The Debt of Tamar (27 page)

The light began to fade and the temperature dropped. It was then that Selim admitted to Hannah, what he’d never had the courage to admit to anyone before.

His eyes were fixed on some obscure point in the distance as he spoke. Measured, dry of affectation or emotion, but mostly, they were tired words. Words aware of all that had come before them. Words aware of the quiet nothing that would soon follow. They were words for endings.

“It was I who was driving the motorbike,” was all he managed for a time.

The cool air licked his ears and stroked his hair, just as it had in the memory of that tragic day. “It was me.” He nodded matter-of-factly, then dropped his chin and eyes to the ground. “Ali was begging me to slow down but I didn’t listen.”

Hannah studied him for a moment, then picked up her brush. “Go on.”

He sighed then rubbed his eyes.

“Don’t stop now.”

He looked up at her.

She was still, with her arm raised and her brush hanging in the air.

“So I confess while you paint? That’s how it works?”

She looked away and began mixing colors. “That’s how it works.” She dabbed the paints together carefully, then rinsed her brush clean.

So he spoke, and as he spoke, she painted his image. It hadn’t been easy, but she’d finally done it. She’d finally discovered the color of a secret.

There was a stroke for each word. A hue for every shade of shame. The panic in his voice was matched only by the urgency of her brushstrokes.

Ali sat perched on the backseat of his motorbike, his frail arms linked tightly around Selim’s thick torso. Selim had just turned seventeen, old enough to apply for a motorbike license, and Ali, just fourteen.
Baba
had warned Selim not to take Ali on the motorbike until he learned how to handle the thing, but flushed with the excitement and brashness that teenage boys possess, Selim ignored his father’s advice.

They cruised through the narrow, crooked streets of Nisantase, marveling innocently at the beauty of Izmirian blonds, who sipped on cappuccinos and pecked meagerly at their smoked salmon tartines under the bright umbrage of red and orange canopies that stretched outward from low slung stucco rooftops of springtime outdoor cafes.

The slick air licked their ears and stroked their hair as the rusty engine sounded through the streets and shredded the quiet decency of Friday calm.

“Slow down, Brother!” Ali shouted over the wind. “Slow down!”

“What?” Selim pretended not to hear, a rush of excitement coming over him.

“Slow down!”

Selim, intoxicated by the engine’s power and the wind’s inability to keep up with his bike, pressed the gas pedal further. He swerved the handlebars from left to right, a cruel joke intended to frighten his little brother. A few whippets of course hair cracked their wiry edges against Selim’s cheeks and lids, so that he squinted to shield his watery gaze from the glaring light and ash of the wind. As the bike swerved, he pressed the pedal yet further, laughing caustically as drivers from oncoming vehicles sounded their horns angrily, some shaking their heads and others cursing out the window.

“Slow down, Brother!” Ali’s frantic voice rose above the roaring engine as his grip tightened around Selim’s waist.

Empowered by recklessness, Selim teased, “What’s that? Can’t hear you, little brother!” He snaked along the winding roads at speeds that frightened the curbside grocers and sent veiled women running in the opposite direction.

The sweet-charred scent of roasting
shawarma
made Selim turn his head. He caught a glimpse of three girls sitting at a sidewalk café. They seemed to be looking deep into the bottoms of their cups, at the dark swirling patterns produced by the gooey residue of Turkish coffee. Many believed those patterns held the secrets of the future. They smiled and laughed as a young lady with a bright green headscarf tried to predict what was yet to come. She did not foresee what the next few seconds had in store.

Selim’s motorbike swerved towards the oncoming traffic and collided with a tall utility pole. When Selim opened his eyes, the woman with the green headscarf was leaning over him, her face contorted, mouth agape and eyes narrowed to slivers. It looked as though she was screaming, but Selim heard nothing. There was only silence.

Ali landed thirty feet away and was found beneath the tire of a truck that had been transporting crates of fruits and vegetables. There was silence while people stopped and stared, unsure of what to do. Watermelon bits, strewn about the street in wet fleshy clumps, rolled down the slanted alleys when all else seemed to stand still.

“He is gone,”
Baba
whispered.

Selim looked out of his window. Below, the workmen moved about the property, business as usual. With their long poles and big nets, the pool men skimmed the water’s surface for leaves and insects. The tennis court was being swept clear of Ali’s footprints. He’d been the last one to play. Gardeners tended the bushes, as though they still believed it was possible for life to grow. The Armenian guards stood at the gates, under the mistaken impression that there was anything left on this earth still worth protecting.

As Selim thought back to the events leading up to the crash, a chill ran through him. “I don’t accept.” He would say when one of the kitchen staff would attempt to serve him his dinner. For days following the accident, he was unable to hold down food.

“I don’t accept,” he would hiss, his eyes cold and distant when his friends from school came by to pay their respects. He waved them away with the same contemptuous scorn he used to dismiss his meals at dinnertime.

“I do not accept,” he pleaded with Allah, kneeling on his carpet during the sunrise prayer .

“I do not accept!” he threatened menacingly, in his prayer at sundown.

“I do not accept,” his spirit howled through every pore in his flesh.

“I do not accept,” he cried out from those hazy dreams, beneath the mist of a weeping pomegranate tree, planted in the garden of secret loss and desire.

“Come back…” he pleaded. In his heart, he held the secret that no one else could touch. He could convince others, his parents, the doctors, and the authorities—They were all so sympathetic—He could convince everyone and anyone. No one doubted what he presented as fact. Only, no matter how many times he lied to himself, he could not convince himself of anything but the truth. It was he who had been driving the motorbike.

He had killed his brother.

Hannah examined the empty half of his face, the blank space on the canvas that until now, she’d been unable to imagine. Exhausted, Selim sat limp. She rinsed her brushes then wiped her forehead with her sleeve. “Go inside.” She placed her hand on his shoulder.

He stood slowly and made his way to the automatic doors.

For hours she worked, standing before her easel, paralyzed by the revelations that commanded her brush’s obedience. She stayed at her easel and began painting the left. At the end of four hours, she was utterly exhausted but thoroughly inspired. Her work slowed. The brush, still and perched at a very precise spot on the canvas, moved with such imperceptible diligence, that it appeared for whole moments, not to move at all. At dusk, the portrait was complete.

The news was not good. The latest round of treatments had been unsuccessful. CT scans indicated that the cancer had come back despite the surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. The tumor had metastasized. Dr. Rosen did not need to explain to Selim what that meant. He suggested a more aggressive treatment plan, to extend whatever “good months of health” Selim had left. Hannah was shocked. “So that’s it? We just give up?” Though his body was failing him and there was no hope left, he was able to smile. Somewhere in those painful months,
I
had become
We
.

He felt an awakening within, like a slow, steady sun rising through him. It started in his core and spread throughout the dark shell of his body. It coated the lining of his insides and seeped into each and every cancer-ridden cell he possessed. He felt a tingling and was able to sense the warm trace of his skeleton glowing within him.

They sat beside one another for some time. Words could not suffice to say the things that became clear in the eloquence of silent understanding. Soon, it was Selim who had to console Hannah and assure her that she’d be all right and please not to cry because “it breaks my heart,” and wasn’t that “the only good part left of me?” Beyond the shivering curtains, the night was thick and brooding, drenched in ebony and saturated with stars whose brightness was as stunningly violent as only Van Gogh himself could have dreamed.

It was a month since Hannah had met with Mr. Rumie in his downtown gallery. She’d selected over two dozen of her favorite portraits to be shown in an exhibition he’d arranged to showcase emerging young artists. In less than twenty-four hours, Hannah’s work was to be exhibited.

“It’s almost five,” Selim said once the doctor had left the room. “Go home and unwind. You’ll have a big day ahead of you tomorrow.” He collapsed back against his pillow.

“Forget it. It’s not important.” She leaned forward, a thief, a criminal stealing a kiss that should have been shared between them, but that she hoarded to herself since he had lost all sensation on his left side. She moved her lips very carefully across his swollen cheek. Her lips moved with intent, like a blind man draping his fingers across the braille that unlocks secrets imprisoned by the dark.

Selim felt. He closed his eyes and felt her kisses pass through him like puffs of air in the lungs of a drowning man. He thought to himself, how odd is life, that my greatest joy, should also be my greatest sorrow. “I can’t lose you. Not when I’ve just found you,” he said quietly.

She leaned forward and kissed him once, twice, three times. Hers were kisses that flowed through him and carried him away. She pulled back and looked into his black eyes. “You should go,” she whispered in a tone so low, he was unsure if he’d even heard it. “Go now.”

He sat up, not fully comprehending.

“You’ve lived your life with regrets. That’s no way to die.”

“I don’t understand—”

“
Go,”
she cut him off and locked her eyes with his
. “Go back to her.”

He looked around at the countless paintings, landscapes, and portraits that lined the walls of his hospital room. Floor to ceiling, wall to wall, a kaleidoscope of distant places, familiar strangers, all the colors along the spectrum of love.

“Selim,” she continued. “You know what you have to do.”

Astonished, he nodded slowly.

They held each other throughout the night, savoring that long goodbye. He stayed awake, amazed that she’d known the truth before he had. She knew him. Perhaps she knew him even better than he knew himself.

In the morning, she gathered her paints and her canvas under her arm. Walking out of the room, she stopped at the door. She drew her fingers across the raised numbers then turned around to say, “I love you.” Then, she whispered to the glistening ruby she wore as though it were a portal, as though through it, Selim could hear her words. “Love me next lifetime.”

When he woke up, he saw the canvas she’d left by the doorframe. It was a large portrait, at least four feet high and three feet wide. It was his portrait. She painted him standing on that sprawling bridge in Istanbul, the one that spans from Asia to Europe. In the background, the Bosphorus lapped out and seemed to spill over the top of the canvas, like it did sometimes in his dreams.
There is no right, there is no left, there is only me,
he thought to himself. He studied his own face, a face no longer divided by pain and beauty, a unified vision of the man he had once been. Looking at the painting, he saw the man he
still
was.

Selim reached for the telephone and slowly dialed the number to his flat in Istanbul. It rung a half dozen times before the answering machine picked up. “We’re not home, leave a message,” Ayda’s voice sounded cheerily on the recording.

“Ayda.” His breath was heavy. “If you’re there, pick up.” For a few minutes, he lay with the warm receiver against his cheek. There was a click and he knew she was on the other end of the line. He waited and still, she said nothing.

He brought the receiver close to his lips and sat upright in his bed. He could hear her breathing quietly. “Forgive me,” were the only words he could muster. There was nothing else to say.

“
Forgive me.”

She answered him with a cold space of nothingness.

“Please. Please forgive me.” He could hear her breaking down on the other end. He could sense her holding back all her rage in her bloated silence. He told her that there was little time left. He had nothing to offer but his heart, and even that was no more useful than a tattered shoe that had traversed all the earth’s surface. “
Forgive me
,” he whispered once more before he dozed into a medicated sleep.

Then, the sound of her voice echoed through the dreamscape of his mind. Her words came from worlds so far away that he was unsure whether he’d merely dreamt them. “
Come back to me
,” she broke her silence. “
Come back
.”

“You got some kind of party?” asked the driver, his face cropped to nothing more than a sliver of eyes, sleep-starved and webbed in red, caught in the trappings of the rear-view mirror. For a moment, she did not answer. She held out her hands before her. The nails were manicured and covered in a coat of glossy nude polish. On her right hand, she wore the ruby she had promised never to take off.

“Something like that,” she said, still studying her hands because that evening, they did not appear to be her own. Then, she met his eyes for a moment. He smiled a smile she could not see, because the rear view mirror did not afford it any space.

Outside, the clamor of evening jettisoned past in a colorful array of posh dog walkers and urban business elites, tucked away in grey Brioni suits. Chunks of Fifth Avenue tumbled by while the town-car weaved past traffic through the threat of changing streetlights. It sped around potholes and past the orange and red canopies of heavily patronized cafes that rather not bother with tables for one.