Istanbul Noir - Mustafa Ziyalan [40]
“I just need to wash my face,” he mumbled. “It’s just because I’m so happy, I guess …”
As soon as he reached the hallway, he collapsed to the floor. Cemile Abla, who was just a few paces behind him, took a deep breath of relief. How nice that Timur Bey had already made it halfway to the bathtub all by himself.
Two hours later, as she once again wrapped her knives, scissors, and meat cleaver up in their cloths and returned them to their drawers, three large, black trash bags stood in front of the kitchen door.
The mother of the first of the two stubborn groom candidates had somehow gotten Cemile Abla’s telephone number and called less than a week after her son went missing. Her voice undulated with concern; she found the situation humiliating, that she had to talk with Cemile Abla under these conditions, when they hadn’t even met, but she had no other choice. “Well, I tell you, I’ve been really worried myself, ma’am,” said Cemile Abla. “I made all these preparations. I thought to myself that a man like your son, a man from such a good family, would at least call and let me know that he couldn’t make it. But unfortunately, I haven’t heard from him at all. And I had to give all those pastries and cakes to the neighbors’ kids.”
That night, she thought that she’d be able to carry the bags, which stood lined up in front of the kitchen door, by herself; she might not be able to carry them all at once, but certainly she was strong enough to take them out one by one. But her knees were so sore that she gave up after dragging the first bag down the hill. “There must be an easier way to do this,” she mumbled, when the solution struck her—Captain Hasan. She headed down the shore and found him sitting on a stool just on the other side of the pier, puffing on a cigarette as he gazed upon the lights of distant ships. Just as she had guessed he would, Captain Hasan got up from his seat without asking a single question, without waiting for any explanation, in fact, without even the slightest glint of curiosity in his eyes. He ground his cigarette beneath his foot and followed Cemile Abla over to the bottom of the hill. First they carried the bag she had brought down to the captain’s boat, then they went to her home and grabbed the other two bags. Even Captain Hasan had run short of breath; using the sleeve of his shirt, he inconspicuously wiped away the beads of sweat that had gathered on his brow from all the climbing.
“Don’t you worry, Cemile Abla,” he said with a grave expression once they had made their final descent. “I’ll drop these straight into the current at the mouth of the Bosphorus. Nobody will know.”
When they ran into one another around noon three days later, they didn’t mention it; Captain Hasan just shook his head as if to say, Mission accomplished. And though she could hardly conceal her curiousity, Cemile Abla never asked: Had he simply dropped the bags into the strait, or had he untied them and dumped out the contents?
Thankfully, nobody called to ask about the second potential groom. And this time around Cemile Abla was more experienced; she didn’t even attempt to carry down the three large, black bags she’d set in front of the house. She went straight down to the shore and found Captain Hasan. She didn’t need to say a word; she gave him a certain look, and he immediately understood that she needed his help once again. Captain Hasan seemed to handle the bags with more ease this time; in only fifteen minutes he had taken all three down and loaded them onto the boat without shedding a single drop of sweat. “I should set off before sunrise,” he said. “I’ll take care of these and then come back and pretend I forgot something and pick up that lazy-boned boy.” The car-fanatic apprentice had just started work earlier that week.
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