The Red-Haired Woman Read online

  When had he passed away? If it happened while we were stuck in traffic, it somehow had to have been my fault. But perhaps he was already dead when we got the phone call. I couldn’t look at him, but, like some detective, I kept asking his weeping widow that same question over and over. She couldn’t answer.

  Once we had decided that we would spend the night with her at the house, I started drinking the Club Rakı I had found in the fridge. We called a doctor who confirmed what we already suspected, that my father had died of heart failure. As I read the certificate, I myself was on the verge of tears and, again later, when the three of us carried him into the bedroom and laid him on a fresh set of sheets. Maybe I did cry, but his wife’s sobs were so loud that they drowned out any sound I might have made.

  It was well after midnight when my wife went to sleep on the couch and my father’s wife on the spare bed while I lay down in bed beside him. Everything about my poor father—his hair, his cheeks, his arms, the creases in his shirt, and even his smell—was exactly as I remembered it from childhood.

  My eyes roamed over the skin on his neck. One day when I was seven, my parents took me to the beach on Heybeli Island. They wanted to teach me how to swim: my mother would lower me belly-first into the water, and I would flail and splash about trying to reach my father standing three steps away. Every time I came close, he would take another step back so that I’d have to swim just a bit farther. But in my desperation to grasp him, I’d yell, “Daddy, don’t go!” I’d scream so much and become so agitated that he couldn’t help smiling as he raised his sturdy arms to lift me out of the water like a kitten, nestling my head against his chest or in the crook of his neck, the very spot I was looking at now, which even at the seaside retained his unique scent of biscuits and floral soap. Every single time, he’d furrow his brows and say:

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Son. I’m here, all right?”

  “All right,” I’d gasp, basking in the joy and comfort of his arms.

  35

  WE BURIED MY FATHER in Feriköy Cemetery. There were three types of mourner at the funeral: in the front rows, close and distant relatives—including us and his weeping widow—toward the back; assorted contractors, engineers, and businessmen there mostly for my sake; and finally, standing around in twos and threes, his old militant friends, smoking as we awaited the call to prayer.

  I would love to tell you more about the funeral, but I suppose it isn’t strictly relevant, so I won’t go into detail. As the crowd in Feriköy Cemetery dispersed, a stocky man with an endearing face came up to me and embraced me with all his strength. “You might not know who I am, but I’ve known you for years, Mr. Cem,” he said.

  When he realized I didn’t recognize him, he apologized and stuck his business card in my breast pocket.

  I didn’t look at it again until I went back to work two weeks later. I tried to remember the names and faces of all the people I’d met during my summer in Öngören, when I was sixteen, trying to place this Mr. Sırrı Siyahoğlu, who’d said he’d known me back then, and whose card indicated he was now offering “printing services for business cards, invitations, and advertisements.” My mind kept calling up the face of Ali, my fellow apprentice. After the Red-Haired Woman and Master Mahmut, he was the one whose fate I was most interested in.

  But I still couldn’t remember Mr. Sırrı, so I sent him an e-mail at the address on the business card he’d printed for himself. I thought that if we met, I could ask him what had become of that old Öngören crowd while also sounding him out on the area’s real-estate prospects. And what better way of acting as if nothing had happened than to return to the scene of the crime years later in the guise of a contractor?

  Our meeting ten days later at the Palace Pudding Shop in Nişantaşı was as brief as it was disconcerting. We didn’t bother with small talk; that might have been my fault. I spent every moment of our encounter feeling that I had only to ask and I would find out everything I’d always wanted to know, while sensing simultaneously that I might be too afraid to do so.

  Mr. Sırrı was even more thickset and overweight than he’d seemed at the funeral. I still couldn’t place him among the faces I recalled from that month in Öngören. But before I could fret too much about that, he admitted that while he’d always known who I was, we’d never met face-to-face until my father’s funeral.

  He’d known my father personally and had always thought very highly of him. So he was glad of the chance to pay his respects. He could tell who I was on first sight, since I looked a lot like my father: just as handsome and wearing the same kind, honest expression. My father had been a paragon of patriotism and self-sacrifice. He’d given up everything for his country, and he’d done it all out of the goodness of his heart. He’d been tortured for his beliefs, but they’d never broken him; he’d languished in prison, but unlike some others, he hadn’t changed his tune. It was unfortunate that his own friends had slandered him and caused him such distress.

  “What kind of slander, Mr. Sırrı?”

  “It’s ancient history now, militant gossip, Mr. Cem, and I don’t want to waste your valuable time with such deplorable nonsense. There is just one favor I’d like to ask of you. Your company Sohrab is after my humble patch of land, but your estate agents and your engineers are trying to cheat me. Your father was the kind of man who would not tolerate injustice, and I thought you should know what’s been going on.”

  He’d been offered less than the going rate for his land because others had come forward claiming to own a share. But actually the place belonged to him alone.

  “Mr. Sırrı, can you tell me the exact location of your property, and where it’s registered?”

  “I’ve made a photocopy of the title deed. As you’ll see, it says there are other stakeholders, but don’t let that fool you.”

  While I examined the deed and tried to work out where his land was situated, I said with feigned indifference: “I spent some time in Öngören myself, years ago. I’m familiar with the area.”

  “I know, Mr. Cem. You visited my friends’ theater tent in the summer of 1986. Mr. Turgay and his wife were my guests for about a month around that time; they stayed in my apartment while Mr. Turgay’s parents stayed on the floor above, facing the Station Square.”

  Mr. Sırrı was the signmaker in whose apartment I’d made love with the Red-Haired Woman! The woman who’d answered his doorbell later and told me the theater troupe had left, she was surely his wife. How could I not have seen it before?

  “You were digging a well with Master Mahmut on that plateau outside town,” he said. “My little plot is just down the road from your well. When Master Mahmut finally hit water, all the industrialists came running to try and get their hands on some land. I wasn’t making much from painting signs…But my wife and I managed to scrape a bit together and bought ourselves a little parcel a couple of years later. Now this land is my family’s only asset.”

  I had just discovered what some part, perhaps every part, of me had known all along but never really believed: not only had Master Mahmut survived, he’d gone on digging until he found water. I tried to digest what I’d learned, staring at the customers that populated the pudding shop without really seeing them—students getting a quick snack, housewives shopping, and men in business suits—but my mind was irretrievably in the past.

  Why had I spent almost thirty years believing that I might have accidentally killed Master Mahmut?

  It was probably because I’d read Oedipus the King and relied on its truths. At least that’s what I wanted to think. From Master Mahmut I’d learned to believe in the force of old stories. And like Oedipus, I couldn’t resist investigating my ancient crime.

  “Mr. Sırrı, may I ask, how did you know Master Mahmut?”

  When Master Mahmut found water after my return to Istanbul, Hayri Bey rewarded him with gifts and further jobs. He was treated with great reverence because his shoulder had been maimed when a bucket fell on him during a dig. Hayri Bey
commissioned Master Mahmut to dig two more wells, linking them with underground tunnels and storage tanks. Other factories and wash-and-dye plants began to enlist his services to design their own water storage systems, as well as to oversee excavations and the pouring of cement. With welldigging having become a dying art, Master Mahmut had ended up settling in Öngören with his crippled shoulder, remaining there until the day of his death.

  “When did Master Mahmut die?”

  “It’s been more than five years,” said Mr. Sırrı. “They buried him in the cemetery on the slope. His funeral was attended by his apprentices from Öngören, fellow welldiggers, and many businessmen.”

  “Master Mahmut was like a father to me,” I said, wide-eyed.

  I could tell from the way Mr. Sırrı was looking at me that he knew I’d wronged Master Mahmut in some way and that Master Mahmut had died holding a grudge. But since he needed my help, Mr. Sırrı was reluctant to overstate the matter. Did he realize that I’d panicked and abandoned my master at the bottom of a well thirty years ago because I thought I’d killed him?

  How had Master Mahmut made it out of the well? I was desperate to find out, and to ask everything there was to know about the Red-Haired Woman, but I held my tongue.

  “Master Mahmut always spoke of you as his most cultured apprentice,” said Mr. Sırrı, fumbling for something nice to say.

  I suspected that this wasn’t all Master Mahmut had said about me, that he must have added something like “It’s the bookish ones you have to worry about.” I couldn’t blame him. It was my fault his shoulder had been crushed.

  Mr. Sırrı was oblivious to the fact that his house had been the scene of my first sexual encounter. Resisting the direct questions I actually wanted to ask, I was able, in a roundabout way, to learn the following: Mr. Sırrı and his wife had moved out of that ugly block with big windows overlooking the Station Square. The building had been demolished, and a shopping mall built in its place. Nowadays all the local youths hung out there. He would be happy to show me around Öngören if I cared to see his property in person, and he’d have me over for dinner whether I liked it or not. He’d long left the movement, but he hadn’t severed all ties with his old friends. He still bought a copy of National Revolution every now and then, but not as faithfully as he used to, since its positions had grown rather extreme. “They’d do better to write about fraud and injustice in the construction industry instead of harping on American imperialism,” he said.

  Was there a threat hidden in these words?

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Sırrı, I’ll talk to my people, they’ll make sure you’re treated honorably. But now there’s something I’d like to ask you. These rumors you mentioned about my father…”

  My father’s case wasn’t unique. Turkey was then a backward country. Even well-meaning Marxist militants, especially those from the eastern regions, could still possess a “feudal” mentality. They disapproved of men and women mixing, of overt flirtation, and certainly of love affairs within the group. Such banned behavior was sure to result in jealousies and rows within the movement. So the organization frowned on my father’s romance.

  “The girl was beautiful, but she’d already caught the eye of someone in the very top ranks of the National Revolutionaries,” said Mr. Sırrı.

  This caused the situation to get out of hand, until eventually my father left that group and joined another. The more senior militant went on to marry the girl, but eventually he was shot dead by the gendarmes, and the girl, unable to break with the group, wound up marrying his younger brother. My father’s passion for that spirited girl had been thwarted, but perhaps it was just as well, for it had allowed him to do the smart thing and marry a girl outside the movement, and together, they’d had me. He hoped I wouldn’t be too troubled by these old stories, now that my father had passed away.

  “It’s all in the past, Mr. Sırrı, there’s nothing to be upset about. They’re just old stories.”

  “Actually, Mr. Cem, these are all people you know.”

  “Which people?”

  “The younger brother the girl ended up with was Mr. Turgay. Your father’s sweetheart was that actress who lived in my apartment.”

  “What?”

  “That woman with the red hair, Gülcihan. Well, her hair used to be brown back then, but she was your late father’s young lover.”

  “Oh, really? And what might they all be up to these days?”

  “We’ve all drifted apart, Mr. Cem…They pitched their tent and put on shows for the soldiers for two more summers, but after that they never came back. I left the movement, too, like all those militants who give up and move on to other cities once they start having children…Her son is an accountant, he does my bookkeeping. But there are a few old-timers like me left in Öngören; we’d be happy to have you.”

  I didn’t ask him anything more about the Red-Haired Woman that day. Mr. Sırrı had tried to soften the blow by improvising a little, bringing his account forward by six or seven years to a time before my parents had met. But I remembered that when I was nine, my father had disappeared for two years. During that absence my mother seemed to lose all regard for him and was far angrier at him than usual. Politics had certainly figured in his disappearance, but there seemed to be another, more furtive element to it as well. I inferred as much from the whispers I overheard at the time and from the nature of my mother’s fury, which seemed directed less toward the state and more toward my father’s friends from the movement.

  On leaving the pudding shop with Mr. Sırrı, I felt myself in a stupor, worn out from all the things I’d learned from the old sign painter and the effort of masking my shock. I walked the streets of the city for miles like a fatherless, childless phantom.

  36

  THAT EVENING I told Ayşe how, while looking into some land we might want to buy, I’d met someone who’d told me all about things in old Öngören. More than guilty or regretful, I felt betrayed and belittled. What would my father have said were he still alive? What would he have thought knowing that we had both slept with the same woman within seven or eight years of each other? I tried not to dwell on that. I wanted to confide in my wife. But I didn’t want her to see how affected I was by what I’d found out. I was afraid of the Red-Haired Woman.

  I had a gnawing urge to know more, but I dreaded what I might learn. For all the effort I’d put into being a decent human being, I was still oppressed by the same bottomless remorse. The terror of being blamed for something even when we’ve done nothing wrong is a fear that manifests itself only in dreams. I felt it all too often.

  Sohrab’s construction portfolio continued to expand, to the point where we could no longer deal with everything by ourselves. We put Ayşe’s cousin in charge of buying and selling real estate. We even started talking like Murat: “We’ve bought all this land behind Beykoz, and do you know, I don’t think we’ve ever even been there!” When we confessed to friends that we had no idea what lay beyond Şile, even though Sohrab had purchased “a ton of acres over there,” we glowed with the oblivious pride of parents—for Sohrab was our son. He was growing up much faster than most children, outperforming his peers, and winning accolades for his business acumen.

  Sometimes I would naïvely ask myself what the purpose of my life was and grow disheartened. Could the reason be that we had no children, nobody to inherit all this once I was gone? The more demoralized I felt, the more I took refuge in Ayşe’s companionship. She had intuited that our bond was nourished by my need to be close to a strong, intelligent woman. She knew I would never cheat on her. She did not believe I could sustain any kind of emotional life, keep a secret, or pursue a clandestine fling without her knowledge. At work, if we went more than an hour without speaking, one of us would call the other’s mobile and ask “Where are you?” In fact, our intimacy bred such a sense of self-satisfied superiority that it ultimately caused us to make a mistake costing Sohrab dearly.

  It was the beginning of 2013, and other construction c
ompanies were growing just as we were, exploiting changes in the building code to erect multiple-story blocks, and conducting national advertising campaigns on TV and in newspapers to sell their apartments. We succumbed to temptation and followed suit, signing on with one of the slick advertising agencies behind these efforts.

  Leading contractors would often appear in their own ads to attest to the quality of the homes they’d built. This had been a popular ploy ever since the first residential high-rises began to appear: here was the venerable builder himself in suit and tie standing by his work, obviously not the kind of man to cut corners and sell you a home destined to collapse with the smallest earthquake!

  The advertising agency pointed out how young, sophisticated, and modern we were compared with those old men in most of the commercials; if we were to appear together in a campaign for Sohrab, it would immediately set us apart from our provincial rivals. We initially demurred at the idea, but the yoking together of the words “modern” and “Sohrab” dazzled us, and soon we were starring in our own ads.

  Even while still filming, we already had misgivings. We were made to enact the affected, ostentatious, Westernized lifestyle of a wealthy couple—a kind of life we didn’t even lead. Our images first appeared in newspapers and on billboards, and once they started running on TV, they became famous, causing us no end of embarrassment with friends and family, just as we’d feared. Sohrab quickly sold all of its relatively expensive and still-unfinished apartments in residential developments spread over three different corners of Istanbul (Kavacık, Kartal, and Öngören), while the clothes we’d worn and the manner we’d assumed in the commercials became the object of mockery among everyone who knew us. Our more well meaning friends, though no less amused at first, tried to warn us: “Is such exposure really wise?” In the Ottoman Empire, as in Russia, Iran, or China today, the rich would always hide their wealth for fear of the ruthless state.