on crutches for months.
They called him Sümbül’s gimp.
I suppose people felt that her presence offered some security, stopped the young kids in town from pestering other women and provided an outlet for their wild desires. She had friends and neighbours. Like the other poor women, she carried her groceries in a mesh bag and covered her head with a scarf when she left home.
She wasn’t beautiful but she was cheerful – she had a good sense of humour.
‘I’m this town’s lightning rod,’ she would say. ‘Lightning always strikes me first. I keep this place honourable.’
It’s not easy for me to make friends with other men but I can quickly befriend women. For me talking to a woman is like wandering into a gift shop filled with a thousand different ornaments. There are so many different things to talk about – gossip, secrets, petty jealousies and personal troubles – that speaking with a woman is like playing with little ornaments that you can pick up and look at without getting bored and without having to buy them. If you don’t bore women by over-selling yourself, you can talk about things that will entertain you for hours.
They have none of the boring, ostentatious self-satisfaction that men have, and to those men who proclaim themselves able to solve all problems they say, Well, go ahead and solve it then, and seem to leave all kinds of problems on the sideline as they have a good time; they know that these problems can be solved easily and believe they can solve them much better than men, and they do. I enjoy them most when they’re putting men down but they really have to believe I’m a true and close friend to do that. Sümbül and I quickly became good friends.
She came to me around midnight. Somehow she’d picked up the habit of drinking whisky and cola – she must have had customers from the big city who met her in fancy hotels.
‘Take off your clothes,’ I would say to her, and she would undress and sit in front of me. She was completely comfortable naked.
Unlike the other women in town, she was fascinated by politics, and she never missed the nightly news. Occasionally we’d discuss popular issues. I always found it amusing to talk politics with her when she was naked. I suppose because I was a writer she always enjoyed talking with me and in time she started telling me about her other clients, though never disclosing names. She pitied men’s hang-ups but was never surprised.
‘Write about prostitutes,’ she’d say, ‘there’s great material there.’
‘Now I’m not the type of girl to just finish the business and send a fellow on his way. But that’s not to say I can’t finish a guy off in five minutes – they just can’t last any longer – but that’s not my style. There was the miserable guy who came to see me, his wife never listened to him, no one ever listened to him, but I did, which is why he even called for me when he was out of town. There’s nothing I won’t do, I never say no.’
Men can never really know other men and that’s why I was curious to hear about what these men did with her. And she told me. There was one I’ll never forget. She didn’t give me his name but I assumed he was one of the town’s better-known gangsters.
‘The man would come and just sit down opposite me, look at me and then start crying. We would never speak. Never did anything either. He’d just look at me and cry. He’d bawl his eyes out. Then he’d pay me and leave. Once I asked him why he was crying and he said that if he told me he’d never come back. I didn’t push him but one day I’m going to ask him again, I’m dying to know.’
One night I asked Sümbül what the people in town thought about me.
‘You got off lightly.’
‘Got off lightly?’
‘One of Oleander Ramiz’s men was going to beat the living daylights out of you.’
‘Why?’
‘So you would leave town.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Everyone knows.’
‘Everyone knows?’
‘Of course they do,’ she said. ‘The whole town was talking about it.’
A sadness suddenly swept over me as I realised how much I cared about the people in town, and it broke my heart to think that as I chatted and joked with them, believing them to be friends, they could look me in the eye knowing that I was going to be beaten and not even tell me about it. I felt betrayed. This feeling only proved how much they meant to me. I was fond of them but they had betrayed me; they had never cared for me.
Sadly I said, ‘No one ever said a word about this to me.’
‘No one could tell you. They were afraid. One day you’ll leave, but they have to stay. I’m sure they dropped hints, though.’
‘No, they never did.’
She raised her eyebrows, pursed her lips and said, ‘Didn’t Remzi ask you if you were bored here, tell you to try somewhere a little more fun? Didn’t Centipede tell you the mountains were beautiful this time of year, that you should spend some time up there? Doesn’t Hamiyet wonder why you don’t go back to the comfort of your own home? Didn’t you ever stop to think why they were saying all these things?’
‘No.’ But I was pleased to think that they were trying to warn me, which means at least I hadn’t been betrayed. ‘But why didn’t they beat me up then?’
‘Mustafa said you were harmless and that they should leave you alone for now. That’s why.’
‘Mustafa got me off the hook?’
‘He’s got something in mind. He always does.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘I’ve known him since he was a kid,’ she said, laughing. ‘But I haven’t seen him for a while. I don’t really see much of those guys after they grow up.’
‘But then why were they planning to beat me in the first place? What was the problem with me? Is it because of the treasure?’
‘Of course. They don’t like strangers poking around here.’
‘Do you think there really is treasure there?’
‘God, I don’t know, but that’s what they say. And even if it’s true, what use is it to me?’
‘It’s like Schrödinger’s cat,’ I said, softly.
‘Whose cat?’
‘Schrödinger’s.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘He says put a cat and poison in a box, and the cat is both dead and alive until you actually open the box.’
‘So you’re saying that the treasure is either there or it isn’t?’
‘No, I’m saying that it’s both there and not there …’
She took a deep breath.
‘You’re the cleverest man in the town and now you’re saying that the treasure is both there and it’s not there. The damned thing is enough to drive even the cleverest people insane.’
She stood up and ran her hand up her inner thigh. ‘Come over here and I’ll show you Sümbül’s cat. Now, that’s definitely there.’
Sümbül’s cat was no match for Schrödinger’s and between her legs the last thing on my mind was quantum physics.
She downed the last bit of whisky-cola before she got up to go. As she was stepping through the door, I took her by the arm and said: ‘But you never warned me.’
She looked at me, a forlorn expression on her face.
‘Didn’t I tell you to come and say goodbye before you left town? I was putting the idea in your head.’
That’s