Belshazzar's Daughter (39 page)

Suleyman raised his eyes towards the ceiling and grinned just a little. ‘I see.’

‘Well, off you go then,’ said ikmen and, sitting down again, proceeded to light his cigarette.

The last person Robert had wanted to meet was the School Director. Unfortunately, however, Mr Edib wanted to speak to him quite urgently. There had been rumours, a couple of complaints and now this - fainting in class. Not that Edib would be heavy, that wasn’t his way. No, a nice friendly chat in his office. He ushered Robert through the door and they both sat down.

Edib immediately assumed a professionally concerned expression. ‘You are feeling better now?’

Robert mumbled. ‘Yes. Nothing to eat this morning. Had a bad stomach for a while. You know how it is.’

Edib didn’t but he agreed with a small, sympathetic grunt anyway. ‘An unfortunate event, but one, I must say, of several over the past, I think, two weeks.’

Robert sighed heavily. ‘Yes.’

‘A very public argument with another member of staff, the matter of your appearance. I myself have noticed that in class you are less than—’

‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry, Director.’ Robert raised his head and looked at his employer. He could feel that his eyes were very red and watery. ‘I’ve no excuse …’

‘Perhaps.’ Edib clasped his hands together underneath his plump chin. ‘But I am bound to ask whether anything is wrong, Robert. If you have trouble maybe I can help.

There is no question of disciplinary action at this time.

Please do not be afraid.’

But Robert was, although for none of the reasons that were passing through Edib’s mind. ‘I suppose I’m a bit run down …’

‘The curse of the dedicated disseminator of knowledge!’

Edib smiled as pleasantly as his greedy, unpleasant face would allow. ‘And the students are not always easy. I know.’ He laughed. Trying to be one of the boys. ‘But we must go on, Robert! These young people are placing their trust in us!’

And their parents’ cash in your pocket! thought Robert spitefully. ‘Yes, I know,’ he said. ‘I will try to—’

‘Good!’ Edib smiled again; it was horrible. ‘I knew there was nothing serious. But really these things cannot happen again. You do understand?’

‘Yes.’ There wasn’t much not to understand. Smarten up, stop having rows, toady to the horrible children and eat occasionally. It wasn’t a massive agenda and Robert knew that he had to do it if he wanted to remain gainfully employed. If he did. Of course, the ideal scenario would be for himself and Natalia just to pack up and run away to England. But …

‘You know,’ Edib continued, ‘we all have problems. I myself have a lot of difficulty in my life.’ He took a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and lit up. ‘Since that Inspector ikmen came here with all his rude, arrogant policemen, I have had nothing but questions from the parents. Why were the police here? What did they want? On and on!’ He held his arms up and shrugged. ‘What I have done?’

But Robert’s attention to Edib’s words had switched off after the word ‘ikmen’. Then he thought about that stupid, stupid letter. The one he knew, but then again, didn’t know whether he’d touched with his fingers. He’d written it right here. Used the information she had given him. Planned it.

‘You look a little green again, my friend.’ Edib had walked around the desk and placed his hand on Robert’s shoulder.

he hadn’t noticed him move. ‘Perhaps you should take the rest of the day off. Get some food, some fresh air.’

‘Er …’

‘I really think that you should. Start fresh again tomorrow, eh?’

Tomorrow. Yes, if there were to be one, that is. Robert licked his parched lips and nodded his assent. Go home.

Think. But then perhaps not, no. Perhaps it was best to go out now and divert his mind for a while. Possibly - or, more accurately, definitely - with the help of alcohol.

It was an impossible question to answer and even though it was one that a lot of his older patients frequently asked him, Dr imad’s necessarily oblique replies did not get any easier.

‘The truth is,’ he said as he replaced the old man’s hand on top of the bed-covers, ‘that I just can’t give you any definite time frame.’

Reinhold Smits raised his red and rheumy eyes up to the doctor’s face, his expression a mask of both wants and despair. ‘I appreciate your difficulty, doctor,’ he said, ‘but am I looking at months or years or …’

‘If you continue with the chemotherapy and restrict yourself to a quiet lifestyle there is no reason why you shouldn’t experience quality of life for some time to come.

So far, you seem to be responding positively.’

‘But when the end does come, it will be both painful and undignified!’

Dr imad sat down in the chair beside his patient’s bed and then took hold of the old man’s hand once again.

‘Look, Reinhold, there are enough pain-controlling agents on the market these days to make me almost certain that you will not suffer an agonising death. You have more than enough money to allow you access to the most

powerful and sophisticated drugs and besides, remission is, although unlikely, not an eventuality that can be entirely discounted.’

The old man laughed. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you!’

‘To see you recover? Well, of course I would!’

‘Yes.’ Reinhold Smits looked down at what was left of his frail form under the bedsheets. ‘Because dead men can’t write cheques, can they doctor?’

The doctor did not raise his voice in reply. He was accustomed to goading of this type. ‘That’s rather unfair of you, Reinhold.’

‘Yes, I know.’ Now he looked sad, almost regretful. But then that was the way of his moods now. ‘The niceties of life somehow disappear when you stand upon God’s doorstep.’

‘Allah is, if nothing else, merciful, Reinhold.’

Smits laughed again. It was one of those days, grimly amusing. ‘What Allah may or may not be is of no interest to me. In case you’ve forgotten, Doctor, I am a Calvinist like my father and believe me, my God will show little in the way of mercy to a person like myself.’

Dr Suleyman imad had been Smits’s personal physician for nearly forty years - plenty enough time to realise that there really was no answer to his last statement. Instead, he simply slipped his stethoscope off his neck and placed it back in his briefcase. Smits was as well as could be expected given his recent experiences and there was little to be gained by staying any longer.

Smits, seeing this activity, concurred. ‘So, you had better be on your way then.’

‘Yes.’ Imad retrieved his jacket from the back of the chair and slipped it on. ‘I would like you to think about what I said regarding the police though, Reinhold.’

The old man shrugged. ‘I may. Although I can’t imagine what it might achieve.’

‘They had no right to harass a sick man like yourself, we can see the result of that strain in your condition now. I would be only too pleased to speak to your lawyer in those terms should you decide to take action.’

Smits closed his eyes and rested his head back against the pillows. ‘We will see,’ he said. ‘Could you please send Wilkinson up here on your way out?’

‘Of course.’ Imad picked his briefcase up and then smiled at the closed and sightless face before him. ‘I’ll come by again tomorrow.’

‘As you wish.’

‘I’ll see you then.’

As soon as he heard the bedroom door close behind the retreating doctor, Reinhold Smits opened his eyes again.

God, but he was so awfully tired of it all! He had been tired even before all this Meyer business began, but with that now added in on top of the ghastliness of dying, the whole thing was utterly unbearable. Not least because the most terrible aspect of the whole affair was the one thing that he couldn’t share with anyone.

The way Leonid’s body and face had looked in death

was, without doubt, the most frightening thing he had ever seen - that and the stench, the flies, the terror in blood that almost leapt upon him from that filthy wall. So horrifying, so barbaric and yet so awfully sacred too.

If only he hadn’t mentioned the swastika to the old bitch.

If only he hadn’t been, wasn’t still, so terribly vulnerable. A whole lifetime of being discreet, it now appeared, counted for nothing.

And just that one tiny bit of thoughtlessness meant that Maria Gulcu could, if she wanted, destroy him. Which was what he knew she would do. He almost laughed when

he thought about it now. Leonid would have laughed

himself sick.

A soft tap on his door was followed by the entrance of the butler.

Smits, as ever, pulled himself together for the benefit of the staff. ‘Ah, Wilkinson,’ he said, his voice once again a paragon of authority, ‘I want you to gather some items together for me from the library and bring them up here.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Using his fingers as markers for each item, Reinhold Smits listed those things that he needed. ‘I would like all of my photograph albums, a book called The Death of Russia by Simon Danilov - it’s in English and resides in the History section - plus my writing paper, envelopes and a pen.’ He raised a finger in warning. ‘Not a ballpoint, a proper pen.

Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

With a flick of his hand he waved the menial away. ‘Off you go then.’

However, once the door closed behind the butler, Smits’s mask of superior confidence fell. There is often a gap between knowing what is right and acting upon that knowledge and even though Reinhold Smits had now taken that

step in his mind there were still niggling doubts. Once it was done, Madame Maria could place any sort of interpretation upon it that she wished. After all, even to the so-called dispassionate policemen, his actions could seem like guilt or spite or both.

But then did that matter? No. No, all that mattered now was that almost everything in the albums was destroyed.

Then it would be just like none of it had ever happened and now, of course, without Leonid, it might as well have just been a dream anyway. But, oh, how he’d enjoyed it.

Smits smiled again and this time the expression stayed on his features for some time.

‘ Robert Cornelius’s first thought after he had excused himself from Mr Edib’s oily presence had been to get as far away from the Londra Language School as possible. This had, not of necessity but more as a reaction to a sort of internal dare he decided to have with himself, meant that he had to walk through the streets of Balat again. Although almost insanely confident at first, it wasn’t until he came across that apartment block on that corner that it all, suddenly and with almost coronary-inducing power, became too real and unbearably horrifying. And that he then found himself running again only added to his sense of being inside a nightmarish and inescapable loop of time. At one point he almost fancied that he even saw Natalia running in front of him, her face scared and drawn and just that little bit too thin. And yet despite all this and despite his almost bursting chest he kept running until he was very far from Balat.

Finally stopping in order to catch his breath, he looked around him and, to his dismay, he discovered that he was in a part of the city that he didn’t recognise. It was like he had got to wherever he was blindfold and although he assumed that, since he had passed the old apartment block in the usual way, he was probably somewhere closer to the Sea of Marmara than to the Golden Horn, he couldn’t be certain of that. But then given his current situation, did that really matter?

He looked first to his left and then right. It was a typical istanbul street: a clutch of shops, a few broken paving stones, a selection of evil-eyed dogs and cats. For no other reason than it seemed like a good idea at the time, he started walking to the right. There had to be a bar or a hotel somewhere nearby and that was after all what he was here (wherever here was) for. With drink he might just be able to forget and that was all that he wanted - for the moment. To hell with letters and women and policemen and old, dead Jews. What he wanted was to be himself again, just for a bit, just before it all got going again, leading God alone knew where.

And then suddenly there was an enormous expanse of

blue in front of his eyes - a great sea with its little boats and tankers and pleasure craft flying the familiar Turkish crescent and star flag. And then there was music too and bars and drink and happy, laughing voices. When they want to relax, people go down to be by the sea and have a few drinks. It’s very benign and very normal. Robert Cornelius, unshaven, hurting and sick in all sorts of ways, moved to join in the fun.

Leonid. It was strange but looking back over the years it was almost as if she were thinking about two people. Leonid before and after middle age. He’d been young for so long!

At forty he’d still been like a teenager, still coming round to the house with a smile and a jaunty spring in his step, his pockets always and forever full of Reinhold Smits’s money.

He’d made her feel quite old - then. She’d resented it. She remembered the feeling well.

But he’d paid in the end, of course. It had been almost as if his whole life had caught up with him at once. One day he was young, the next … Perhaps the enormity of it had come to him in a dream, perhaps like Lady Macbeth he’d finally realised that nothing he had done or could do would ever wash it away. But at that point they had ceased being friends and for a time she had felt sad. His new incarnation was an obligation, a mere mouth in which to pour alcohol and scraps of food. The last time she’d visited him in his foul Balat hovel, twenty, or maybe even thirty years ago, she’d been disgusted to discover that he was completely toothless.

He’d tried to kiss her but she hadn’t let him. She’d endured enough of his rough caresses coming across the mountains of Armenia and beneath the sparse trees on the central Anatolian plain. Although ‘endured’ she knew was not really the right word. Endurance implied lack of complicity.

Maria took a cigarette from the box beside her bed, lit it and then leant back heavily against her pillows. Leonid had been doubly excited during their journey out of Russia.