Authors: Maureen Freely
Had Jordan never told her about it? The more Jeannie insisted that he hadn’t, the less Suna seemed to believe her.
‘But he told you. Most certainly, he told you! Worse still, you believed him! Yes, Jeannie. That’s what hurts the most.’ She was talking about ‘the rumours’ Jordan had spread. They were all false, of course. ‘But attached to them is a shameful secret.’
For there’d been a night – ‘and it was only a night’ – when she had ‘succumbed’ to his charms. ‘In the spring of ’71. Those last crazy days. If you were not there to witness my downfall, it is probably safe to say that I am speaking of the days following your demotion to pariah.’
Sighing, she gestured up at the apartment house where Billie Broome had once lived with Dutch Harding. ‘It was there, on that very balcony, that he approached me. He was very handsome in those days, wasn’t he? It must have been my wish to impress him that prompted me to introduce myself as Turkey’s most dangerous insurgent. Trained by the PLO, no less, in the Bekaa Valley. Jordan understood my joke at once, and it was in this spirit that he was soon confessing to the murders of Jack Ruby and JFK. What’s more, he had brought down de Gaulle. His name was also mud at NATO. Jeannie – he had even conducted a secret mission to the moon.’
Her voice was so tragically theatrical by now that the languid ladies at the next table were moved to take off their gold-rimmed sunglasses. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘do not let these numbskulls distract you. They cannot understand English.’
‘Are you sure?’ Jeannie asked.
‘Look at their puffy lips. Can these be natural? No, they are cows. If they can speak English, let them know what I understand of them.’ She took a long swig of her drink. ‘But to return to my confession. It would be impossible for me to remember all the fantastic fictions I fashioned for my flirt on that fateful evening. But it is only my finale that matters: I told Jordan there was soon to be a coup. I claimed certain elements in the military would join forces with the student left. Can you imagine such idiocy? I claimed, too, that I was none other than the kingpin. Can you believe such brazen nerve?’
Twirling her glass in her hands, she said, ‘Yes, this was surely my
pièce de resistance
. But even as I spoke, Jeannie, I was myself falling into Jordan’s bed. I was drunk! I passed out! When I awoke the next morning, there he was, smiling so triumphantly. Yes, it was Jordan Frick, zipping up a freshly ironed pair of trousers. His mission having been accomplished. For as you may have guessed by now, my dear Jeannie, I had given him my virginity.’
She uttered these words with a finality Jeannie could not quite read. ‘When did you next see him?’ she asked carefully. Suna’s eyes brimmed with tears as she stubbed out her cigarette. ‘You know, you were there,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Eleven years later, in 1981. In Kulis!’
Another tragic look. Jeannie struggled to fathom it. She asked if she had missed something – had Suna fallen in love with Jordan, had he broken her heart, had she fallen pregnant? ‘Hah!’ Suna said scornfully. ‘As if I would have allowed such mundane matters to cloud my vision! No, my dear Jeannie, you have, as usual, missed the point.’
Beckoning for the waiter, she added, ‘For thirty years now – you have wished to know what part you may have played in the so-called Trunk Murder. If you were the unwitting instigator. In fact, it was I!’
She took a last suck on her cigarette and attempted a haughty stare. ‘Yes,’ she said with trembling lips. ‘I was the informer. Or whatever you wish to call me. I betrayed everyone. Even you.’
Her voice had become harsh and thin. It no longer sounded like Suna’s. ‘I’m sorry,’ Jeannie said. ‘I’m still not connecting the dots.’
‘But you must.’
‘Then tell me the whole story, not just half of it. You say you never saw Jordan again. So who were you informing?’
‘Who do you think?’
‘Listen, Suna. If my father was somehow involved in this…’
And now Suna laughed. Or rather, snorted. ‘You Americans! How arrogant you are! You always think you’re the bad guys, don’t you? Well, let me tell you. If you ever need an evil puppetmaster, someone who can take an innocent fabrication and turn it inside out and set your mind on fire with unfounded suppositions and deranged paranoias – I’d advise you to go for a Turk.’
‘So was it İsmet?’ Jeannie asked.
But Suna had said her piece. She rummaged through her handbag, fished out two twenty million lira notes, threw them on the table, and rising to her unsteady but determined feet, she left.
Returning home, Jeannie found Sinan in the kitchen, grilling aubergines. ‘Nice day?’ he asked.
‘Not really,’ she said.
‘Hmmm. Stormy weather?’
‘Well, you know Suna,’ she said. ‘When’s the last time you saw her calm?’
He smiled, glanced over at the aubergines, picked up his knife to dice a large tomato. He took his time; he still moved like a cat. ‘I’m making a lot of this, by the way, so that you can eat it while I’m away.’ He put down his knife. Here,’ he said, pulling out a chair. ‘Sit down. You’re out of breath.’
‘How many days are you away this time?’
‘Three,’ he said. ‘First Copenhagen. Then Munich. There’s that commissioning round – we can’t afford to miss it. But listen, if…’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said.
He gave her a sharp look.
‘But you’re right,’ she said. ‘I’m not fine now.’
He went back to dicing. ‘So tell me. What did our sacred monster do today?’
‘She took me along with her to meet Billie Broome.’
It took him a moment or two. ‘Oh, I know who you mean now. It’s just that I still think of her as
Miss
Broome. So tell me,’ he said as he went back to his dicing. ‘Is she the same as you remember, or has
she changed?’
‘She took us to see someone.’
‘Oh?’
‘Jordan Frick.’
Although Sinan had his back to Jeannie, she thought she caught a momentary pause.
‘He’s been back in Turkey for some time now,’ Jeannie offered. ‘But working out of Ankara.’
Sinan nodded.
‘You know about this?’
‘Only the bare bones,’ said Sinan. ‘The names, the silent partners…’
‘Who are they?’
Sinan put his finger to his lips. ‘Don’t ask.’
‘Whoever they are,’ Jeannie said, ‘They’ve backed the wrong horse.’
‘He’s not in very good shape right now, is he?’
‘You’ve heard that part too then?’ she asked. As he poured the diced tomatoes into the pan with the sautéed onions, Sinan nodded, somewhat absently.
‘If you knew all this,’ Jeannie asked, ‘why didn’t you tell me?’ Though she knew what the answer was – she was pregnant, she needed to conserve her strength. And he knew how much she hated to hear it. So instead he said, ‘Why upset you for no reason?’
‘That’s what Suna said, when she asked me not to tell you.’
‘That makes no sense,’ he said. ‘She knows I know. She told me!’
How tempted Jeannie was to ask the question that was burning inside her.
Could Sinan read her mind just the same? He left the pan hissing on the stove and pulled up the chair next to her. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘What’s done is done. Whatever she said to upset you, I am upset because she upset you. But the rest I forgive her. Forgave her. Long ago. Can we leave it there? Come.’ Taking her hand, he led her out to the porch. ‘I command you to put your feet up.’
‘You’re treating me like an invalid.’
‘I’m treating you like a woman who’s about to bear a child.’
‘That doesn’t mean…’
‘Listen, I know more about this than you do, remember?’
‘Don’t pull rank,’ she said.
‘I won’t if you put your feet up.’
So she put her feet up, and he went back to the kitchen to finish their supper, leaving her to watch the traffic humming below the great glittering arcs of the bridge. Between its snaking shores, the Bosphorus was black – only a light here and there from a passing tanker. Set against the night, the windows of Rumeli Hisar looked like pictures suspended in space. She watched the little figures move about inside them, restless, caged, but still afraid to speak.
The next morning Suna called her, and in another new voice – thin, edgy, and oozing false calm – she apologised for her ‘drunkenness.’
‘And for my garrulous exaggerations,’ she added. ‘I was, as you may have guessed, only speaking metaphorically. But you understood this already. Yes?’
‘No,’ Jeannie said.
‘I understand, however, that you spoke to Sinan, who assured you…’
‘That’s not true. I told him who we saw yesterday, but nothing else.’
‘Ah! What a good friend you are.’
‘You’ve got to level with me, Suna. I need to know what happened.’
‘Nothing happened. I assure you!’
The stalemate persisted. Jeannie tried to find other ways in – tried to coax her conversations with Chloe and Lüset back to their first year together – dared, from time to time, to ask Sinan a direct question (What was eating away at Suna? If this was old history, wouldn’t it be better if she got it off her chest?). But she couldn’t bring herself to betray Suna’s confidence, couldn’t say the word ‘informer’, couldn’t, for that matter, ask Sinan why, when they got along so beautifully, when she couldn’t fault a single thing he did, when they hadn’t had a single argument (in, what was it now, eight months?) he was still
holding himself back.
She’d be on the verge of putting it into the best words she could muster when it would occur to her that he was no more able to betray Suna’s confidence than she was. If they both had had the same motive, how could she fault him?
In the absence of facts, she began to spin theories. Had Jordan tricked Suna, walked her into a trap? Or was it someone else who’d blackmailed her, and was that person İsmet? If so, her father would have been involved as well. What sort of information did she pass him, if indeed she passed him anything? Even if Suna had betrayed them all, how could her crime be as serious as she seemed to believe? Around and around the questions flew, in ever-wilder circles. She had to air them; to breathe she had to speak. The more Sinan deflected her, the more desperate she became. But somewhere in Suna’s eyes, she could see the hint of a plea to rescue her, to force the issue.
In the last week of July, while Sinan was filming in the Southeast, a summer cold that had left Jeannie with a bad cough sent her into premature labour. Although the crisis passed, her doctor decided it would be safer to keep her under observation. She had no cause to complain – her room at the Admiral Bristol Hospital was on a par with what she would have had in the US, and the nursing was up to the same standard. But she was not in a good way. Her small emergency had robbed her of what little confidence she’d had, and her medication didn’t help matters. Although it did what it was meant to do – arrest labour – it also induced anxiety. She was still having contractions, at least two an hour, and she got it into her head that they were trying to squeeze the life out of the baby. She would persist in this delusion until she’d felt the baby kick again. Between crises, she was bored, restless, breathless. She couldn’t concentrate and was no good at conversation, either, but that made her loyal friends try all the harder.
Chloe and Suna visited in the afternoons with playing cards and chessboards and, if all else failed, gossip. In the evening, Suna would arrive with Europe’s best newspapers to save Jeannie’s mind from ‘the ravages of hormones’, to keep her ‘abreast of the world’ and entertain her with her deepest thoughts.
Her latest brainchild was an electronic newsletter called
Enlightenment 2000
. It did not boast many readers beyond her circle of friends and colleagues. She ran it along the same lines as their short-lived school newspaper. Her pen names were less fanciful but
the old fire still flickered in her closely reasoned but rarely reasonable prose. The central feature was a rambling interview, always a battle of wits. She called it ‘a free exchange between friends’ and for the August newsletter, she’d asked Jeannie to be her sparring mate.
What they argued about during the interview she taped that evening in Jeannie’s hospital room was human rights – not the sorry state of human rights in Turkey at that juncture but the philosophical tensions that the international movement carried. Suna drew, as usual, on thinkers most people only pretended to have read – Kant, Heidegger, Arendt. Jeannie drew upon what she knew of the law, the EU, the dilemmas of human rights work in the field, and they spent most of the interview trying (unsuccessfully) to correct the other’s misapprehensions.
But just before the tape ran out Suna asked Jeannie what it was like to be back in Turkey. ‘To put it baldly, I am asking how you can square this with your legacy, this past of yours that so obsessed you. The fact that you are the American daughter of an American spy.’
What a rush Jeannie felt at that moment – finally, an opening! By now she, too, had forgotten to speak carefully – long interviews are like that, you forget the whirring tape. ‘I’ll never square it,’ she said. ‘But I can’t let it end there. I have to find my own way.’ You couldn’t choose your father, she said, but you could choose your legacy – decide what it was about the American tradition you disowned, and what you wished to honour and pass on to others.
‘Such noble thoughts,’ said Suna. ‘But you have evaded my question.’ So she asked it again – what did Jeannie make of Turkey 2000?’ In reply she said she was concerned about the IMF and the World Bank acting as if they owned the place, which, in a sense they did. ‘As someone whose association with this country goes back thirty years, I’m only too aware how long the US government has been pulling the strings here, imposing policies that benefit no one except perhaps for the fat cats in their pay.’ Jeannie had hoped that this crude approach to foreign policy management would end with the collapse of Communism. ‘So I’m concerned,’ she said, ‘when I see the old crooks still prospering.’
Here Suna demurred: ‘This is a simplistic view of things.’
‘Then please,’ Jeannie said, ‘Illuminate me.’ She picked up that day’s issue of
Milliyet
. On the front page was a large photograph of their old enemy İsmet, who had called a press conference to deny rumours that he was seeding a new political party. But he went on to say just what that party hoped to be: the voice of modernity, dedicated to eradicating corruption and political Islam – the two scourges now threatening to bring Turkey to its knees.
‘Just how can you sit there,’ Jeannie asked, ‘while a man like this pontificates against corruption?’
Suna puffed out her lips. ‘And you are telling me that in your sainted America, politicians have clean hands?’
‘We’re talking about İsmet, the man who…’
As Suna’s hands flew up, she screeched, ‘That’s enough!’
‘You’re afraid of him! Don’t deny it!’
Affecting nonchalance, Suna said, ‘If I were hoping to go into the gunrunning business, then perhaps I would fear this man. But as a lowly sociologist editing a humble journal for the five others who share my views, I do not fear him. For he has even less interest in me than I in him.’
They ought to have known that the Turkish press would be interested in what Jeannie had to say about her father, no matter how obscure the publication.
A few days later, Sinan, who by now had returned from the Southeast, handed Jeannie a printout of the newsletter. From his expression you’d have thought it was his death warrant. Though she was glad to see his calm disturbed, it still irked Jeannie to see that (because of her ‘condition’?) he was keeping his fury to himself. She wanted to say, ‘Stop babying me, goddamn it! I’m your wife!’ Instead she said, ‘I’m sorry. I should have told you. But you were away.’
‘Still,’ he said, ‘you should have known better.’
‘If you’d told me more,’ Jeannie replied, ‘then perhaps I would have done.’
‘There’s nothing you need to know I haven’t told you.’
She watched him clench and unclench his fist.
‘It’s not just a question of need,’ she said. ‘It’s a question of respect.’
‘Oh is it now?’ There was a hint of the old fire in his voice.
‘You’re shutting me out,’ Jeannie said. ‘How can you expect me to get over something I don’t even know about? I can’t live this way, Sinan.’
‘What are you trying to say – that I
can
?’
He was spitting his words now, the way he’d done as a boy. His eyes had turned to liquid. Part of her welcomed that, too. ‘Do you think this is easy?’
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘As I’ve said before, you’re under no obligation. If I’m a burden…’
‘There’s no if about it. You
are
a burden.
My
burden. How many times do I have to tell you! I don’t mind!’
‘But I do mind,’ Jeannie cried. ‘I’ve had enough! I don’t want to live this way!’
To her shock and horror, he turned around and bellowed: ‘Neither do I!’
It was the truth, they both knew it, but after they had sat there for a few stunned seconds – after the nurse had popped her head in the door, and Sinan had gone out ‘for some fresh air’, returning with cakes, peaches, apricot juice,
baklava
– he apologised. He had no idea where those words had come from. ‘Perhaps it’s work.’
But how her heart ached. How she longed to ask him why. A line from Stevie Smith came back to her, how being almost-but-
not-quite
-in-love was wholly evil. She knew then what she had to ask him. But she hesitated, afraid, perhaps, to hear her fears confirmed. And then it was too late. The moment had passed, and he was talking about the blasted interview.
‘What game does Suna think she’s playing?’ he asked, clenching his fist. ‘And for what? Because your father is coming for a visit? What harm can he do us? He’s had nothing to do with this country for thirty years. It doesn’t matter who he is. But then you go and dig this up, drag in İsmet…’
‘What does it matter what İsmet thinks?’ Jeannie said. ‘He has no power over us.’
‘You have no idea how much power he has over us,’ said Sinan. ‘And I hope you never find out.’
They made peace, but it was a fragile peace, because the next day, a national newspaper ran the interview in translation; on the next day, three others did the same, and on the Sunday, three more. The headlines were along the lines of, ‘Turkey Is Where My Heart Lies Now, says CIA Daughter.’ and ‘My Father Was a Spy and I Repudiate Him.’ That was the one her father brought from the airport.
The first thing he said was, ‘Hi. I’m the father you repudiate.’ Seeing Jeannie squirm, he said, ‘No apologies necessary, my dear! It’s nice to know that in one place at least, I’m not forgotten.’ He glanced towards the door, where a pregnant woman and an older relative had slowed their passage to get a good look at them. He waved at them affably. ‘The father,’ said one. The other said, ‘
Zavallı
. Poor man.’
‘So we’re the talk of the town, are we?’ he said as he closed the door. ‘I can’t tell you how refreshing that is, after twenty years in a city where no one reads a paper unless they’re looking for a deal on pool cleaner or the Early Bird Special at The Red Lobster. So,’ he said. ‘How are you bearing up?’
There was something about his careless smile and the whiff of fresh air he’d brought in with him that made Jeannie blurt out the truth.
She said things she didn’t even know she thought. She’d been mad to come back, to think she could turn an obsession she’d carried around her whole life into the sort of love that could sustain a marriage. She couldn’t get the past out of her head. The rest had moved on. When ghosts came out of the woodwork, they just walked right through them, and Jeannie had to hand it to them, seeing their courage did her heart good, but she had no idea how they did it and it was pretty obvious she never would. But here she was, bringing a child into the world, another burden. She didn’t want to be a burden. And now she knew that Sinan was only humouring her, that he had accepted this child out of duty, not love…
‘He said that?’ There was surprise in her father’s voice.
‘Of course not. He’s too fucking polite. He refuses to talk about it. He’s walled himself off.’
‘So how do you read that?’ her father asked. But now the door
opened, and it was Hector. At the sight of William Wakefield he opened his arms wide and let out his usual cry of ahistorical joy. Then it was Amy, and more of the same. By the time Sinan arrived, Chloe and Lüset had also joined the party. Seeing his long face, Jeannie’s father said, ‘You’re not worried about
this
, are you?’ He waved the Sunday paper with his picture on the front. Seeing Sinan’s face darken, he said, ‘I don’t mind. Honestly. It’s just words. I’ve heard them all before. It’s just how we talk to each other, Jeannie and I. Don’t worry on
my
account. This is just the way the cookie crumbles.’
‘Cookies do not crumble by themselves,’ said Sinan ominously.
‘Politics. What can I tell you? It’s what the English call a mug’s game.’
This sent Sinan back into his silence. When he excused himself, William patted his daughter’s leg and said, ‘If you don’t mind, I’m going to chase after him. Maybe go out somewhere, get a bite to eat. There’s something he and I need to discuss. You don’t mind, do you? Hector? Amy? Can you sit out this shift?’
‘I’m fine on my own,’ Jeannie insisted.
‘
You
, young lady, need to get some sleep.’
How she hated that condescending note in his voice. Hated sitting there with them pretending to enjoy Amy’s smoked chicken and the special low alcohol champagne she’d brought all the way from Austria. It was not that she wasn’t grateful, and not that she didn’t enjoy their company. She just couldn’t bear being here, being suffered. If she’d been able, she’d have walked out right then.
When Suna arrived, just past nine, all Jeannie wanted was some time alone. So after Hector and Amy had said their farewells, she told Suna she should leave, too. Not a chance. ‘What do you take me for,’ asked Suna huffily, ‘a wolf child?’ She reminded Jeannie that Turkish families never ever left their loved ones unattended in times of illness. ‘Anything less would be barbaric.’
‘So which cat has bitten your tongue this evening?’ she asked.
‘I can’t take this any more,’ Jeannie said. ‘And neither can he.’
Suna sat down on the half-made sofa bed. ‘So what are you trying to say?’
She told her. Suna appeared to listen. When Jeannie said she had decided to leave Turkey, Suna shook her head. ‘No, Jeannie, this would not be best. You must stay here, and resolve your differences. Think of the child. Be strong.’
‘What’s the point of being strong,’ she asked, ‘if he doesn’t love me?’
‘He loves you,’ said Suna. ‘You just refuse to see it.’
‘You don’t know how he looks at me. You don’t know how hurtful it is.’
‘Even so. I cannot let you leave.’
‘But Suna, it has nothing to do with you.’
‘Oh yes, Jeannie, it does. It most certainly does.’
‘I’ll make my own decisions, thank you very much.’
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Ah. If I want to hear the Voice of America, I’ll buy a radio. In the meantime, you are no longer free to do as you like.’
‘And why not, may I ask?’
‘You are bearing his child!’ Suna snapped.
‘Yes, but he doesn’t want it!
‘How would you know, my fairweather friend? Who knows him better, you who have just wafted in, or me, his lifelong companion? Is it my fault that he wishes to spare you pain? You don’t deserve his love. And that is not all! My friend, you no longer deserve the gift of innocence.’ She strolled over to the light switch and plunged the room into darkness. All Jeannie could see was the ember of the cigarette she now lit and the hint of a ceiling.
‘There are things you should know.’