Snow (48 page)

When he was awakened in the morning by a knock at the door, Ipek was no longer lying beside him in bed. He had no idea what time it was, or what he and Ipek had talked about, or what time the gunshots had ended.

It was Cavit, the receptionist. He’d come up to tell Ka that an officer had appeared at the front desk with an invitation from Sunay Zaim: Ka was to report to headquarters at once; the officer was downstairs waiting to escort him. No matter; Ka took his time shaving.

The empty streets of Kars looked more beautiful, more enchanted, than the previous morning. Somewhere high up on Atatürk Avenue, he saw a house with broken windows, a shattered door, and a front wall riddled with bullet holes.

At the tailor shop, Sunay told him there’d been an attempted suicide-bomb attack. “The poor man got his houses mixed up, and instead of coming here he attacked a building farther up the hill,” he explained. “He blew himself up into so many pieces we don’t even know yet whether he died for Islam or the PKK.”

Ka was struck by the childish gravity of a famous actor taking himself so seriously. Freshly shaved, he looked clean, pure-hearted, bursting with energy.

“We’ve captured Blue,” Sunay said. He looked straight into Ka’s eyes.

Ka made a valiant effort to conceal his joy at this news.

Sunay wasn’t fooled. “He’s an evil man,” he said. “He’s definitely the mastermind behind the assassination of the director of the Institute of Education. He goes around telling everyone that he’s against suicide while he’s busy turning poor brainless teenagers into suicide bombers. National Security is not in any doubt that he’s come here with enough explosives to send the entire city of Kars up in smoke! On the night of the revolution, he managed to lose the men we’d put on his tail. No one had any idea where he was hiding. Of course you know all about that ridiculous meeting yesterday evening at the Hotel Asia.” 

It was as if they were onstage, playing a scene together; Ka gave Sunay an affected theatrical nod.

“My aim in life is not to punish these heinous creatures, these reactionaries and terrorists in our midst,” Sunay said. “There’s actually a play I’ve been longing to do, and that’s the real reason I’m here. There’s an English writer who goes by the name of Thomas Kyd. They say Shakespeare stole
Hamlet
from him. I’ve discovered another injustice too, a forgotten play by Kyd known as
The Spanish Tragedy.
It’s a blood feud, a tragedy that ends in suicide, and like
Hamlet
there’s a play inside the play. Funda and I have been waiting for an opportunity to perform it for fifteen years.”

When Funda Eser came into the room, brandishing a long elegant cigarette holder, Ka greeted her with an exaggerated bow which obviously pleased her. With no encouragement from Ka, the couple now launched into talk of
The Spanish Tragedy.

“We want people to enjoy our play, to be uplifted by it, and toward this end I’ve simplified the plot,” said Sunay. “We plan to perform it tonight at the National Theater in front of a live audience, and of course it will go out on television at the same time so the whole city can see it.”

“I’d love to see it too,” said Ka.

“We want Kadife to be in it. Funda will play her evil-hearted rival. Kadife will appear onstage wearing a head scarf. Then, in defiance of the ludicrous customs that have given rise to the blood feud, she’ll bare her head for all to see.” With a broad theatrical flourish, Sunay took hold of the imaginary scarf around his head and made as if to rip it off.

“This is bound to cause more trouble!” said Ka.

“Don’t worry, there won’t be any trouble at all. Remember, the army’s in charge now.”

“Anyway, Kadife will never agree to it,” Ka said.

“Kadife is in love with Blue,” said Sunay. “If Kadife bares her head, I can have Blue released at once. They can run off together to some foreign land and live happily ever after.”

Funda Eser’s face radiated the compassion of a good-hearted auntie from a nice Turkish melodrama who smiles as she watches the two lovers departing to find happiness in the great beyond. For a moment, Ka imagined his own love affair with Ipek bringing the same smile to her lips.

“I’m still very doubtful that Kadife will agree to bare her head on live TV,” said Ka.

“You seem to us to be the only one who might be able to talk her into it,” said Sunay. “To bargain with us is to bargain with the biggest devil in creation. She knows you are concerned about the head-scarf girls. And you’re in love with her sister.”

“It’s not just Kadife, you’d also have to persuade Blue. But Kadife must be approached first,” said Ka, still smarting from the brutal direct-ness of his last remark.

“You can do it any which way you like,” said Sunay. “I’ll give you whatever authorization proves necessary and your very own army truck. You have permission to negotiate in my name.”

 There was a silence. Sunay had picked up on Ka’s reluctance.

“I don’t want to get involved,” said Ka.

“Why not?”

“Well, it could be because I’m scared. I’m very happy right now. I don’t want to turn myself into a target for the Islamists. When they see her bare her head, those students will think I’m the atheist who arranged the performance. And even if I can manage to escape to Germany, they’ll track me down. I’ll be walking down a street late one night, and someone will shoot me.”

“They’ll shoot me first,” said Sunay proudly. “But I admire your courage in admitting you’re afraid. I’m the coward to end all cowards, believe me. The only ones who survive in this country are the cowards. But there’s not a coward in the world who doesn’t dream of the day when he might find himself capable of great courage. Don’t you agree?”

“As I said, I’m very happy right now. I have no desire to play the hero. Heroic dreams are the consolation of the unhappy. After all, when people like us say we’re being heroic, it usually means we’re about to kill each other—or kill ourselves.”

“Yes,” Sunay insisted, “but isn’t there a small voice somewhere inside reminding you that this happiness of yours is not destined to last very long?”

“Why do you want to scare our guest?” said Funda Eser.

“No happiness lasts very long,” said Ka cautiously. “But I have no desire to do something heroic that will get me killed just because I know how likely it is that I’ll be unhappy again at some point in the future.”

“If you don’t get involved, as you put it, they’re not going to wait until you’re back in Germany to kill you; they’ll kill you right here. Have you seen today’s paper?”

“Does it say I’m going to die today?” Ka asked with a smile.

Sunay took out the
Border City Gazette,
turned to the front page, and pointed to the article Ka had read the previous evening. 

“ ‘A godless man in Kars!’ ” read Funda Eser in a booming voice.

“That’s from yesterday’s first print run,” said Ka evenly. “Later on in the evening, Serdar Bey decided to correct the inaccuracies in this article and print a new edition.”

“In the end he was unable to do so. This is the edition that went out this morning. Never take a journalist’s promise at face value. But we’ll protect you. Those fundamentalists can’t do anything against the military, so naturally they’ll want to vent their spleen by taking a potshot at a Western spy.”

“Are you the one who told Serdar to write this piece?” asked Ka.

Raising his eyebrows and pursing his lips, Sunay glared at him and played the affronted man of honor, but Ka still recognized him as a politician pulling a fast one.

“If you agree to protect me all the way, I’ll be your mediator,” said Ka.

Sunay gave his word and, still in Jacobin mode, threw his arms around Ka, congratulated him, and gave his assurance that his two men would never leave Ka’s side.

“If necessary, they’ll even protect you from yourself !” he boomed.

They sat down to work out the details of Ka’s mission, with two fra-grant cups of breakfast tea to help them along. Funda Eser was all smiles, as if a brilliant famous actress had just joined the company. She spoke for a time about the power of
The Spanish Tragedy,
but Ka’s mind was elsewhere: He was looking at the wondrous white light pouring through the high windows of the tailor shop.

His dream ended abruptly when, upon leaving the shop, he met the two burly armed guards who’d be protecting him. He’d hoped at least one of them would be an officer or a plainclothes detective with some modicum of sartorial sense. Once upon a time, there was a famous writer who went on television saying that Turks were fools and he didn’t believe in Islam; Ka had once seen him with the two bodyguards the state gave him toward the end of his life: They had excellent manners and wore stylish clothes. They insisted on the sort of exaggerated servility Ka thought befitting famous writers of the Opposition; not only did they carry the man’s bag, they even held the door open for him and locked arms with him on staircases, to protect him from any fan or enemy who might pass.

The soldiers sitting next to Ka in the army truck could not have been more different. They acted like jailors, not protectors.

When Ka walked into the hotel, he felt as happy as he had in the early hours of the morning. Although he longed to see Ipek, he dreaded having to tell her about his mission; he feared she might take it as a betrayal. However small it might be in the scheme of things, he still worried it could diminish their love. It would be better all around, he thought, if he could find a way to see Kadife alone first. But he ran into Ipek in the lobby.

“You’re even more beautiful than I remembered!” he told Ipek, looking at her in awe. “Sunay Zaim summoned me for a meeting. He wants me to be his mediator.”

“What for?”

“They’ve caught Blue. It happened yesterday, in the evening,” said Ka. “Why is your face changing? We’re not in any danger. Yes, Kadife will be upset. But in my view, it’s a relief, believe me.” Very quickly, he told her what Sunay had told him: the noises they’d heard during the night, the gun battle, everything. “You left this morning without waking me. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of things; no one will come out of this with so much as a bloody nose. We’re going to Frankfurt; we’re going to be happy. Have you spoken to your father?” He told her he was charged to negotiate a deal, and that was why Sunay would send him to speak to Blue, but first he had to speak to Kadife. He registered the extreme concern in Ipek’s eyes as a sign that she was worried for him, and this made him glad.

“I’ll send Kadife upstairs in a few minutes,” she said, and walked away.

When he reached his room, he saw that someone had made the bed. The room in which he had spent the happiest night of his life had changed; the glare from the snow outside had given a new aspect to the bed, the table, and the pale curtains—even the silence in the room seemed different. But there was still the lingering smell of their lovemaking for him to breathe in. He lay down on the bed and, gazing up at the ceiling, thought of all the trouble ahead if he couldn’t manage to win Kadife’s and Blue’s cooperation.

Kadife burst into the room. “Tell me everything you know about Blue’s capture,” she said. “Did they treat him roughly?”

“If they’d roughed him up, they wouldn’t be letting me see him,” said Ka. “They’re going to take me over in a few minutes. They captured him after the hotel meeting, that’s all I know.” 

Kadife gazed out the window at the snow-covered avenue below. “So now you’re the one who’s happy, and I’m the one who’s sad. How things have changed since our meeting in the storage room.” 

Ka thought back to their meeting yesterday in Room 217, where Kadife had held a gun on him and made him strip before they left to see Blue; the sweet, distant memory bound them together.

“That’s not the whole story, Kadife,” Ka said. “Sunay’s associates are convinced that Blue had a hand in the assassination of the director of the Institute of Education. What’s more, it seems that the dossier connecting him to that Izmir television host has also reached Kars.”

“Who are these associates?”

“A handful of people from the Kars MIT, plus one or two soldiers who have links to him. But don’t think Sunay is completely in their pocket. He has artistic ambitions too. Here’s what he has asked me to propose to you. This evening he means to perform a play at the National Theater, and he wants you to be in it. Don’t make a face—listen. There’s going to be a live broadcast too, with all of Kars watching again. If you’re willing to play this part, and if Blue can convince the religious high school boys to come watch the play and sit quietly, to be polite and clap at the right moments, Sunay will have Blue released. Then this whole thing can be forgotten, and we’ll all come out of it without so much as a bloody nose. They’ve asked me to be the go-between.”

“What’s the play?”

Ka told her everything he knew about Thomas Kyd and
The Spanish
Tragedy,
explaining as well that Sunay had changed the play to make it more relevant. “In the same way that during their long years of touring Anatolia they’ve made Corneille, Shakespeare, and Brecht more relevant by adding belly dances and bawdy songs.”

“I suppose I’m the one who gets the blood feud started by being raped on live television.”

“No. You’re a proper Spanish lady with a covered head, but then you tire of the blood feud and in a burst of anger you pull off your scarf to become the rebel heroine.”

“To play the rebel heroine in Turkey you don’t pull off your scarf, you put it on.”

“This is just a play, Kadife. And because it’s just a play, it shouldn’t be a problem to take off your scarf.”

“I see now what they want from me. But even if it’s a play, even it’s a play within a play, I’m still not baring my head.”

“Look, Kadife, the snow’s going to melt in two days, the roads will open, and the people sitting in jail will pass into the hands of men who know no pity. If that happens, you won’t see Blue again in this life. Have you really thought this through?”

“I’m afraid that if I do think about it, I’ll agree to it.”

“You could wear a wig underneath your scarf. Then no one would see your real hair.”