The Debt of Tamar (25 page)

Outside, clouds were simmering in the hot grey sky. A wet wind jettisoned past through a narrow crack in the window as he loosened his grip and let her hand slip away.

Her eyes sparkled peculiarly while her lips came to a part. “Selim?” she whispered.

He brought his finger to his mouth and hushed her with his eyes. Their bodies were still and their breathing slowed to a stop. Only the world’s breath breathed for them.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Something strange was happening to Hannah. Her father was gone, her mother a ghost. She was grieving for her losses, yet a new energy had taken her by force, a stranger from room 301.

More than ever before, Hannah began spending long hours in the studio, late into the night. She would come home with her hair covered in red and blue splotches of paint. She would bring her paintings to his hospital room and cover his wall with every scene the eye could capture.

Selim’s once sterile cubicle had started out as a unit of solitary confinement. Then slowly, over the next few weeks, portraits and landscapes began to cover the walls. Hannah’s oil paintings hummed in hues of pastel violets and blues. The room became a gallery of countless portraits, fiery sunsets, lovers kissing, children laughing. She took bits and piece of the outside world to give to him.

She spent the mornings by his side. They laughed and talked about life and politics and faith. She read to him from the works of Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese philosopher who believed happiness could not be contained without the carvings of sorrow deep within one’s soul. He recited his favorite verses of Voltaire. “I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms,” the words came to him in waves. Musings of the wise ones, Emerson, the Afghan Rumi, the eleventh century mystic Ghazali.

In the afternoons he slept, dreaming of sweet halvah and sugar coated pineapples sliced and glistening like yellow half-moons. He dreamed of bundles of licorice stems Mother had brought home from the sweet shop. His dreams took place in days gone by, when Mother still smelled of lemon and cinnamon spice, when she still loved him. He had silent dreams, dreams where nothing happened at all, dreams of a white bliss and nothingness, sheer and pure and fair. A dream without a sound, sight or smell. A dream of empty space and peaceful nothings.

And while he dreamed, she wandered into nearby museums. She passed through white halls of Greek sculptures. Faces that looked like Gods, bodies that were indestructible. She saw Selim in every statue. She passed through the Impressionist hall and let herself be absorbed in the fluid moments that were forever captured in those paintings. Dances and glances and kisses that lasted only for a second, but lived forever in vertical love.

Hannah Herzikova had transformed the bitter starkness of room 301 into a vibrant, bustling art gallery, where patients and doctors alike stopped in to marvel at the beauty of the world she had created. Through her paintings, Selim was transported through time and space to the outside world. Through her, he was transported home.

He began to dream in different colors. Iridescent hues of violet, blue and pink. They drifted to an ancient world on the wings of Khalil Gibran’s Prophet. He spoke to her about Istanbul and Turkey. He told her how the streets were winded and a bit crooked but lovely and really very charming, much like her smile.

In his dreams, he was visited by the words of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, words of love he had written for a Polish slave that he later made his bride and queen. Verses whose truth came upon him in soft waves that lapped gently against the dreamscape of his mind. The words of the poem came to him in pieces, like scattered sea treasures washed ashore. Bit by bit, he found them gleaming.

Throne of my lonely niche

My wealth,

My love,

My moonlight

You are my most sincere friend, my confidant, my very existence,

My Sultan, the most beautiful among the beautiful...

My sweet rose,

The one only who does not distress me in this world...

My Istanbul,

The earth of my Anatolia

I'll sing your praises always

I, lover of the tormented heart

I…

I am happy.

She sat by his bedside until he dozed off.

He found himself cradled in the supple stems of a weeping pomegranate tree, with a girl, a child really, but he loved her, he loved her…the sky darkened and he felt a sudden sense of dread that he would lose the girl, that she would look up to the clouds and disappear forever.

Selim sat up, half lost in a dream, half lost in a memory. “Don’t leave me again.” His fingers reached out for her.

“I’m not leaving.” She pushed in close and brushed his hair away from his ear. “ I never have.” As soon as she heard her words, she sensed they were untrue.

There it was, day in day out. A tin box that Davide Herzikova had cradled in his lap before his passing. The box held the jewels of his existence and the proof of his being—his memories.

But the man was gone and the box, a mausoleum of fossilized mementos not quite living but not quite dead, was relegated to the far end of the room. Hannah had left it there alongside the portrait of her father. She’d come and go often, side-stepping the box as though it were yesterday’s paper, or maybe, tomorrow’s.

Selim reached for a pen and sketched geometric shapes on a napkin. Soon he was scribbling letters, then letters became words.
Mother. Father, Brother.
To whom did these words belong? He studied the letters he had inscribed.
A.L.I.
He gripped the pen in his hand until his knuckles turned white.
Who inherits memories or are they lost to the dust? Do they belong to a single man, to any man, or are they free to roam the world entire?
He opened his eyes and with his pen, put shape to these thoughts.

The sound of Crocs slapping against the floor tiles startled him momentarily. He looked up to find a nurse in his room carrying a clipboard and taking notes in her folder.

Selim nodded in the direction of the box. “Would you do me a favor and hand that over to me?”

She pulled her thin lips back into two pink threads. “This one here?” She let out a little squeal while squatting to retrieve the box from under the chair.

“That’s it.”

Selim examined the box. Plastered on the lid was a poster featuring a pin-up girl in a polka-dot dress with a blood red rose tucked up in chestnut hair. Selim drew his fingers across the curled up edges of the parchment trying to smooth them down as best he could. He wondered about the poster. He wondered about the man.

Tenderly, he lifted the lid while considering his own memories. Would they die with him or would they, by some act of celestial kindness, be passed on to live in the consciousness of another? Who would inherit the Osman Secret Chronicles? They had been passed from generation to generation, from one man’s heart to the next man’s mind. Centuries of wisdom and recollection had been preserved and passed down throughout the ages. Those memories deserved to be salvaged. But what of a man who never had any children?

What of a man who had taken away the life of a child and all the memories he would never live to have? He looked down at the words he had scribbled on the napkin.

Mother. Father. Brother. Ali.

Gently, he folded the napkin and tucked it away within the pages of a hefty book beside him.

Returning his attention to the box in his lap, he sifted through dozens of photos and discovered a grey-scale world framed by white perforated edges. He lifted up a picture of Davide Herzikova as a youth. With his prominent chin and curious eyes there was no mistaking him. Beneath the white-hot sun with a steamship in the backdrop, he stood beside a husky boy with a keloid scar above a sagging expression. Selim flipped the photo over.
1958.

He went through the others. The same boy was in nearly all the pictures though it was clear he’d not yet suffered the injury that had left the space between his eye and brow mutilated. He studied that boy and as he did, he had the strange sensation that the boy was studying him too. He felt his shoulders tense up as a hot cramp spread up along the back of his neck settling behind his ears and along his jaw.
It’s just a picture
he assured himself.
Just a shadow of a boy, not even a boy.
And yet, he could not shake the strange sensation that the boy was watching him
.
Slowly, he lifted his chin to discover an elderly man standing in the doorway leaning against his cane.

There was no telling how long he’d been there.

Selim dropped the photos back into the box and secured the lid hurriedly.

“Edward Rumie,” said the man in the grey hat. He peeked his head through the doorframe then looked around as though he were lost.

His fleshy antiquity seemed familiar, like the worn pages of grandfather’s
Hafez
poetry collections. He had lines from too much laughter, his thick mouth accentuated within etched parentheses. His eyes were a mystery though, shielded from view by the oversized, opaque lenses of his black wraparound glasses.

The man took a few steps towards Selim’s bedside.

“Do I know you?” Selim asked. He was sure he didn’t.

Mr. Rumie made his way to the wall opposite the bed and set his attentions on one particular abstract mural. “I’d be surprised if you did,” he said in a thick, French accent. “Mind if I sit for a minute?” The joints in his knees cracked as he lowered himself onto an upholstered chair. “I’ve been trying to find someone.” The elderly Frenchman suddenly seemed distracted.

Though he couldn’t see his eyes, Selim was sure the man’s gaze was on the lid of the box, inspecting the girl in the polka-dot dress.

“Whose is that?” The man seemed startled.

“The box?”

“Yes the box.”

Selim leaned over and slid it under his bed. “It’s mine.”

“Yours?”

“Mine.” His voice was firm.

“Right.” The man scoffed. “That’s a French pin-up from 1958. I’ve only seen one in my lifetime. Well two, counting that one.”

Selim shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s from the
Marais
. I should know.”

“Then it’s from the Marais,” Selim acquiesced before turning away.

“So that’s your box.” The man leaned forward and smacked his lips together. “Maybe you’re from
Le Marais
. Maybe you speak French too?”

“I do.”

“Like a Spanish cow, I bet you do,” the man mumbled under his breath in his native tongue.

“There are as many as five official languages spoken in Spain,” Selim replied in near-perfect French. “Another three that enjoy recognition status and two others that are used unofficially.”

The old man’s pout flattened out into a wry grin.

“And I wouldn't underestimate cows,” Selim went on blithely. “They’re highly intelligent creatures.”

Beaten at his own game, the old man shrugged then turned his attention towards the works on the wall opposite the bed. He gestured toward the paintings before turning back to Selim. “Not bad.” Floor to ceiling, the paintings looked like mosaic tiles in a sanctuary.

“Not bad at all,” Selim replied.

“Who did all this?” His voice took on a tender tone.

“A friend.”

The man quietly contemplated this. “Good friend.”

Selim nodded. “The best.”

“You’re very lucky.”

Selim hadn’t thought of himself as lucky. He said nothing.

“I’d have done anything to be loved like this.” The old man seemed to be talking only to himself.

After a few moments, he picked up his grey hat and headed to the door. When he reached it, he turned to Selim and with his cane, drew an imaginary circle in the air. “
This
,” he said, pointing with an air of instruction. “This is a labor of love.” His cane came down quietly. He smiled, tipped his hat, then left the room.

Edward Rumie returned just a few days after his initial encounter with Selim. Without a knock he burst in once again and made himself comfortable in the chair by the bed. “I want to meet the artist,” he began without the courtesy of a salutation.

“Nice to see you too.”

“Where is she?” the old man huffed.

“I see you’ve been brushing up on your manners.”

“I’ll wait. Do you expect her to be back soon?”

“You know there are set visiting hours.”

“I guess she’s busy. Yes, she must be very busy.”

“Do you wander around the hallways harassing every foreigner you come across?”

“I don’t discriminate,” the man said pointedly.

Selim sighed than turned his attentions back to his newspaper. “I don’t know when she’ll be back.”

“Mind if I wait?”

“I don’t mind.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes while Selim flipped through the newspaper. He discovered a half-page article detailing the latest turmoil surrounding the Turkish novelist’s imprisonment on the charges of “Insulting Turkishness.” A peaceful protest had turned violent and tear-gas was unleashed on a crowd of marching university students. A large photo depicted a man with multiple piercings and a young girl in a headscarf holding up a sign that read “Free Taguc! Free Speech! Free Turkey!” Selim read on and learned that the trial was postponed yet again, and that the author faced up to three years in prison for depicting an Armenian character as a victim of genocide. He was the third writer to be charged with violating Article 301 of the Turkish criminal code.

Selim thought of Gul and of the canceled appointment that could have freed the man from prosecution. And still, even then, it would not have been enough. There were more writers and journalists that were being prosecuted for speaking their minds. He could not buy everyone’s freedom. Perhaps he could
start a petition pushing for the abolishment of Article 301.