Belshazzar's Daughter Page 12

  “Oh, you understood all that, did you?”

  Suleyman stood up. “I understood the individual words.”

  “Mrs. Gulcu is an appalling snob. She equates intelligence with class. She thought that because I am educated I must be aristocratic.”

  “She thought I was a peasant though, didn’t she?”

  Ikmen smiled again. “As I said before, the Lady Chatterley complex, the desire to have power over handsome young workers. A common fantasy among the upper classes, like their notion that all the peasants must by definition be stupid. Opinions, young man, that helped to bring Imperial Russia to her knees. Don’t let it bother you.”

  Suleyman shrugged. “It doesn’t. She was wrong. It made her look stupid.”

  Ikmen’s interest was aroused. “Oh?”

  “Until Atatürk my family was very powerful on the Black Sea coast. Provincial Governors for centuries.”

  Ikmen looked amazed. “You never told me?”

  Suleyman’s face darkened slightly. “What’s the point?” But his mood changed quickly and he laughed. “Anyway, maybe one of my ancestors had one of yours put to death. They did a lot of that. Embarrassing, eh?”

  Ikmen raised his glass to him. “History coming back to haunt us!” But his voice faded as he spoke and he started to feel odd again. “Goodnight, Suleyman,” he said, softly.

  “Goodnight, sir. I’ll pick you up at about nine if that’s OK.”

  “That’s fine.”

  The young man left and the cheery noises of the drinking classes closed in around Ikmen. It was a fitting end to an evening drenched in ghosts that Suleyman’s ancestors should enter the conversation. The rich, the privileged and the cruel.

  * * *

  It was ten-thirty when Robert arrived at Rosemary’s apartment. How he got there he couldn’t remember. Or why. It was as if he had patched into that curious automatic device that takes over when you are very, very drunk. The one that gets you home but flatly refuses to let you know how.

  Robert was a little tipsy, but by no means drunk. Mostly he was confused. In the hour or so since he’d left Natalia’s house, he’d been through many emotions. Fear had been uppermost, of course, fear that he had committed a grave error. That he had totally misjudged Natalia, indeed that he now knew even less about her than he did before. Fear that she wasn’t just quirky, but something terrible, her and her peculiar set of relations. It had made him feel bad, soiled somehow, a willing party to something both unclean and beyond his understanding. The arrival of the familiar policeman had simply served to underscore this feeling. He felt caught out, watched and deeply paranoid. He wondered what Natalia’s invisible grandmother had told them. He wondered what the woman was like and why she had not joined the rest of the family for dinner. And yet he had been unable to say anything to Natalia or her family. When the policemen had gone—even in fact, now he thought about it, while they were still in the house—a sort of normality had been maintained. Nothing to do with either the events of Monday or the police had been so much as touched on. They’d played cards, talked about nothing; he’d stared at Natalia’s body, almost, but not quite, obscured by the thickness of her plain white dress. Overriding everything, the demon of lust still wouldn’t leave him in peace. Perhaps Natalia possessed some magic, maybe she was skilled in the use of subtle aphrodisiacs …

  He pressed the bell on Rosemary’s front door and tried to work out what he was going to say when she answered. What he wanted from his colleague was ill formed in his mind. Basically, he supposed, it came down to comfort. He didn’t want to tell her anything, he wanted a cup of English tea with milk and some mindless platitudes; he didn’t want to be alone.

  The door opened. “Hello, Robert!”

  She had her hair in curlers and was dressed for bed. The BBC World Service on the radio whined in the background, the sound scarred and pitted by static.

  “Hello, Rosemary, can I come in for a minute?”

  He’d only been to her apartment once before. It had been for her fiftieth birthday party the previous November. Then it had been very cold. She had worn a blue velvet evening dress and had been escorted by her then beau, a twenty-five-year-old Kurdish boy. Since then there had been two Turkish boys and a Sudanese. Rosemary’s thirst for true love was dimmed by neither time nor difference in age. Robert found himself hoping that she wouldn’t get the wrong idea about his somewhat late appearance on her doorstep.

  She smiled. “Of course, come in.” Her smile was easy, but Robert could see that she was concerned. He looked briefly at his face in the small mirror by the door and realized why. His face was white, his eyes black and staring. He looked like he had just wandered away from a nightmare.

  She stood aside to let him pass and then ushered him into a very comfortable and tastefully arranged sitting room. Robert sat down uneasily on the edge of a large brown sofa while Rosemary turned off the blaring radio.

  “So,” she said, turning round to face him and smiling once again. “What can I do you for?”

  For one horrible moment Robert felt that all his worst fears about Rosemary were about to be confirmed. But as she moved to sit in the armchair opposite him, he noticed that her smile was motherly, her movements a little coy and retiring.

  “Oh, just a chat really.” He laughed nervously and brushed an imaginary speck of dust from his trousers. He had to say more than that! It was hardly justification for interrupting an aging spinster’s comfortable night-time routine. But he couldn’t think of anything. He grinned instead and became silently irritated with himself. A good-natured but nevertheless tense quiet hung across the room.

  “That wind’s getting up,” said Rosemary, nodding her head toward the window, apropos of nothing. She was as embarrassed as he. It was ridiculous. He had to say something. He had to say what was on his mind. Disguise it a bit, dress it up, but do it. It was, after all, why he had come. Not to talk about Natalia would be a waste. Rosemary was older, experienced; she knew about love.

  “Love life’s a bit on the skids,” he blurted finally. He chuckled slightly as he said it, his stiff upper lip planted firmly on his sleeve for all the world to see. “Don’t think I’ll ever get it right.”

  “Oh dear.” She looked very old in her curlers, sitting with her hands clasped firmly together in her lap. She wasn’t relaxed either. It occurred to Robert that perhaps she was just as afraid of his unwanted sexual attentions as he was of hers. After all, he was hardly her type. It was not only for the weather that Rosemary had spent most of her working life in the Middle East.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” she said after a pause.

  “Do you have milk?”

  “Lots. And sugar. Would you like one?”

  Robert nodded. “Two sugars, please.”

  “The cup that cheers.” She patted his hand and went out into the kitchen.

  Several minutes later she returned with two large mugs of steaming tea and a rather serious question.

  She gave one mug to her guest. “Look, Robert, I’m not prying, but is this lover of yours a local girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah.” She eyed him critically. “I take it you’re quite serious about her?”

  Robert took his cigarettes and lighter out of his pocket and lit up. “Yes I am. I only have serious relationships. Screwing around isn’t really my style.” It sounded smug even to him; he hated himself for saying it. “Not that I’ve anything against people who do, you understand…”

  “It’s all right, Robert!” She was smiling again. “Some of us want to settle down and some of us don’t. Horses for courses and all that. But—”

  “Rosemary?” He felt a sudden and overwhelming urge to tell her things. Not the lot, of course, just generalities. He sat forward and licked his lips nervously.

  “Yes, dear?” She put her mug down on the coffee table, her face serious and concerned.

  “Rosemary, what would you do if you found out your lover might have done something terrible
?”

  “Like what?”

  “Stealing, drugs, prostitution…” He carefully avoided the actual crime that was on his mind. “Not in the past, I don’t mean. I mean if he was doing it now, while going out with you?”

  She looked thoughtful for a few seconds and then sighed deeply and picked up her mug once again. “I suppose it would depend upon how strongly I felt about my lover. If I weren’t that involved, of course, it would be easy—just ditch him. If I were involved, however…”

  “Would you inform the police?” He was sitting on the edge of the sofa again, his fingers trembling slightly around the filter of his cigarette.

  Rosemary sighed again. “If I were deeply involved, I don’t know. I like to think I’d do the right and morally correct thing, but I can’t be sure, Robert. At the risk of sounding awfully crude, I think it would largely depend on sex. I had one lover, a Turk he was, who made me tremble every time he came near me. It would have been very difficult to give him up to the authorities. It was hard enough giving him back to his wife!” She paused. “I just don’t know is the short answer.”

  Robert drank his tea in silence. When Rosemary spoke again she sounded helpless and lost. “You know this cultural difference between ourselves and the Levantines is a sod. Knowing what’s really going on is often well-nigh impossible. It’s so easy to get involved in things that you don’t really understand. On the one hand you could jump to an erroneous conclusion that could wreck your relationship. On the other, you could get yourself into a lot of trouble.”

  Robert ground his cigarette out in the ashtray and finished his tea. “I just want to be married again, Rosemary. I know I’m at risk of making a mistake simply because my desire for a settled life is so strong, but … Honestly, if I lose this girl, I don’t know what I shall do. She’s got to me somehow, I don’t know what it is—”

  “Sex,” said Rosemary flatly, a sad half-smile playing about her lips. “It’s always sex, dear. Bloody dangerous, it is! If your partner is good it can obsess you.” She looked down at the floor. “Especially if you’ve had a bad time in the past. Lust and love can get very confused sometimes, I know, believe me.”

  “She’s all I think about!” He spoke very softly, almost to himself. “Even now.”

  Rosemary clasped her hands in front of her chin and suddenly looked very determined. “You know, in my opinion, and you won’t like this, you should start seeing other people a bit more. Inject some fresh air into your life, dear. I’m sure this girl is wonderful, she must be or you wouldn’t be so … Stop being the mystery man of the Londra Language School and get about like the rest of us! You’re divorced, of course you want to marry again and I’m sure that one day you will, but take it slowly, Robert. ‘Marry in haste, repent at leisure,’ remember?”

  Robert smiled, put his cigarettes back in his pocket and stood up. “I know, Rosemary.

  Anyway, I think I ought to go now, I’ve bothered you enough with my nonsense.”

  “It’s all right, I don’t mind.” She stood and put her hands in the pockets of her dressing gown. “Don’t feel you have to go. Talk more if you want to. I’m manless at the moment. It’s been really rather nice having a little male company for a change, albeit of the platonic variety.”

  They both laughed. It had been very nice spending time with a woman who wanted nothing from him. As Robert left he thought how pleasant it would be to do it again sometime. But not yet. At a point in the future when he didn’t have so much on his mind, when she, Natalia, was either out of his life or properly in it—cooking his meals, going on holiday with him, sleeping in his bed. The notion flashed briefly across Robert’s mind that he was “sad.” A “sad man” hung up on marriage and domesticity. But from his perspective, outside, that kind of life had always looked so safe. When it worked. Even back then, even through a haze created by drugs, despite the divorce, he had never stopped dreaming about it. Hoping.

  “Goodnight, Robert,” said Rosemary as they reached the front door. She stood on tiptoes and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “I’m sure that if you use a little judgment, you’ll be all right.” But her bright face changed in an instant and she became very grave. A final thought had just occurred to her. A horrible one. “If the police are involved you know she’s not worth it, don’t you?”

  “I know,” he replied, and walked briskly through the doorway and on to the landing.

  “Goodnight, Rosemary, and thanks.”

  Rosemary shut the door behind him and returned to the sitting room. From a tiny box on the windowsill she took a pinch of marijuana resin and crumbled it between her fingers. She looked around for her pipe, but couldn’t locate it. She sighed and emptied the crumbled narcotic into her mouth. It was the only way she could get to sleep without the comfort of a man in her bed. She understood her recently departed guest more than he knew.

  Chapter 6

  Fatma Ikmen stirred the customary “poor man’s breakfast” of soup slowly and with some malice. Four small children sat at the big scrubbed table in the center of the room and slurped noisily from metal bowls. Four down, four to go: the breakfast madness wasn’t over yet.

  It annoyed her. The older children were so bad at getting up during the holidays. Lazing in bed all morning listening to their radios was all very well, but it stretched breakfast out so. It was just a mercy that neither of the two men bothered to eat in the morning. That would have been intolerable.

  Fatma put a slow hand deep into the small of her back and rubbed. This pregnancy was not as easy as the others had been. She was more weary this time. She looked at her face in the small mirror above the sink. It wasn’t a particularly lined face, but it was nevertheless obviously the face of a woman who would not see forty again. It irked her a little. Perhaps it was the onset of middle age that made her feel so negative about this new baby? In retrospect it had not been one of her better ideas, and yet she had no one to blame but herself. It was the old familiar story. As soon as the last baby had started walking Fatma had wanted to be pregnant again. Most of her children had been conceived out of broodiness. Poor Çetin! She actually felt sorry for him sometimes, although she would have rather died than told him so.

  But he was good really. All she had to do was drop the appropriate hint and she was pregnant again. No lectures about lack of money, no grumbles about the restrictions placed upon his sex life when another one was on the way. Sometimes she wondered if he went elsewhere … Stupid, stupid woman! She pulled herself together. Çetin, with his wretched job, barely had enough time for the family, let alone mistresses! And he was loving, both to her and the children. True, he couldn’t always remember all of the little ones’ names and his caresses were sometimes a little vague and distracted …

  She heard him close the bedroom door behind him and imagined him, tatty briefcase in hand, tearing down toward the front door. She also heard another door open, slowly, a little tentatively—his father. Fatma allowed herself an infrequent scowl. It wasn’t that she actually disliked the old man and it was a fact that without the money Çetin’s elder brother gave them toward Timür’s upkeep, life would be tough, but … It wasn’t worth thinking about. After all, they weren’t exactly young lovers, were they? The group of small children around the table attested to that. Not to mention the others who were still in their rooms. Nevertheless …

  * * *

  The old man put his head around the side of the door and called out to his son’s rapidly retreating back. “Çetin!”

  His son turned to look at him, an unlit cigarette hanging at a crazy angle from his lips.

  He looked as if he was in a hurry, flustered and annoyed.

  “I’m leaving for work, Timür! What is it?”

  The old man beckoned him over with his hand. “You were very late home last night.”

  He wanted details. It was difficult for Timür Ikmen to keep himself from meddling in his son’s work. Çetin’s cases were often a source of excitement, an emotion the old man still crave
d with a passion. And anyway, he’d actually helped him with this one. He was owed something.

  Çetin looked angrily at his watch. “Suleyman’s going to be picking me up in about two minutes! I’ve an old German to see at ten!”

  “What have you found out?”

  The younger man sighed impatiently. His father’s eyes were eager, greedy for information. Oh, well, it was one of his few remaining pleasures! “I’ve spoken to both the Rabbi and that Maria Gulcu woman,” he said. “The latter was a very exotic experience!”

  “Why? What was she like?” Timür was almost breathless with anticipation.

  “Weird. She’s probably older than Allah and she lives in a sort of shrine to Old Russia.” He cast his mind back to the events of the previous evening and tried not to shudder. “She said she used to be the dead man’s lover when they were both young. There was a terrible … oh, malevolence about her. It’s hard to explain. One of my—you know.”

  The old man stared glassily into space. “A malevolent old Russian.”

  “Yes.” Çetin picked up his briefcase from the floor and tried to pull his mind away from the unpleasant picture his father had just painted. “She rather fancied my pretty little sergeant.” Suddenly and horribly, he realized that he was using Maria Gulcu’s own rather spiteful description of his colleague.

  Timür’s dry burned laugh rattled toward him down the hall. “I’m not surprised!”

  “Çetin!” Fatma’s voice wound its deep and sonorous way out of her kitchen and zeroed in upon its target.

  Çetin squared his jaw and marched purposefully toward the front door. “I am gone!”

  The old man watched his son close the door behind him and stumbled back into his room again. “A malevolent old Russian!” he repeated to himself. “How exotic!”

  * * *

  The house was much more beautiful and a great deal less sinister than he had expected. In the car, his eyes narrowed against the glare from the road, Suleyman had imagined that Smits would live in a very dark, Gothic sort of place. But logically there was no real reason why he should. Some Nazis, if indeed Smits were one of their number, presumably enjoyed classic elegance just as other people did. The enormous marble entrance hall and the immaculate English butler who showed them in did, however, strike him as a little excessive. There was rich, but there was also rich and vulgar, and Smits’s set-up definitely smacked of the latter.