Istanbul Noir - Mustafa Ziyalan [74]
I really used to hate memories. But now my tears were trickling down, hanging from my chin like raindrops from a gutter. I was in Fener, a place that saddens, much like a museum that no one visits. I stood there, just stood there, in front of the Yıldırım Boulevard house where I was born and raised. Some mute color, some shifty darkness had fallen upon me. The building no longer possessed even a shred of the glamour I knew from my childhood; it was but a skeleton of itself. The familiarity of the place failed to return my past to me; alas, it was all lost to time.
All of a sudden I felt so much like a stranger, I had to breathe hard not to cry; I pulled myself together and thought of my family. I wasn’t supposed to return to Istanbul, not after all the hell my family had been through. But it was as if I had been unable to tell just what was happening, trapped there in a silent darkness; it induced amnesia, it was indifferent to the past. I had hit the road in a hurry and found myself in Istanbul in no time. Strangely enough.
A long time ago, one morning, contrary to habit, I had woken up before my parents. I didn’t dare wake them, so I munched on some food and left. I walked along the shore of the Golden Horn. If I had to describe that walk, I think it best to put it in terms of music. I heard sounds, sometimes sharp, sometimes soft as silk, something between a song and a lament, like the melody of the haziness I was feeling around me for the first time. Yet it was a crystal clear morning, with the sky reflecting on the Golden Horn like a tree shaping its own shadow. But then, it is a difficult business, conveying the feelings that Istanbul evokes.
Without a doubt, though, I had heard that strange melody. Then the noise of cars and fishing boats ruined it all, and I headed back. That morning, a few minutes after coming home, I found my father and mother in bed, completely still, their eyes fixed on the ceiling.
My memories aren’t that clear at this point. The bedroom was a pool of gelatinous blood, that I remember very well. Yes, a sea of frozen blood, thawing, trickling, thinning. Even a heart of stone could cease to beat in a place saturated with fear, and though I stood very close, I could not bring myself to touch the bodies. I don’t know which I was more afraid of, death itself or the stain it would leave; it was as if I was frozen right there.
Before he was killed, my father had left home late every night for a week. Sometimes he would just pace up and down the street, sometimes he would disappear from view as soon as he was out the door. It wasn’t disturbing; in fact, it was rather exciting. I became a bit obsessed with his whereabouts, and so I decided to follow him one night. I left after him. I was like a jinn in human form, burning with curiosity. Where was my father going? Who was he going to meet? He turned toward the Bulgarian church, which looked like a present forgotten there on the shore, wrapped in shiny paper. I went after him, the breeze striking my face as I turned each corner. My father was walking briskly, his head down. Suddenly, he turned around and saw me. He couldn’t have heard my footsteps, I was walking so gently.
“Son … are you following me?”
I stopped dead in my tracks, my head spinning at the shock of having been caught. I was looking at the gate in front of that silvery church, the marble steps winding up to the entrance, at the dark waters a little further ahead