Istanbul Noir - Mustafa Ziyalan [25]
They made a pact. They made a pact with the wordless knowledge and the profound pain of being alone in this world from which they had long ago been severed, and which would never take them back.
He was waiting in the darkness of the bedroom, the switchblade in his pocket.
Several days and several nights had passed, but his stepfather had somehow managed, again and again, to avoid falling into their trap. Either the transvestite’s timing was off, or the stepfather just wasn’t drunk enough when she made her move. Sometimes he ignored her because there were others with him. The transvestite devoted all of her time, her energy, her concentration, and her care to seducing the stepfather, seeking out every opportunity to make the big catch. Finally, that night, she’d collared him, drunk and eager.
When he heard the key turn in the lock, he held his breath and ran his fingers over the switchblade again. The light came on. The transvestite didn’t call out to him, which meant that the old man was with her. This time, tonight, she had brought him. God willing, she had brought him. He sat up straight again, swallowed, held his breath. He heard some voices, some laughter; he pricked up his ears, but he couldn’t understand a word. Just some drunkard spouting expletives, and the transvestite’s trite responses. Then, footsteps. The living room light seeped under the bedroom door. The footsteps stopped. The living room door squeaked but didn’t close. Every now and then the transvestite burst into laughter.
“Would you like something to drink, sweetheart?”
“Do you have any rakı?”
He quietly opened the door, having taken off his shoes so they wouldn’t squeak on the parquet floor in the hallway. He pressed down on the switchblade’s button—chaak. Making his way down the hallway, he counted silent prayer beads in his head: Kill him, kill him, kill him … On the inside he was now like a small child poisoned with hate. He felt neither the fear of death nor the fear of killing. He was flushing the poison of fear out of his system by taunting death, by challenging it. His fear would be dulled to the point of irrelevance once he’d finished the job and disappeared into the night, light as a bird.
He approached the living room, leaning his ear in closer. He could hear his stepfather’s voice. “Oh baby, yeah, go on, bitch—faster, faster!” Tormented, he wavered there before the door of decision. Finally, he slithered through the half-open door, silent as a snake. That’s when he saw his stepfather sitting on the couch, legs spread wide, head thrown back, eyes closed, and the transvestite kneeling in front of him sucking the head of his cock, which she held firmly in her hand. She was raising and lowering her head in a swift motion, doing all she could to revive the dead.
He watched his stepfather sitting there in a state of complete and total submission. His throat stretched back, bared, the thick veins popping out, begging to be cut. Just a few steps later, with a swift motion, he thrust the switchblade into his stepfather’s neck. Dark red blood spurted out impatiently. He stuck the blade in again, and again, twisting it firmly. With each stab the blood continued to flow, though never quite as much as at first. It was as if he could hear the blood draining out of his stepfather once and for all. Then, still holding the switchblade, he stepped back and observed his stepfather. The old man made a wet wheezing sound, and his eyes shined, no longer with hate, but with amazement at the courage of his namby-pamby stepson.
The young man held the bloody switchblade and continued to look his stepfather right in the eye, as if wanting to be absolutely certain that he had paid his debt, that he had finally avenged the loss of his mother. Across from him lay a hairy, disgusting, cowardly slab of meat that had nothing to do with the mother in his mind, and all of the values that he attributed to her.
One last wheeze and the body became a corpse.
It was only then that