The Woman Who Lost Her Soul Hardcover (41 page)

Penny for your thoughts, she prompted Mr. Maranian as they loaded the Mercedes, yet
he was no more receptive than he had been on the drive over from Uskudar, his responses
clipped and his mood unsocial. Dottie persisted, asking about his family, only to
be chastened to learn that he was alone, his parents dead, his two siblings dead,
his wife likewise dead, his only son a teacher halfway around the world in California.
That’s so sad, she said, but he grunted in an ironic manner that seemed to pander
to her sentiment. They finished packing the car and he stood by the driver’s door,
hands jiggling coins in the pockets of his summer trousers, looking at her with a
lugubrious expression of farewell, as if he might not ever see her again. She met
his eyes with an inquisitive look and said, What? and he seemed to bring himself back
with a weak smile and said, I have something to give you.

He removed his left hand from his pocket and extended his arm toward her. It’s so
beautiful, she exclaimed, taking the tiny gold coptic crucifix and its chain from
his palm to examine its Byzantine workmanship. Very old, he said. Antique. Armenian.
Wear it, please—taking it back from her to noose the chain over her head, kissing
the cross before he dropped it through the neck of her T-shirt. For protection, he
said, tapping the blue beads of Osman’s evil eye bracelet on her wrist. Better than
a superstition. I love it, she said, and he responded brusquely, Please, get in the
car.

The boat was in the harbor, tied off to the wharf, by the time they returned, its
tanks being serviced with diesel fuel and fresh water and the coolers with blocks
of ice. Her father sent her with cash to the marina’s store to purchase foul-weather
gear and candy bars and anything else she might have forgotten to pack. Before she
finished shopping, however, the car was out front honking and she quickly paid and
found herself driving with the men to a stone chapel in the village, where they went
inside and lit votive candles below icons of Our Lady of the Sea and Nicholas, the
patron saint of sailors and she knelt between Maranian and her father in front of
the altar to pray for a safe voyage. Then her father offered to take everybody to
lunch but Maranian said moody good-byes and drove away. Dottie said, Is Mr. Maranian
all right? and her father told her that Maranian had a lot on his mind.

He’s sweet, she said, pulling the gold cross out from her T-shirt. Look what he gave
me.

Take good care of this, her father said, fingering the pendant. It was his
babaanne
’s, his paternal grandmother’s.

Oh, my gosh, he didn’t tell me that!

He’s like an old mother hen, said her father. He worries about our trip. But he’s
not a sailor, is he?

When they sat down in a café for lunch her concern for his health returned. While
she ate a Niçoise salad he drank two beers, claiming he had no appetite, and waved
off her suggestion that they postpone the trip for a day or two. I’m fine, he insisted,
as trickles of perspiration began to pour off his forehead in the steamy heat of the
season. He took a pen from the pocket of his shirt and said, Here’s the plan and began
to sketch it out on a paper napkin, a route that would take them through the Dardanelles—he
preferred Hellespont—and into the Aegean to Smyrna, Ephesus, and, ultimately, the
island of Patmos, where the Lord unveiled the end of the world to the apostle John.
They walked back to the quay and went aboard the
Sea Nymph
and minutes later were out in the shipping lanes, Dottie at the helm, wearing a violet-colored
billcap and her black one-piece, the engine cut and the silence a seductive whisper.
Her father raised the mainsail into moderate winds, heading south on their grand adventure,
but as they slipped beneath the span of the Bosphorus Bridge he said, I’m going below
for a little nap. That was the last she saw of him until late in the afternoon, when
he appeared bleary-eyed in the hatch opening, bare-chested and glistening with sweat,
his scarred shoulder a garish pink crab of molten tissue, a cigarette dangling from
his lips.

We there yet? he said, grinning sleepily.

Almost.

The wind had fallen off and they were a mile or more from Kinaliada, the first of
the Princes’ Islands, and he told her to steer farther west toward the green hills
of Buyukada, the largest island in the group, where they would anchor for the night
and be ready for the morning’s fresh start for their longest sail of the expedition,
westward across the Sea of Marmara.

Let me know when we’re ten minutes out, he said, flicking the stub of his cigarette
overboard and withdrawing to his bunk.

It was a lazy sail through heat-drenched haze, the sky above an orange-tinted screen,
that last hour until she was close enough to Buyukada’s northern headlands to see
the gingerbread villas climbing its slopes. When she called her father to come on
deck he popped up transformed, face washed, hair combed, eyes lucid and teasing, all
jolly, one hand rattling an ice-filled silver canister and the other holding two tea
glasses, each containing an olive, surveying their position for a moment, saying to
himself,
Well done,
until he turned to admire her at the wheel and announced cocktail hour. I think it’s
time you learned to drink martinis, Kitten, he said, prying the lid off of the shaker
and pouring and then relieving her at the wheel.

But by her second awful sip—
Yech! This is straight vodka!
—she could feel her senses swirl and she rescued and ate the olive and offered the
rest of the martini
to her father. I think I’ll start with cherry juice, she said, and went below to change
out of her bathing suit into cotton shorts and a tank top, used the toilet and figured
out its saltwater flushing system, rubbed lotion on her sun-tendered skin, and tied
back her hair in a ponytail, noticing her father had fallen asleep with St. Augustine.
She returned topside in time to help drop the sail and fire up the engine as they
approached the channel toward the harbor and ferry terminal, lining up with the island’s
unmistakable landmark, the bulbous cupolas of the Splendid Otel.

Let’s reconsider, her father said, back at the helm, frowning at the boat-jammed harbor.
He tapped the throttle into neutral and they bounced in the wake of a passing ferry.
It looks like a frigging regatta in there.

Whatever is fine, she said, though he must have sensed her disappointment, assuring
her there would be an abundance of places to explore in the days ahead, but tonight
he hoped for solitude and quiet in preparation for their dawn-to-dusk sail across
open water, the two of them together beneath the stars, undistracted.
Getting
—he said with emotion—
to know each other better
.

Like, how much better, Daddy?
she wanted to say.

He pointed the
Sea Nymph
south and they motored down along the hilly coast over mottled shallows, teal and
greenish brown, Dottie a statuesque Aphrodite in the bow keeping a lookout for shoals,
a blushing sun lowering toward the European mainland.
That looks fabulous!
he sang out as the headland they rounded fell away to reveal a perfect cove, its
privacy walled by cliffs dropping to a pebble beach. She shouted out the depth and
they anchored fifty yards from shore. Then a splash startled her until she realized
her father had jumped overboard, the bobbing humps of his naked ass and shoulders
visible as he butterflied toward the island, pausing once to somersault around, dog
paddling while he called back to her—What are you waiting for? Jellyfish report: zero—and
she said she had just changed out of her swimsuit and he said, You don’t need a bathing
suit in paradise, baby, and she told him maybe later, itchy with the embarrassment
of her newly shaved crotch, her pubic hair dispatched by a disposable razor with the
guidance of Yesho, who had finally coaxed her into a hammam, where such a thing was
de rigueur.
Fistik gibi
—like a nut, said Yesho; the other Turkish women in the bath nodded approval. In wide-eyed
disbelief she watched several of them—thick-waisted, saggy breasts, shockingly bare
pussies—scoop up the floss of her curls and pass them, marveling at their fineness,
from hand to hand.
Like a little girl,
she thought uncomfortably, now imagining beneath every conservative Muslim female’s
head-to-toe
carsaf
loomed the private contradiction of exposed genitalia.
Not for Daddy’s eyes!
Afterward, she and Yesho leaning into each other, bent with uncontrollable laughter,
waiting outside the hammam for a dolmu
ş
, joking in English—
The clam has lost its beard. Poor clam! Cold clam! Scratchy clam!—
the queue glaring as if they were retarded, these girls.

But as she watched him swim to the beach and strut around like Adam, the audacious
freedom of the sight spurred her envy and she changed her mind, stripped, and dove
in, knifing through the underworld, relishing the taut glide of her flesh, seeing
how long she could hold her breath, going farther than she thought she might, eyes
wide open in wonderment, a deb mermaid, boundless.

Well what do you know, said her father as they climbed back aboard the sailboat and
she quickly wrapped herself in a towel. By the looks of it I’d say you’ve been to
a hammam. His droll tone caused her to stiffen and snap—
Don’t say anything else. Just don’t
—a rare rebuke of her irrepressible father for a minor offense that, minutes later,
she had not so much forgiven but pushed away and forgotten before she admitted what
she sometimes felt, the obvious answer to the question,
Who’s to blame?

Twilight arrived with the land-scent of rosemary seeping onto the water and an exquisite
coolness exhaled from the sea and encouraged her to join her father in the cockpit,
on his second round of martinis, with a rum and Coke in her hand, dressed to feel
not quite dressed, braless under a scoop-necked sleeveless aqua-colored shift. Here’s
to us, he said, saluting her with his glass, a toast she echoed back to him. Dear
God, we are blessed, he said, this is certainly the life, isn’t it, and she stood
up in the well and bent over to hug him, her nose pressed against his neck, breathing
deeply the smell of him, which she knew so well but could never describe, saying how
much she loved him as his hand rose and fell soothingly along her spine.

There’s a baguette, he said. Olives, cheese, tomato, some prosciutto. Marinated eggplant.
How’s that sound?

While he went below to throw together dinner, she watched a raucous flock of seagulls
pinwheel through the glassed surface for fish, a luminescent halo crowning Europe,
the sea traffic light up on the Sea of Marmara, like flickering clumps of drifting
villages, her consciousness soaked in a divine silence the absence of which she now
realized had been a mistake in her life, one of the last missing pieces of the puzzle
of complete existence. She reflected upon love, how she was in love with love, its
presence crazy and sweet, the center of all yearning. Wasn’t it true that when you
fell in love you had done the one thing that no one could explain to any satisfaction?
If she were to have Osman here right this second by her side, they would swim ashore
like electric eels in the inky phosphorescent water and without a doubt and absolutely
she would give herself to him body and soul, her readiness for love, all of love,
never more apparent in her life than at this moment, and yet the back of her mind
muttered Yesho’s folkloric admonitions,
Loving too much invites envy, bad luck, nazar—
the evil eye.
When things go well in your life, remember danger walks behind you. Protect yourself.
Eat onions. Wear the bracelet.

Up through the galley hatch he handed her another drink, a battery-powered lantern,
a red-and-white enameled tin platter piled with food, shallow ceramic bowls, the silver
cocktail shaker, and, finally, his own glass—
How about some Verdi while we eat?
—and she heard him slip a tape into his portable cassette player, the volume low,
the opera like an imperceptible murmur blended into the lap of the sea against the
hull. He climbed the steps into the tent of buttery light where she sat on the side
of the cockpit and poured himself another martini, sipping thoughtfully, eating little
while she gorged herself. She nagged him to eat more and he told her his stomach was
not inclined at this time to accept her superb advice.

You know, he said in a hushed voice, back there at the harbor, when I saw that old
hotel, it made me think of Pittsburgh.

Really? she said with a full mouth, voracious, a little animal with a huge appetite.
Why?

There were smokestacks, as you might imagine, he said. But just as much, in my memory
of Pittsburgh, there were the onion-shaped steeples of the Orthodox churches. You
couldn’t get away from the Eastern Europeans—Ukrainians, Slovaks, Serbs, Polacks,
Czechs, boatloads of them come over to work in the coal mines and coke furnaces or
the steel mills, but there was a bigger reason. They were running from the Russians,
they hated the goddamn Communists. I used to resent them as a kid—a hick is a hick,
no matter the country of origin—but you can’t hate them and love the American dream
at the same time.

My grandmother was Eastern European, right?

Not at all, he said. She was a Croatian from Dubrovnik, which is nearly the same as
being an Italian. Better, I would say—less emotional. Roman Catholic, well educated,
and worldly. She was no peasant, I can tell you that. When I look at you
. . .
well.

I’m like her, aren’t I?

Yes.

And your father? All-American war hero, right?

Anglo-Irish-Welsh-Franco-Germanic stock, a full house, as they say, fourth generation.
A hardworking man with a ferocious sense of right and wrong. Unfortunately, he was
an Episcopalian. Your grandmother fell in love with him anyway, proving once again
that love, as they say, is subversive and one might even say willfully blind.