Istanbul Passage Read Online Free PDF Page B

afternoon—that’s all I know about you. Somebody who doesn’t ask me questions. Until today. And now what? Pay for the room. I pay for it.I told myself, if you ever get out of that place, you’ll have your own room, just yours, not in some house with people walking around. It’s mine,” she said, looking at the room. “I pay for it.”
    “But this is how you pay for it,” he said, nodding at the bed, the tangled sheets.
    “Yes.”
    “Then I’m paying anyway.”
    “Not for the room.”
    Which is when he realized someone else was keeping her, their Thursday afternoons just extra cash, something to tuck away under the mattress. All the others just pin money too. Did the man know about him? The afternoons, the most private thing he had, seemed suddenly invaded, no longer safe. It became important to know. He even watched the building for a while, curious to see the others. Europeans, always in the afternoon, like him. Only one at night, a Turk who showed up at odd times, as if he never knew when he could manage to get away. Someone she kept her evenings free for, just in case.
    “Why do you want to know?” she said when he pressed her.
    “Does he know about me?”
    “No. I told you that.”
    “Or the others?”
    “You think there are so many?”
    He waited. “Does he know?”
    She belted her robe tightly, reaching for a cigarette. “No. Why? Do you want to tell him?”
    “You said you didn’t want to lie to me. But you lie to him.”
    “Maybe I have feelings for you.”
    “Now you are lying to me.”
    She glanced over at him, then smiled wryly, and drew on the cigarette. “I’m a whore. That’s what we do. You’re surprised?”
    “Tell me.”
    “Oh, tell what? Leave me alone. He’s rescuing me. That’s how he sees things, a fairy story. He gives me this room. So I’m like a princess, somebody in a window. In a drawing.”
    “And he’s the prince?”
    She smiled again. “The pasha. He stole the building. An Armenian owned it. Remember the Varlik Vergisi , how they taxed the Jews and the Armenians and when they couldn’t pay they sent them to camps and took what was left? He got the building. So he gives me this room. No rent. But I pay for it with him. Is that what you want to know?”
    “And he thinks you’ve given it up? The others?”
    “He thinks I’m grateful. I am grateful. But I have to think of the future too. He gets tired of me. Anything can happen. He’s a simple man. A business in Şişhane. He never thought he could have anything like this, a girl in a room, waiting for him. But now he’s a big landlord. Rents. So it was the tax, maybe, that got me out of that place. Strange how things work.”
    “Why strange?”
    “I’m Armenian. He steals from an Armenian and he gives the room to another. I don’t think he knows. A woman—it’s all the same to him. So I lie to him. I don’t lie to you.”
    “Why not?”
    “I know who he is. A man who steals. You—I’m not so sure. You never tell me anything.”
    He touched her wrist. “I don’t come here to talk.”
    “Everyone else—I think that’s why they come, to tell me their troubles.”
    “Maybe I don’t have any troubles.”
    She raised her eyes, meeting his, and held them for a second, a sudden connection, not saying anything, not having to.

    He met Ed Burke for lunch in one of the restaurants in the Flower Passage, a table out in the arcade, under the belle époque globes. Ed had ordered wine and drank most of it himself, Leon sipping a little for show, barely touching the stuffed mussels, his mind somewhere else.
    “So when are you going home?” Ed said.
    “What’s the hurry?”
    “You don’t want to wait too long. The import business is finished. Where are they going to get the hard currency? Another year, it’ll be strictly domestic here. You should get out now.”
    “I’m buying, not selling. They’re still open for business.”
    “Until the fucking Russians get their hands on the place. What