The Serenity Murders (20 page)

“Please, sit down,” she said.

She must have thought her place was the lobby of the large and spacious Hilton, with its rows of empty seats and aisles you could walk down for miles. When I reached out to move the thing I thought was a blanket from the armchair next to me, I realized it was a jacket made from a blanket.

Andelip held her arm out.

“I’ll take that.”

It would take an eternity if we went about removing the things on the armchair one by one. She threw the jacket onto the divan, and then, shoving a few things aside, made room for one buttock, while the other squashed against the precarious mountain of magazines and balled-up clothing.

Mimicking the host is a general rule of good manners. I pushed aside the pile on the armchair to make enough room for me to keep my balance, and seated myself.

Hüseyin stared at the humongous mess around him, not knowing what to do.

“Good thing you turned up,” said Andelip. “I’m receiving strong signals already.”

The smell of incense was strong enough to burn the back of one’s throat. I coughed.

“Is it the incense?” she asked. “Or is that a cough of skepticism?”

When she asked me to follow her into the kitchen, I thought she wanted me to help serve the treats she had prepared for us. I was wrong.

She took a whirl on the spot and gave flight again to her colorful handkerchiefs. Her spin cornered me by the refrigerator.

“He is a pleasant and clean-cut man. But isn’t he a bit young for you?” she asked.

She had suddenly triggered all my conscious and unconscious defense mechanisms.

“We don’t have that sort of an attachment.”

She stared right into my eyes, as if by boring into them she would succeed in seeing the truth of which she was convinced.

She tapped my chest with her finger.

“Actually, that’s what I want too…Someone who’s not going to question me about what, where, how, and from whom I learned what I know.”

I had no intention of asking such a thing. Just because she was going to tell our fortune didn’t mean that I had to know all of Andelip’s bedroom secrets and how she developed her mysterious skills. If, however, this intimate moment we were having was meant to prod me to share my secrets—well, she had best not get her hopes up.

“I really am sick and tired of every man I’m with asking me where I learned the tricks I know, who I’ve slept with before, what I’ve tried, how I became such an expert…”

I think she was flattering herself—I wasn’t biting at her need to share her secrets with me. I had no desire to know her area of expertise.

“Someone plain and simple like this one could do me good…You understand what I mean, don’t you, sweetie?”

“Of course,” I said, to cut her short and keep her from prying any further.

“Men always ask,” she continued. “The young ones ask because they’re curious to learn, the old ones because they fear I might be more experienced than them. But you’ve got the best…”

What she meant by “the best” was of course a mystery to me.

The table where she would do the reading was located on a veranda
that had been enclosed after construction, and which she preferred to call her “office.” The entire space was enveloped in dark red velvet curtains. The massive walnut table was covered, as per tradition, with a black silk tablecloth, and on the table, in a chest with a velvet inner lining, wrapped again in a black headscarf, the tarot pack awaited us. She had placed an egg-shaped bloodstone, which she said increases clairvoyance, on one end, and on the other a natural unworked lapis lazuli, which she said enhanced psychic activity.

When Hüseyin, curious, reached out to touch the lapis, which glittered eerily in the light of the burning candles, Andelip stopped him.

“Crystals,” she said, “they’re unbelievably powerful…But please don’t touch. They’re filled with my energy…”

Hüseyin, who was trying to figure out what sort of sorcery, witchcraft, or exorcism he was caught up in, quickly pulled his hand away and seated himself in the chair that Andelip had pointed to.

“The cards are actually more active after midnight, but when we’re dealing with signals as strong as these, it doesn’t really matter.”

She studied Hüseyin, scrutinizing him carefully, before we got started. She narrowed her eyes and stared, opened them wide and stared, closed them tight, lifted her chin, and stared. And then, finally, she announced the result of her examination.

“You need to be cleansed, dear. I’ll do that for you another day.”

A puzzled look fell over Hüseyin’s face. His eyes asked what exactly needed cleansing; did cleansing mean “doing away with someone,” like it did in Turkish slang? If so, how would it be performed? His confused expression said,
I don’t quite understand what I’m supposed to understand
. Yes, I could read all of that simply from the look on his face.

“She means your energy,” I said, trying to keep it as brief as possible. “You know how everything in the universe has its own energy…”

“You mean aura,” said Hüseyin, surprising me for the second time that day. He must have taken a crash course in general knowledge since we’d last slept together.

“Yes,” I said, smiling a smile of satisfaction, “aura. Andelip can see people’s auras.”

“Not always,” Andelip corrected me. “Only if I concentrate properly. Or if the person in question is strong.”

Just as Hüseyin was about to puff up thinking his aura was being complimented, “Burçak’s energy is extremely powerful. That’s why we definitely want him in our Reiki sessions,” explained Andelip. “I think that’s why I got stuck on him today…His energy has an effect on me. It has an effect on my cards.”

Andelip closed her eyes, then opened her right palm and waved it about, as if searching for something in the empty space between us.

“He doesn’t know it, but his energy is tremendous. It reaches all the way to here, look…”

She was pointing to the empty space approximately seventy centimeters away from me.

“Sweethearts. We’d best begin. My head is throbbing.”

With utmost reverence she reached out to the pack of cards in front of her and unfolded the black silk in which the cards were meticulously wrapped.

“In normal sessions I use a mythic tarot deck because it’s more posh and intellectual, but yours is a different situation. I’ve chosen the Rider-Waite deck, which has become one with me over the years. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t the one doing the choosing. I put all the decks in front of me and waited, thinking it was going to be Celtic tarot. But, lucky you, it was my favorite deck that spoke to me instead.”

Hüseyin’s eyes continued to widen in disbelief. He stretched out his leg underneath the table and gently kicked me.

“I’ll do the ten-card Celtic cross spread. We won’t open the last card if you don’t want to…”

As Andelip looked at the cards that she turned over one by one, she groped for a strand of her curly hair, pulled on it, took it between her lips, and began slowly chewing. Once she’d finished sucking one strand, she’d find a different one from a different area, and the process would begin all over again.

The lovers card was reversed; the moon and wheel of fortune were right side up.

“Someone who is madly in love,” she said, tapping the lovers card with her index finger.

It was impossible to miss the smile spreading across Hüseyin’s face.

“At the same time, a warning against enemies. You have a dangerous admirer,” she said, placing her hand on the moon card. “It’s as if he’s walking toward the dark. The dark…It is impossible for him to escape…He’s delusional.

“As for the wheel of fortune…The most difficult card to interpret. Events beyond their own power…Marking the end of an era…New, inescapable events await you…Things that are beyond control…Could be good or bad…But it’s usually not auspicious when paired with the five of swords and moon card. Close…Very close…Someone very close to you…”

The hanged man was also reversed. Andelip tapped it with her index finger a couple of times as she chewed on a particularly thick bundle of hair. She lifted her eyes from the cards and seemed to stare into infinity over my shoulder.

“A loss…Warning against a loss…Inability to see the truth…Oh, I don’t know! Three of swords, warning…Warning!
Warning! It keeps appearing…Prepare for something undesirable…”

I gulped. I was short of breath, as if someone had placed a heavy stone on my chest. Hüseyin had finally stopped trying to play footsie with me; his cheeks aflame, he stared at the card in the middle without blinking an eye, watching Andelip’s ringed finger as if hypnotized.

“The devil card…Reversed…Disastrous inclinations! Uncontrollable powers…Actions for which explanations are denied…Fear! Damage of unprecedented proportions…”

I held my breath and listened. Just when we had reached the most vital point, we jumped from our seats at the sound of car horns rising from the street. The silence of the tarot ritual had been broken. The noise grew louder all of a sudden, even though we were at the back of the building. People were screaming and shouting. The doorbell rang.

Andelip went to the door with an annoyed look on her face.

We could hear her talking to a man who was clearly nervous, but we couldn’t make out his words.

She called inside.

“If the taxicab outside is yours, apparently it’s on fire.”

Shocked, Hüseyin didn’t respond at first.

“It’s ours!” I said, jumping up from my seat.

By the time I reached the garden gate with Hüseyin in tow, flames had already enveloped the entire hood. Out of solidarity, two other taxi drivers were trying to put it out with fire extinguishers. There was dense smoke and a burning smell. I stopped and turned around. There was Hüseyin, kneeling on the ground, his head buried in his hands, watching with disbelief as his livelihood went up in flames.

I glanced at my watch. It was past midnight.

“Son of a bitch!” I said angrily from between clenched teeth.

T
he car wasn’t insured.

“They don’t insure taxis,” explained Hüseyin. “Because we’re in traffic all day…The only thing that’s worth money on this is the registration plate. But it’s gone!”

The other two taxi drivers, whom we had thanked, had left, as well as the curious crowd of onlookers, and we stood in front of the burned car, the blanket of foam turning into white stains. If I hadn’t known better, I never would have believed that this had been a yellow cab just half an hour ago.

“The bastard must have doused it in gas or petrol or something!” he said.

We stood there as if hoping that, if we waited long enough, the taxi would return to its previous state.

It was a starry night.

A sweet breeze caressed my skin. It was a quiet street, not very busy. No passersby. The lights in the building opposite were already out.

Even the street dogs that multiply in this season and roam the streets in packs at this time of night were nowhere to be seen.

How quiet it was.

We stood there with the stars above us.

Did Andelip’s prophecies have to come true so quickly? Loss,
events beyond our control, darkness, the wheel of fortune, five of swords, the reversed hanged man and reversed devil.

“What now?” I asked calmly.

Hüseyin looked me straight in the face. I wanted to avert my eyes but didn’t. I didn’t know what to do, how and with what expression to look at him. What was he looking for in my eyes? What feeling? I raised my eyebrows and tightened my lips, only to repeat my question.

Hüseyin huffed and puffed noisily, looking up at the stars in the sky. He was chewing on his bottom lip. Then his head sank down. With the tip of his shoe he spread a blob of the fire extinguisher foam splattered in front of him onto the pavement. And then he slowly lifted his head, looked into my eyes, and answered with a crooked smile.

“We’ve got to go and report it to the police. Then I’ll borrow some money, or take out a loan from the bank, get my dad to back me up, get my mom to hand over a couple of gold bracelets, and I’ll buy a new one.”

I wanted to hug him, whisper words of consolation, tell him I loved him even though I wasn’t in love. I did neither.

We stood there motionless, until Andelip called us in. “I’ve made you a special mix of herbal tea.”

There was an ounce of the famous weed in the special herbal mix. Its smell had mixed with that of the incense, but it was still distinctive when I brought the cup closer to my nose.

“Just a pinch,” said Andelip, grinning. “The rest is linden, fennel, a little hibiscus, and chamomile. Just to relax you before going to sleep…It isn’t that powerful when brewed…And it’s not addictive. Not one bit! I know because I’ve been having cups and cups before going to bed for years. If it were addictive I would have grown addicted to it by now. Isn’t that right, sweetie? I know what I’m talking about. One hundred percent natural.”

She giggled as if we were partners in crime.

She’d been drinking cups and cups for years and it wasn’t addictive.

I pulled my mobile from the pocket of my jacket, which I had left on top of Andelip’s crowded armchair. The expected message had arrived.