Istanbul Passage (26 page)

“The same.”

“You don’t mind, I come with you?” Altan said as they walked. “There’s room?”

“Yes, but now.”

“I’ll tell Halit,” Lily said. “So he won’t look for you.”

“A pleasure, Madame Nadir. Thank you for the evening,” he said politely, as if his face had never been close to hers. “I’m sorry that—”

“Yes, such a terrible thing. Leon, you’ll call? Let me know how he is?”

They were at the landing now, being helped in, the boat rocking in the wake of some larger ship, so that everything, even her voice, seemed to be shifting, unsteady. He turned to her. A woman who arranged things. How much did Altan tell her? Faces close, whispering. His old friend, her hair golden in the lamplight. Before he could answer, the boat pulled out onto the dark water.

“Keep the tube in,” Obstbaum was saying to Georg. “You need the oxygen.”

“On the Bosphorus,” Georg said, but closed his eyes, obeying.

The air, in fact, was sharp and fresh. The freighter’s wake had passed and the water was calmer, their headlight slicing across the surface, the opposite shore twinkling.

“My father had an attack like this,” Kay said, her hand still in Georg’s. “He’s getting his color back, see?”

“Leon,” Georg said, motioning him closer again.

“Don’t talk. You have to stay quiet.”

“I didn’t say,” he whispered, his eyes closed. “I didn’t say anything to Melnikov.”

But he would, his mind filled with it now, brimming, maybe not intending to but letting it slip out.

“What does he mean?” Kay said.

“Nothing.
Ssh.
” Patting Georg’s hand to quiet him. Not here. Not anywhere. What if he talked in his sleep, unaware, sedatives loosening the last restraint?

“You are old friends?” Altan said.

“Old. Like a son,” Georg said, his voice faint, eyes moist. “I didn’t say.”

“Ssh,”
Leon said, brushing the hair off his forehead, soothing a child, feeling Kay watching him.

“Kosterman says it’s the second time,” Obstbaum said, taking Georg’s pulse again. “So it’s dangerous.”

“My father survived two,” Kay said.

“But not the third,” Obstbaum said, blunt, dismissing her presence.

And the landlord didn’t talk only to Georg. A whole neighborhood of friends, eager for news, the sort of gossip Altan’s men were bound to pick up. The
ferengi
renting a flat for his woman. Whom nobody had seen. Imagine the expense. A flat, not a hotel. Someone who couldn’t be seen. He could almost hear the voices, a sibilant buzzing, Sürmeli smoking a water pipe, the center of interest. If Georg had heard, it would be just a matter of time before someone else did, whether Georg talked or not. Running out of time.

He looked at Kay holding Georg’s hand, wisps of hair blowing across her face in the breeze, a nurse’s calm. Obstbaum deliberately
not looking at either of them. How could he bring her to the clinic, Anna down the hall? Georg was mumbling something again, too indistinct to be heard above the running engine.

“Good. They sent the ambulance,” Obstbaum said, seeing it on the quay ahead.

Move Alexei, the sooner the better. Not a hotel. Somewhere private. He thought of the house he and Anna had rented one month on Büyükada. Pine forests and empty coves, no one else in sight, afternoons just walking and looking at the Sea of Marmara. An easy exile—Trotsky had stayed there—but also a trap, no fast way off the island if someone found out. Better to hide in plain sight, even the Cihangir flat, the last place they’d expect. Unless someone was already watching it. He glanced over at Altan. His new colleague, expecting a report.

“Be careful,” Obstbaum said, waiting for the driver to tie up before they lifted the stretcher.

“You think I’ll break?” Georg said, then gave an involuntary moan as the stretcher jerked, the last heave up to the quay.

They loaded him into the back of the ambulance. Obstbaum opened the black bag an assistant had brought and took out a syringe, filling it from an ampoule.

“What’s that?” Georg said. “Kosterman—”

“Prescribed it. This will pinch. But it’ll feel better, the pain. Just keep calm. We’ll need to monitor you at the clinic, your rhythm’s still irregular.”

“But Kosterman—”

“On his way. He’ll meet us there.” He looked up at Leon, standing at the door. “You coming?”

Kay started toward him, but Leon turned, stopping her. “No, don’t wait. It could be all night. I’ll just make sure his doctor gets here. Colonel Altan, will you see that she gets home? The Pera.”

“But—” Kay started to protest.

“Really. You’d just be sitting in the waiting room.” Down the hall. “There’s no point. I’m sorry the evening had to—”

“Nobody’s fault,” she said vaguely, trying not to look wounded.

“I’ll call tomorrow,” he said. “Let you know how he is.”

She looked at him, eyes still puzzled. “Not the best timing, was it?”

“Things just happen sometimes.”

She nodded. “And sometimes they don’t.”

“Now, please,” Obstbaum said from inside the van.

Leon climbed up, closing the door behind him. He looked back through the oval window as the ambulance pulled away, Kay in her party dress with Altan, boats bobbing behind them, and for a second he wanted to open the door and jump out, then Georg moaned and when he looked again she had got smaller, too far away.

At the clinic, Georg was put on a gurney and wheeled into one of the medical rooms where nurses attached electrodes to his chest from a bulky machine next to the bed.

“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? Şişli’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 Tünel. 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 Nişantaşi. 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
Hürriyet
. 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.