‘Yes, I would,’ Ziya replied.
As she reached out to take a cigarette, Binnaz Hanım allowed herself a faint smile.
‘So that’s how it is,’ she said with a tired sigh. ‘He might have killed my father, but when I remember that microbe’s tears, it still makes me sad. Sometimes I wonder if you need to have some evil in you, to have any chance of being seen as good. Who am I to say, but in this world of ours, bad people do have a way of outshining the good, Ziya Bey. As I said just a moment ago, Matkap had only to see a child to turn into an extravagantly good man. Maybe, without knowing it, he was able to tap into their inner goodness somehow. Maybe when he reached out to touch a child’s cheek, he was actually touching the light in that child’s soul. I can’t say for sure, of course. I never studied any of that God stuff, my mind just can’t take it in. I can’t believe there’s a needlepoint’s worth of light in him anyway; he’s all darkness, a stinking barn filled to the last square millimetre with long-tailed, fire-breathing devils. All else aside, this was already clear from the fact that he murdered my father. . Yes, he killed my father! Without even blinking! In the space of a moment, I saw my world come crashing down — bang! — and then, before my eyes, it remade itself, from top to bottom. Just like that. And that, Ziya Bey, is when it happened: his weight joined with mine. As he vanished, I increased in volume, and then — presto! — the woman you see before you was reborn. It’s not just my weight that changed that day. It was everything: my arms, my legs, my face, my eyes. I was chilled to the bone, and what’s more, I couldn’t stop trembling, and I had no idea what to do. And then, every time I thought that thought — “I don’t know what to do” — my father’s face would appear before me, and there he’d stand — my father. My father, stinking like a meyhane, and watching over me. He could see how distraught I was. I’m here, he’d say. Just the faintest hint of a smile: I’m here. In those days, of course, there was no price to be paid for too many tears, and nothing could stop me from retreating into a corner to cry the night away. In one sense, I was calling out for my father, whose face I could see so clearly in my dreams. I knew he wasn’t coming back, but I still cried out for him. At the time, my mother was doing the same, using all her strength to beat her chest, and so were my brothers and sisters, my white-haired grandmother and the relatives who came to us from all over the city. We cried and we cried. We begged my father to come back. And oh, the day they brought the coffin to the house. That sorry coffin, draped in green. As we gathered around it, our grief knew no bounds. . And that’s God’s own truth. So I shall ask you to pay no attention to what I said a moment ago, about being so sad. I am, to all intents and purposes, Matkap’s most formidable foe. If I ever get my hands on him, mark my words: I’ll strangle him in a heartbeat. I’ve only seen him a few times since, but I was too young to kill him — I didn’t even have pimples then. The first time I saw him was three days after the funeral, when he came to the house, to pay his condolences. Swishing that coat of his. Did that murderer feel no shame? Standing in front of our door that day, you could still hear us wailing: three days after the funeral, our cries of grief still hung over us: black and trembling, a wailing cloud. And now here he was, stepping out of that cloud, without his men, and showing such remorse. Matkap. When my poor mother opened the door, she was so shocked and angry she didn’t know what to do. Then she pulled herself together, gathered all her strength, and hissing like a yellow snake she said, “Go. Away.” Just those two words. “Go. Away.” We ran to her side, taking her by the arms, lest she crumble in a heap, and that leather-faced goon they called Matkap just buried his head in his shoulders, and off he went, back into the wailing cloud, and it wasn’t long before we could see no more of him or his black raincoat. But still we stood there, staring into that cloud until our tears returned. It was worst for my mother. It was as if she had lost my father all over again, and the second time was far, far worse than the first. Day after day, she sat in her corner, head bowed, eyes downcast, her hands hanging limply at her side. A week later, she suddenly remembered my father’s coat. Furious, she jumped to her feet. In a tearful voice, she told me to go straight to the meyhane to bring it back. That was how, like it or not, I had my second encounter with this Macit Karakas¸, this man we knew as Matkap. And so I threw on my cardigan and off I went to the meyhane, and I cannot begin to tell you how scared I was. I’m not sure what scared me more — seeing Matkap, or seeing the place where my father had been killed, or touching his jacket — but I was quaking. With every step and every street, my terror grew, until there I was, at the meyhane door. Matkap had pinned the blame for the murder on one of his men, and given the other partner in the business a little money to get lost. He’d then had the meyhane’s indigo-blue walls painted pink, and changed the neon signs, and the tables, not to mention the tablecloths and pictures, and as if this wasn’t enough, he’d put up a bead curtain that clicked and clattered at the slightest touch. To supervise all this he’d parked himself next to the cash register. Or at least, that where he was sitting, snug as an inkpot, when I pushed open the bat-wing doors. Sitting there with his hands clasped, staring stupidly into the middle distance. Was he startled at the sight of me? He didn’t move a muscle, but something was up. For all I know, the very force of my gaze pulled him right out of his seat, only to set him right back down again. He looked up for a moment. Bored his eyes straight into me. Then he opened a drawer. Began to rummage through it. Made a good show of being frantically busy. A businessman, with important business to attend to. And while he continued with this charade, I stared down at the concrete floor, wondering where it was my father had fallen, after being stabbed. A jowly grey-haired middle-aged waiter worked his way over to me, very slowly. Standing right in front of me, he asked me what I wanted. He knew who I was, of course. He’d seen me before. He was at pains to look pained. As if to say, “Oh, my poor, poor girl, from the bottom of my heart, I grieve for you.” And oh, how old that made him seem. You know how it is with old men sometimes. How they’ll try and turn their decaying bodies into featherbeds of compassion. You know the type. Old man. Heart on sleeve. A little breeze wafts by or the door slams and he dissolves into tears. With every passing day his body sinks deeper into inertia. The world revolving around him seems to do the same. Each minute rolls by slower than the last. If life were a reel of film, he’d have time to pore over each and every frame. And when life is unfurling that slowly, a single frame can really strike the heart. You know what I mean? But who does know? It might be the slow pace of life itself that drives old men like this mad. Maybe the rest of the charade is subterfuge. A sad attempt to dignify all those tears they’ve shed. When they cry, every last pore in their eyes opens up, and with all that light coming in, there is no hiding from the mountain peaks of memory. It may well be those mountain peaks that upset them: I just don’t know. In any event, this middle-aged waiter I was telling you about. With that silly look on his face, he might as well have been one of those old men. Just say boo and he’ll cry. I’m not joking. Tears welling in his eyes. Eyelashes twitching. Cheekbones clenched. I told him what I wanted, my voice trembling, and off he went, rushing to a wooden closet behind the counter and retrieving my father’s jacket. With a deftness that took me by surprise, he folded it up and placed it in my arms. I was in such a state, Ziya Bey. I couldn’t stop shaking. And shivering. You would have thought I had a fever. I threw Matkap a furious glance, as if to say: “What of the man who should be wearing this coat?” Which was, of course, a wasted effort. The scoundrel was still bent down, fiddling with the drawers. And so I left, without saying a word. I rushed out into the street. Dived into the crowd. Broke into a run. I began to feel better once I’d escaped from the meyhane, but even so, I dreaded going home. What I mean to say is, I began to imagine the scene that might await me there. I ran through the possibilities, each more frightening than the last. I had no idea what my mother would do when I walked in. Would she freeze at the sight of me, never to move again? Or would she let out a high-pitched scream, hold the jacket to her breast, bury her face in it, taking in the smell — bury her face in it, over and over, only to launch into a tirade of fury, a string of curses that had no meaning, beyond being all against Macit Karakas¸? Or would she take the jacket off to her corner, and bow her head and return to her dark chasm, refusing food and drink for days to come? There was no way of knowing. It could be none of the above, but it was not knowing that unnerved me, and my heart raced faster with every step I took. Honestly, Ziya Bey. Walking home with that jacket in my arms was difficult beyond words. Even now, all these years later, that same fear comes back to haunt me. It’s like someone has driven a giant nail through my heart. And nothing I can do will dislodge it. And when I go down into the city, when I walk through those same streets, sometimes I can see myself, as I was on that day. What I mean is, when I’m least expecting it, I see before me a very young girl, whose face is pale as pale. Sometimes she slips out from behind a bus, and sometimes around a corner. Sometimes the crowds drift apart like clouds and there she is. A girl whose slender legs are trembling with fear, and I share that fear. Because I’m not taking home a jacket. I’m taking home my father’s absence. And that’s why my burden feels so heavy, and why it pains me so. And yet I’ve taken it with me, wherever I’ve gone, wherever I rest my weary head — can you ever lose sight of a person? And for a long time I’ve wondered if it’s his echoes I’m seeing. I’ll be walking down a street, and suddenly it’s like everyone I see is someone I met many years ago. Then I remember that some of these people are dead and buried, and naturally that sends a chill down my spine. Soon I’m so scared my eyes are popping out, and that is when the young girl slips back into the crowd. Tossing her hair, she slips back into the pandemonium of the streets. Time buttons itself up. I can no longer see into the past. I know, Ziya Bey, I know. You must think I’ve said quite enough. And if I am right about that, there wouldn’t be anyone on heaven or earth who’d disagree with you. Even I couldn’t tell you what’s making me talk like this. Let’s have another cigarette — what do you say?’