Upon arriving at his building—a late-nineteenth-century rust-colored mansion with old-style oriels on each of its five floors—Fanis looked over his shoulder. Having reassured himself that no one was following, he fumbled in his pocket for his keys, unlocked the heavy iron door, and stepped inside. He shut the door gently so that its dull clang would not disturb his neighbors and took a deep breath while observing the faded entryway wall paintings, which had been designed to look as if they were alcove statues. Within a burgundy-bordered panel of yellow ochre, the tall figure of the goddess Athena stood to his left. Directly across from her was a male counterpart, the god Hermes. Fanis had always attributed the sparing of his house from the mob to their guardianship, rather than to a God he visited every Sunday in church and in whom he did not entirely believe.
“Friends,” he said to the faceless paintings. “Lend a hand, will you? Daphne hasn’t bitten yet, and that bewitching Selin is more than I can handle.”
He ascended the staircase, pausing at each landing for a rest so that he wouldn’t suffer the stroke predicted by Dr. Aydemir. He felt just as fit at seventy-six as he had at sixty, but his mouth was parched. He opened his water bottle and took a sip but had difficulty swallowing. Wasn’t that a symptom of arteriosclerosis? If Fanis were not so attached to his apartment, he would have moved to the ground floor and saved himself the daily torture of ascending four and a half flights with a list of symptoms flashing like warning lights on a car dashboard. Damn that Aydemir.
Once inside, he double-bolted the door, closed the velvet curtains, checked that he had indeed locked the balcony window before going out to tea, and peered inside closets and behind doors to make sure that no one had entered while he was out. When he was certain all was secure, he disconnected the telephone—lest he be bothered by his habitual prank caller—and arranged his cutlery, a plate of leftover meatballs and pilaf, and glass of lemon juice on a nineteenth-century Qajar table tray. Then he turned on the television to Magnificent Century, a historical soap opera that was the subject of much current debate. The prime minister had criticized it for misrepresentation of the golden age of Ottoman history. He was right, of course. Women—and men—of that epoch did not wear so much makeup; neither did the sultan’s wives and concubines expose their augmented breasts in such a fashion. Furthermore, uncastrated men did not enter the harem, as they had to in the soap opera in order to create a spicier plot. Even so, Fanis cringed whenever he heard talk of prohibiting certain representations of history.
Sitting down to dinner, he chased the controversy from his mind and lost himself in the palace intrigues. Halfway through his meal, the electricity went out. His terror of intruders made him freeze with a mouth full of pilaf. Perhaps they had done it. Perhaps they were waiting in the street, like a flow of molten evil, just as they had been on that September night, and perhaps this time they would succeed in breaking down his door. Or perhaps it was just another electricity outage like the one they’d had last Monday.
Fanis peeled back the curtains. The entire street was black. It was, after all, just a power cut. Swearing and stubbing his toes, he fumbled his way through the living room and located candles and matches in a sideboard drawer, beneath Dr. Aydemir’s crumpled scripts. He was sure that Aydemir was nothing but a pharmaceutical salesman, even if his diagnosis had been correct. So what was the use in keeping those hateful papers? Besides, Fanis was going to get his Viagra after all, and who knew if erectile aids could be taken with that poison?
He lit a candle, snatched up the prescriptions, and carried them to the kitchen sink. Then, one by one, he set them on fire and watched the flames eat half-moons into the paper. A few wispy embers wafted up from the sink and settled down again. When the flames had gone out, Fanis surveyed the insignificant ashes, set the candle on the counter where his mother had rolled pastry, turned on the tap, and washed the death sentences down the drain.
He took the candle into the bedroom, put on his pajamas, and stretched out on the bed. Over the roofs of Pera, a flock of screaming seagulls surged and receded like an ocean wave. A cat howled, like a woman having an orgasm. Now that’s a good sound, Fanis thought. He tried to picture Daphne’s face on the ceiling. Nothing. He tried Selin’s. Nothing. He tried again, and the result startled him, for he conjured his lost fiancée Kalypso instead. She was just as real as Daphne and Selin had been in the tea garden that afternoon, and she was not angry with him. He had always supposed that, if there was a heaven and if he met her in it, she would refuse to speak to him. Instead, smiling and laughing, she nibbled his ear. Then some idiot let the heavy iron building door slam shut, and she disappeared.
Fanis tried to bring her back but other sounds—motors, a catfight, and Anatolian music—kept breaking his concentration. The couple who lived beneath him began quarrelling. Fanis unlocked the balcony door and shouted, “Can’t you argue during the day?” The couple fell silent. He extinguished the candle and lay down to wait for sleep or death, whichever came first. Not having gone to see Kalypso was the greatest regret of his life, the secret sorrow he had tried to numb with amorous adventures. He hadn’t
