Istanbul Noir - Mustafa Ziyalan [7]
I wasn’t the one who opened the petroleum lamp on the bed stand and hurled the liquid on her. I wasn’t the one who screamed, “You’ve been a witch, and now you should be punished like one, you cunt!” I wasn’t the one who took his lighter out of his pocket, all the while savoring the lines of horror breaking out on her face. I wasn’t the one who swung the burning lighter, catching the flame on her dress. I wasn’t the demon who dashed out and held the door shut as she, engulfed in flames, ran around in a frenzy. Or perhaps it was me, releasing the flames of the hell now in charge of my rage. I made a mistake; just once in my life, I made a mistake.
I was so sure the smell of burnt flesh, hair, and nylon was coming from my own private hell that I casually took out a cigarette once she had ceased trying to force the door. I remember. I was surprised not to find the lighter in its usual place, in my right pocket, and considered for the first time the possibility that these things were true, that they had happened outside my own private dark world, somewhere within this nightmare called life. I remember. I was walking backwards down the hallway, trying to understand the uneasy mutterings of the crowd gathering close by, trying to piece together a meaningful whole from whatever they were saying. That, I remember. The rest, I don’t. I don’t remember that I ran under pouring rain for hours, wandering with a soggy, disintegrating cigarette between my lips before finally returning to the hotel. I don’t remember being arrested and put in a hospital. The next thing I remember is how someone with a long face and matty hair questioned me, keeping his deep and glinting eyes on me the whole time: “Why did you burn her?”
* * *
Nigel visited me two months after I went to prison. He looked as calm as ever, but a little worn out. He stared at me, motionless, for some time. When he parted his lips, as if struggling to talk, lines formed on his forehead and around his eyes.
“Why did you kill her?” he asked.
I had lost everything. I didn’t owe him anything. I annihilated something which belonged as much to me as it did to him. I smiled.
“You watched the trial; everything was discussed there, everything I did was reported in the papers, with details even I wasn’t aware of. What more do you want to know?”
“You owe me. A lot.” He said this in Turkish. Although not on the same par with Xenia, Nigel too was very adept at learning languages.
“What do you think I’m doing here? I’m paying my debts,” I said, smiling.
“I’m talking about what you owe me, not the ones running this world,” he shot back, once again in excellent Turkish.
“It’s all the same to me. I’ve lost everything. There’s nothing more I can give you.”
“You haven’t lost everything; there is always something more to lose. Just wait. You’ll see,” he said. He walked away before I had the chance to truly consider his words.
Three months after that visit I received the first book. Similar to the books previously bound by Nigel, it contained thirty-six pages in a sturdy binder. The binder and the pages were made of Moroccan leather or very delicate deer hide. One More Thing To Lose: Volume I was written on its cover. In it were depicted the painful moments of someone’s life and, on the last two pages, the person’s murder and cremation in his own home. Each of the pictures occupied almost the whole surface of a page and was accompanied by a few words about the person. I thought it wasn’t terribly meaningful to rack my brain over these puzzling words, which at first appeared odd and nonsensical; I put the strange volume in my suitcase. A few days later, I