Istanbul Passage

“If it gets worse we’ll have to move him to a hospital,” Obstbaum said. “We’re not equipped here-” He looked at his wristwatch. “So where’s Kosterman? Sisli’s fifteen minutes.” He glanced up. “Maybe you’d better wait outside. The less talking the better. We need to keep him quiet.”

Anna’s room was dark, just the dim night-light near the door and a thin strip of hall light underneath. She was asleep when he came in, so he tiptoed to the chair. Eyes still closed. Usually she was aware of movement, and he wondered whether they’d given her a sleeping pill, more rest after a day spent not quite awake. Outside the door, the hushed sounds of the clinic at night.

He sat for a few minutes watching the faint movement of her breathing. Did she dream? Melancholia, from the Greek, black bile, what they used to think it was, a gloom spreading through the body, addling the mind. Something you could drain away.

Georg’s here, he said, the voice in his head, imagining her listening. A heart attack. Serious. We were at Lily’s, at the yali. You know what I thought about? The first time we went there, her garden party. I could hear you. Worried about your parents. You said it was wrong to be so happy. Those words. And I said no, and then-I couldn’t remember any more. What we said. It just faded, your voice. It keeps getting harder to remember. Even your face-I see it and then it fades too. The way it looked then, I mean.

He touched his hair. Not just a little gray, Lily’s flattery, older, someone else. No one stayed the same. But what happened when everything just stopped? The air still, memory suspended in it, getting fainter. In the garden earlier he’d felt he could hear his own pulse, his senses so alive they seemed to be outside his skin, touching, listening. Now he barely heard the voice in his head, a steady murmur that seemed as far away as that first party. What it must be like to be dead, when you couldn’t even hear yourself. Then suddenly a louder voice came in over it, not really talking to Anna anymore, to anyone, just pouring out.

You were the only idea I ever had. To be with you. The way we were at the yali. That’s all I wanted, to be like that. Not change. But it did. I still don’t know why. The child. Then the war. Everything. Sometimes I blame you-and then it’s worse. But Lily’s right, we’re both dying this way. And I don’t want to. I see a woman, near Tunel. And it doesn’t mean anything. How can something like that not mean anything? Like the lab frogs in school. You could make their muscles twitch, with electricity. Even after they were dead. It’s like that. A jolt, but you don’t feel anything. Then tonight. I did. I think so anyway.

He shrugged to himself, the voice taking a breath. So what did I do? I sent her away. So I could come here. Sit with you. That was right, wasn’t it? The right thing. But I can’t even remember your voice-a few minutes and then it goes. I’m not sure anymore what I’m holding on to.

The voice stopped, the sudden quiet a vacuum in his head. He looked over at the bed. Anna lay still, not moving, as if she were holding her breath, waiting. I’m sorry. Listen to me. One kiss and now all this. Like a kid. He paused. But it’s true. It’s getting harder to remember.

Outside, there were footsteps in the hall, a nurse hurrying past. Kosterman had probably arrived. Why sit here brooding? Check on Georg and leave. Move Alexei. Where? Georg wouldn’t be going home to Nisantasi. Just one night. But there’d be neighbors taking care of the dog-Georg never left her alone. Mihai had a cousin in Kuzguncuk, on the Asian side. A street with old wooden houses and plane trees, as quiet as an Anatolian village. And just as small-everyone would know in an hour. Much safer in an impersonal flat. A cheap hotel, no questions.

There were more steps outside, nurses’ shoes, a hospital sound. How many times had he sat with Anna listening to rubber soles and swishing skirts? The sound echoed, back to the other hospital, Anna lying with her hair spread out on the white pillow, not crying, her face drained, facing it.

“We can have another,” he’d said, not knowing what else to say.

“Don’t give it a name,” she’d said, her eyes far away for the first time, something he thought now he should have noticed, but didn’t. “If you name it, we won’t be able to forget.” As if it had existed, had personality, a place in one’s heart, all the things that can happen in the first seconds of life.

The hospital listed it as “baby,” or “infant,” he forgot which, the form tucked away in some box of papers where Anna wouldn’t see it. You couldn’t lose a child who’d never existed. But she’d known the sex, her boy, and here he was, years later, still in the room with them. All it took was the sound of nurses’ shoes.

“You’d better come,” Obstbaum said at the door. “He’s had another attack.” Not waiting for Leon, starting back, talking over his shoulder. “Kosterman’s working on him, but he’s not responding.”

In the room a gray-haired man was pushing down on Georg’s chest, kneading it, nurses around him, glancing nervously at a monitor.

“Nichts,” he said, but kept pumping, somehow angry, as if Georg were being stubborn.

Another minute, then a quick knowing look from the nurse, and finally his hands stopped. He moved them away slowly, and shook his head.

“He’s gone,” Obstbaum said, needlessly.

Leon looked down at Georg’s face, already different, empty. For a moment the room seemed motionless, stunned by the gravity of death, then nurses began to remove the electrodes, wheel a cart away, cover the body. Kosterman looked at his watch, noting the time, already preparing the certificate in his mind. Leon kept staring. Something you never got used to, no matter how many times you’d seen it, the stillness of a dead body. Not Georg anymore, irretrievable in a second. Not coming back, not in any life, whatever the Hindus imagined.

“There was nothing you could have done,” Kosterman said to Obstbaum in German. “Like a bomb.” He opened his fingers, mimicking an explosion. “I told him.”

“Have you finished?” a nurse said to Leon, holding the sheet, waiting.

Leon nodded.

“There’s no family,” Obstbaum said to the doctor. He turned to Leon. “Did he ever say anything to you? What he wanted?”

Leon shook his head. “The dog. The neighbors must have her. Someone should make sure. And call Lily,” he said, making a list, things to do, a way of not thinking about it. “She’ll want to know. She can have someone tell the papers. An obituary-he knew a lot of people. I’ll call Vogel at the university. He can arrange a memorial service later.”

And then there seemed nothing more to say. Georg disposed of, gone. He wondered suddenly how easy his own death would be-a notice to the Reynolds office, an insurance claim for Anna, Mihai settling the apartment. Maybe a piece in Hurriyet. American businessman. Nothing about the trains to Ankara or Tommy or Alexei. Would Anna know he was gone? A paragraph would do it.

Two aides came to wheel the gurney away, and Leon felt people moving around him, busy. Why wasn’t everyone standing still, letting it sink in? But they hadn’t known him, hadn’t just lost something. It was Georg who’d explained about the storks that Sunday when they went out to see the Byzantine walls, a picnic in the shade, looking up at them perched on their high rickety nests. “They migrate south, over Arabia, so the Muslims believe they make the pilgrimage to Mecca every year.” Was it true? Did it matter? Anna delighted, smiling. Sandwiches in waxed paper. Beer. The wheeling stopped, the aides looking at him, in the way.

He thanked Obstbaum and started back to Anna’s room, then stopped, his feet suddenly lead. Not another vigil, talking to himself about Georg, regretting their last conversation, sneering at his Marxist heaven. Then on the landing, still your friend. Maybe his own form of warning-the landlord was talking, it wasn’t safe anymore. But where would be? Hotels with sleepy night clerks checking the tezkere Alexei didn’t have? What would be open? The Muslim world went home at night, whole sections of the city blacked out in a medieval dark, streetlights like the old torches. Only the Greeks and Armenians and foreigners went out, drinking in noisy mihanyes. But eventually they closed too. Even the Taksim Casino went dark, forcing the streetwalkers to lurk by the late-night kebab stalls and the dim lights of the taxi ranks. He stopped.

A simple answer, the obvious overlooked. It wasn’t too much to ask. And if it was, there was always Cihangir. But not Laleli anymore, Georg’s warning like an omen now.

“What is it?” Alexei said when he opened the door. Dressed, the way he always was, maybe the way he slept, ready to get out in a hurry.

“I’m moving you.”

“Something’s-”

“No, a precaution. It’s time.”

“Good,” Alexei said, putting out a cigarette and folding up the chess set. “Somewhere better, I hope. The Pera