‘You’re right, but I fail to understand why it has taken me all day,’ said Ziya. ‘I’ve lost count of the files and documents I had to give your accountant, but for some reason he wouldn’t take the key.’
With the calmest of smiles, Binnaz Hanım leaned back in her chair.
‘He wouldn’t because he couldn’t,’ she said. ‘It’s not his job to take the key. It’s mine.’
Ziya said nothing. Or rather, he turned wearily to look out the window. He could not understand why a simple matter of returning a key had turned into this endless ceremony. The pigeon he’d been watching earlier was still there, still staring. There was a darkening warning in its beady eyes — and even in the colouring of its feathers, which seemed on the verge of changing into something else. Unnerved, Ziya turned back to Binnaz Hanım.
She was calling for the maid. ‘What’s become of your manners, girl? Aren’t you going to offer anything to our guest?’
At that same moment, the maid ran in carrying a coffee tray. Stopping in front of Ziya, she curtsied.
He picked up a tiny cup embellished with blue flowers. ‘Thank you.’
The maid responded with a solemn nod so perfectly measured that it seemed to take even its owner by surprise. For now she broke the mood with a smile. Though it would be more accurate to say that she stood in front of Ziya and stretched her lips. Those rose-petal lips — they opened and closed, wet and slippery with desire. And then she was off, this maid, leaving a lovely perfume in her wake as she darted between the armchairs, as dainty as a little bird, to take Binnaz Hanım her coffee. Standing before her mistress, she went back to playing the coquette, swaying her hips as she gazed impishly into Binnaz Hanım’s eyes. Her gaze had so much life in it that you could almost see it, flowing from one woman to the other. And even, somehow, holding up Binnaz Hanım’s cup. But now, all of a sudden, the tray was on the table, and this maid was fiddling with her hair in the armchair next to Binnaz Hanım. She seemed almost to be sighing. Almost, but not quite.
Sulkily eyeing the maid, Binnaz Hanım slotted a cigarette between her lips. A moment later, she took it out again. ‘A light, my girl,’ she said curtly. ‘A light.’ The maid, unfazed, produced a garish lighter. As the flame shot up, she let out a little gasp so unsettling that Ziya fell back in his chair. Only by fixing his eyes on the ceiling was he able to regain his composure. Time seemed to stop. Or rather, it turned into cigarette smoke; it was nothing more than the smoke leaking from Binnaz Hanım’s mouth. Slowly Ziya lowered his head, as the girl leaned back to play with her hair again.
Ziya, who had finished his coffee by now, gave her a pained look. What was he doing here? ‘I should just hand over the key and go,’ he thought. But he seemed incapable of movement. Every time he tried to stand up, something pushed him down again. A crushing weight, but not the sort you could measure. This was more like a spell, a trance, a gentle wave of fatigue casting the sort of net that never lets you go. Or rather, this was what Ziya was thinking while he sat there. But even as he surrendered to this force he could not see, he of course kept his eyes on Binnaz Hanım, and on her maid.
And now, before his very eyes, a mist blew in from goodness knows where. It swirled around the room, sketching strange shapes as it rose to the ceiling, leaving tiny wisps of quivering smoke in its wake. It vanished into the shadows, rambled across walls, rose over the cabinet behind him, bounded from chair to chair, only to return as a shadow, settling on the tables and the carpets and Binnaz Hanım’s chair. She was still puffing on her cigarette, and now, when she exhaled, the fog grew thicker. Another puff, and it grew thicker still. She puffed again, and she vanished into the smoke, taking with her the maid and both their chairs. Now Ziya could see nothing but Binnaz Hanım’s fat fingers, glowing in her ring’s reflection. And, flitting here and there through the billowing smoke, the silhouette of a handsome young man. But it did not stay long, this silhouette. It had, perhaps, been sent from far away, in error. Ziya seized this moment to place the key on the table.
As he rose to his feet, he said, ‘Please excuse me, but I have to go.’ His voice sounded odd, and unnecessarily loud.
No sooner had he spoken than Binnaz Hanım parted the smoke like a curtain and stuck out her head. Slowly she opened her mouth, as if to speak, but she said nothing. She just fixed her tiny raisin eyes on him. His own eyes rested on her cheekbones, which were glistening with sweat, until suddenly, impatiently, she withdrew back into the smoke.
In a distant voice, she said, ‘Where are you going?’
‘I’ve left the key on the table,’ said Ziya, turning back towards the wall of smoke. ‘Please take it, because I need to go.’
This time, it was the maid who poked out her head; a plaintive look and she was gone again.
For Ziya, this was the last straw. How could they have parted company, if no one had left? With a mounting sense of dread, he surveyed the room. He turned back to the wall of smoke, hoping for one last glimpse of Binnaz Hanım before he left, but he could see nothing, and all he could hear was an indistinct echo of voices rising and falling, until, without willing it, he leaned forward to listen.
It was the maid. ‘Let’s drop it. Let him go if he wants,’ she said.
‘Absolutely not.’ This was Binnaz Hanım.
‘Why not, though?’ said the maid. ‘Tell me that, why don’t you? Why can’t we let him go?’
Binnaz Hanım said nothing.
Or, if she spoke, her words were lost in the smoke.
Silence. First it was just inside the cloud, but then it radiated outwards. Ziya craned his neck, as if to watch it spread. Did he know what he was doing? When his eyes lit on the window, he saw the pigeon still perched there, staring at him urgently with its beady eyes. Its outline wasn’t as clear as before, though. Its colour was indistinct, too. Its long wait seemed to have worn it out. You could almost see time pressing down on it, for now it had begun to quake and blur, and even to shrink slightly. And that was why, if you just glanced at it, the bird looked more like a puff of smoke resting on the windowsill, or a pale patch of sky that had somehow drifted their way. And now, seeing Ziya’s eyes, it pecked at the glass a few times, this pigeon, and ruffled its wings. Was this its way of trying to tell him something? Ziya had hardly formed the question when the bird came hurtling inside, shattering the windowpane, and sending shards of glass flying in all directions. The bird flew right through the wreckage, screeching madly as it flapped across the room. After flying like this for some time, making ever-tighter circles around the chandeliers, it wheeled around to launch a vicious attack on the wall of smoke in the corner. And soon the bird had ripped the wall to shreds, and there before him were Binnaz Hanım and her maid. Who could say how long they had been gone?
Binnaz Hanım, at least, stayed calm. Every now and then she cast a sidelong glance at the new arrival, smiling as wearily as if this bird was known to her and paid her daily visits. The maid, meanwhile, was racing around the room trying to catch it. In fact, she was going so fast that her slippers began to squeak and her flyaway hair to blur. She turned into a shadow with eyes that grew wider at the sight of scattered feathers and shattered glass. Blurring even more, she began to screech, too. ‘Hiiii. Hiiii!’ She was faster than a fever now. Faster still. And now she seemed to be in several different places at once. One shadow was darting around the glistening shards of glass; another was in the corner, leaping up to catch the pigeon in mid-flight. One shadow was lost in smoke, while another, anxiously panting for breath, was trying to push past his chair. You might almost think they were in the grip of some larger force here. As if there was some sort of monstrous puppeteer lurking unseen above them, making one maid and multiplying her, and binding each one to invisible threads. But no matter how they ran and lunged, or how ingenious their surprise attacks, none of these puppets could catch the pigeon. For the moment they touched it, the pigeon turned into a shadow. And all that while, the pigeon kept returning to the walls, of course, fluttering so wildly you might have thought it was trying to leave this world and enter another. For now, each time it hit against that wall of smoky shadows, the bird attacked it more viciously.