Vince leapt to his feet and began baying. He held us captive, an actor on a stage. I could see the claustrophobic narrow corridor, feel the rush of bodies around the lockers. ‘Hey, Nazin, didn’t this poofter Vince invite you to dinner? I wanted to die, not because of what he had said about me, but I would never have wanted to humiliate Nazin. I think at that moment I was prepared to punch him: I would have been beaten but I would have been defending her. So idiotically romantic were my fantasies. Except he went on, shouting, laughing: As if Nazin would ever accept a dinner paid by a whore’s wages, as if. As if! Those last two words he literally sprayed across my face.’
Vince sat back down. I could not look at him. None of us dared look at him.
‘I was looking straight at her.’ His voice had lowered, he once again sounded unconcerned. ‘She said nothing but for a moment I saw a small sly grin that told me everything I needed to know. She agreed with him, she agreed with all the Omets and Hussans and Serkans of this world. That grin disappeared as soon as she saw me looking at her but I was never to forget it. That afternoon I went home, waited for Mum to get there and told her I wanted dinner to just be us. She protested, but I convinced her that was what I really wanted. For the night of the dinner she bought a new dress, I still remember it, a white frock with red floral swirls, she did her hair and she bought me a new jacket and new shoes. I laughed and talked and was excited all through dinner, not letting on that inside all I could think of was Nazin and that cruel disdainful grin. I’ve never been able to forget that grin.’
‘How did you get your revenge?’ Mark’s question was so quiet that we almost did not hear it. He seemed fearful asking it, as if Vince’s story had taken us far from the confines of a parlour game.
But Vince clapped his hands together and grinned at him. ‘Yes, yes, of course, revenge. Let us get to what really matters.’ He leaned back in his seat, his finger tracing the stubble under his bottom lip. I thought he was figuring out how best to resume his story, but now I wonder if he was gauging how far he had reeled us in, whether we were there for the taking. In the pause, Serena rose, grabbed more bottles and refilled all our glasses.
Vince watched her fill his glass, then raised it, sipped, and began to speak. ‘As you all know, I had a great time after I finished my studies, travelling in Indonesia and Thailand. I’d hooked up with a German girl there, Angela, and she invited me back to West Berlin. I loved Asia but I was hanging out for the bright lights and flushing toilets of Europe. Berlin was astounding. The wall hadn’t fallen yet but you could tell there were seismic shifts just about to happen. It was crazy, I didn’t sleep, I took a shitload of drugs, I partied every night. It was the most decadent place I have ever visited. Angela knew this DJ, a Kurd called Rajan, and he threw the best raves, they went on for days. He and I hit it off immediately. He was a migrant kid as well, we understood each other. Soon after I got there, Angela left me for a woman—’
‘Score one for our team!’ yelled out Ingrid.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I decide to head to Greece. Rajan tells me he is holidaying in Turkey for the summer and we decide to meet up in Istanbul.’ All of a sudden, with great force, Vince slapped his knee with the palm of his hand; it cracked like a gunshot through the apartment.
‘Fuck,’ he muttered. ‘Fuck, we are so far away here, so far away from life.’ The look he threw Marie was fierce. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are.’
‘I think I do,’ she replied calmly.
‘Didn’t you just love Istanbul?’
Vince grinned at Hande. ‘Yes I did — it was the second most decadent place I have ever been. Rajan took me to these raves there, to gigs where two hundred screaming Turkish punks in Che Guevara T-shirts and anarchist tattoos were jumping around like it was 1977 while all the time behind the bar a picture of bloody Atatürk hangs on the wall.’ He grimaced at Hande. ‘What is it with you Turks and that arsehole?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s the law. Every venue has to display his picture.’
‘I couldn’t bear his weasel eyes always looking down at me, wherever I was, whatever I was doing.’ He shrugged, in imitation of Hande’s nonchalance, and returned to his story.
‘I danced, I ate, I fucked and I danced some more in Istanbul. The one unintoxicated moment I had I wandered into the Grand Bazaar to buy my mother a necklace. My grandmother always used to say that the best gold in the world comes through Costantinopoli, and it must be true because there is stall after stall after stall of gold being weighed and displayed. I finally found a beautiful crucifix for her, simple but solid gold, and I bought it for her as well as a solid gold chain.’ As he was speaking he seemed unaware that his fingers had reached for his exposed neck, that he was softly stroking the underside of his chin.
‘After a week in Istanbul, Rajan invites me east to where his family are from. We travelled on buses for days until the West just disappeared. It was mountains, desert, mountains, desert and soon there are signs pointing to Iraq, Iran, Syria, and all these places in the Soviet Union I’ve never heard of. We’re on this 1950s bus with Turkish peasants staring at us as if we’ve just descended from the stars. Not just me, they think Rajan is an alien as well. We might both look like wogs but he’s got brand-new Adidas runners on his feet, a Happy Mondays T-shirt, a mohawk, plugs in his ears. He’s a Berliner through and through. I want to laugh, I want to hoot, I’m in the backblocks of Turkey and having a wonderful time. But I notice that the closer we are getting to Rajan’s home the angrier he gets, the more he’s telling me in his German English that he can’t stand the Turks, that they stink, that they’re inhospitable, that they’re savages. I realise that this dude hates the Turks with a red-hot hereditary passion. They’ve imprisoned my uncle, he tells me, they’ve stolen our lands, they are murderers, animals.’ Vince had thrown his arms in the air, was gesticulating wildly; I could see the bus, the scorched open road, the Kurdish friend next to him, I could see it all. Yunan, Yunan, he kept saying to me, gripping my arm, you and I are Greek and Kurd united against the Turk. It’s like the further east we head the less of a German he became. The more he remembers his hatred, the less a European he is. I myself don’t give a fuck. Omet and Hussan and Serkan are a lifetime away, I left them dying a long slow suburban death in Westmeadows. I want to sing, I want to breakdance, I want to fuck every single one of these peasants, every toothless man, every covered woman, every bright-eyed child on that bus.’
His eyes that night were burning. I finally understood his zeal for travel, for not standing still, for bursting through walls. I could see the desert landscape of eastern Turkey, touch it, smell it.