Orhan's Inheritance (3 page)

“Lastly, I bequeath the family home located in the village of Karod to . . .” The attorney pauses, looking around the room at each person before he proceeds. “To one Ms. Seda Melkonian.”

Who?

“The bastard,” Orhan’s father says. “Son of a whore!”

Orhan isn’t sure whose mother is being cursed here—his own, the attorney’s, or Dede’s. Maybe all mothers everywhere.

“Who?” Orhan hears himself say.

“You listen to me, you piece of shit.” Mustafa turns to the lawyer, spit flying out of his mustache. “I’m going to ram that will so far up your ass, you’ll be able to gargle with it!”

Orhan feels he may be sick. He needs to take control of this situation, to compose himself and concentrate. How could Dede turn his aunt and father out of the only home they’ve ever known? Orhan stands and looks around the room dumbfounded.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” he says.

“Who is this Seda Melkomam?” Mustafa asks.

“Seda Melkonian,” the attorney corrects him.

“Do you know her, Mr. Big City Attorney? Huh? Did some she-devil seduce that simpleton in his old age? Trick him into giving her my house?” his father shouts.

“No, Mr. Türkoğlu,” the attorney says, “I do not know her, but I do have an address. Your father’s will clearly states that this house now belongs to Ms. Melkonian.”

“No one is kicking me out of my home,” Mustafa says.

“This can’t be,” Orhan says, pushing past a horrific mental image of his father and aunt moving into his flat in Istanbul. “This house has been in my family for a hundred years. My father was born in this house,” he says. “My aunt has lived here for over seventy years. Where would they go?”

“This should help you locate Ms. Melkonian,” the attorney says, pulling a large manila envelope from his briefcase and handing it to Orhan.

“No one is locating anybody,” Mustafa says, lighting another cigarette. “Any lawyer in Turkey will tell you this will is garbage.”

Orhan rips the envelope open and pulls out one of Dede’s tiny black sketchbooks.

“It is part of the will. It belongs to you now,” the attorney says. “There is an address on the last page where you can find her.”

Orhan stares down at the tattered tome. The black cloth cover and white string keeping its pages tight are familiar to everyone in the family. Although he never called himself an artist, Dede was always drawing. He carried a sketchbook the way most men carry their worry beads. When he was young, Orhan would find them in every corner of the house, in his toy bin, a kitchen cupboard, or behind the chicken coop. There were entire volumes dedicated to things as mundane as Auntie Fatma’s dishes, but there were also books filled with wondrous animals, real and imagined. Once, at fourteen, Orhan had the pleasure of seeing the body of a woman, her breasts and legs and buttocks drawn in meticulous detail. He spent a great deal of time with that particular collection, until Auntie Fatma discovered it under his mattress and gave him a proper beating. One never knew what lay between the two soft black covers of these volumes. The thrill in opening one of Dede’s sketchbooks lay in this not knowing.

“Typical,” barks his father. “He plunges us into ruin and leaves a handful of drawings as consolation.”

“There is also a letter, addressed to you,” the attorney says. Turning to Mustafa, he extends a small sealed envelope to him. The letter stays suspended in the air for what seems like a long time until finally, Mustafa, his eyes never leaving the attorney’s face, snatches it from his hand.

Orhan turns the sketchbook around and around in his hands. The weight and feel of it does what the wailers and well-wishers could not. He bites his lower lip until the pain overwhelms his grief.

“I’m sorry if this confuses you,” the attorney says as he rises to leave.

“No one is confused,” Mustafa utters the last word like a curse.

Turning to Orhan, the attorney says, “Perhaps you could walk me to my car.”

Orhan jumps at the chance to leave the dark room and his father’s presence. Outside the pomegranate trees prevail against the dry wind, but their leaves are less reserved. They shimmy and sway, reflecting light and creating the kind of fleeting negative space of which Orhan often dreams. Their playful existence stands in direct contrast to the dilapidated buildings lining the streets of Karod.

Orhan walks alongside the attorney whose steps are quick despite his old age.

“I’m sorry about what happened in there. My father isn’t himself,” Orhan says.

“He’s nothing like your grandfather,” the attorney says.

Orhan realizes for the first time that this man is roughly the same age as his late grandfather.

“Were you and Dede friends, Mr. Yilmaz?”

“You could say that, yes,” says Yilmaz. “He was very proud of you. You know that?”

“God knows I tried to please him,” says Orhan. “Do you think he was in his right mind toward the end?”

“If you’re asking me if he knew what he was doing, my answer is yes. He wanted to give you control over Tarik Inc. But that doesn’t mean it’s legal, not when your father is still alive. I tried to dissuade him from this business about the house, knowing it would only exacerbate things, but he insisted.”

Orhan nods.

“Your grandfather was a good man,” the attorney says, placing a hand on Orhan’s shoulder. “He wouldn’t do this if he didn’t have a good reason. You understand?”

“Yes,” he hears himself say, though he understands nothing.

“Look, the will is highly unconventional. The part about the house can be easily contested as it goes against our inheritance laws to forgo immediate family and favor a stranger. But if one part of the will is contested, then the rest of it is suddenly open to questioning. We don’t want that.”

“No,” agrees Orhan.

“Go see her. Find out what this is all about. It’s what he wanted. But take these papers along,” he says, removing a new envelope from his briefcase. “It’s an offer for compensation in place of the house. Try to get her to sign the house back to you. It will calm your father down. Whoever she is, a dilapidated house in the middle of nowhere can’t be of much interest to her.”

“I hope you’re right,” says Orhan.

When the attorney’s car can no longer be seen, Orhan returns to the house. His father, still seated in Dede’s green chair, glares at him through a cloud of cigarette smoke.

“He never loved me, you know.” They are the first words his father has spoken to him on this day of mourning and they come out in a low ominous whisper.

“He would have put his eyes out to avoid looking at me as a child. Avoided me like the plague until you came along. Now he’s put it in writing. Skipped me like I never existed. Made it official.”

“Every father loves his son,” says Orhan, “even if he doesn’t know the best way to show it.” He should know.

“A perfect stranger,” his father says in disbelief.

Orhan reminds himself that this is not his fault. And though it isn’t, he feels guilty just the same.

“You know that attorney is no friend of ours. What will you do next, shine his shoes?”

“Dede trusted him,” Orhan says.

“Your
dede
was an old fool.” His father’s voice grows louder, making Orhan wonder how soon the family’s plight will spread from the balconies and stalls of Karod to the streets of Istanbul, where Tarik Inc. is located. “Everything we have has just slipped through our fingers. And what do you do?”

“Not everything,” says Orhan. And not
our
fingers, he thinks. Just yours.

“You have been charmed, you know. Bewitched by the West, its shiny coins and godless women,” Mustafa says, rubbing his index finger against his thumb.

“I live in Istanbul. How is that the West?” Orhan says, thinking he hasn’t had anything shiny or naked in such a long time.

“Be quiet!” Mustafa says, propping himself up with the help of his cane. Despite himself, Orhan reflexively recoils from the menacing rod.

“You are not to contact that woman,” his father says.

“Don’t you want to know who she is? Why he’s done this?”

“No, I don’t want to know. And I forbid you to go stirring up shit that no one cares about.”

“I have to go and see her to get the house back,” says Orhan.

“Always, I am living among heathens,” Mustafa says, raising his voice again. “I ask nothing of you. Only to be a good Turk, a good Muslim. And what do you do? You shame me. You turn communist. You spread leftist propaganda and get kicked out of the country.”

“I was a photographer, not a communist.” Orhan is shouting now. When will his father understand this? Every conversation turns to this perceived betrayal.

“You’ve given me nothing to be proud of,” Mustafa says. “I hang my head in shame while you go around without remorse.”

“I have nothing to be remorseful about. I’ve been pardoned, remember?” he says, thinking that it must be easier to dwell on a son’s perceived betrayal than a father’s disapproval. Orhan stands to his full height and begins pacing, towering half a meter above his father. He knows all about a father’s disapproval. If it were up to his Mustafa, the country would be run by mullahs, every woman in a head scarf, bureaucrats so busy praying five times a day, they can’t see straight.

“You godless louse,” Mustafa says. “You think you are so much better with your art and your pictures.”

“I haven’t taken a picture in years,” Orhan says.

“Yes, yes, Mr. Big Businessman,” Mustafa says, making wide circles with his arms. “You think you would have that job if it weren’t for your
dede
? Hmm, Mr. Exile?”

“Well, he didn’t give it to you, did he?” Orhan says. “He gave the company to me.” Even as the words leave him, Orhan wishes he could take them back.

Mustafa’s face turns as gray as his mustache. “You are nothing but a traitor,” he says finally. “To your faith, to your country, and most of all, to this family. I want you out of this house by morning. And take his fucking letter with you,” he says, throwing Dede’s letter at Orhan and limping toward his room.

Orhan watches his father walk out of the room with the help of his cane. Unable to face the funeral guests that litter the house, he steps out into the family courtyard, where Auntie Fatma is waiting for him on one of two plastic chairs. Free of her dark head scarf, she carries her grief, raw and exposed to the dry wind, in the creases of her face.

“I’ve brought tea,” she says. “Sit. Let him fester.”

Orhan accepts, though he isn’t thirsty, and settles into the other chair.

“I see you’ve found God,” he says, lighting a cigarette and pointing to the discarded head scarf draped on a low table between them.

“Nonsense,” she replies. “Those idiots in Ankara have outlawed it, so naturally I decided to take a new fancy to it.” A new law banning head scarves in universities had just passed. It was the Kemalist state’s way of curbing fundamentalist Islam and embracing modernism. But the rule was meant for young university students, not village women in their nineties.

“Always the rebel,” Orhan says.

She reaches over and takes the letter in Orhan’s hand. She rips it open. “Here, read it to me,” she says.

Orhan hesitates for only a moment, before his curiosity and the need to hear Dede one last time overcome him.

Dede’s narrow slanted script dominates the page. There are no drawings here. Only words.

My dearest Mustafa (and you are dear, though I never let you feel it),

I trust that by now you will be seeking the comfort of religion through our good imam. And I am glad of that, though I cannot believe as you do. I lost that ability a long time ago. To tell the truth, I’m not sure I ever had it. My words here are meant to be another salve, for you and also for Orhan and Fatma.

I have spent the last year chasing my past. Or rather, it chased me. At first, I hid from it, looked the other way, busied myself, but then I grew tired and turned to face it. I met with it in secret places. On the highest branches of our now barren mulberry tree, at the lap of the red river where I first caressed your mother. I even climbed inside the cauldrons. Each time my past did not disappoint me. It came, explaining everything and nothing. Rest assured that whether you find me in my bed, at the base of a tree, or inside the river: I did not jump, or drown, or in any way harm myself. I simply went looking for my past and was mercifully relieved of its burden.

I’m sorry I did not love you better as a child. You were, for me, a daily reminder of her. I hope that my love for Orhan has made up, in part, for my failures as a father. I ask only for your forgiveness and that you oblige me this one last time, as I try to meld my past to your present. Forgive me. For your sake and for Orhan’s too.

Your loving father,

Kemal

“Well, that explains all the tree climbing,” says Auntie Fatma.

Orhan remains speechless. Part of him had hoped there would be an explanation of the will. His heart aches for his father, and his mind is racing with questions.

“Give it here. I’ll see to it that your father reads it.”

Orhan hands her the letter and opens Dede’s sketchbook, hoping there might be a clue to his reasoning. Almost every page is filled with sketches of the old mulberry tree that still stands in the center of their courtyard. The row of cauldrons looms sometimes in the background and sometimes in the foreground. How many times did Dede sketch these cauldrons before stripping his clothes and immersing himself for his very last breath?

“Tell me, who is this Seda?” asks Orhan.

“No ‘How are you, Auntie? How have you been, Auntie?’ Are you like this with your girlfriend too? What was her name?”

“Hülya,” Orhan replies. Auntie Fatma and Hülya were like the two parts of Turkey itself, one grasping for modernity, the other with both feet planted in the fertile soil of a rural village. The last time Auntie Fatma paid a visit to his apartment in Istanbul, she fastened a garden hose to the bathtub and proceeded to “do a proper washing.” Hülya and Orhan came home to find half his furniture piled high on the balcony and the other half dripping with soapy water. It was an amusing story he told at dinner parties.