Читать книгу City of the Lost - Will Adams - Страница 27

Zehra rose early to prepare a light breakfast for herself and Katerina. After last night’s harrowing drive, not all the demons in hell would ever get her back behind the wheel of her son’s car, so she had Katerina show her the way across the park to her school. She said goodbye to her at the gates and promised to meet her there again that afternoon.

It was a promise she had no intention of keeping.

A bus to the Old City, then on foot to a small enclave of handsome whitewashed homes just inside its walls. Two policemen were on duty outside the Professor’s house. She hesitated but then steeled herself. ‘I’m here to see Metin Volkan,’ she told them.

A scar from upper lip to left nostril made the nearer policeman seem to sneer. Or maybe he really was sneering. ‘And you are?’

‘Zehra Inzanoğlu.’

‘And what are you to him? His cleaner? His lover?’

She ignored their laughter. ‘We were children together.’

‘That was a while ago, I’m guessing.’ He took her bag, rummaged through it, holding individual items up for mockery before thrusting the whole thing back at her. ‘Go on in, then,’ said his companion, opening the door for her. ‘You’ll find your sweetheart in his study.’

Zehra didn’t know where that was, but she wasn’t about to ask. She opened doors at random, therefore, until she found him at a desk in a brightly lit, book-lined room, making notes in green biro upon a sheaf of stapled papers. Professor Metin Volkan, formerly a noted historian but now best-known as leader of One Cyprus, the political party he’d founded to press for reunification of the island. He looked up irritably from his work but sprang to his feet the moment he recognized her, hurried around to greet her. ‘My dear Zehra,’ he said. ‘How good to see you. But what are you doing here?’

‘My son came to visit me yesterday,’ she told him, launching into the speech she’d rehearsed on her way here. ‘Before they arrested him. He asked me to look after his daughter. But it’s impossible, I can’t, I’m too old. She needs to be here, near her school, near her friends.’ She thrust out her jaw. ‘You’ll have to look after her for me.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes. You.’

He looked at her as though she were crazy. ‘What do I know about looking after a schoolgirl, Zehra? And did you really not notice those policemen at my door? I’m under effective house arrest. It’ll be a miracle if I’m not under full arrest in the next few days. The moment they find anything on me, anything at all … Anyway, she’s your granddaughter, not mine.’ He shook his head in bafflement. ‘What happened to you, Zehra? You used to be so kind.’

‘She’s one of them,’ spat Zehra.

‘One of them?’ frowned the Professor.

‘Yes,’ insisted Zehra. ‘One of them. A Greek. Like her mother. That whore you introduced to my son. So this is your fault. Your fault, your responsibility.’ She folded her arms emphatically, as if her position was unarguable.

Volkan nodded. ‘I’m sorry about what happened between you and your son. I truly am. But it wasn’t my fault. Nor was it even your son’s. All he ever did was fall in love.’

‘Then whose fault was it?’ demanded Zehra.

‘Yours.’

She looked incredulously at him. ‘Mine?’

‘Yours and your husband’s.’

‘Those monsters raped and murdered my sister,’ she said furiously. ‘They broke my father’s legs and they stole our home and land and everything we’d ever owned. We had to run for our lives. We had to take refuge in a concentration camp. You had to take refuge there too, in case you’ve forgotten. And now you’re telling me that it was my fault?’

‘Athena did all those terrible things to you? Remarkable, considering she hadn’t even been born at the time.’

‘Not her. Her kind.’

‘Her kind!’ he retorted. ‘So all Greek Cypriots are accountable for the sins of those few, are they? Even the ones who weren’t yet born back then? Does that work both ways, I wonder? Did you know that Athena’s family came originally from Kyrenia? That they were refugees themselves, only in the opposite direction, fleeing from us? Do you have any idea how many hundreds of them vanished during that time? And did you know her own uncle was one of them? That he was photographed surrendering to Turkish troops yet he was never seen again?’

‘Good,’ snapped Zehra. ‘I’m glad.’ Volkan didn’t say anything to that. He didn’t need to. Her cheeks grew hot all by themselves. ‘They started it,’ she said weakly.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They did. But before they started it, we started it. And before we started it that time, they’d started it once before. Go back to the beginning of time and you’ll never run out of other people starting it. So the question isn’t who started it. The question is who can finish it.’

‘You?’ scoffed Zehra.

‘No,’ said Volkan. ‘Not me. Your son, perhaps. More likely your granddaughter.’

‘Don’t call her that.’

‘Your flesh, Zehra. Your blood.’

‘I’m too old,’ she said. ‘I don’t live here. I made a vow to my husband …’ She faltered at the feebleness of her own protests. ‘What am I to do?’ she asked plaintively. But it was an admission of defeat.

He put a hand upon her arm. ‘It may not be for long. With luck they’ll release your son soon enough.’

‘With luck?’

‘We have good lawyers,’ he said. ‘They’re working hard on his case. On everyone’s cases. But you have to understand what’s going on here. These arrests have nothing to do with investigating the bomb or capturing the real culprits. They’re all about reassuring the Turkish people that the police are active, that they’re making progress, and most importantly that they’re making life miserable for people like us. To release your son and the others now would be to admit that they have nothing, and they can’t do that, not without risking an outcry.’

She gave a long sigh. She knew the truth of this. It was how life was. ‘And you swear that neither you nor my son had anything to do with the bombings?’

Volkan shook his head. ‘How could you even ask such a thing? We make a lot of noise, your son and I, because we want desperately for Cyprus to be one island again, independent of Turkey, Greece and Britain, and ruled by its own citizenry under its own constitution. But we reject utterly the use of violence.’

‘I still want your word,’ she insisted. ‘I want your word that you know nothing about it.’

‘I give you my word,’ said Volkan. But there was just a hint of something else in his voice: of hesitation, of doubt. And they both heard it. And, to judge from his expression, it seemed he was every bit as taken aback as she was.