Blood-Dark Track Read Online Free PDF

friend in an air crash having previously scared him off. On this occasion, though, getting on board the aeroplane truly was a matter of living or dying. Dr Ersoy said that the next three days would be decisive; either the patient would perish or the crisis would pass. Joseph said to his wife, Georgette, ‘I promise that if I survive I’ll buy you a fur coat. I’ll buy one for you and one for the wife of Muzaffer Ersoy.’
    Nobody got a fur coat. On the third day of his hospitalization, Joseph died; but not before he had seduced my grandmother one last time. Lying on his bed, he asked her forgiveness for all the harm he’d caused her: ‘ Pardonne moi pour tout le mal que je t’ai fait .’ Mamie Dakad replied, ‘I am very happy with what I have had.’ My grandfather closed his eyes. For a long time he had worried terribly about dying, but now he was surprisingly and suddenly at peace.‘ Comme c’est bon ,’ he said, and he squeezed his wife’s hand; whereupon he died.
    My grandmother attached great weight to these dramatic gestures and would occasionally tell the story of her husband’s last moments to her daughters. It was, in her eyes, a kind of happy ending, and one which decisively vindicated the steadfast and exclusive love she had borne my grandfather for over thirty years. My mother said to me, ‘Because of what he said in the hospital, Maman always kept a good memory of Papa.’
    A van came down overnight from Istanbul with the body. The journey was not easy. Snow was falling as the van crossed the Anatolian plateau, a near-desert of desolate, immeasurable darkness. The van slowly made its way through the snowstorm, the flakes falling without cease and still falling hours later as the vehicle slowly climbed the Taurus mountains, where, at the village of Pozanti, Fonda and Amy escorted it for the remainder of the journey. The convoy proceeded through forests and along terrifying precipices towards a narrow chasm known as the Cilician Gate, through which the army of Alexander the Great and the crusaders of the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, once passed. Eventually the snow and the mountains gave way to heavy rain and foothills, and finally to drizzle and the maritime plain of Çukurova, which is still referred to by westerners as Cilicia, after the Roman province (briefly governed by Cicero) of which the plain formed part. My grandfather’s body was driven through Tarsus, the birthplace of St Paul, where a still-visible hole in the ground is alleged to be the well in which the evangelist hid from his pursuers. Legend also sticks to Tarsus’ river, the Cydnus, on whose then navigable waters Cleopatra sailed her barge to meet Mark Antony. The convoy continued south-westward for about thirty kilometres, coming to a place that according to one conjecture is the location of Eden, a theory that, however crazy, is consistent with the remarkable fertility of the local earth, in which superb fruits and vegetables grow, and also with archaeological evidence (produced by the excavations of an English Hittitologist, John Garstang) which suggests that the area – that is, the area now occupied by the city ofMersin – is one of the oldest continuously inhabited spots on the planet.
    The van followed Fonda’s car along an avenue of eucalyptus trees. This was the eastern road into Mersin. On they went: past the railway line that reaches a charming terminus at Mersin’s old railway station, past the courthouse, past the prison, past what used to be known as the Maronite quarter, past the Catholic church, past the old Greek quarter. They entered a town which I imagine I just about remember, a quiet port of white-stoned villas and lush gardens, of untidy shacks and donkeys loaded with panniers leaking peaches, of card-games and tittle-tattle in multiple languages – a town reeking, in the springtime, of orange blossom. There was practically no motorized traffic as the convoy proceeded up the main street,