“But then, yesterday’s bombing on Rasim street…” He opened a dossier and turned pages. “Any theories? Who? Why?”
“No, not really.”
“Was Goldbark a friend of yours?”
“An associate. I knew him as one of the directors of the IRU office.”
“Been to his house?”
“No.”
“Met his wife?”
“Maybe once. At some kind of event.”
“The crate of eggplants was sent to him, specifically. Three other people died, there are five or six in various hospitals.” He offered Serebin a pack of cigarettes, then lit one for himself. “You got out, it would seem, just at the right moment.”
“A telephone call.”
“A warning?”
“No.” Serebin’s voice was very cold.
“Then what?”
“‘Please meet me outside. It’s urgent.’”
“And who was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Really don’t?”
“No.”
“An unknown stranger calls, and you go charging off in the middle of a party held in your honor.”
“‘An old friend’ is what he called himself. I thought that was possible, and the tone of the voice was serious, so I thought I’d better go.”
The major tilted his head to one side, like a listening dog. What do I hear? Then decided that, for the moment, it didn’t matter. He leaned back in his chair and said, “This comes at a bad time for us, do you understand? There is a war going on in Europe, and we are under pressure from both sides. And in this country, and particularly in this office, we feel it. The more so because we know the thing is heading south. I could drive you up into Thrace, to the Bulgarian frontier, and there, in the border villages, you would see a new sort of tourism. Vacationing Germans, all men, in overcoats and alpine hats, with cameras or binoculars around their necks. It must be the birds, don’t you think? That makes them so passionate to be in the Bulgarian countryside in November?
“And these days, where such tourists go, tanks follow. It isn’t far from here, maybe six hours. And much faster by aeroplane. It’s sad to see a city like London being bombed, night after night, terrible, a nice brick city like that. But here, of course, it wouldn’t be night after night. Because one night would be enough. A few hours’ work for the bomber pilots, and the whole thing would just, burn.”
Serebin knew. Dense neighborhoods of old, dry, wooden houses.
“So, we stay neutral, and treat every act of political violence as a potential provocation. A shooting, a stabbing, a bombing-what does it mean? Is it an incident? What comes next? Well, maybe nothing, in this case. It’s England and Germany we worry about these days. Russia maybe not so much-we’ve spent three hundred years worrying about them, so we’re used to it. Still, we have to be concerned, an attack of this sort, and our concern is, ah, concentrated by the fact that Goldbark was no virgin. There is at least some possibility that he asked for it.”
Serebin said “Oh?” He meant fuck you.
But Iskandar was ready for him. Slid a photograph from the dossier and laid it on the desk, like a playing card. A clandestine photograph, a gray man on a gray street on a gray afternoon. Hands thrust deep in overcoat pockets, brooding as he walked. Perhaps a Slav, grave lines in the face, the corners of the mouth pulled down, a sensitive man who had long ago chosen the wrong life, one where the Emniyet took his photograph.
“Know him?”
Serebin shook his head.
“This woman?”
She was buying oranges from a market stall.
“No.”
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
“Goldbark knew them.”
Did he?
Iskandar laid down a photograph of Goldbark and the woman, leaning side by side on the railing of a ferry.
“Who are these people?” Serebin asked.
“Professionals-from the way they behave. Was Goldbark a Zionist?”
“I have no idea.”
“Communist?”
“Unlikely. He left the country, after all.”
“All kinds of people leave all kinds of countries. How much pressure would it have taken to force him to work for Germany?”
Serebin stared.
“It is not unheard of. I am sorry, but it is not.”
“He was too strong for that,” Serebin said. What remained of Goldbark was the memory of him.
Major Iskandar raised an eyebrow. He drank down the last of his coffee and snapped his fingers. Perhaps a comment on Serebin’s answer, or maybe he just wanted more coffee.
“Do you plan to remain in Istanbul?”
Serebin thought it over. “For a week or two, maybe.”
The major paged through an appointment book. “That would make it the twelfth. Of December.” He made a note by the date.
They drank a second cup of coffee. The major said that it often rained, this time of year. Still, they hardly ever had snow. Spring, on the other hand, was pleasant, with wildflowers in the countryside. When Serebin left, a man he recalled, vaguely, from the IRU party, was sitting in the outer office. Their eyes met, for a moment, then the man looked away.
My God, who is she? She was radiant, strange, had the face of an uncomfortably beautiful child. Twenty minutes from Major Iskandar’s office, in a tiny square with a fish market, Serebin sat at a table outside a lokanta, a neighborhood restaurant, and she came and sat on the edge of the other chair. When she pushed the hair back from her eyes he could see that her hand was shaking. She wet her lips, then spoke a few words-memorized, he thought-in guttural French: his friend, Monsieur Serge, wanted very much to see him. Then she waited, unsure of the language, to see if he’d understood her. She is Kubalsky’s lover, he thought.
He nodded, tried to look encouraging. “In Tatavla,” she said.
The Greek district.
“At Luxe cinema, tomorrow night.”
Her hands clutched the top of a purse, tight enough so that her knuckles were white and sharp. He said he understood and thanked her for the message, which earned him a sudden, luminous smile, on and off, then she stood and walked away, striding around the corner and out of sight.
After that, he walked and walked. Writing sometimes, staring at faces, adrift in unknown streets, far away on his own private planet. The world gnawed at you, he thought, better to be, now and then, elsewhere — it would all still be there when you got back. He would send flowers to the hospitals, would call on Goldbark’s wife. Later, when Iskandar was done talking with her. She would lie to them, of course, as he had. One did.
For the moment, he studied a handsome chestnut tree, spidery winter branches trimmed back to the pollard shape, circled by an iron fence. A pair of girls in school uniforms, kohl darkening their eyes-after-school femmes fatales. A sidewalk vendor, tending skewers of lamb and onions that sizzled and dripped onto hot coals. This made him violently hungry, but he couldn’t bear to stop walking. The neighborhood changed. To rows of elaborate stone buildings, five stories high, with brass plaques announcing important companies and banks. Standing restlessly in
