Beside Myself, page 4
Ali lit a Player’s and stared at Katarina’s body. It looked like pure oxygen—oxygen and a bit of moon—and she wondered what she was really called—Anna, Elvira, Zemfira, Petka—could be anything; Ali found no name to fit her face. She looked out of the window again. The muezzins interrupted one another unrhythmically.
The muezzin to the left of her balcony had a cold; he whined today rather than sang, and the other always came in a little after him, relishing his superiority. Ali imagined an Elvis lookalike adjusting glittery silver sunglasses, smiling to reveal two rows of white teeth and perhaps a single gold incisor, then tapping his mike before launching into the morning prayer. He sang well. He knew he was the best for miles around. God is great. And prayer better than sleep.
At the smell of the cigarette, Katarina screwed up her pale face and opened her eyes, squinting slightly. Her cheeks were puffed out, her lips puckered into a chrysanthemum, and she blinked several times before she understood where she was—or that she didn’t know where she was. She curled into a half moon, her head cocked to one side. Ali handed her a cigarette.
‘What’s the time?’ she asked, sitting up.
‘The clock says five. Can’t be right, can it? Look out of the window—the moon’s shining as if it were the middle of the night, but the muezzin’s singing the morning prayer. Everything’s mixed up.’
‘Yes.’
‘They’ve done away with time.’
‘Have you slept?’
Ali had slept. She could even remember her dream, which was happening to her more and more since she’d come to Turkey. In this particular dream she’d been dancing with Uncle Cemal in a crowd so dense that their bodies had moved to the music of a seventies film as if by themselves. They’d stood locked in an embrace and the crowd had rocked them to and fro. Then Cemal had caught sight of someone, and staring over the sea of heads, he’d fixed his gaze on a shock of red hair at the back of the room, and letting go of Ali’s hips, he’d gone off and left her—pushed past the other couples and left her standing there, swaying to and fro on her own. For a few seconds, Ali had continued to hold her arms where Cemal’s shoulders had been a moment before, her head bent forward as if it were resting on his chest. Then she’d melted to a puddle in the crowd.
‘No, I don’t like sleeping.’
‘I do,’ said Katarina with a yawn. ‘I love sleep. I wish I could sleep all my life.’
‘Oh, Katyusha.’
Katarina wrapped her arms around her knees and suddenly looked serious and almost mean; she cut the room with her eyes and said in a voice that was perhaps more her own than the one she’d used earlier to vie with Ali in Russian vulgarities—a voice deeper than the one that had whimpered and shrieked as she’d come in Ali’s mouth: ‘I have to tell you something.’
It flashed into Ali’s mind that she was in the exact situation of which her mother had always warned.
‘I’m not Katyusha.’
‘No, I didn’t think you were,’ said Ali with a nervous laugh, hoping that was it. If it was only the name, that was okay, but she was afraid of more revelations—contagious diseases or feigned financial difficulties.
‘I’m Kato.’
‘Okay,’ said Ali, thinking that she desperately needed other words beside this ‘okay’. She didn’t even know what exactly was okay.
‘I’m not a she.’
‘Aha.’
‘I’m a he.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you understand?’
‘Do you need money?’
‘What? Why would I need money?’
Ali couldn’t work it out—had she forgotten her Russian, or was she still drunk, or had she just not understood? Kato got up, reached for the packet of cigarettes and left the room. Ali stayed sitting on the floor and looked out of the window. The lights of the city tugged at her eyelids. The windows of the gecekondular cut through the froth of colours, and a chain of lights around a rooftop car park drew a white line across a little piece of black in a sky that was otherwise made up of yellow, orange, red and violet oblongs, some of them flickering with synthetic television light. Above the nearest row of houses, three minarets, loamy grey by day, rose up, illuminated yellow, bristling with loudspeakers like tiny thorns, too small for such thick stems.
Kato came back with the glowing cigarette and sat down on the edge of the bed, planting his legs square on the floor.
‘Funny, the moon always lies on its back here. It never stands up like the crescent on their flag; it lies there like a segment of orange—look at it.’
Kato didn’t look at the moon, but down at Ali who turned her head to him.
‘Do you want breakfast?’
He stubbed out his cigarette on the window frame, pulled up his legs, crawled under the covers and mumbled through the sheet: ‘It’s night time. Let’s sleep.’
The blood ticked in Ali’s throat. She looked up at where Kato’s body must be, though she couldn’t see it, and climbed onto the bed in search of him.
She squeezed her eyes shut and waited until it was light enough to get up. Red curls and a tongue sticking out at a mirrored ceiling kept popping up on the back of her eyelids; she opened her mouth and snapped at them. A sudden taste of salt made her open her eyes. Kato’s lips had worked their way up from her neck and pressed themselves on hers. Ali started up, spun round and jumped out of bed. The lino was so cold it burnt her feet. Kato turned onto his belly and said something into the pillow. Ali slid into her slippers and locked herself in the bathroom. The boiler gave off a whistling sound; lukewarm water trickled over her shivering limbs. She looked down at herself and examined the hairs on her arms; they were pale as pale, long and soft, almost invisible. Then she squatted to inspect her calves—furry white cat’s hind legs. Shampooing her head, she thought about what Kato had told her in the night—that she was a he. Kato was a he. Her scalp itched; she scratched her temple with the inside of her lower arm. Shampoo ran down her face and back, and she stuck out her tongue, opening her mouth wide, trying to flush the vodka out of her head. Just as the scent of the accordionist was rising to her nose again, the smell of freesia and bergamot, pineapple, oranges, cedar wood and vanilla, the boiler stopped whistling and the lights went out. The water promptly ran cold and all at once Ali was awake. She jumped out of the bath, wrapped a towel around her and staggered out into the arms of Kato who was standing in the hall looking about him in bemusement.
‘Power cut. Often happens when I have a shower.’
With the towel tucked under her armpits, she went down to the cellar. On the stairs she met her next-door neighbour and said good morning, the shampoo still in her eyes, the blood throbbing at her temples. He avoided looking at her. She wasn’t sure if he’d heard them yesterday, but judging by his face he had, and now here she was, walking around the communal areas half naked. She flicked the flat black switch in the fuse box and ran back upstairs. Kato was standing in the kitchen, his shorn head illuminated by the light from the fridge.
‘I wanted to make breakfast, but there’s only a lump of old butter.’
‘And a bottle of tonic water.’
‘And a bottle of tonic water.’
‘Come on, let’s go out.’
The streets were empty, as empty as in the summer, as empty as in the holiday season, when people fled the hot city—but it was November and the light wasn’t in sync with the clock or the muezzins. It was strangely still, the air tense. The crumbling facades looked like a frozen stage set; there were still chairs in the deserted bars on the ground floor; a lot of houses were in ruins, but not all. It was as if a wrecking ball had struck once and then moved on. Some flats were still lived in; the curtains were closed, but they couldn’t cover the gaping walls spewing cables. Two cats crawled out of a burnt-out car, a single tangle of fur. At the greengrocer’s, balloons hung on a post next to boxes of brown bananas, and there was a flag bearing the symbol of the People’s Democratic Party: a tree, its trunk two purple hands, its green leaves interspersed with stars—Vote, Vote, Vote—the whole neighbourhood was full of it.
There was a smell of detergent and paint. When they turned off at the Armenian church, Ali stopped in front of old red graffiti of a woman with birds coming out of her head. She stepped closer to examine it, but Kato pulled her on. In the half dark, boys were kicking a leather ball against the church doors; it bounced off and Kato stopped it and kicked it back. The boys’ teasing voices echoed down the streets after them; Ali and Kato heard them all the way to the park, where they sat down on the damp grass.
The fountains were dry, the motorway made a loop over their heads; that too was deserted. Ali stretched out on her back, her stomach rumbling. Kato talked and his voice sounded tinny, like the echoing voices of the boys.
He told Ali about the hormones he was taking; soon he’d be covered in black hair. You couldn’t tell from his shorn head what colour his hair was, and his arms and legs were still smooth—but his square eyebrows were drawn on with a black kohl pencil. Ali imagined the line of his eyebrows extending to his chin and tried to picture him with a beard, drawing a frame around his broad, open face. The face reminded her of someone, but she couldn’t think who.
Kato said he’d soon lose his job—because of the beard, and because of the hairy legs—they didn’t look so good in gold hot pants, so someone else would have to wear them and he’d go back to Ukraine and show himself to his parents—his father in particular. Look, Dad, this is me now. He told her about his alcoholic father. Ali hardly listened; her mind wandered and she asked herself why all fathers had to be alcoholics—couldn’t they be chess players or compulsive yerba mate drinkers and, whatever else they did, couldn’t they keep quiet? Couldn’t they just keep quiet and never talk? Kato’s mother, it seemed, was a heroine—a heroine of labour, of the kind envisaged by Lenin—and there were two little brothers and sisters as well. He didn’t send them money; he never sent anyone anything, but he sometimes thought of them and wondered if they were thinking of him. Kato talked and talked, and the sky above their heads turned as white as dishwater.
I’ve missed Russian, Ali thought. But missing wasn’t something you could think. She didn’t know exactly what she missed, and if she began to think about it she’d only make room for a sense of missing, so why bother? Her mother had once said something about thoughts being parasites, but she couldn’t remember the exact words.
Kato had gone quiet and was looking at Ali. She realised he’d asked her something. He leant over her and repeated the question.
‘A ty?’
And you?
There was no expectation in his face. He wasn’t going to kiss her; it was a serious question; he really wanted to know. And you? Ali looked past him and thought: Tarlabaşı is going to be pulled down. Everything’s going to be pulled down. I’ll never find Anton.
A street vendor pushed his barrow past them, behind the glass a gleaming layer of greasy rice, big mother-of-pearl-coloured chickpeas, then more rice and on top, a brown layer of boiled chicken.
‘Pilav! Tavuklu pilav!’ he cried. ‘Want some, girls?’
Kato looked away. Ali shook her head. She stared at the oily layer of chicken meat and tasted bile.
‘Fresh chicken. Pilaf is comfort food, sisters!’ The vendor stood over them, fists on hips, little head nodding down to them on its thin neck.
The chicken stared at them. Ali tried to withstand its gaze.
THIRTY-SIX HOURS
The pieces of meat slid down her throat like liquid. The dead bird lay naked and half demolished on the small table between them, in the fourth carriage of the Moscow–Berlin train. She and Anton had window seats. Their hands sticky with chicken fat and potatoes and tomatoes, they pushed each other and drew letters on the windowpane, while their parents swayed on twelve suitcases and even more boxes. Inside the boxes and cases were bedclothes and Adidas tracksuits in plastic wrappers, maybe to sell, you never knew—there were gold-plated watches too. But mainly there were bedclothes and socks and pants and books. ‘Why are you taking so many books with you?’ their father’s father had asked, shaking his head. ‘Are you out of your minds? You can’t sell them over there.’ Mother and Father sat in the carriage, their lips pressed together and their knees pressed together, watching the children gnawing their chicken drumsticks with big grins on their little faces. They hadn’t been told they were leaving for good, and all that stuff about children knowing everything without being told is a load of nonsense; all children know is how to play, so they played and horsed around and paid no attention to their parents who were shitting themselves. This made them scream at each other all the time—but so what, the children didn’t notice; their parents were always screaming at each other and the kids weren’t to know that if they were always screaming at each other it was because they were always shitting themselves. Mother’s father sat in the next compartment pretending not to hear and smoking out of the window; now and then he looked in on Valya and Kostya and Ali and Anton to ask if Valya had Analgin for him, and Valya dug around in her handbag for the foil packet that crackled and popped open, spitting rust-brown pellets onto the waiting hand which made the twins stare because it was so big and yellow with such dark blue lines. Valya pressed a plastic beaker of water into her father’s other hand and he disappeared again. The smell of nicotine lingered.
His wife, Mother’s mother, hadn’t come with them; she had to wait a bit, had to sell the flat they’d never live in again, say goodbye to her friends, prepare her own parents’ move—because they were coming too, Mother’s mother’s mother and the father to match; everyone had to be packed up, no one left behind—you weren’t asked if you wanted to go. Ali and Anton hadn’t been asked, nor had their parents’ parents’ parents. Some were taken straight away and others had to be fetched later—that’s just the way it was. Mother’s mother would follow in the aeroplane with a suitcase full of money from the sale of the flat, and these five here were going on ahead with suitcases full of things you couldn’t sell over there.
The rocking of the train was comforting, deep breathing lulling them to sleep, and the hot tea that the guard brought them was comforting too: ‘Here you are, my darlings,’ she said. ‘Nice hot tea with lemon and sugar. Wouldn’t want you feeling cold.’ Mother stuck a hand in her bra and pulled out a note. ‘Thank you, thank you, my sweethearts’—and the guard vanished again. Ali peered after her and just glimpsed a man in a white undershirt, his hips as broad as the corridor, trot along behind and disappear into a compartment with her.
If it hadn’t been for customs, the journey would only have taken thirty-six hours. Customs was when the train shuddered in the night and the bed frames were bashed so hard that the thick chains fixing them to the walls rattled like bars being shaken. You had to get up and pretend you’d been asleep. You had to put your hand to your heart, into your bra where the two hundred dollars were waiting for the customs officer, an unshaven man with bloodshot eyes who stared so hard at Valya that she was glad to have her husband in the compartment with her, even if he was cowering nervously in the corner. She knew what would have happened if he hadn’t been there. And she knew what would have happened if she hadn’t had those two hundred dollars next to her skin for just this situation: they’d have been turfed out onto the platform in the freezing cold, along with all the others, the have-nots or the know-nots—it was all the same in sub-zero temperatures. She looked out at them through the steamed-up glass, then at old Bloodshot in front of her, then at her children, two pairs of eyes peeping out from under a blanket on the bed above the window. Bloodshot spat something through his teeth, but she wasn’t listening; she knew her papers were in order. She stared out at the platform again, counting the people gathered there: three, four, five, seven… more and more of them, families with children and even babies, young men, a lone woman—and as if a conductor had raised his baton, they all made the same gesture at the same time: they all reached into their jacket pockets and pulled out cigarettes, and watery smoke rose above their heads. Then the compartment door fell shut, the grown-ups fell back into their beds and the twins clawed each other’s shoulderblades and held each other tight to make sure they didn’t fall off the bunk with all the rocking—or that if they did, they’d fall together.
When the Chepanov family got off the train the next morning, the world pretended to stay still, but beneath Ali’s little body the rocking continued. The chicken fat trembled in her throat, climbed back out of her stomach and into her mouth. Maybe the food had gone off in the warm carriage—Anton grinned, right as rain, but the chicken was determined to get out of Ali and onto the shoes of the man helping Father with the suitcases. Uncle Leonid, who’d come to collect the emigrants (or immigrants, depending how you looked at things) and take them home to his place and then on to the authorities—the wonderful Uncle Leonid stood before them and spread out his arms, and Ali puked all over his shoes, puked up the whole half chicken she’d eaten, and then fell over.
‘Alissa? What’s the matter? Alissa!’
Alissa lay in the vomit next to Uncle Leonid’s black trainers and saw his shoelaces crawling towards her. Outside her head, time passed more quickly; things moved at lightning speed—shoes snapping about them like snakes; otters and giant insects pouncing at her. She gave a scream and felt as if she’d shrunk and been put in a picture she’d once seen on the wall at McDonald’s—all jungle and bright colours and scary; she didn’t know if she was lying on the ground or had fallen down a hole.
