Istanbul Noir - Mustafa Ziyalan [11]
Tolga is a computer engineer in his thirties. A few years ago, he left the company he had been working for to start his own business with a friend. They install data processing systems for companies and provide support services and solutions. Of course, he is an intelligent man—he must be, right? He’s a person of high moral standards and principles, a man who likes to do things by the book. He’s not married, but he has a girlfriend, a woman he met at his last job. They share a home, though theirs is a constant rollercoaster of break-up and make-up. Yes, that’s right, yet another case of passion’s demise and habitual routine on the rise! He works in Gayrettepe, lives in Etiler. On the evening in question, in spite of the heavy end-of-the-year workload, he had managed to leave early, thinking he might stop by Akmerkez on his way home and buy a New Year’s gift for his girlfriend. A white cashmere sweater, an elegant laptop bag, or a bottle of perfume—he was still undecided. But then, what difference does it make anyway? Considering that, ultimately, he would buy none of these.
That evening on his way home from work, as he passed Zincirlikuyu and made a right onto the road to Levent, he was listening to the radio program Women Sing Jazz. “Dear listeners, we continue with Ethel Waters’s ‘Stormy Weather’ …” There couldn’t have been a more fitting selection. He tapped along on the steering wheel. The invasive wind whistled and shook the colored lights on the trees. Who knows, maybe everything would have panned out in another way if the weather had been different; say, if it had been snowing. After all, the New Year spirit calls for snow; and for love, hope, new beginnings, packages of presents, angels hanging on trees, the cinnamon-spiced scent of mulled wine. But it didn’t happen, it didn’t snow. Instead, a crazy, wayward wind kept the area convulsing for days on end, making the city slave to its whim. Though the majority suffered only mild headaches and a little shortness of breath in its aftermath, at the time, melancholy ran like a viscous liquid through the streets.
Tolga, for his part, did something he never would have done otherwise: Compelled by the sorrowful music and the feeling of benevolence that the New Year’s spirit aroused, he pulled up to the curb, where a woman with shopping bags was trying to flag down a taxi. The woman, Cavidan Hanım, had just finished her shopping at the mall in Levent. On the window behind her, 2007 was written in cotton balls, and adorned with wreaths of mistletoe, yellow, green, and red lights, gold-lacquered pinecones, and red stars. She was a woman of a certain maturity; she held her hand in front of her face as she tried to protect herself from the wind. Perhaps hitching a ride wasn’t her intention at all. Still, when she stooped and saw Tolga, she opened the back door, dropped her bags in the car, and settled onto the passenger seat without hesitation. Obviously she was cold, otherwise why on earth would she have plunged headlong into a stranger’s car, especially at that hour?
While we were in Tolga’s car, making our way from Levent to Gayrettepe, Cavidan Hanım was checking off items on her shopping list. She had bought a different washing detergent, something other than her usual brand, because it came with a free bottle of fabric softener. The thin peel of