Hotel Bosphorus (24 page)

“Come on,” he whispered in my ear, making me jump. He was holding my suitcase and standing right behind me.

I reached out to take the suitcase. “Let me take you,” he said.

“Whatever next?” I said.

“I'm going to take you home,” he said and strode towards the door. I ran after him.

“Don't be ridiculous, I'll get a taxi home,” I said.

“You're German,” he said laughing. “You'd go and take the metro, just because it's cheap. Unless I saw it with my own eyes, I'd never believe you went by taxi.” As he opened the door for me to pass, he was still laughing.

Apart from telling the driver the address, we didn't speak again until the taxi stopped outside my mother's house.

“Shall I call you at the hotel tomorrow afternoon?” I asked before getting out of the taxi.

“I have a very busy schedule tomorrow and I don't know what time I'll be back at the hotel,” he said.

I turned my head away so that he wouldn't see I was upset, opened the door and jumped out. He got out behind me. I felt certain my face had turned bright red. I kept my eyes fixed to the ground.

He held my hand, or rather the tips of my fingers and, as if explaining to a small child why the seasons change, said, “We don't need to telephone each other. Let's meet tomorrow evening at eight o'clock,” he said. “There's a Thai restaurant I like very much. It's in the East, in Prenzlauer Allee. Let's go there to eat.” Without letting go of my hand, he patted his jacket pocket with his other hand looking for pen and paper.

“Here,” I said, taking a small notebook out of my bag. He placed it on top of the taxi and wrote down the address.

“Do you know it from memory?”

“It's my favourite restaurant, of course I do.”

I put the diary back in my bag and offered him my cheek.

“Just a minute, let me take your suitcase up the steps,” he said.

“You're going too far now,” I said.

He put his head through the window and asked the driver, who was sitting motionlessly in his seat, to open the car boot.

When I woke up the next morning, I was surprised to find that I wasn't feeling like the happiest woman in the world. One aspect of ageing I didn't like was my increasing sense of duty. It prevented me from forgetting my responsibilities and devoting myself wholeheartedly to the business of love.

As I went into the shower, my mind was not on Selim, but on my mother. This was very sad for a forty-three-year-old woman. The water was still dripping down my legs when I rang my brother Schalom.

It was Ute who answered. “Are you in Berlin?” she asked. “Yes,” I said. “We need to get Mother out of hospital and find a suitable place to care for her.”

“Wait, I'll call Schalom,” she said.

After putting the phone down, I dressed and went out for breakfast. I walked along the side of the canal, reading the menus posted on the doors of the row of cafés. My mother's house was in the Turkish district of Kreuzberg, known as “little Istanbul” by Germans who keep away from Turks and this area. Anyone who has seen a single postcard of Istanbul would never refer to this miserable place as “little Istanbul”, but never mind.

Because this area used to have the Berlin Wall next to it, the German working classes didn't want to settle in Kreuzberg. Therefore while the Wall existed, rents hit rock bottom and the Turks who came as
Gastarbeiter
after 1965 settled in Kreuzberg because it was cheap. First it was these workers and then, during my student years, it was left-wing Germans… Non-Turkish guest-workers gradually left Germany as the economies of their own countries improved. It meant that, during those years, the only new arrivals were Turks, who married, had lots of children and continued to live in Kreuzberg.

I've never worked out why my parents chose to live in that area, which I associated so much with migrants. I could understand my father wanting to live there when we returned from Istanbul, but my mother continued living in that house even after he died, despite all her complaints about Turks. My mother liked to confuse people around her by speaking in Turkish. Even so, it was ridiculous to think that she'd lived there all those years just to hear a headscarved young cashier say, “
Teyze
, where did you learn your Turkish?” a couple of times a week at one of the Turkish markets in Kreuzberg. Also, she used to say that if anyone called her “
teyze
”, meaning “auntie”, it made her so cross she wanted to hurl the olives, or whatever she had bought, back at them.

Sometimes I used to think the reason why my mother didn't move away from Kreuzberg was that she loved water. Although originally from Munich, my mother had spent her childhood in Hamburg. Unlike my father, who was from Trier, she had always lived near the sea. My mother found Istanbul too Muslim and never really liked it, so I think the reason she agreed
to remain there after the war was her love of water. The only water visible in Berlin, if you don't count the lakes nearby, is in the canals that wind around the city and the River Spree. My mother loved her house by the canal, even if she didn't love Kreuzberg.

On my last visit, she'd said that sometimes she thought the canal smelled like the Bosphorus.

But she became annoyed when I said, “I think you're missing Istanbul.”

 

I decided to head for some cafés with a view of the light railway that I'd discovered on one of my visits to Berlin. However, having studied all the menus on the café doors in Paul-Lincke-Ufer, I waited in vain for a waiter to run up to me saying, “This way, madam, we have crunchy
simit
, honey, cream and a host of olives.” I realized I'd been wasting my time.

Leaving the canal behind me, I turned into Manteuffel Street. I liked both the view and the breakfast at Café Morgenland, which was right on the corner of the street next to Görlitzer metro station, referred to as Gülizar station by Turks.

What I really wanted was the Italian salami breakfast but, thinking of mad cow disease, I just ordered cheese.

While waiting for my breakfast to arrive, I took out my notebook and wrote a list of arguments I'd been storing in my head since the previous day for persuading my mother to go into a care home.

That afternoon, I entered the hospital room with a thermos of coffee in my hands, feeling like a child who has done her homework properly.

Later, as I waited in the queue outside the Thai restaurant in Prenzlauer Allee, I lit a cigarette and exhaled, feeling pleased with myself.

The moment I'd mentioned the words care home, my mother had said, “I've been thinking of that for a long time. In any case, I don't have many friends left in Berlin. Those that haven't died have moved into care homes.” As if to convince herself, she'd added, “I think that would be the best thing to do.”

I was amazed. Perhaps because, for some reason, I'd had the belief that no elderly person, especially a woman like my mother, would ever want to go into a care home. My brother was right. I'd started to think like a Turk about some things, though not everything of course. I'd come to believe that it was a disaster for anyone to go into a care home. Yet in Germany, care homes are a part of life; there's a place to suit everyone.

 

When I left the hospital, I'd gone into a nearby café and drunk two glasses of sparkling wine, to celebrate the fact that, for the first time in her life, my mother had acted like a “normal” woman. From there I went to my favourite bookshop in Oranien Street. Then I'd gone home, put my feet up and even read for a while before getting ready to go out in the evening. Now, I was standing in a queue outside the restaurant where I'd arranged to meet Selim.

“You're miles away,” said a voice. Selim. He was carrying an enormous briefcase and wearing a beige linen suit with his tie undone.

“Hi,” I said, in a chirpy voice that sounded alien even to my ears.

He bowed his head in response and gestured towards a man in a suit standing right behind him.

“Let me introduce you. Jean… Kati…” He didn't say our surnames. I shook hands with the man.

“Do you speak French?” he asked me.

“Not very well,” I replied.

“In that case,” he said, looking at Jean, “let's speak in German.”

We had now reached the front of the queue and were led to a table for four near the kitchen.

As Selim studied the menu, he gave his friend a most important piece of information about me.

“Kati doesn't really like lawyers. In fact her father was a lawyer, but…”

“Really? What's your father's name? We might know him,” Jean interrupted eagerly.

“Abraham Hirschel,” I said. Jean looked as if he couldn't believe his ears. “You mean the criminal lawyer Abraham Hirschel was your father?” he cried.

“Yes,” I said. I was used to people reacting when they heard my father's name mentioned; I had even learned to enjoy their amazement.

“Your father was a genius in criminal law.”

“That's what they say,” I said proudly. “You must be a criminal lawyer too, I think.”

He nodded.

“Don't you know of my father?” I asked Selim, who was sitting opposite me.

“Yes, I do, or rather I know his name. He was involved with Turkish… But criminal law has little in common with what I do.”

“Selim spends most of his time in the committee meetings of faceless companies,” said Jean teasingly.

The Thai waiter planted himself next to our table, notepad in hand.

“I'm going to drink beer. And I suggest you don't drink the wine,” said Selim.

Jean and I both ordered beer.

“The food here is very good, but as you see…” he indicated the interior of the restaurant. “It's not a place to drink wine. It's really a peasant restaurant,” he whispered.

“Tell me what to eat,” I said.

“If you like fish, number seventy-nine is very good. It's dried fish. The Thais cook it with vegetables. But if you can't take spicy food, have something else.”

“I like spicy,” I said. “I'll order number seventy-nine.”

Selim and Jean ordered steamed trout with celeriac.

Jean got up to go and wash his hands before the meal and Selim leaned across the table towards me.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I would have preferred it if we'd been alone, but Jean has to go back to Brussels tomorrow and tonight is the only time we had to see each other. I had to bring him along.”

“No problem,” I said with understanding, like a woman of experience. Selim stroked my hand lightly with his forefinger as silent recognition of my generous attitude.

Jean removed his jacket with newly washed hands and hung it over the back of his chair. “It's a bit strange for someone who lives in Istanbul to know Berlin restaurants better than you do, isn't it?” he said. Selim had obviously not told him much about me.

“I also live in Istanbul,” I explained.

“The last I heard, your father was in Berlin.”

“Yes, but I went back to Istanbul.”

He lifted one eyebrow. “Are you happy there?”

“Very much so. It's been thirteen years.”

He nodded his head pensively.

“Ah!” he said, raising his hand as if he had just thought of something. “I asked Selim about something on the way here in the taxi but he couldn't tell me. Since you live in Istanbul, maybe you know something about it. This murder case… I read about it in the paper…”

My heart began to pound.

“Which murder?” I interrupted. “You mean the Müller murder?” The words tumbled out of my mouth.

“See,” he said, turning to Selim. “Those who read the papers know about it.”

“Well, it's something that comes into Kati's area of interest,” said Selim.

“What do you mean, her area of interest?”

“Kati sells crime fiction. She has the only shop in Istanbul that sells detective stories.”

Turning to Jean, I intervened. “What were you going to ask?”

“I was going to ask what happened. Have they found the murderer?”

“No, he wasn't found and probably never will be. There was an interview with the inspector dealing with the case in yesterday's
Westdeutsche Zeitung
. As far as I understand, the police don't have a single lead, so yet another murder case will be closed and remain unsolved.” As I said this, I realized how upset I felt that my first venture into detective work had ended unsuccessfully.

“It's interesting that the German police didn't ask to be brought into the investigation,” said Jean, lighting a cigarette.