didn’t know the first thing about scalpels. What I did know was that long gone were the days when punks who thought they were hot shit packed straight razors in their shirt pockets. I bought a sturdy box cutter; it fit my hand perfectly. I almost bought a blowtorch too, but then I changed my mind. Truth be told, I’d never really liked the smell of burnt flesh.
Pubs crowded the edges of the neighborhood. I thought I saw the blondie again. But I didn’t pay him any mind this time. I went to a pastry shop that had a broken marble counter. I had börek. I went to a greasy spoon restaurant. I had vegetable casserole with meat, rice, and cacık. Then I ducked into a workers’ coffeehouse and ordered rosehip tea. I opened the paper. Let’s see what happened when I wasn’t looking. The headline said, The Scalpel Slays Again! For real. Somebody out there was on a killing spree, knocking off retired civil servants. Nobody had seen or heard a thing. It was almost like some practical joke — saving the retired from their misery! Except it wasn’t a joke. And whoever did this was treating the victims like lambs marked for slaughter during the Feast of the Sacrifice. The person, or persons, might very well be in the business of butchering or medicine, the paper said. Well, there is little difference between a butcher and a medical professional, if you ask me. For lack of visual material, they had printed a huge picture of the scalpel; one had been found with each victim. It was a fancy piece of work: handmade, with some floral ornaments connecting the handle to the blade. Holy shit, look at that! I recall thinking, Are we seeing the beginning of a serial killer fad in Turkey? Of all things...
Days passed. I was getting used to the neighborhood. The neighborhood was getting used to me. I visited the stationery store every once in a while. I was getting fat on kebabs and lahmacun. I recalled the once numerous vendors of firewood, the yorgan makers, and such. If only I could find a yorgan maker, I’d stop to watch the cotton spinner. That would help me focus. But where to find one these days? I went to the barbershop instead and got an old-school haircut and a very close shave with a straight razor. That’s how I regained my focus. The razor, glinting like a river snake, reminded me of all the things I still had to do.
I wandered about with purpose, before, finally, I dared to enter Çıngıraklı Bostan Street. It all felt like a dream. Yet I found the chief’s house just like that, as if I’d put it there myself. There it was, still standing after so many years.
I did my best to ignore him, but I couldn’t help being painfully aware of the blondie. To the hilt. He was in the neighborhood, around me, after me. I was curious as to whether he was following me or not. Maybe he had a number going on in the neighborhood and he was concerned that I would lay claim to his stakes, try to scare up a partnership, or wreck his game somehow. I was picking up a bad vibe from blondie, but whatever his beef, there was no way I’d let him stand in my way. He had to be handled before I could get down to business.
There was a snack shop selling dried fruits and nuts at the mouth of Horhor Avenue. One day I was buying dried oleaster berries there. The blondie walked by and continued up Horhor. I grabbed the paper bag and paused to put some distance between us. Now I was after him. The box cutter was in my pocket. I was about to do some close-range work; it was giving me a serious buzz.
I don’t know if I actually caught up with him or if he just let me catch up. We were in front of a building; its door was ajar. I tossed the bag, reached with my left. He turned then, and I saw his hands were empty. Perhaps foolishly, I let the box cutter go and pushed the guy, charging into him. We burst through the door, crashing against its wings. I was surprised we were still standing. I tried to land a hook on his face; he moved his head ever so slightly and evaded the blow. Nice. Very, very nice. There was no one to break up the fight. My blood was boiling. I saw red the shade of a sizzling iron. I dove into the atrium of the building and pounced on him. By that point, he was no different to me than a rabid dog, and I was a butcher, barging through the gates of the slaughterhouse, eager to do the deed.
We were sitting on the stairs leading up from the atrium of the building. We were breathing heavily, good and cranked up. My knuckles hurt. It felt like I had a few broken ribs. My nose was swollen. Something warm was dripping down my face. My vision was off on the left. My brow was beating like a punctured heart.
As far as I could tell, he wasn’t in any better shape. He turned to me and said, just like that, “We are each worse than the other, you know.” He had a slight accent, like I did. He was right. We were each worse than the other, in ways both material and not so material. But I didn’t know the half of it yet.
We stepped out, leaning on each other. We ducked into a nearby pharmacy. The pharmacist lady had to hold a scream in when she saw us. Fortunately, the blondie knew what he was doing. We left without having to explain anything to anybody.
We went to a kebab house that I was familiar with, one of several strung from the mouth of Horhor toward the police station. I never figured out the man tending it; I didn’t even know his name. He was dark and always wore a black suit. He knew me from back when my mother was sick.
“My oh my!” he said when he saw us. “Did they try to remodel you guys or what?” I would have laughed out loud, if only I’d had the strength. He took us to the back of the store and let us sit at a secluded table. He brought us towels, water, and bags of ice.
Blondie wiped my face with peroxide, then stuffed gauze in my nostrils. “It’s not broken,” he said. Not that it mattered, really. He fixed my cut eyebrow with some strips. He gave me pills for pain and infection. Then he examined and treated himself in front of a mirror. We grabbed the bags of ice and sat, facing each other, like two geese that had escaped a very close shave by some demented barber.
His name was Pandeli. He lived in Vienna. He was a doctor. Single. He had done his residency training in surgery in Istanbul. Not so luckily for me, he had trained as a kickboxer several years before.
I told him about myself. I lived in New York. I had a car repair shop there. I was single. I had dabbled in tae kwon do in the past. I had come to Istanbul because my mother was sick. I didn’t yet explain why I had stayed on, though.