Burntcoat Page 5

You laughed then and held out your palms. Often you talked with your body, gestures, pauses, a way of holding and releasing your pose that was cultural. I could see you thinking, quickly translating, then very casually you quoted lines of a poem.

  I’m dying, my God. This is happening too.

  Every death is an early death, my God.

  Yet, the life you are taking wasn’t too bad.

  Keep the change.

  You seemed comfortable, alike even, but you didn’t touch me inside the studio, not then, or ever.

  Upstairs I had other names, in your language, begging, sworn before climax. The stove in the bedroom kept us warm. We sat or lay, you unwinding from work, taking off layer after layer, and our forms melted together in the red underworld light. We slept as the flames settled and died, tucked together like pigeons in a loft, the sleet creeping over the roof, the country waiting. February, with its bare, larval branches. March. Other nations were closing borders, quarantining.

  You brought the orange tree from the market, carried it rustling up the stairs, and we put it on the small iron balcony over the river. It was blossoming wildly. The scent was heady, urgent; it released something in us. Bodies in the rubble of a huge earthquake when you were fifteen had a similar smell, you told me. Briefly, a kind of sweet, organic rot. Then they became putrid, no one could go out; your father had insisted you stay home.

  But I went. I wanted to know what it was like. I’m sorry to say it. After a week it was so strong, awful. You could tell which buildings had people under. Stupid boy.

  You looked pained, so undefended. I took your hand.

  I kept the scan of Naomi’s brain, the one before surgery. The haemorrhage is like a rose. It’s completely horrible and beautiful too. Sometimes I look at it.

  Secrets too intimate to pass without marking us, inviting trespass.

  Canım.

  You took me by the shoulders and brought me against you, found warm skin on my back, the soft interior of my mouth, the fastening of my jeans – extraordinary wetness you realised was blood when you undressed me.

  I didn’t stop you. I didn’t care. Nothing can prevent desire in its first stages. Your arousal was like a drug. You put me on the floor. There was red smeared on my thighs. You kept slipping out, were agonised by the slickness of the movement, the adolescent slapping, pleasure filled with bad knowledge. The cold wind kept flushing through the open window as if trying to rouse us. Insistent, seductive perfume drifting on it. You came, saying you were going to, asking to stay inside. I raised my hips as you drove in. There was slight shame afterwards: you’d been taught doctrines. The blood smelled of fresh iron, there were small clots in the hair on your thighs. We went to wash, dried each other, a little lost by the direction we had gone, into a new room of the relationship.

  That wasn’t totally safe?

  Maybe not. I’ll go to the pharmacy.

  I’m sorry. Oh God. I loved it.

  Me too.

  I was dripping on the floor.

  You don’t need to apologise, Halit.

  I’m trying not to.

  You watched me insert a tampon, though I’d turned and was being discreet. Another taboo broken. You sat on the corner of the bath, pulled me backwards into your lap.

  Can I feel?

  Inside?

  Yes.

  You circled your fingers, pressed one gently into me until you felt the cotton end. You slid it back out, kept stroking.

  Is this right? you whispered. I want to make you.

  I moved your hand a fraction. My head fell back on your shoulder. Your prick swelled; you pulled it away, sloped it up my back, an incidental thing. You used the tips of two fingers.

  Like this?

  Yes.

  My nerves were already alive from the sex, the cramps. It took only moments.

  On Saturdays I met you after closing, when the bars were already emptying. Sunday was your day off; by then you were exhausted, full of frustration that easily became lust. Afterwards you would sleep as if dead, motionless, on into the bright sunlight. Or you arrived at the apartment in the early hours, having cleaned and locked the restaurant, and I would hear the ringing of feet on the iron stairs. The night was interstitial; hours awake midway, as once there would have been field labour or prayer. You would bring small coffees to the bed, or open wine, and would talk until the night’s energy had released.

  It’s snowing outside. Snow! English weather is so confusing – I thought it was spring. Yesterday I walked without my jacket.

  Let me get up and see.

  That is what I want to see – your pale ass like the moon.

  It’s not that white.

  Yes. I’ll take you somewhere hot in the summer.

  Where?

  Akyaka. It has a beautiful river, so cold it can give you a heart attack if you jump in.

  Cold? No, I know cold water.

  In the morning I would get up, go downstairs half-dressed to sit in the studio, then return to bed as if I’d never left. You’d stir, roll stiffly towards me.

  Günaydın.

  Hello again.

  Once, as I was coming back up, I found you awake and working shirtless in the kitchen. There was orange blossom on the counter. You were heating a pan on the stove.

  What are you making?

  You leant and kissed my cheek.

  I had a dream that I went to my grandmother’s house in Bulgaria. She was very traditional and always gave visitors kolonya. I could smell it so perfectly in the dream.

  You were turning the oil slowly in the pan, melting the flowers down.

  What else does it need, Mr Chemist?

  Alcohol. Tobacco.

  I have vodka.

  Sure.

  I poured you a shot and drank one.

  Really! I don’t like vodka. OK, give it here. Hassiktir! Actually that’s quite good – I do like vodka.

  The perfume when it cooled was floral, refreshing, slightly antiseptic. You left it to sit and then tipped it into a small, clean spice jar.

  I’m impressed. What other skills have you got?

  OK. Well, I should tell you that before I came here I was in the military.

  Really?

  That wasn’t my choice.

  You put the scent on my hands and wrists.

  Where do you wear your perfume?

  Here.

  You thumbed the liquid onto my neck, blew gently on it.

  If I know you are coming, here.

  Oh, to invite me.

  You lifted up the long jumper I was wearing.

  To do this?

  You knelt down.

  Adult games. We tried other experiments – which height worked best when you were behind, if I wore shoes with a heel, bent forward and held the rail of the bed. One item worn highlighting nakedness. I tightened my stance, tipped my pelvis and you forgot any mutual instinct, forgot how a woman is made. You lay on your back and I gently ran my tongue along the front and then underneath your erection, bringing the end into my mouth, before swapping again.

  Which side is better? This side … or this side …

  Oh God. I don’t know.

  Which one?

  Both.

  Choose.

  This … Front. When you do that.

  I lifted away. I knelt across your chest and began to touch myself. You leaned forward to see, to help, then watched the technique as if watching a stranger.

  Show me how with you, I asked.

  No! Come on. I can’t do that?

  Imagine I’m not here. Like you’re in the shower.

  You refused, smiling and scowling, so I started again with my mouth, and breathed.

  Show me, Halit.

  I knew – to call you by your name meant you would give in. You took over, held it out from your body as if separating a piece from the rest, and swiftly, soundlessly, made a white web across your stomach.

  A string was broken, another spun of trust – the psychology of intimacy. You saw me
looking at the tip, the dark lilac belt.

  Shall I tell you about when I was cut? I was six.

  You described the circumcision, a few days after your birthday. You and another boy, dressed in blue-and-white costume, were lifted onto horses and led down the street by the men in your family. The horse you rode was big, ill-tempered, it kept sidestepping, grinding the bit. You knew what was coming, everyone did, such things were not private. The other boy was braver; he let go of the reins and held the animal’s mane, showing off.

  I didn’t know the doctor. He was probably doing fifty that day, all over Istanbul. My grandfather held me down, crossed my arms.

  My head was resting on your arm and I was lying against your chest. Your body was rigid, the biceps jumped as your hands lifted, conducted the trauma in the air. There was an injection; in that way you were lucky. But you screamed for them to stop, fought as hard as you could.

  I hated them all. I hated God. The other boy had to watch what was happening, so I think in the end it was worse for him.

  Afterwards, bulky wadded tissues taped to the top of your legs, and a ceremony, at which you were praised, told you were a man, and money was pinned on your jacket. You had kicked so hard you’d split your grandfather’s chin – küçük boğa, little bull – it became your nickname, the family joke.

  I didn’t know what to say, but you kept talking.

  I went to mosque in the afternoons, and learned Arabic. I learned the call to prayer. When it echoes in the empty space it’s a very strong, spiritual thing. If I heard it when I was playing football I would feel so guilty.

  I turned to look – you were staring at the beams in the ceiling, the voids. There was a glimmer in the corner of your eye.

  What do you believe now?

  You shook your head.

  The imams gave us little sticks to point out the letters we were learning – like ice-cream sticks. I stuck two together with tape and made a cross. It didn’t mean anything, I wasn’t really thinking. The imam saw and took it away. He broke it, told me – never do that.

  I think back on those last unrestricted months. The before. There was such freedom and faith; I’ve never known it again. After knowledge, after experience, comes an unmovable weight, to the body, the mind. It’s like war; the effect is invasive, almost genetic. It can’t be undone.

  Those mornings were contradictory, fiercely sunny but still raw, with frost under the north side of buildings. We saw no one we knew; friends assumed. You went to work but the restaurant was quiet. People were worried, could feel the first sting. A few months of carefulness, masks and closures, and it would pass, I thought. I was stupid with contentment. But it was becoming the only story in the news. You checked every day, the figures coming in from the east, the different media reports and government denials. You were anxious about your family, who were nearer the main sites of the outbreak: the city of two continents, so full, so populous. There was footage of virologists giving catastrophic estimates and nurses in the capital making video appeals.

  Why is nobody doing anything? We have nowhere to treat these patients except with everyone else.

  It did not seem possible joy would be disrupted, or that our bodies could break. The eye can see disaster on a screen, human silt and effluent, makeshift triages, pits, and the brain cleanly dissociates. We live temporally, deluded. Not here, not us. Of all people, I should have known better. But I thought my lot had changed. Even your cautiousness seemed like a closed window. Outside, the danger, the fear, made what was happening inside purer. The fucking of innocent gods.

  Those voices, pleading for action. The zones on the map blooming red, and the red vectors between. Dreams of the rodent, the wild dog, in which it had existed, then suddenly leapt, breaking the barrier. The weeks we were together, entering the bloodstream of love, it was travelling unstoppably, like its predecessors, its sequence long and patient, transmitted by touch, fluids, breath. It had learnt to incubate, could survive outside crowds. It had perfected itself for us.

  We drove to the beach, across the neck of the country; I remember the date – it was the 15th, the Ides of March. I’d promised to show you the Scotch Witch on the way. I heard you draw breath as we approached, as she broke the horizon, her edges sharp and dark. We parked and walked the pathway to the base and you stood, speechless, at the edge of the reef of gorse. Don’t let this finish, I thought.

  At the coast, we walked along corrugated sand, our faces covered by scarves. The light over the sea was radiant: great vaults of shale and a bright patina to the sky. The marram grass reached over the dunes, stroked light and dark as the wind coursed through. We walked in each other’s arms, in step, and from the surf a black-headed seal watched us, then disappeared. There had been a high spring tide; storm debris was everywhere. Racks of shells and dismantled carcasses, driftwood. I couldn’t help myself.

  Look at that. Will you help me lift it?

  We hauled the large piece of salted oak back to the roadside. Its shape was bizarre, with branches emanating from its core as if the sea’s fission had malformed it. The wind was bitter, scouring us with sand. We’d planned to camp on the beach but slept in the back of the van, next to the sodden oak. We acted as if we were on holiday, honeymoon, the edge of our new life. We were. The world had caught fire; not even the sea’s tonic would put it out.

  Naomi’s friend – Ellen – had been pulled from the wreckage of the crash. She wanted to see me, so I went to the hospital, where she lay half-demolished, her eyes swimming up out of the medication. She whispered through her pulped jaw. They’d been on the pass, coming back from the south of the county, she said. A lorry had crossed the central reservation, hitting and flipping them. The car had rolled down the embankment, crushing in like foil. There’d been no time to think.

  I can’t stop hearing her. She was shouting, dee-dee, dee-dee.

  Fluid ran from her eyes. I held her hand, gently. I asked if she knew about Naomi, her condition, whether anything had happened in the car. Did she say her head hurt?

  No. She was fine. She never said a thing. What does it mean – dee-dee?

  I think it was my baby nickname.

  With the help of a neighbour, I arranged the cremation and put Naomi’s belongings, and her archive, into storage. A yellow metal container for a life’s worth. Her agent had long since passed away; she’d had no dealings with Saul that I knew of for more than a decade. When I called the agency I was put through to several secretaries, then the junior accountant who was overseeing the royalty stream. He had never met Naomi, was flustered over the news, and asked for a copy of the will.

  The next morning, Karolina Sepehri called me back and introduced herself.

  I apologise for Benjamin – he’s very young, not used to people. Your mother was truly exceptional. Quite unlike any of her peers.

  The accent was minimal, the pronunciation acute.

  She’s one of the reasons I joined the Saul Agency. What can I do to help you, Edith?

  Karolina rode a train north that day, and took a parochial taxi twenty miles to the cottage. She stood under the enclosed, thundery sky, in a linen jacket, enjoying the house, the mossed roof and stacked vernacular slate. She kissed me on both cheeks when I opened the door. At the kitchen table she drank an exquisite floral tea that she’d brought in her bag and left for me on her departure. She talked briefly about the agency, her family history, the shah. She asked me very few questions, but each had the tenor of a captivated aunt. She had believed in Naomi; she seemed, immediately, to believe in me. For some reason I talked, about my childhood, the work I had done with Shun, what I hoped to become. I spoke about Naomi, our life – its ordinary and exceptional moments. She listened.

  When did I know I was an artist? I’ve been asked so many times. As if there’s annunciation, cosmic lightning. Naomi would say she knew. The summer I turned thirteen. The summer of the ship. That August she was gone most days, teaching her workshop. I accompanied her for the first few sessions, bu
t the drive was long, the community centre was dull, attended by bored retirees and timid divorcees. I told her I preferred to stay at the cottage, that I didn’t mind being alone. I said I had my own plan, and she took me at my word. We’d got rid of the social worker, Cheryl. A telephone had finally been installed. It seemed workable.

  The summer was searing hot, with high blue skies, chaff drifting, a cuckoo sounding dully in the valley like a heartbeat. The marshes were drying up, and cotton grass and swarms of flies had taken over. Every morning before she left, Naomi put a basket on the table containing cheese and apples, antihistamine, little folded sanitary pads and a book about puberty – though I was still undeveloped, had a flat athletic chest – and the front-door key. I swam in the waterfalls, diving from rock pillars into the bottomless pools, holding my breath as I kicked down and down. Then I collected all the useful wood I could find, branches from the moor, planks, I took off the shed door that had been hanging on its bottom hinge. I asked Naomi to bring me more and she’d arrive home with the boot open, the back seat folded down, pallets and crates rammed in. I would hear the load clattering as the car bounced over potholes into the yard. I wanted rope, hammers and nails, old bedsheets. She didn’t ask me what I was doing. I told her not to go into the bottom of the garden.

  The hull was deep, copied from a picture book, made of boards and sticks. I raised the prow on rocks, so the ship was cresting waves of grass. The stern was big enough that two people could sit together tightly on crates. It took weeks of construction. I was covered with scratches and cuts, which stung as I sweated. The plague of tiny biting flies left my hairline and the folds of my elbows itching madly. I kept busy all day so I would not be waiting for the sound of the car, so I wouldn’t have to think.